The Dark Side of Love

by Rafik Schami

  “But if I give you my hand it’s worth more than an agreement with the National Bank of France,” he said quietly, and very courteously.

  “The Mushtaks keep their word,” agreed Lucia, standing up. Ten minutes later she came back with a packet. “You can count them. There’s a hundred and ten thousand there. The extra ten thousand are a present; even if you’re just renting a place to live you should furnish it in style, because a confectioner lives by his reputation for prosperity. You’ll bring me five hundred lira in interest on the first of every month.”

  Elias was touched, and also full of admiration for his mother-in-law, who was so trusting and generous to him, while at the same time surreptitiously raising the interest by half of one percent. He smiled, and she understood without words that her son-in-law had already worked it all out to the third decimal point. Lucia patted him on the shoulder and said, as he left, “No bank will accept your love for my daughter as surety for a mortgage, you know.”

  Elias did not reply. Only on their way home did he tell Claire what had been going on in her mother’s kitchen while she was reading in the drawing room.

  “And she let you have the hundred thousand?”

  “A hundred and ten, and now I’m setting to work on my plan,” replied Elias.

  Autumn of the year 1938 was mild and long. Damascus is at its most beautiful in that season. It wasn’t so hot now, and the swallows were filling the air with their farewell songs before they left for Africa. Damascus was colourful for the last time, as if the city were showing its full beauty once more before falling into profound, grey hibernation. Claire had known that atmosphere from her childhood. But this autumn, she believed, would remain in her memory as the best of her life. Her father was freed from prison after serving three years.

  57. An Unholy Alliance

  To his dying day, Musa Salibi didn’t believe it had been his fault. And after a long period suffering from Parkinson’s disease he died, an embittered old man, in a hostel for indigent Christian senior citizens.

  When Rimon Rasmalo defeated him in the ring, he had spent two weeks trying to make his peace with his fiancée, but he thought he could tell that Claire already had someone else.

  Then she went off to Mala, and he followed her in the general’s car. On the way he went over everything, preparing for a reasonable conversation. But when he reached the village no one would talk to him, and Claire had changed entirely. She turned him away as soon as he arrived. You have to be patient with women, he told himself, and kept calm. Then she threw the little box containing the engagement ring out of the door. He was bewildered. She was acting outrageously, and someone in love never does that. To Musa, it was immediately clear that she was just a whore.

  He found her mother as cold as ice too. When he tried getting her to explain herself, she said straight out that she had never liked him. He could always visit his friend in jail and complain to him, she added. Musa took his engagement ring and drove back to Damascus that very evening.

  He had been tricked. Mother and daughter, both of them whores! And the malice in that old viper’s voice when she told him Claire was in very good hands, so he had better look for a girl of his own class. Just whose hands was Claire in? The woman he had thought of as his future mother-in-law wouldn’t say. She simply shut the door in his face.

  For a long time he couldn’t make out why they had treated him so shabbily, until it came to his ears six months later that Claire had eloped with the son of a rich farmer from Mala. Musa was seething with rage. Eloped – a likely story! The old procuress had fixed it all. He could forget a good deal, but not hypocrisy. Claire always used to say she found the primitive peasants in the village repulsive. Lies, all of it! Camouflage! He had just been used to inflame the desire of other, richer men who took special pleasure in robbing the poor of their women. Musa swore revenge, but until the day when a man came to the boxing club in the summer of 1938 and asked for him he didn’t know how to go about it.

  Elias had just bought an old olive warehouse in the Christian quarter, in Bab Tuma Street on the corner of Bakri Alley, and in the record time of three weeks he turned it into a modern confectioner’s shop with a glass and marble façade. Many rich Christians lived nearby, and the nearest good confectioner’s shop belonged to an Armenian, was tiny, and lay in Bab Sharki.

  Elias was hoping to be reconciled with his father soon. Claire was in her third pregnancy, and this time he felt sure that, in the safe surroundings of her own city, she would bring a healthy baby into the world. The baby would soften up that old fossil George Mushtak. Nothing in the world touches a man’s heart like a grandchild, he told himself.

