“What?”
“Take off your shirt so I can see your chest.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Do what I tell you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain to you after you take this off.”
She reached for the buttons on Carol’s blouse, but Carol restrained her hand and said somewhat angrily, “No, you won’t.”
Emily sighed hard, as if her patience had run out. Then she looked at her for a long time and said, “Listen. I didn’t ask you to come here to play. I have to see your chest.”
CHAPTER 22
After Dr. Salah told his wife that he wanted a separation, he felt relief and said to himself that it was a step that he should have taken a long time ago. From now on he wouldn’t have to face her chasing him, her physical demands, the humiliating, exhausting moments of his impotence, the expectations and disappointments. He was done with that fierce tension, which was always lying in wait just beneath their quiet conversations and their living together under the same roof while avoiding looking at each other. After today he wouldn’t have to pretend or lie. Their relationship was over. That was the truth. There was no doubt that he had loved her at a certain time in his life. She had helped him a lot. He was grateful to her and felt toward her that deep, calm appreciation that one has for a colleague that one has worked with for years. They would separate quietly and he was willing to meet all her demands. He would pay her any sum she wanted. She could have the furniture and the car, even the house if she wanted it. He would rent a small place for himself. All he wanted was to be alone, to enjoy a calm, comfortable old age, to be able to relive his life over and over, nonstop. Oh God, how did he get to be sixty? How quickly the years had passed! His whole life had passed before he realized it, before he began. He hadn’t lived. What had he done in his life? What had he achieved? Could he measure his happy times? How much? How many? Several days, a few months at best? It was not fair to advance in years without realizing the value of time, not fair that no one drew our attention to the time that was slipping through our fingers by the moment. It was a clever trick: to realize the value of life only just before it ended.
Salah went out, leaving his wife alone in the bedroom. He closed the door gently and thought that, from now on, he would live in the living room until the separation was complete. He had no desire to sleep. He said to himself that he was going to have a quiet drink and read a little of Isabelle Allende’s new novel. He strode to the door as he did every night, but as soon as he crossed the hallway, exactly before he entered the short corridor leading to the living room, he stopped suddenly, bent over, and looked at the floor as if looking for one thing or another. He was overcome by a strange sensation, quick and sharp like a blade: a distant, mysterious vision as if it were a dream that had been revealed to him. No one would believe him if he were to relate it, but it was quite real. He was possessed by a feeling such as that which overcomes us when we enter a place or see a person for the first time and know, in no uncertain terms, that we have been there before, that what we are living now is something that we had lived before in an earlier time. He found himself turning to the left and going toward the door to the basement. He descended the stairs as if hypnotized, as if he were being carried, as if it were someone else moving his feet while he contented himself with looking at them as they carried him forward. He opened the door and entered the basement and was immediately greeted by the dampness. The air was heavy and stagnant and he had difficulty breathing. He felt for the light switch and turned on the light. The basement was empty except for a few things that Chris had stored to dispose of later: an old television set, a dishwasher that didn’t work, and a few chairs that had been used in the garden for years before she bought a new set that previous summer. Salah stood examining the place with a distant look. What brought him here? What did he want? What were those vague feelings raging inside him? The questions kept droning in his ears without an answer until he found himself moving again. He was now certain that he was being driven by an overpowering force that he couldn’t resist. He headed directly for the corner and opened the closet and with both hands pulled out the old blue suitcase. He found it to be heavier than he had expected, so he paused for a moment to catch his breath, then pulled it again and placed it under the light. He bent down and began to undo the straps surrounding it. As soon as he opened it, his nostrils were filled with the overpowering smell of mothballs. He felt nauseated for about a minute, then he got a hold of himself and began to take out the contents of the suitcase: there were the clothes he had brought with him from Egypt, thirty years ago. He thought at the time they were elegant but discovered immediately that they were not suitable for America; wearing them he looked as if he had come from another planet or as if he were a character who had stepped out of a period play. He’d bought American clothes but he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of
