My Uncle Napoleon

by Iraj Pezeshkzad

  As he was running toward the door to the street Mash Qasem said, “Didn’t I say your excellency should’ve let me do away with ’em . . . this lot are the Master’s enemies . . .”

  A few minutes passed with the confused voices of everyone present and the sound of Layli’s sobs, until Dr. Naser al-Hokama entered carrying his bag.“Your good health, your good health, what has happened?”

  The doctor’s examination took a few minutes Everyone stared silently at his mouth. Finally he lifted his head and said, “Your good health, his heartbeat is irregular and we must immediately get the Master to the hospital . . .”

  “Isn’t it dangerous to move him in this state?”

  “At any rate, the danger is less than if we just sit on our hands and stare at him. I’ll give him an injection now, and then we can take him . . . get a car ready.”

  Two people went for the car and the doctor busied himself sterilizing a syringe. Layli went on crying. Dear Uncle’s wife, who had arrived home a few moments earlier, was beating herself on the head and chest.

  Asadollah came over to where I was standing to one side, silently hanging my head and feeling guilty; he muttered, “Damn you, lad! Because you aren’t up to one unimportant little trip to San Francisco, you see what a fine mess you’ve made!”

  “Uncle Asadollah, how was I to know that . . . ?”

  A smile played about Asadollah Mirza’s lips; he said quietly, “Go and get a whole chest of grenades together . . . because in three months time that Arab horse is going to be well again and you’ll have to explode another grenade . . . and three months after that another, and gradually you’ll have to increase their force and throw three or four together.”

  I hung my head again and said, “Uncle Asadollah, I’ve made a firm decision to . . .”

  “To take a little trip to San Francisco? Bravo, well done, congratulations . . . couldn’t you have made this decision two days earlier so that you wouldn’t have brought that old man to this sorry state?”

  “No, Uncle Asadollah, I . . .”

  “You mean two days ago your luggage wasn’t ready and now it’s ready? That’s still something to be thankful for.”

  “No, no, no, why do you keep joking? It’s another decision. It’s not San Francisco . . .”

  “Los Angeles?”

  I was ready to scream. With difficulty I controlled myself and said in a choked voice, “I’ve decided to kill myself.”

  Asadollah Mirza glanced at me and smiled, “Bravo, well done, this is an excellent decision. And when will this auspicious event take place?”

  “I mean it, Uncle Asadollah.”

  “Moment, moment, so you’ve chosen to take the easy way out . . . people always go after the easy way . . . there are many for whom it’s easier to go on a little pilgrimage to the cemetery than to go to San Francisco. . . . Well, that’s how people are. There’s nothing you can do when as the brigadier says your nature’s all bahot wilted and there is being no San Francisco . . . so the pilgrimage to the cemetery it is.”

  “Uncle Asadollah, you are standing in front of someone whose mind is completely made up. Don’t make a joke out of it.”

  “Right, so, let’s see, have you chosen how you’re going to do it?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll find a way.”

  “Drop by and see me tonight, I’ll find some method in the house for you that won’t be too much trouble or too painful.”

  And then with a serious and sad expression he added, “God rest your soul! You were a nice young man! Have them write on your tombstone: ‘Oh good people now in this world, or yet to come to this world—he who lies here in this earth is I, who never made it to San Francisco . . . ’ Perhaps in the other world they’ll look out for you and send you to San Francisco there.”

  At this moment Dr. Naser al-Hokama’s voice could be heard, “If the car had come earlier we could have moved him by now . . . the injection has brought him round a bit but we have to think of something more fundamental.”

  A few moments later they announced that a rented car was ready by the door. On the doctor’s orders they had got a travelling cot ready. They carefully laid Dear Uncle down on it. Mash Qasem and two of the servants lifted it up from underneath.

  In this way they carried Dear Uncle close to the door leading from the garden; when they put the bed down so that they could raise the patient’s body and place him in the car, he suddenly opened his eyes. He stared around with an uncomprehending look and then said in a weak voice, “Where am I? . . . What’s happened? . . . Where are you taking me?”

