Discretion (18 page)

She did not become involved in the diplomatic social circles, however. She went back to university and completed a master’s and then a Ph.D. in history. Both the children and I profited from her knowledge. She continued to teach me about the history of Europe and about the European exploitation of Africa and Asia. There are more times than I can count that I have been grateful to her for that education.

In those years, I saw Marguerite twice—the first time, ten years after I looked into her eyes and the Margarete of my youthful fantasies died, burned to ashes in the intensity of my passion, the suddenness of the love that I felt for the woman in front of me, the real Marguerite, the true Marguerite. I saw her briefly then, that first time, ten years later. I was forty and the ambassador for my country in Chad. My president had asked me to go to the UN to persuade the West African countries to put pressure on Nigeria to unload shipments of food waiting in the harbor. Nigeria was undergoing another period of unrest, and most of its harbors were closed. My country, like Chad was landlocked, and though we had rivers that led to the interior, nothing could get to the rivers unless it passed through Nigeria’s harbor.

My president was apologetic. He assumed that I did not want to set foot on the earth of the country where my son and my daughter had been violently killed. This was true, but it was also true that the moment he asked me, the moment I realized that there was a possibility that I would go to New York, Marguerite returned to my heart, Marguerite whom I had fooled myself into believing I had forgotten. Now she consumed me, took control of my waking hours and my dreams until more than anything else I desired, I wanted to go to New York. I wanted a chance to see her again.

I
telephoned Marguerite at her apartment the afternoon I arrived in New York. A man answered. I would have put down the receiver had I not realized that his accent was American. He was not the African I had seen nibbling on her ear, fondling her neck in front of the coffee shop. He told me that Marguerite no longer lived in the apartment. He did not know where she lived, but he knew she was still teaching at the New School.

I told myself, when I called her, that I no longer desired her, that she was a friend from the past. That was all. In the ten years I was away from her in Africa, I had made love only to my wife. I had desired no one else but my wife. Nerida had become my confidant, my companion in life, my world. Had I not thought this, I would not have had the courage to call Marguerite. I would have feared I would have fallen to my knees at her feet. I would have begged her forgiveness. I would have pleaded with her to take me back. I would have cried with rage and jealousy over the man who had replaced me. But these are the tricks the mind plays to give us what we want when conscience or fear stands in our way. So when I dialed the number to Marguerite’s office I did so with a lightness of spirit, believing myself safe, my heart repaired.

“Oufoula!” She seemed happy to hear from me. “When did you come to New York?”

The sudden racing of my heart should have warned me, the joy I felt on hearing her voice. But I did not want to be warned. I wanted to remember. I wanted to hear her speak again. I wanted to see her.

“Yesterday,” I said.

“How long are you staying?”

“Three days.”

Three days. It was not a long time, even if I weakened
.

“Three days! Will I get to see you?”

“I called because I wanted to see you,” I said.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Yes,” I said. “Can we meet?”

“Of course, of course,” she answered quickly, her voice almost officious.

“Today?”

She hesitated. Consulting her appointment book? I had not consulted mine when I let her choose the time and place for our first meeting. “Tomorrow,” she said finally.

“When tomorrow?”

“In the early evening. Say about seven?”

I tried and failed to control my anxiety. “For dinner?”

“Yes,” she said. “Dinner would be fine.”

“In the same restaurant?” Memory propelled me to imprudence, to take the risk of immersing myself in the entanglement of emotions I should have known I could not resist. My hope was that she would refuse me. It was a hope I did not want fulfilled.

“In the same restaurant,” she said. But there was no acknowledgment in her voice that that was a special place for her.

I came to the restaurant fearing for myself, but when I saw her, the muscles that had constricted my chest loosened and I was able to breathe again. She had changed. She seemed more mature, more womanly, less of the carefree girl that I had fallen in love with ten years ago, a shadow of the image I had struggled to smother. I did
not think she seemed that way to me because she was older, or because she had cut her hair and no longer wore it in the ponytail I remembered. I did not think it was because she no longer had the body of a girl and that her breasts were fuller, her hips slightly wider. Or that the clothes she wore—a fitted navy jacket that buttoned over a white blouse and a narrow dark brown skirt that ended mid-calf—were completely unlike the casual attire I had known her to wear. I barely noticed these differences. She was as beautiful, as much the same as before, and yet there was a darkness that clouded her eyes that made her so different from the woman I had loved that I could approach her now without the flutterings in my heart that had surfaced when I heard her voice for the first time on the telephone.

She came immediately toward me. “Oufoula.” She did not embrace me. “It’s nice to see you again.” She held out her hand.

I noticed at once the ring on the second finger of her left hand. I made myself find comfort in it. We would be friends. Nothing else was possible.

“You look beautiful,” I said.

“You haven’t changed.”

“I tried calling you at your apartment. I see you’ve moved.”

“Yes. When I got married,” she said.

The waiter came to seat us. He was not the same waiter who had pointed me to Marguerite’s etchings in the back of the room. This was a young man, a boy barely in his twenties who wore an earring in his left ear. But nothing in the restaurant was the same. The etchings on the walls had been replaced by signed photographs of famous people. Track lighting crossed the ceilings where old fixtures once hung. Small round tables were crammed into the dining room, and the space between the wall and the column, where I had tried to hide from Marguerite, had been sealed to the height of a table counter. Behind it was a bar from which loud voices and laughter filtered into the dining room.

“It’s gone the way of most of the Village restaurants,” Marguerite said when I made these observations to her. “I hardly come here anymore.”

