The Other Language(52)

“I don’t know. I can ask my cousin.”

“I had this crazy idea. I was thinking I could turn that room into a small bakery. I’m a pretty good baker, you know? I used to make my own bread.”

“You could make pizza too,” Mina murmured.

“Exactly! I could also bake muffins in the morning. I think it would work, especially in the summer months, for the tourists. Don’t you think?”

“If you made good bread, even the local people will buy it all year round. Nobody makes bread the way we used to anymore. Everyone is using that chemical yeast now.”

“Absolutely. And there are no good bakeries around us for miles.”

Mina yawned.

“I could give you my aunt’s recipe.”

It had started to get dark much earlier now. Lara could smell the woody scent of fall coming through the half-open window.

“Maybe you and I could go into this together,” she offered.

There was no answer.

“You know what? I think we’d make good money,” Lara said almost to herself and threw a glance at Mina. She was snoring lightly, her head abandoned to the headrest, the plastic parrot clutched to her chest.

Lara drove on in the pitch-dark, the brights shining on the twisted olive trunks shaped like gnomes. But it was easy; by now she knew the way home like the back of her hand.





An Indian Soirée


The crow woke her up with a start, ripping her away from the dream. Every morning at seven sharp, the stupid bird tapped its beak on the window demanding to enter, each day unaware that he was knocking on a pane of glass. Its relentless cawing was the most disagreeable sound to wake up to.

Her heart was still beating fast from what had just happened in her sleep. She glanced at the pillow next to hers. Her husband gave a moan directed at the crow, then turned over and continued to sleep. Better that way. She needed some time alone.

She lay still, in an attempt to extricate herself from the shreds of her dream. She had just been passionately kissed and made love to and the lovemaking had stirred such a strong longing, she was still overwhelmed and aroused. Apparently she and her ex-lover had met again at a party somewhere. There were people standing around with drinks in hand. He had pressed her gently against the wall, his forehead on hers, and that’s how they’d looked into each other’s eyes, like two stags locking antlers. She had felt they were being observed and for a moment had thought, This is impossible, we can’t, not in front of everybody. Instead all she said in the dream was “I have missed you so much,” and it felt as though such an uncomplicated phrase had instantly commanded a truth that had been buried for years. The words had taken on, as often happens in dreams, a special power, as if they’d meant so much more than just that. As she pronounced them she had felt a surge of relief. From that moment on, she knew it would be impossible to hide this simple truth again: it was true, she had missed him all these years, despite having refused to admit it, so that the dream had come as a revelation, an awakening of sorts. Just then he had leaned in to kiss her, pressing his mouth to hers with an incredible will, in the same way he had with his forehead. And then, still in the dream, of course, she no longer cared if others were watching and word would get out. Yes, it would be public. Her husband would have to know. It was inevitable. They had found each other again and discovered that their passion was intact. In fact, it had never faded. How astonishing was that?

She got up slowly, entered the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She hadn’t seen him in almost fifteen years. She didn’t even know where he was anymore, whether he was married or had children. Then why, she wondered, why would he come in her dream so forcefully, so completely out of the blue? She splashed her face with cold water. Her eyes looked puffy again, she noticed with dismay. It felt almost as if he’d ambushed her, leaping out from the depths of some repressed memory. And what was the dream meant to be? A secret message? A prophecy? How about telepathy? Could he have been dreaming of her too, on the very same night? Was this some kind of message she was meant to pick up and do something about? After the kiss, when he’d made love to her, the feeling was so visceral, she couldn’t accept it had been just something she’d fabricated. She must have had an orgasm or something, it just wasn’t possible to feel this way otherwise. She looked at her face, more closely this time, till her breath fogged the mirror. Puffy eyes, crinkly at the corners.

This was insane. Yes, insane. But she wanted him back now—how did that happen?—after years of not even thinking of him. She would have to track his number, his Facebook page or search his username on Skype. Nobody could disappear entirely anymore. She unscrewed the cap of jasmine bath gel, one of the luxurious ayurvedic products offered in the hotel, and turned on the shower.



He knew exactly what was going to happen to her hair. As it thinned out—and it would, eventually, with age—it would go limp and disclose the unseemly shape of the back of her head, which was flat. He knew it would happen, because of her mother. That’s exactly what had happened to her head and he found the detail deeply depressing, as though this plane at the back of her mother’s head, its lack of roundness, signaled a weakness. It made the older woman look even more helpless, especially since she was unaware of this particular flaw, being at the back where she couldn’t see it. He had never liked his mother-in-law. She was a petulant, self-centered and uninteresting woman who relentlessly talked rubbish. Often he’d had to stop himself from shouting at her to shut the f*ck up. That was another problem with marriage, you were stuck for life with people you didn’t care for.