Read Online The Hakawati by Alameddine Rabih - Free Book Online

don’t believe there is a God.” I heard the hollow sound of the match falling in the waste-basket. “But I don’t want you talking about this with other people. It’s not something we talk about. Do you understand?”
    “But how do you know there’s no God?”
    “Because, if there’s a God, your father would have been smitten already. Now, for the last time, go to sleep or go to your room.”
    The odor of the mosquito killer, mixed with verbena, permeated the room.
    That night, in the comfortably furnished parlor while everyone else slept, the doctor confessed everything to his wife. His back to the mild fire, he knelt before her, wept. She put down her knitting and listenedto his elaborate explanations. He was weak, only human. He didn’t know what had possessed him. It wasn’t Lucine’s fault. It was his. If only he could castrate himself, his life would be so much simpler, he would be a better human being, the husband she deserved. She remained quiet. It would never happen again, he promised her. It was an accident. Inconsequential. He would once again prove worthy of her trust. She was his anchor. She was his faith. Would she forgive him?
    “What about her ankle?” his wife asked.
    Puzzled, the doctor could think of nothing to say.
    “Is her ankle all right?” she asked.
    “It’s a severe sprain,” he responded. “It’ll be back to normal in a month or so, but she needs to be off it for three or four days.”
    His wife went back to her knitting. Looking down at her work, she said, “That’s going to be difficult. It’s hard to keep that girl off her feet. She’s so industrious and loyal. I don’t know if she’ll be able to stay still for three days.”
    Her husband walked back to his chair. He took out his pipe and his tobacco pouch. He began his nightly ritual. “We’ll just have to force her.” He lit the pipe, took a few puffs, waited for the shreds of tobacco to turn amber before blowing out the match. “For her own good.”
    “You’re right. I’ll have to find her some chores that don’t require her to move about.”
    He opened his book, and the bookmark fell on his lap. “Just make sure her leg is elevated.”
    “Yes. The sprained ankle always above her heart, to make sure it doesn’t swell too much.” She paused, smiled at him; then her fingers resumed their spidery work.
    A cast-iron woodstove dominated my grandfather’s sitting room. The exhaust pipe, big enough for a soccer ball to roll through, extended all the way across the room to the ceiling on the other side. He removed the stove every spring, yet when he brought it back in late autumn he placed it in the exact same spot, across the room from the hole in the ceiling. He stuffed the stove with split oak, pine, and pinecones throughout the cold season. The sitting room always felt like a slow-burning oven. And whenever the capricious wind changed direction, aggressive smoke puffed back into the room, searing my lungs. If I complained, my grandfather chided me for not liking the scent ofburnt pine, for being a spoiled city boy used to gardenias and lavender handpicked from the gardens.
    In winter, the stove became the center of his universe. He cooked on it, brewed his maté, his tea, his coffee. He moved his bed next to it. He left his sitting room only to go to the bathroom at the back of the house.
    The next day, Lucine’s ankle was swollen and her leg blue to the knee. The doctor’s wife brought her a pink oleander and placed it in a chipped glass beside her bed. She raised the bottom end of the bed on bricks. She cleaned Lucine’s bedpan. Lucine mumbled incoherent apologies, too shy to speak directly to her madame.
    Two weeks later, the doctor stood next to his wife in the doorway of the maids’ room, watching Zovik, the second maid, help Lucine vomit into a rusty metal pail.
    “Make sure the ankle doesn’t move,” the doctor instructed Zovik.
    “This is the will of God,” his wife whispered to