About the Night (8 page)

Cognac, he chose. Straight-faced, he explained that his visits to London had taught him to love everything French and was pleased when her laughter cleared the air and got him laughing, too.

She thought he would join her in her cabin, that he would enter silently under darkness, lock the door behind him, keep the lights off, gather her into his arms, press his face to her neck, breathe her scent, move his hands down her smooth back. He would seek out her lips, which would at first touch him lightly and then open to him. There was no other way to end their evening together on the ship. At least, that is what she thought.

“Are you sleepy?” he asked beside her door.

“Not enough to go to sleep,” she said.

He passed his hand lightly through her hair. “We’ll go to bed,” he said; then he turned and started walking toward his cabin. “Good night.”

It was two o’clock in the morning, and this was so unexpected that she was unable to fall asleep. Perhaps she had disappointed him; perhaps she was not sufficiently beautiful. But that was not possible: he was dancing around her in circles, drunk with happiness and her laughter, and touching her with his eyes.

She put on a sweater and went up to the deck, letting the sea breeze cool her down. The darkness was complete and engulfing, a heavy salt smell wafting up from the water. From there, infinity seemed almost tangible; humans were swallowed up inside it, their worries insignificant and transient. The thought of that man sleeping in his cabin filled her with joy. After all, he had not invited her to a foreign country to keep his distance. He had his own pace, his own temperament—that was apparently the explanation. If only she shared that pace. She would try to fall asleep now without him, with the knowledge that he was a few steps away, real and palpable even if he was not yet at her side.

At breakfast, he was pleased to discover that she liked her eggs sunny-side up and that, like him, she could eat them every single day. He ate the whites first, leaving the two yolks for the end, shiny and inviting. She dipped her bread into the runny yolks and only after consuming them turned her attention to the whites.

By the time the ship docked in Istanbul, they were already closer, still feeling their way but more open with each other as the hours passed. They even managed to overcome an argument that started out small and led to tears, which was how Elias learned that she cried easily but was easily appeased as well. Her stomach was bothering her, and he said something about being spoiled, but he had no idea that the word would raise her ire.

“Me? Spoiled!” She had made her way alone, orphaned; how could he even think such a thing? Her tears had flowed, and long minutes passed before he was able to convince her that he had meant no such thing.

He ran to the ship’s doctor, brought her pills and hot tea, and pressed her to drink more. “My mother believes in the healing powers of tea,” he told her.

The city was beautiful and inviting, with its six turrets of the Blue Mosque and those of the Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom. Elias would bring her there one afternoon to marvel at the spectacular ceilings and the play of shadow and light in one of the wonders of the world.

“The city was built on seven hills,” she told him, “so her curves astonish as they appear and disappear.”

She had departed from this pier seventeen years earlier, and now she was returning with Elias. He stood close to her, the wind fiendishly fresh, his face tan, and his laugh lines so fetching that she wanted to kiss him. His presence at her side was stronger than the absence of her parents, and the exciting feeling of “now” was stronger than the hidden and unresolved past.

“Let’s look for the house you grew up in,” Elias suggested.

“No,” she answered immediately.

“Think about it,” Elias said.

“There are things left better in the haze of memory,” Lila responded. She breathed deeply, as if cleaning out a clogged chimney. They leaned over the ship’s railing. In a quiet voice she told him how they had left the city in haste, how silence had reigned on the ship and in their home in Jerusalem, how her parents had brought to life a single child who was witness to their fury and moroseness, how they had died joyless and extinguished.

Elias listened in a way that he would not miss a single word.

First, her mother had succumbed to lung disease. A year later, her father, with whom she was very close, their souls entwined, was taken from her. On a stormy day, a roof collapsed above him, sending down a few tiles that broke his neck.

He knew she did not wish to sound helpless, so he restrained himself from saying that she would no longer remain alone in the world. But his eyes immersed her in their warmth, like a soft woolen shawl around her shoulders.

They had two nights in Istanbul before the minister’s driver would come to fetch them for their trip eastward to the tea fields. Before they left home, Elias had sent a telegram to their hosts informing them of a slight change—that Elias’s father would not be joining him but, instead, an amateur agronomist with an interest in Turkish agriculture. “Speak only French,” he told her, “I’m fairly certain they won’t understand much.” They agreed she would conceal the Turkish she retained from childhood, though that was not the only thing they were concealing.

In the taxi, the driver asked in broken English if Elias would like to show his wife the ancient churches on the way to the hotel. Lila nodded with a smile. They were amused by the driver’s name—Caesar—and were especially pleased that for a single moment they were husband and wife in the eyes of the man who gazed at them in his mirror. Caesar, with his thick mustache, gave them credibility, turned them from hidden lovers into a couple. Lila saw how Elias was enjoying this picture of them.

