by Alon Hilu
5
NO SOONER HAVE I made my fabricated confession in the arms of Father Alexis than Mahmoud hastens to lead me back along the street called Straight to his room at the consulate, and he is blushing and excited, eagerly plying me with kisses and his warm, manly, abundant love, his fox-eyes brightly sparkling, and when we reach Mahmoud’s quarters and pour fresh glasses of araq, he kisses my fingers one after the other, for my presence is so dear to him, and he smiles and tells me that he feels and knows that we are soulmates, that my person is wondrous in his eyes, that I am all radiant tenderness and sanctity.
Aslan wishes to protest and demur, for Aslan is ugly of body and soul, as is known throughout the city of Damascus, but Mahmoud reiterates his admiration for this young man whose path has crossed his own and he describes my eyes as those of a falcon and an owl, and he extols the red lines of my lips, drawn as though by an artist’s paintbrush, and also the bones of my lower jaw, straight and masculine, sharp and true, and my small chin, its cleft a garden of delights, a hidden orchard to which lovers repair in the moonlight; and while he is speaking, Mahmoud plucks an errant hair from my forelocks and squeezes to death a fatty pustule festering on my cheek, and he sings praises to my dark beauty, and Aslan hearkens to his words and his heart blushes.
And now it is the hour for Mahmoud to confess to me that a life of freedom and liberty is spread out before him, and along with them the delights and pleasures he so adores, for Count de Ratti-Menton has assured him that if he solves the mystery of Father Tomaso’s disappearance he will be released from the prison in which he has been incarcerated; now, at the peak of his success, Mahmoud has revealed his secret, and Aslan is astonished, for apart from the singer called Umm-Jihan he has never made the acquaintance of a person in custody, but for what reason and why did they see fit to place this charming young man behind bars?
Mahmoud recounts that until two years earlier he had lived the life of a king, reigning terror on the Christians and Jews in his jurisdiction, for he was responsible for collecting aljiziya, the head tax, and he would pass through the Christian and Jewish Quarters and they would bow down before him, prostrate themselves and honour him with biscuits and beverages; but evil people had libelled him, saying he had embezzled monies from the head tax, and from there the path to his arrest and interrogation and trial were short, since all attention was diverted by the power of his libellers’ riches, and because of these lies he had been imprisoned for several months already in a tiny cell while the libellers continued their lives of rich foods and earthly delights, though their black day would come, it was nigh; and now, with the ritual slaughter of Brother Tomaso, Mahmoud had offered – from his prison cell – to take charge of the investigation, and he had been promised in writing by his eminence Sharif Pasha himself that if he found the solution to this vexing and atrocious riddle he would be instantly pardoned, so that now Mahmoud had but one request of Aslan: that he continue to assist him as he had done until then, that much as he had confessed to the ritual slaughter in Father Alexis’ arms, so should he confess all the details of that stormy evening to Mahmoud; and he rose to embrace me and his touch was very comforting.
At that, Mahmoud became even dearer in Aslan’s eyes, for not only was this new and precious friend of his a handsome man of song, he was also a righteous man pursued by evildoers. And Aslan allowed himself to be swept away by Mahmoud’s singing and his gay demeanour.
The longer I remained in the presence of Mahmoud, the two of us alone, the more I loved this Good Interrogator, and I learned his likes and dislikes, such as his repulsion at acts of violence and destruction, or his haste in cleansing his hands after touching an animal or an imprisoned criminal or anything filthy or contaminated, and of course Aslan knows of his lover’s loathing of mothers and women and girls and females of any kind, how he recoils from their touch, and Aslan knows, too, of handsome Mahmoud’s love of song and dance; and on occasion the spirit descends upon him and he rises for a jig, his beautiful feet bare as they move in small, delicate steps, now proceeding now receding, the dance of the mamba snakes in the Khan Assad Pasha.
Mahmoud smiles at me and praises me for behaving with great nobility when I revealed the secret of the ritual slaughter of the monk for the Passover holiday, and he wishes to know whether I might be able to expose, too, the identity of those very Jews who carried out the act, and I respond that I have no information with regards to this matter, for I was not among the slaughterers, and with a mischievous glint in his fox-eyes he asks whether Aslan, whose loyalty and love of truth are so apparent, will agree to clarify for him several questions pertaining to the interrogation, information Aslan might garner by trailing secretly behind his father and uncles and father-in-law to discern what the Jews are whispering about Tomaso; also to gather any news concerning Tomaso’s disappearance, and perhaps about the approaching Passover holiday as well, and about the bread of affliction eaten according to religious decree, and Aslan is overwhelmed with joy at his new mission, and he responds that he is ready and willing to do Mahmoud’s bidding and assents to Mahmoud’s request for urgency, agreeing to pass along that very evening everything he has investigated and discovered, and I plant kisses on his face and, for a brief moment, on his lips, and depart from him in peace for my father’s home.
