The cufflink came first. Lying in her purse, like some kind of memento. One shouldn’t look into purses, or if one does, one should swallow the consequences. But the purse and the handbag are the burial mounds of the trade, hidden hoards that just beg to be excavated. And surveillance becomes a habit of kinds, the watchful eye, the gaze that once looked with a kind of voluptuous fondness becomes gradually colder, more observant. It was there one morning and the next morning was gone. She had returned it, I supposed, and I tried to think no more of it. But at his desk he had a habit of fixing them before he picked up the phone, took up his pen, and what kind of man was it that wore immaculate shirts in the summer heat, shirts with silver baubles on the cuffs? I couldn’t avoid that glint of silver when he shook my hand, which he did often, in that thumb-grasping half-American kind of way, when he turned the car wheel, when he adjusted his necktie. A fog descended, a jealous fog, and I confused it with the summer heat haze, the mist that emanated from the humidifiers of the street cafés. And I passed that sign one day that read ‘psychic readings’ in both languages and took those most irrational steps, up the stairs by the broken lift, and first made the acquaintance of Gertrude and her Pomeranian. She read my palm and predicted nothing but she knew how to soothe the soul somehow, in that old-fashioned Middle European way. She had a voice that sounded like it emerged from a coal-tar pit with an infinite sense of ennui that knew that everything passes, even jealousy and bile. So I allowed myself to forget it, that little gleaming question mark of silver, until I found the hotel charge on her Visa bill. And then of course I had to visit it, a brutalist concrete pile along the river front, with shabbily dressed businessmen coming and going and well-dressed ladies sitting in the lounges. I questioned the room-service charge and was given a printout of the bill, complete with the costs of cable TV and miniature vodka bottles from the mini-bar, five of them.
I know you want me to explain, she told me, but I can’t. You were away so much, I was redesigning the office, I was choosing those adjustable swivel-backed chairs that would have helped with your posture. The things a wife thinks about, how her husband stands, what he eats, how he dresses, is he happy, has his eye wandered, do those trips to other cities mean something other than business, is he taking more care of his health, does he drink too much coffee, and more to the point is that feeling we engendered together in the Mesopotamian heat still there, like the oily Euphrates, flowing between us towards the burning Arabian sea. Does he still care for me, am I still attractive, have I put on too much weight since the birth, is there too much room in that space between my legs where I used to love holding you still and tight until the urgency took over. All of those things that I can’t explain, couldn’t talk about, I began to talk through with him and yes, he would adjust his cufflinks as he listened and keep his calm inscrutable face in the listening mode and he was handsome, you know that, but without those eyes that I could sink into for ever, without that mouth that crinkled downwards; he was nothing like you. And yes, I met him for a drink in that drab concrete hotel and did I have some intent? I can’t be sure, but I hired a babysitter for the night and hired a room and paid for it because with him you always paid. And I drank too much, champagne and wine at first then those small vodka bottles, and many many cigarettes – I was eating them that night, out of nervousness, out of need; you were away of course and we began by talking about you and finished by talking about you. And please don’t ask me about what happened in between, I’m shy about those things and eaten up with guilt, the guilt that came down on me like a sudden cloud when I woke on my own in that tousled bed and saw his cufflink glittering on the faux-woollen carpet. It stank, that carpet, of male feet and sour wine and vomit. I washed myself in that plastic coffin they called a shower but couldn’t wash myself clean and maybe I never will. And I picked up that cufflink and put it in my purse to give it back to him and maybe that was the real mistake, because that’s where you found it.