“Cut out that noise!!!” David screamed, grabbing his brother and pummeling him.
The storm helped clear his soul, and brought a sort of relief to David, who could breathe again. Victor gagged and wept like a wounded animal.
“David, David, what’s wrong with you?” his mother asked, scared.
“Mama,” he said, elated, “I’ll eat your fried eggs!”
Emilie raised her eyes to the sky and thanked the good Lord. As long as people are eating … “Come, Victorico, I’ll make you two fried eggs as well.”
After eating and praising his mother, David snuck into the bathroom, shoved two fingers up his throat and returned the meal to the sewers. Now he was pleased: he’d appeased his mother without damaging his diet. Knowingly and maliciously he’d betrayed his mother’s trust, but his heart was light and he was relieved, happy and proud. His asceticism made his limbs feel lighter, as if he was stepping out of his body. His head floated among the clouds, and he was assured his body was as weightless as a cloud in a summer sky.
Esperance will even be surprised at how light I am, he thought, and hopped onto the scale.
One-hundred-and-seventy grams more than the previous weigh-in! It was maddening! Maddening! What was causing this?
The main thing was to keep his secret. Things would work out in the end. David was a natural optimist and believed that God loved him. Robby’s sister might not love him, but who was she compared to God?
The sun invaded the house, sweeping up its dark corners and almost reaching the depths of the hall with its frantic, curious rummaging. The rattle of copper sounded from the street. An old Arab man, wearing a skullcap, dragging loose britches between his legs like a sort of forgotten placenta, carried a plump sack on his shoulder that rang like the bells of ten churches. He called at the top of his lungs, “Nahàss! Nahàss!”
All the housewives sent down their servants with pots and pans, and the old man put them in his sack. For a small fee, this patina-stricken crockery would be returned to its owners glowing a bright gold. From the balcony, Robby could see all the cauldrons flowing into the sack, and yet the sack was never full, and the old man did not collapse under the burden.
“Nahàss! Nahàss!”
A piece of copper flashed through a hole in the sack, winking at the sun. The sack was full of cheerful suns.
“God loves me,” said David, indulging himself once more in his reflection in the hall mirror. In it, he saw the reflection of a painting that hung on the opposite wall. A cloudy, pastoral landscape. Green-brown trees, a herd of sheep grazing in the meadow, a pointy-eared dog, alert and prepared to give his life for any of the sheep, never imagining that the bone he receives as his reward at the end of each day came from the body of one of these woolly beasts, living for a moment in the dewy green, knowing nothing of slaughterhouses. A strange, nostalgic European landscape that David had only ever seen in movies or in textbooks in French class. The paravent also reflected in the mirror, a screen not intended to hide anything— a decoration meant merely to please the eye. Across the black fabric, an embroidered peacock spread its gorgeous feathers. Until that moment, David had never given any thought to this peacock. Now it seemed to have been born from darkness just for him, to expand his mind, a sign of grace, a sign of good things to come. They say Robby’s grandmother embroidered that peacock when she was a young girl, perhaps even back in Turkey. Strange to think that the old lady was able to produce such a masterpiece. She can barely read or write, but she has a sense of humor, that old bag, and she … she wants me so badly to marry her granddaughter. Perhaps I should just explain to her … frankly, without excuses, why I finally decided not to marry her …
Now David believed that he’d been in control of the entire matter from the start, and if he was engaged to Lilly Elhadeff rather than to Robby’s sister, that meant this was his desire and his choosing. The face in the mirror, the delicate, fair features, spread light over the glass. He could sit like this for hours, stroking his eyes over his reflection, studying each feature, trying to crack his own puzzle, as if the sphinx itself were smiling from the mirror. Suddenly he truly pitied Robby’s sister. If she could only open her eyes and see what she was missing! That Lilly Elhadeff, that smiling skeleton, she’ll win the jackpot, it’s practically being forfeited to her. He sighed, still believing deep in his heart that a loving hand was guiding the world, and his life especially.
His mother’s reflection appeared in the mirror. David looked at fat Emilie and was appalled. His confidence in himself had been shaken: he could see his career sinking into a pit of fat, drowning in it with a gurgle. He’d inherited the curse of weight from her. A trickle of hate toward her suddenly dripped inside his heart, as if by her mere existence she’d sentenced the jockey David Hamdi-Ali to failure.
“Emilie isn’t fat.”
“She isn’t thin either, is she?”
“Chubby. As they say en français, potelée,” Robby’s grandmother said.
“Potelée or not, it certainly doesn’t become her.”
“I think it looks nice. The Turks have always preferred their women with a little cushion, not like those skeletons walking around today with a boy’s haircut!”
Who can argue with Grandma when she gets her evidence from the Turks?
Madame Marika, whose own size was way beyond what was fashionable, could not comprehend why everyone was so understanding of Emilie’s figure, even going so far as to point out her loveliness, while her own figure inspired nothing but ridicule and wrinkled noses. She’d always carried her extra weight as a sort of protest, but this wasn’t to say that she didn’t feel wronged and persecuted. The cascades of fat had been part of her life ever since she was a little girl in Izmir. True, Turkish men do like chubby women, Madame Marika thought, but nobody liked fat women. Tears of rage rose in her throat, but then she remembered her husband, Vita, her skinny, modest Vita, whose weight she could barely feel the first time he climbed, like a long-limbed cricket, atop her voluptuous belly. She felt a sort of tickle back then, and almost laughed, but resisted, knowing that was no way to treat a man as he, breathing heavily, mounted the woman he’d married that very day. Vita was prepared to accept her just as she was, along with the considerable dowry her widower father had paid. But that was long ago. Since then they’ve had Eliyo, Becky, Julia, Rose and Nissimiko, whom they sometimes called Nisimachi, as was the Turkish manner, and counting. Renée Marika felt a little better and was ready to go to battle.
“What’s for sure is that David’s wife won’t be fat. Not even potelée.” Madame Marika giggled. “She’ll be skinny como un palo!”
“You’re saying my granddaughter is skinny as a stick?” Grandma asked innocently.
“Who’s talking about your granddaughter?” Madame Marika laughed maliciously. “You know Fortunée Elhadeff?”
“Of the Cairo Elhadeffs?” Grandma pretended not to know what this was about.
“Of the Cairo Elhadeffs,” Marika confirmed. “From Heliopolis.”