An Egg

He woke this morning, later than usual, and announced, “I’m cured!” He was very bright-eyed and cheerful when we went into his room. “I feel much better!” he said. “And I’m hungry!”

I brought him a bowl of oatmeal the kitchen had sent up, and asked him if he’d like an egg. He said yes, and I asked how he wanted it cooked. “Five minutes,” he said, “and then on bread.”

“Do you mean five minutes boiled in the shell, or do you want it poached?” He couldn’t hear “poached” so I had to explain the procedure instead.

“No, cooked in the shell,” he said. “And then you take it out…” he mimed a spoon running around the inside of the eggshell. I told him it would be ready right away, and went into the kitchen and put a pot of water over to boil. He had been dreaming of his father, he said, talking loudly so I could hear, and even now he felt he was with him.

The egg finished cooking, and I held it in a towel as I tapped a knife around the top of the shell and spooned the interior onto a piece of bread. Just then I heard the walker clacking, and my husband came around the corner. “Is he heading for the bathroom?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I looked forlornly at the breakfast plate, which would certainly be stone-cold before the bathroom visit was finished and he was back in bed, and then decided to eat it myself. I ate standing up in the kitchen, did the rest of the breakfast dishes, and by then he was heading back to bed. I turned the heat up again under the pan, and started the process over again.

I took the second plate into the bedroom, and asked if he wanted the head of the bed raised. He didn’t, which meant he couldn’t cut the bread himself. “Do you want me to feed you?” I asked. He simply opened his mouth. I cut a piece of bread and egg and gave it to him; he chewed it; I gave him another mouthful.

“Next time,” he said, “forget the bread.”

“You said you wanted it on bread,” I said.

“I did?”

“Yes.”

“This bread isn’t good. It has no taste – maybe it doesn’t have enough salt in it.” The food complaints are constant these days; nothing tastes good but it’s because no one knows how to cook. The same logic tells him that he can’t hear because no one knows how to speak clearly.

“Maybe not,” I told him, telling myself to be patient.  “I’ll just give you the egg then.”

“Did you ever keep chickens?” he asked, between mouthfuls.

“No, but I always wanted to. Did you, besides the ones you had at your last house?” He had raised chicks for two years in a small hen-house his brother had made him, modeled after his own home. Both years, in the early fall, raccoons had broken into the enclosure at night and killed all the chickens. He’d been very upset; the chickens were a romantic idea and used to run free on the lawn around him while he lay in a chair in the sun. He called the raccoon attack “a massacre” and after the second time, declined to try again, blaming the whole affair on his brother’s incompetence in building the hen house while in fact he'd probably forgotten to lock it up at night.

“Yes,” he said, “we always had them in Damascus. And for a while we also had rabbits.”

“Did you eat them?”

“No!” he shuddered. “I could never eat rabbit. They were nice to cuddle, though.”

“In Quebec you can buy them in the grocery store. I don’t like the way they look, cut up in the package.” He grimaced. “And also horse. Cheval haché.”

“Aaagh!” he said. “I don’t think I could eat it.”

“Me either. Though of course your son ate camel when you were in Damascus.”

“The only person in the family ever to eat camel! I was shocked when he told me.”

After breakfast the first of the outside caregivers arrived. Knowing the greater likelihood that he’d listen to medical authority rather than his children, we’d enlisted the head nurse to help make the explanation. She had told my father-in-law that this was necessary because if he was so weak he might fall, he couldn’t stay in their facility any longer unaccompanied, and they “wanted him to be able to stay there with them.” “It’s just until you’re stronger,” she assured him, doing a masterful job of convincing him of the necessity of something we all knew would be unwanted, especially now that he was “cured.”

My father-in-law had been trying to read a bound book of his own sermons, two years’ worth, given when he was an interim minister at a Unitarian church in the South in the early 1990s. He turned to his son, repeated his comments about how he was completely well now, and then said, “It’s odd, when I try to read this it’s like there is dust on the pages, and on the edges, I see children running and playing! I think it’s too much bother,” and he closed the book and set it aside.

We introduced him to the young man who would be with him the rest of the day, and said goodbye, hoping for the best.

When I arrived back at the apartment at 3:45, before the caregiver’s shift ended, I went into my father-in-law’s bedroom and the young man followed me. Immediately my father-in-law’s eyes flashed and he shook his head on the pillow. “Qu’il est bête!” he exclaimed. “J’ai pensé que je vais mourir!”

Good Lord, I thought, and then answered in French, since the unfortunate young man was right behind me in the doorway. I raised my eyebrows and said, “Sorry, you have to be patient.”

After the caregiver left, I went back into the room.

“Was this your idea?” he demanded.

“No,” I said. “This place insists on it; you heard what A-L. said this morning.”

