The Boy with the Red Lips
It is his lips I notice first. They are full and so red that the first time I see him I believe he has been hurt, that his lips are bleeding and that he is standing in my room to be healed.
But it is his mother, a woman named Safa, that he has accompanied here.
She is the wife of a copper merchant in the city.
She wants some minor cure, for a cough or some such and I mix what is needed without knowing what I am doing, my hands moving alone from years of practice.
When I let her sip from the cup she shudders.
She rises to leave but I stop her, my hand on her richly decorated robes.
“You must come every day,” I say. I can see she is wealthy; she will not baulk at the price.
“Is it worse than a cough, Lalla?” asks the woman fearfully, using the term of respect I have heard more and more often over the years.
“N-no,” I say. “But I am giving you a new remedy. It must only be taken here, under my supervision. It is very efficacious,” I add quickly. “You will be well very soon.”
She leaves me murmuring thanks, which I do not hear. Every part of me is focused on her son, on his red lips.
***
Each day she comes and each day I see something else in him.
His red lips give way to the darkness of his eyes, to his black curls, the golden-brown of his skin, the ripple of the muscles of his forearm when it emerges from beneath his robes to help his mother up.
I do not know what I give his mother but when I see that she is indeed getting better I grow desperate.
When she is well, she will no longer come to me and nor will her son.
He is strong and healthy. I may never see him again.
“A woman has asked for a love potion,” I tell my mother, standing behind her while she cooks our dinner.
My mother laughs. “There is no such thing. Love comes when it wishes.” My mother has never believed in such things although plenty of other healers offer love philtres and other, perhaps darker concoctions for those whose feelings have run away with them.
Magic is part of most healers’ work throughout the Maghreb and beyond, but my mother has always trusted only in her knowledge of plants, in the leaves and berries and roots.
She says magic is not her place to know.
“But one could excite the pulses or quicken the heart,” I say, thinking of my own heart and how it pounds when he stands near me.
My mother shakes her head. “It is not the same thing.”
“Or excite the male member …” I say. I do not blush to say this as I should. I have spoken of such things many times. My face is pale with concentration.
My mother shrugs. “That is between a husband and wife,” she says. “Does her husband have such difficulties?”
“I—I did not ask,” I manage.
My mother makes a face that shows she does not think very highly of me if I have not even asked such a simple question. “Tell her she must give you more information,” she says and goes back to the cooking.
***
It is night and I do not sleep. I have not slept well for many days, since I first saw the shape of his lips, their blood-red curves.
At last, I get up from my bed and I make my way to the healing rooms. I open the shutters and a full moon lights the room so that I do not even light the lantern that I meant to use.
The night air is cool and my half-naked body shivers.
I place a hand on one jar and then another.
I smell their properties without removing the stoppers.
I think what each will do when it enters the body, what they might do when mixed together.
I do not take down the jars, only touch each one while in my mind the boy appears, his eyes lit up with desire, with love for me.
***
The next day before his mother arrives, I make up her medicine and have it ready in a small bottle of its own.
Then I take down the cup. I think of what it does, for I have had time to watch its work, these past years.
I have come to believe that it intensifies the desire of the person who drinks from it, that whatever I mix takes on added power from their need for a child or a cure.
The greater their desire, the more the cup makes powerful my own skills as a healer.
Now I turn the cup in my hands. I have never mixed anything inside the cup; I only pour into it what has already been made.
What if I were to mix the potion I have in mind within the cup itself?
Will it add to its power? Will my own desire affect the drink I make?
I have never added my own desires to the cup; it has been my patients who have added theirs.
Will my love, my lust, pass from me to him when he presses his lips against it and drinks?
As I mix together quantities from each bottle that I touched in the dark of moonlight last night I allow myself to think of him, to unleash the desire I feel for him into my fingers as I stir.
At last, as I hear footsteps on the stairs leading to my room, I press my own lips against the cup. When I set it down, my hands shake.
Safa settles herself on the floor opposite me while her son gazes, bored, out of the window. I cannot help but admire his silhouette with the light behind him, each part of his profile outlined as though for my gaze alone.
Safa is all smiles. “I feel healthy again, Lalla,” she tells me. “You are gifted.”
