Authors: André Aciman
Out of Egypt (5 page)
“You sound like a typical
parvenu juif
,” jeered his daughter.
parvenu juif
,” jeered his daughter.
“And what else are we if not des
parvenus juifs?
”
parvenus juifs?
”
After lunch he insisted we have coffee alone together, “
Lui et moi seuls
,” he told the others. “Come,” he said, pointing to the kitchen, where he proceeded to brew Turkish coffee. “You see, all you need is a little pot like this, preferably made of brass, but aluminum will do. I had this one made in Manchester. By a Greek. But do you think our antiques dealer is smart enough to figure out that's all he had to do? Never! That's why I go to him every once in a while. As long as he remains stupid and as long as I am lucid enough to know it, then things are well with me. Do you see?” he winked at me, complicity beaming in his eyes. I nodded but missed the point. It occurred to me that I would never have lasted a day in the
world of his youth.
“De l'audace, toujours de l'audace,”
he replied. “You see, in life, it's not only knowing what you want that matters. That's easy. It's knowing how to want.” I was not sure I understood this either, but again I nodded. “But I was lucky. I had a good life,” he went on. “Life gives us all a few trump cards when we're born, and then that's it. By the time I was twenty I had already wasted all of mine. Life gave them back to me many times. Not many can claim the same.”
Lui et moi seuls
,” he told the others. “Come,” he said, pointing to the kitchen, where he proceeded to brew Turkish coffee. “You see, all you need is a little pot like this, preferably made of brass, but aluminum will do. I had this one made in Manchester. By a Greek. But do you think our antiques dealer is smart enough to figure out that's all he had to do? Never! That's why I go to him every once in a while. As long as he remains stupid and as long as I am lucid enough to know it, then things are well with me. Do you see?” he winked at me, complicity beaming in his eyes. I nodded but missed the point. It occurred to me that I would never have lasted a day in the
world of his youth.
“De l'audace, toujours de l'audace,”
he replied. “You see, in life, it's not only knowing what you want that matters. That's easy. It's knowing how to want.” I was not sure I understood this either, but again I nodded. “But I was lucky. I had a good life,” he went on. “Life gives us all a few trump cards when we're born, and then that's it. By the time I was twenty I had already wasted all of mine. Life gave them back to me many times. Not many can claim the same.”
When coffee was ready, he took out two demitasses and proceeded to pour, holding the pot precariously high above the cups and aiming the coffee into them, the way good Arab servants did, to allow the brew to cool somewhat as it was being poured. “May God rest his soul, but no one made coffee like your grandfather,” he said. “A snake, with a cleft tongue, who bubbled like milk when he lost his temper and then cut you to pieces, but still, the best brewer of coffee in the world. Come.” He indicated the drawing room as we passed through a different corridor. The room was filled with antiques and Persian rugs. On the glistening old parquet sat a band of afternoon sunlight in which an overfed cat had fallen asleep, its legs stretched out awkwardly.
“See this smoking jacket?” he said. “Feel it.” I leaned over to him and touched the fabric on the shawl collar. “At least forty years old,” he said, looking terribly amused. “Guess whose?” “Your father's,” I said. “Don't be stupid,” he snapped, practically losing his temper. “My father died eons ago.” “One of your brothers'?” “No, no, no.” “I don't know then.” “I'll give you a hint. Guess who made the cloth? Best fabric in the world.” It took me a while. “My father?” I asked. “Right. Woven in the basement of his factory in Ibrahimieh during the war. This jacket belonged to your grandfather Albert.”
“He gave it to you?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“On what occasion?”
“After he died. It was Esther who gave it to me. Where would you ever find such fine wool nowadays? It's one of the few things I treasure,” he joked. “Here, feel again!” he ordered.
Ever the master salesman, I thought. “Let me explain,” he said, his face uncomfortably nearing mine. He looked around to see no one was listening.
“Do you remember Flora,
la belle romaine,
as we used to call her?”
la belle romaine,
as we used to call her?”
