by Waguih Ghali
She poured me another cup of tea.
‘It’s nice sitting here talking to you,’ I said. ‘It’s nice and cosy and comfortable and you are so beautiful.’
She smiled.
‘I nearly broke my heart over you in England,’ she said. ‘You have a terrible charm.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Why didn’t I what?’
‘Break your heart.’
‘You are intelligent enough to know I wouldn’t take someone like you seriously.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know,’ and laughed.
‘All this nonsense,’ she said, ‘the three of you.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘The Spanish civil war,’ she remembered our discussions and activities in London. She had lived eight months with us. ‘The bomb, the British elections, the Independent Labour Party, Father Huddleston, the little theatre in the East End …’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Entre nous,’ she said, ‘it suited you. You were very attractive, always elegantly dressed among the polo-necks and duffle coats. I liked the love part, too,’ she said. ‘It was a holiday I enjoyed. But it was a holiday and it ended.’
‘Cliché,’ I said.
‘What is cliché?’
‘A holiday and it ended.’
‘It was also intolerable, cette affaire, for Edna. Don’t think she didn’t notice I often spent the night in your room. Why she put up with …’
‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘when Edna suddenly left England the first time, I began to learn of the terrible pain of love. She did not write or say where she was for a whole year. And when she came back, all she said was that she had gone to Israel and lived for a year in a Kibbutz, she had a British passport in addition to her Egyptian one I discovered; as though that was enough reason to explain not writing for a year. Six months later she was off again, to South Africa this time. She put more money for us in the bank and was off again without telling me where. Just before you came I had asked her to marry me.’
‘And?’
‘And,’ I said, ‘the answer was no. Why then are we lovers? Why don’t you put a stop to this? Because I love you, she says and looks sad.’
‘Don’t you love her any more?’ Didi asked.
I didn’t answer.
‘Many people of your age like to revolt a little,’ Didi said. ‘Many Egyptians too. I find the régime here good.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said, my voice slightly raised.
She looked puzzled for a moment at my pitch.
‘The government is good and fair. If some people like you and Font want to be a bit theatrical – you’ll soon get over it.’
‘Soon get over it? Do you know Bobby Malla? He’s dead. Killed in a concentration camp. Do you know Hakima Mohammed who used to be with you at school and caused a scandal because she married a Copt? Her husband buried her mutilated body last week. She “committed suicide” they told him. Do you know the number of young men, doctors, engineers, lawyers in concentration camps? Or don’t you know that we have concentration camps?’ I shouted. I stood up. ‘You bloody idiot,’ I said, ‘you can sit back and engrave your name on leather for your books while hundreds of decent young people are dying and being imprisoned and you call it “theatrical”. You’re a bitch like all the rest,’ I shouted. ‘You and your bloody education and doctorat. You’re working for a muzzled press, aren’t you? A bloody editor you are; just write what they tell you, don’t you?’
‘Ram! Are you mad to scream so?’
‘Yes, I am mad. Did you or did you not know that “twelve men committed suicide” this week in concentration camps and the prison doctor, glory to him, refused to sign the death certificates? Did you or didn’t you?’ I screamed.
She didn’t answer.
‘Because I posted the pictures and the documents myself to you and all the other editors. Not a word appeared, you cowards and backside lickers, all of you I’ I completely lost control of myself. I had seen the pictures of the distorted faces of the twelve. One of them I had known at the university. A quiet, peaceful boy from Upper Egypt, son of a fellah. He used to live on seven pounds a month he earned working as a cinema usher in the evenings. A scholarly Marxist who had refused to fight against Israel unless Nasser met Ben Gurion for an attempt at a peaceful solution. He went away quietly, his neighbours had told me, and was never heard of again until I saw that picture.
‘Not so loud, Ram.’
I sat down. It had been so nice and peaceful, waking up and drinking tea with her.
‘I’m sorry, Didi. I didn’t mean to be so loud. I’ll go home now.’
