Husbands & Lovers

Hannah’s husband, Alistair, warned her about cobras when they arrived in Cairo, but she isn’t thinking about the snakes when she goes to the garden behind her hotel. After surviving World War II and the Soviet invasion of Hungary, being bitten by a cobra would be an unexpected way to die. Lucien Beck, the Swiss hotelier, passes by, asking if Hannah needs anything. She doesn’t. Cobras are often called asps in Egypt, which makes Hannah think of Cleopatra, and she wonders if the asp was a metaphor for a man. When Hannah sits, her face is but three feet from a cobra. The snake lunges, and she flings a hand before her face. She loses consciousness, thinking of Lucien.

Sam is now 12. Mallory remembers the day Paige called her to tell her about their mother’s death. Their mother was visiting Peru, and she fell off one of the terraces of Machu Picchu and died of a brain bleed. Paige found out first because she was their mother’s emergency contact; she is, in fact, everyone’s emergency contact. Mallory always seems less reliable than Paige.

Paige inherited their mom’s house on Cape Cod, and she and Jake, her husband, renovated it. Mallory and Sam visit every summer, and Mallory drives Sam to the nearest hospital for his dialysis. Today, Paige tells Mallory that she should approach Monk Adams, Sam’s biological father, to see if his kidney is a match. Mallory points out that Monk is one of the most famous men in the world, but Paige is undeterred. Paige can’t understand why Mallory has never shared the story of what happened between her and Monk 13 summers ago. Mallory insists that there’s nothing to tell because it was a mistake. Sam overhears, and she reassures him that she doesn’t regret his birth. She regrets not giving Sam a “real” dad, though Sam already knows who his father is. Paige mentions doing some family research to look for another potential kidney match for Sam, and she learned that their mother was adopted from an orphanage in Ireland.

A doctor told Alistair that he needed a warm climate for his health, so he got a job as a political liaison to the ambassador in Cairo and informed Hannah that they were leaving England. He relied on her to make arrangements. Now, five weeks after they arrived, Hannah is home from the hospital, recovered from her snake bite. She recalls her initial shock at the city’s chaos and tension and the misery of the vulnerable, exploited Egyptians beside the indifferent, affluent English. She thinks that the Egyptians have become spectators in their own country, just as she feels like a spectator in her own life. The Ainsworths stay at Shepheard’s Hotel, a very English establishment, where Lucien works. To her, his eyes are the color of hope.

Now, Hannah wants to know why Lucien was in the garden that night. He says that she already knows, and they speak in French, which feels more intimate. He kisses the scar on her hand. Lucien wants to take her to see the pyramids—Alistair saw them already so has not made the visit a priority—and when Hannah meets Lucien’s green eyes, she accepts his invitation.

Mallory recalls learning that her mother left her the cobra bracelet given to her by her mother at birth. She looks at the cobra’s emerald eyes and thinks of her mother’s own green eyes. Now she wonders which mother passed it down to her own. She remembers the first time she googled Monk’s name, when Sam was a year old. Paige asked if Mallory knew a “Monk Adams” from school and told her that his debut album hit number one on iTunes. After that, he became a household name. He’s getting married to a “lifestyle influencer” named Lennox Lassiter on Winthrop Island this summer. Paige plans to have her DNA tested to learn their ancestry and to connect with possible kidney donors for Sam.

One Sunday, years before, Mallory’s mom dropped her off at school, and she asked Monk to help Mallory with her bags; Mallory couldn’t believe that Monk knew her name. That night, they hung out, and she recalls how he made her feel like the most fascinating person in the world. Later, Paige mentions her friend Lola, who has a house on Winthrop Island, and Mallory recalls a line from The Great Gatsby about being pushed by the current back into one’s past.

Hannah met Alistair six years ago, outside Vienna, at a displaced persons camp. She’d been there for three weeks and helped as a translator for the English, including 60-year-old Alistair. One day, she identified a German man pretending to be Hungarian, and he was ultimately prosecuted for war crimes. Alistair got a commendation from Churchill for it. Now, in the car, Lucien asks if she loved Alistair when they married, and Hannah admits that she did not. She respected his intellect and integrity, and he had money to support her. Hannah and Lucien arrive, walking around the Sphinx. He tells her that he was born in Alexandria, and his mother’s family still lives there. His father was Swiss, but he and Lucien’s mother never married. Lucien kisses Hannah deeply, and she thinks of János, her first husband, though she hasn’t allowed herself to for years.

Lucien points out the smaller pyramids, those dedicated to the Pharoah’s queens. Hannah realizes that they would be “colossal” on their own but are dwarfed by the Pharoah’s much larger pyramid. Lucien can tell that she is full of sorrow, and he wants to remind her what love feels like. She is aware of the bargain that she made when she married Alistair, trading passion for security. Hannah collapses against the pyramid built to memorialize a wife’s fidelity. Alistair was 61 when they married, though he was more nervous on their wedding night than she was. She thought of her body as merely a “bag of bones and skin” (98), while her soul lived elsewhere. She lay still while he had sex with her, and when she woke at dawn, he looked like a corpse. She wondered then if she’d have another child. Now, Hannah longs to be loved by Lucien. She could go on existing like a stone pyramid, or live again in “mortal sin.”