It was Flora who had taught me all about the pianist Schnabel, I replied.
“That's right. During the war, in the days of Alamein, we all stayed in your great-grandmother's house. You have no idea how crowded it was. Well, one day, in walks this dark-haired, beautiful, but painfully beautiful woman who plays the piano every evening, who smokes all the time, who looks a trifle worn but sexier for it, and who flirts with all of us, though you'd swear she didn't know it. In short, we were all madly in love with her. Madly.”
“What does that have to do with my grandfather?”
“Wait, let me
finish
!” He had almost lost his temper. “Well, the tension was suchâyou have to realize there were at least seven grown men in the house, not to mention younger men who were just as predatoryâthat every day we would start quarreling. Over nothing, and over everything. Your grandfather and I quarreled every day. Every day. Then we would make up and play backgammon. And then quarrel again. Do you play backgammon?”
finish
!” He had almost lost his temper. “Well, the tension was suchâyou have to realize there were at least seven grown men in the house, not to mention younger men who were just as predatoryâthat every day we would start quarreling. Over nothing, and over everything. Your grandfather and I quarreled every day. Every day. Then we would make up and play backgammon. And then quarrel again. Do you play backgammon?”
“Poorly.”
“I thought so. At any rate, it becomes quite evident that Flora has singled me out. Of course, I make no passes, I have to behaveâin my mother's house and all that, and my wife snooping about, you understand. I have to move very slowly.
So I finally say to your grandfather, âAlbert, this woman wants me. What should I do?' He says, âDo you want her?' And I say, âDon't you?' He does not reply. So I say to him, âAlbert, you've got to help me.' That cunning wretch of your grandfather smiles awhile and finally says, âI'll see.' Everyone else knewâFrau Kohn, your grandmother, Isaac. Everyone, except me. I found out about them years later, when Flora came to visit us here and saw me wearing his smoking jacket. She recognized it immediately.”
So I finally say to your grandfather, âAlbert, this woman wants me. What should I do?' He says, âDo you want her?' And I say, âDon't you?' He does not reply. So I say to him, âAlbert, you've got to help me.' That cunning wretch of your grandfather smiles awhile and finally says, âI'll see.' Everyone else knewâFrau Kohn, your grandmother, Isaac. Everyone, except me. I found out about them years later, when Flora came to visit us here and saw me wearing his smoking jacket. She recognized it immediately.”
“Yes?” I asked.
“Don't you get it?”
I shook my head.
“She probably had it made for him as a present. I felt like a complete dolt. The only woman I wanted and never slept with. Being jealous like this after forty years, what a dolt!” A moment of silence elapsed. I was tempted to tell him it was not my grandfather but my father who had loved Flora on those summer nights of 1942, and that the jacket was his, not his father's. My grandfather had simply “inherited” it from his son, the way he “inherited” everything my father stopped wearing. But I said nothing, for I wanted my grandfather to win one bout against Vili. “You should have seen us back then, though,” he went on, “everyone asking her to play the piano, everyone drinking more cognac than was usual, waiting for all the others to tire and go to sleep. Frankly, staying up so late was never my style.”
I watched him relish his revelation as he picked up both our emptied demitasses. “Come,” he finally said. And before I knew it, he had taken me to the garden, where his grandson and his wife were reading the local newspaper.
“Have you had your little chat?” asked his wife.
“We have indeed,” replied Vili.
A small incident occurred over dinner. A couple of Gypsies
were observed through the dining room window roaming the grounds. Without hesitating, Vili went into the drawing room, got his shotgun, and fired two shots in the air, rousing the dogs and the horses. “Have you gone mad,” his daughter shouted, jumping up and trying to grab the gun from his hands. “They could kill you if they wanted to.”
were observed through the dining room window roaming the grounds. Without hesitating, Vili went into the drawing room, got his shotgun, and fired two shots in the air, rousing the dogs and the horses. “Have you gone mad,” his daughter shouted, jumping up and trying to grab the gun from his hands. “They could kill you if they wanted to.”
