17

“I’m not stupid! I understand. The place your mother has gone is an indecent house. I will never set foot there, dear.”

Hasti looked at Mrs. Farrokhi. She had lost a lot of weight, and now her face and neck had yielded themselves to so many folds and furrows that one could call her Afsar Wrinkles. She had dyed her hair light brown. Hasti was now her daughter-in-law, whether Mrs. Farrokhi set foot in the house that her mother had gone to or not.

“I went to the hairdresser with Eshrat, dear.”

The curls in her hair shouted that it was Farhad’s work.

“Women come and go in see-through dresses. Men with neckties or bow ties. Of course, Eshrat is chaste. Even if she were to be among a regiment of soldiers . . .”

Hasti’s gaze traveled to the armchairs that had new covers and the arms of straight chairs that had been polished with oil. The cast-iron heater that used to give out so much smoke had given way to a new, luxury heater of a brand Hasti didn’t recognize. These were her mother’s prints in this house. If only her mother would allow her to not worry for just one day.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? Help your mother, dear. She won’t reconcile with Ganjur. He has to pay her subsistence. She asked the clerical authorities about that. But if Ganjur finds out what kind of house she is in, he can avoid paying her subsistence.”

“But where is my mother?”

Mrs. Farrokhi put her hand in her purse, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to Hasti. Hasti read the address. “Vila Street, before the Medical Clinic, number . . .”

The four-bedroom apartment that Ganjur rents, and his wife ends up there! Hasti looked at the ceiling. The chandelier in the middle of the room was clean and shiny. But what Hasti was looking for was a solution. She got up, hit the switch, and the chandelier lit up. The clouds were pouring rain onto the garden. Perhaps the trees were joyful, and it was only Hasti’s heart that was as gloomy as the clouds.

“Of course, I haven’t said anything to Mr. Farrokhi. And Salim doesn’t get involved in other people’s business. If Mr. Farrokhi found out, he would destroy that apartment. And of course, Ganjur has been with that maid, the one with slanted eyes, for a year now . . .”

“Why didn’t my mother go to a hotel?”

“Hotels are no different. All of Tehran has become a house of pleasure. Of course, Eshrat isn’t poor . . .”

Didn’t Hasti know that Ganjur gave her mother as much money as she wanted, and that no one was as extravagant as her mother? Hadn’t she left money in Hasti’s notebooks when she was a student? And in her purse? When Hasti graduated, hadn’t she given a party for her in the garden of her home? How much she had flattered Professor Mani and his wife and Simin. And despite the fact that Morad made many wisecracks and ironically praised frugality, hadn’t her mother calmed him down with a glass of whisky and a few caviar sandwiches? And when Farkhondeh shouted her slogans and said, “So, Hasti Nourian is of the nobility and an aristocrat, and we didn’t know it,” hadn’t her mother sat beside her, kissed her, and peeled a cucumber for her? The Russian bear, Marusa, had prepared Hasti’s blue dress on time, and that gift was enough by itself. But on top of that, her mother had hung a turquoise necklace around Hasti’s neck.

“Mrs. Farrokhi,” Hasti asked, “how was it that my mother decided to go to such an apartment?”

“This house was not her place anymore, dear. The other morning, right in front of me, she called the housekeeper at the apartment and asked that she prepare the end room for her. The sheets . . . everything. Then she made the housekeeper swear not to tell anyone. She kept saying, ‘You mustn’t tell anyone! You’ll get a big tip from me.’”

Mrs. Farrokhi rang and Taji appeared. She asked Taji to prepare lunch. Hasti said she should leave. There were a thousand things waiting for her in the office.

“It’s past noon. I swear on Salim’s life that I won’t let you go. Especially since it’s raining cats and dogs.”

At lunch, Mrs. Farrokhi ate salad. “Who brings food to Salim Khan?” Hasti asked.

“Nanny.”

If Hasti could have food with Salim, maybe he could eat something. She could feed Salim herself and tell him that she loves him to infinity. She had a “lit lantern on her heart” under her blouse, and she knew that with that she could help her mother. She knew that these knotty problems could be solved one by one.

“She got a taxi,” Mrs. Farrokhi continued. “We went to the bank together. She called it the ‘problem-solving bank.’ Anyway, she pawned the jewelry, silver, gold, and furs. Her receipt is with me. I’ve put it in the metal box by my bed. The key is around my neck.”

A gold chain hung from Mrs. Farrokhi’s neck under her dress. The key was probably attached to the end of that chain.

“Three empty suitcases of Eshrat’s are under my bed. She has taken two suitcases. But what if I die? What if Eshrat kills herself?”

“Why do you think she might kill herself?”

“She didn’t pawn that gun. That ivory-handled gun. The one a foreigner had given her for her birthday.”

Hasti asked Dr. Bahari’s secretary, “How much should I pay for the visit?”

“Paying for the visit is optional.”

She made a file for Hasti, and, as the reason for the visit, she wrote “headache.” When it was Hasti’s turn, and Dr. Bahari saw her, he laughed and asked, “Have you become sick for lack of a husband?”

Dr. Bahari asked how Mr. Sympathizer was doing and said, “It was a dangerous case of pneumonia.” He repeated his special joke that Hasti had heard several times before: “One can be a sympathizer and get pneumonia, too. One can be bald and be run over by a car, too.” Then he thought and said, “But Hasti, I have a question. Why should the present generation suffer so that the next generation can be happy when there is no guarantee that it will be?”

Because Hasti didn’t answer, Dr. Bahari asked about Hasti’s headaches—whether half of her head aches or all of it and when her head aches.

