Out of Egypt by André Aciman

Saint giggled at the metaphor.
    â€œGallbladder, my eye,” grumbled her husband a few evenings later when he came to visit her after work only to find the hospital room turned into a regular salon. “All this pain, the moaning, and the sleepless nights, and the doctor, and the ambulance, and the hospital, and what does it all add up to: giggling. Quelle comédienne! Now, my poor mother, may she rest in peace, she really suffered from gallstones. She died of it, poor soul. And without so much as uttering a squeak. In those days they didn’t have painkillers the way we do today —in those days you made a fist, clammed your mouth tight, and suffered in silence so as not to wake up the children.” “The important thing is to eat well,” added the Princess.
    â€œBut I’ve lost all my appetite. I eat so little.”
    â€œThen why do you keep putting on so much weight?” her husband interrupted.
    â€œNerves, that’s why. You’ve been in this room two minutes and already I feel the pain starting.”

    She returned to that same hospital many times during the next ten years until 1958, the year she was to leave Egypt, each time dreading the operation she feared might be the end of her. And when, finally, she had her gallstones removed under emergency conditions, it was an Egyptian doctor at the Jewish hospital who performed the operation. Luckily, peritonitis was averted. Her longtime Jewish surgeon, into whose hands she had entrusted her entire life, had been arrested, had his license revoked, and, it was rumored, would be tried as an Israeli spy.
    By then she was in her sixties and was already beginning to lose her memory. Her head was propped up by pillows, and
I remember her wearing a shabby flannel bathrobe, a pearl necklace, and her aluminum bracelet, which she claimed helped her rheumatism. Her hair had thinned quite a lot by then and was matted on her head like a lopsided wig. She struggled to smile each time she looked at me. “This is the end, Madame Esther,” she said when the Princess took me to visit her one spring morning.
    â€œNot to worry. One more week and you’ll be sitting with your daughter on your balcony, enjoying the sun as you always have and as you always will long after I and all of my siblings are gone.”
    â€œNo, madame, you’re made of steel,” said the Saint, remembering how the Princess’s husband had once complained that his wife’s very skeleton was made of steel rods that clanked when she tossed in bed at night. “Besides, we all go when He wills us to go, no sooner, no later.” The Saint assumed that characteristic pinched and pious little air of hers whenever she meant to put people in their place.
    As we stood up to leave, the Saint remained in bed, producing a lank rosy hand which she placed gently on the back of my neck muttering a string of words in Ladino. Then, full of love, she bit my arm and kissed it, while I threw my arms around her.
    â€œDon’t I get a hug now?” interrupted the Princess rubbing my hair. Before she had time to finish her request, I had already put both arms around her and was hugging her very tightly, pressing tighter still, because I wanted not only to reassure the Saint that I was finally complying with her wish to love the Princess more, but also to tease her into thinking that, during her sickness, I had done just that. I waited for the Princess to unstiffen and yield to my embrace as the Saint had done on so many occasions. I wanted to hear her own litany of endearments, the accent of her sorrow, of her love, of her
passion—and the less she responded, the more I stiffened my grasp. But she did not know this game and, in the end, all she did was utter a squeamish little cry, half giggle, half squeal.
    â€œLook at all this love,” she exclaimed, beaming with joy. “It’s not good to love so much,” added the Princess as she ran her