The Reluctant Fundamentalist Page 8

  I can still recall her muscularity, made more pronounced by her gauntness, and the near-inanimate smoothness and coolness of her flesh as she leaned back and exposed to my touch her breasts. The entrance between her legs was wet and dilated, but was at the same time oddly rigid; it reminded me—unwillingly—of a wound, giving our sex a violent undertone despite the gentleness with which I attempted to move. More than once I smelled what I thought to be blood, but when I reached down to ascertain with my fingers whether it was her time of month, I found them unstained. She shuddered towards the end—grievously, almost mortally; her shuddering called forth my own.

  “You’re a kind person,” she said afterwards, as we lay there. “It sounds like a stupid thing to say but it’s true.” I held her and did not reply. I felt something I have not felt before or since; I remember it well: I felt at once both satiated and ashamed. My satiation was understandable to me; my shame was more confusing. Perhaps, by taking on the persona of another, I had diminished myself in my own eyes; perhaps I was humiliated by the continuing dominance, in the strange romantic triangle of which I found myself a part, of my dead rival; perhaps I was worried that I had acted selfishly and I sensed, even then, that I had done Erica some terrible harm. But this last explanation is—I hope—unlikely; surely I could not have known what would happen to her over the weeks and months to follow.

  Erica fell asleep that night without medication; I remained awake, in part because I had not yet eaten. I hesitated to rise and go to the refrigerator for fear of disturbing her, but her sleep was deep, like that of a child, and eventually I managed. I ate only bread and drank only water, a tasteless meal, but I kept at it until my belly was full, and when I returned to the bed it was as though I had a tight drum strapped to my front, which forced me to lie on my side.

  It is impossible to tell, sir, given the gloom about us and the unexpressive cast of your face, but I suspect you are looking at me with a degree of revulsion; certainly I would look at you in such a manner if you had just told me what I have told you. But I hope your disgust has not banished your appetite, for I am summoning our waiter to take our order. Tonight, I can assure you, our meal will be anything but tasteless—and here he comes. Good man!

  8.

  I OBSERVE, SIR, that there continues to be something about our waiter that puts you ill at ease. I will admit that he is an intimidating chap, larger even than you are. But the hardness of his weathered face can readily be accounted for: he hails from our mountainous northwest, where life is far from easy. And if you should sense that he has taken a disliking to you, I would ask you to be so kind as to ignore it; his tribe merely spans both sides of our border with neighboring Afghanistan, and has suffered during offensives conducted by your countrymen.

  Is he praying, you ask? No, sir, not at all! His recitation—rhythmic, formulaic, from memory, and so, I will concede, not unlike a prayer—is in actuality an attempt to transmit orally our menu, much as in your country one is told the specials. Here, of course, there are no specials; the excellent establishment of which tonight we are patrons has in all likelihood prepared precisely the same dishes for many years. I could translate for you but perhaps it would be better if I selected a number of delicacies for us to share. You will grant me that honor? Thank you. There, it is done, and off he goes.

  I had been telling you of my disquiet on the night I finally made love to Erica—a night that ought, were ours a more normal relationship, to have been one of great joy. She left before dawn, waking with a start and insisting that she return home despite my requests that she stay. Once again, considerable time would pass before I heard from her again; my calls went unanswered, my messages unreturned. I had learned my lesson, and I desisted from attempting to make contact. But once a fortnight had gone by, I tried again and was rewarded by a response. She apologized, as she had previously done, for disappearing in this fashion; she said she thought it best, perhaps for her but certainly also for me, that we try not to see each other too often; and she consented to my request that we meet. “But come over to my place,” she said. “I don’t feel up to going out.”

