About the Night (7 page)

“Tea?” Elias said with surprise. “You don’t have tea.”

“We’re going to surprise the world,” he said. “Tea will become our biggest export in the years to come. That is what our president has decreed.” He paused a moment to give authority to the words he had just spoken. “While still alive, His Eminence Kamal Atatürk decided that Turkey should become a tea empire. He gave instructions to locate the best tea merchants in the world and offer them our tea.”

The Turkish consul continued with his attack: “We know who you buy from—the best. We will offer a better price and quicker shipping. In a few years, you will have forgotten you ever purchased tea from India and Ceylon.”

Beautiful Lila suddenly popped into Elias’s thoughts and caused a fluttering in his chest.

The consul walked Elias to his Mercedes, where a waiter in a white jacket joined them with a box that he placed in the trunk. Elias thanked the consul and drove off, slightly annoyed about the time he had wasted.

This evening I need sleep, he thought. No less than eight hours without interruption. The woman in his thoughts filled his waking hours and his sleep and the twilight that separated them. His eyes were red. He was just about to enter the house when he remembered the box in his car, and he went back to retrieve it. He found two bottles of French cognac, a slab of halvah in a wooden box, and an envelope. They had catered quite accurately to his tastes.

He only opened the envelope the next morning. In it were two tickets for Istanbul. The minister of commerce wished to show him the new tea gardens that had been planted across thousands of acres. He hoped that September would suit him.

Lila paid the taxi driver in advance for her trip to the Haifa port. To her boss and coworkers at Salon Hubert, she explained she was sailing for Cyprus to meet distant relatives who had turned up in Europe after the war. Monsieur Hubert was infuriated; anything that detoured from his organized plans frayed his nerves. “Cyprus? Now?” he had croaked. She consoled herself with the fact that her lie was partly true, since the ship would dock in Cyprus and then continue to Istanbul.

She was wearing a skirt and jacket the color of sand and carried a brown suitcase that matched her shoes. Her heart was beating wildly, and when she caught sight of him leaning against a pole, it beat even faster. Still, she managed to walk toward him. He did not move, but his eyes followed her with an expression that said,
I knew you would come. I wanted you to come
.

The pier was bustling, vehicles disgorging passengers against the backdrop of roaring engines, and from every direction came the sounds of people saying good-bye. She looked around, trying to see if anyone there might recognize her and cast a shadow over this wildly adventurous journey upon which they were about to embark. She hoped and prayed not to meet anyone she knew, especially clients or neighbors.

They stood next to each other but with a certain distance between them. There was no reason to suspect they were a couple because they acted more like acquaintances that had only just run into each other. The steward who escorted her to her cabin ignored Elias and let another steward accompany him.

“Two cabins,” Elias had told her when she was making up her mind about joining him on this trip.

The Turkish minister of commerce, who was paying for this voyage, had sent two tickets, one for Elias and one for his father. When Elias told his father about the invitation and asked his opinion, George had blown smoke from his pipe, sending up an aroma reminiscent of smoked cocoa beans, and told him to travel on his own to see what the Turks were cooking up. George was suspicious: it had taken the Asians hundreds of years to reach the divine taste of their leaves, so how could the Turks think that as fast as they could say “Atatürk” they would be able to produce a tea that would provoke similar reactions?

Elias did not care, however. His only thought was of traveling with Lila, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She gave her consent—feebly, tenuously—then got frightened and backed out. It had taken everything he had to convince her.

It was already midday when they made their way to their cabins, she in number twenty-seven, he in thirty-six. While he splashed cold water on his face, he recalled the weeks that had passed—the sleeplessness, the obstacles—and was overcome with emotion. His body was alert and full of life. He dried his face in front of the mirror. He saw a man who felt like a youth, excited with anticipation over a woman splashing cold water on her face in a cabin nearby and, like him, anxious about the coming hours together yet still in the throes of hesitation as to whether it was right to come away with him.

The ship pulled away with a loud blast. Now the two of them were alone in the small and secluded universe they had wished for. He knocked at her door, and she opened at once. This was something he loved about her, that she was natural and straightforward, unlike most of the women he knew.

“I’ll wait for you upstairs at the bar,” he told her with a shy, embarrassed smile.

Elias ordered arak on the rocks, took a sip, and felt the tension in his body that the liquor would soon take care of. The strangeness between them had not yet fallen away on this journey they were making from one to the other; the escape from the city that weighed upon them had not yet started. And when she suddenly appeared—blushing and full of youthful vigor—all his thoughts disappeared, his heart expanded, and his whole body prepared itself as she crossed the room toward him. This vision of feminine beauty was affecting every cell of his body and was something he had never seen before. Her smile opened to him slowly to reveal nearly perfect teeth, bright and shining like beads, and the dimple at the tip of her chin, and the tiny bridge between her upper lip and her nose, and the smooth skin. Her eyes were saying to him, “Here I am, coming to you.” And so she proceeded, to him alone, while all the men at the bar watched her.

