by Rawi Hage
I took the necklace and put it in the glove compartment of my taxi, and then I drove to Mary’s husband’s place. It took me about half an hour to get there. I drove through the suburbs, where all the houses looked identical, one variation or another of the same thing. I said to myself, I’d rather fire myself from a cannon, pick up the shit of elephants and eat it, suffocate inside Houdini’s water tank, lie beneath the running horses, or sodomize a big cat in a cage and pay the consequences than get trapped in these suburbs of cardboard, gossip, and conformity.
I parked at a gas station and called Otto. This time he was home. Otto, my man, I said. Could a harmless, farcical clown be ready in about forty-five minutes?
Who is the guest reader this time? he asked.
A hater of books, I said.
I’ll make him excel in his recitals, he answered.
Gently, I said. Very gently.
Can do. What do you suggest for reading material?
How about The Clown, by Böll? I said. That would be an appropriate joke of a title . . .
Yes, but Fly, man, I don’t have that book. Where am I supposed to get it?
Just go to my place, I said. You still have the keys. By the way, the extra key to the taxi is on the same ring. Don’t lose it. People are more interested in stealing cars than books. Choose a passage from any novel you find.
Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts. What do you say, Fly?
Fiction would still be my first choice. Let’s not underestimate the power of imagination.
Suit yourself. I’ll see what I can find.
Meet me at the bar, in the back alley. Be there in an hour, I said.
I arrived at the house and knocked on the husband’s door. The man answered and he looked me up and down, frowning, and before I could say that I was there to pick up things for Mary, he pointed at some boxes in the corner.
Could you take off your shoes? he said.
That would make it difficult to go back and forth to the car, I said.
Well, the rule here is that no one enters with shoes on.
Well, the rules have to be broken today, I said.
Do you have the necklace?
Actually, Mary decided she would like to give it to you in person, since it is valuable and all, and asked if I would drive you to where she is.
I thought she trusted you, at least well enough to fuck you.
Listen, man, I am just in transit here. I take what comes. Are you coming?
Fine. But you should have taken off your shoes.
We began to drive back to the city and he lit a cigarette in my car.
There is no smoking inside the car, I said.
He looked at me and said, I thought the rules were to be broken today.
Right, you got me, Mister. . . . ?
Are you asking for my name?
Nothing is mandatory here.
My name is Chad. You could have simply asked my wife.
Too painful, I said.
I like you, Mister. . . . and where is your name? I see nothing on the dashboard.
You don’t have to bother with my licence at the moment; I am off-duty. Just call me Fly.
Right.
I drove with the window down. Rain, wind, and the night entered the taxi. I asked him for a cigarette and the white of our smoke crossed, mingled, and disappeared.
We both stayed silent. He would look at me sideways once in a while; I was sure he was picturing me above his wife. A filthy low-life, a loser of a driver. He was probably thinking that she’d grabbed the first thing available just to hurt him. Anything to stick it to him: it was all about him. This arrogant bastard, I thought, this uncultured mechanic capable of reading only manuals and sports sections! Who the fuck does he think he is. At least I’d made sure he sat in the front, next to me. I ain’t his bloody driver, I said to myself. I am his equal. I am the new victorious general that is taking over and entering, triumphant, through the city arches . . .
So you are fucking my wife, he finally said, to break the silence.
Among other things we do together.
Let me guess: you cook.
No, not much of a cook. I am afraid my kitchen is very flammable. So I avoid cooking.
Flammable? What, do you have bombs in your cupboards?
Worse: books. My cupboards, my stove, the top of my fridge . . . all filled with books.
Right, that would please Mary. Listen, man, taxi driver, or whatever you think you are. You want to take care of this woman, go ahead. But make sure she keeps taking her mental pills. Which reminds me . . . here . . . and he slammed a bottle of medicine onto the dashboard. Now she is your responsibility. Enjoy.
We arrived and I parked in the back alley behind the bar.
I’ll be right back, I said. I’ll go and buzz her.
I left and I entered the bar.
A clown went straight to the alley. Opened the passenger door and sat next to the hater of books and laid his hand on his own waist.
I have a gun, the clown said. I strongly suggest that you read this passage I am giving you. Do not leave the car and do not resist the book in your hand.
The husband looked surprised. He opened the book and stared at the first page.
Out loud. Read out loud, the clown said with authority.
And the hater of books started to read, but before he’d finished the first sentence, he looked up and said, What is this, some kind of a joke? Did my wife put you up to this?
Just read, asshole.
He resumed reading but again he stopped. There’s not enough light, he said. And I don’t have my glasses. And I don’t have to read anything.
Then you keep the book, Otto said, and again I strongly suggest that you read, and that is for your own welfare. You are to write a summary of it: that will be your assignment. I will find you again and assess your progress. Never underestimate a clown with a book. Now get out.
Mary’s husband walked away shouting, Is this some kind of a joke? Is this some kind of fucking joke?
Otto left the car, making sure his clown hat didn’t fall and that the gun was well secured in his bag, and disappeared.
And when I went back, the husband and Otto were gone.
That night I met Otto and I asked him, How did the book-hunting go?
