My Uncle Napoleon

by Iraj Pezeshkzad

“No sir, why should I lie? This key . . . I mean to say, with all due respect, sir, the key’s fallen in the pool . . . however much we tried with the grapplin’ hook, we couldn’t get it out . . .”

  With his knotted, furious face the deputy stared into Mash Qasem’s eyes. Mash Qasem went on in exactly the same tone of voice, “I mean, you know it’s a tiny little key and the grapplin’ hook couldn’t hold it . . . you want me to bring a towel and then Mr. Ghiasabadi can go in the pool and get it out . . . I don’t think it’s very warm, though, maybe he’ll catch a cold in his head.”

  “Silence! Murder . . . concealing the corpse . . . insulting and wounding a representative of the state during . . .”

  Deputy Taymur was suddenly quiet for a moment. And then, walking on tiptoe toward the boxtree, he continued, “ . . . during the execution of his duties . . . ridiculing and mocking a representative of the law . . . Aha! What are you doing here?”

  And in this way the deputy ambushed my father, who was busy eavesdropping behind the boxtree. “Silence! What were you doing here? Answer, quick, now, immediately, at the double!”

  Dear Uncle jumped forward and stared at the scene, his eyes round with astonishment and filled with malice and loathing. Involuntarily I left Layli’s side and went over to my father.

  The deputy walked round the boxtree and stood in front of my father. Bringing his huge face close to my father’s face, he said, “Why are you behind the boxtree? Why didn’t you come round this side? Eh? Answer! Quick, now, immediately, at the double!”

  “Because on this side of the boxtree I’m in my own house and on that side I’m in the house of people who mercilessly and savagely kill a poor innocent young man over some trivial argument about property! And chop his body into pieces! And bury him in the earth!”

  Dear Uncle’s voice could not escape from his throat, he was so enraged, but from a few feet away I could hear him panting heavily.

  Aziz al-Saltaneh suddenly burst out with an artificial-sounding cry, “Oh your poor little chopped-up innocent young body that they’ve buried under the cold ground!”

  Asadollah Mirza imitated her fake sobs. “Oh your poor little chubby potbelly that didn’t get to eat its special circumcision supper.”

  Deputy Taymur’s yell drew everyone up short, “Silence! What kind of games do you think you’re playing?”

  My father took advantage of everyone’s silence, “Officer, as I stated, I have detailed information about these events. If you will allow me to talk to you, sir, in private for a minute . . .”

  “Silence! Private conversations are forbidden!”

  “But sir, you, whose system of surprise attack is famous throughout the whole city, must know that if I discuss the matter in the presence of the murderer and his accomplices, this will hamper the discovery of the truth.”

  His flattery had its effect. The deputy glanced at the group awaiting his decision beside the sweetbrier bush and said, “No one has the right to leave this place until I return. Silence! Cadet Officer, keep an eye on them until I return.”

  Dear Uncle, who was trying to keep a hold on his self-control, said, “I hope you will allow my daughter to go and eat her lunch.”

  “She may go! But she is not to leave the house. It’s possible we will have to question her.”

  At a sign from Dear Uncle, Layli went toward the inner apartments. And I was quite content that Layli go because I didn’t want her innocent ears to hear about these upsetting and idiotic events.

  Asadollah Mirza ran toward my father and yelled, “Brother, even in a joke, enough’s enough! That prize donkey Dustali’s gone off on a jaunt somewhere and, as some kind of crazy joke, they’re trying to make out I killed him . . . his wife’s a lunatic, his stepdaughter’s even worse, you say something! If you’ve your differences with the Master, what’s that to me? If you or someone else makes a noise in the middle of one of his stories, what’s that to me? If this woman wants to castrate her husband, what’s that to me? You know perfectly well that I’m not blame!”

  Without looking in his eyes, my father shook his head and said, “I don’t know anything. I don’t know where Dustali is or when they killed him. I’ll offer the information I have to Deputy Taymur. He’s an expert in this business and he’ll come to whatever conclusion seems best to him. Justice must be done. Isn’t that so, Deputy Taymur?” And having said this, he set off with Deputy Taymur.

