That evening she came back into the yard and, putting her long thin arm around my shoulder, she whispered softly, “I’m sorry I called you an idiot. I wanted to tell you a
“I don’t want your secrets,” I said. “I’ve got plenty of my own at home.”
She started to laugh, but then ran off, happy that we were more or less friends again.
This time I was coming to Grandfather’s bursting with scary news. I felt like a sort of hero coming home from a magic kingdom. I pictured the astonishment I would arouse with what I had to tell. But little did I know that a disturbing surprise was waiting for me in that old house: Margarita.
The moment I stepped through the courtyard gate and looked up I saw her in one of the upper-storey windows. I had never seen such a beautiful woman’s face in a house I could only imagine as a repository of aunts, uncles, Arabic letters and food.
She was sitting near the flowerpots, utterly, miraculously alien; as strange and unexpected as a rose that suddenly blooms one morning on a thorny stem.
“Who’s that?” I asked Grandma, a bit taken aback.
“Our new tenant,” she said. “We rented her the corner room a week ago.”
Margarita smiled through the flowerpots and asked, “Is this your grandson?”
“Yes,” Grandma answered.
I felt my ears turn red and ran out through the courtyard gate. As I stood at the gate, I heard something, a flutter of wings. Suzana, I thought.
“So, you’ve come back,” she said.
I had suddenly lost the urge to tell stories about the neighbourhood. “What can I tell you? There’s nothing to tell,” I said.
“Nothing?” she asked, with disappointment.
“Well, there are some stories about magic.”
“Magic? How come? Tell me.”
“There are different kinds.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
I stayed silent.
“Why don’t you want to tell me about it? Go on! Or else tell me about the Italians.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“You’re really stupid,” she said. “
“Really,
I took the round lens from my pocket and stuck it to one eye, holding it in place between my cheek and brow. To hold the lens that way I had to distort my whole face and keep my neck frozen stiff. Suzana hated seeing me like that.
“Boo! Monster!” she said.
“I quite like my look.”
“Why do you want to look so ugly?”
“Because I feel like it.”
I began to move slowly, holding my neck stiff and my face screwed up, tightening every muscle to keep the lens from falling. She looked at me scornfully. For a moment I forgot my inexplicable irritation with her and, wanting to show off, I walked into the gypsies’ room with the lens over one eye, provoking the little cries of surprise and wonder that this trick usually aroused in them. On my way out I felt my cheek going numb. I couldn’t hold the lens in place any more, so I took it off and put it back in my pocket.
Suzana saw me take it off and came up to me and said softly, “Why are you always in a bad mood when you come over from your place?”
I looked at her and realised from her expression that she was closer to affection than to resentment. She took a step towards me.
“If you only knew! I’m so alone here. So bored.”
Her smile anticipated the kind words I would say, but just then, as if driven by some blind and irresistible force, suddenly and unthinkingly, I blurted out in a drawl that even I didn’t recognise as my own the words I had heard an Italian say:
She clapped her hands to her mouth, took a step back, then another, then turned and ran away as fast as she could through the undergrowth. I stood there a moment, rooted to the ground. My forehead was covered with sweat. I was brought back to my senses by Grandma calling me for lunch.
I didn’t see Suzana again for the four days of my visit. Sometimes I thought I heard a rustle somewhere around me, but I couldn’t tell exactly where and I never did catch sight of her.
Autumn was closing in, the roses in the yard were fading, and everything was getting more barren by the day, but Grandfather’s old house had become brighter. These were the last evenings when the gypsies would play their violins. Grandfather, after reading his big books all afternoon, now smoked his pipe in the courtyard in the half-light, reclining on the divan. I would sit near him on a stool as usual, but I’d lost interest in tobacco and Turkish books, for Margarita often sat near me and put her arm around my shoulder. The sky was pitch black and now and then a falling star flashed in the void.
“A shooting star,” Margarita said softly. “Did you see it?”
I nodded.
To tell the truth, a star falling from the sky made about as much impression on me as a button falling off a coat, for Margarita’s thick hair was spread across my neck and her hair, her whole body, had a subtle fragrance I had never noticed on Mamma, Grandma or any of my aunts. Nor was it like any of the other smells I liked best, including the aroma of my favourite dishes.
It had grown cooler, and Grandpa got up from the chaise longue earlier now than on summer evenings. Everyone else got up after he did, the gypsies would put their violins back in their cases, and for a moment there would be silence. Then there would be a flash of lightning in the distance and Grandfather would say, “It’s going to rain tomorrow.”
“Good night,” the Gypsies would say on their way back to their shack.
“Good night,” Margarita’s husband would say, on the rare occasions he stayed there.
“Good night,” Margarita would reply in her warm voice.
“Good night,” they would all answer in turn.
I would say “Good night” too, last of all, sleepy as I was. Then the old steps would creak for a while until calm and sleep settled over everything.
Then the ceilings of the house came to life. The movements of mice, timid and sporadic at first, became bolder and more rapid until an unchained horde thundered from one corner of the attic to another. As the minutes passed, my mind turned the mice into the hordes of Genghis Khan, which I had seen in a film. Now they were gathering somewhere in the depths of Asia (Asia was Margarita’s ceiling). Getting ready for battle. A brief silence. Genghis Khan must be addressing his troops. He extends his hand toward the borders of Europe (the hall ceiling). The hordes move off. The commotion mounts, the ceilings groan. They cross the frontiers of our continent. The noise builds to a crescendo. Right above our heads. Terror. Carnage. Then the horde veers off. A messenger brings the news from the depths of Asia. A tribe has rebelled. The horde rushes back whence it came. Crosses the border again. Now they are back in Asia. A terrible slaughter begins. Margarita lies sleeping beneath the battlefield. Genghis Khan ought to end the hostilities. Doesn’t he realise Margarita is sleeping? But he’s not interested. In war there is no sleep, he shouts. And the battle rages on.
In the morning Grandma put her hand on my forehead.
“You talked in your sleep last night,” she said. “You don’t have a fever, do you?”
“No.”
It was my fourth and last day at Grandfather’s. After breakfast, I said good-bye and left.
On my way home, carrying a big piece of meat pie and Margarita’s name (the pie had been carefully wrapped in paper by Grandma; I’m not sure where I held Margarita’s name), I saw some school kids going up Varosh Street. They looked terribly upset. Their teacher Qani Kekezi must have dissected another cat in the classroom.