But I was glad, relieved that there was little to remind me of the place where I had fallen in love with her. Glad of the new decor, the ring on Marguerite’s left hand. Both would keep me from losing my balance. Both would remind me of the stability of my life with Nerida.

“When did you get married?” I asked Marguerite. We were at the table. I was feeling secure now, confident. There were no traces of resentment in my voice when I asked her that question. I asked it as I would have of a friend I had not seen for years, a friend whose joy I was happy to share.

“Nine years ago,” she answered me.

And suddenly the jealousy returned. Suddenly my mind registered this single fact: Nine years ago was exactly one year after the year she put me out of her apartment.

“The African?” My blood rushed to my head.

“The who?” She looked surprised.

“The man I saw you with.”

“You saw me?”

“Ten years ago, outside your apartment building. I was in the coffee shop.”

She looked away from me. “Oh,” she said.

“Was it he you married?”

“I saw you, too.” Her voice was quiet.

“I thought you did. Then I got your letter and I was certain you had.”

“I turned away deliberately.”

She was talking about whispering in his ear, leaning against his chest when he put his arm around her waist. Running across the street with him to her apartment. My jealousy engulfed me, left me no space to breathe, to be kind, to be gracious.

“I used to think you were in love with me,” I said bitterly.

“He meant nothing to me.” I had to strain my ears to hear her.

“It doesn’t seem so. And so soon after we had broken up.”

“I had to get over you,” she said.

“Well, that took you no time at all, did it?”

She had been avoiding my eyes, but now she looked directly at me. “It was the quickest way,” she said.

The pain naked on her face pierced my heart. I crumbled. “Marguerite.” I said her name and reached for her hand, hating myself. Loving her.

“Don’t.” She pulled away from me.

“Marguerite.” I said her name again, wanting to fold her in my arms, to press her to my heart.

“I had to cut you out of my system. There was no other way.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Marguerite. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know you didn’t, but you did.” The tone she used now was flat, without emotion. She opened her napkin and placed it on her lap.

“I loved you.”

“We loved each other.” She was stating a fact, about something that had happened in the past, but there was no room for a present in that past.

“I still love you.”

“No. Don’t talk about love now. We’re friends. Let’s be friends.” The waiter came toward us. “Let’s order,” she said.

“I never forgot you.”

“Stop. Don’t.”

The waiter stood in front of us. “I’ll have the chicken cutlets. And you?” She turned back to me. “What will you have?” Her voice was controlled, steady.

“I’ll have the same,” I barely responded.

When the waiter left she spoke to me as if nothing had passed between us, as if I had inquired about her marriage the way I thought I had—as a friend, believing that that was all she meant to me.

“My husband’s name is Harold. Harold Gifford. He’s American,” she said.

“American?”

“African American.”

“An artist like you?”

“A politician.”

“A politician? I’m surprised.”

She heard the cynicism in my voice, my jealousy lingering though I fought hard to banish it. “Why?” she lashed out at me. “I thought you knew I liked men who ride that fine line between honesty and dishonesty.”

I cringed at the reference to the lie that had separated us. This was a new Marguerite, a Marguerite who would not soften the sting of the truth for my sake, who would not be a willing conspirator in my lies of omission.

“I deserve that,” I said.

But she was remorseful. “No, I shouldn’t have said it.”

The waiter had brought our salads. She stuck her fork in hers and I felt her release her anger. “It’s all in the past now.”

Guilt swept over me. “It was my fault,” I said, desperate to find a way to cover up my cynicism, to make my comment appear benign. “I only meant that as a politician’s wife your life would be busy and you would not have time for your art.”

“I don’t,” she said.

“You don’t what?”

“Have time for my art.”

She said what I thought she would say, but it was not what I wanted her to say. For the truth was there was malice indeed in my intent when I said I was surprised she had married a politician, the kind of malice men revert to when they want to disguise their fear of a loss they sense is irreparable. I wanted to hurt her, to imply that she had chosen to marry a politician for the same reason she had chosen to be with me. Both of us gave her time for her only true love: her art. But even as I said so, I was also afraid of the other possibility: that in that contest where I had never dared to enter, he had won. That while I was afraid to challenge her, he had not been.

Though I had been consumed with jealousy for her devotion to her art, in time I had learned to be grateful. In time I understood that Marguerite was attentive and loving to me because of the time we were apart. Because of the time my absence gave her to devote herself to her art.

So it was with creative people, I had concluded. The longer the hours they spent with the imagination, the greater their desire for the tangible. They wanted to touch, see, smell, taste then. Love with their senses. Feel with their bodies what their spirits had experienced. I had discovered that there would be benefits to be reaped if I left her alone, if I was not demanding of her time, if I had patience. And truly, after each absence, I found her more passionate, more responsive to me when we made love. So I never asked her to see me more than the day or two we were together twice every month, more than the infrequent weekends, though there were times I could have arranged to be in New York and Nerida would not have suspected me.

“We needed the money,” Marguerite was saying to me now. “I teach full time at the New School.”

But I did not believe her. I knew the truth. It was not money that had driven her to give up the hours she needed for her art. It was her husband’s jealousy. Like me he feared the thing that could erase him from her mind, that could make him cease to exist for her. He would have known, as I did, that in those hours when she was at her easel, her paintbrush in her hand, she thought of no one, she loved no one, she wanted no one but her art. He would have seen that as I had. Except she had chosen him. Except when he demanded she have no gods but him, she picked him.