Rosewater and Soda Bread (5 page)

“So that's it, is it?” she huffed. “You're not going to do it? You're not going to write to Gloria for me?”

ESTELLE DELMONICO'S THOUGHTS were on her doctors advice as she stared out her rain-spattered bedroom window.

“I must insist on a change of scenery,” Dr. Parshaw had said, his chocolate eyes fluttering in that mesmerizing way that always reminded her of her late and beloved husband, Luigi.

“This Irish damp is only going to accelerate your osteoarthritis. I know you have a niece in London, which admittedly is not much better for weather, but there is a rather reputable therapy program in Kensington that might be just the ticket. I hear their treatments are based on Ayurvedic principles.”

Upon which Estelle explained, as extensively as she could, that she had already tried the ancient art of corresponding humors, with little positive result. It was among a list of alternative therapies she had attempted in the prior decade, including color therapy, Reiki, and an embarrassing session of colonic irrigation. Ayurvedic principles were not going to banish her arthritis, she had told her doctor, but a regime of sewing in the afternoons after a brisk morning walk would certainly ease the pain in her joints.

And what walks! What wonderful strolls. Not only was she cultivating a set of spectacular hamstrings from her morning exercise—an important vanity for a woman of any age—but her walks about the clover fields had prompted surprising discoveries in her adopted country. She had come to find the gemlike pockets of Mayo, the silent boglands and the shimmering waterfalls that made it the mystic's home.

Estelle had never known Ireland to hold such a multitude of diverse and magical places, for although she had been living under the gaze of its most celebrated elder, that mountain named after Patricio, her years tending the counter in Papa's Pastries had left her with little time for gallivanting.

As far as she could see, the only upside to the needles of arthritic pain had been this traipsing of late; the disease had forced her to finally get out from her small patch of cottage comfort and get some fresh air into her joints.

This morning's sojourn notwithstanding, of course; that adventure
had been an entirely different kettle of cod, as the Irishman liked to quote.

What should have been a warming stroll around the western shore of Clew Bay had turned into a feat of Sisyphean determination—the better part of the morning given to transporting the injured mermaid from the inlet to the backseat of her rickety Honda.

Then there was that whole hour spent hauling her from the car, up the cottage's gravelly drive, and into the four-poster bed.

By the time Estelle had undressed the mermaid, changing her into a pair of Luigi's stripy cotton pajamas, and washed and chopped all the vegetables for her life-affirming minestrone soup, she had been too tired to blink, let alone tune in to one of her favorite weekend activities: roaming the vast and comic world of Irish radio stations.

Estelle returned her gaze to the window. Not even a good reel could lighten her mood now. Not after finding the poor darling mermaid.

A drop of water, a vestige from an earlier shower, trickled down the windowpane. It joined earlier drops, pooling in one corner of the frame like a sacrificial cup faced toward heaven.

To Estelle it seemed as though the rainwater mirrored her own tears, the crying that had not stopped since she had found the girl, naked and half dead.

The whole earth was crying for the shame.

“
SO THAT'S IT?
You're not going to do it? You're not going to write to Gloria for me?”

Layla's question ran through Marjan's mind as she stepped out of the café later that evening. She hadn't had much time to think of anything else, really. The shock of hearing her sister talking so candidly about such grown-up matters was compounded by her own mixed feelings, the confusion that had been brought to the surface by Layla's effortless confidence. It wasn't an easy decision—certainly not one she had prepared herself for making.

You'll just have to be patient, she had told a pouting Layla. I promise I'll be fair in my answer.

At least, she hoped she would be fair. The truth was she had no idea what to do about her youngest sister's request; she felt a thoroughly incompetent judge of it all. Her own romances were certainly not much to go by; her past dating experiences were
limited, a fact she was sometimes embarrassed to admit, even to herself.

Not that she hadn't had her chances. There had been no shortage of lovely lads coming through the doors of Aioli, the restaurant where she had worked alongside Gloria Delmonico in London. With her accent and Italianate looks, she could pass as Gloria's cousin, a ploy that had often bought them a pint or two at the local tavern. But whereas her friend's bravado enabled her to flirt and frolic with many an Englishman, Marjan had always shied away from any serious commitment. It was a reticence born not from prudery but from too much experience, too many memories.

Keeping the two trays of chickpea cookies balanced in her arms, Marjan tilted back her head and looked up. The sun was quickly sinking behind Croagh Patrick, filling the autumn air with a rose-tinged mark. Bonfire Night was set to spark with twilight precisely twenty-three minutes from now.

Sunsets, whether voluptuous and pulsing or thin with the whisper of winter rain, held a special place in her heart. It was under another western sky, in an East over a decade ago, that Ali, her beloved Ali, had proclaimed his love for her. That was the night he had given her a beautiful brass jewelry box, a simple little chest etched with desert roses, with the promise that it would be the first of many keepsakes. It was a promise he had not kept, one he had no way of keeping, she realized, now that she looked back on it.

