I tried the best I could to explain how electricity works, but failing after a stuttering attempt, I simply looked up the entry for electricity on Wikipedia on my tablet. While he held the device reverently, I made tea and a few slices of bread with butter, sausage, yellow cheese, and tomato.
“My understanding cannot comprehend these wonders,” he said after a few minutes. “And the language here is written in such a way that it is hard for me to make sense of its meaning.” He set the device aside.
“It isn’t so important,” I said, still embarrassed by the fact that I could not explain the workings of electricity in simple terms. “Electricity will only appear seven hundred years after your time.”
“Everything that you want to know, you ask this device?” he asked.
“You could say that,” I said, smiling.
“And how does the device know?”
“It isn’t the device that knows,” I laughed. “It’s simply a collection of everything that we have come to know.” I was not sure that he could understand what I meant, and I started to explain to him the general idea of preserving and disseminating information.
He shook his head slowly and stroked his beard. “No wonder so many people thought you were a fairy or a witch. You really do live in a world of wonders and magic.”
“Come eat,” I said.
He was amazed by the idea of putting a slice of food on a slice of bread, and he was curious about the tomato. When I told him that a few hundred years after his time, they would discover a huge continent full of delicacies that would change the whole world, he fell silent.
By the time we finished eating, he was exhausted with wonderment. He laid his head down on his hands, set on the table, which was somehow childish and poignant. I stroked his head and told him we would go to sleep soon.
“But there is one other thing that I have to show you,” I told him, and he looked up. “The splendor of human civilization and the thing for which it really is worth living in modern times: the home shower.”
When I showed him how it worked, his mouth gaped. He played with the hot and cold water in the tap, and I asked him if he preferred todip in a basin of hot water or stand beneath a gushing cascade of water at the exact temperature that he wanted.
“You may think I am overly insatiable, my lady”—(“Never,” I squeezed in)—“but I would like to try both.”
“Not a problem,” I said and adjusted the water to the perfect temperature. I showed him how to switch the tap from the bath nozzle to the showerhead, how to adjust the water so it would suit his exact needs, and I instructed him to undress. He removed his boots, stripped off his red silk tunic and his golden silk pants, and remained in a long cotton tunic with cloth tights. Then, he stopped.
“You have to remove everything,” I said.
“In front of you?” he asked, agitated.
“Of course,” I said, holding back from laughing. “We are both adults, are we not?” He did not understand the connection between the two things and insisted that he could not remove all his clothes in my presence. “Did you never undress before your wife?” I asked in astonishment.
“Never,” he said resolutely. “Of course, I have been with her without the overlayers dozens of times, but to stand naked before a woman and her nakedness …” He even shuddered a little. I left in peace. I preferred that he enjoy the experience instead of forcing intimacy on him. While I waited for him to shower, I rolled a joint—more as a relaxing routine than out of any urgency to be stoned. It was strange to see Jean so flustered, devoid of his usual confidence.
I started to wonder if I should pay him a surprise visit but decided to leave him be. I also debated for a moment if I should wait for him to smoke the joint. But maybe it was better he not smoke any, given the culture shock that I had imposed on him. I didn’t want him getting paranoid.
I lit the joint. I took a few deep tokes and closed my eyes. I felt a pressing need to digest everything I had done and seen in the past twodays. I still had a hard time believing that I had left the house less than forty-eight hours earlier.
“Lady Édith,” I heard Jean’s voice over the noise of the flowing water. I set down the joint in the ashtray and went into the bathroom.
“Yes?” I asked quietly through the curtain.
“I was pondering something,” he said, and his head poked out from behind the curtain, his dark hair wet and shiny. “And I came to the conclusion that I must not respond to your generosity and patience with reservation and alienation.” He pulled the curtain aside and stood before me in all of his beautiful nakedness. He was terribly embarrassed but was brave in the face of it.
The air left me at once, and I felt a wave of heat pass through my whole body, in a ripple that ran from my center to my limbs. He laughed at my gaze fixed on him, and I threw off all of my clothes and joined him. We embraced beneath the water and were soon kissing wetly and wildly. I felt pain with the desire that he enter me.
“Let’s go to bed,” I managed to groan.
“After you,” he said hoarsely.
I woke up at the crack of dawn and for a long time looked at Jean, naked, sleeping peacefully. His chest rose and fell, and I reconstructed every detail of our lovemaking throughout the night. How he was surprised when I went down on him and only managed to mutter, “I thought only port whores …” and then was silent. How he directed himself to the exact spot that made me come with a cry. How afterward we lay holding each other and kissing until we fell asleep. My lips were still burning a little in the morning from all the kissing.
I heard my phone rattle from the living room and rose quietly to see who it was. It must have been 6:00 a.m., and I suddenly worried that perhaps something was amiss with Lily.
It was a message from Halimi.
