The Girl from the Garden (17 page)

Rakhel jumps to her feet and runs to the basin. “That’s enough, you will tire yourself,” she says. Kokab stops to look at her.

“Rakhel, Kokab just started . . .” Zolekhah says.

“No, no, it’s fine. Get out. Get out, now.”

Rakhel leaps forth and grabs a handful of Kokab’s hair. She pulls hard and the woman loses her footing and falls forward. Zolekhah grabs Rakhel’s shoulders and tries to pull her back, but Rakhel doesn’t release her hold.

“You’ve done enough,” Rakhel screams.

Kokab struggles to stand in the liquid. Rakhel pushes down on her head until Kokab’s face submerges in the juice and pulp.

“Khasveh shalom, you are killing her!”

“Allah protect us, Allah forgive us this sin!” Fatimeh says. She pulls Rakhel’s arms and pleads, “Rakhel Khanum, let go, let go!”

Rakhel finally releases her hold and steps back. Kokab raises her face, coughing and gasping. There is a clear, still moment. The women around Rakhel wait to see what she will do next. Rakhel looks to the sky, then opens her mouth as if to scream.

At first the women hear a sound like the rumble of low
thunder, then it becomes a shrill pitch that fills the whole sky. The women look at Rakhel in bewilderment, then look up to where she gazes. A thick moving cloud covers the sun. It looks like a torrential flapping of birds’ wings, until the cloud splits apart and they see the luminous gray-green armor of the insects, the thick of them settling in the trees, plummeting like hail at their feet. The women scream and run in the direction of the sitting room. Rakhel ignores them, and watches, in stillness, the downpour of the locusts, undisturbed by the large insects that settle on her hair, on her arms, on the grass, splash into the pool and bring the hungry fish up to the surface to feed. She stands and watches as though she had been waiting all along for this answer to come falling from the mute blue skies.

Zolekhah and the women watch Rakhel with horror from behind the windows of the guest hall. The locusts land on Rakhel, crawl on her arms and legs. Khorsheed begins rapping on the glass frantically and screaming, “Dada, Dada!” Yousseff wails and Zolekhah bounces the child absently, clucking her tongue.

“Ya Imam Hossien, the girl is out of her right mind. Those insects will eat her face,” Sadiqeh says.

Khorsheed pounds harder on the glass with her fists. Zolekhah puts a hand on her shoulder. “You are upsetting your baby. I’ll get her,” she says.

Zolekhah knocks on the window to get Rakhel’s attention, but the girl does not respond. Zolekhah looks around the room and spots a broom.

“Fatimeh, hand me that broom, I’m going out to get that girl.”

“Zolekhah Khanum, those insects will eat the broom. I’ve seen them before, they’ll eat right through that straw, maybe down to the stick,” Sadiqeh says.

Zolekhah pulls her chador over her head so that only her eyes are visible. She braces the broom in one hand and steps to the door. Khorsheed stops crying and the women turn to watch Zolekhah.

“Zolekhah Khanum, it is thick as fog out there with those insects,” Zahra says. “Leave it be for a while, until they clear.”

“The poor, poor child,” Fatimeh says. She looks at Rakhel, frozen by the pool, and clicks her tongue. “It happens this ways, sometimes, when a woman suffers too much.”

The women look at the storm of green bodies, the
thud thud
of them against the window. A few crawl on the glass, revealing the white of their bellies, the clasping forceps of their mouths, the nervous twitch of antennas, their red eyes.

Zolekhah hits the window with her knuckles. “Come this way, Rakhel, come inside!”

Rakhel looks at them. She raises her hand to wave. Then she looks at the back of her hand. A locust crawls over it, to the palm and out to the tips of her open fingers, then flies off. Rakhel drops her hand limply to her side.

“She’s going inside,” Zahra says.

An hour later, armed with the broom, Zolekhah braves the journey to Rakhel’s room to see what has become of the
girl. She sweeps her path clear of the bodies of insects, carefully treads her way across the marble. She enters the room to find Rakhel sitting beside the window, still wearing the torn, stained clothes, staring vacantly at the courtyard.

“Rakhel?”

Rakhel turns slowly to look at her.

“Say something, child, you’re aging me.”

“They came because of her.”

“Who came, child?”

“They came to cleanse her sins from the earth.”

“What nonsense are you speaking, girl?”

Rakhel looks out of the window again, places the tips of her fingers on the glass where locusts crawl. “She is evil.”

“Who?”

“Kokab.”

“Rakhel, you’re not yourself.”

“No. I have seen her wickedness. In the clear light of day.”

