About the Night (24 page)

After a Frank Sinatra song, Elias took their coats from the coat check and drew her outside. The rock garden was winter-silent, the fountains cloudy with rainwater.

“Over there,” he said, pointing eastward, “are the Hills of Moab and the Dead Sea. Maybe we’ll manage to meet here again in the summer,” he added wistfully, immediately sorry to mention what was only conjecture and hope.

They scampered over the graves of the British commissioners’ dogs, Labradors and German shepherds and Dalmatians buried under engraved headstones, and it was there, on this bewitching and frozen night, that he kissed her and set her lips and her body—this body that had been hungry for him for so long—on fire. It was a long, long kiss that ignored everything around them, a kiss that fused their atoms into a single entity. And so it was that their passion, which was now their sole master, caused Elias to lead her, unseen by anyone, toward the octagonal tower that sat atop the building. He rushed forward, and she followed, her hand in his, and she felt safe and protected as he led her through the labyrinthine halls, as if he had been there before.

He came upon a dark room, where he found a candle that he lit. He closed the door and slid the desk of the high official whose office it was against it. He spread his jacket on the carpet and sat upon it to wait for her to slip out of her dress and lean down to him, face-to-face, their scents mingling, and he settled into her like someone with no intention of leaving. This was his home, and no one would remove him from there.

Muffled sounds of the ball came to them from afar as if from a distant beach, as though they, the lovers, had been carried to sea on a raft. He told her she was the beloved of his heart and his body. He continued to move slowly and gently, and she moved with him, sensitive to his rhythm as he sped up or slowed down or stopped. His arms held her thighs tightly as if trying to believe this was happening.

“How I’ve missed you,” he said.

He remained buried inside her for long moments that intensified and relaxed, an act of love that should not be viewed as a single event or a final one but as a heavenly gift bestowed upon them.

Still enwrapped in the sweetness of the moment, still clinging to each other on the office carpet, Elias could sense her encroaching sadness and said, “This ball will continue to the light of day. What a luxury it is to be able to tell you I love you all night long.”

She sniffed his sweat, wishing to keep it for herself, in her memory, when she would no longer be with him. “With you,” she said, “I forget myself.”

He arranged her hair, combed it backward with his fingers so that these precious moments they had been granted would not give them away. She buttoned his buttons and fastened his cuff links and tied his tie, loving his vitality and his manliness. They kissed again, their lips soft and warm.

“The truth is,” he said, “I couldn’t care less if they saw us slipping away together. You’re the most beautiful woman at the ball, and you are with me.”

They stepped out into the corridor and back into the ballroom as if drawn by a chariot of clouds. They moved as if they were always together, as if they did not live on two sides of the divided city. Thus, reddened and slightly glowing, they passed among the faceless revelers whose only task was to fill the room for them. It was impossible to imagine that anyone in that room was there to disrupt their plans or make them unhappy. They were served finger sandwiches with smoked fish, a dollop of mayonnaise, and a garnish of dill.

“Here you are,” said Lorraine Tapieux in English. Lila embraced her, and Elias kissed her hand. “You two are so handsome together, more handsome than each separately,” she said, then left them to be on their own. The music suited the few and quiet words they shared, words that could not be expressed, words that were better left unsaid, words that might scratch when uttered or cause pain if not repeated. As Lila danced in his arms, enjoying the beauty of the moment and trying to keep thoughts that tormented her at bay, she realized that this was the essence of his wisdom.

Outside it was still dark, but a thin strip of light began to shine in the bewitching gardens. Sadness, invited by no one, was making its claims after having silently waited its turn. The coat check emptied, and party guests were shepherded into waiting cars. Freezing temperatures sobered the inebriated like a whip to their faces. Elias looked up at the octagonal tower as if to say that what had transpired there belonged only to them and could be taken with them like a secret treasure wherever they went.

“Good night,
mon amour
,” she heard him whisper into her hair.

Lorraine Tapieux’s driver wiped the frost from the windows; Elias’s driver warmed the engine by pumping the gas pedal. Elias admired Lila for not crying even though he himself felt like doing so. Or he longed to shout, or grab hold of her and stop her from leaving, or hide out with her in the building’s kitchen and then be sent to an island for exiles, or request political asylum from the king of the United Nations or whoever could grant it.

