The night was as restless as I was, the wind coming in from the west and the north like two hawks with their eyes on the same prey. My hood couldn’t keep my ears warm. The only sounds to be heard beneath the cliff were the gnashing of branches, and the keening of wolves, and of foxes, and her.
She was hidden by the night, but I knew at once that she was beautiful because a woman alone at night is always beautiful.
From a respectful distance, I asked her why she was crying. She said she’d been betrayed. I said that was all right, life betrays everyone. She said I didn’t understand. I said I probably didn’t, but that was all right because we’d only just met each other, and anyhow, she didn’t understand me, either. Then I asked her if she needed shelter, someplace safe and warm. “I’ll give you the key to my house,” I said. “It’s just back there, around the cliff, the way I came.”
“But where will you stay?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, stepping closer to hand her the key. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I went on without looking back, a spring in my stride. Everyone in town had things to say about me, but I would prove them wrong. I would save this woman. I hadn’t married when my parents were alive because they’d been too poor, and I was still too poor, but this woman wouldn’t care. She’d been disgraced. She’d lost her honor. That was what her sobs were all about. It had to be. I would marry her. Then people wouldn’t say that I was gay. Instead, they would say that I was crazy. Only a madman would marry a woman who’d been disgraced beneath the cliff. I wouldn’t care what people said because I would be married and no longer alone.
I’d been on my way to borrow milk from a neighbor, who happened to be the imam. He let me in, and I told him about the woman. I explained that I needed a place to stay that night because I’d given her my bed, and I had no intention of further disgracing her. Let the word travel, I told myself. Let them sing it from the rooftops. Let him weave my story into the morning call to prayer. I didn’t care.
In the morning, I rose early, before the imam and his wife, and returned along the path I’d walked the night before. When I knocked on my own door, the woman answered. In the early morning light, I saw that she was not as beautiful as I’d imagined, but still beautiful enough. “May I come in?” I asked, as if it were not my own house.
“You may,” she said. She liked that, I could tell. She wasn’t given many chances to give permission. I nodded in a way that was almost a bow and stepped inside. She had a fire going. I sat across from her and explained my intentions. She did a good job of hiding her shock, behaving as if it were perfectly normal that I should want to marry her. The only obstacle was her father. “He’ll never allow it,” she said. “He’ll kill me. He never lets me out of his sight.”
“Who’s your father?” I asked.
The name she said caught me by surprise. I knew who he was, of course. He lived a few towns over, but he was rich and well-respected, known throughout the entire region. He had three sons, but I’d never known he had a daughter.
“He never lets me leave the house,” she said. Then, “I’m never going back there.”
“I think I can reason with him,” I said. In truth, I wasn’t sure, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s to never let on what you’re really feeling.
I returned to the imam and told him everything, and he agreed to go with me and help me reason with her father. We rounded up twelve old men from town and set off that very afternoon. When we arrived, the old man didn’t seem surprised. I thought this was odd, but I didn’t have time to give the matter much thought. He invited us in, and we all sat around drinking tea. The imam spoke on my behalf, conveying my desire to marry his daughter. The old man didn’t say much, just nodded and listened. It occurred to me that he’d already known that something had happened to his daughter, and that he’d made peace with it before our arrival, whatever it was. Perhaps he’d even known that we were coming. As if God had whispered in his ear.
By the end of our meeting, the sun was quite low in the sky. It was agreed that I would marry his daughter at once, with no ceremony. Instead of her moving in with me, I would move in with them. He would turn a blind eye to anything that had been done to her. He didn’t say that he was grateful to me, but this was only because men like him never admit that they’re grateful to anyone but God.
That night, I slept once again at the imam’s house while my bride-to-be slept in my bed. In the morning, we set out for her father’s. She didn’t say much on the way. I understood that she was not happy about moving back in with her father, but I told myself that she would come around when she discovered that my presence improved things.
That night, we were married. My wife’s room, now ours, was already furnished with a large bed, an armoire, a chest of drawers, a makeup table, and two divans.
“You should have everything you need,” said my father-in-law, “but if anything comes to mind, don’t hesitate to ask. We’re doing things a bit differently, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t feel at home.”
