didn’t you know?” he jested.
It was the lawyer himself who opened the doors to his firm on the twenty-sixth floor. “This way, gentlemen.” The collar of his striped white and blue shirt was unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up above his elbows. This, Kalaj signaled, was not someone getting ready to head home.
We entered an office overlooking the harbor. Boston looked magical from such a height. Both of us must have gasped, the way hired waiters do when they’re first shown the way from the kitchen to the main dining room in a posh mansion.
We had rehearsed our spiel in the car. What Kalaj wanted was not just for me to translate, but to read between the lines, to extract, to interpret, to intercept, from what the lawyer was saying the core of what he wasn’t saying. In this as in everything else, he wanted complicité. The lawyer put both feet on his desk, took out a fresh yellow legal pad, removed the cap of his pen with his teeth, and placed the lined pad on his thigh, meaning: OK. I’m listening.
“Kalaj’s wife is suing for divorce,” I explained.
Nod, nod, meaning: And this is surprising? He lit a giant meerschaum pipe.
“They haven’t been living together for over two months. He’s living in a tiny rented room in Cambridge. The question is: Will this hurt his chances for getting a green card?”
Nod, nod from the lawyer, meaning: Did you honestly believe that it wouldn’t?
“If both agree to go for an interview before divorce procedures are set in motion, might this help things?”
Nod, nod. It might.
“Is there anything that can be done to hasten the process before the issue of his divorce comes up?”
“We can try to ask them to hold an interview sooner—but it’s not good to push the people at Immigration. They get very suspicious. And let me warn you, they do deport people they suspect of operating in bad faith.” Silence. “Why is she suing for divorce?” he asked, as though more out of personal curiosity.
“Pourquoi veut-elle divorcer?” He understood the question, but I had to go through the motions of asking him. He whispered a few words in French.
“She alleges he cheats on her.”
Nod, nod. No shit.
“Well, gentlemen, all I can promise is to request that they move up the date of the interview.”
Kalaj did not ask me to translate.
“His father is sick in Tunisia. He needs to leave the country for ten days.”
“Not advisable.”
“Il se fout de notre gueule, ou quoi? Is he fucking with us or what?” whispered Kalaj. Then, to the lawyer he said, “Well, thank you. And by the way,” he added, turning to a series of framed photo portraits on the wall, “they’re all wrong.”
The lawyer cast a disbelieving look at his framed photographs of heavyweight champions. “Not Carnera, Baer, Braddock, Schmeling, Louis, Charles, Marciano,” said Kalaj. “It was”—and he proceeded to list them by heart the way every French schoolboy knows his La Fontaine’s Fables—“Willard, Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, Sharkey, Carnera, Baer, Braddock, Louis, Charles, Walcott, Marciano, Patterson, Johansson, Liston, Ali.”
“Wow. I’ll have to look into it. Does he know Köchel numbers too?” asked the lawyer with irony in his voice as he turned to me.
“No, he’s not a Mozart fan, but if you ask him, he’ll explain exactly why asparagine emits that unmistakable smell each time you eat asparagus and go for a piss.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Kalaj that the lawyer’s cold, disaffected replies spoke volumes and couldn’t possibly bode well. But Kalaj didn’t need me to tell him that. “I paid him three thousand dollars and all he does is smoke his huge Sherlock Holmes pipe and nod.” He made his usual imitation of Yankee nasal sounds as they’re mimicked the world over. Not advisable. Not advisable. Not advisable.
Kalaj knew of a lovely small Italian place in the North End where we could stop for dinner. He liked to show he could speak some Italian, which he had picked up in Milan. We had veal stewed in thick buttery wine sauce. I had not eaten so well in months. We usually split the bill right down the middle. This time Kalaj insisted on paying. I refused to accept. “I make five times in one day what you make in a whole month,” he said.
He was right.
He ordered a second bottle of wine. On the small television placed above what looked like a makeshift bar, the news bulletin showed Egyptian President Sadat landing in Israel, with the Israeli army