Page 136 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

that she was so conversant about so many different musicians. She was struck,

not for the first time, by both a childlike admiration for Maman and an unsettling
sense that she did not really fully know her own mother. What did not surprise
was Maman’s effortless and thorough seduction of Julien. Maman was in her
element there. She never had trouble commanding men’s attention. She engulfed
men.
Pari watched Maman as she murmured playfully, giggled at Julien’s jokes,
tilted her head and absently twirled a lock of her hair. She marveled again at how
young and beautiful Maman was—Maman, who was only twenty years older
than herself. Her long dark hair, her full chest, her startling eyes, and a face that
glowed with the intimidating sheen of classic regal features. Pari marveled
further at how little resemblance she herself bore to Maman, with her solemn
pale eyes, her long nose, her gap-toothed smile, and her small breasts. If she had
any beauty, it was of a more modest earthbound sort. Being around her mother
always reminded Pari that her own looks were woven of common cloth. At

times, it was Maman herself who did the reminding, though it always came
hidden in a Trojan horse of compliments.
She would say, You’re lucky, Pari. You won’t have to work as hard for men
to take you seriously. They’ll pay attention to you. Too much beauty, it corrupts
things. She would laugh. Oh, listen to me. I’m not saying I speak from
experience. Of course not. It’s merely an observation.
You’re saying I’m not beautiful.

I’m saying you don’t want to be. Besides, you are pretty, and that is plenty
good enough. Je t’assure, ma cherie. It’s better, even.
She didn’t resemble her father much either, Pari believed. He had been a tall
man with a serious face, a high forehead, narrow chin, and thin lips. Pari kept a
few pictures of him in her room from her childhood in the Kabul house. He had
fallen ill in 1955—which was when Maman and she had moved to Paris—and
had died shortly after. Sometimes Pari found herself gazing at one of his old
photos, particularly a black-and-white of the two of them, she and her father,
standing before an old American car. He was leaning against the fender and she
was in his arms, both of them smiling. She remembered she had sat with him
once as he painted giraffes and long-tailed monkeys for her on the side of an

armoire. He had let her color one of the monkeys, holding her hand, patiently
guiding her brushstrokes.
Seeing her father’s face in those photos stirred an old sensation in Pari, a
feeling that she had had for as long as she could remember. That there was in her
life the absence of something, or someone, fundamental to her own existence.