Camille has often imagined herself a widow. She would return home and look after Pa and he’d realize she was the only daughter who really loved him. It has weighed on her that he has been all alone in that big house since Mumma died with only a coloured woman to wait on him. Camille has cried over that. It’s the only thing she has cried over since the early days of her marriage, when she still had the energy to cry over herself. So now that Teresa is gone, Camille is in her element. Her one regret is that she is obliged to return home nights.
Camille knows that Teresa is not a thief. The jewels that went missing from Ma’s rosewood box have reappeared at the speak, encrusting Frances’s fingers, dangling from her ears and glittering round her scrawny neck. The silver tail of a comb pokes out her Guide pouch. If Camille could incinerate Frances with her eyes, Frances would have been blown away by now, but Camille has a good reason for keeping mum about the jewels.
She frisks her father’s house top to bottom to find the breach where the pest has got in. Down in the cellar she glimpses the guilty crack of light framing the swing-trap at the top of the coal chute. She nails a board across it for now and goes upstairs to the front hall, where she telephones the hardware store.
Frances waits patiently inside the closet until Camille gets off the phone and returns to the kitchen, then she bounds soundlessly upstairs two at a time into the master bedroom, where she prepares for tonight’s performance. Her last on this stage.
Camille has sealed up the rat-hole but she doesn’t breathe a word about the rat. If Pa found out that it wasn’t Teresa who stole, then he would hire her back and send Camille home to her husband.
Mahmoud has spent the day at his store as usual, sitting out front, carving soapstone and playing checkers with the other old fellas while his sons run things. They have expanded the business and now they are a major Maritime import/export company with a big warehouse in Sydney and headquarters in Halifax. Shipping is next. Mahmoud never played the stock market, never bought on credit, and it has paid off. The world economy lies in ruins, but the family business is expanding. The Mahmoud boys honour their father by allowing him to feel that he is still the boss, hence “Sure Pa, whatever you say,” before going ahead and doing what they know is best.
Mahmoud has passed an agreeable day growling at his grandsons and watching the street go by. Everybody knows him, everybody respects him. He wears a plaid shirt and a dove-grey jacket and tie just as he did every day of his working life. Today is Wednesday, so on his way home he looks forward to stuffed koosa the way Teresa makes it. He’s been forgetting like this lately. It’s not so bad if he remembers before he opens the front door. Then he can prepare himself for her absence. But if he makes it all the way to the kitchen, and over to the stove to taste what’s in the covered dish — “Teresa!” he calls in disbelief at how she has murdered her specialty with salt — only to turn and see Camille at the top of the cellar steps.
“What is it, Pa?”
“Nothing.”
He does not blame Camille. The best cook of the family is not quite as good as Teresa, and Camille is the only bad cook. Another effect of her wrong marriage — an unhappily married woman is necessarily a bad cook — and therefore his own fault, as well he knows. Just as it’s his fault she’s a thief. Well, why shouldn’t she have her mother’s pretty things? She has little else, not even a talent for food. He forgives her.
“Are you starved, Pa?”
He grunts and shuffles away. He doesn’t want to see her sallow smile, she makes him feel tired. He’ll just have a snooze before attempting supper, which will taste, as usual, like the Dead Sea. He forgives her because he does not love her.
He comforts himself with the thought of his other daughters whom he does love — please God the one with grown children will be widowed soon and deliver me from Camille, God forgive me I didn’t mean that.
After supper, Mahmoud drinks a big glass of water and falls asleep in his mauve satin chair in the front room. Nothing quenches his thirst or his fatigue these days. He thinks a lot about Giselle. Not in the ordinary way, as of the dear departed, but as though she had just stepped from the room. And for the first time in thirty-two years he admits the memory of Materia. She appears with her black braids and mischievous smile. He is unaware of the smile on his own lips — la hown, ya Helwi. She looked like her mother and she ran off at about the same age Giselle was when Mahmoud married her, but that was different, oh very. That was in the Old Country where they had everything in common.
The Old Country was part of Syria then and a lot of people were emigrating to America. He and Giselle ended up in Cape Breton because of the lying mongrel of a sea captain who took their money, then dumped them on this barren rock. Days of peering at the horizon waiting for land and finally — land! Waiting to see the Statue of Liberty loom up, to dock at Ellis Island before ferrying to the blessed isle of Manhattan. They dropped anchor in Sydney and the captain turfed them out — “What’s the difference, it’s an island, ain’t it?”
Jameel’s father was on that boat too. Mahmoud had no way of knowing that Jameel senior was fleeing creditors in Syria, because he said he was fleeing the Turks and the Druses like everyone else. And when asked for his own story, Mahmoud replied, “the godforsaken Muslim devils.” In fact, he and Giselle left because her family was set to arrest him and stick her in a convent. But it was different from what happened with Materia and the enklese bastard — for one thing, he and Giselle were both from the same race, culture, language and faith. Although Giselle’s family did not see it that way. They were doctors and lawyers, spoke more French than Arabic, considered themselves more Mediterranean, even European. They were from Beirut. He was an Arab from the south. He had returned to Lebanon, land of his birth, having spent his boyhood picking cotton in Egypt. Don’t tell me what it is to work.
He took Giselle to a better place across the ocean and gave her everything her own family would have and more. As soon as he could, he forbade her to work, even though, being the good woman she was, she resisted at first. He honoured her, never laid a hand on her in anger — never had to. He gave her a beautiful house, servants, jewels each anniversary. A silk négligée from Beirut to make up for the fact she’d never had a wedding gown; three shades of Mediterranean blue and a veil with a fringe of real pearls. The veil was purely for fun, of course, a romantic joke. The sight of her in this outfit was unimaginably exciting.
If only her arrogant family could have seen what Mahmoud achieved in the New World.
“Pa? … Pa.”
He wakes with half a moan to see Camille. She’s got her coat on and the room is dark.
“I’m going home now, Pa.”
“Where’s your mother?”
He’s speaking Arabic but she replies in English to help him back to his senses, “Wake up, Pa, do you want something before I go, a nice cuppa tea?”
Oh. What? It’s time for bed, where’s Ter —? Oh. “No, no, no, I’m going to bed.”
Camille goes to help him but he casually swats her away as he rises.
“I’ll turn the light on for you, Pa.”
“No, no, go home, Camille.” Oh, his life — what has become of his life?
There is nothing more for Camille to do: she has laid out his pajamas, he doesn’t want the light. Mahmoud reaches the foot of the stairs and with a slight wave of his hand he says without turning, “Thank you, Camille.”