  To stir things up as much as possible, Aziz al-Saltaneh squatted down by the sweetbrier bush where they were supposed to have buried her husband and, putting a finger on the earth, she began to recite the first chapter of the Quran. The deputy called to her, “Madam, you come with us.”

  I went after them, too, but at the door to the reception room the detective turned me back and wouldn’t let me enter. When I started back to the others, I saw that Dear Uncle and Asadollah Mirza were sitting, talking quietly under the sweetbrier; Mash Qasem was in another corner some distance away from them, talking to the detective’s assistant; and Shamsali Mirza was angrily pacing up and down the yard in front of the inner apartments.

  I was tempted to listen surreptitiously to Dear Uncle’s and Asadollah Mirza’s conversation, as they seemed to be chatting in a secretive way. Gradually, without making any noise, I positioned myself behind the sweetbrier.

  “Have you any idea of what you’re saying? How can I . . .”

  “You’re not listening to me, Asadollah! I’m almost certain I know where Dustali has hidden himself. This evil-minded so-and-so has told Aziz al-Saltaneh to say they should dig up the ground under my sweetbrier. He knows how much I like this bush; if they disturb the sweetbrier’s roots during this season, it’s sure to wither away, and you can see someone’s already turned the ground over a bit with a trowel . . .”

  “Moment, because they might disturb your sweetbrier’s roots, I’m to confess that I killed Dustali?”

  “I just need two or three hours to find Dustali safe and sound. It’s enough for you to confess and then, with the excuse that you want to show him where the body is, you take this idiot of a detective away while I find Dustali. It’s got so that I have to find Dustali and talk to him first!”

  “Suppose he can’t be found, or suppose he’s found and the detective arrests me for the crime of deceiving a representative of the state? Has it occurred to you how that’ll go down in my office?”

  “You’ve been accused in any case already, Asadollah! It’s possible you’ll be arrested in any case!”

  “Moment, moment, they can’t arrest someone on the word of that lunatic woman. They’d better not try and do such a thing!”

  “But if they do, there’s nothing you can do about it! You’ll stay under arrest until it comes to court . . . I promise you that I’ll find Dustali before tonight, and for the rest, don’t worry about it. I’ve a lot of friends in the police. It’s impossible I’d let you stay there for the night.”

  Asadollah Mirza shouted, “I don’t understand how it’s possible, with your intelligence and at your age, for you to make such a suggestion! I wish I’d broken my leg and never come here.”

  “Look, Asadollah, I’m begging you. It’s a very simple matter; when the detective gets back you pretend that your conscience has got the better of you, and then straightaway you confess that you killed Dustali and buried him under the floor in your house, and then I’ll find Dustali, because I’m just about certain I know where he is. I’ll send Mash Qasem to give you the news that Dustali’s been found and I promise you there won’t be any trouble for you as a result!”

  “I’m very sorry, you’ll have to excuse me on this one. Even if Deputy Taymur arrests me . . . an innocent man can go to the foot of the gallows but he’s not going to climb up and slip the rope round his own neck . . . I can’t be a murderer just for the sake of the roots of your sweetbrier bush!”

 
And he stood up to go. But Dear Uncle angrily said, “Asadollah, sit down! I haven’t finished talking yet. Dustali left a message for me.”

  “A message? Then why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you say so instead of letting me suffer . . .”

  “Listen . . . the night he slept here, I went to see him early the next morning. I saw a bit of paper with my name on it in his empty bed. Dustali had written that he’d hide for a while and we, the members of this family, were to smooth over the fuss his wife was making and the fuss about Shir Ali the butcher . . .”

  “Moment, moment, this prize donkey goes off on a jaunt somewhere while the helpless members of his family are to smooth over the results of his filthy carryings on?”

  “Be patient, Asadollah! The members of his family aren’t so helpless after all. If there are difficulties for him, everybody’s going to land in it.”

  “What’s that to me! I’m not this family’s keeper . . .”

  “I think it would be better if I read you his note . . .”

  Dear Uncle put his hand under his cloak and drew out of his trouser pocket a folded piece of paper that had obviously been torn from a child’s exercise book.

  “Marvelous, what fine handwriting Dustali has!”

