Things We Left Unsaid (2 page)

The unseen frog croaked again, and this time it was answered by a louder croak from another frog. I was flustered. Maybe it was because of her short stature, or the pearl necklace at four in the
afternoon, or her woolen shawl in this heat, or her very formal manner. Or maybe it was those damned frogs; despite living so many years in Abadan, I had never gotten used to the sight and sound of
them. I wiped my hand on my apron and offered it to her. ‘I am Clarice...Ayvazian.’ And why did I find myself mimicking the tiny creature in front of me?

She squeezed my hand so hard, my wedding ring dug into my fingers. She squinted at me. ‘The Ayvazians from Julfa?’ The wrinkles around her eyes were symmetrical in size and shape, as
if someone had meticulously etched them in. I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear: ‘Why don’t you wear your wedding band on your left hand, like every other woman?’

I explained that Ayvazian was my husband’s surname. ‘The Ayvazians of Tabriz. My mother was born in Isfahan. Arshalus Voskanian. Do you know her?’ My sister would have sneered,
‘But then how would people know that Miss Clarice is not like every other woman?’

She smoothed her hair again. ‘If I knew her family nickname I might recognize her. It’s been a long time since I was in Julfa.’

I hemmed and hawed. The nicknames the Armenians of the Julfa district in Isfahan gave one another were not chosen with a particular eye for kindness. They used to call my mother’s
grandfather ‘Missak the Blabbermouth,’ which I, of course, had no particular desire for everyone to know. Fortunately my tiny new neighbor did not seem to expect a reply. She shifted
from one foot to the other. ‘Could you call Emily, please? I have a lot to do.’

I stepped aside. ‘Do please come in. She’s having an after-school snack with the children.’

She clutched at her necklace again. ‘Snack?’

There was no croaking of the frogs now, but I was still flustered. ‘Cheese sandwiches with milk.’ Why was I explaining this?

She lowered her gaze to the little cross around my neck and stared. ‘She doesn’t like cheese. And she absolutely has to have her milk warmed up. With two teaspoons of honey.’
She was yelling again.

It felt as though I had administered the wrong medicine to a patient. Before I could say another word, she barged in, hopped three times over the scattered satchels, and found the kitchen. I
kicked the satchels aside and followed.

Emily was pressed up against the wall. The pressure of her slim body was tearing the etching of Sayat Nova, whose silhouette was facing Emily. It crossed my mind that the beloved
‘Gozal’ whom Sayat Nova addressed in his poems must have looked very much like Emily.

This time the grandmother really did shout. ‘If I had not seen you come in here from our window, I suppose I would have had to search for you all over town?’

The twins stared at her, open-mouthed. From the look on Armen’s face as he watched this short woman, I was convinced he was about to burst out laughing any second. In order both to
distract him and to steer the conversation in another direction, I asked, ‘Emily, why didn’t you tell me you don’t like cheese and cold milk?’ All eyes turned to her empty
plate and glass. Mortified, I looked at the grandmother. ‘When kids get together, you know...’

Paying no attention to me, she turned to Emily and roared, ‘Get going!’ The girl scampered out of the kitchen like a rabbit on the run.

I closed the front door and watched them through the lace curtain of the window panel. At the end of the front path, near the spot where we had planted the larkspurs, the grandmother raised her
hand and gave the granddaughter a hard smack on the back of the neck. I straightened out the pleats of the lace curtain and headed back down the hallway, hoping the children had not been at the
kitchen window to see the beating their friend had just received.

Armineh was standing on the chair in the kitchen, her stomach thrust forward. Facing Arsineh, she shouted, ‘Get going!’ The three of them cracked up. I tried hard not to laugh, but
could not help myself. Armineh was almost as tall as Mrs. Simonian and had a brilliant knack for mimicking people.

The twins’ bedroom had its old familiar smell. A sweet smell, the kind of smell that could lull a person to sleep. Artoush called it ‘the rice pudding smell.’
Armen’s room had lost that smell long ago.

I found Armineh’s teddy bear, Ishy – God only knows how it got that name – under the piano lid and placed him in her arms. She would not go to sleep at night without Ishy
cradled in her arms, but every other night, Ishy would mysteriously disappear. I straightened out the long, thin arms and legs of Rapunzel the Blond, a doll named after the heroine in
The Little
Blond Princess
, and handed her to Arsineh. On my way to close the curtains, my foot knocked into something on the rug. I bent over and picked up a wooden yo-yo. I told the twins, both of them
chanting ‘Story, story!’, that I was too tired and not up to telling them one. To make up for it, I told them that in the morning they could pick flowers from the garden for Miss Manya,
their favorite teacher – so long as they promised not to trample over all the other flowers in the process.

