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missed the point. It occurred to me that I would never have lasted a day in the
world of his youth. “De l’audace, toujours de l’audace,” he replied. “You see, in life, it’s not only knowing what you want that matters. That’s easy. It’s knowing how to want.” I was not sure I understood this either, but again I nodded. “But I was lucky. I had a good life,” he went on. “Life gives us all a few trump cards when we’re born, and then that’s it. By the time I was twenty I had already wasted all of mine. Life gave them back to me many times. Not many can claim the same.”
    When coffee was ready, he took out two demitasses and proceeded to pour, holding the pot precariously high above the cups and aiming the coffee into them, the way good Arab servants did, to allow the brew to cool somewhat as it was being poured. “May God rest his soul, but no one made coffee like your grandfather,” he said. “A snake, with a cleft tongue, who bubbled like milk when he lost his temper and then cut you to pieces, but still, the best brewer of coffee in the world. Come.” He indicated the drawing room as we passed through a different corridor. The room was filled with antiques and Persian rugs. On the glistening old parquet sat a band of afternoon sunlight in which an overfed cat had fallen asleep, its legs stretched out awkwardly.
    â€œSee this smoking jacket?” he said. “Feel it.” I leaned over to him and touched the fabric on the shawl collar. “At least forty years old,” he said, looking terribly amused. “Guess whose?” “Your father’s,” I said. “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped, practically losing his temper. “My father died eons ago.” “One of your brothers’?” “No, no, no.” “I don’t know then.” “I’ll give you a hint. Guess who made the cloth? Best fabric in the world.” It took me a while. “My father?” I asked. “Right. Woven in the basement of his factory in Ibrahimieh during the war. This jacket belonged to your grandfather Albert.”
    â€œHe gave it to you?”
    â€œIn a manner of speaking, yes.”

    â€œOn what occasion?”
    â€œAfter he died. It was Esther who gave it to me. Where would you ever find such fine wool nowadays? It’s one of the few things I treasure,” he joked. “Here, feel again!” he ordered.
    Ever the master salesman, I thought. “Let me explain,” he said, his face uncomfortably nearing mine. He looked around to see no one was listening.
    â€œDo you remember Flora, la belle romaine, as we used to call her?”
    It was Flora who had taught me all about the pianist Schnabel, I replied.
    â€œThat’s right. During the war, in the days of Alamein, we all stayed in your great-grandmother’s house. You have no idea how crowded it was. Well, one day, in walks this dark-haired, beautiful, but painfully beautiful woman who plays the piano every evening, who smokes all the time, who looks a trifle worn but sexier for it, and who flirts with all of us, though you’d swear she didn’t know it. In short, we were all madly in love with her. Madly.”
    â€œWhat does that have to do with my grandfather?”
    â€œWait, let me finish !” He had almost lost his temper. “Well, the tension was such—you have to realize there were at least seven grown men in the house, not to mention younger men who were just as predatory—that every day we would start quarreling. Over nothing, and over everything. Your grandfather and I quarreled every day. Every day. Then we would make up and play backgammon. And then quarrel again. Do you play backgammon?”
    â€œPoorly.”
    â€œI thought so. At any rate, it becomes quite evident that Flora has singled me out. Of course, I make no passes, I have to behave—in my mother’s house