I assured him that I felt very much at home.
Over dinner, a lavish spread that the servants prepared, my wife said nothing. I’d heard her voice only a few times and was already beginning to forget what it sounded like. There was no time for me to start feeling lonely, however, for I found it easy to make conversation with my father-in-law. I asked about his sons. He said the two older ones had gone into import-export while the youngest was getting his education. “I gave them everything,” he said. “I set them on the right path. Now they don’t need me anymore.”
That night, I finally did what men do to their wives. I expected to enjoy it, but the experience was something of a letdown. Being on top of her made me feel alone. There was no blood, and no noise, and no movement at all. When I asked why, she said it was because her father was there in the next room.
“So?” I said. “He knows what you do.”
She turned her face to the side after that and would only look at the wall. I finished a little while later, but I felt no satisfaction. For the first time since encountering her beneath the cliff, I felt that I was getting less than I deserved.
When I woke the next morning, it was with the impression that I’d always been married, that I’d always lived in a big house with servants, that I’d always had a magnanimous father-in-law. He and I got along well. Within a few weeks, I loved him more than I’d ever loved my own father. It seemed to me that the same was true from his end. This made up for my wife’s frigidity, though her bad behavior in bed really was starting to get under my skin. When I told her to do things, she did them mechanically, or else said she didn’t know how to do them, as if it were impossible to learn. The way she lay there whenever I climbed on top of her, like a dead body, sapped all my desire. I even found myself wondering whether there might’ve been some truth to the rumors about me. No matter how many times I pushed that thought out of my mind, it kept slinking back in, like a stray dog that wouldn’t leave me alone no matter how many times I kicked him.
On balance, however, my life as a married man turned out to be fulfilling. My father-in-law promised that when the time came, he would cut me in to the family business. He didn’t tell me what the business was, but assured me that I would know in time. He was glad that I’d found my way into his life, for his sons weren’t interested in carrying on his legacy. He already trusted me. He just needed time to dispel the doubts that lingered in his mind.
From the way he talked, I thought it would be years before he made me a partner in the business, but I didn’t mind. I was willing to wait.
Then, in the spring, he announced that the time had come. It had been less than a year since I’d married his daughter, and the results of my persistence with her were finally beginning to show, so perhaps that was why he decided to cut me in so soon. “I’m going to the country next week,” he told me. “I want you to come with me.”
The night before we were supposed to leave, he came to my room and pushed a crumpled heap of rags into my arms. “Wear this.”
I’d already bought a suit for this occasion. It was laid out on the bed, freshly ironed. At first, I thought my father-in-law was joking, but he wasn’t that sort of man.
“Don’t worry,” he told me. “I’ll be wearing the same thing.”
True to his word, the following morning, I found him dressed in filthy rags. He didn’t bother to wake up the servants. He led me straight to the car. I felt strange, as if we were play-acting. Even back when I’d been poor, I’d dressed better than this. I’d dressed well. “Do you like music?” he asked me. Before I could answer, he switched on the radio. It was tuned to a station that was playing religious songs.
We drove for hours. The city vanished and was replaced by mudbrick huts and tents and pastures. The rising sun shone whitely into our eyes. When he pulled over and cut the engine, I thought we must’ve arrived, but he told me we still had a long way to go. He went to a farmer’s door and asked to borrow a donkey, which we rode for another hour. Then, at a seemingly random location, we dismounted, tied up the animal, and continued on foot for an hour more. By now we were really in the middle of nowhere. My breath was coming quick and fast. The secret of my father-in-law’s success was close at hand. I could practically taste it, a minty freshness in the air. At the same time, though, I couldn’t work out how these pieces fit together. On top of that, the smelly, scratchy clothes on my back were really starting to irritate me.
Finally, we entered a small Berber village. By now, my father-in-law was moving stiffly, a little stooped over, as if the long journey had put an ache into his bones. Unconsciously, I found myself mimicking him, walking as if I, too, were a weary, hunched-over old man. It was part of the game.
