Authors: Erica Jong
On some occasions our afternoon debate was interrupted by the arrival of Pierre’s mother and aunts—three ancient ladies in black (with gigantic bosoms and fuzzy mustaches) who looked so much alike you could hardly tell them apart. They would have made a great singing group except that they only had one song. It went: “How you like Lebanon? Lebanon better than New York?” And they played it over and over just to make sure you got the words. Oh they were nice enough, but not terribly easy to converse with. As soon as they arrived, Louise (the maid) would appear with coffee, Pierre would suddenly remember a business engagement, and Randy (pleading her delicate condition) would disappear into the bedroom for a nap. Lalah and Chloe and I were left to cope, ringing endless changes on the refrain “Yes—Lebanon is better than New York.”
I don’t know whether it was the heat, the humidity, the presence of my family, the effect of being “in enemy territory,” or my depression over Charlie—but I seemed to have no will to pet up and do anything at all. I felt as if I had been transported to the land of the Lotus Eaters and would die in Beirut of sheer inertia. One day segued into the next, the weather was oppressive, and there didn’t seem to be any point in fighting the desire to sit around, bicker with the family, think about having clap, and watch TV. It finally took a crisis to lurch us all into action.
It was a minor crisis admittedly—but any crisis would have served. It began simply. One day, Roger, the six year old, said “
ibn sharmuta
” to Louise. Roughly translated, this means “your mother’s a whore” (or, by extension, “you’re a bastard”) and however you translate it, it is the insult of insults in the Middle East.
Louise had been trying to give Roger a bath and he had been screaming. Meanwhile Pierre was arguing with Randy, saying that only Americans had the crazy notion of taking a bath every day. that it wasn’t
natural
(his favorite word), and that it dried up all your wonderful skin oils.
Randy yelled back that she didn’t want her son to stink to high hell like his illustrious father, and she pointed out that she wasn’t fooled by his dirty habits.
“What the hell dirty habits do you mean?”
“I mean I know
perfectly
well that when I say I won’t sleep with you unless you take a shower, you go into the bathroom and turn on the water and just
sit
there smoking a
cigarette
on the goddamned
toilet
seat.” She said this very bitchily and it touched off a real brawl.
Roger naturally understood what the argument was about and refused to let Louise corner him in the bathroom until this case had been appealed and the verdict handed down. But Louise was very persistent, and in a rage, Roger threw a wet washcloth in her face, yelling “
ibn sharmuta!
”
Of course, Louise began to cry. Then she said she was quitting and went to her room to pack. Pierre put on his French movie-star manners and tried to sweet-talk her into staying. But to no avail. This time she was adamant. Pierre promptly took it out on Roger—which really wasn’t fair, since Roger hears Pierre veiling “
ibn sharmuta
” constantly whenever they go out driving. (There are no traffic regulations in Beirut but lots of cursing.) Besides, Pierre usually thinks it’s very cute when the kids curse in Arabic.
Naturally the afternoon wound up with everyone yelling or crying and water all over the floor, and once again we did not go sightseeing or even to the beach. The incident, however, provided us with a mission. We had to take Louise back to her village in the mountains (Pierre’s “ancestral village,” as he called it) and find a still more naive mountain girl to replace her.
The next morning, we put in the obligatory few hours of yelling and then piled into the car and headed along the Mediterranean for the hills. We stopped at Byblos to admire the Crusader castle, reflected torpidly on the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, and Turks, ate at a nearby seafood restaurant, and then proceeded into the sun-baked mountains along a road which looked and felt like another archaeological find.
Karkabi, Pierre’s much-vaunted “ancestral village,” is a town so small you could easily pass it without noticing. The town only got electricity in ’63 and the electricity tower, in fact, dominates the village. (It is also the point of interest which the villagers are most avid to show you.)
When we arrived in the main square (where a skinny donkey was pulling a stone around in a circle to grind wheat), everyone practically fell over themselves touching the car, breaking their necks for a look at us, and being generally depressingly obsequious. You could tell Pierre
loved
this. It was
his
car, and he probably also wanted everyone to think we were
his
four wives (though, of course, they knew we weren’t). All this seemed even more depressing when you considered that nearly everyone in town was Pierre’s
cousin
at least and that they all were illiterate and went barefoot—and what the hell was so difficult about impressing them?
