Raymund P. Reyes

Marvin and the Jinni

MARVIN HAD GROWN to dread getting into bed, because it forced him to face his depression. Sometimes, when the sadness became too much, he would cry until sleep claimed him, and wake up the next morning hating himself, for being weak. He liked it when work exhausted him during the day, because once he slipped under the covers, he would pass out quickly, his mind too numb to think. Even then, in those few minutes before he blacked out, he would be haunted by the memory of his late wife.

Karla died in a plane crash, on her way to attend a conference in Kuala Lumpur. They had only been married for two years, and she was two months pregnant with what would have been their first child. The plane fell over the South China Sea, and her body was not among those that were retrieved, so Marvin had not had the opportunity to grieve properly.

In the first couple of months after the incident, he was in denial, and clung to the belief that Karla was only in Malaysia and would surprise him with her return. After six months of waiting and hoping, he felt that the only way for him to recover would be to leave the country and everything that had been familiar and which reminded him of Karla.

He took a job as area supervisor for a chain of clothing stores in Tabuk, a city in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. During the day, his job provided enough distractions to make him forget about his wife. But at night, he always had to return to his flat, where he lived by himself.

He had Filipino neighbors, but Marvin preferred to keep to himself. He disliked parties and would beg off invitations if he could. After three months in Tabuk, he had so far only accepted five dinner invitations from co-workers, and not one of them had ever been to Marvin’s flat. He didn’t watch TV, but kept it turned on for company. The Internet was his constant companion.

The jinni first showed up in his dreams.

Marvin woke up one night from a dream of a woman whose face he would not remember, try as he might, although he was left with the impression that she was beautiful. He could remember her skin, translucent – almost ghost-like – and her dress, white and blown by an invisible wind. She didn’t do anything, only floated there in a dark void which surrounded her, while Marvin sensed himself being watched, even as he stood watching her.

The same dream recurred for nine consecutive nights. He didn’t know how long the dream lasted, only that he woke up at the same moment each time, just before the nearby mosque called for Fajr, the first Islamic prayer of the day. He would not be able to sleep afterward, thinking of his dream and trying to snatch bits of details he might have missed. Then his thoughts would stray to his wife again, and the gloom that he thought he had slept away the night before would return. He would spend the next hour in bed thinking and getting more melancholy, until the alarm clock went off at six and he had to get up.

Ten nights after the jinni first visited him in his dream, Marvin was getting into bed, when he heard someone calling his name. It was a woman’s voice, soft, almost a whisper, sweet like a tinkling.

“It is me, Marvin,” the voice said.

He looked up toward the large mirror on the wall opposite the bed, where the sound seemed to have come from. The light from the lamp on the bedside table cast a dim reflection of the room, but he could see in the mirror the shadow of a woman’s figure, standing at the foot of his bed. He could see no one in front of him, but in the mirror she was there, a shadow whose outlines flowed, like seaweed under the water.

“Who are you?” Marvin asked the dark being, his voice quivering.

“I am a jinni. I have lived here long before you, when this whole place was a desert, and my family guarded the wadi which used to be on this very spot, but which has long dried up. We stayed, even when humans claimed our home. We will have this place to ourselves again someday. Your kind have short lives compared to ours, and your civilizations rise and disappear fast. One day the wadi will fill again with water, but in the meantime, we live with you and the other humans here. We have learned to ignore your world, unless necessity forces us to intervene. We are always around, but you cannot see us, unless we choose to reveal ourselves to you.”

“What do you want from me?” Marvin asked.

“It is your sadness. It bothers us. It is enveloping our home with gloom. You harbor too much grief in your heart. It makes us feel restless. The anxiety your grief arouses makes us homesick for the old wadi, where we jinn did not need to share our home with your kind and deal with your existence. My father has allowed me permission to ease your sorrow with my company.”

“Please go away. Could you just leave me alone?” Marvin pleaded. He shut his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, the jinni would have disappeared, but his fear only grew, when he heard the jinni speak inside his head.

“I am here,” the jinni said. “Do not be scared of me.”

Marvin slowly opened his eyes and looked into the mirror. The shadow of the jinni had disappeared from the reflection. He could see only himself, alone in bed and in the room. But he felt someone standing beside him; he felt her warmth, even before he turned his head to look.

“Karla?” Marvin’s eyes widened in shock at what he saw. “What is this? Are you real?”

“I have taken on the form of the person you would most like to see. Hold me. I am who you want me to be. I am here, so you will not be sad anymore.” The jinni held out both hands to him. Marvin reached out and felt his wife’s soft palms, the cold of their wedding ring on one finger, the steady throbbing of a pulse, and warm flesh. She had on the navy-blue skirt suit she had worn on the day she left for Kuala Lumpur, and her hair was held up with her favorite butterfly-shaped barrette.

“Yes, that is good.” The jinni smiled at him. “I can feel your grief waning. It is slowly thinning in the air. My family will be happy.”

Marvin was not listening, however. He had imagined and been expecting this moment for too long. He stood up from bed and kissed his wife’s birthmark, on the inside of her right arm, rubbed his cheek on her shoulder, nuzzled the hollow of her neck, and smelled her familiar perfume, the one that she had been using ever since he sat beside her on the first day of class in graduate school, the first time they met.

He kissed her, and she kissed back. He knew every inch of those lips, and even recognized the manner in which Karla liked to nip at his lower lip, each time they kissed.

“Come with me.” The jinni stepped back and tugged at his hand.

“Where are we going?”

She only smiled at him, and led Marvin to the door leading toward the balcony. He followed wordlessly. She kept him locked in her gaze, and he found himself being pulled, as if by a magnet he could not tear himself away from.

When they were outside, the jinni released his hand, rose from the floor and onto the balcony ledge. Then, she took a step backward, until she was floating on air. Still smiling at Marvin, she beckoned for him to follow.

Marvin continued to stare at her, marveling at how Karla’s brown eyes looked more enticing that night than at any other during their years together. He nodded at her, and walked toward her. He did not notice how his feet had lost contact with the floor and glided upward, as if he were climbing up an invisible stairway. He paused when he reached the ledge of the balcony, but did not look down, at the cold concrete of the parking lot, ten storeys below. The jinni reached out a hand to him.

Marvin took the final step, to hold Karla’s hand with his own.

 

 

Raymund P. Reyes teaches English at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Intramuros. His poems and short stories have been published in various literary journals – such as Anak Sastra, Taj Mahal Review, Stonecoast Review, pacificREVIEW, and Our Impossible Voice – and anthologies, including Off the Beaten Track (Anvil), Verses Typhoon Yolanda (Meritage), and Diaspora Ad Astra (UP Press).