The Darling of Kandahar Read online

  The Darling

  of Kandahar

  a novel

  FELICIA MIHALI

  A life spent in the company of foreigners inevitably

  involves misunderstandings and mistakes.

  Linda Leith

  Marrying Hungary

  Live in any place long enough and you learn

  to call it home.

  Noah Richler

  This is my Country, What is Yours?

  You’ve all heard beautiful stories told by an old woman sitting in a chair in front of a window. You listen to her as she remembers the good old days and tells you about her great loves.

  I am going to tell you my story, too, though I am not old at all. Young women have stories to tell, too, and may even have experienced great love. Outside, big snowflakes will be falling, because you are in Canada. My desk is set right in front of the window where, at this time of day, the light is reduced by the shadow cast by a big building across St. Lawrence Boulevard, The Main.

  My name is Irina, I am 24 years old, and my parents moved to Montreal when I was four. My name is that of an old Byzantine empress, but I was born in Transylvania. For those unfamiliar with horror movies, I should add this is Dracula’s country. My mother, who is Romanian, gets angry every time someone associates her with the character imagined by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. The myth originates with Vlad the Impaler who, when he was locked up in Bran Castle by his Hungarian enemies, became known for killing rats to alleviate his boredom.

  A few years after their arrival here, and shortly before their divorce, my parents took me on a visit to Romania. In Canada, they had come to think that coming from the same place as Dracula was nothing to be ashamed of, for the vampire was no more than a tourist attraction. So they decided to go back to see those places again with new eyes.

  The castle where the Romanian sovereign was imprisoned is one of the most beautiful in the country. An old fortress set on high cliffs and protected all around by mountains, this was one of the best lookout points during the Middle Ages. Paths leading to its wooden door were concealed by a thick forest of conifers in those days, and its keep, parapets and watchtowers look even today as though they are straight out of a fairy tale. The stone walls are about a metre thick, so that the chambers stay cool and shady even in hot weather. What still comes to my mind is a small garden with a bottomless spring in the middle, the story of which I no longer remember.

  At the time Bran Castle was built, the Romanian territory was divided into three small provinces: Hungarian Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, which enjoyed some autonomy though threatened by the Russians to the north. As this is the historical part of my story, I have to tell you that my father’s reason for leaving Romania was the fact that Russia was always a deceitful ally, even after the fall of the Communists. In the Middle Ages, fortresses like Bran Castle were necessary, he said, because people in Transylvania had to defend their territory against their Romanian brothers from the south rather than against the Turks, who were our declared enemies.

  My mother knew my father’s opinions, and she used to just let him talk. Once we set foot in Canada, though, she couldn’t stand hearing about the old conflicts between Romanians and Hungarians. But those stories are not the reason my parents separated.

  During that trip back to Romania, my parents studied every nook and cranny, every stone, and every path. They tried to understand how these places could have awakened the imagination of that Irishman who, rather than going back to the ghosts of his own history, preferred instead to delve into the tragic past of the Romanians, as though it weren’t enough that they had already had a thousand years of being the victims of false interpretations. Because of him, here we are carrying a bloodsucker on our shoulders for ever.

  My parents had always thought the Dracula story was nonsense. Now, with their new Canadian identity, they saw it differently. They paid attention to the story for the first time just so as to come up with counter-arguments. The day before they separated, there was only one point they still agreed on, and that was that Vlad the Impaler ended up not as a vampire, but in the hands of the Turks.

  I guess it’s time I told you about my family.

  My parents came from a province where the two solitudes lived side by side on much the same principle as here. My father belonged to the smaller, richer Hungarian solitude, and my mother to the bigger, but poorer, Romanian one. As in Quebec, the Romanian solitude had survived because of its language, its religion and its population numbers, which might be the requirements for the survival of any cultural group.

  My father, an old-stock Hungarian, rather despised the Romanians, especially after his marriage ended. He was too proud to accept that his mother could have been right when she warned him about Romanians, but he did trust his experience in Canada, which taught him that people cannot wipe out their racial – or what Canadians call cultural – differences, and that group memories arise when you least expect them.

  The disconnect produced by multicultural policies has clearly had some effect here. Have you ever asked yourself why the word culture, which once referred to all that the human mind has produced, has now come to include the colour of your skin? In order not to be offended by this, ethnic minorities see themselves honored by the term cultural, which Canadian politicians use in attempts to diminish the impact of a dark face or a spicy meal.

  In Transylvania, people were not too worried about the metaphysics of human differences. All they knew for certain was that every Romanian family considered a Hungarian lad was a good choice for their daughter.

  Once they landed in Montreal, my parents based themselves in this no-man’s-land separating the Francophone and Anglophone sides of the city. Immigrants were supposed to fill the space between the two communities, but what they really did was increase the gap between them. Their task was not in fact to reconcile the two groups, but to make them more foreign in each other’s eyes. Each time newcomers go to one side, the other reopens the old controversy.

