About the Night (23 page)

That evening, Mrs. Tapieux dined with two colleagues at a Lebanese restaurant in East Jerusalem, where four waiters served the UN officials no fewer than twelve appetizers. She was particularly impressed with a dish of tiny eggplants pickled in vinegar and hot peppers. Mrs. Tapieux loved these trips to Jordan, the back-and-forth excursions between two cultures and the ability to adapt herself to both. The waiters competed for the privilege of explaining to her how to find Elias Riani’s building.

The next morning, as she sat sipping sweet coffee from a small ceramic mug, she peered at the slip of paper on which was written Riani’s address. In her experience, few such stories ended well, so she was decisive and lacking expectations when she told her Arab driver to wait for her. She waved a five-dinar note at him to ensure he would not be tempted to drive off.

At the entrance to the building, she searched for a mailbox, but none was to be found. She passed from doorway to doorway until she reached the third floor, where she found a sign that read “Riani.” No one answered on her first knock, so she knocked again.

“What can I do for you?” asked the man who answered the door. Her foreignness was obvious to him, and he was speaking in English.

“Are you Mr. Elias Riani?” she asked.

“I am,” he said, scrutinizing her. He asked her to come in.

His response was tight-lipped and reserved, which is why it touched her heart. What she noticed was emotion, a huge amount of emotion; even if he wished to hide it, Elias was unable, as his hands were shaking and his face drained of its healthy color. He said nothing. All at once, she understood that she was the sole thread of connection between him and a woman in the Jewish half of the city. Something about the couple’s emotions had affected her, so that even the niggling doubt she felt that they might be exploiting her good will for bad purposes vanished. She had received endless briefings in Geneva from senior UN officials warning her about Israeli resourcefulness and gumption and their ability to enlist anyone and everyone to join their clandestine intelligence operations. But this man standing facing her was trembling and had lost his ability to speak.

“Did you see her?” he asked at last, his voice cracking.

“Yes,” said the foreign mediator, “though I can’t really say much about that. I barely know her. All I know is that she was desperate for you to have this.”

“Please forgive me if I am a little overwhelmed,” Elias said. “I am so grateful to you for coming here.”

She said it was fine, that she had a quota of good deeds and that she had filled it for the coming year. She told him she would give him several hours to write a response and that she would come by to collect it. Elias was powerless to stand and see her out, and only after she had left did he realize that he had forgotten to ask many questions about Lila.

Mrs. Tapieux returned to the waiting taxi. She did not notice Elias as he leaned his forehead on his office window, trying to comprehend what had just happened. The street looked broken and scattered to him, as though he were looking at it through millions of pieces of shattered glass. The people he knew, the shops he passed each day, the cars—it was all flickering before his eyes. He recalled nothing of what had happened the day before or what day it was or what he had to look forward to the next day. He did not remember what he had been doing when this European woman entered his office. It was a total blackout. In fact, there was only one thing his foggy brain could grasp, and that was Lila’s real and solid presence on the other side of the city, the fact that she had not given up and that she was searching for him and had found him for the first time since Jerusalem had been severed into two halves.

He lay on the floor in his suit and polished shoes, his hands on his stomach. He closed his eyes and gave in to the weakness his body was feeling, as well dressed and shaven and elegant as a body in a coffin, an image he found appropriate since for two years he had felt like a dead man walking. He was not yet capable of moving his hands to open the letter, which was lying on his chest as if he were absorbing it into his skin before reading it. His breathing was ragged, and tears filled his eyes. He sobbed in silence as he had never cried in his life.

In the lives of Lila and Elias, there was only Mademoiselle Tapieux, a woman who had agreed to bend the rules and act selflessly in the face of evil. She returned from East Jerusalem with a large wooden crate filled with clothing and delicacies that burst into Lila’s life during this year of austerity and shortages: silk scarves, blouses, sweaters, nightgowns, stockings. Chocolate, coffee, tea, butter cookies, biscuits, sugared nuts. When the Belgian diplomat saw what was being loaded into her UN vehicle, she thought about this man who had walked the streets and lovingly gathered everything that would make his beloved happy, these priceless gifts that were impossible to obtain in Lila’s world. She pondered their love, which aroused envy in its simplicity, and how it had managed to survive against all odds.

For weeks to come, she brought the feelings and emotions of this man and woman back and forth, past armed sentries and borders. The Israelis and Jordanians glanced at her belongings, the letters and the gifts, occasionally shining a flashlight on them before allowing her to pass through. Even if they were to confiscate some string of beads meant to adorn Lila’s neck, Mrs. Tapieux was carrying their emotional baggage and was the sole witness to what was happening between them while they could not meet. She could not ignore the thought that if something suddenly happened to her, or she was reassigned elsewhere, they would be lost, forever cut off one from the other. It was in her power to preserve their love. She was capable of changing their lives.