  Uncle colonel bent his head down to him and said, “My dear brother, you collapsed. The doctor said we’re to take you to the hospital.”

  “The hospital? Take me to the hospital?”

  “Your good health, your good health, it’s nothing serious but it’s possible that some equipment we don’t have here might be necessary. Perhaps you might need some oxygen . . .”

  Dear Uncle was quiet for a moment; then he yelled, “Well, you can think again about taking me to the hospital! Who told you to take me to the hospital? You want to hand the sheep over to the wolf, do you? You want to deliver me into the hands of the English, do you?”

  Dear Uncle’s voice became mixed in with those of his relatives. Virtually everyone thought that despite Dear Uncle’s objections they should take him to the hospital, by force if necessary. In the middle of this confused to-ing and fro-ing my father and mother suddenly came in from the street. My mother screamed, “God strike me dead, what’s going on, brother?”

  Once again a confusion of voices was raised in explanation; as soon as Dear Uncle Napoleon, who was still lying on the bed, saw my father he shouted, “Help me, brother . . . these idiots want to kill me. In this town where the English are waiting like wolves to get their hands on me, they want to take me to the hospital.”

  In a firm voice my father said, “Then they should think again! With the English here in the city it’s quite inadvisable to take the Master to the hospital. Have the doctor come to the house.”

  Doctor Naser al-Hokama said, “Your good health, but it’s possible some medical equipment that we don’t have here might be necessary.”

  In the same decisive tones my father said, “Bring all the equipment to the house and I’ll pay for it.”

  Infinite gratitude welled up in Dear Uncle’s gaze. Calmly he closed his eyes.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “HELLO.”

  “Hello, Layli. How are you?”

  “Come, come over here, I’ve something to tell you.”

  Layli was speaking very quickly. She had turned pale, and an unusual degree of anxiety was visible in her black eyes.

  I hurried after her. We reached the sweetbrier arbor.

  “Tell me, Layli, what’s happened? How’s Dear Uncle . . . ?”

  “Mash Qasem has sent you a message.”

  “Mash Qasem?”

  “Yes! It seems that, God forbid, daddy’s losing his mind . . . this morning he suddenly went after Mash Qasem with the shotgun and wanted to kill the poor thing . . .”

  My eyes wide with astonishment, I interrupted her, “Kill him? Why? Whatever has Mash Qasem done?”

  “Daddy says he’s an English spy.”

  I nearly burst out laughing. But Layli’s worried face stopped the breath in my throat. “What? . . . Mash Qasem’s an English spy? You’re joking?”

  “No, it’s very serious . . . he went after him with the shotgun. If the poor thing hadn’t taken to his heels he might have been killed.”

  “Now what’s happening?”

  “Mash Qasem’s run away from daddy . . . for now he’s gone into the kitchen and locked the door on himself, but he’s so afraid of daddy he daren’t come out . . . he asked me in secret from behind the door
to tell you to go straight to your father and to Asadollah Mirza to tell them to come and help him . . .”

  “You didn’t say anything?”

  “I wanted to say something but daddy shouted at me so violently I was terrified . . . he’s pacing up and down in the yard with the shotgun, saying things I’ve no idea what they mean.”

  “All right, you go and watch out till I can tell them.”

  It was a Friday morning. My father had left the house before the rest of us had woken up. I hurried off toward Asadollah Mirza’s house.

  About two weeks had passed since the day I had set off the firecrackers in uncle colonel’s yard. Since that time Dear Uncle Napoleon had been confined to his bed for a few days. A heart specialist and a nerve specialist were keeping him under observation in the house. The heart specialist was of the sincere belief that the cause of Dear Uncle’s illness was a heart problem, and the nerve specialist said that the heart specialist didn’t understand anything and the cause of the illness was a nervous problem. After a week the various tranquilizing drugs and medicines he was being given began to take effect and brought Dear Uncle gradually back to health, but, apart from my father and occasionally Asadollah Mirza, he wouldn’t let anyone near him, and whichever of his relatives went to see him, he pretended to be asleep.

