Before leaving he went to the restroom and swallowed the pill. On their way home, she sat next to him in the car. There was tension in the air between them, as if they were expecting something that they couldn’t quite spell out, so they covered it up by engaging in small talk that went on and on, leading nowhere. They got home and he went to the bathroom before her, came out wearing a white cashmere robe, and lay in bed watching television until she was done with her bath. That was their time-honored ritual before lovemaking. He recalled his session with the doctor. Why did he think that what he had said was insolent? The doctor had stated the fact that he had been carrying around deep inside him, even as he tried to avoid it. Yes, indeed. He had used Chris sexually, got her addicted to him while he was implementing his plan of marrying her to get an American passport.
He thought: stop deceiving yourself. Admitting your baseness might help you. You behaved like a gigolo, exactly like those chasing old American tourists in the bars of São Paolo and Madrid. You’re exactly like them. The only difference is that you are educated: a gigolo with a PhD. What did you do to Chris? You ignited her physical desire with liquor and fondling, then you played hard to get; you pretended to be preoccupied, and when she persisted you asked her, like a prostitute, “How many proofs of love do you want tonight?” You toyed with her desire until she almost cried; your impudence with her increased your own desire; you kept yourself at arm’s length until she almost gave up on you and then suddenly you were all over her, burning her with pleasure until she was fully satiated and dozed off for a long time then came to, looked at you gratefully, and showered your body with kisses. Everything went as planned: you married Chris, got your green card, and afterward, American citizenship.
When he stood up to swear the pledge of allegiance to his new country, he couldn’t, even for a moment, keep Zeinab Radwan out of his thoughts. “I regret to say that you’re a coward”—that was what Zeinab had said thirty years ago, perhaps a fitting summation of his life. He was roused from his reminiscences by seeing Chris. She had come out of the bathroom wearing a white robe that she had deliberately left open, revealing a snow-white naked body. She sat next to him on the bed and clung to him. He looked at her. Her face was flushed, and she was overcome with desire. He tried to speak but discovered there was nothing more to be said. As soon as he touched her body with his fingers she threw herself at him, embracing him hard and taking his lips into her mouth. He felt the contours of her body, and her beautiful perfume filled his nostrils and he felt his blood rushing. He had an unmistakable full erection. He began to bite her breasts and knead them with his hands. For a moment he felt that he had regained his old vigor, but apprehensions suddenly assailed him and he concentrated on getting rid of them. She felt what he was going through and decided to stand by him until he achieved victory. She began to fondle him patiently and persistently. She did her best, trying several ways to keep him focused, but he wavered and gradually quivered then was out of it completely. Failure loomed like a news flash, or a bolt of lightning. She closed her eyes and moved away a little while he stretched out on his back, as if he had lost his ability to move. He began looking at the shadows cast by the soft light on the ceiling. It occurred to him that they might be depicting something that was tangible: didn’t what he was seeing now resemble a big bear and a child next to it? Or two trees next to each other, one taller than the other? He went close to her and kissed her on the head. She looked at him with tearful eyes and he was filled with pity for her. She murmured in a wounded voice, “My problem is not with sex. I’m not young and my needs diminish with age.”
He began to pat her on the head silently. She went on, “What pains me is that you no longer love me.”
“Chris!”
“You cannot deceive a woman about love.”
He sat up and began to speak slowly, as if failure had given them some respite, “In a few weeks I’ll be sixty. My life is approaching its end. At best I’ll live another ten years. When I look back on the many years that have passed, I become certain that I’ve made many wrong decisions.”
“Was I one of your wrong decisions?”
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve known, but I only wish I could live my life over again to make different decisions. This might sound ridiculous, but I now believe that my decision to emigrate was not the right thing to do.”
“Nobody can live his life again.”
“That’s the tragedy.”
“Therapy will rid you of these thoughts.”
“I’m not going through that again. I am not going to lie on a couch to tell my life’s secrets to someone I don’t know and accept his reprimands as if I were a child who’d misbehaved. I won’t ever do that again.”
He said the last sentence loudly as he got off the bed. He turned on the light and picked up a book from the nightstand, then said as he held the doorknob before going out, “You know very well what you mean to me. But I’m going through a crisis that will not be over in the near
