“It was perhaps Masseck’s father, then.”
“Oh no,” she murmured, “Masseck is far too old to be Mansour’s son.”
And since her father seemed increasingly bewildered and even close to wondering whether she wasn’t deliberately trying to confuse him, she quickly added, “Oh, it really doesn’t matter.”
“You’re mistaken, I’ve never employed anyone called Mansour,” he said with a subtle, condescending smile that was the first manifestation of his former self: however irritating that tiny, scornful smile, it had always warmed Norah’s heart; it was as if, to this conceited man, it mattered less to be right than to have the last word.
For she was certain that a diligent, patient, efficient Mansour had been at her father’s side for years on end, and that even if she and her sister had come to this house scarcely three or four times since they were children, it was Mansour whom they’d seen here and not this Masseck, whose face she didn’t recognize.
Once inside, Norah noticed how empty the house was.
Outside, it was now quite dark.
The big living room was dark too, and silent.
Her father switched a lamp on, the kind that uses forty-watt bulbs and lights poorly. Nevertheless it revealed the middle of the room and its long, glass-topped table.
On the rough-plastered walls Norah recognized the framed photographs of the holiday village her father had owned and run and which had made him rich.
He took much pride in his success, and always allowed a large number of people to live in his house. Norah had always thought that this wasn’t so much because he was a generous man but because he was keen to show that he could provide his brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, and sundry other relatives with free board and lodging. As a result, whatever time of day she happened to be there, Norah had never seen the living room empty.
There were always children on the sofas, sprawling belly up like well-fed cats, men drinking tea and watching television, and women moving to-and-fro between the kitchen and the bedrooms.
But that evening the room was empty, harshly exposing the crude materials used in its construction, the shiny floor tiles, the cement rendering on the walls, the narrow window frames.
“Isn’t your wife here?” asked Norah.
He picked up two chairs from the big table, moved them closer to each other, then changed his mind and put them back again.
He switched on the television, and then turned it off before it had time to light up.
He moved about the room without lifting his feet, so that his flip-flops scraped the tiles.
His lips trembled slightly.
“She’s away traveling at the moment,” he mumbled finally.
Oh, Norah thought anxiously, he can’t admit she’s probably left him.
“And Sony? Where’s Sony?”
“Likewise,” he said, exhaling.
“Sony’s off traveling too?”
The thought that her father, who’d had so many wives and children, that this not particularly handsome but brilliant, clever, quick-witted, and ruthless man who’d been born into poverty but made his fortune, and had since then always lived surrounded by a grateful and submissive crowd, that this spoiled individual now found himself alone and perhaps abandoned, fed a hazy old grudge that Norah harbored in spite of herself.
It seemed to her that her father was at last being taught a lesson he should have learned much earlier.
But what sort of lesson?
It made her feel petty and base, thinking that.
For even if her father had always kept an open house to spongers, even if he’d never had any true friends, honest wives (with the exception, Norah thought, of her own mother), or loving children, and if now, old, ravaged, and probably much diminished, he wandered alone around his gloomy house — how was that justice served? What kind of satisfaction could that be for Norah, except that of a jealous daughter avenged at last for never having been welcomed into her father’s inner circle?
And feeling petty and cheap she now also felt ashamed of her hot, damp skin and her rumpled dress.
As if to atone for her spiteful thoughts, by confirming he wouldn’t be left alone for too long, she asked, “Will Sony be back soon?”
“He’ll tell you himself,” her father murmured.
“How can he, if he’s away?”
Her father clapped his hands and shouted, “Masseck!”
Small yellow poinciana flowers fluttered down from his neck and shoulders onto the tiled floor, and with a swift movement he crushed them under the toe of one of his flip-flops.
It gave Norah the intimation of his doing likewise to the flowers, rather similar, covering her dress.
Masseck came in pushing a cart laden with food, plates, and cutlery, and proceeded to lay the table.
“Sit down,” her father said, “and let’s eat.”
“I’m going to wash my hands first.”
She found herself adopting the tone of peremptory volubility that she never used with anyone but her father, the tone intended to forestall his attempt to have Masseck, and before Masseck Mansour, do what she insisted on doing herself, insisted out of an awareness that he so hated seeing his guests perform the slightest labor in his house, thereby casting doubt on the competence of his servants, that he was quite capable of saying to her, “Masseck will wash your hands for you,” without for a moment imagining that she would fail to obey him as those around him, young and old, had always done.
But her father had hardly heard her.
He’d taken a seat and was staring vacantly at what Masseck was doing.
She found that his skin was now blackish, less dark than before, and dull looking.
He yawned, his mouth wide open, not making a sound, just like a dog.
She now felt certain that the sweet fetid smell that she’d noticed at the threshold came both from the poinciana and from her father’s body; in fact his whole person seemed steeped in the slow putrefaction of the yellowy-orange flowers, this man who, she remembered, had worn none but the chicest of perfumes, this haughty and insecure man who’d never wished to give off an odor that was his own!
Poor soul, who’d have thought he’d wind up a plump old bird, clumsy flying and strong smelling?
She walked toward the kitchen along a concrete corridor lit imperfectly by a bulb covered in fly specks.
The kitchen was the least commodious room in this badly proportioned house, as Norah remembered, having added it to the inexhaustible list of the grievances against her father, though knowing full well that she would mention none of them, neither the serious ones nor the less serious, and that, face-to-face with this unfathomable man, she could never summon up the courage — which she possessed in abundance when far away from him — to express her disapproval; and as a result she was not at all pleased with herself but, rather, very disappointed, and all the angrier for bowing and daring to say nothing.
Her father couldn’t have cared less about making his servants work in a tight, uncomfortable space, where neither he nor his visitors ever set foot.
Any such consideration would have been incomprehensible to him. Indeed, he would put it down to the sentimentality that characterized her sex, the world she inhabited, and a culture he didn’t share.
“We don’t live in the same country, societies are very different,” he would more or less say, in a pedantic, condescending manner, and perhaps summon Masseck to ask him in front of her whether the kitchen suited him — to which Masseck would say yes — and her father, not even looking at her, since that would give the subject an importance it didn’t merit, would, with an air of triumph, simply consider the matter closed.
There’s no point, no sense in having a father you literally can’t communicate with, whose feelings for you have always been in question, she thought, yet again, but this time calmly, not shaking with rage, impotence, and despondency as so often in the past when circumstance had brought up the fundamental differences of perception, outlook, and education between her and this cold, passionless man who’d spent only a few years in France, where she, a vulnerable person of strong feeling, had lived all her life.