  I was greeted at the door to Erica’s apartment by her mother, who ushered me into an antechamber—which featured, among its antique decorations, a bonsai tree and a harpsichord—and said, “I think we need to chat. Erica has told you about her history, yes?” I nodded. “Well,” she went on, “her condition has come back. It’s serious. What she needs right now is stability. No emotional upheavals, you get me? I can see you’re a nice young man. And I know she cares about you. But you have to understand that she’s a sick girl at the moment. She doesn’t need a boyfriend. She needs a friend.” She looked at me beseechingly. “I understand, madam,” I said. “I will do whatever you think best for her.” “Thank you,” she said. Then she smiled and added, “It’s easy to tell why she likes you.”

  That conversation had a considerable impact on me, not so much for what was said—although I was alarmed by this grave characterization of Erica’s situation—but for how it was said; Erica’s mother’s tone was one of quiet desperation, and it frightened me. I entered Erica’s room tentatively, attempting to steel myself against what I might find. What I found was not at first particularly alarming: Erica reclined on her bed, pale, yes, as though she had a fever, and with hair that had gone some time since it was last washed, but seemingly in good spirits. She patted the space beside her and offered me her forehead to kiss as I sat down.

  We spoke for a while as though nothing unusual had happened and we were meeting under the most ordinary of circumstances. I told her about my project in New Jersey—the negative reaction to our presence by the employees of the cable company, Jim’s words of advice—and about the day-to-day occurrences in my life since she had seen me last. She told me about her doctor and her medication, how the drugs made it difficult to concentrate and so her days seemed to slip away with nothing to show for them. Given the relaxed manner in which she described it an observer would have been forgiven for thinking that her condition was not serious and she was on the mend—until I asked about her novel.

  I immediately regretted doing so. Her eyes began to wander, and her voice became less sure. “I can’t seem to work on it,” she said. “Every time I try, I just get upset. I haven’t been taking my agent’s calls. Poor guy. He must think I’m a lunatic.” I remarked that writers were known to be eccentric and so it was unlikely her agent was particularly perturbed, and then I tried to change the subject, but she would not have it. “It doesn’t help anymore,” she said. “I used to turn to it, my writing, when I needed to get something out that was stuck inside. But I can’t get it out now. It pulls me in, you know? I dwell on it instead of writing it.” I tried to prevent myself from asking her what it was—whether because I thought it would upset her or because I thought it would upset me, I do not now know—but I failed. “It’s whether there’s something left,” she explained, suddenly and unsettlingly calm, “or whether it’s all already happened.”

  How can I describe to you, sir, how much her words disturbed me? She glanced away, and I saw her recede into her mind. I placed my hand next to hers, hoping as I had done innumerable times in the past to lure her out of her thoughts. I watched our skin—mine healthy and brown, hers sickly white—separated by a distance not greater than the width of an engagement ring, but she did not notice me. I waited for my proximity to make itself felt to her; a minute passed in this fashion. Then she removed her hand from where it lay and—without ever looking in my direction—covered it with her other hand on her lap.

  When Erica’s mother entered shortly thereafter, I did not feel she was interrupting. No, she was not preventing the continuation of a discussion between her daughter and myself; she was merely bringing to an end my intrusion on a conversation Erica was having with Chris—a conversation occurring on some plane that I could not reach or even properly see. Erica waved a good-bye to me as I left her room, but she did so with her face averted, so I could not m
eet her gaze. Her mother thanked me for coming and asked me to wait for Erica to contact me before coming again. And with that, and a gentle kiss on the cheek, the door to the elevator was shut upon me and I began to travel down the shaft, alone.

  I returned to my apartment and spent that night in semidarkness, in the glow of the city’s lights entering through my windows, wondering as I would wonder for many months thereafter—indeed, as I sometimes wonder to this day—where Erica was going. I never came to know what triggered her decline—was it the trauma of the attack on her city? the act of sending out her book in search of publication? the echoes raised in her by our lovemaking? all of these things? none of them?—but I think I knew even then that she was disappearing into a powerful nostalgia, one from which only she could choose whether or not to return.