  My mother now belonged to the French solitude, bigger but less wealthy, while my father, who worked for an English company, was on the other side. Each half-heartedly defended the values of the group to which they belonged. And neither made much of an effort to score points against the other. They were doing their best to make a peaceful life for themselves in their new country.

  It was too late for them to get into national debates. My mother learned that from my father before they separated. What they lacked was anger. They were too old, and they had the sense that this was a conflict that did not concern them. Let them solve their own problems! Two solitudes is it? What happens, then, to the third one, the lonely immigrant side, left on its own or, even worse, caught up in a political game and sacrificed in multicultural speeches?

  So my parents learned how easy it is to steer clear of the kinds of conflicts that can make people capable of bloodshed. How much better it is not to be torn apart by historical quarrels between Arabs and Jews, Chinese and Japanese, Indians and Sikhs, Pashtuns and Tadjiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Only once did my father propose an idea my mother disagreed with. “They don’t hate each other any more,” he said. “That’s because they have someone else to hate. We are their common enemy.”

  My mother decided to keep her new partner away from all these national arguments inherited from her marriage to my father. Have you any idea what it’s like to be associated with Dracula? To be taken for somebody other than the person you really are? You feel a certain pride in things that do not make you proud, and you represent things that have nothing to do with you. And there’s more to it than this, for
immigrants always bring their problems with them when they move to a new country. It’s a Canadian writer who said this.

  I myself brought nothing, because I was too young when I came here. I don’t even remember what language I spoke. Maybe it was more Hungarian than Romanian, but after our arrival my mother didn’t want me to use the local variation of my father’s language except this single expression: solnitza, paprika, horinka. These are the three things supposedly most cherished by Hungarians: salt, paprika and booze. It was her little revenge, because my father did not have any scornful phrases in Romanian that he could torment my mother with. If you want to hurt someone, you have to speak his language. My father eventually figured that out.

  Sometimes, people ask me where I come from, and when I say Canada they know the Canada I am talking about. This is because my name contains too many z’s, c’s, and t’s, even though I’m listed under the letter H in the telephone directory.

  I still live with my mother, who remarried to a sailor who lives at home one month in four. He is a Quebecer. As with any Quebecer who becomes part of an immigrant family, he has to keep quiet about his separatist feelings. With mixed couples, the old-stock, died-in-the-wool Quebecer learns, bit by bit, to laugh at the newcomers’ jokes about them and to accept the way they use Quebec swearwords. They even become a little jealous of the way a Chinese, an Arab or a Polish immigrant pronounces tabarouette and ostie.

  According to my mother, her husband is a good guy with no big flaws. Did I say his name is Pierre? Luckily, though, his parents didn’t call him Pierre-something, and his family name only has one part to it. Otherwise imagine my mother’s embarrassment; she has always had trouble with foreign names, even that of my own father.

  When Pierre comes ashore, he spends his time visiting second-hand goods dealers and garage sales. The shelves in our apartment go right up to the ceiling in every room, and they are crowded with knick-knacks and are as dusty as an antique shop. Pierre picks up all kinds of stuff – ornamental pumpkins, painted eggs, tiny porcelain statues, odd cups, bronze candlesticks, native crafts. He doesn’t buy any of it for himself. It’s all for my mother, who is a painter.

  My mother has never worked in Canada. Since coming here, she has been a student, taking short breaks in between different university courses. She has a B.A and an M.A. in History and another B.A. and M.A. in Art History, but don’t ask her why she studied these subjects. The question drives her crazy. Why should a woman, or a man, have a specific reason for studying? Is passion or interest not enough? All my mother wants is to be educated, stay at home, and dedicate herself to her work. Isn’t that wonderful? When you think that women in other parts of the world are forced by their men to stay at home and are unhappy about it.

  She started painting under the guidance of some artists from the Romanian community when she was doing her B.A. in Art History. The community has lots of artists who made a name for themselves long ago; here, they have to do menial work to make ends meet.

  More or less self-educated as an artist, my mother slowly started showing her work in small cafés downtown, but no one paid much attention. Did she even want that? It doesn’t seem so. When a supposed literary agent in the community offered to take on my mother’s career, she hung up on the younger woman, accusing her of being a spy.

  My mother wants nothing to do with pressures from the outside world, or with any responsibility either to produce or earn money. She hates everything that gets in the way of her routine, anything that could affect the time she drinks her coffee and waters the basil and rosemary plants on her balcony. She doesn’t do much the rest of the day, either. She has few friends left, and she doesn’t go out except to shop. All she does is paint.

  Not that she produces very much. A small canvas sometimes takes her months, for she has a baroque taste for details she is forever adding and removing. Lately, she has been drawing knights and Muses, and she’s especially fond of Mnemosyne, muse of memory. She also likes Clio, muse of History, and Calliope, because my mother also writes poetry. Her canvases are piling up in our two storerooms: she doesn’t sell her work, nor does she give any of it away as presents.