Fly, man, your library is big but disorganized. Nothing is in alphabetical order, or in any order, for that matter.
Yes, but do tell, what book did you finally assign him to read?
On my way out of your place, I grabbed Finnegan’s Wake from the shelf at the entrance.
Good. Let the fucker suffer, I said.
GIRAFFES
LAST NIGHT I picked up two women in love. They talked and kissed in the back seat of my car. They didn’t mind my seeing them kissing each other, but they didn’t want me to hear a word they said. They kissed and whispered and stroked each other’s hair, and I watched the road in front of me and peeked at Ecstasy and Ecstasy in the mirror. I drove across the bridge and above the water and down to the other side of town. It was a clear and spectacular night that these two butterflies were missing. Had they been paying attention to the world, they would have seen a low moon, bright and big, suspended above the swinging bridge. I went underneath it and drove south. I like going south; I like the idea of going towards the warmth. I was thinking this just as one of the girls’ heads disappeared, and the eyes of the other closed, and her chest heaved. I took Exit 64 and waited at the ramp for the green light to come. I kept my silence; a faint red reflection from the traffic light bounced off the dashboard and shone on the back seat. I watched the upper body of one of the women extend and contract. Little, quiet moa
ns that sounded like the faint squeaks of small animals rushing up the trees . . .
When the traffic light turned green and replaced the red reflection, I accelerated slowly, not wanting to deprive anyone of a romantic touch under a spectrum of colours and the delight of the full moon. The moon should be colonized, I thought. Mankind should seek a happier beginning, and humans should be free to stroll hand in hand regardless of their weight and orientation. The ultimate weightless existence of a species, effortless in an environment where everything floats. Floating lips, floating sighs, floating shoes, and knees and stockings floating above the dashboard, around the mirror and the seats. Life in space, I thought, should be modelled on the current situation inside my car as we speak, what a great model, what a great premise with which to experiment with the loss of gravity: the elevation of the superwoman. And as I drove with all the windows shut, everything started to levitate: I witnessed the rising of toes, the upward flowing of hair, the inflation of chests. And I heard a howl rise towards the moon.
We reached the address they’d given me and I announced our arrival at the requested destination. Immediately two heads reappeared above the back seat. They stopped, took deep breaths, fastened their clothes, looked at each other, and giggled. And then Ecstasy opened her purse while Ecstasy fixed her hair. Ten dollars and sixty-five cents, I said. The first woman gave me the exact change and said, You got your tip, didn’t you? And she winked at me.
Now, as I get older, I prefer money to watching other people’s flights and pleasures. I would like to amass enough to one day play dead, or clown around on a beach full of ballplayers, divers, and bouncers, a beach of women happily and horizontally suspended under large umbrellas, in strings parting their luscious moons, a bit of sand on both sides of the shore, with topless skies above and the cheers of the waves and the clapping of clams.
Once I picked up a professional clown dressed as a giraffe. He told me he was late for a kids’ show, where by now, we both laughed and assumed, the audience would be filled with sweets and drinks, awaiting the performance. His face came out of the middle of the giraffe’s long neck. He opened the window and stretched the giraffe’s head outside. I drove him fast and he held the animal’s head steady and it stretched above my car roof and towards the sky.
We laughed, but I knew how sad a kept creature could be. A giraffe is a sad thing, I said. Yes, I know, he said, it doesn’t fit into low-ceilinged houses or basements. Always bowing its head, always feeling big and small.
You should live on the roof if your basement is getting too small, I told him. You should eat meat if leaves are scarce. You should be fighting for those kids instead of trying to heal them with balloons and laughter. You’ve wasted your life, and you could have been tall and above everything, I said.
Drive, the giraffe said to me, drive. Look ahead and not at the car’s roof. You are a lousy traveller. All you do is think, talk, and go around and around in circles. You are as poor and as miserable as any of us kept animals. You are a prisoner of your own windows and point of view.
I was raised by clowns, buffoons, comedians, and cannon fodder and they are the saddest creatures I’ve ever met, I said to him.
Don’t forget the sons of freaks like you, he added, and held his head more tightly against the wind. If your father had loved you, you wouldn’t have felt sadness around laughter and the wonder of kids’ joy.
Here, he said, as we arrived, here is your fare and a lollipop, which will keep your mouth shut. He yanked his long neck inside and opened the door and bounced down the sidewalk and towards the house, where a few kids with painted cats’ moustaches and dogs’ ears waited for him to blow balloons and shape them into birds and mice and little kangaroos.
SALLY
THE DRUG DEALER left a message on my phone. The fucker never says anything but Yeah, we are on tonight, same, same, and he hangs up.
I waited for him at eight at the usual place. We drove around and checked on a few dealers of his. He shook and slapped a few hands, and then he wanted to stop at a strip club for some business, as he put it. Wait here, I’ll be back in an hour, he said. Park in the back alley, I’ll tell the bouncer that you’re with me. Just keep cool, I’ll be back.
I waited and watched as the dancing girls arrived. They carried their bags on their shoulders and waited for the bouncer to open the door and let them in. Neither acknowledged the other.