Pierre slowed the ridiculous tank of a car to a crawl as we drove past (to let all the rubberneckers get a good look). Then he pulled up in front of the “ancestral home”—a small, white-washed adobe house with grapes growing on the roof and no windowpanes or screens but only small square windows with wrought-iron grills over them (and flies zooming freely in and out—but inevitably more in than out).
Our arrival sent everyone into a frenzy of activity. Pierre’s mother and aunts began preparing
tabuli
and
humus
with a vengeance and Pierre’s father—who is about eighty and drinks Arak all day—went out to shoot birds for supper and nearly shot himself. Meanwhile Pierre’s English Uncle Gavin—a displaced cockney who married Aunt Françoise back in 1923 (and has been in Karkabi regretting it ever since) —produced a rabbit he’d shot that morning and started cleaning it.
Inside the house, there were only about four rooms, with whitewashed walls and crucifixes over all the beds (“Pierre’s family are Maronite Catholics) and kissed-over pictures of various saints ascending to heaven on slick magazine paper. There were also numerous tattered magazine photos of the Royal Family of England; and then there was Jesus Himself, wearing a toga, his face barely visible under a hail of kiss-prints.
While supper was being made, Pierre led us out to show us “his domain.” Randy insisted on staying in the house with her feet up, but the rest of us trooped obediently over the rocks (followed by an entourage of barefoot cousins who kept pointing enthusiastically to the electricity tower). Pierre snapped at them in Arabic; he was after something more pastoral. And he found it, just over the next rocky hill, where a real live shepherd was guarding real live sheep under a wormy apple tree. That was all Pierre needed to see. He began spouting “poetry” as if he were Kahlil Gibran and Edgar
Guest rolled into one. A shepherd! Sheep! An apple tree! It was
charming.
It was
pastoral.
It was Homer and Virgil and the Bible. So we walked over to the shepherd—a pimply kid of about fifteen—and found him listening to a little Japanese transistor radio which played Frank Sinatra followed immediately by a bunch of singing commercials in Arabic. Then
saftig
seventeen-year-old Chloe took out one of her menthol cigarettes and offered him one—which he accepted, trying to look as cool and sophisticated as possible. And then this
charming
shepherd reached into his
charming
pocket and pulled out a
charming
butane lighter. When he lit Chloe’s cigarette, you just knew he had spent practically his whole life at the movies.
After supper, all the relatives in town (i.e. practically the whole town) came over. A lot of them came over to watch TV (since Pierre’s aunt is one of the few people in Karkabi who has one) but that night they came over to watch us too. Mostly they stood around and stared at us and looked embarrassed, but sometimes they’d touch my hair (or Chloe’s or Lalah’s) and make noises to indicate that they were really crazy about blondes. Or else they’d pat us everywhere as if they were blind. God—there’s nothing to compare with being patted by a dozen two-hundred-pound Lebanese women with mustaches. I was panicky. Could they tell by patting that we were
Jewish?
I was
sure
they could. But I was wrong. Because when it came time to give us presents, I got a silver rosary, a hand-knitted pink angora sweater in size 46 (it came down to my knees), and a blue bead on a chain (for the old evil eye). I wasn’t about to turn down any amulet at that point. All intercessions with all deities were gratefully accepted.
When the gift-giving was over, everyone sat down to watch television—mostly reruns of ancient American programs. Lucille Ball batting her false eyelashes, Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, and the whole screen a blizzard of subtitles. You could hardly see the actors for the letters.
It really made you believe in the universality of art to see all these pastoral types loving Lucille Ball and Raymond Burr. I was looking forward to the day when America extends its glorious civilization to other solar systems. There they’ll be—all those intergalactic types—watching Lucille Ball and Raymond Burr in rapt attention.
