The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [52]
As Jean moved to get up, she found beside her a jar of water. Only then did she notice the long trail of gargara all around her in the sand.
The next day, a Nubian worker she did not recognize came to the houseboat; with him was a woman.
– My husband is not here, said Jean.
The man, too, was embarrassed. He nodded toward the woman beside him.
– I come because of my wife. She wants me to tell you that she has seen you and that you are not like the other wives. You are always alone. She wants me to tell you that she is the one who brought you the water yesterday when you were asleep. She sees that you will soon have a child. She wants me to tell you that when the child is born she can help you.
The young woman beside him was smiling unrestrainedly. She was young, at least ten years younger than Jean. The sight of her youthful spirit put tears in Jean's eyes. It took a few minutes to sort out the man's consternation at Jean's emotion, but soon it was set right and the young woman and Jean were speaking through her husband's translation.
– One week after the child is born, he is carried to the river. We must bring the fatta and eat it by the Nile, but not all – we must share it with the river. We must light the mubkhar and lift the child over it seven times. Then we must wash the baby's clothes in the river and bring a bucket of river water back to the house so the mother can wash her face. The child must then be held over the rubaa of dates and corn and everyone says the ‘Mashangette, mashangetta’ and we pass the child over the good food seven times. Then – this is most important – the mother must fill her mouth with water from the river and pour it from her mouth onto the child. It is only when the river water flows from the mother's mouth over the child that the child will be safe.
– You would do all this for me? asked Jean, holding back her tears.
The woman looked very pleased and then suddenly sad. She spoke with her husband.
–Yes, yes, the man reassured her. She will be like your mother and make the child safe.
Now Jean often woke restless, her body strange to her, in the night. Avery entertained her with childhood stories of his cousins and Aunt Bett. He kneeled naked on the bed covers and dramatized.
– One morning with nothing to do but wait for lunch, we sat in the long grass and discussed Aunt Bett's brother, Uncle Victor. For some reason he held a morbid fascination for us, and it was usually Owen who started us off.
Avery imitated the haughty angle of Owen's head.
– ‘They say he died when a book fell off his library shelf and knocked him senseless.’
‘What book was it?’ I asked him.
Owen sighed disdainfully.
‘Who cares,’ he said. ‘That's not the point, is it?’
Owen, Avery explained, was disturbed that a man who had survived being a soldier in the Great War could die so unheroically.
‘It certainly is the point,’ I argued. ‘What book would you choose to die by?’
There was a moment's silence while we all contemplated this question.
‘The Bible, I suppose,’ said Tom.
‘Oh, don't be so melodramatic,’ said Owen.
‘I'd choose Browning's Portuguese Sonnets,’ said Nina.
‘Not thick enough,’ I said.
Then we heard my mother calling and as usual Owen, being the eldest by almost eight years, had the last word.
‘I'd choose Grey's Anatomy or a medical encyclopedia, just in case there was a slim chance of resuscitating me …’
Jean laughed.
– ‘Now we can play Dessert Island,’ Nina would say as she always did when the table