  Dear Uncle drew his hand back and placed the note before his eyes in such a way that Asadollah Mirza couldn’t read it. And then he slowly said, “Open your ears and listen carefully. He’s written, ‘If, in the next two days, this fuss doesn’t die down, I will have to publicize the names of the people who’ve been carrying on with Tahereh . . .’”

  Asadollah Mirza jumped. “Tahereh, the butcher’s wife?”

  Dear Uncle gave him a meaningful look and said, “Yes, Shir Ali the butcher’s wife . . . listen . . . and then Dustali’s listed the names of a few people that he’s heard from the mouth of that woman herself . . .”

  With his hand over his mouth, Asadollah burst into peals of laughter, “Moment, this is really delicious!”

  “Truly delicious! Especially when you know that your name is there, too.”

  “What? But how? I don’t get it. My name? My name? I swear by our friendship, on my life, on your . . .”

  “And on your father’s, too, I suppose, you shameless rat! That agate seal of your late father’s which you had made into a signet ring and then said you’d lost—Dustali’s seen it in this woman’s possession. If you aren’t blind, take the note and read it for yourself.”

  Asadollah Mirza didn’t know whether he was coming or going. “I . . . I mean . . . as God’s my witness . . . I mean, just think of it for yourself . . .”

  And then he fell silent with his mouth open. It was clear that his morale was failing before the terrifying vision of Shir Ali the butcher. Dear Uncle kept staring at him. With a pallid face and with his voice trembling, Asadollah Mirza said, “You yourself know that relationships like that are not my kind of thing.”

  “It so happens that if there’s one man whose name’s there whose kind of thing they are, then you’re that man, you impudent lecher.”

  For a moment Asadollah Mirza was silent again, then he said excitedly, “Who else is on it?”

  Dear Uncle snatched the paper back from his hand and said, “That’s nothing to do with you.”

  “Moment, how come it’s nothing to do with me?”

  Somehow Asadollah Mirza appeared to feel calm again and in a decisive voice he said, “I have to read that note, and if I don’t, I will not cooperate with you under any circumstances.”

  Dear Uncle hesitated for a moment but then it seemed that he caught sight of his sweetbrier bush again and, with a brusque gesture, he thrust out the note toward him.

  Asadollah Mirza started to read carefully. Occasionally he placed his finger on his lips in astonishment, sometimes he slapped his knee, and sometimes he laughed. “What! Wonderful! The colonel . . . God bless you, colonel, who would have guessed it from your face . . . incredible! Well, really incredible! And Madhosayn Khan, too . . .”

  Asadollah Mirza suddenly slapped his hand in front of his mouth and smothered a laugh that would have been heard five streets away; with tears of laughter flowing down his cheeks, he said in a broken voice, “This . . . this . . . this is impossible . . . my brother Shamsali . . . moment, moment.”

  Dear Uncle put one hand over his mouth and with the other snatched the note back. “Quietly! If Shamsali realizes, he’ll raise the roof . . . now do you understand why I didn’t show the note to the detective? Now do you realize it’s not just my sweetbrier bush that’s at stake? Just think if this should get into the hands of that filthy fellow . . . do you think he’d have mercy on you or the others or especially on my brother?”

  Asadollah Mirza, who was having difficulty controlling his laughter said, “By the way, where is the colonel?”

  “Since I told him about it, he’s been too ashamed to put in an appearance today.”

  Asadollah Mirza threw caution to the winds and with a laugh said, “Well, whatever, we’re all in the same boat!”

  Dear Uncle grabbed him by the arm and said, “Asadollah, think properly! It’s possible that Shir Ali the butcher won’t believe it of the others, but you’re a lady-killer, randy, horny, with a roving eye and handsome to boot . . . it’ll be you he’ll come after first with the cleaver, so think about it!”

  Asadollah Mirza suddenly became very thoughtful and after a few moments he said, “Whatever you say . . . I agree! From this moment on, I’m a murderer. I slit Dustali’s neck from ear to ear. And he died just like that! In fact, I wish the prize donkey was here and I’d cut his head off right now. It’s a real pity that beautiful Tahereh’s paired off with that old jackal . . . with a whole pack of jackals, come to that . . .”