‘No. The gardener closes the gate at night and I don’t want him to see you leave my room so late.’
‘Still, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Only a moment ago I was thinking everyone on earth should be like you.’
She stood up and ruffled my hair with her hand. ‘You are a child, Ram. But I like you.’ Then she sat on my lap and put one arm round my neck.
‘Kiss me like you used to.’
She smiled and I kissed the dimples on either side of her cheeks.
‘Nobody,’ she whispered, ‘has touched me since you did in London.’ She had been a virgin.
‘What is it, Ram?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You suddenly laughed.’
‘I was dreaming.’ She rubbed her cheek against my chest then covered my body with hers. I felt the weight of her, relaxed and cool. I passed my hands up and down from the nape of her neck to the small of her back.
‘You are damp,’ I told her.
‘I’ve had a bath.’
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to be fresh and cool for you when you woke. Do you like my bedroom?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And me?’
‘And you too,’ I whispered. ‘You are very beautiful.’
‘Hold me tight and say beautiful things to me.’ Her heart uttered quick little beats and her breasts stiffened against me.
There comes a moment, after that, when man’s passion has suddenly been completely vented, and all that remains is a detached, aloof, perhaps rather smug omnipotence. And if the man is not really in love with the woman, she is at a terrible disadvantage. He has a sudden lingering ascendancy over someone who a little while ago was his equal.
Although Didi is very sophisticated and frequents sophisticated circles, this part of her life, this essence, has to be unfulfilled unless she is married. It was nearly by force I took her, that first time in London. Now she lay in bed, her serenity ruffled, and a naïve, helpless expression on her face.
‘I am in love with you,’ she said.
And this omnipotence a man feels usually makes him cruel. Smug, as I said. And the crueller he is, the more helpless and defeated is his companion.
‘First,’ I said, ‘you should never tell a man you love him in this way. It makes him cruel. Second, if you had the courage to give yourself to someone else, you would also fall in love with him.’
‘No,’ she said.
‘My Aunt Noumi,’ I told her, ‘is arranging a match between you and my cousin Mounir.’
She shook her head.
I turned over and lay face downwards, putting my head under the pillow.
‘Or,’ I said, ‘if you don’t like Mounir, you might as well marry me.’
She ran her hand up and down my shoulders and back.
‘Don’t make fun of me, Ram.’
‘I am very serious.’ I turned round and faced her. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘But…’
‘But what?’
‘But… but…’
‘But but but but,’ I mimicked. ‘If you love someone, you marry him.’
‘But …’
‘But,’ I repeated.
‘But …’
‘But,’ I said and laughed.
‘But, Ram, you have no job, no money.’
‘That’s right; that’s why you’ll ge
t married to Mounir.’
‘Besides …’
‘Besides nothing. Mounir has a set of books he bought in America about love-making. I saw them; with figures and positions. One chapter is entitled “The Perfect Five Minutes”. The designs are drawn on a background of a clock with a second’s hand. For the first four minutes he “arouses” you, and for another full minute he benefits from his “arousation”, if there is such a word. Besides, you can always shove a cushion in your place if you’re not inclined. It will remind him of his days of training. He has shown me the books: “You sure pick up some information there, boy.”’
‘And Edna,’ Didi asked.
‘I am finished with Edna,’ I said.
‘Besides…’
‘What, another besides?’
‘Be serious. How did you get all this literature and pictures of the concentration camps?’
‘A hobby of mine,’ I said.
‘Through Font?’
‘Font? Font. Can you see these things in Font’s hand? He’d have rushed in the street and given a copy to everyone he saw; and before they even shot him, he’d have gone mad. No,’ I said, ‘leave Font in his snooker heaven out of harm’s way.’
‘Do you belong to the Communist Party?’
‘There is no such thing, I tell you. Together with the liberals, social democrats, pacifists and idealists; they’re on the shores of the Red Sea. We have a lot of Ex-SS Germans here who know what to do with such people.’