“Let them try. Do you think I'm afraid of them? I'd go after every one of themâ” And then it came, as a farewell present, as a memento of my visit to England, a final concession on his part to the visitor who had come to hear the words spoken from his own lips. “Me afraid of them? Me frightened? What do you think? Am I or aren't I?”
That night, he came into my room to say farewell to me. “I insist on adieu,” he said, “because at my age one never knows.” He stared at my things, looked over my books, picked one up with something like mock scorn on his face. “Do people still read this?” “More than ever,” I replied. “Another Jew,” he said. “No, a half-Jew,” I said. “No. When your mother is Jewish you are never half-Jewish.”
Perhaps it was the subject, or maybe this was why he had come upstairs to my room, but he asked about his mother. I told him what I could remember. No, there had been no pain. Yes, she was lucid until the very end. Yes, she still laughed and still made those short, lapidary pronouncements that made one squirm like a trampled worm. Yes, she understood she was dying. And so on, until I told him that she couldn't see well because she had developed cataracts, and that a light, yellowish film had veiled her eyes. I had said it in passing, not thinking that cataracts were a particularly serious impairment.
“So she couldn't see then,” he said. “She couldn't see,” he repeated, as though trying to scan in the words and the syllables themselves some secret meaning, some revealed purpose behind the cruelty of fate and the vulnerability of old age. “So
she couldn't see,” he said like someone gripped by a sorrow so powerful that all he can do is repeat the words until they finally bring tears to his eyes.
she couldn't see,” he said like someone gripped by a sorrow so powerful that all he can do is repeat the words until they finally bring tears to his eyes.
“You won't understand this,” he said, “but I think of her sometimes. Old, lonely, everyone gone, and, now that you mention it, blind, dying practically all by herself in Egypt. And I think of how I could have made things better for her had I not misspent my life trying out all these flimsy schemes of mine. But then, that is how life is. Now that I have the house, I haven't got the mother. And yet I wanted this house for her. Sometimes, I think of her simply as mother, the way children do when they need something only mothers have. You would think because I'm old enough to be a great-grandfather that I couldn't possibly think of my mother in those terms. Well, I still do. Strange, isn't it?” He smiled, placed the volume back on my nightstand, and, perhaps meaning to surprise me, began quoting in French the long, sinuous prose of the first few sentences.
“Good night,
Herr Doktor
,” he said abruptly.
Herr Doktor
,” he said abruptly.
“Good night, Dr. Spingarn,” I replied, resigned never to ask how he had come to know this passage by Proust.
Half an hour later, on my way to the shower, I was stopped by my cousin and his wife. “If you're quiet you won't regret this.” They explained that every evening, between ten and eleven o'clock, Vili would listen to the French-language shortwave broadcast from Israel. I expressed surprise. “It's always the last thing he does. Then he turns off the lights and goes to sleep.” “So?” I asked. “So, you'll see.” For a while we waited outside his door. “It's the same thing every night,” she whispered. Were they going to knock and ask to be admitted, or were they simply going to barge in on him? “You'll see.” Finally, we heard the Israeli national anthem. It was followed by various signing-off signals. “It's about over now,” my cousin
warned. Something gave a click in his room. Vili had just turned off his radio. Then we heard the sound of bedsprings yielding under his weight, followed by a rustle of sheets, and suddenly the band of light went out from under the door. All was quiet for a second. And then I thought I heard it, a faint, reedy, muted buzzing, emanating from within the small room like a vapor of sound working its way out the keyhole, under the door, through the cracks in the lintel, filling the dark silence where we three stood now like incense and premonition; an eerie garble of familiar words murmured to a cadence I too had learned long ago, whispered as if in stealth and shame.
warned. Something gave a click in his room. Vili had just turned off his radio. Then we heard the sound of bedsprings yielding under his weight, followed by a rustle of sheets, and suddenly the band of light went out from under the door. All was quiet for a second. And then I thought I heard it, a faint, reedy, muted buzzing, emanating from within the small room like a vapor of sound working its way out the keyhole, under the door, through the cracks in the lintel, filling the dark silence where we three stood now like incense and premonition; an eerie garble of familiar words murmured to a cadence I too had learned long ago, whispered as if in stealth and shame.