“What wickedness, poor wretch? She is a sad woman, trying to find a place in this world, pining for the child she’s lost.”

“She is destroying Asher.”

“Enough, Rakhel, enough.”

“She is, but I won’t allow her.”

“What has the poor woman done to you? She is here to help you and Asher.”

“She’s bewitched him.”

“Nonsense.”

“He walks in a dream state, he has forgotten everything else.”

“You are speaking from jealousy.”

“He cares for nothing but her.”

“She is a new wife, it is natural for a man.”

“He is trapped by her spell. They say Eliyahoo divorced her for this wickedness. She brought him near the brink of insanity. And he wasn’t enough. She lured other men, common men.”

“Rumors started by Eliyahoo’s sisters to save face.”

“The truth is before our eyes. He spends all his time in her room, leaves late, sometimes never leaves for near the day, the whole of the day.”

“It is normal, Rakhel. She is new to him. He will tire of her soon.”

“She will be his death.”

“Asher needs children, Rakhel.”

Rakhel turns to look out of the window again. The locusts hit the glass, crawl over its surface, cover the sill, cluster on the pots of flowers on the ledge. Outside, the trees are covered with breathing, glittering leaves. The grass of the courtyard crawls and clicks, the vegetable and herb garden of the kitchen is already bare down to the black soil.

“It’s a hunger that leaves the earth barren,” Rakhel says.

“What?”

“This longing.”

I
t
will stop, do you hear me?

She looks out of the window at the garden.

Do you hear me?

She wants to rise from the chair, to walk into the morning air.

What would you prefer me to do?
Spend every night with you?
Send her away?

Her legs feel leaden. Her body aches. She is tired. Early morning and she is tired.

I need children. Do you understand this?
And what will my future be if I don’t have a son?
All I work for?

If Mahboubeh does not work in the garden,
now, if she misses these early mornings, the day will come when the garden becomes unmanageable.

Where will all my melk, all that I have built go after me?
I, alone, must be the man for this household, and my position undermined by a girl of fifteen, sixteen?

The weeds will be too many, too strong. The rosebushes untamed. The fruit trees less productive.

I am not made of stone!
Every
day I leave this home, I know full well that any street beggar, any ruffian could beat me the way they beat my brother!
My brother,
abused in the street like a dumb beast!
And no one stopped them!

Mahboubeh thinks about rising from her chair, but her legs hold fast to the ground.

Do you know how hard it is to work with men for years and years, men who take your money, but still deem the touch of your hand to be najis? I see these men each day at the caravansary, and whenever it rains, they stay away from me for fear that the water will spread my contamination.
Jew.
Jew. They whisper behind my back like the word itself is filth in their mouths.
Do you know what this does to a man?
Shamed by men less than me?
And now, by my own wife?

“Stop,” Mahboubeh says quietly. “Stop telling me.” She knows that no one is with her, that she is alone, all alone, in a home in a place too far away for this story to unravel itself at her feet, and bind her to her chair to keep her a prisoner to its telling.

My home is the only place I have peace.
Where I can be respected, and you . . . You disrespect me with your childishness!
She is my wife, too.
A woman ten years older than you! What if this story gets out?
That I can’t control my wives? Did you ever think of the effect that would have on my name?
Stop crying.
Stop!
Look at me.
I will do whatever it takes to maintain the peace of my household.
Do you understand what I mean?
Do you understand what I mean?

“
Let me be,” Mahboubeh yells into the silence of her home. “Let me be.”

Rakhel sits alone in the corner of her room.

“She has gone mad,” the girl servants whisper from behind the door.

“She is possessed,” they whisper, then turn to run.

Rakhel wakes up screaming. It is night outside. The bed is wet, her body on fire. The door opens to her room. Asher runs in, behind him Zolekhah. Darkness. Rakhel opens her eyes. Daylight. Zolekhah’s face before her. The old woman asks her something. Darkness.

Rakhel stands in the courtyard. Beneath her feet, a chasm opens. She looks into it. No bottom. Khorsheed beside the window. She waves. She smiles. The men hold Khorsheed, their big hands on the length of her arms. They pull in the opposite direction of each other. Khorsheed splits, her body tears. Black bleeding. Khorsheed turns to stone. Time passes. Stone becomes soil. Time passes. From this black soil grows a pomegranate tree. It blossoms, fruits. One falls to the grass, splits open, pours forth her ruby-coated seeds.

Rakhel wakes up lying on her stomach, her back is
bare. She struggles. Somebody holds her arms, there is a weight on her legs. She sees Naneh Adeh looking into her face. The old woman holds a horn-shaped glass over an open flame. Then she places the glass between Rakhel’s shoulder blades. Rakhel hears herself scream. It feels as if her skin has been torn off and her flesh is melting. She turns her head to see a red rose blooming on her back. Darkness.