Back then, back when they had been seventeen and in the midst of the free-loving seventies, it had seemed as though they would have an eternity to plan and play out their dreams. Funny, thought Marjan, how she and Ali had only held hands when they started dating, their passions manifesting solely in long and languorous kisses.

While their school friends had taken full advantage of Tehran's heady modernism, a moment of amnesia for the traditionally staid capital, she and Ali had chosen to keep their bond fairly chaste. It would take a separation and the coming of the Revolution to bring them together in a deeper union.

When she allowed herself to think of those days, in moments when neither of her sisters was present, Marjan always marveled at the circumstances of their first night together. Unlike the white satin romance they had planned on that school trip to Istanbul, when he had bought her the brass box, their first encounter had been a hushed affair, played out tenuously on a springy cot in the darkened offices of
The Voice
, the revolutionary newspaper she and Ali helped print underground. The word
irony
did not have an equivalent in Farsi, but Marjan had long since come to regard that night as ironic.

It was ironic, after all, that she and Ali had come together only after she had joined his cause and started wearing a
roosarie
, a traditional head scarf. Ironic that through their words of rupture and revolt, constructed piecemeal on an old printing press, they had joined their bodies for those brief moments of bliss. Pure, uncomplicated happiness.

It was as if the secrecy of their revolutionary venture had allowed them a separate space of their own, a room with walls that only they could enter. Was it only within boundaries that people were allowed the freedom to be themselves, to be fully naked in both soul and body? Marjan sometimes wondered. It was, after all, the Iranian way, separating one's public and private worlds, allowing no stranger beyond your closed door. All those walled gardens and veils, those captive singing nightingales.

Was it better to give all of yourself and open up your wounds, your darker moments to another person? Or were you richer for being conservative, for keeping your emotions to yourself?
Maybe it was necessary to have a bit of mystery in life, Marjan told herself, to keep some things hidden from others. Perhaps there were secrets that you could share only with yourself. Or was this an argument for justifying the ever-gilded cage, the Republic that Ali had fought and, perhaps, died for? She just did not know. It was a puzzle that would probably never be solved. One of those questions that would eternally confound the human heart.

Maybe it was better to concentrate on the chickpea cookies she was toting for the Bonfire, thought Marjan, turning down Main Mall.

WITH THE COOKIE TRAYS held securely in her arms, Marjan quickly crossed over to a packed Fadden's Field. Even before she stepped onto the grassy knoll adjacent to Danny Fadden's Mini-Mart, she could feel the ground quiver with the excitement to come. This would be the first year Ballinacroagh would be celebrating the end of the harvest season in such a grand manner. There had been an attempt at organizing a celebratory event last year, but that had gone the way of the proverbial smoke.

Bonfire Night 1986 had been a massive letdown thanks to a gale that had blown in from the nearby Atlantic. The night was to be forever referred to as Fadden's Big Fizzle, after the pile of birchwood that steamed out within a minute of being lit.

“Marjan! I'm so glad you're here!” Fiona Athey dodged a trio of nuns, two of whom Marjan recognized as Sisters Agatha and Bea, to get to her. The robust hairdresser was wearing an orange UCLA sweatshirt and her favorite pair of olive green fishing pants, handy for all their secret pockets and folds. Not a fan of feminine accessories, Fiona seemed slightly perturbed by the large plastic earrings hanging from her earlobes. Marjan recognized
their shape—husks of yellow corn—as her friend approached.

“You wouldn't believe the mess I'm in, even if I told you.” Fiona breathed heavily, taking one of the trays. “Have a look over there, Marjan, and tell me what you see, now.”

Marjan followed her friend's gaze, past the already crowded refreshments tent, to the middle of Fadden's Field. Planted amongst the dark heather, in two semicircles that repeated themselves for three rows, were the white lawn chairs used for all of the town's meetings. The seats faced an open area marked by round fieldstones. The delineated ground resembled a giant pie or wheel, with its spokes leading to a pyre of spindly kindling.

Marjan blinked, unable to believe what she was seeing.

Tucked firmly atop the pyre, with its legs spread at a forty-degree angle, was a twelve-foot man made entirely of straw and dried nettle. Or what was left of a man. Marjan could clearly see a large hole gaping from his grassy pelvis.

“The Cat's goat,” Fiona remarked drily. “Took a chunk off before I could get my hands on it.” Balancing the tray on one palm, she pointed to a row of elms on the far edge of the field.

Roped to the smallest tree was a long-haired billy goat. Balli-nacroagh's resident boozer and philosopher of no less than nine doctorates, the Cat had recently celebrated what he had claimed as his centenary on earth in his favorite manner, namely getting sloshed on a bottle of strawberry schnapps while grooming his new pet goat, Godot, in the town square.