“He'll deny it if you ask him,” said my cousin.
Rue Memphis
T
o the two ladies who were to become my grandmothers one day and who met for the first time in '44 in a small marketplace in Alexandria eyeing a suspiciously old catch of red mullet, this was indeed a very small, very strange world. Past their first, shy, tentative remarks spoken from behind thick lipstick and respectable hat-veils, something like intense sunshine erupted on their speech and suddenly the two strangers, who had known each other by sight for more than a decade without ever daring to utter a word to the other, began to twitter away with the heady good cheer of old classmates picking up exactly where they left off fifty years earlier. Each was accompanied by a boy servant whom neither trusted or talked to but whose job it was to trail behind his wise old
mazmazelle
âall European ladies of a certain age and station were called
mademoiselle
or
signora
in Egyptâand watch her pick out the good from bad fruit, hear her haggle in the most incomprehensible Arabic, intervene if things got out of hand, and finally ferry the load from one food vendor to the next
until he was sent home to start cooking lunch.
Mazmazelles
would not think twice of touching raw liver with their bare hands, or of fingering the gills of red mullet to prove the fish wasn't at all fresh that day; but they never took anything from the loutish food vendor's hand. That was the boy servant's task.
Mazmazelles
were then free to do as they pleased until about one o'clock, when their husbands came home to eat and sleep.
o the two ladies who were to become my grandmothers one day and who met for the first time in '44 in a small marketplace in Alexandria eyeing a suspiciously old catch of red mullet, this was indeed a very small, very strange world. Past their first, shy, tentative remarks spoken from behind thick lipstick and respectable hat-veils, something like intense sunshine erupted on their speech and suddenly the two strangers, who had known each other by sight for more than a decade without ever daring to utter a word to the other, began to twitter away with the heady good cheer of old classmates picking up exactly where they left off fifty years earlier. Each was accompanied by a boy servant whom neither trusted or talked to but whose job it was to trail behind his wise old
mazmazelle
âall European ladies of a certain age and station were called
mademoiselle
or
signora
in Egyptâand watch her pick out the good from bad fruit, hear her haggle in the most incomprehensible Arabic, intervene if things got out of hand, and finally ferry the load from one food vendor to the next
until he was sent home to start cooking lunch.
Mazmazelles
would not think twice of touching raw liver with their bare hands, or of fingering the gills of red mullet to prove the fish wasn't at all fresh that day; but they never took anything from the loutish food vendor's hand. That was the boy servant's task.
Mazmazelles
were then free to do as they pleased until about one o'clock, when their husbands came home to eat and sleep.
“No mullet then,” concluded one to the other. “Such a shame, though. To think that all these years I've been buying bad fish and didn't even know it,” she said sadly.
“It's in the gills. Not the eyes. Gills must be bright red. Otherwise, don't buy.”
“Such a shame,” repeated the meeker of the two as they made their way home. “All these years living exactly across the street from each other, and not so much as a peep for a greeting.”
“But why didn't you ever speak to me?” insisted the one who knew everything about fish.
“I used to think you were French,” replied her meeker neighbor, implying high-society French.
“French? And whatever made you think
I
was French?
Je suis italienne
,
madame
,” she added, as if that were a far greater distinction.
I
was French?
Je suis italienne
,
madame
,” she added, as if that were a far greater distinction.
“As am I!”
“Yes? Are you? But we are from Leghorn.”
“But so are we! What a marvelous coincidence.” A small world indeed, they said in Ladino (which each insisted on calling Spanish), a language each found out the other spoke because, at the fish vendor's stand, as one tried to explain why the mullet were not good that day, it suddenly occurred to both that of the six to seven languages each spoke fluently neither knew the name for mullet except in Ladino.
When it was time to say goodbye, both agreed to meet and shop together early the next day.