And lo, the Aslan who returns home now is a different Aslan, a new Aslan, no longer ashamed or terrified, no longer tense from fear of his father’s shout-and-slap welcome; rather, he is drunk with the love that has been imparted to him and with the strength with which it has imbued him, for is it not within the power of his tongue to determine fates – one way or the other? His tongue moves about in the chamber of his mouth, between his teeth, in the internal rivulets of saliva, and these tiny clicks are meant to be the cause and effect for a great and wondrous chain of events whose outcome and end are unknown and unforeseeable to all; and how agreeable is this strength to Aslan, and how sweet the small glint of terror – fear of the gentiles – that gleams in the eyes of his father, who is called almuallem by all, and this gleam is brighter even than the shimmering gold of the gilded pages of the Crowns of Damascus scrolls stored in the Khush Elpasha Synagogue.
Thus, from that moment I departed from my custom and, instead of stealthily entering the house – as was my wont, by way of the malodorous rubbish gate, that narrow and crowded place used by the servants to cast off from our home into the street that which is filthy and fetid, such as the remains of tea or the feathers of slaughtered fowl or their red cockscombs and internal organs – I marched erect, unfettered, to the main entrance of our estate, hidden as it was behind wretched walls of clay to avoid attracting the unwanted attention of tax collectors and the envy of impoverished Jews, and I sniggered at the cunning of such ugly gates, poised to topple, which did not attest to the opulence and wealth of what lay behind them, and my chirping whistles echoed from one end of the wall to the other until the sole servant left to attend to the needs of our household pricked his ears to note how Aslan, habitually tortured and tearful, was sauntering into the house, his chest puffed with pride and his shoulders squared.
New thoughts, rare in Aslan’s realm of experience, tweaked at his chest, inciting him to take revenge upon his family and deliver them to the executioner’s rope, and the dense, overpowering light blinded his eyes again and lit up his mind: who were Tomaso’s assassins if not his father and uncles? And in an illuminated vision he could picture them encircling him for the purpose of chaining him with rusted manacles and submerging him in the waters of the River Barada before he could deliver them to the governor of Damascus, and he knew that this pack of vipers could no longer overcome him, so Aslan stood over them laughing copiously, freely, just like the wizened Christian witch standing at the gate of the city, suffused with joy at the demise of her enemies, her hands unwashed since the day she had come of age, the blackened, irremovable filth between her fingers now an element of her sorcery.
My happy friend, when I caught sight
of Maman and my wife, who were sprawling about on the second storey of our home, used in the winter for warming oneself in the generous desert sun, I entered with noisy footsteps, soles clacking, and they were somewhat alarmed, and when they grumbled womanishly of this shameful habit of mine I responded sharply and without delay that the control they have exercised over Aslan and the trampling of his life will cease and desist at this very moment, and I demand that she who is known as my wife at once be turned out of our bedroom, that servants’ room scented with urine, and restored to the home of her father and many sisters, for I have no interest in her or reason to detain her.
Maman hearkens to my words but instead of responding she rises and approaches, her dark hair dishevelled, to beat me with a golden rod stored in her sunduq, the dowry chest she brought from her own father’s home many years past, and she curses Aslan as she has never before, that he might drown or be consumed in flames or burn in hell for a thousand years, and his wife Markhaba claps her hands in sorrow to God the Creator, pleading with him to hurry along the arrival of the Messiah, may He arrive at once, and Aslan utters not a word to his mother or his wife, he merely raises his hand and sends flying the sweetened cups of tea and the patterned china saucers and the apricot pastries, a feast for mesdames spread before them upon a tea tray.
The rest of the household hears the din and tumult from the second storey and emerges post-haste, sister Rachel and brother Meir and the manservant, and Aslan regrets that his father has not yet arrived to witness this new behaviour, and Aslan is carried away on the flames of his indignation like a flock of cranes careening high above on gusts of hot air, and his mother and wife and siblings appear to him as trivial, inconsequential, ridiculous, like heaps of rubbish and cesspits the cranes would view from their eyrie, and Aslan snatches the golden rod borrowed from the sunduq in order to deter him, and he brandishes it wildly, and a thunderous, fiery melody of curses and blasphemy spews forth, and he casts upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, an embassy of evil messengers, reimbursing them for all their infectious evil, and he wishes for his sister that her crossed blue eyes will frighten away all the men of Damascus for ever and ever, and he threatens Meir that one of these nights he will be strangled by the house snakes that slither through the thick, hollow walls, whispering and hissing their poisonous breaths, and Maman tears at her long black hair as she listens to these terrible words, the likes of which have never sullied my tongue before, and she screams for me to desist at once, that she will tell Father of all my wickedness the very moment he arrives, but Aslan does not heed her threats, he wishes to raise his hand against her, and he grows larger, his hair stands on end and his neck thickens, and he spits venom at her like his friends the cobras, and he pushes her towards the winding staircase that leads to the floor below, and were it not for Markhaba, who faints dead away, sprawled in all her holiness upon the embroidered pillows and carpets, he would have prodded his mother into the abyss and broken her back and neck.