“I am glad you are better,” I manage. “I will give you one final draught and then you will be entirely well. But—but before you go, I thought that perhaps your son should also drink a preventative. I would not want your cough to spread to other members of your household.”
Safa looks a little surprised, glancing over her shoulder at her son. “Faheem? He is strong as an ox, but if you think it best …”
Faheem, I think. I had not known his name until now. Faheem. “Yes,” I say, trying to keep my voice clear and firm. “He should have a mixture I have prepared. I am certain it will be good for him. One cannot be too careful.”
Safa nods, “Of course. Drink this,” she orders her son, waving towards the cup, which I am holding out.
Faheem steps forwards and takes the cup from me.
One slender fingertip brushes mine and I rock back, placing my hands on the floor where no-one can see them shaking.
The wave of desire I felt as we touched frightens me.
It is what I feel for him but magnified so greatly that I want to snatch the cup back from him.
It is too much, I think. Too much for one body to stand.
But it is too late for me to countermand my own orders.
His red lips press against where my own lips were moments ago and instead of a girl’s foolish pleasure at the thought of it, I feel my face draining of colour with fear.
I take back the cup, wash it, fill it with Safa’s innocuous mixture, watch her drink it.
I do not hear her thanks, nor do I see Faheem’s face as they leave, for I dare not raise my eyes.
If I had known that I would not see him again alive, perhaps I would have raised my eyes and looked once more at those red lips, perhaps I would have summoned every part of my boldness and traced them with one fingertip, the better to recall them when it was already too late to save him.
***
I hear nothing. Late at night I lie awake and wonder what I expect to hear.
That Faheem has asked for my hand in marriage?
His family is well off; the copper pots they make can be found in half the households of Kairouan.
Would they even wish for such an alliance?
Is he, even now, begging his father to relent and allow marriage to a healer?
I hear him reminding them that I am not some purveyor of whispers and nonsense, mixtures of who knows what.
I can read and write; I am known as the best healer in the city.
My father is a slave trader; we have a comfortable home.
But days go by and I hear nothing. The moon wanes and rises full again and I hear nothing. I cannot bring myself to ask questions. I am silent. I do my work.
And then Safa arrives. Alone. Her face is drawn, she looks older than the last time I saw her, only a month ago.
“Lalla,” she sighs, settling in front of me. “I have need of your skills.”
I try to swallow. “Ask and I will do all I can,” I say, my voice croaking with a sudden dryness.
“My daughter Djalila refuses to be married. She will not eat. She grows thinner by the day and nothing we have done helps. After what has happened to us, my husband is distraught. He cannot lose another child.”
I feel a terrible coldness settle on me. “What—what happened to your family?”
She looks at me wide-eyed. “You did not hear?”
I shake my head.
“My son Faheem, whom you saw when I came here before, he—he died.”
I force my lips to move. “Died?”
She nods and her eyes fill. I wait while tears trickle down her face and she wipes them away. “He said his heart pounded, that his hands shook and his lips burnt. He died in less than a day. We thought it was a fever. I would have come to you, Lalla, for your healing hands but it was so quick.”
My heart pounded for him; my hands shook at his red lips.
Dark red wood against which I pressed my mouth.
I take her hands, murmur the words that should be said, offering my condolences, meaningless words of comfort.
I look into her eyes for blame and see nothing.
Why should she suspect me, the best healer in Kairouan?
Her only regret lies in not rushing for my aid.
I tell her that I am busy today but that tomorrow I will come to her house, meet with her daughter Djalila who refuses to leave her rooms. I embrace her, watch her wipe away more tears and escort her from my rooms back to a waiting servant who will accompany her home.
***
All that day I mix and pour, speak words I no longer recall, watch as one mouth after another presses against the redness of the cup and when evening comes, I make my excuses to my mother, tell her I do not feel like eating, retreat to my room.
The moon is bright again. I try to sleep but it wakes me again and again or maybe it is the dreams I do not have.
I long for nightmares to punish me, to frighten me and yet there is nothing, only falling darkness when I sleep and the moon’s too-bright gaze when I awake.
At last I rise and make my way back to the healing rooms. I stand, naked and alone, staring at the red cup.
When I throw it as hard as I can against the wall, I expect to see it crack in two but it only falls to the floor, unharmed, its mottled red colour lit by moonshine. I am afraid to touch it again.