Kel na refa na la
. The voices of women respond,
Amen.
Someone lifts Rakhel until she sits. Someone lightly slaps her face. Rakhel opens her eyes to see the room full of women. The old rabbi folds a small scrap of paper full of writing in black ink. He drops it into a glass of water, stirs until the water is blue. He moves toward her. Someone tilts her head back, holds her face with one hand, presses hard into her cheeks with a thumb and forefinger. When Rakhel opens her mouth to moan, they bring the glass quickly to her lips and flood her throat with the ink water. She drowns. The torn paper lodges in her throat. She swallows and swallows words. She sees Khorsheed standing in the far end of the room, holding Yousseff.
A son.
A son for me
. Darkness.

Rakhel, wake up, please.
Dada, open your eyes.
Dada, please, please, open your eyes.
Look, Yousseff is holding your finger.
If you open your eyes, I’ll show you how he can stand when I hold his hands.
It’s lonely here, without you.
Remember when we ran out in the rain?
It
’s been raining.
Raining and raining.

Thunder. Rakhel stares into the chasm that opens between her feet. No bottom.

When she opens her eyes, the light is a dusty blue. She
tries to swallow, but her throat feels full of sand. She sees a glass of water beside her bed. She tries to lift her hand. She whimpers with the effort.

“Rakhel Khanum?” Fatimeh stands beside her.

Rakhel tries to say water, her tongue like stone in her mouth. She looks frantically to the glass beside her bed. Fatimeh places an arm behind her back and raises her, then brings the glass to her lips. The water is cool. She gulps and gulps. She pulls her head away from the glass when she finishes.

“Rakhel. Rakhel, open your eyes, you must eat. A week has passed. Rakhel. You must eat.”

Zolekhah lifts her head. Fatimeh places pillows behind her back until she sits upright. Khorsheed appears. She carries a bowl full of steam. She sits beside Rakhel.

“Soup,” Khorsheed says. “Made from the most beautiful rooster you have ever seen. Green feathers and a proud red comb. He jumped into the pot willingly, when he heard you screaming all that nonsense. I’ll blow on it. Open your mouth. Good. Open your mouth. Good . . .”

The broth is warm. Rakhel feels it go down her throat. It spreads all across her body. She sees Yousseff, crawling across the floor.

“In The Book, G-d gives Yousseff to Rakhel,” Rakhel says.

“What do you mean, Dada?” Khorsheed asks.

“Let her rest. She’ll drink the rest of the soup later,” Zolekhah says.

Rakhel looks at the women in the room. She opens her eyes again and they are gone.

In the moonlight,
the courtyard appears blue. Asher stands beside the window, looking at the frozen trees, the snow-covered ground. He looks up at the sky. Black clouds move to cover the moon, veiling parts of her, then passing to reveal the white orb of her body, before concealing her again. He stands for a long time in silence, aware of Kokab sitting behind him, but lost in the currents of his own thoughts.

Without turning, he says, “This moon, comes into fullness and waxes and wanes, I’ve watched so many of them from this window, and still . . .”

“Sometimes it takes time,” Kokab says.

“Enough time has passed, now.”

Kokab says nothing in response. Asher waits, expectantly, for a word, a promise, something to ease the growing fear that lurks in the corner of his mind. He presses his forehead against the cool of the glass. “Kokab?”

“Yes?”

“What if . . .”

“It is no use, Asher, to think about it. It is out of your hands.”

“But what if I can’t . . .”

“Then that is the destiny G-d has written for you, your qesmat.”

Asher reels around to face her. His brows furrowed
deep with anxiety, he clenches his fist and pounds it against his chest. “Then my life amounts to nothing. The value of what I have built is nothing. It would all have been in vain.” He searches her face to see if she shares his suffering. Her face is empty. “Don’t you want a child, too?”

Kokab turns her face away from him.

“All these nights, in my arms, isn’t that the yearning? The fire between us, isn’t it the longing to create?” Asher asks.

Kokab stares at him for several moments, then looks down and shakes her head.

“What is it for you?”

“Perhaps to burn the past, to forget.”

Asher covers his face with his hands, then looks up furiously at Kokab. “You don’t want to give me a child?”

She watches him, her eyes full of pity.

“Don’t look at me as though . . .”

“Asher.”

He buries his face in his hands, again, his body shaking. She rises off the floor and approaches him and places her hand on his shoulder. He moves out of her reach and turns his back to her. He holds his face a moment longer, then wipes his eyes with his sleeves.