  For it was clear Erica needed something that I—even by consenting to play the part of a man not myself—was unable to give her. In all likelihood she longed for her adolescence with Chris, for a time before his cancer made her aware of impermanence and mortality. Perhaps the reality of their time together was as wonderful as she had, on more than one occasion, described to me. Or perhaps theirs was a past all the more potent for its being imaginary. I did not know whether I believed in the truth of their love; it was, after all, a religion that would not accept me as a convert. But I knew that she believed in it, and I felt small for being able to offer her nothing of comparable splendor instead.

  I did not see Erica again that year. Thanksgiving soon gave way to the chill of December, and every week—every day—I thought of calling her but prevented myself from doing so. Her mother had, of course, asked me to resist, and I suspect I thought, given the catastrophic progress of our relationship thus far, that imposing myself on her interior struggle would only do her harm. But I must admit that my motives were not entirely noble; there were in me at least some elements of the anger and hurt vanity that characterize a spurned lover, and these unworthy sentiments helped me to keep my distance. Still, I remained concerned for Erica’s well-being—and remained also in the grip of a certain, probably irrational, hope—so the ongoing task of abstaining from communication was a struggle not unlike that of a man attempting to rid himself of an addiction.

  Possibly this was due to my state of mind, but it seemed to me that America, too, was increasingly giving itself over to a dangerous nostalgia at that time. There was something undeniably retro about the flags and uniforms, about generals addressing cameras in war rooms and newspaper headlines featuring such words as duty and honor. I had always thought of America as a nation that looked forward; for the first time I was struck by its determination to look back. Living in New York was suddenly like living in a film about the Second World War; I, a foreigner, found myself staring out at a set that ought to be viewed not in Technicolor but in grainy black and white. What your fellow countrymen longed for was unclear to me—a time of unquestioned dominance? of safety? of moral certainty? I did not know—but that they were scrambling to don the costumes of another era was apparent. I felt treacherous for wondering whether that era was fictitious, and whether—if it could indeed be animated—it contained a part written for someone like me.

  But what is that? Ah, your unusual telephone, beeping a demand for your attention. No, sir, I do not mind in the least; please proceed to key in your reply. It occurs to me that you have been contacted with the precision of an old church bell tower, by which I mean precisely on the hour—perhaps the company is checking up on you? No, you need not answer. But now that your response has been sent, allow me to direct your gaze to that grill where at this very moment our boneless chicken pieces are being set to roast. Observe the sparks that fly from the coals, angry and red, as our cook fans the flames. It is quite a beautiful sight, you must admit, and with it will soon come—there, do you smell it?—the most mouthwatering of aromas.

  I had been telling you of the nostalgia that was becoming so prevalent in my world at the onset of the final winter I would spend in your country. But one notable bulwark continued to hold firm against this sentiment: Underwood Samson, which occupied most of my waking hours, and which was—as an institution—not nostalgic whatsoever. At work we went about the task of shaping the future with little regard for the past, and my personal efficacy continued to grow as I immersed myself in my project at the cable company, hoping, in this way, to leave behind the many worries that preyed upon me when I was free to ruminate.

  I suspect I was never better at the pursuit of fundamentals than I was at that time, analyzing data as though my life depended on it. Our creed was one which valued above all else maximum productivity, and such a creed was for me doubly reassuring because it was quantifiable—and hence knowable—in a period of great uncertainty, and because it remained utterly convinced of the possibility of progress while others longed for a sort of classical period that had come and gone, if it had ever existed at all. I detected a change in my attitude to my colleagues, a greater understanding of what drove them to focus so completely on their professional lives, and perhaps as a consequence it seemed for a while that my popularity at the office was on the rise.