“She is so distinguished,” reported the meeker of the two to her husband that day. “Distinguished my eye,” he had snickered. “Her husband owns a billiard hall.” “Why, is your bicycle shop much better?” she retorted. “A hundred thousand times better.” He had even raised his voice.
Heedless of her husband's pronouncements, she was determined to refer to her neighbor as
une vraie princesse,
while the other, who must have had more or less the same conversation with her husband, concluded that although her neighbor may not have been
très high-class
, she was nothing short of
une sainte
.
une vraie princesse,
while the other, who must have had more or less the same conversation with her husband, concluded that although her neighbor may not have been
très high-class
, she was nothing short of
une sainte
.
The Saint was a gentle, melancholy grandmother who sometimes spoke to herself and who often lost and forgot things. She forgot where she hid them or whom she was hiding them from. She lost keys and gloves, forgot names, dates, debts, and quarrels. She would lose the thread of her story and, drawing a blank in her mind, grope about for ideas, stringing idle words together, hoping to convey a semblance of continuity if she spoke fast enough, not realizing that her rapid succession of non sequiturs was precisely what betrayed her lapses most. Sometimes, feeling totally disoriented, she would own defeat. “It's nothing, it happens to everyone,” she would say, taking a deep breath, trying to suppress a surge of anxiety. “I'll remember later,” she would promise, knowing that, in the Italo-Byzantine world she came from, if a sneeze in mid-sentence confirmed the truth of what one was saying, forgetfulness was a sign of deceit. She tried to allay this suspicion by punctuating those sudden pauses in her speech with little oaths, such as
On my daughter's eyes or On my mother's tombstone
, but, by dint of swearing so often, she herself began to doubt her own tales, thinking, as happens so often among the elderly, that
perhaps she was exaggerating more than she was forgetting.
On my daughter's eyes or On my mother's tombstone
, but, by dint of swearing so often, she herself began to doubt her own tales, thinking, as happens so often among the elderly, that
perhaps she was exaggerating more than she was forgetting.
When she had trouble remembering your name, she would search for it through an elaborate maze of other names in the family, thus betraying where you ranked in the hierarchy of her heart: first her son, Robert, then his three daughters, me, then her daughter who was deaf, her brothers, neighbors, her husband.
She cried once when I told her I had seen Uncle Robert in a dream. “And what did he say to you?” she fretted. More than a year had elapsed since his expulsion from Egypt after the 1956 war, and by then her life was entirely unsettled. “He said his daughter wanted to bring you a present,” I lied, thinking my dream would make her happy. But according to established Levantine custom, dreams always portend the opposite of what they say, which implied that her son in France was desperately in need of funds for his children.
Hence the frantic shopping for clothes, the scrupulous wrapping of parcels, the tireless standing in line at the post office, followed by epic worry sessions in the living room every evening as she, and anyone who happened to be visiting at that time, would sit and stew and fill themselves with as much gall as each could secrete, waiting for confirmation that the package had not fallen into the hands of the police or that some crafty postal clerk had not looted its contents. Wrapped in cobalt-blue paper, durable string, and stained with brittle reddish wax seals so old they bore her maiden name, her parcels were the product of a mind so naïve and so transparent that they might have fooled a master spy but not a child: a pair of homeknit overalls for each of her granddaughters, medicine that was hard to come by in France, a naughty assortment of rock candy carefully wrapped in colored cellophane paper, and, as though stitched by thoughtful celestial hands, a folded hundred-pound note sewn discreetly into the cuff of a child's shirtsleeve. Her
husband would find out sooner or later, and there were bound to be scenes. But her grandchildren come first she told the Princess, who, more than ever now, was convinced that this was truly a saint, though she noticedâas those who loved her sometimes did notâthat her mind had already started to wander. “She is like a dove,” the Princess went on, “totally without bile.” “And without brains, either,” her husband had once replied.
husband would find out sooner or later, and there were bound to be scenes. But her grandchildren come first she told the Princess, who, more than ever now, was convinced that this was truly a saint, though she noticedâas those who loved her sometimes did notâthat her mind had already started to wander. “She is like a dove,” the Princess went on, “totally without bile.” “And without brains, either,” her husband had once replied.
