Chapter 16 #2
I opened my eyes and did not see Jean anywhere in the room.
I leaped up in fright and looked around the beautiful, slightly damp room, at the big wooden door and at the walls that the tapestries appeared to have sunken into.
A thousand different horrifying scenarios flooded my imagination in the two seconds that passed until Jean pulled back the curtain—and came out from behind it carrying a pile of fabrics.
“Is something the matter, my lady?” He hurried over to me and set his pile down on one of the armchairs, or whatever it was, took my hand, and then turned my face to the light that streamed through the long, narrow window.
“Sit,” he said in his lordly tone. “You do not feel well.” He supported me as I collapsed into a wide wooden chair with armrests, padded with cushions. I could barely keep my eyes open.
“Where is that stupid boy?” Jean muttered, irate. He was fiddling with the wood stove and brought me a goblet. “Drink,” he said, placing the goblet in my hand. “It will give you strength.”
I obeyed numbly and sipped a strong wine that made me cough until I nearly choked.
“Water,” I finally managed to splutter.
“I will go and seek Hugh,” said Jean and turned toward the door.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t leave me here alone.” Jean returned and knelt beside me.
“Do you want me to bring you back to the spring, Lady édith?” he said gently, as if he were speaking to a sick child. Brunette rested her head on my thigh.
I reached out for my bag and took out the bottle of water that I had brought with me. I drank and drank, emptying the bottle, took a deep breath, and then said, “Soon. But give me a moment.”
I was still unable to fully pull myself together, but I was not willing to give up yet. If I went back now, I would waste a wonderful opportunity—that much was clear to me. I have to pull it together, I repeated to myself. Soon, I will go back to my spring.
I woke up with a start and a stiffness in my neck and realized that I had fallen asleep on the balcony, sitting on the folding wooden chair with my head drooping.
Dawn was rising in the east. A noise made me jump.
I peered into the house, which was still dark.
As I stretched, intending to go back to bed, Halimi appeared on the threshold of the balcony in a T-shirt and boxers, holding a glass of water.
I allowed myself a moment of pleasure at the sight of his long legs as he settled in front of me on a chair on the balcony. He smiled at me, still groggy.
“Couldn’t sleep, ma belle?” he asked. I did not bother to try to consider if there were some subtext in his question. I simply answered, “Yes.”
“Want to talk about it?” Halimi asked, taking a cigarette from its packet.
I shook my head and got up. I went over and sat on him, resting my head against his chest. He was still warm from bed, his smell familiar and dear to me. His arm folded around me, and his hand stroked my back, his other hand still holding the cigarette.
Suddenly, I wanted to ask him how it felt to be in love with both Nina and me at the same time, but I knew that this would spoil the mood.
Yet I truly wanted to know. I had no precedent for this expansion of the heart, to be able to cuddle up to the beloved and familiar, while at the same time soaring, borne on this dream of a new, totally irrational love.
For the first time since I had discovered their affair, the thought of Nina did not feel like venom spreading through my body.
Halimi was unusually quiet. He had just woken up a few minutes earlier and was not even absorbed in his phone, as he usually was whenever he wasn’t doing something else.
“And you, Limush?” I asked from where I was nuzzled into his shoulder. “All good with you?”
Halimi murmured in the affirmative but did not elaborate. The first ray of sun pierced through the sky from the east, and the gray sea in the west turned a light blue.
“I think I’ll go back to bed for another hour or so, ’til Lily gets up,” I mumbled, still nestled into the crook of his shoulder.
“Good night,” said Halimi.
We returned to normal. Lily got better and went back to daycare, where we had decided to continue sending her for another year because the teacher was wonderful.
I resumed my translations, which I had neglected during the month when I had been tormentedly surveilling Halimi.
Halimi went back to work at the magazine, after the days off that he had taken to be with us when Lily was sick, and made sure to come home at regular hours.
Relations between us had become careful, almost polite.
I was unable to ask him if he had broken it off with Nina. I knew that he saw her at the magazine’s office—though most of the writers did not actually come in too often, she was a high-handed type, and I knew that she was very involved in the way her articles were published.