I knew a dancer named Sally once; I used to wait for her every Thursday and drive her home late, after her shift was over. She was smart, well-read, she was studying French literature at the local university, and we hit it off. First we talked about books, because she saw a book lying on the dashboard of my car. I believe I was reading Jean Genet at the time, Our Lady of the Flowers. And when she saw it her eyes brightened. A reader, she said, and smiled.
Sally grabbed the book, flipped through it, and said, Listen, I have nothing against masturbation, but don’t you think the act is a bit overdone in this novel?
What else is there to do when you have a free spirit and you are confined to a small world of jailers and walls? I said. What else is there to do but to summon the world and lament and masturbate beneath your jailer’s nose, and break his keys and his chains?
Sure, I guess, whatever keeps you sane, said Sally. It’s a masterpiece in its lyricism, but it gets suffocating, claustrophobic. I can’t imagine being kept in a cell, I’d die.
And then she asked me about my working hours. I said, I have no particular shift. My hours are flexible. I work here and there for as long as necessary to cover the car rent and the gas, and so that I will be left with a little change.
Are you hungry? she asked.
A little, but I would love to see your bookshelf first, I said. Unless you prefer to see mine.
I have a feeling that your collection would be a bit intense for me tonight. The last thing I need is another image of a metal bar. I danced around one all night. Is pasta okay?
Yes, I said, and we talked about our lives some more. She wanted to be a professor of literature. She’d never believed in loans and debt, so to support herself and pay her tuition, she worked Thursdays as a dancer and a couple of nights a week as an escort. She was strong and had rules: she never kissed her clients on the mouth, she made it clear that they should not touch her neck or her face, and she always made sure they took a shower before her eyes, even if they assured her they’d already had one.
In time we became good friends. And every Thursday I would wait for her in my car. We occasionally slept together. There was friendship between us and no love in the romantic sense; well, at least that was what we agreed upon. She would tell me what had happened that night, her meetings with her clients, like the story about the man dressed as a clown who ejaculated as soon as she came through the door. Once, a friend of her father’s turned out to be the client. She promised not to tell his wife, he promised not to tell her father, and that settled it. But as she was leaving, he stood at the door and tried to touch her face. Listen, she said, I haven’t talked to my father in years. I can afford that, but can you afford your wife’s alimony?
At the end of every month, Sally would take a car with two work colleagues and drive to the south shore, to a meat-packing town where men worked in slaughterhouses for low wages. She and two prostitute friends would rent a couple of rooms in a cheap motel and host these workers, charging less than half the usual price. Charity work, Sally called it, and she explained it as a religious gesture, pointing out that Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute before and after meeting Jesus. Certainly after, she said, and giggled. The girl who’d initiated the project was named Maggie, short for Magdalena, and that is why they called themselves the Magdalena girls and were known by the slaughterhouse workers as the Magdalenas.
Most of these workers, Sally told me, are away from home. They have no one, and they can’t even afford to leave the meat-packing town with the little
money they earn. Some of them are highly educated, some are just poor villagers. All kinds. I even met a doctor once, she said. He was an eastern European. He spoke English with a very strong accent but with eloquence nonetheless. He came to my room; he was very nice, I’d say graceful, in his manners. He came cleaned up, shaved; they all mostly do, they treat it like a date. They take us very seriously, they groom themselves and some even wear cologne; you would never know that they take apart animals and bathe in blood all day. The first time, this doctor brought a bottle of wine and some flowers, and he tuned the radio to a classical music station. He brought out his own condoms, then he washed his palms, his thumbs, and his wrists and he let the water rinse over him while he sang opera, and he walked out of the bathroom with his hands up in the air like a surgeon. He opened the wine and served me. He even brought two glasses. He was gallant.
When he went to the bathroom, I checked his bag. I often check their clothes after they strip and, if they carry a bag, I open it and quickly peek inside it. We take no chances. He had a book in there, and I took it out and saw that he was reading Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk. I laughed, thinking, What is this doctor in the middle of nowhere doing reading Hašek? I keep on meeting these well-read men in all these odd places. Anyway, I didn’t want him to know that I had opened his bag. But I did ask him if he was Czech. At first, he said no. But I was sure that he was. He asked me why I asked. I told him that he reminded me of my uncle. Is your uncle Czech? he asked. Yes, I said, his name was Jaroslav. The doctor was all confused. What was his last name? he asked. Hašek, I said. He laughed and poured me wine, saying, You are one careful woman, and he lifted his glass and we drank. He sang some more opera in German and drank so much that he fell asleep, but I had to take him out of my bed because there were other workers waiting. So I called these two Albanian brothers who come at the end of every month and try to get us girls to have them both at the same time. But we girls have rules and everyone knows them very well. No anal penetration, no more than one man at a time, and of course a compulsory shower . . . I called these two Turks, well, Albanians or whatever. Every time they come, they bring us blocks of olive-oil soap and figs and other sorts of food that their mother sends them; they are funny and harmless, villagers with big, rough hands, loyal and grateful. Anyway, they carried the doctor down the stairs and shoved him into their car and took him away.