Elias asked the driver what he drank in the morning.

“Coffee,” Caesar told him proudly, as if there were no other choice in the world. “Twelve cups a day.”

Elias wondered how the legendary Atatürk’s plan was going to change a national habit. “And what about tea?” he asked.

“Tea is for sick people,” said the driver.

The taxi stopped at the entrance to the Bosphorus Hotel. The doorman bowed toward Lila as she passed by, and she acknowledged it with a smile and said
“Merci,”
delighting him. The doorman’s chest puffed up with pride as he went to bring their luggage into the lobby. Lila looked around as Elias registered them for their rooms. The reception clerk wished to know whether they would dine in the dining room.

“I’ll let you know later,” Elias told him, following Lila with his eyes and feeling as delighted as she was with the river shimmering in the blue evening light.

Their rooms were at the end of the hall, a heavy amber-colored carpet separating them.

While he went to bathe in his room, she took in the enormity of her room. It had a huge window that seemed to hang right over the river and a fancy bathtub that stood on four legs of gold. She opened the faucets and envied the Turks for all the water they had, recalling one after the other the names of the rivers she had learned as a child—the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Murat, the Sakarya, the Kizil Irmak—until the bath filled with water and frothed with a scent of jasmine. Then she sank down into the water and listened to her heart echoing, her eyes closed against the candlelit room.

When the water began to cool, she opened her eyes, slowly stood to her feet, and wrapped her body in a thick white robe. Thinking of Elias on the other side of the wall awakened all her senses.

Just then, he entered her room—clean, barefoot, wearing light clothes. “It’s lucky you didn’t lock the door,” he said, handing her a cold glass of lemonade.

She tightened the belt on her robe and clinked glasses with him. “What wonderful timing for our trip,” she said.

“Our first trip,” he corrected her. He was leaning on the doorpost, swooning from her smell and her freshness. Only a bathrobe separated them, a single knot in a belt.

He picked up a towel and with gentle movements began drying her hair. He was standing behind her; however, he did nothing in haste or eagerness. He dried her back, too, by patting her robe.

Nothing of what they had endured—the long sea journey, the fatigue, the tension, and the uncertainty—had seeped into the room. Her back still to him, she closed her eyes, excited and full of yearning, the thick robe unable to deflect the heat rising from his hands. He untied the knot and let the robe fall to the floor. All he could see was her backside, her hips, and her legs, and they were even more beautiful than he had imagined.

He gathered her into his arms, brought her to the bed, and lay down next to her, fully clothed, face-to-face. He caressed her neck and shoulders. His fingers fluttered over her face, her cheekbones, her nose, her chin. They tarried over the depression above her mouth. At first, he pressed his lips to hers and felt them opening to him, and only then did he deepen his kisses, encountering her wonder. She was desirous, hungry, but she let him lead their slow movement, one toward the other.

Through the wooden slats on the windows, the light from outside changed and softened, stippling the white ceiling. Elias moved his head away and looked at her as she had never been looked at before. He was steeped in the longing, wonder, and restraint of someone enjoying the moment, ripe with anticipation, grateful for the beauty his eyes were taking in.

In those eyes, she found what she had been searching for these long weeks. She saw that he had been utterly and unconditionally vanquished and that the effect her presence had on him was volcanic. He rose to his feet, removed his clothes, and stood before her, flushed and desirous. The silvery light from the window slats played on his body as he stood above her in his nakedness.

She handed her passion to him, her breathing quiet and hesitant, and she wished to trap this moment, with him so close, lustful and seductive and on the verge of consummating their love. And still he stood just a touch away but not touching, trembling at the sight of her beautiful face and body. She moved her thighs on the white sheet, inviting him, and he lay down beside her, a mere fraction of an inch separating her nakedness from his.

She trembled in the most wonderful sort of anticipation when he touched her back, as she lay in sensual repose, her arms alongside her head. He trailed his fingers across her face and could feel the storm in her body, how she wanted him. Then he drew his lips to her mouth, near but not quite touching it. She reached out for him, and the feel of her arms around his neck changed everything, this single touch pulling him away from the slow path he had been taking, and bringing him to her.

Now he pressed himself into her body with all of his own, their flesh experiencing the burst of pleasure—skin-to-skin, scent-to-scent—that is unique to a first encounter.

Beneath him, he could feel her body, aflame and aroused and cradling into him as he passed his mouth and nose over every one of her curves, for the first time touching her breasts, his palms sensing their fullness. Her thighs were opening slowly, and as if painting her with his lips, he moved up and down the length of her body, caressing her warm belly and glowing inner thighs. With a tenderness that was his and his alone, he overwhelmed her with a dizzying rush, making her part of him.