  “I promise you there’ll be no difficulties for you in all this. But that filthy fellow mustn’t be able to use this against us, too. When this business is all over, if my sister doesn’t leave the evil bastard, I’ll never mention her name again as long as I live. As Napoleon said, sometimes holding back and fleeing from the battlefield is the best strategy. But what’s going on? The detective’s talk with this fellow’s lasted a long time . . . I’m afraid he’s cooking up some new scheme . . . anyway, Asadollah, my whole strategy, all my hopes for victory in this conflict rest in you!”

  “Rest assured, I’ll play my part well because, to be honest, if I weren’t so afraid, as well as Dustali I’d have strangled that witch Aziz al-Saltaneh, too, with my own bare hands. But if the detective asks why I killed him, what shall I say?”

  “That doesn’t matter; first, I’m sure that filthy fellow has been telling the detective about the property in Ali Abad that Dustali Khan bought three parts of and all that fuss there was a few years ago, and that you came under suspicion about, and then you can repeat what Aziz al-Saltaneh said.”

  “Moment, you mean I’m to agree that I was interested in that whining witch?”

  Dear Uncle had no chance to respond because there was a knock at the door and the preacher Seyed Abolqasem came in. With a worried, confused look on his face, he came panting over to Dear Uncle and started, “Sir, you must help me . . . after I’d spoken about the matter of the drugs in your brother-in-law’s pharmacy, his manager closed the shop, but today he came to me and said that if I didn’t clear the matter up by tonight, tomorrow he’d tell everyone in the neighborhood that my son has had an unlawful relationship with the wife of Shir Ali the butcher . . .”

  Asadollah Mirza jumped up, “Moment, moment, Your Reverence’s boy, too . . . yes, indeed . . . God bless . . . I mean, God bless Tahereh, what a woman!”

  “But God forbid, it’s completely untrue, completely . . . it’s slander, it’s calumny, it’s spreading false reports, it’s pure malice . . .”

  Asadollah Mirza brought his face close to the preacher’s, in the manner of Deputy Taymu
r, and shouted, “The truth shall set you free! Confess! Make a clean breast of it! The truth, unvarnished, quick, now, immediately, at the double!”

  The terrified Seyed Abolqasem drew his head back and said, “It’s a lie, it’s a falsehood . . . now, perhaps when one is young and ignorant . . .”

  Asadollah Mirza once again adopted the detective’s system of surprise attack and pressured him, “When one is young and ignorant, what happened? Quick, now, immediately, at the double . . . did San Francisco happen? Quick, now, at the double!”

  “Asadollah, will you let me hear what the gentleman has to say?”

  But Asadollah Mirza cut Dear Uncle off. “Moment, quick, now, immediately, answer!”

  Seyed Abolqasem, who was very taken aback, said, “I’ve thoroughly questioned this degenerate son of mine, and he says that occasionally he’s felt that, if one day Shir Ali were to divorce his wife, he’d like to marry her; but an unlawful relationship, God forbid!”

  Asadollah Mirza lifted his head up victoriously and with a laugh said, “The deputy’s system of surprise attack’s not a bad system after all. My congratulations, sir . . . encourage him as much as you can . . . it’s a real pity that a woman with such a reputation, such a fine housewife and so pretty, should be married to that donkey of a butcher, that ogre in human form who’s so frightening no one dares pass by their house. This woman needs a kind, meek husband like Your Reverence’s son who won’t frighten people away like that . . . God willing, it’ll all turn out well. Why is Your Reverence’s son so rarely seen around and about? Please tell him to drop round to my house sometimes . . . especially after the wedding, have him come over with his wife . . .”

  Dear Uncle shouted, “Asadollah, will you shut your mouth or not? Sir, please go home now; tonight I’ll come by and we can talk. You can be sure we’ll find some way out of this difficulty, but please go immediately . . . we’ve a difficulty of our own here and we have to solve that first . . . please, this way, please . . .”

  Dear Uncle was so afraid that the detective would appear, and that when he saw Seyed Abolqasem he’d start some new incident, that he almost threw the preacher out of the house. But he didn’t have the opportunity to express an opinion on the matter. As soon as he’d returned to Asadollah Mirza, Deputy Taymur’s yelling became audible, “Hey! Where is that utter cretin . . . Cadet Officer Ghiasabadi! Idiot! Instead of guarding the accused, you’re off chewing the cud about Ghiasabad near Qom, are you?”