I put the yo-yo in the toy chest, drew the curtains, kissed the twins, said good night and went to Armen’s room. He was in bed, reading a magazine. I picked his navy blue trousers and
white school shirt off the floor and hung them up in the wardrobe. I went over to tidy up his writing desk, making him frown. I sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the large color poster of
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider that he had thumbtacked to the wall. Written in thick Persian calligraphy at the bottom of the picture was:

A Norouz gift from
Tehran Illustrated

Romy Schneider had grey eyes and a cold smile. I felt like reaching up and pushing back the hair falling over Alain Delon’s eyes. I remembered, ‘You’ll mess
up my hair.’

Then, for the thousandth time, I gave Armen an earful – it isn’t funny at all to hide the twins’ toys, and furthermore, you do not call your sister the town idiot in front of
other people. I kept at it until he pulled the sheet over his head and said, ‘Alright, alright, alright already.’

The moment I shut Armen’s door, the twins called out, ‘Mommmmmyyyy!’ I looked in on them. They were sitting cross-legged on their beds in their red and yellow plaid pyjamas,
which I had bought from the Kuwaiti Bazaar a few weeks before.

Armineh asked, ‘Why is Emily’s grandmother...’ and here she held Ishy in front of her face.

Arsineh finished her sister’s sentence. ‘Why is she so short?’

Every night they found some excuse to stay awake longer. ‘Tomorrow night,’ I said. ‘I’ll explain tomorrow night. Now it’s time for night-night.’

Armineh lowered Ishy so I could see her face. ‘Then at least tell us a story.’

My hand was on the light switch. ‘Didn’t I tell you I was tired? Tomorrow night.’

Arsineh cocked her head. ‘Just one little story?’

Armineh also cocked her head. ‘Just one teeny tiny story?’

I looked at them. In their twin beds with the identical sheets, pillowcases, and pyjamas, they were like Xerox copies of one another. As usual, I gave in. I frowned in fun, and said, ‘A
teeny, tiny one. Okay?’

They squealed in tandem, ‘Goody!’ and crawled under the covers, waiting excitedly.

I began. ‘Once upon a time there were two sisters. Everything about them looked exactly the same. Their eyes and eyebrows, their nose and mouth, their school satchels, their recess snacks.
One day, these two sisters...’

The twins loved to hear stories that I made up myself, featuring them as the heroines. I was still sprinkling fairy dust when their eyelids began to droop. I closed with the usual fairytale
ending: ‘Three apples dropped from the sky...’

Armineh said drowsily, ‘One for the teller of the tale.’

Arsineh added with a yawn, ‘One for the hearer of the tale.’

I kissed them and said, ‘And one for...’ All three of us chimed in together, ‘...all the good little children of the world!’

I turned off the light and left the room. In the hallway, I smoothed out the cloth doily on the telephone stand. I knew that in another year or two the twins would exempt me from nightly
story-telling duty, just like Armen, who lost interest in stories years ago. Then I will finally have time for the things I want to do, I thought. My critical streak started in, ‘Like what
things?’ I opened the door to the living room and answered, ‘I don’t know.’ It was a depressing thought.

The television was showing a documentary about the Abadan oil refinery. Artoush was on the sofa, feet stretched out on the coffee table, reading the newspaper. I sat next to him and for a few
minutes watched the pipes, the observation deck, and the workers in their hardhats. The pages of the newspaper turned, and a section that had already been read fell to the floor. I bent over,
picked it up, and asked, ‘You’re not watching? They’re showing your work.’

‘I get to see my work in person from dawn to dusk,’ he muttered.

I read the bold print of the headlines: Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Tour Abadan in Coming Days. The Majles Elections and the Six Reform Bills. Construction of Homes for Factory Workers in
Pirouzabad. New Swimming Pool Opened in the Segoush Neighborhood of Braim.

I folded the section. What was it in all this boring news that Artoush found so interesting? My ever-present critical streak chided, ‘First of all, it’s related to his job. Second,
you knew about this from the beginning.’ I recalled the period of our engagement, in Tehran. At Artoush’s insistence I had gone to several meetings of the Iran–Soviet Society, or
as everyone called it, VOKS. Each time I was bored.