“I didn’t come to you for my headache. I came for a cure for my mother’s problems. Why should the present generation pay for the mistakes of the previous generation?”

She told him about her mother’s problems. At the end she explained that her mother was then residing in a house of pleasure a hundred steps from the medical clinic. Dr. Bahari bit his lip.

“Why did she destroy you? I doubt that Farrokhi’s son will marry you with your mother’s actions, although Farrokhi himself . . . Well, Afsar al-Moluk is five or six years older than Farrokhi. At the time of the oil nationalization, he spent most of his wife’s money on the movement and stayed loyal to Mosaddeq until the end.

“But what can I do for you and for Eshrat?”

“Grandmother has faith in you. She says that you are familiar with suffering.”

He wiped the imaginary sweat off his forehead and said, “Do you mean that I should convince Grandmother to bring Eshrat to her place? I’ll take care of it. Tonight, pretend to be sick. Make her call me. When I come, I know how to play my role. Remember how well I played the roles of bathhouse owner, bath attendant, and masseur? . . . That night seems thousands of years ago.”

Hasti thought, Isn’t life a series of plays, often written by novice writers, plays that might get published or might not, that have a thousand ifs and buts?

As soon as she returned home, Hasti pretended to be sick. Grandmother had her drink rock candy dissolved in hot water and made her lie down on the sofa in the living room. She sat beside her and said that Hasti’s illness was due to worry about her mother.

“Now that she is well and her illness is known, is it my turn to fall ill?”

Grandmother rose, prostrated herself, and kissed the floor. “It would have been a shame if that beautiful body had been buried.”

“She doesn’t want to go back to her husband’s house anymore.”

“If he buys her a piece of jewelry, she’ll go back.”

“But it’s Pasita, too. Her husband and Pasita have an . . .”

“Grease Monkey, the garage owner? How dare he . . . ? Really!”

Touran Jan went back to square one. Still, Hasti kept trying. “She doesn’t want to go back to her husband’s house for a little while.”

“She’ll probably make it a condition that Grease Monkey send the maid away; then she’ll go back . . . How are you feeling?”

“Terrible.”

When Dr. Bahari arrived, he took Hasti’s pulse. Took her blood pressure. He put the stethoscope on her heart. Checked her eyelids . . . “Your headache is due to worry and fear. And you have become anemic.”

“Thank you for saying this,” Touran Jan said. “I’ve been telling her the same thing.”

“My diagnosis is the best. I was the one who, from the start, diagnosed Eshrat’s pregnancy. Ganjur distracted everyone. It’s because his mind is only on Pasita.”

“And she’s not speaking to her husband,”

Grandmother said. Grandmother left and came back bringing tea for Dr. Bahari. The doctor patted Touran Jan’s hand lightly in appreciation, picked up the tea, and, like someone who is continuing a conversation, asked, “What do you think about it?”

“About what, Doctor?”

“The idea,” the doctor said, “that Hasti rent the furnished room above my office and take care of her mother there until I have enough time to have Pasita leave and to get Eshrat and Ganjur to reconcile.”

“And leave me alone? With no one? Just go?” Touran Jan’s voice was trembling.

“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking about you, Hajieh Khanom.”

“I haven’t had the honor of visiting Mecca, and I’m not a Hajieh Khanom.”

“But you are right.”

Then Dr. Bahari gave a lengthy speech about the elderly. That the children grow up and leave and the elderly stay alone . . . They lose their minds . . . That he has often convinced young people to take their old parents into their own home. “When the living conditions of the elderly change, their senility is cured. In the past, old age was not a problem. Everyone—sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and great grandchildren—all used to live together. Even if the house is full of enemies, it is better than being alone.”

“I, too,” Touran Jan said, “sometimes think I’m losing my mind. I wish God were content with me and would take me, especially since Hasti wants to rent a room and leave me for a mother who was never a mother to her.” And she started crying quietly.

Dr. Bahari put his hand on Grandmother’s shoulder. “But you’re not old!”

“I’m seventy years old!”

Dr. Bahari was pacing and continuing to talk about the phenomenon of aging, saying that it starts when the sperm is formed, but that real old age begins at sixty-five. “In old age, the body shrinks, the brain shrinks, vertebrae collapse on top of one another. Loneliness and being excluded is the biggest pain for an old man or old woman.” He stood in front of Touran Jan and said, “Do you know why I am enchanted by you? I saw you take care of a stranger, a political activist, and there was even fear of his being exposed. You took care of him as though you were his mother. A lioness like you, Mrs. Nourian, with this much knowledge, benevolence, and holiness, can postpone 50 to 60 percent of old age.”

“I wish Khanomi would agree to come live with us.”

“Who’s Khanomi?”

“My former daughter-in-law. Eshrat. She has given me two beautiful grandchildren. She used to call me ‘Sister.’ Alas . . .”

“Leave it to me to convince her,” Dr. Bahari said. “I’ll go with Hasti to the hospital to bring her here.”

“To this rundown hovel?”

Hasti came out of the state of illness, rose, put her arms around Grandmother’s neck, and kissed her again and again. “This rundown hovel is more than my mother and I deserve. This is a house of piety and chastity, and you are life’s blessing.” Hasti noticed that Dr. Bahari, happy and content, had tears in his eyes. She was thinking, Why did I trouble him this much? But the doctor’s presence was necessary. Hadn’t her mother, in Mrs. Farrokhi’s words, forbid the housekeeper of that house of pleasure to tell anyone that Mrs. Ganjur was there, and of course Dr. Bahari himself knew about the house . . .