  The opening of his shop at the beginning of September augured well. People crowded in to try the new sweetmeats, and Elias sold his entire stock that day, down to the very last item. Every customer went away with a present: a china plate with a coloured print of the shop on it. This cheap plate, which cost only a couple of piastres, made the new confectioner famous in a day. It was the first advertising campaign in Damascus. Elias had followed the example of his master Gandur, who always brought the latest ideas home from Paris.

  Claire’s belly was rounding out, and she and Elias were glad that August had passed without any mishap, in spite of the heat. In her first pregnancy she had lost the child after two months, in the second one after three months.

  One evening Nuri the flower seller came into the confectioner’s shop. He was drunk as usual, but he seemed to have something he was bent on saying. He stood at the counter and waited for the last customers to leave.

  “Guess who came asking after you! It’s a small world,” he said, laughing. “My old school friend Musa,” he continued, holding on to the edge of the counter. His gaze strayed around uncertainly for a moment, as if he couldn’t make up his mind what he was looking for. Then it fell on Elias, who wasn’t really interested in his neighbour’s babbling, but like everyone else had to put up with him.

  “Musa who?” asked Elias out of politeness.

  “Musa who? I know only one Musa – Musa Salibi.”

  Elias stopped what he was doing. He had been sorting out the day’s takings; now his hand froze with the lira notes in it.

  Nuri noticed nothing amiss. “I said to him, why are you asking me where he lives? Ask him yourself, I said. He’s a nice guy, I’m sure he’ll answer your questions. But he didn’t want to. Where do you live, anyway? I didn’t know what to tell him. He wanted to know what time you come here and what time you go home. ‘He works from six to six,’ I said. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” replied Elias. His throat was dry. He watched Nuri weave his unsteady way back to his flower shop. Almost mechanically, Elias cleared out the till and entered the day’s accounts in an exercise book. He listed next day’s tasks and orders on a piece of paper, to leave his memory free for more important things. It was a trick he had learned from the Jesuits. He locked the safe and put his keys in his pocket.

  Suppose this boxer, whom he had never met but who, according to Claire, was a muscle-man almost two metres tall, humiliated him here in the middle of the Christian quarter? Suppose he came into the shop, picked a quarrel, and demolished the expensive furnishings? The three crystal chandeliers alone had cost a fortune. And his customers? What would his frightened customers think of the new confectioner?

  He was still deep in thought when Ali, who ran errands for him, came out of the stock-room and said good night.

  “Wait a moment,” he cried, for the sight of big, strong Ali had given him an idea.

  Ali was a young farmer whose small plot of land stopped producing anything but dust and thistles in the long drought. He had come to Damascus to look for work. Ali was a bachelor, and his arms were incredibly strong. That was why Elias had hired him. He had found him a small, cheap room near the shop, and kept a fatherly eye on the young man.

  “I want you to help me,” said Elias. “There’s a man who bears me a grudge an
d wants to attack me, I don’t know why. But he’s two metres tall and a boxer. Could you take him on if the worst comes to the worst?” And he offered the young man a fine Bafra cigarette.

  “I don’t know how to box, sir, but I was always best in the village at cudgel-fighting. Give me a good stout stick for a cudgel and no one will touch you. A lot of men carry walking sticks these days. A good oak stick would be best,” said the young man, his eyes shining.

  “But what will we do if he comes into the shop?” asked Elias.

  Ali had no answer to that.

  “Right,” said Elias, “from tomorrow you’ll wear a clean white coat and a white cap, and stand out in front at the entrance to help me. You’ll welcome the customers in and help the old folk. Then it will look as if you’re there as a doorman. And if someone tries making trouble, you take him out quickly and quietly, and once you’re well outside you can break all his bones.”

  “That’s fine,” said Ali, “but who’s going to do my work in the stock-room?”

  “Don’t worry about that. From now on you’re my bodyguard. I can hire someone else for the stock-room work until this cloud has passed over.”

  “But what after that? Do I get my old job back, or will I have to go home?” asked Ali uncertainly.

  “If you do your work well you can stay with me for ever.”

  “Then I won’t let a fly touch you,” said Ali.

  At six in the morning from then on, Ali was outside the building where Elias and Claire lived. It had a big wooden door and a handsome knocker, a woman’s hand made of bronze. For now, Elias had rented three rooms on the second floor. The building was very close to the St. Louis Hospital. Ali accompanied his employer to the confectioner’s shop in the morning and saw him safely home again in the evening.

