as though he had come of his own volition, but the assembled guests, it turned out, weren’t particularly interested in him. Small talk rushed in behind the introductions. Expat gossip. He sat mute, feeling like a prize idiot. Baksheesh. Ignorant bastard. Books about Oman had been thin on the ground in Cork, but Annie had left a couple behind, which Gabriel had read while waiting to leave, so he knew about the Portuguese, the British, and the battle of Dhofar. He knew to expect desert and mountains and longed to learn something of Bedouin ways. These had been his expectations of Oman—rudimentary, perhaps, but not unreasonable—and yet the first word he had assigned to this culture was “baksheesh,” which came from he knew not what preconceived notion. He still felt the sharp sting of his worldly brother-in-law’s rebuke.
He turned his attention to the assembled company: Stéphanie’s husband, Mark, was a dapper Englishman, even sporting a silk cravat; Joan, a woman in her forties probably, wore a long skirt and cheesecloth top, and looked as if she had fallen off the hippie wagon, keeping the clothes, but rejecting the lifestyle, to live in air-conditioned comfort in the Gulf. Her husband wore pristine whites and had such highly arched eyebrows that he looked like he was about to take off. Marie, clearly a good friend of Annie, and her husband, Jasper, also English, were warm and engaging.
It wasn’t until they were seated at the dining-table that they turned their attention to Gabriel, with a rush of questions. How long would he be staying? What did he hope to do during his holiday? How was he finding Muscat? He had little to say on that score—all he had seen of Muscat was a small airport with two huge sabers over the entrance, some gray-gold hills and a short stretch of seafront, where he had walked with Annie in the late afternoon.
Joan, leaning her forearms on the edge of the table, said, “Annie was telling us that you’re a musician.”
“A teacher, actually. I teach piano.” They all looked at him, expecting more. “At the School of Music in Cork.”
“So are you in between terms right now?” Stéphanie asked, perplexed.
Fair question, since it was mid-March, but how was it, he wondered, that people sniffed out the holes in any story without even knowing there were any to be filled? “No,” he said. “I’ve taken a leave of absence.”
That silenced them, but a change of topic only made things worse when Joan said, in a pert, determined tone, “Annie, I haven’t seen you since before Christmas! How was your brother’s wedding?”
“Not this brother, I hope,” Jasper quipped. “Unless you’ve run away from your new wife already?”
Gabriel smiled.
Joan persisted: “Did you find something to wear? You were fretting, I seem to remember, about finding something elegant but warm.”
Annie chewed a mouthful of lamb at length, as if hoping for inspiration, then swallowed, reaching for her glass, and said, “We stopped off in Rome and I got a dress there.”
That at least was not a lie, Gabriel thought.
“It must have been a wonderful day,” Joan went on. “I always think winter weddings must be so romantic. Did it snow? Winter Wonderland and all that?”
Annie turned her glass between her fingers before saying, “Mmm. It was lovely. No snow, but a great day.”
Gabriel frowned at her. Rolf frowned at him.
“I don’t think it’s romantic at all,” said Marie. “I’ve never understood why anyone could possibly want to get married in the winter. The bride must have been perishing, poor thing.”
“Oh, she was,” Annie said, turning her eyes to Gabriel. “Perishing.”
Pressed for more details, Annie got off to a halting start, but then the words, the fables, began to flow out: she described the wedding, related key moments and amusing anecdotes, and even made Rolf and Gabriel smile indulgently when she looked to them for confirmation that this or that had been the funniest, most touching moment. It was altogether bizarre: a conspiracy of invention.
The wedding chat exhausted, the guests turned their attention back to Gabriel, pushing forth suggestions of how he should use his time and telling him he must see this and this, and mustn’t miss that.
Mesmerized, exhausted, he had never worked so hard to be courteous to people who meant nothing to him, but he would have feigned interest in a babbling parrot if it would help him regain his sister’s respect. Looking at her face now was like gazing up from within a deep pit to see her peering over the rim, down at him.
“Why did you say all that about the wedding?” he asked her from the back of the car after they’d left. “You don’t have to protect me, you know.”
“I’m not protecting you. I’m protecting myself. Besides, one lie is much the same as the next. I went with the happy lie.”
“But how can you sustain it? Isn’t Marie a close friend of yours?”
“Yes, and I’ll tell her . . . in my own time.” After a moment she said, “I mean, they’ll think we’re a very odd family.” Rolf put his hand on her lap. “But we’re not . . . or we weren’t, or at least I didn’t think we were.”
Gabriel knew better than to speak, since he was the one who had given the family this new perception of itself. He looked out. The night lights of Muscat told him little about the town, but when they continued on foot, after parking the car, the dark, quiet alleys that led to the house spoke louder. This was a secretive place; much was held in behind the thick walls. Probing deeper into the warren of back streets, Muttrah felt like a den. His den. He and his shame could hide out there, he thought, for quite a while, undisturbed.
When they came into the house Annie went to the kitchen; Rolf followed her, while Gabriel, near-blind with exhaustion, said goodnight and went up the stairs, but stopped when he heard Annie say to Rolf, “I wanted to tell them. I wanted to say, ‘This is why he is here. This is what he has done.’”
“But you didn’t,” Rolf said, in his most pragmatic tone, “and you mustn’t. He didn’t come here to be judged, and you, my darling, you of all people, must not judge him.”
“Why not? Why should I not? Everyone else does!”
Gabriel could not move without revealing that he was still on the stairs.
“This is how we change,” Annie went on. “I turned my head and he became someone else. Do you think I should try to save what’s left of him? Of my Gabriel?”
“I think it’s best you let that Gabriel go.”
“I wish I could. And I wish I could leave. Get away. If I don’t, I’m afraid I might hurl a glass across the room and cut his face. I want to cut his beautiful archangel face!”
Gabriel went on up. Short of breath, he passed his bedroom and climbed to the top of the house, where a wooden door led onto a small rooftop balcony. He stepped out and stood, fingers in hip pockets. In spite of stars aplenty, galaxies crowding, and a glow coming off the streetlights on the seafront, it was still, somehow, a dark night. Between the stars, the sky was black as oil and deep. Perhaps all Arabian nights were this black.
He tried to