I got up, turned off the television and went over to the window. I looked out at the boxwood hedge under the moonlight, bordering the yard in straight, orderly lines. Mr. Morteza had trimmed it
the day before. After he mowed the lawn, I took him a sour cherry sherbet. He thanked me and then moaned that although it had been six months since he qualified for a scheduled promotion, the Oil
Company’s personnel division had still not awarded it. He asked me to have Artoush put in a recommendation for him. ‘If nothing else, the Doc is
Senior Grade.
What we workers say
carries no clout.’

Then came the same old question. ‘Why doesn’t the Doc get a house in Braim? Mr. Hakopian, who is
Junior Grade
, got a house in Braim.’ I repeated the explanation I had
been giving to everyone for years – to my mother, my sister, my friends and acquaintances, and even to Mr. Morteza himself – that
Senior
and
Junior Grade
does not mean
anything, and that one neighborhood is the same as another neighborhood, and that we are comfortable in this house, and that... Mr. Morteza just listened, as he did each time, then shook his head
and wiped the blades of his garden shears on his oversize, baggy pants.

I ran my hand over the drapes and tried to remember the last time I had washed them. Then I remembered to tell Artoush, ‘Mr. Morteza asked that...’

The pages of the newspaper turned. ‘He deserves it. He works much harder than most
Senior Grades
in the Company.’ As usual, he pronounced
Senior
thickly and derisively.
‘Remind me tomorrow to tell Mrs. Nurollahi to remind me to call Personnel.’

I turned back to the window and said to myself, ‘Our master had a valet and the valet had a servant...’ Mrs. Nurollahi was Artoush’s secretary.

Across the street, the light in one of the rooms of G-4 was on. It was too far away to see clearly, but since all the homes of north Bawarda were alike, I knew it was the living room. The
similarity of the houses aside, I had been to G-4 on many occasions, when Nina and her husband Garnik had been living there. Artoush did not like Garnik that much – not surprising, since
there was almost no one that Artoush did like. The strange thing was that on this one issue, my mother was in agreement with her son-in-law.

The first time that Artoush and Garnik argued politics they went on for a full two hours. After Garnik left, Artoush said, ‘The Armenian Revolutionary Federation was once a powerful
political party. Now times have changed. Why does Garnik still pound his chest for the Federation? I just don’t understand.’

Mother had replied, ‘I, for one, understand perfectly. Garnik’s father and uncle were infamous throughout Julfa for their tomfoolery. They called his uncle Arshak the
Cackler.’

If Artoush was surprised by this irrelevant line of reasoning, he did not let on. After Mother left, I explained that many years ago my father had a friend who was a member of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, and he was always joking and kidding around. My mother did not like this friend of my father’s, which was not very surprising, because Mother did not like any of
Father’s friends.

I looked over at the window of G-4. Nina and Garnik were still living there just six months ago, and I used to pop over some mornings to see Nina, or she would come to see me. We would have
coffee and chat.

Someone came and stood in their window. I only saw a shadow, but I could guess from its height that it was not Emily. It was certainly not her grandmother. It must be her father.

I remembered the night in that very living room when Nina set out what she called a ready-made dinner. Mother said, ‘It’s not healthy to eat cold cuts, sausage and scraps all the
time.’

Garnik laughed. ‘Is there really such a thing as healthy or unhealthy food, Mrs. Voskanian? A smiling face and good intentions are all that’s needed! The way my wife serves up our
food, why, even bread and cheese taste like Chelow Kebab. Where there’s a smiling face and pure intentions, vitamins will make their way through the body!’ With a guffaw, he put his arm
around Nina’s beefy shoulders, and she went weak at the knees from laughter. Mother had frowned and the next day said, ‘Idiotic clowns! God’s matched them perfectly, snug as a
door and its jamb.’

It did not matter to me at all if Garnik was a supporter of the Armenian nationalists (or as Artoush put it when he got over-excited, ‘He doesn’t realize that what’s best for
the Armenians, as for the rest of the world, is joining the downtrodden masses.’). And it did not matter if Nina was messy (or as Mother put it, that ‘a whole camel caravan could get
lost in her house.’). What was important was that Nina and Garnik were good together, always happy. I had never seen them angry with each other.