The Map of Love Read Free

feelings have passed and it is safe for me to lift my head.
    My journal is of no use on such occasions for it would merely encourage the expression of these emotions that threaten me and that I must put aside.
    I cannot believe that he is happy.

2
    Oh what a dear, ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!
    Aphra Behn, c. 1680

Cairo, May 1997
Isabel gives me bits of her story. She tells me how she met my brother. A dry, edited version, which, as I get to know her, as I get to be able to imagine her, I fill out for myself. Isabel thinks in pictures: as she speaks I see the pool of light rippling on the old oak table —
    New York City, February 1997
A pool of light ripples on the old oak table, picking out the darker grains of wood, then shadowing them. At its centre shines a glass bowl in which three candles float like flat, golden lilies.
    ‘I thought maybe it’s like birthdays,’ Isabel says. Her voice has that slight, deep-down tremor she has noticed in it lately. She doesn’t know whether anyone else can hear it. She doesn’t know why it comes. She lays her fork down carefully on her plate.
    ‘I mean,’ she says, looking down, considering her fingers still resting on the fork, ‘you know how when you’re a kid every birthday has this huge significance?’ She glances up. Yes, she still has his attention. ‘You even think,’ she continues, encouraged, ‘that after a birthday everything is somehow going to be different,
you
’re going to be different; you’ll be
new —’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘And then, later —’ she shrugs — ‘you realise it isn’t like that.’
    ‘My dear girl — I’m sorry: my dear young woman — you can’t possibly know that already.’
    Is he flirting with her? He leans back in his seat, one wrist on the table, an arm slung over the back of his chair. Beyond the bowl of light, the woman he arrived with turns laughing towards Rajiv Seth. A sheet of auburn hair falls forward, obscuring her face. My brother fingers the stem of his wineglass; the back of his hand is covered with fine, black hair. She looks full at him: his face so familiar from television and newspapers. They hate him, but they cannot get enough of him. When he conducts, the line snakes around the block as though for the first showing of a Spielberg film. The ‘Molotov Maestro’ they call him, the ‘Kalashnikov Conductor’. But the box office loves him. Now the dark, deep-set eyes are lit and fixed on her. He is laughing at her.
    From the head of the table, Deborah calls out, ‘Anybody want more salad?’
    There is a general clinking of cutlery and shifting of plates and after a moment Deborah says, ‘I’ll go get the ice cream.’
    Louis, her partner, groans and she flashes him a smile.
    Isabel gets up and even though Deborah says, ‘Sit down, sit down, I’ll do it,’ she picks up her plate and his and carries them into the kitchen. ‘Isn’t he just a doll?’ Deborah whispers amid the gleaming brass pots, pans and colanders.
    ‘He’s pretty gorgeous,’ Isabel agrees, not pretending not to know whom Deborah means. ‘And he’s approachable. Who’s the lady?’
    ‘Samantha Metcalfe,’ says Deborah. ‘She teaches at SUNY.’
    ‘Is she — are they — together?’
    Deborah makes a face as she leans into the freezer. ‘For the moment, I guess. Why?’ She straightens up and grins at Isabel. ‘Interested?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘He’s fifty-five,’ Deborah says, putting two tubs of ice cream on a tray. ‘And —’
    ‘— old enough to be your father,’ Isabel completes, smiling. ‘Is he really involved with terrorists?’ she asks.
    Deborah shrugs, arranges wafers in a blue porcelain dish. ‘Who knows? I’d be surprised, though. He doesn’t look like a terrorist.’
    Isabel picks up the bowls and follows Deborah out of the kitchen.
    When she sits down, he turns towards her. ‘I wasn’t laughing at you, you know.’ His eyes are still smiling.
    ‘No?’
    ‘No, really. Really. You