“Don’t you want to be a mother? Isn’t it a natural inclination for women, to want to bear a child, to nurture a child? Desire is a means to that end. Unless, like an animal, you act on that desire for the sake of the act itself?” Asher asks. Even after the words are spoken, he hears the waves of
them crashing over the woman who stands before him, and she is suddenly carried beyond his reach. Her eyes look past him, past the courtyard, beyond the moon.

He places his hand on her arm. “Kokab?” Her eyes remain distant. “Kokab?” He shakes her arm with his hand. “I did not mean what I said, forgive me. You must understand. Kokab?”

She looks at him, a look so empty, that in her looking, he feels himself erased, the touch of his hand ethereal, the nights of his embrace gone. “Please, I have enough to consider, don’t make more of my words than they were meant to be.” He squeezes her arm. The suppleness of her flesh, its response to his touch, feels cold. For a brief moment, Asher imagines her as an apparition of the moonlight, and wonders if the nights that passed between them only existed in the dreamscape of his mind. He shakes her again, this time more forcibly. “Woman, stop this selfishness, I am not in the right mind at this moment.”

Kokab sits heavily on the floor, her hands folded in her lap. “I cannot tonight, Asher.”

Asher looks down at the top of her head. “You don’t consider me,” he says.

“Please let me be, Asher.”

“For you, I am nothing but a distraction.”

“Asher.”

“So you don’t have to think about how you have failed . . .”

“Asher, please . . .”

“As a woman.”

Kokab throws her head back, her eyes clenched shut. In the silence of the room, Asher hears her breathing, short inhalations, short exhalations, like rapid, dry weeping. Asher kneels beside her. He touches Kokab’s arm. She does not respond, again, to his touch. He flinches. “All day, when I am away from you, I am mad with longing,” he says. “I cannot think to count. I lose words amidst sentences exchanged with clients. I make errors, simple errors at the scales, because my eyes do not see the thing before me, but are lost in the contemplation of you. All I can think of . . . you.” Asher looks to Kokab to see if his words touch her. He yearns to pull her into his arms and bury his face in her hair. “Something must be born of this desire, no?”

“Layli,” Kokab says.

“What?”

“My child. Her name is Layli. You have never asked. The child I have lost, my daughter . . . Her name is Layli.” Kokab keeps her eyes closed. “I know what being a mother means, Asher, I know it well.” Kokab wraps her arms about her own shoulders and buries her face in their fold.

Asher looks back out of the window. Black clouds cover the moon completely. The poplars by the garden walls sway in the wind.

“I miss smelling the musk of her when she rises from the damp of sleep,” Kokab says. She bites her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. She sways gently back and forth. “I wake from sleep, sometimes, thinking that I have heard her
voice, calling me.” Kokab looks up at Asher. A long moment of silence stretches between them.

“If the only value of my whole life is in those moments that she slept in my arms,” she says, “against my chest. If all that I have done was to soothe her, to hold her . . .” Kokab’s voice breaks, she presses her closed fist against her lips, then bites her knuckles.

“And I don’t know . . .” she says. “I don’t know, now, when she startles from her sleep and calls for me . . . only the endlessness of the dark night greets her . . . I don’t know . . . if she even calls for me any longer . . . if she is afraid and thinks that I have left her of my own will . . . that I have left her to the despair of night and that terrible man . . .” Kokab’s voice trails off. She looks to the window, the light of the moon illuminates the rivers upon the earth of her face.

So old,
Asher thinks,
she looks so old
. “Have I not made you happy?” he asks. He pulls her into his chest and holds her tightly.

“What joy can I feel, Asher?”

“Don’t tell me you have not felt joy, Kokab, don’t tell me that. I have seen you. I have held you.”

Kokab struggles to pull out of his arms. “I am your prisoner, Asher, your slave. Should I feel joy in this life? Should I feel joy for these crumbs of bread you throw at me and believe to be enough to satisfy the hunger of my soul?”

Stunned, Asher releases her and looks at his arms in the blue light of the room, then looks at the woman sitting
before him as if seeing her for the first time. Suddenly, he feels a revulsion, a bitterness in his mouth. All that he has given her, all he has done for her. He rises to his feet. He bends over and clutches her arm, then pulls her to her feet. She stands before him and looks into his eyes.

“Enough. Enough self-pity,” he says. He pushes her against the window so that her face is pressed against the glass. He stands behind her. “Enough ingratitude,” he says in her ear. He feels her shudder, but she does not move. He pulls her closer to himself and bites the lobe of her ear. She pulls away.