“He nearly killed me. Every time I moved he was instantly next to me, fussing that I was going to fall. If I could have made myself disappear I would have. I think it’s all C.’s doing. So I don’t flirt with the girls!”

“I very much doubt it.”

“Well, c’est la vie. I have to endure it, I suppose. But now I’m hungry…” I had brought a Syrian dish: a stew of beef with green beans and tomatoes, simmered for a long time and spiced with cinnamon and allspice, along with rice pilaf made with vermicelli, onions, and parsley. When I told him I had brought that for dinner he perked up and said good, he was ready for something like that.

I warmed up a small portion and brought it to him, with the salt shaker. He took a few bites and said, reflectively, “There is something lacking in your cooking.”

I felt myself getting angry. “What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, if you figure it out, I’ll try to fix it,” I said, and walked out of the room, remembering my mother saying to me, “If you’re getting cross, you’re probably feeling better.” She had been right, and I should be glad he was better, but I was still annoyed, and I went out and read on the couch until J. arrived an hour later. The kitchen sent up the dinner my father-in-law had ordered: under a large plastic cover was a plate containing three grilled shrimp on a bamboo skewer and some rice. It looked so tiny, and so absurd that we began to laugh, and took it in to see if he’d eat it. He began to laugh too, and we all argued about who should eat the shrimp, and I forgot about being annoyed.

Later I asked him if I could get him anything. “Yes!” he said. “I want something that is such a startling taste, so strong, that it will change the taste in my mouth.”

“Lemon?” I suggested. “A date?”

He shook his head.

“A cup of Arabic coffee, and you can stay up all night!”

“No, it would kill me!”

“Whiskey!” He laughed a lot. “I’ve never tried it!”

“That would do it. Hmm. Tomorrow I can get you some olives…”

“We have labneh, right? If you put some extra salt in it and put it on a piece of bread…but I don’t  want the bread to be the dominant taste.”

“Do you want it on a cracker instead?”

“A what?”

“A cracker. A piece of…you know… it’s hard, not like bread.”

“OK!” I brought back the cracker and salted labneh. “What’s this?” he said. “Where’s the bread? Just some soft bread.”

“You want bread, then. OK, just a minute.”

On my way back to the kitchen I noticed his cake of dark brown olive oil soap from Aleppo. “Now that’s a strong taste,” I thought to myself. I scraped off the labneh, cut the crusts off a piece of bread, transferred the cheese, and took it back to him. He was on his side in the bed, his face near the rails, eyes shut. “Here you are,” I said.

He accepted the piece of bread and took a bite. “Ahhhhh,” he said. “That’s better.”

But later on I heard him going through the same complaint with J., and this time I got up, picked up the cake of soap, went into the bedroom and handed it to him. "What's this?" he said.

"Soap." I said. "Your soap from Aleppo."

He looked puzzled, and then burst out laughing. "You want me to eat it?"

"Well, it would change the taste in your mouth!"

"You brought this to me a long while ago! It's from Aleppo. I only allow myself to pass my hand over the surface," he said. "See how long it's lasted?" The cake of soap had some Arabic writing on one side, stamped into the surface.

"What does it say?" asked J.

His father asked for a magnifier. "It says nothing," he said, turning the soap around in his hands under the glass. "But it must...the Arabs never write anything meaningless... 'For cleanliness and decoration.' Idiots!"

We all laughed. "From the Illiterate Soapmaker of Aleppo!"

Comments

[Kaycie]

He is a mess, isn't he? This gave me a smile.

[language hat]

Oh man. It's good you're able to vent here! It probably extends both your life and his.

[beth]

Kaycie -- Not so much a mess as just unpredictable-on-purpose, and not above running people around. I thought it was funny too; glad you did.

LH - you've got it!

[elizabeth]

I just love the image of you stalking into the room with the bar of Aleppo soap (and I've always wondered what the words stamped upon them meant!) I hope his palate and his temper are improved now, for both your sakes--and I'm grateful you're telling this tale in all its complexity, his rough patches as well as shining ones.

[language hat]

Incidentally, I spent several days in Aleppo half a lifetime ago (stayed in the famed Baron Hotel as long as I could afford it and had the private-stock Armenian brandy, yum), but didn't bring back any soap. Now I regret it.

[sylph]

I admire your patience and I found this amusing...thanks

[Natalie]

Beth, it's so good to see that his story continues, just when it seemed that it was coming to an end. What an amazing character and how wonderful that he keeps a sense of humour alongside the hard-to-please traits.

[Lucy]

'her husband's to Aleppo gone, master of the tiger...' how Shakespeare loved those exotic placenames!

I'd come and eat the food you prepare, it sounds delicious.

Thanks again Beth.