“Before you head out, you should try the chicory coffee,” Jo said.
Gaia House was on Avenue des Pins, not far from the mosque on Sherbrooke, and since the sidewalks had been cleared of the night’s snow, Arthur and Margaret decided to enjoy a suddenly sunny day. Another chance to confess. But to what? Confession was for miscreants, and he’d done nothing blameworthy. But would she believe that?
The problem was not so much in the telling but in the manner of it. Should he make a joke of it? Ho, ho, ho, there she was half draped over him as Stoney barged in. Maybe he should come on affronted. How dare she! The brazen woman, thoughtless even in her sleepwalking state.
How to counter Margaret’s questions? Isn’t she staying in the bedroom below? Why on earth would she have sleepwalked upstairs? Stoney saw her snuggled up to you? What explanation did you give him? And he believed you?
Stoney hadn’t, and neither would Margaret. She’d go off like a moon rocket, forever distrust him for having betrayed her at a most critical juncture of her life and career. After she cooled, guilt would assail her — she’d been too immersed in politics to focus on his needs for companionship. His husbandly needs. But how had he demonstrated those last night? With flaccidity, fibbing excuses, alleged fatigue, complaints of feeling like an intruder in this strange house.
Yet if he didn’t tell her, what if she found out, what then? Why was I the last to know? Arthur would be in a hopeless situation, backed against the wall by his unworthy silence.
“Such a lovely day,” Margaret said, taking his arm.
The Mosque of the Holy Prophet was a converted greystone mansion, with little but its sign to designate it as a religious centre. By the door was a corkboard advertising a coming debate: “When Belief and Doctrine Collide,” two Christian clergy, a rabbi, and the mosque’s religious leader, Dr. Mossalen. Workers were washing a red swastika from the wall.
They slipped off their shoes, Margaret tied a silk scarf on her head, and a young woman led them past the sparsely attended prayer hall to the imam’s office. Dr. Mossalen rose to greet them, a furrowed, white-bearded face. His doctorate was in religious studies from Cairo University. Arthur had been told he was not one of the fire-and-brimstone mullahs the media preferred to focus on.
“Welcome, welcome to our little holy institution. Not one of the grand mosques of our Asian and African heartlands, but more peaceful than some. I content myself with the knowledge that God does not discriminate against homely houses of worship.” Efforts at introductions were waved aside. “Your names are well known in these precincts. Mr. Beauchamp, the eminent barrister, and his industrious political spouse. Mrs. Blake, yours is a sane voice amid the howls of consternation over this Bhashyistan business.”
He placed them on a settee, poured them coffee. “I hope it’s not too strong for your taste.”
“As long as it’s real coffee,” Arthur said, the bitterness of the chicory lingering.
“Keeps one awake. Otherwise I tend to sleepwalk through my mornings.” Arthur almost choked on his coffee. “Vana and Iqbal Zandoo are without; she’s showing him through the mosque. I know her well and can attest to her probity. I haven’t met Iqbal, who I suspect is not much of a believer.”
Margaret asked him how he felt about the Bhashyistan mess.
“Much as you do, I imagine. Distress. Confusion. Some fear of the consequences of overreaction. Of interest, we play host periodically to a group of that nation’s emigrants. Maybe they’ll talk to you, I don’t know — they’re a close-mouthed lot who harbour much hostility against their despotic home government. In their language, Erzhan means soul of a hero, and these people believe him to be one, whether he be guilty or innocent.”
“Have the police questioned any of them?” Arthur asked.
“Not to much effect. A journalist has been working them over too, rather insistently, in fact.”
“A police agent?”
“That’s what they suspect. Allegedly works for an online journal. I saw its website, and it looked hurriedly cobbled together. At any rate, our Bhashyistanis are right to be cautious in expressing their feelings toward Erzhan, though I suspect none can truthfully say where he is. There are suspicions. But I am stealing your valuable time. Vana and Iqbal are at the door.”
Vana entered shyly, followed by Zandoo, late sixties, bearded and balding, with a scowl that could curdle milk. His handshake was restrained, perfunctory. Mossalen attempted to put them at ease, offering greetings in Pashto and Urdu, then seemed embarrassed at his show of linguistic prowess. “One picks up various tongues along the way in the racket of giving spiritual guidance. This is very much a polyglot mosque.”
“I grew up speaking English,” Zandoo said, surly. “Maybe not as fancy as you.”
“And you speak it very well, as does Vana. I told her, Mr. Beauchamp, that she can fully trust you. A brave woman, these are trying times for her.”
Zandoo sat back, arms folded, declining an offering of tea or coffee. But Vana took the former, offered a tentative smile. “I don’t know what to think about all this.” She looked prettier than on TV, but sadder. Dark, solemn eyes.
Arthur began his questioning by asking after her children. They hadn’t been sleeping well but were back in school, where there had been taunting; it was difficult for them. Further gentle probing revealed nothing unusual or amiss about this unexceptional Canadian family — Erzhan may have had a rebellious past, but had apparently integrated into the new world with remarkable ease, a respected teacher.
He loathed the Ultimate Leader and his loyal, clinging minions. No sensate being would reprove him for that — after his acquittal in the Canadian courts, his parents had been beheaded, his two brothers arrested, beaten, tortured, his teenaged sister serially raped by her jailers. But Vana insisted he wasn’t involved in an anti-Bhashyistan cabal. Any political involvement was local — Neighbourhood Watch, park and playground cleanup campaigns — or athletic — high school hockey and soccer. He was a hockey player himself, in an amateur senior league.
He had rarely discussed his youthful years — which had included a stint in the army and his desertion from it — or the fate of his family or his alleged role in the assassination of Great Father Boris Ivanovich. He’d told his son and daughter of his arrest and trial, however, and proudly spoken of his great protector, Brian Pomeroy, a photograph of whom hung in a place of honour.
Vana’s account of the morning of November 26 had not been made public, though repeated many times to investigators. It had begun as a very ordinary day. Abzal had read the newspaper over breakfast, as he regularly did, commenting on items, reading passages aloud, often bewailing the state of the world. An observant and dutiful citizen, Arthur assumed, rightly cynical about the murky realm of politics.
“I packed his lunch, and he left for work, and that’s all I can say. The police asked me if he was nervous or worried, and I told them, no, he was normal, like every day.”
“And did they seem satisfied with that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The cops kept bugging her,” Zandoo said. “Me too, like we were criminals. To me, these guys were racists.”
“No, Iqbal, they were doing their work.” Vana said this reprovingly. “Everybody is a racist but you.” To Dr. Mossalen: “Iqbal has a good heart, but … he finds his own path.”
Mossalen smiled. “And it does not often lead to the mosque.”
“In this place, I will not say what I think.” Zandoo refused to meet the imam’s eye. “But I respect.”
Throughout this, Margaret sat smiling, taking the safe route of silence. Her implicit message: you take on this curmudgeon, Arthur. Dr. Mossalen excused himself — he had other visitors, duties to attend to.