Page 163 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

classes with a tutor he has found through the mother of one of his pupils. Pari

often finds him on the couch wearing headphones, cassette player on his chest,
his eyes shut in concentration as he mutters heavily accented Thank yous and
Hellos and How are you?s in Farsi.
A few weeks before summer, just as Eric is looking into airfare and
accommodations, Pari discovers she is pregnant.
“We could still go,” Eric says. “We should still go.”
It is Pari who decides against it. “It’s irresponsible,” she says. They are living
in a studio with faulty heating, leaky plumbing, no air-conditioning, and an
assortment of scavenged furniture.

“This is no place for a baby,” she says.
Eric takes on a side job teaching piano, which he had briefly entertained
pursuing before he had set his sights on theater, and by the time Isabelle arrives
—sweet, light-skinned Isabelle, with eyes the color of caramelized sugar—they
have moved into a small two-bedroom apartment not far from Jardin du
Luxembourg, this with financial assistance from Eric’s father, which they accept
this time on the condition that it be a loan.

Pari takes three months off. She spends her days with Isabelle. She feels
weightless around Isabelle. She feels a shining around herself whenever Isabelle
turns her eyes to her. When Eric comes home from the lycée in the evening, the
first thing he does is shed his coat and his briefcase at the door and then he drops
on the couch and extends his arms and wiggles his fingers. “Give her to me, Pari.
Give her to me.” As he bounces Isabelle on his chest, Pari fills him in on all the
day’s tidbits—how much milk Isabelle took, how many naps, what they watched
together on television, the enlivening games they played, the new noises she’s
making. Eric never tires of hearing it.
They have postponed going to Afghanistan. The truth is, Pari no longer feels
the piercing urge to search for answers and roots. Because of Eric and his

steadying, comforting companionship. And because of Isabelle, who has
solidified the ground beneath Pari’s feet—pocked as it still may be with gaps
and blind spots, all the unanswered questions, all the things Maman would not
relinquish. They are still there. Pari just doesn’t hunger for the answers like she
used to.
And the old feeling she has always had—that there is an absence in her life of
something or someone vital—has dulled. It still comes now and then, sometimes
with power that catches her unawares, but less frequently than it used to. Pari has
never been this content, has never felt this happily moored.

In 1981, when Isabelle is three, Pari, a few months pregnant with Alain, has