We approached one of the huts, where he was greeted warmly and given a sack barley. It was heavy, but I wanted to show him that I was eager, so when he passed it to me, I slung it over my shoulder without complaint. At the next door, he was given another sack of barley, and at the next, a sack of wheat. Then barley again. Then corn. He didn’t offer payment, and the villagers didn’t ask for any. It was then that I realized what we were doing. Every year, in the villages and towns, poor men and beggars are given a portion of the harvest as charity. We were collecting that portion.
Before long, I no longer needed to make a show of my decrepitude. I trudged along behind my father-in-law like a beast of burden, barely able to walk with all the sacks of grain. He carried a few bags, too, but nothing like what I was carrying. The sun was high in the sky now, and even though it wasn’t very hot, I was sweating. The scent of my underarms mixed with the odor of our filthy clothes. Disgusting.
It took us forever to get back to where we’d left the donkey. From there, instead of heading back toward the car, we set off in another direction. At another seemingly random location, he ordered me to dismount and take the sacks once again on my own back. By this time, I could barely stand, but I was afraid to disappoint him, so I did as I was told.
We walked until we reached another village. I knew I’d collapse if one more sack of grain was given to me, and I was immensely relieved when, instead of begging for more, my father-in-law began selling the ones we had. The villagers must’ve felt bad for us because they paid a lot more than the grain was worth. When we left the village, our hands were empty, but our pockets were full.
The sun was setting by the time we returned to the car. We hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger and exhaustion were making me irritable. “So,” I said, “this is the family business.”
“This is the family business.”
“But your sons want nothing to do with it?”
“They all enjoyed the life I gave them,” he said. “They just don’t care to know where it came from. They tell me they don’t need me anymore. If they really didn’t need me, they would tell the world who I am and what I’ve done. We all know the truth. We’re just playing games. Sooner or later, I’m going to die, but death doesn’t have to mean losing the game.”
“I see.”
“You’ve got to look life in the eye,” he said. “You’ve got to seize life by the throat while you’re slitting it and drinking the blood.”
“I’d like to know something,” I said. “What did you know about me before I married your daughter?” The first day I’d met him was replaying in my mind: the way he’d seemed so calm and in control despite the shocking news. The way he hadn’t seemed surprised at all. What had his daughter meant, I wondered, when she’d said she’d been betrayed?
When he answered, his words sliced like a knife through my thoughts, through my lungs, into my bones. “What was there to know?”
That night, as soon as I had eaten, I collapsed into a sleep without dreams. The next day, we did it all over again in another village. For the rest of the season, like locusts advancing from field to field, we made our way across the country. I’d always assumed that those who make their living by begging and cheating must be lazy, but I soon understood that our work was just as demanding as harvesting the crops from the fields. “If you want to be a beggar,” my father-in-law told me, “you’d better be skin and bones.” He wouldn’t let me bring any food. He also forced me to carry the lion’s share of whatever we collected. “When you’re an old man,” he said, “it’ll be your son who carries the load. You can’t reap until you’ve sown.”
My son was making his presence known more every day. My wife and I no longer did what men and women do. Now she simply took up space beside me in the bed. She ate often and vomited often. Sometimes, her father and I would come home to find old women, strangers to me, keeping her company. Otherwise, she preferred to be alone.
I was relieved when winter came. The long days without food had caused my stomach to shrivel, so that the sumptuous meals the servants cooked now caused me indigestion. I ate them anyway because I’d worked hard for the right to eat them. The consequences kept me up all night. I felt foolish for ever having let myself forget what I’d once known: that nothing is free in this world. I dreaded the following spring, when I would have to trudge about the countryside once more like a pack mule. New muscles wound like ropes around my arms, but my torso was scrawny. The only upside was that I no longer felt much pain.
The winter, I told myself, would give me a chance to recover. In fact, God had other plans. Shortly after the first frost, my wife went into labor. The child was born strong and healthy, but as soon as the cord was cut, my wife lost all interest in him. While he screamed in one room, she wept in another. My father-in-law had no choice but to hire a wet nurse.
