She lay on her canopied bed and waited for its effects, waited to be wafted away from the Consulate.
“The opposite happened. I felt myself growing heavier and more passive. I felt myself turning into a white slug.”
In spite of the tranquilizers, the Consul’s wife realized that the adoption of an American daughter, a healthy American orphan, had subtly developed into an expedition into the realm of nubile youth from which he might never return, for it was he who had been adopted by a young film star. She began to wonder if their story were finished.
She remembered a day in Morocco, when she sat in a cafe and while waiting for the Consul to end a conference, had been embroidering a petit point tapestry. The Moroccans had gathered around her to watch her as they watched other craftsmen working the streets. She was using all the colored wools they loved, and her needlework was nimble. She worked on a small square and was but halfway done. One of the Moroccans in long black robes, with a dignified bearing, bent over her and whispered: “Would the lady give me this embroidery in memory of her fair hands at work? I have never seen such fair hands at work.”
The Consul’s wife had been startled by the request. She had never parted with her embroideries. They covered all the chairs at the Consulate for many years. And all she could think to say was: “But it is not finished.”
The Moroccan did not ponder this very much or very long. He almost immediately answered: “But dear lady, according to the Koran, nothing is ever finished.”
Nothing is ever finished.
Yet there at her feet lay an open magazine with a photograph of the Consul and the young film star in a gondola in Venice. And the young film star had commented to the press that she did not believe in the European system of a wife and mistress in close collaboration.
Nothing is ever finished. As they had always shared and paralleled their interests, the study of dialects from all the provinces of India, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the history of Turkey, the classification of Arabian war cries, the history of rugs and pottery of Egypt, the history of ship building, birds of Africa, diseases of Tahiti, would she now parallel his experience and fall in love with someone like Bruce, the masculine counterpart of the Consul’s new love?
Could she love such an unstormy sky as his eyes, such a downy and untarnished skin, such a candid smile?
The man she carried in her mind at the moment was a Turkish war hero, a dark and wild man. She was writing his biography. The magnetic pull of his violence was greater than that of innocence and serenity.
A romance with a man who had died long ago promised at least no pain, no separations, no betrayals.
She boarded a plane to his native city.
Few people knew about him, but she knew him as well as if she had been his wife. She was adept at resuscitating a human being out of dusty books and files and letters in library vaults.
When she arrived at the Capitol, at the big hotel, she asked about ways to reach the village birthplace of Shumla. She was told she would have to wait for a guide, that no woman could travel there alone, and that it was the middle of the day, time for a siesta and that she should rest and wait.
But she could not sleep, and she could not wait. The photograph of Shumla which she carried in her wallet was so vivid, so alive, that she felt as if she had an appointment with him which could not be postponed.
She slipped out of the hotel and walked to the bus stop, asking her way. The buses were taking their load of men, women, babies and animals. She was the last to climb on. She was the only pale, fair-haired woman aboard.
Nothing is ever finished. The Consul was walking into the future with his young film star, learning to dance jazz in caverns without windows, studying The Dictionary of Slang, helping to compose instant films; and the Consul’s wife was retrogressing to the seventeenth century. Was this a form of faithfulness in her?
The bus jogged along. She was not treated like a tourist as her clothes were loose, crumpled and anonymous. She asked the conductor for Shumla’s village. He was surprised she would want to stop there. A small village, half in ruins. No foreigners, no hotels, no guides. She persisted and he stopped the bus. The road was white with sun and dust, as white as a ski slope. The stones like chalk. No shade from the silvery, denuded, thirsty pepper and olive trees. A few women in black carrying baskets and pottery, or standing by the well. Streets of earth or rough stones. Her heel broke. She tore both heels off. She wrapped her neck scarf around her hair. She walked alone while half of the village slept through the heat of noon. Now and then she stopped to ask someone: “The house of Shumla?” Some would look blank and suspicious. Others pointed the way. It was outside the village. From inside the shops whose entrances were covered with strings of beads which sang in the breeze, people watched the pale-faced woman stumbling over stones. She finally arrived at a group of half-ruined houses. There was no sign. But someone said: “That’s Shumla’s house.”
The big wooden door was open, because the hinges were half rusted and half gone. The house had been built around a patio. The garden was taken care of; it had flowers and bushes and fruit trees in bloom. But the rooms were in ruin. There were vestiges of murals. A few broken colonnades. The ceilings were gone, and trailing plants fell from the beams. The heat like a hypnotist made everything stand still as if deep in sleep. No leaf stirred. No voices were heard. His presence, six feet of dark brown flesh, heavy black hair and strong voice must have filled the fragile place. It was no wse e that though born there, he had run away to fight wars. And only came home to die.
His religion forbade biographies, photographs, records of personal lives. So she had found little to reconstruct his life. Whoever thought about him, or tried to make a living portrait of him would be struck with misfortune. But the Consul’s wife felt that having already suffered a loss, she could not be cursed any further. What else could happen to her? So she was fearless. She sat on one of the stone benches and tried to relive his life. Ill, dying, he must have listened to the sound of the trickling fountain. He did not die in the middle of battle. Did he regret this? Charging, screaming, with a curved sword held high above his head, he might have died then. Who had been there to hold the large, heavy head? As she said this she heard footsteps. A figure dressed in black appeared behind a column. It was a girl about fourteen. Her face was dark, her eyes of a highly polished black. But her mouth was tender, and a soft smile never quite left her lips.
“I came to see the house of Shumla because I am writing a book about him.”
“But it is forbidden,” said the girl.
“In your country, yes, but outside your country people think he was a great man, a hero, one of the bravest, and they would like to know about his life.”
“People dared to write about him?”
“Not his own people, but scholars and historians. They are embalmers. They are taxidermists. I wanted to write about the living man. I loved him. What do they know about him here in the village?”
“He was born here, in this house. I am a descendant of his. His great grandchild looks like him, they say. Come in and have tea with us.”
At the back of the house in ruins, in a wing preserved from decay, she found a complete family, great grandparents, silent and like mummies, grandparents, grandchildren.