Out of Egypt by André Aciman Page A

on the shoulder later that evening on the crowded patio of the French Consulate. People brimmed over into the garden and onto the street, where the city’s French, Greek, Jewish, and Italian youth were gathered about in a chaos of standing bicycles and car horns, singing. Everyone had come to celebrate. The same, it appeared, was happening farther off at the Italian and British consulates.
    â€œYou’re not dancing?” she asked, when he turned around. He couldn’t understand a word she said.
    â€œIsn’t it too crowded?” he said, thinking she had asked him to dance. Do the deaf dance? he thought, conjuring a grotesque picture of a waltz danced like a tango.
    â€œIt’s such a wonderful evening,” she said. She was wearing a sleeveless white cotton dress, a thin necklace, and white shoes, her ruddy tanned skin glistening in the evening light. With a touch of makeup on, and her wet hair combed back, she looked older and more spirited than the shy neighbor’s daughter who all during her visit earlier that evening had kept her schoolgirl eyes riveted to her pleated skirt and her mother’s cards. There was even a suggestion of self-conscious elegance in the way she carried herself, holding her champagne glass with both hands, her elbows almost resting on her hips.
    Yet the absence of stockings and a handbag and the white outline of what must have been a missing man’s watch on her tanned wrist betrayed a hastily dressed or vaguely underdressed quality, as if after spending all day at the beach, with barely a few minutes to make it to the ball, she had put on the first thing that came her way without drying her hair or feet. Her toes were probably still lined with sand. Somewhere, he thought, watching the dimmed evening lights play off the liquid sheen of her white gabardine dress, was a wet bathing suit, hurriedly taken off and left crumpled on a wooden bench in a friend’s cabin.

    â€œDid you come all by yourself?” he asked, making sure he was facing her when he spoke.
    â€œNo, with friends.” Perhaps she wanted to dance.
    â€œWould I know them?” he asked.
    â€œNo, but I’ll introduce you,” she said, not thinking he had no interest, taking his hand as she threaded what seemed an endless path through the crowd until they reached the other end of the large terrace, where a group of young men was waiting for her. One of them, leaning against the balustrade, was holding a maroon cardigan very much like the one she had worn earlier in his parents’ home. Was he holding it for her, or had she borrowed it earlier that day and given it back to him? She made the introductions, describing how she had kept her neighbor’s son waiting outside his own home. Everyone laughed—not at her error, this time, but at the way she had closed the door in his face.
    â€œShe’s done much worse,” said one of them.
    â€œWe’re leaving,” another broke in. “People are waiting for us at the British Consulate.”
    â€œWant to come?” she asked.
    He hesitated.
    â€œYou might enjoy it.” She smiled again.
    â€œOh, I don’t know.”
    â€œAnother time, then.”
    Turning to the young man who had been holding the cardigan, she motioned for the car keys.
    â€œNo. I’m driving,” he replied.
    â€œMy car, I drive,” she said peremptorily.
    My father followed them mechanically to the end of the garden. She opened the door to her car, got in, leaned all the way across to unlock the other doors for her passengers, and then rolled down her window with jerky, determined motions, one foot still resting on the pavement as she fumbled with the
keys. “My respects to your mother,” she said as she closed the door and started the engine.
    Without budging, he watched the car silently roll out from the consulate grounds, inching its slow, quiet way through the milling crowd and the parked cars and the row of