“You’ve got to take a firm hand with her,” he told me. “Stop letting her be such a drama queen.” The way he said it, I understood that my manhood was on the line, but try as I might, I wasn’t able to get anywhere with her. No matter how I beat or berated her, she refused to come out of her stupor.
“You take a firm hand with her,” I burst out one evening, addressing my father-in-law as I’d never dared to address him before. “She’s your flesh and blood, not mine.”
“When you married her,” he replied calmly, “you accepted certain responsibilities. Are you telling me that you can’t handle those responsibilities?”
After that, I understood that I was on my own. The weather was cold, our work done for the season, but I couldn’t bear to stay cooped up in that house, which felt much smaller than it was. To occupy myself, I started going for long walks, trudging along through sleet and the snow. I barely felt the cold.
Then, one afternoon, I came home and found the house eerily quiet. My father-in-law was napping in his room, one arm thrown over his face, but my wife and son were nowhere to be found. Unsure what to do, I made myself a cup of tea and drank it in the sitting room. I didn’t know what I was waiting for. I sat there for three hours. When the wet nurse came, I told her that she wasn’t needed. I told the chef I wasn’t hungry. He asked about my father-in-law. Without thinking, I said, “He isn’t hungry, either.”
It occurred to me that he’d been napping for quite a long time. Moving quietly, I crept to his room and peered in. He hadn’t moved since I’d last checked on him. His arm still lay across his face. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up like stalks of grain. I moved closer to the bed until I was standing over him. His flesh was gray and cold. He was not breathing.
To know what I was feeling, I consulted my mind, but it was blank and empty. I consulted my body, but my body didn’t seem to know, either. Then, turning once more to my mind, I found a single thought there, waiting, clear and fully formed: he had it coming. Then another thought materialized beside the first one: now I won’t have to work anymore. These two thoughts hooked together like the beads of a necklace. Before long, a third one arrived: what was his will now be mine. These three thoughts formed an unbroken chain.
Just then, I heard the front door open and close. I panicked. I was on the verge of hiding beneath the bed or folding myself into the armoire when reason returned to me. Doing my best to keep my hands from trembling, I went out into the hall and headed for the sitting room.
My wife stood in the doorway, shaking snow from her hair. Her cheeks were flushed. Her makeup was perfect. She wore her most expensive clothes. My first thought was that she must be having an affair. I no longer cared what she did, but it occurred to me that this would give me a good reason to explode. My outrage would make her responsible for anything bad that had happened that day.
Cold wind and snow were blowing through the open door. I was about to start berating her, but then the words caught in my throat. I’d just realized something. I’d just realized that our son was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?” I demanded. “What have you done with him?”
“With who?” she asked. I wouldn’t have recognized her voice, so light and airy, if I hadn’t seen her with my own eyes. I’d have thought she was some other woman.
“Our son,” I said.
“I haven’t got a son.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“That baby, you mean?” she said. “The one that’s always screaming all day, every day? That baby isn’t mine.” She began to laugh. I’d never heard her laugh before. I’d never seen her smile. The sound was like ice breaking. I’d been walking on a frozen river, and now the current had a hold of me.
“I’ll kill you,” I snarled.
She seemed to want to answer me, but the harder she laughed, the less control she had of her own body. She clutched the doorframe for support, and when this didn’t work, she sank onto the floor, still laughing.
“I’ll kill you,” I repeated, striding toward her. “Tell me where he is.”
“You’ll never find him,” she said. “You’ll never guess where you left him. They’ll keep asking and asking, and you’ll just keep saying, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ Eventually they’ll get tired of your games and start beating you. Maybe they’ll even stick things up inside you. They do that sometimes. But you won’t tell them anything. You’ll just keep saying, ‘I don’t know.’”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “Who’s they?”
“The police, of course,” she said. “They’re on their way.”
I saw them, then: three dark figures trudging toward us from the far end of the street, barely visible through the swirling veils of snow.
When I looked back down at my wife, sprawled before me on the threshold, there was only one thought in my mind. “I saved you,” I said. “Have you forgotten?”
“You couldn’t even save yourself,” she giggled. “By the way, if they ask you, you can tell them it was poison. Poison in his tea.” E