The relatives stayed and stayed. They drank coffee and wine and Arak until Aunt Françoise was wringing her pudgy hands. We were all exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, so instead of actually throwing them out, Pierre’s Uncle Gavin quietly left the room, climbed up on the roof, and began monkeying with the TV antenna until the picture turned into a mass of zigzags. Within a few minutes, the visitors departed. I was given to understand that Uncle Gavin climbs up on the roof quite frequently.
Sleeping arrangements were difficult. Randy and Pierre and the kids were to be put up at Pierre’s father’s house down the hill. Lalah and Chloe were to share a double bed in another aunt’s house next door. And I drew a single in a tiny annex of Aunt Françoise’s house. I’d really have preferred to be with Lalah and Chloe than to be alone in that creepy room, sleeping under a crucifix and grubby pictures of the illustrious queen. But there was no space for three in bed, so I sacked out alone, amusing myself before sleep with thoughts of scorpions scampering up the wall, and fatal spider bites, and visions of breaking my neck during the night when I needed to find the outdoor toilet without a flashlight. Oh there was plenty to keep the most phobic mind thoroughly occupied for many busy hours of insomnia.
I had been lying there in full phobic flower for about an hour and a half when the door creaked open.
“Who is it?” I said, my heart thudding.
“Shhhh.” A dark shadow moved toward me. The man under the bed.
“For God’s sake!” I was terrified.
“Shhh—it’s only me—Pierre,” Pierre said. And then he came over and sat down on the bed.
“Jesus—I thought it was some rapist or something.” He laughed. “Jesus wasn’t a rapist.”
“I guess not. … What’s up?” It was a poor choice of words under the circumstances.
“You seem so depressed,” he said, full of counterfeit tenderness.
“I guess I am. All that craziness with Brian last summer and now Charlie …”
“I hate to see my little sister depressed,” he said, stroking my hair. And for some reason that “little sister” sent chills through me.
“You know I always think of you as my little sister, don’t you?”
“Actually I didn’t, but thanks anyway, I’ll be OK. Don’t worry. I’m thinking of going back home and stopping in Italy again for a few days on the way. My ticket gives me a free stop in Rome. I don’t think the climate here agrees with me. Lalah and Chloe are supposed to fly to New York next week anyway and it keeps getting hotter and hotter. …” I was babbling on out of nervousness. Meanwhile, Pierre was stretching out on the bed next to me and putting his arms around me. What was I supposed to do? If I fought him off like an ordinary rapist, I’d
offend
him, but if I took the path of least resistance and went along with him, it was
incest.
Not to mention the fact that Randy would probably kill me. But what should I say? What was the etiquette in a situation like this?
“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I said weakly. Pierre’s hands were under my nightgown, stroking my thighs. I wasn’t as unaroused as I wanted to pretend.
“What isn’t a good idea?” he asked nonchalantly. “After all, it’s
natural
for a brother to love his little sister. …” And he went on doing what comes naturally.
“
What
did you say?” I asked, sitting up.
“Just that it’s perfectly
natural
for a brother to love his little sister. …” He might have been Albert Ellis giving a lecture.
“Pierre,” I said gently, “haven’t ?you ever read
Lolita
?”
“I can’t stand that phony prose style of his,” Pierre said, annoyed with me for distracting him.
“But this is
incest,
” I said emphatically.
“Shhh—you’ll wake everyone. … Don’t worry, you won’t get pregnant. We’ll do it the Greek way, if you like. …”
“It wasn’t
pregnancy
I was worried about for God’s sake—it was
incest!
” My reasoning didn’t seem to make a dent in Pierre’s resolve.
“Shhhh,” he said, pushing me down on the pillow. He was like some of the guys I’d met in Italy. If you resisted because you really weren’t interested, they thought it was fear of pregnancy and kept suggesting other alternatives—anal intercourse, sucking, mutual masturbation—anything except “NO.” Pierre inched up to the head of the bed and offered his erect penis to my mouth. … The showdown. A battle was raging within me. It would have been so damned
easy
to oblige. To suck him and be done with it. It was so
simple
really. What difference could one more blow job make to my life?