A month later word arrived that the candies, overalls, magazines, and the petite surprise woven in by the hands of fate had arrived safely. “I knew it, I always knew it,” she exclaimed with great glee. “Then why did you worry so much?” asked the Princess, who had spent too many evenings soothing her neighbor's worst fears to see them so readily dispelled now. “Because if I hadn't worried, they might not have gotten there,” she replied, as though this were the most evident truth in the world. “I don't understand,” added the Princess. “If you don't understand, Madame Esther, then you don't understand,” she would retort curtly, meaning she was certainly not about to divulge rituals that were so elaborate and so delicate that merely thinking about them, let alone discussing them with the uninitiated, might strip them of their spell.
“But please explain,” the Princess would insist, waiting to see what demented piece of logic might surface in her neighbor's explanation. Like all mystics, however, the Saint refused to be baited.
“Madame Esther, I may not be learned,” she would say, “but I'm very sharp,
très lucide.
I sniff things out long before they happen.” Whenever she suspected someone was trying to make fun of her or pull the wool over her eyes, she would indicate her nose with an admonitory upraised index finger, as if her nostrils were a passageway to a venerable sixth sense. “And she thinks she's sharp,” the Princess's husband would
scoff, sometimes even in the Saint's presence. “She's got the brains of a turnip, and the demented goathead goes around claiming she's sharpâplease!” Unruffled by the smirks around her, she would raise her inspired index finger, point to her nose a few times, smile her faint sagacious smile, and, whispering in my direction, say, “Let them. They think I don't know, but I know.” She would look around sadly and sigh, reminded of yet sadder things in life.
très lucide.
I sniff things out long before they happen.” Whenever she suspected someone was trying to make fun of her or pull the wool over her eyes, she would indicate her nose with an admonitory upraised index finger, as if her nostrils were a passageway to a venerable sixth sense. “And she thinks she's sharp,” the Princess's husband would
scoff, sometimes even in the Saint's presence. “She's got the brains of a turnip, and the demented goathead goes around claiming she's sharpâplease!” Unruffled by the smirks around her, she would raise her inspired index finger, point to her nose a few times, smile her faint sagacious smile, and, whispering in my direction, say, “Let them. They think I don't know, but I know.” She would look around sadly and sigh, reminded of yet sadder things in life.
“I'd give everything to see you grow into a young man. But that's for an
otra venida
,” she would smile, referring to another lifetime, the one
to come
, that storehouse of might-have-beens and second-time-arounds where all of life's blemishes are polished over and edged in gold and filigree.
otra venida
,” she would smile, referring to another lifetime, the one
to come
, that storehouse of might-have-beens and second-time-arounds where all of life's blemishes are polished over and edged in gold and filigree.
That was my cue, for on hearing her speak of
la otra venida,
I would lunge toward her and clasp her tightly, while she struggled with mock annoyed shoves, like a person about to be tickled or embraced in public, feigning to ask how dare I kiss her now after doing what I had doneâwhich was to outlive her and deprive her of me someday. But then, seeing that I refused to release my hold, she would slacken and cease to fight and hug me back, staring into my face as if to make out whether I was indeed worthy of so much love, finally taking a deep, intoxicated breath, filled with longing and premonition and the yearning to inhale my entire being. All I had to do then was squeeze a bit harder, and out would come the sob she had been struggling to contain.
la otra venida,
I would lunge toward her and clasp her tightly, while she struggled with mock annoyed shoves, like a person about to be tickled or embraced in public, feigning to ask how dare I kiss her now after doing what I had doneâwhich was to outlive her and deprive her of me someday. But then, seeing that I refused to release my hold, she would slacken and cease to fight and hug me back, staring into my face as if to make out whether I was indeed worthy of so much love, finally taking a deep, intoxicated breath, filled with longing and premonition and the yearning to inhale my entire being. All I had to do then was squeeze a bit harder, and out would come the sob she had been struggling to contain.