“What’s your problem?” my sister asked, after several days during which I had not spoken to her.
I did not reply and only shook my head helplessly.
“Do you want me to come?” she asked abruptly.
“No, no,” I laughed. That was all I needed, for Dina to be here now, coming to my aid like a knight defending a damsel in distress.
“So, why don’t you tell him, in simple words, what you want?” she insisted. Her wild hair was sticking up in every direction.
“Because I don’t know exactly what I want, Dina,” I said with comparable impatience. I knew what I did not want to be—the punishing wife who forbids her husband from acting on his desires. In my experience, prohibiting something usually just increased the hunger for it—certainly with Halimi.
I also did not exactly want to break up with him: Our lives were entwined, and I loved him terribly despite all of his shortcomings.
We still made each other laugh, and even after years together, he was the person I enjoyed talking to most. We were attracted to each other—the sex, even when it was average, was good, and often it was spectacular.
I knew that Halimi loved me and needed me and depended on me, and that in his elusive, narcissistic way, he was unable to imagine his life without me.
And Lily was no longer a baby. If we were to break up, that would be the end of our three-way ice cream benders (strawberry for Lily, pistachio for Halimi, and dark chocolate for me) and our cuddling in the mornings, when I would find myself mashed between Lily’s foot and Halimi’s elbow …
the end of our watching all the Disney movies ever made, and our trips in nature, and lazy vacations in the sun.
Of course, I did not want him to keep up his affair with Nina.
But I was willing to make my peace with it—at least that’s what I told myself—if he would just stop lying and hiding it from me.
In a less precarious situation, I thought, I would be able to handle an affair with another woman—as long as I knew everything and had control over the frequency of their meetings.
When I was honest with myself, I knew that what I really longed for was for Halimi to break off the relationship with her without me having to say anything, out of an understanding that above all else, he had to restore my trust in him.
But as the one who had pushed for an open relationship, until I saw that message from Nina with the hearts (he had deleted it since then, I checked), I was unable to acknowledge, even to my sister, that I just wanted him to end it.
After my vigorous lobbying for free love, having to ask him to stop would be death by humiliation.
“Fine, oh priestess of polyamory,” I finally said to Dina, who was exaggeratedly chomping slices of carrot and kohlrabi. Maybe she got her period that morning. “Give me advice, oh wise guru.”
“I can’t give advice to someone who does not know what she wants,” Dina spat, a carrot cracking between her teeth, and some shards flying toward the screen.
“Ew, gross,” I laughed.
As soon as the sun had risen and I had gotten back into bed, I heard Lily wake up and put Halimi to work (“Dad, make me hot chocolate! In the pink cup! The pink cup! I don’t want the blue one!
”). It was earlier than usual for her. By the time I got up, she and Halimi were already out of the house.
It was 9:10 in the morning, and I figured that he was probably getting some groceries before coming home.
I tried to remember the dream I’d had, like someone trying to chart a path through a sticky spider’s web.
Something related to the fortress, the embroidered tapestries on the plastered stone walls, and Thibaut, Jean’s friend, was also there, but I couldn’t remember exactly.
The young squire placed a crowded tray on one of the little tables, casting not-entirely-pleasant glances at me.
“Why did you delay?” I heard Jean ask sternly.
“Sir, éclair was skittish,” Hugh replied. “I brushed his coat to calm him, and I brought him an apple.” Jean nodded his approval, his face still stern, and then instructed the youth to wait on the other side of the door. Hugh nodded and left the room.
“Your young man appears to be rather suspicious of me,” I said uncomfortably.
“That may be so, but not for the reasons that might trouble you,” said Jean, turning back to the pile of fabrics he had brought.
“He is the young cousin of my wife and entered my service only three months back. They are overly close, as he grew up in her father’s house, and he evidently suspects the veracity of my story of a distant cousin turning up suddenly out of nowhere.
He was resentful and very surprised about my going to the spring without him in the last few weeks.
He must be suspicious about the nature of our relationship. ”
“Hmmm” was all I managed to utter.