Read Online Infrared by Nancy Huston - Free Book Online

subjects and only two spark quarrels between Aziz and me: mothers and God.
    Aren’t you ashamed of squabbling over such trifles? smiles her Friend.
    I am, but there’s nothing for it. On the subject of mothers—when I dare tell him I feel asphyxiated by Aicha’s hospitality, her endless meals of couscous and sweet pastries, her pathological demand for gratitude, he gets all worked up and yells, ‘Basically you think mothers should be unavailable, don’t you? The way your mother was with you? Or the way you are with your own kids? Come right down to it, you have no idea what motherhood is all about!’ At that point I start beating him up. I enjoy a good tussle now and then—it reminds me of wrestling-matches with Rowan when we were kids, or football games with his friends in Westmount. I adored pile-ups—a dozen male bodies thudding on top of mine as I clutched the precious ball to my stomach—sure, I got hurt, even badly sometimes, but I never cried. Aziz is stronger than I am, and when he gets tired of fending off my punches he grabs me by the wrists and starts twisting my arms; almost invariably we wind up making peace in bed…
    On the subject of God, Aziz simply refuses to believe I don’t believe in him, though I’ve explained countless times that in my father’s brain there was a place for God but it was empty, whereas in my own brain the place doesn’t exist so neither does the emptiness. Those quarrels don’t lead to punching or shouting; the air between us simply roils with silence, suspicion and dark misery. Here again, though, the bad feeling usually dissipates when we start tearing off our clothes, panting, soldering our bodies together in the kitchen doorway, in the shower, on the living-room rug, on or under the dining-room table…
    Our worst quarrels occur when the two themes converge, for instance when Aziz comes home from a visit to his mother in the projects and I can tell Aicha has been getting on his case again about his girlfriend’s age and atheism: ‘So you’ll never give me a grandson? You’ll never have a Muslim son, Aziz? You’ll never be a real man?’ Those nights, as during the first weeks of our love, my sweetheart’s cock stays soft and small…
    Still standing next to Simon, Rena stares at Galileo’s middle finger.
    ‘Did the Catholic Church ever apologise for its error?’ she asks. ‘Once they were forced to acknowledge that the Earth revolved around the Sun, I mean?’
    ‘Yes,’ Simon replies. ‘John Paul II finally admitted Galileo was right, three and a half centuries after the great scientist’s death.’
    ‘Did he add that, by the same token, Urban VIII was wrong?’
    ‘Oh, I doubt he went that far. Don’t forget, the pope’s infallibility didn’t become dogma until the nineteenth century.’
    ‘I see. And it’s not retroactive?’
    ‘No. So Urban VIII had the right to make a mistake.’
    ‘Well, the museum could at least mention the fact that Galileo’s story didn’t end with his retraction.’
    Simon checks to make sure Ingrid is out of earshot. ‘Yeah, you see?’ he says. ‘Only his finger protests.’
    And Rena laughs. Even if he’s belabouring the point a bit, she laughs. Even if she suspects that, deep down, he’s comparing Galileo’s persecution to Timothy Leary’s, she laughs.
    As they sit waiting for lunch in a nearby pizzeria, Rena leafs through the book Simon purchased at the museum gift shop.
    Galileo’s Daughter. Well, well.
    It would seem Virginia and her father shared a deep spiritualcommunion…just like you and me, hey, Dad? Except that I betrayed you. Virginia entered the convent at age fourteen and took her vows two years later under the name of Suor Maria Celeste; she fervently loved her daddy all her life long—supporting him, doing all she could to protect him from the Inquisition, writing him hundreds of letters, sewing clothes for him, turning his fruit into jams and jellies, running the convent apothecary,