  Yet even at Underwood Samson I could not entirely escape the growing importance of tribe. Once I was walking to my rental car in the parking lot of the cable company when I was approached by a man I did not know. He made a series of unintelligible noises—“akhala-malakhala,” perhaps, or “khalapal-khalapala”—and pressed his face alarmingly close to mine. I shifted my stance, presenting him with my side and raising my hands to shoulder height; I thought he might be mad, or drunk; I thought also that he might be a mugger, and I prepared to defend myself or to strike. Just then another man appeared; he, too, glared at me, but he took his friend by the arm and tugged at him, saying it was not worth it. Reluctantly, the first allowed himself to be led away. “Fucking Arab,” he said.

  I am not, of course, an Arab. Nor am I, by nature, a gratuitously belligerent chap. But my blood throbbed in my temples, and I called out, “Say it to my face, coward, not as you run and hide.” He stopped where he was. I unlocked the boot, retrieving the tire iron from where it lay; the cold metal of its shaft rested hungrily in my hands, and I felt, at that moment, fully capable of wielding it with sufficient violence to shatter the bones of his skull. We stood still for a few murderous seconds; then my antagonist was once again pulled at, and he departed muttering a string of obscenities. When I sat in my car my hands were unsteady; I have, in the uniforms of the various teams for which I have played, had my share of fights—but this encounter had an intensity that was for me unprecedented, and it was some minutes before I deemed myself fit to drive.

  What did he look like, you ask? Well, sir, he…. But how odd! I cannot now recall the man’s particulars, his age, say, or his build; to be honest, I cannot now recall many of the details of the events I have been relating to you. But surely it is the gist that matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in history, as I suspect you—an American—will agree, it is the thrust of one’s narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one’s details. Still, I can assure you that everything I have told you thus far happened, for all intents and purposes, more or less as I have described.

  In any case, let us not allow ourselves to be diverted. Some days after the incident in the parking lot—close to the end of our project at the cable company—I was again driving back to Manhattan with Jim. It was late, and we were both hungry; he suggested, as I was dropping him off, that he panfry us a pair of tuna steaks. His flat was not the conservative, Upper East Side, liveried-doorman sort of one might have expected; it was instead in TriBeCa, a four-thousand-square-foot loft that occupied the top floor of a nondescript building on Duane Street. Entering for the first time, I was struck by its fashionable quality, the sense it conveyed of attaching great value to design. Not that it was cluttered, or indeed feminine in any way; no, if anything it was a minimalist affair with cement floors and pipes conspicuously fastened to the ceiling. But each piece
of furniture seemed perfectly cu rated—lit and positioned just so—and the walls featured impressive and forceful works of art, including, I realized, a not insignificant number of male nudes.

  Jim rolled up his sleeves and asked, over the sizzle of our fish, what was on my mind. I sat at a stool, separated from him by the bar of his open-plan kitchen, which served also as a surface for dining. “Nothing, really,” I said. “Is your family not at home?” He turned to me—visibly amused—and said, “I’m not married.” “Ah,” I said, “no children?” “No children,” he affirmed, “but you’re dodging my question.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “You haven’t been yourself lately,” he said. “You’re preoccupied. Something’s eating at you. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s your Pakistani side. You’re worried about what’s going on in the world.” “No, no,” I said, shaking my head to dismiss any possibility that my loyalties could be so divided, “things at home are a little unsettled, but it will pass.” He seemed unconvinced. “Is your family okay?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, “thank you.” “All right then,” he said, “but as I’ve told you before, I know what it’s like to be an outsider. If you ever want to talk, give me a shout.”

  I left Jim’s flat hoping I had thrown him off the scent. Still, my apparent transparency was alarming; Jim was a particularly perceptive observer, but if my internal conflicts were evident to him, then perhaps they were evident to others as well. I had heard tales of the discrimination Muslims were beginning to experience in the business world—stories of rescinded job offers and groundless dismissals—and I did not wish to have my position at Underwood Samson compromised. Besides, I knew that our firm, like much of our industry, had seen a sharp downturn in activity levels following the September attacks, and Wainwright had shared with me a rumor that cutbacks were on their way.