And now, on Christmas Eve, after a steep, winding drive between the tall pine trees of the Hill of Evil Counsel, Lila reached the gates of Government House. “Welcome to UN Observer Mission Headquarters,” a bowing sentry said to her. Someone else took her coat and escorted her to a grand hall that she walked through by herself.

Her heart was pounding like hail on a tin roof. Her hands trembled as they held her evening bag. Would people notice her heaving chest, her breathlessness? For a moment, she could not remember where she was. She closed her eyes, then opened them, and there was the room, as ornate as a ball in a fairy tale. She felt she needed to observe and notice, since these small details would help her pass the long moments ahead.

Persian carpets covered burnished wooden floors, and chandeliers hung impressively from the ceilings, their thousands of crystal drops refracting the light. She was still finding it hard to breathe normally and made her way around the perimeter of the room until she reached a splendid evergreen Christmas tree with golden globes hung on its branches. Nearby, great logs crackled in an enormous fireplace.

“It’s outstanding,” she heard one of the men near the fireplace say, “how the architect managed to combine European and Eastern elements.”

There was music, but only then did she notice that the orchestra was seated in a gallery above the ballroom. The outside world was fading and would soon disappear entirely. The entire universe, in all its power, was only what was transpiring right at that moment in Government House.

While a UN vehicle ferried Elias from the Jordanian side of the border, the ballroom filled with Christmas songs and revelers: clerks, bankers, UN officers, and diplomats, most of them Europeans. She did not know a soul there, certainly not the ones talking about their hunting dogs or the partridges they had shot and eaten or the maintenance of their stables. All at once, she appreciated the risk Mrs. Tapieux had taken, as there was not a single Israeli or Arab among the invited guests. What if she and Elias looked out of place? She decided it was best not to think of such things at that moment. The pianist, in a white vest, smiled from afar, perhaps at her. His long hair swayed to the sounds of his playing. She smiled back at this lone ally in the grand ballroom.

It had been two years since she had last seen Elias—his eyes, his smile, the expressive lines on his face. The tormented may count the days—more than seven hundred—though he pleaded with her not to. Each day without him was a disappointment, a wasteland, a fading hope. She recalled reading an article in one of the magazines at the salon in which an American soldier recounted how he had survived his time as a prisoner of war in Germany: from the morning soup to the evening porridge, from the first sliver of light to the sound of rats scurrying in the darkness. These tiny gestures kept track of one day after another for months and years. True, she lived in far better conditions and in complete freedom, but like her, the captive soldier understood that he had to aspire to something else, that he must mark off with his fingernails each passing day. A terrible fear took hold of her, choking her. She needed air, but did not dare step outside.

She wore a necklace of grayish pearls that he had bought for her, and she had not removed them from the jewelry box from the time of their separation. Her hair was gathered high and gave her a regal look that did not go unnoticed by the men, who did not tarry when their gazes were unmet. She was acquainted with the power of a woman to capture a man’s gaze but was perhaps the only female guest at the ball completely disinterested in doing so.

With slow footsteps and an aura of gravitas, Elias arrived wearing a black suit and bow tie. Anxiety was eating away at him but did not show. He swept the room with his eyes from one end to the other in search of the woman of his life. And then, among the three hundred and forty guests, he spotted her beside the roaring fire. He stood still for a moment, watching her. His soul was imprisoned, but his heart went to her pale beauty as he crossed the room and made his way toward her as though he were a swimmer crossing a gushing river. Her image grew clearer as he approached.

At that moment, the noise in the ballroom grew indistinct and vanished. The other guests became mere shadows in black and white that adorned the ball of their reunification, while she, in true color, stood alone. He drew near, and still she did not see him until only a waiter stood between them. Elias did not seize the moment or speed it up, as one might expect of a man who had not set eyes on the love of his life for two years; he could wait. He stood breathlessly until the waiter moved aside, opening a space between him and her.

As protocol dictated, he stood poised to kiss her glove, but instead his arms acted of their own accord and gathered her to him. She breathed into his neck, a tiny doubt of is-this-really-happening that turned into yes-this-is-truly-his-scent that caused her to melt into him like chocolate in hot milk. Small, delicate tears disappeared into his dinner jacket. Her eyes were closed; his remained open yet took in nothing. No one heard when he whispered,
“Mon amour.”

After a moment or two or a year, they drew apart. The orchestra began to play again, even though it had never ceased, and his arm wrapped around her waist as he led her in a dance that was theirs alone.

Refracting crystal from the chandeliers altered the color of their skin. They danced dizzily for an hour, and then another and another, more than four hours in all. The waiters plied him with drink, and he, her. Their glasses emptied; her laughter infected him. Their muscles, which had been hard and heavy at the beginning of the evening, were now warm and soft, their legs light. They barely spoke, merely swaying with the music. Neither asked the other whether there was anyone else in their lives. With such storming emotions, it was impossible even to consider such a possibility even though two years of separation had made anything possible.