  She doesn’t hate winter or get depressed by it. Winter forces her to stay on the sofa all day long and not move except to the kitchen and the bathroom. When I’m out, she has the apartment to herself. She enjoys this realm that belongs to her, where she feels really free. My mother has built her happiness on loneliness and on a mysterious empire of thoughts. What does she think about all day long?

  Can you see how annoying it is, talking about yourself? Which in fact means talking about everybody around you: family, classmates, lovers. As individuals, we’re not much more than a bunch of connections with others. Which is comforting enough, since it guarantees a kind of posterity even after our physical disappearance.

  I have to go back to the knick-knacks.

  When my mother first knew Pierre, she used to take him to garage sales. To Pierre, the idea of looking for treasures hidden in the streets of Montreal was new. Garage sales in Quebec seemed to him to be nothing more than a good opportunity for middle-class families to throw junk away. It was better to clear a house of old paintings, frames, mirrors, sticks of furniture, dried flowers, puppets, plastic toys, and paper-flower books and sell it all than dump it on the street and wait for the garbage man.

  Because they move house frequently, Quebecers are not used to saving or amassing fortunes for future generations. Houses built of wood and paperboard could burn down at any time, so what was the point of keeping souvenirs? This country has no great attachment to physical mementos; when a place is emptied, they just pull down the building. In Quebec, memory has to be active, something that’s always in motion. Why else would they hang Je me souviens on the back of their cars?

  This country doesn’t want to fall in love with things. It doesn’t want to take care of things or fix them, and it especially doesn’t want to feel regret. Clothes, shoes, furniture, cars – nothing is kept, except the French language. They teach their children not to owe anything to anyone: young people are taught to build everything with their own hands. No one wants anything from anyone if a legacy means dealing with troublesome clauses, mysterious deals, and shady notaries. They’re afraid to show gratitude to anyone. When you owe gratitude, you are less free. Ancestors and the past are dangerous, for they make you look back, and people here are always looking ahead. Memories are just B-movie plots.

  In Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, a master miniaturist shows the man who comes to kill him a 300-year-old Mongol inkwell. Up to a certain period in our history, people valued an object for its age and for the place it came from; the more distant, the better. Nowadays, when something is Chinese it means it’s cheap and of poor quality. For my mother, however, “Made in China” still grants objects of any caliber and purpose the nobility of the mysterious unknown.

  Pierre also became the prisoner of this philosophy. Through the eyes of my immigrant mother, he was discovering another side to his own country. Strangers have this peculiar capacity to change things. They have an ancient practice of granting new life to any old junk. At the beginning of their relationship, my mother wanted old objects to put in her still-life paintings, and Pierre was as amazed as a child by the new uses my mother made of things they had found on the street. When she changed her approach, focusing instead on Greek mythology and the Muses, she stopped going to garage sales. Not Pierre. Bargain hunting overlapped in some way with his vocation as a traveler.

  When he was not at sea, he sailed through the neighbourhoods of Montreal searching for hidden treasures. He had soon accumulated a lot of stuff, which did not upset my mother. The advantage remarried women have is that they get cleverer: they finally understand that it’s enough to act in silence without going all out to convince your partner to change his mind. When Pierre was away, she simply threw things away, starting with what he had bought a
while back. She had noticed he wasn’t interested in what was in the house. He just bought stuff, presented it to my mother proudly, and then forgot about it. This is why there is still room for new things on our shelves.

  Is this about Pierre or about my mother?

  Pierre does not like beer but brandy, because on board the ship the sailors drink spirits, which are stronger and take up less room. I won’t comment on Pierre’s surprise at some Eastern European curiosities. My mother is not eager to let him know too much about her old identity or to cook him authentic Romanian meals such as a soup made from cow’s stomach or a dish of beans with neck of pork. I believe, though, that it is not just her exotic appeal that persuaded Pierre to choose her out of all his neighbours – because, yes, they used to live next door to each other. What attracted them to each other is none of our business.

  I don’t know when I am going to start talking about myself. I am already involved in all of this though, and especially in my mother’s apartment.

  I did not grow up in this building. After my mother got divorced, she moved into a cheap one-bedroom place, and we lived there for a while. At night, my mother slept on the sofa in the dining room, and I had my own room. When she met Pierre, they moved into a two-bedroom, and I moved out to live with my boyfriend, Manuel. When he and I broke up, my mother invited me to come back and live with her and continue my studies, as she was alone almost eight months of the year.

  Pierre was not against this; I suppose he hoped to keep an eye on my mother’s possible lovers. He let me choose my room, the bigger one, which I then gave to my mother because she often worked in her bedroom. We arranged the apartment to our taste, concentrating on the dining room and balcony. Pierre was just a visitor, and he was welcomed and treated with great care, the way you treat a visitor. When he was at sea, we both breathed a sigh of relief, but what’s wrong with that? You have to admit that having a man around makes women waste an awful lot of energy. In Quebec, the need for a male partner is clear, especially in winter, although there is no entrance here to clear of snow, since we live in an apartment block. Pierre and my mother are respectful to each other, and both know their place, their obligations and their rights as part of the couple.