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Chapter Twenty-One
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The Last Transaction
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It was five in the afternoon.
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Fereshteh Azarang's vial first. Sogand sat, took out the stopper, and a smell rose that filled the whole room: the smell of the first year of school, the smell of a child's wet hair, the smell of a spring afternoon twenty years ago.
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Nariman reversed the swallowing; a thing he had never done, which Mrs. Firouz had explained to him only once. Instead of listening, speak. Word by word. Nothing left out, nothing softened, no kindness. Say it so completely that the memory changes hands.
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And he said it.
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He said Nazli. The sixth birthday and the cake with two colours of ribbon. The voice that couldn't quite manage its S. The ridiculous habit of always putting the left shoe on first. The stupid game she played with her older sister, whose rules nobody else could follow.
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And then, mercilessly, the day itself: the crossroads, the rain, the sound of the brakes, and then the silence that lasted twenty years.
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Sogand did not cry. She kept her fists on the table and let it come in.
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When it was finished the vial was empty and Sogand had Nazli — not only her own share; her mother's too. She was the carrier now, until she could get her to Fereshteh Azarang.
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◆
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Then it was the second one's turn.
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“Ready?”
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“No.” She smiled. “Start.”
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And Nariman did not start.
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His hand stayed on the empty vial and did not lift it. Sogand waited. A minute passed.
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“I won't do it.”
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“What?”
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“I won't do it.” He pushed the vial aside. “A thousand people have come here in twenty years and not once did I say no. Today I'm saying it.”
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Sogand stood. “You have no right—”
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“I know I have no right.” His voice rose; it was the first time Sogand had heard that voice from him. “It's the law of this shop: you make the decision. Mrs. Firouz wrote it and she was right to. But I'm breaking the law, because I know something you don't.”
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“What?”
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“I know what the other side of this transaction looks like.” He gestured at the shelves. “Twenty years I've watched people walk out of that door light. Every one of them thinks they're setting down a load. Not one of them understands they're setting down themselves.” He looked at her. “Right now you're the only person in this shop who has anything. I don't. Your mother doesn't. Nazli isn't here at all. Only you.”
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Silence.
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“So sit down and let your mother die with the hollow in her. People always die with a hollow in them. It isn't a catastrophe. It's a life.”
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◆
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Sogand stood there a long time.
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Then she did something he had not expected: she leaned over, picked the empty vial up off the table, and set it back in the middle, exactly where it had been.
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“I'm going to ask you one question,” she said. “Answer it honestly, and whatever you say, that's what we do.”
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“Ask.”
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“If you were me, what would you do?”
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And Nariman Sadr, a man who for twenty years had stood behind this counter telling people that memory has roots, opened his mouth to say I don't know.
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And could not.
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Because he knew the answer. His answer had stood outside this same door on a rainy night twenty years ago, and then had come inside.
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“I'd do the same thing,” he said.
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“Then pick it up.”
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Nariman picked up the vial.
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◆
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And she began to tell it.
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From nine years old. From a kitchen with no smell of bread. From a man who looked at her like a neighbour's child and was polite, and how the politeness was the worst part. From the paper boat. From the night she stayed at the window until morning. From thirteen, and the photograph on the kitchen table. From sixteen, and the three metres she couldn't cross. From all the Thursdays; the wet ones, the one when she was ill and went anyway, the one when the light was off and she didn't sleep. From the man who said part of you is never here. From deciding to hate him and failing. From the surname that had stayed Sadr, even when she could have changed it.
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The vapour rose; thick, gold, enough to move their shadows on the wall.
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It settled in the glass.
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Nariman did not put in the stopper. He lifted the vial, brought it to his mouth, and — because that was the law, because somebody had to carry it — drank.
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◆
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And in that same second, in that one second, two things happened.
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Sogand raised her head, looked at the man across the table, and did not know who he was.
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And Nariman Sadr, for the first time in twenty years, knew his daughter.
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Not by way of the vial in the cellar; that was still down there, under the white cloth, untouched. He knew her this way: twenty years of the one-sided love of a girl who came once a week and only looked to see whether a light was on, was now inside his chest.
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He knew how much he had been loved. He knew every single Thursday. He knew that once, at sixteen, she had got within three metres.
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And the person who had made that love was sitting across the table asking politely:
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“Sorry — why am I here?”
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Nariman opened his mouth. No sound came.
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The second time it came:
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“You're the new shopkeeper.”
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