Page 137 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Sometimes it was vague, like a message sent across shadowy byways and vast

distances, a weak signal on a radio dial, remote, warbled. Other times it felt so
clear, this absence, so intimately close it made her heart lurch. For instance, in
Provence two years earlier when Pari had seen a massive oak tree outside a
farmhouse. Another time at the Jardin des Tuileries when she had watched a
young mother pull her son in a little red Radio Flyer Wagon. Pari didn’t
understand. She read a story once about a middle-aged Turkish man who had
suddenly slipped into a deep depression when the twin brother he never knew
existed had suffered a fatal heart attack while on a canoe excursion in the
Amazon rain forest. It was the closest anyone had ever come to articulating what
she felt.
She had once spoken to Maman about it.

Well, it’s hardly a mystery, mon amour, Maman had said. You miss your
father. He is gone from your life. It’s natural that you should feel this way. Of
course that’s what it is. Come here. Give Maman a kiss.
Her mother’s answer had been perfectly reasonable but also unsatisfactory.
Pari did believe that she would feel more whole if her father was still living, if
he were here with her. But she also remembered feeling this way even as a child,
living with both her parents at the big house in Kabul.
Shortly after they finished their meals, Maman excused herself to go to the

bistro’s bathroom and Pari was alone a few minutes with Julien. They talked
about a film Pari had seen the week before, one with Jeanne Moreau playing a
gambler, and they talked about school and music too. When she spoke, he rested
his elbows on the table and leaned in a bit toward her, listening with great
interest, both smiling and frowning, never lifting his eyes from her. It’s a show,
Pari told herself, he’s only pretending. A polished act, something he trotted out
for women, something he had chosen to do now on the spur of the moment, to
toy with her awhile and amuse himself at her expense. And yet, under his
unrelenting gaze, she could not help her pulse quickening and her belly
tightening. She found herself speaking in an artificially sophisticated, ridiculous
tone that was nothing like the way she spoke normally. She knew she was doing
it and couldn’t stop.
He told her he’d been married once, briefly.

“Really?”
“A few years back. When I was thirty. I lived in Lyon at the time.”
He had married an older woman. It had not lasted because she had been very
possessive of him. Julien had not disclosed this earlier when Maman was still at
the table. “It was a physical relationship, really,” he said. “C’était complètement