At once, all rush to Markhaba and stand beside her attempting to revive her, each praying to his gods to save her from this evil, and in the meantime Aslan offers his own secret prayer for the appearance of his father, who suddenly today of all days is belated, that he may enter and catch sight of Aslan in his full potency; then Aslan will position himself in front of almuallem Rafael Farhi, whose name is pronounced with fear and awe from Beirut unto Baghdad, from the palace of Muhammad Ali unto Istanbul, capital of the empire, and he will admonish him sharply with a rebuke whose details he is rehearsing now quickly in his head, and he will bring about a show trial for his father’s act of slaughter and assassination, and, immediately following the announcement of the wise and true verdict, he will oversee his father’s flogging and the bending back of his hands and the breaking of his knees and the clogging of his mouth and the plucking out of his eyeballs, and any such punishment that is just and fitting.
However, for some reason this man of esteem does not make his appearance, and Markhaba’s eyes have already opened and the members of the household whisper among themselves and cast sidelong glances at him, and Aslan tries to fan the flames of his passion and anger, reminding himself of the mocking songs they sang him, and how they compelled him to marry an arid bride and how they forced upon him an anguishing journey to Jobar, but the current of hot air that had sustained him on high is now diminishing, and gusts of cool, chilled air transport him far away from there, and Aslan is plunging back to his former, loathsome self, and he is alarmed at his actions and wishes to apologise to Maman and all the others for these things he has said, and a clear blue terror sears his skin for the lies he poured into Mahmoud’s ears.
By the time the cool winds arrive, displacing the good, hot air, the familiar, repugnant sounds are audible from the first floor, the low murmur of voices, and Aslan, now completely alone in the centre of the room, feels his strength waning and he falls to the thick, soft carpets and awaits the decree of his destiny.
The heavy footsteps heralding Rafael Farhi’s corpulence can be heard clearly now as they draw near, and his usual scent, oily and slippery, precedes the arrival of this portly man, and Aslan tells himself, Confess quickly to your father, stand before him and declaim the unfurling of events from beginning to end, for there will be no other occasion on which to save your own skin and the souls of all the Jews from the tempest poised to engulf our skies.
Below him, on the first floor, Maman has recounted to Father a litany of Aslan’s wicked deeds, his brazenness, his shouting, his impertinence, and lo, Father is ascending slowly to the second storey, his booming voice silent, and in the expression on his face Aslan reads his own guilt, and Father utters not a word, neither good nor bad, does not even clear his throat or grumble; instead, he takes hold of Aslan and leads him outside, to the street, through that same gate on either side of which are heaped piles of rubbish, and they move along in tandem and turn into the alley separating their own house from that of the Stambouli family, and from there Father pulls him along to the right as a lamb to the slaughter, still clutching his arm, hurting him like the blade of a knife, perhaps he is bringing him to the Christian Quarter or to the River Barada where they will stop for a father-son chat, the first and only of their lives, instead of clinging to the thicket of their hatred, and at the Tayyek Altalaj, the Alley of the Ice Sellers, they pause for a moment, and Aslan lifts up his eyes and lo, his father seems hesitant, as if considering two options, and in another moment he will enclose Aslan in the embrace of a progenitor with his progeny, for great love prevails between generations, why should such great love not visit them as well?
But his father does not kiss Aslan, does not embrace him, but brings him instead, in mute silence, to the home of his uncle Meir, this, too, a grand estate with mosaic tile floors and, upon its ceilings, tendrils of stone and sacred verses for blessings; however, his father does not lead him to the orchard or the fountain, but to a small and hideous room left unfinished, the floor of which lies uncovered and is full of dust and dirt, and Aslan, despite his occasional visits to his uncle’s home, has never known of the existence of this hovel, and placed therein is a pile of wood and several extinguished, besooted candles alongside which lies a sort of long wooden beam bound with thick ropes, and Father throws me down without an explanation and without a word and presses my body against the beam, and before I can protest even ever so slightly my dreaded uncles emerge: Meir, the owner of this house, and Uncle Murad and Uncle Joseph, and it becomes clear to Aslan that they have spoken to one another and planned this in advance, apparently even before my evil actions of this evening, but for what purpose and what aim I do not even dare conjecture.
In silence, Father and the uncles toil, and they rivet Aslan’s body, stiff from cold, to the beam of his crucifixion, knotting and tightening the ropes, and suddenly I, Aslan, become aware that they wish to interrogate me and not I them, they wish to prise from Aslan a confession to all manner of evil deeds that he has committed, so
that when his father begins slowly reading aloud from a page of paper of these weighty matters, Aslan already comprehends its wretched contents, for this description, these facts, these accusations are nothing but an exact recounting, astonishing in its details, of the acts he carried out with the barber Suleiman Negrin so long ago at his shop, whence they transgressed grave sins forbidden in the Torah and the Talmud, and his father, in a loud and steady voice, describes in detail the act of love Aslan demanded to give and receive, and the organs that were shoved into this and that, and the tongues that licked and the embraces embraced, and all this his father and uncles had gleaned from the mouth of an informant, an old and righteous woman who spied Aslan and the barber through a parting in the curtain flapping in the window of the barber’s shop, and at the conclusion of the long and detailed list of claims that shout Aslan’s guilt, his sins of adultery and engaging in abominations, his father lifts his head from the page, allows the fatty flesh of his neck to wobble and settle into place, and tenderly asks Aslan, his tongue steeped in their silence, to utter one word: truth or falsehood.