‘Say the truth, Ram.’
‘I tell you, it’s only a hobby of mine. You know me better than to think I’d sacrifice my comfort or life for anything.’
‘But you don’t love me, Ram. Why did you want to marry me?’
I pulled her against me and kissed her. ‘I shall love you,’ I said. ‘There were times in London I was madly in love with you. You are terribly beautiful. I want to live with you in a beautiful house with lots of books bound in leather. To take you out each evening to the poshest places. To go for drives in the desert in our car. To caress you and make love to you every night. To buy you the most beautiful clothes, jewels, perfumes in existence …’ and I involuntarily laughed – this tic of mine of suddenly laughing – ‘with your own money of course. Because you are very rich.’
‘So you are joking.’
‘No. I’d have been joking if I hadn’t mentioned you are rich. You don’t think I’d have asked you to marry me if you were poor? How could we have lived? Precisely because you are rich, I am serious.’ I held her closer and when she began to speak again, I covered her mouth with mine. We lay in silence for a while, until I felt passion stirring within me again. ‘I want you to endow our house with serenity,’ I said. ‘With serenity and peacefulness. To go about the house humming tunes, both of us.’
‘I have always been in love with you,’ she said.
‘It’s me Didi is marrying,’ I told my mother, ‘not Mounir.’
‘C’est le comble,’ my mother started.’ Ca c’est le comble …’
‘Didi and I are going to get married,’ I repeated.
‘You are joking. Ce n’est pas possible.’
‘I am not joking’. I said. ‘Unless you want me to give her up for Mounir.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘It is true. We got engaged in London,’ I lied.
‘But what will your aunt say?’
‘I’ll tell you when I see her this afternoon.’
‘Where?’
‘Didi is going with them to Kirka. I am meeting them there.’
‘But she has arranged everything.’
‘What?’
‘The new villa in Heliopolis for them, and Nackla Pasha was delighted …’
‘What about Didi?’ I asked.
‘She gave no definite answer. I swear she never said she was engaged to you or to anyone else; all she said was that she would think about it… et nous avons tous crus …’
‘Or don’t you want your son to marry Didi?’ I said. ‘This charming person … this millionairess? Of course I shall not marry against your wishes.’
The situation was too much for her. She took her handkerchief out and started rubbing her eyes.
‘Buy her an expensive present,’ she said after a while. ‘Let them send the bill here and not to your aunt.’
‘La Edna’ was anyhow much too old for me, she added.
This shop. You enter it and the croquet lawn at the club comes to mind. It’s the sort of shop which has a mile-long window with nothing in it but a black beret and a rose.
Gaston was walking in the entrance hall with his hands behind his back. Gaston is maitre de ceremonie in that shop. He is one of the people called Gaston but who are a bit Maltese, a bit Italian, some Greek and probably something East European. He came towards me.
‘Bonjour, bonjour, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘The family is upstairs. May I congratulate you on the engagement of your cousin?’
‘You may,’ I said. Gaston, as I said, is a mixture of many races, but he and his parents were born in Egypt. Yet he doesn’t speak a word of Arabic. This shop is going to be ‘nationalized’. I put nationalized in inverted commas because I don’t think it has any economic significance here, except to enrich the army somewhat. But this business of nationalization will be significant as far as Gaston is concerned, because he will have to stop using about the only Arabic word he knows, which is ‘go away’, and which he has been allowed to use all his life to ninety-five per cent of the Egyptian population. I remember when the Suez Canal was nationalized and a lot of share-owners and blimps were furious. It is a very good thing this canal was nationalized, particularly to those who knew the French club in Port Fouad and saw the French having cushy jobs and being arrogant to everyone. (A British blimp is very often a figure of fun and his entourage of horsy young women and nasal, public-school nincompoops doesn’t look so bad when you compare it to a crowd of French middle-class bourgeois.) This Suez Canal Company was a heaven for the very worst type of French string-pulling good-for-nothings. They sat in the club doing nothing all day long, and once Font and I parked a car in front of that club – a battered old car we had used for a Suez expedition, from which we had thrown some inefficient bombs at the British army camp. We stopped the car in front of that French club and went in for a drink of whisky.