  Usually while he was under the influence of the tranquilizing drugs he was calm, but later he would start shouting and screaming. He saw lackeys of the English everywhere.

  More than my feeling of sympathy for Dear Uncle, I was upset on Layli’s behalf, because every time I saw her her eyes were filled with tears. Layli had a limitless love for her father. Layli’s emotional turmoil had made me forget my own difficulties and troubles.

  Asadollah Mirza was asleep and his old servant didn’t want to let me in the house. But I begged and pleaded so much that she let me in.

  When Asadollah Mirza heard my voice he called out from within his bedroom, “Sit down in the living room for a minute till I come.”

  “Uncle Asadollah, open the door. It’s about something very important.”

  “Moment, I’m not in a suitable state, just wait till . . .”

  I interrupted him, “Someone’s life’s in danger. It doesn’t matter. Open the door and let me in.”

  “I said sit down in the living room till I come . . . by the time you’ve got the stuff together to kill yourself I’ll be there.”

  Asadollah Mirza was referring to what I had said to him a few days before . . . I’d no choice but to obey, especially since I heard him whispering and realized he wasn’t alone. I sat in the living room and waited for him; during those few days I had been so taken up with worrying about Layli’s state that I had forgotten the suggestion I’d made to Asadollah Mirza that day—that I’d kill myself.

  A few minutes later Asadollah Mirza came into the living room wearing a red silk dressing-gown. He didn’t give me a chance to speak.

  “God willing, the auspicious event will be today? I thought that you’d finally been to San Francisco and changed your mind! You’re completely right! When a man doesn’t go to San Francisco he’s got no business being in this world. The sooner he gets out of it, the better.”

  “No, Uncle Asadollah, Layli is really upset and I haven’t been able to think about my . . .”

  “Well, that’s obvious. The girl has her expectations . . . a bit of San Francisco, a bit of Los Angeles . . . she’s suffocating in this town.”

  “Uncle Asadollah, it’s about a problem of Mash Qasem’s. Poor Mash Qasem . . .”

  “Moment, moment . . . Mash Qasem and San Francisco? That fellow from Ghiasabad’s stolen a march on you too?”

  “No, Dear Uncle wants to kill Mash Qasem.”

  “Because he went to San Francisco?”

  “No, because he says he’s an English spy.”

  Asadollah Mirza gave a great guffaw of laughter, “He must have found a telegram that Churchill had sent from London to Ghiasabad in Mash Qasem’s pocket.”

  “I don’t know how it happened, but today Dear Uncle suddenly went after him with a shotgun. And he was so afraid he hid himself in the kitchen and locked himself in. He pleaded with Layli from behind the door that I go and fetch you and my father . . . because Dear Uncle is waiting for him in the yard, with the shotgun.”

  “All right, all right, off you go and I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Uncle Asadollah, will you let me stay so that we can go together, because my father’s gone out of the house, too? It might be too late.”

  Asadollah Mirza scratched his head and said, “Well, I can’t really . . . they’re supposed to . . . I mean the builder’s supposed to come, the kitchen ceiling’s beginning to collapse . . .”

  “Uncle Asadollah, say that the builder should wait till you get back. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  At this moment I heard a woman’s high-pitched voice coming from the direction of the bedroom, “Asi . . . Asi . . . where have you gone?”

  I said, “Uncle Asadollah, the builder seems to have arrived . . . to be honest, I think I recognize the sound of that builder’s voice.”

  Asadollah Mirza pushed me toward the living room door and said, “Don’t talk nonsense! This builder’s not from this town . . . go in the yard while I put some clothes on.”

  It seemed he was worried lest I hear the builder’s voice again. I walked anxiously up and down in the yard for a few minutes, until Asadollah Mirza was ready and we set off together for the house.

  “By the way, what news of the Arab horse? Did your firecrackers have any effect on him or not?”