“You love me, I know, but you must love your other grandmother more,” she would say.
“Pathologically Sephardi,” observed Aunt Flora, who had witnessed the scene and had no patience for these emotional torsions that go by the name of love on the Mediterranean. “Nothing was ever more hostile,” she told me years later, “than this gnarled, twisted selflessness that chokes you like a bad
debt and always makes you feel slightly unworthy and always unkind in the end.”
debt and always makes you feel slightly unworthy and always unkind in the end.”
“But why won't you let him say he loves you more, Madame Adèle?” Aunt Flora would protest half-jokingly on those hot summer afternoons when they drew the shutters to keep the sun out of the Saint's living room while the two women played music for four hands. It was upon the Princess's recommendation during the last days of the war that the Saint had hired Aunt Flora as a piano teacher. Now, a decade later, they had become like mother and daughter.
“Don't you think I want him to love me more?” the Saint would ask.
“But why not let him, then?”
Irked, my grandmother would answer, “If you don't understand, Flora, then I'm really sorry.”
On those summer afternoons, it would grow so quiet in the Saint's apartmentâand downstairs on Rue Memphis and all over Ibrahimiehâthat, while my grandfather Jacques slept in his room, I too would often doze on the sofa, letting the chatter of the two women and of their piano exercises lull me into a long and restful nap. Sometimes, in mid-sleep, I was roused by the stirring of long spoons in tall lemonade glasses, or by the persistent whispers of the two women, or by a fly wandering about my face, it too woven into a dream along with the music of Liszt and the cooing of turtledoves who would come to rest on the windowsill where yesterday's rice had been left for them by the Saint.
“At least I want him to love her the same,” my grandmother would insist, as though upholding a stubborn, principled egalitarianism in matters of love.
“But why ask anyone to love anyone
the same?
Besides, did wanting anything ever move the heart?” Flora would ask, adding, as she did so many years later in Venice, when we walked
around Campo Morosini one summer afternoon, that “one seldom loves anyone at all, much less loves them well.”
the same?
Besides, did wanting anything ever move the heart?” Flora would ask, adding, as she did so many years later in Venice, when we walked
around Campo Morosini one summer afternoon, that “one seldom loves anyone at all, much less loves them well.”
“You don't understand, Flora,” insisted the Saint, “I want him to love her so she won't be jealous of me. I worry. What kind of grandmother do you think she'll be for him once I'm gone?” “What do you mean, âgone'?” “Gone. As in gone away, Flora.” “What are you saying? You're hardly sixty!” “I meant gone to France, Flora, not gone
like that!
Gone to England. To Constantinople. How do I know. Gone.” She paused a moment, probably realizing that the other meaning was not so farfetched either. “And besides, how many more do you think I've got left?” she asked, meaning years.
like that!
Gone to England. To Constantinople. How do I know. Gone.” She paused a moment, probably realizing that the other meaning was not so farfetched either. “And besides, how many more do you think I've got left?” she asked, meaning years.
Fearing the Princess's resentment, the Saint resolved to conceal all of my visits from her neighbor across the street. Whenever she met the Princess, she never failed to ask after me, to let it seem she seldom saw meâall of it exquisitely Byzantine but quite pointless, as it would never have occurred to the Princess that she was not the more favored of the two.
Since the Princess was so punctilious in her daily schedule, it was never too difficult to hide my visits from her. At two in the afternoon, having had her lunch and being fully bedecked for a summer afternoon, the Princess would shut the door behind her and leave her house, slamming the green shutters tight one after the other from the outside. She would walk to the tramway station and there either hire a carriage or take the tram two stations up to Sporting where her mother lived and where the entire family was about to have coffee, before setting out for the Sporting Club.
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Just the Messenger by Ninette Swann
Enrolling Little Etta by Alta Hensley, Allison West
Optimism by Helen Keller
Agony by Yolanda Olson
Hot Pursuit by Lorie O'Clare