‘Psssst … vous là bas,’ a Frenchman shouted and pointed to the exit.
‘Allez vous faire foutre,’ Font said. We went to the bar and ordered a whisky.
‘No,’ said the barman. Suddenly about five Frenchmen popped up with sticks – they actually drove us out with sticks, big, fat, wooden sticks. But that was not all. While we were having a fight outside on the balcony, another group of Frenchmen bodily removed our small Fiat and threw it on the beach. When the police came, it was us they took away. I tell you, when that canal was nationalized, Font and I could have kissed the Colonel’s feet in admiration.
But back to the shop. Gaston led me to the lift and spared me climbing about eight steps. This shop. People go to it as a sort of apéritif; I mean they don’t go there to buy anything, or because they need something or other: no. They have a coffee with the director, and they talk about Paris and Rome and New York, and then they remember Budapest in the old days and wonder what happened to La Comtesse Ozbensky … what a delightful creature, that Nina! And Luigi, the director, tells them ‘c’était une reine …’ and they all shake their heads sadly: what is happening in the world, they ask. Finally they remember that even with them things are not quite the same. It’s increasingly difficult to travel, Luigi, and even then, with all the worry about making arrangements for adequate money to be waiting for them there … it’s not only Budapest and Prague, mon cher, and they all nod knowingly. Then Sousou tells them about Tata who is very ‘debrouillarde, ma chère’, and officially sends seventy pounds a month to an imaginary student-son in Switzerland … with this she has enough money for a few weeks in Lausanne each year. Luigi laughs at this, then puts
his finger in front of his mouth and tells them to be careful … one never knows. Finally he suddenly remembers something. ‘Have I told you?’ he asks. ‘I have four new Diors I haven’t yet opened.’ – ‘Pas possible! Do show us, Luigi, ne sois pas médiant.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ he tells them; ‘but not today.’ ‘Ouf, Luigi, ne sois pas antipathique … we’re only going to have a look at them.’ Then they fight over the dresses amongst themselves; and when Luigi shows them the new shoes he has received from Italy, they furnish their entire family with shoes from Italy to last them five years. An hour or so later, Luigi is giving orders to pack the three or four thousand pounds’ worth of stuff he has just sold. Then he rings up Madame Abdulla – better known as Fifi. ‘Have I told you,’ he says, ‘about the things I have just received from Vienna?’
I went out of the lift and stood with my hand in my pocket. I looked round and then saw my aunt. She was holding court.
I know this court business well. Now and then she has all the family to spend the day at her villa. All of us, rich, poor, and genuinely poor; priests, clerks, poor girls saving for their dowry, second and third cousins, great aunts and uncles.
‘Now, Samia,’ she will start, ‘I want you to get married to Fathy. Do you hear, Fathy?’
‘Yes, my aunt.’
‘Next month or so. I don’t want any more nonsense now. Age makes no difference. He has a good job and that’s all that matters.’ This Fathy would be about twenty-five years older than the miserable girl.
‘Yes, my aunt.’ Then she will give Samia a dozen of Mounir’s silk shirts and tell her to embroider Mounir’s initials as recompense for having forced her to marry repulsive-looking Fathy.
‘Yes, my aunt … thank you my aunt, thank you.’
‘Aziz, you are to stick to that job you have. If I hear once more that you arrive late or smell of alcohol, you shall never enter this house again. Do you hear?’
‘Yes, my aunt.’
‘Now look here, Amin. The church is in a filthy state, you must increase the price of the Holy Bread; I am not a one-woman charitable organization to pay for everything. If you don’t increase the price of the bread, I shall talk to the Patriarch. That’s final. Another thing; place two or three ten-piastres notes in the offering-plate before passing it round.’