  “I don’t know, Uncle Asadollah . . . all I know is that he’s going regularly to Dr. Naser al-Hokama again.”

  “For as long as Dr. Naser al-Hokama’s treating him, you can be sure that Layli’s safe. Because Dr. Naser al-Hokama’s been treating himself for forty years and there’s still no sign of life . . . his first two wives divorced him. And if it wasn’t for that donkey Dustali Khan, his present wife would’ve divorced him too.”

  “Uncle Asadollah, the doctor has a child by this wife.”

  “Moment, moment, he didn’t give birth to it himself, did he?”

  When we reached the door to the garden I saw Layli through the opening; she was waiting anxiously in the garden for our arrival. Asadollah Mirza said to me, “Wait, I’ll go first and you come after me, so it won’t be obvious why we’ve come.”

  Asadollah Mirza went into the inner apartments. Layli and I waited for a moment in the doorway. Dear Uncle Napoleon had his cloak on, and the double-barreled shot gun was in his hand.

  Asadollah Mirza made a boisterous entrance, laughing as he did so, “Well, well. You’re going hunting are you? The best of luck! Which way are you going?”

  Dear Uncle Napoleon turned round and for a moment stared blankly at the newcomer. Asadollah Mirza stopped laughing, “Although I don’t recall that this is the hunting season.”

  Dear Uncle narrowed his eyes and said in a voice quite unlike his normal voice, “It so happens it is the hunting season . . . the season for hunting the spies and lackeys of the English.”

  Asadollah Mirza pretended to be surprised. “Are you referring to me?”

  “No, I’m not saying you are . . . although perhaps . . . one day it might turn out that you’re a lackey of theirs, too!”

  For a moment he went on staring at him, then he shouted, “But who ever would have thought that the English had bought Qasem? Who’d have thought that Qasem would plunge a dagger in my back?”

  “Moment, moment . . . Mash Qasem has betrayed you?”

  “And what a betrayal! . . . a hundred times worse than Marshal Grouchy’s betrayal of Napoleon . . . all Grouchy did was that he could have gone to help his benefactor at Waterloo and he didn’t. But he didn’t then plunge a d
agger in his back.”

  “But sir, just think for a moment . . .”

  Asadollah Mirza was about to say something but changed his mind. He seemed to guess that he had to try another tack. “It’s very strange. Really, I’d have thought it of anyone except Mash Qasem, to whom you’ve been so kind.”

  Asadollah Mirza’s sympathy calmed him somewhat, and in a whining tone he said, “O Asadollah, you tell me . . . I feed him and he bites my hand; why? . . . In the wars I risked my own life so many times to save his dirty little life—should someone like that betray me in this way? . . . Why did he have to sell himself to the English?”

  “How did you discover his treachery?”

  “I’d suspected him . . . this morning I caught him red-handed and he confessed . . . Do you hear me? In his own stuttering voice he confessed that he’s a lackey of the English.”

  At this moment Mash Qasem’s voice rang out from behind the solid kitchen door, “The master’d put the shotgun against my heart; he said ‘Confess or I’ll kill you,’ so I did.”

  When he heard his voice, Dear Uncle began to tremble. He wanted to shout but no sound came from his throat. Asadollah Mirza sat him down on the steps, and Layli called out through her tears, “Daddy dear, don’t get angry; it’s not good for your heart.”

  “Run, dear, and get your daddy a glass of water.”

  The kitchen in Dear Uncle’s house, where Mash Qasem had taken refuge, was constructed in a particular way. After you went through the door from the yard you had to go down a few steps. At the bottom of the steps on the right there was the lavatory, on the left was the faucet to the water-storage tank, and straight ahead was the kitchen. In fact, by shutting the door to the yard Mash Qasem had cut off access to the lavatory, the water-storage tank and the kitchen, and I was hopeful that, as the people in the house would need these three places, some way of saving Mash Qasem would be found.

  Dear Uncle Napoleon drank the water, and his condition improved a little.