The terror of the unknown froze his tears. Unlike most of the other guests, he had to fear never seeing her again. Only these two were condemned to years of loneliness and longing. Elias felt like a man about to be executed with the dawning day who had just been granted his final wish. Lila, too, was bereft, with no future and nothing to grasp. Even Mademoiselle Tapieux, that miracle worker, could not promise another such stolen evening.

His cold hands held hers as the strip of light widened on the horizon. Lila stretched her lips into an attempt at a smile and brightened her face, though she felt her insides ripping apart. She went to the car, where Mrs. Tapieux was waiting for her. With a lifting of her chin, the diplomat signaled her driver to pull away, but a moment later, she said, “Stop!” The two cars stood one next to the other, and Lila and Elias faced each other in insufferable agony. The drivers and Mrs. Tapieux looked away until, after a long and painful moment, she ordered her driver to carry on.

The black car traveled into the darkness, its passengers silent. The wind picked up as if blowing away the magic. And then it began: the anguish that burst out with Lila’s tears so that Mrs. Tapieux wished to cry along with her.

“No one can tell you to stop,” she told Lila. “Cry as long as you can.”

In the shower, the hot water pricked her skin. It brought no comfort, no pleasantness, and carried away the scent of his body. She did not notice the gray day outside her window or the look of torment on her face in the mirror. Three cups of tea helped revive her. She held a small ornament that Elias had presented to her from the Christmas tree.

“This night is holy,” he had told her, “as is this building and everything that has brought you to me.”

She wished this day would turn to night, or would not exist at all.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when she was brought by two men in a white car to the cellar of a building with which she was not familiar. She did not try to resist or protest; she merely asked permission to dress while the suited men waited below. They did not mention the reason for their visit, but she could guess it had something to do with the previous evening. The Christmas ornament in her purse was meant to protect her.

They detained her in the interrogation room until the next morning. She had not slept or eaten for three days, and even when she returned home, she was incapable of doing anything but crawl into bed and sleep for hours. It was as if she had been spit out from the world.

Only late that night did she drag herself from her bed. She heated the room and forced herself to fry an egg, but when she sat at the table to eat, all she could think about were the questions she had been asked by the interrogators. What were you doing at that ball? Who brought you there? In what car? Whom did you meet? What is your connection to the woman from the United Nations? What were you given there? What did you hand over? What the hell did you do there for so many hours?

Lila had no intention of lying, but she was also unwilling to tell the entire truth. All she said during the long, long hours of her interrogation was that the UN diplomat was a client of hers who had invited her to the ball. And what was wrong with such a happy, innocent occasion? She had met some acquaintances there, including a man she knew before the war. They had spoken and eaten and laughed and danced—all the things that one does at a ball. At the end of the evening, she had returned with the UN diplomat. That was the entire story, she told them, so why was it necessary to ask so many questions?

They left her alone in the room, then returned with a third man. They knew that the man she had met there was an Arab. They wished to know his name, since he was an Arab agent who had been sent to get her to gather information for him. It was possible, they told her, to be turned into an agent without even knowing it.

“What are you talking about?” Lila exploded. “He’s not an agent or a spy. He’s a good man.”

“You’re in over your head,” the third man told her.

“Mr. Investigator,” Lila said, turning to him, “there is only one truth here, and I have told it to you.”

“You’re hiding information from us,” he said bluntly. “You’re liable to receive a heavy punishment for being in contact with an enemy agent, twenty years in prison at least. I can be very patient. As far as I’m concerned, you can stay here for a few weeks until you tell us the truth.”

Her first night of incarceration included a prolonged interrogation, always the same questions, always the same answers. She hated these men for infiltrating her sweet memories of that evening and for sullying it with their malicious accusations. Only one thought kept her going: that he was safe on the other side of the city and that he could long for her and miss her as much as he wished.

During the morning interrogation, the third man entered the room again, the one she thought of as Mr. Arrogant. “Give me his name, and you’ll be free to go,” he told her. “For a woman like you to be under interrogation is a big disgrace. Who knows what they’ll say about you at Salon Hubert? You’ll lose your clients and your good name.”

One of the interrogators who had detained her entered the room, put a slip of paper on the table, then left.

Mr. Arrogant smiled with satisfaction and said, “So you’re the lover of this Arab, Elias Riani.”

Her face fell; she bit her lips. Now she was not only frightened and exhausted but also wounded. She hated the way he had said Elias’s name, making the sacred profane.

“I’m going to let you go now,” Mr. Arrogant said, biting into his pencil with sharp teeth, “but I’m going to keep my eye on you.”