The Changing Room 7

 

Jubal made a hat of the wool fibers, weaving the bracelet into the wool. And he told me he planned to move his family to the land of his wife's birth, something her physician had long ago recommended.

On the day they were to leave there was a commotion in the street. A caravan passed by, a woman insisting that her camel kneel so that she could dismount. The drivers did not want the trouble, so her arguments became louder and more emphatic.

Then I saw Jubal. He silenced the drivers and dismounted to help the woman, his wife. She clung to me and wept while Jubal turned his head to hide his own tears.

"I know you not," she said. "Yet I love you."

I held her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Love yourself, Lady," I said. "Then you will know all." They mounted their camels and I watched them go, the bracelet in Jubal's hat sparkling under the sun. After three years the same woman appeared at my door with a man I thought first was Jubal. It was their son, Garland, who would stay to sell wines from their faraway vineyards in his mother's homeland. Her name, I learned, was Helen.

I asked after Jubal.

Not a day passed, Helen said, without Jubal's thanks to her for something or other. "After all this time he never forgets," she said.

I did not tell her I had not taught him to do this.

"When I take the hat to clean it," she said, "Jubal looks for it while it dries. He cannot rest until I give it to him."

Nor did I tell her that Jubal was who he was, hat or no.

Helen returned to her own country after telling me the true reason for the visit. Their son was to see me.