She drank arak and fell into a laughing mood along with Elias, and even dared to tell him that she did not know how to swim.

“I’ll jump into the water,” he told her, leaning in her direction, “and I’ll save you. And anyway,” he added, decisive and self-assured, “nothing will happen to you when you’re with me.”

“I don’t know how to ride a bicycle, either,” she admitted.

He noticed she was not wearing a watch and touched the imaginary band on her wrist, which was paler than the rest of her forearm.

Lila said, “I left it at home. I decided not to bring time with me.”

That was all he could hope for—that she would be at his side so he could gaze upon her as much as he desired for long hours and days. As far as he was concerned, nothing at all had to happen. He did not need to draw near or touch her; her presence alone beside him was enough. He did not ask for more.

Lila and Elias were served a jarring reminder of the place from which they were hoping to disappear when the lights dimmed and a rambunctious group of Englishmen began singing “God Save the King.”

It was a place now receding, a place where life was a conflagration, where Arabs and Jews crushed one another with sieges and war, holding one another by the throat in a struggle with no end in sight, emptied of hope for the future. Only fifteen minutes separated his home from hers, but they were two enemy enclaves. In their corner of the world, people fought for existence and for land, for domination and for victory. In such a barren landscape, two innocents like them would not be permitted to nurture their love.

He was right, Lila thought, and daring, too, since their situation demanded a huge gamble. It was all or nothing. In order to enable them to be together, he had to tear them from their natural surroundings and plant them in foreign soil.

Around them, the bar began to fill up; men and women moved about gaily to the music, and cigarette smoke spiraled thickly through the room. With all the noise and the smoke, it took a single glance between them to cause them to stand up and seek somewhere quieter.

“You must be hungry,” he said. The silk of her dress rustled softly as she walked next to him, her scent maddening. But he would not kiss her here. It would not be appropriate.

When she sat facing him in the dining parlor, with its windows overlooking the sea and a waiter pouring red wine for them, she thought this was a moment to save and savor.

With her, he noticed, even the quiet moments were surprising in their fullness. In the silences, there was beauty, and mellowness; there was no rush to get anywhere. Things that were said were absorbed by the skin, not lost to the air. Something about her allowed him to be calm. Normally, he was restless, impatient with stragglers, quick to think and quick to act. But with her, everything was natural, as if they had been together forever and their presence created a peace that sufficed them both, passing from one to the other, back and forth.

“Tell me,” Lila said, “will the Turks manage to grow quality tea?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Elias said, “they can grow nettles. All I care about is that they gave us this gift of being together.”

Lila blushed. “How did it all begin?” she asked.

“Thousands of years ago,” he told her, as if sharing a secret, “a Chinaman went out to be alone in nature. He gathered some herbs, tested them on himself, mixed and concocted and poisoned himself seventy times, since every medicinal plant is also a poison depending on how it is used. That day he was boiling water for himself over a fire built on sticks. A breeze blew leaves from a nearby hill and some of them fell into the boiling water. And that is how, according to the legend, the world’s first cup of tea was born.”

“Fantastic!” Lila proclaimed, clapping her hands. “That story will pass from person to person forever. And who was that Chinaman?” she asked.

“The second emperor of China, Shennong,” Elias said. “From China, tea spread to Japan and from there to the rest of the world.”

Lila laughed. She had actually meant to ask how the family business had begun, but she had gotten caught up in his story and was transported to faraway China.

“Oh, so you wanted to know how it started with us?” he asked. “My great-grandfather imported salt and my grandfather added tea, something both the poor and rich drink. When I came into the business, I traveled a lot, looking for something that would make me swoon.”

He sipped from his wine and asked if she liked it.

“Very much.” She nodded, her delicate lips purpled.

“It is so pleasant to drink with you,” he said, though perhaps it was not the words but the way he looked at her when he uttered them that overwhelmed her.

A rebellious thought stole into her head, one that Lila tried to banish so that she could listen to him as before, but this thought was overbearing. Perhaps he had already sat facing a woman he desired, filling her wineglass, looking into her eyes, and telling her about the first time he saw tea leaves being harvested in China. And perhaps he had been captivated by that woman’s smile and had won her over, just as he was winning Lila over. But he did not seem overly skilled or experienced. He was not a professional seducer of women. Her instincts told her that he was not in the business of preying on women. But maybe she was wrong? While he discussed after-dinner drinks with the waiter, she decided that these thoughts were pointless.