  He was reliable and didn’t let his master out of his sight. He never grumbled, and he did his job at the shop door with as much charm as if he’d taken at least three courses in etiquette in the finishing school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The customers thanked him for his help and kind attentions, and Elias began seriously wondering whether he might not employ a permanent doorman. Not Ali, but an attractive little boy, dressed like a hotel bellboy, to stand at the door for him. He wouldn’t even have to pay a boy wages, for he had noticed the richer customers pressing a couple of piastres into Ali’s hand now and then. Usually the tips in his pocket amounted to more than his day’s wages by evening.

  One evening, on the way home, it occurred to Elias to buy his helpful bodyguard a meal. He could sit with Ali as he ate, read the paper, and drink a coffee in peace before going home himself. The idea came to him suddenly, just as they were passing the entrance of the big Glass Palace restaurant, halfway between the confectioner’s shop and his apartment. Elias stopped suddenly and took Ali’s arm.

  “Come on in here,” he said. At that moment a shot rang out. It smashed the glass window and hit a waiter inside the restaurant in the shoulder. Passers by and guests screamed in terror. Elias sprang nimbly through the open doorway into the restaurant and pulled Ali in after him, for the shot had been fired from the building opposite.

  A second shot hit a woman walking by in the leg. She collapsed. Chaos ensued. A young police officer raced out of the restaurant with his pistol at the ready. He located the marksman.

  “He’s in the Hotel Baladi,” he called. Three men followed him, while passers by tended the injured woman and the waiter. There was a large police station quite close, so the hotel was quickly surrounded.

  The would-be assassin was led out of the building, handcuffed and bleeding from the head. Several people recognized him. Word went from mouth to mouth. “Musa Salibi, that’s Musa Salibi.”

  “You saved my life,” Ali told his master.

  “The hand of God protected us both. And now let’s have something to eat,” added Elias, propelling his pale employee into the restaurant. “You can sleep late tomorrow and take the whole day off. I’ll give Hassan notice and you can go back to the old job,” he told him.

  “Why?” asked the naïve Ali.

  “Because they’ve caught the man who was after me,” replied Elias. When Claire heard what had happened she immediately felt a stabbing pain in her belly. Elias made her some herb tea, but the pains became unbearable during the night. Elias ran out in his pyjamas, woke a cab driver and came back with him to the door of the building, where his pregnant wife was standing with a woman neighbour now supporting her. The hospital was only a few doors away, but Elias didn’t want Claire to strain herself.

  The doctors did their best, but they soon discovered that at best they would save the mother, for the baby was already dead, and they induced a stillbirth.

  Elias sat on the steps of the hospital for a long time in his pyjamas, weeping, until the cabby politely asked if he was to wait any longer. Elias sent him away, asking him to come to the confectioner’s shop next day, when he would be paid his fare. The cabby knew the confectioner. He pressed his hand. “My wife’s lost six children too, only God knows why,” he said, much moved, and trotted off to his cab.

  Three days later a CID officer came to the confectioner’s shop and asked Elias to accompany him to the police station. A young French officer received him there and civilly questioned him. The officer was enchanted by the confectioner’s command of his own language, and kept saying that Elias spoke better French than many a Frenchman born.

  Asked about the incident, and whether he would give evidence as a witness, Elias told the officer what he had heard from the flower seller, and said that after that he had always gone out with his employee to escort him.

  “That bears out exactly what the criminal said,” the officer told him. “He was planning to abduct you, monsieur, torture you, and then kill you, but he saw that he wouldn’t easily be able to outwit and overcome your companion. So he decided to shoot you, and he wounded two other people instead.”

  “And he has brought an innocent child to its death,” added Elias bitterly.

  “Can you tell me why he did it?” asked the officer, who could make nothing of Elias’s remark about the dead child.

  “I think it was jealousy because his former fiancée left him, good for nothing as he was. She’s my wife now,” replied Elias, with a certain pride.

  “Yes, monsieur, but there’s something else too. He said a man with a heavy accent gave him the job to do, provided his German rifle, and paid him five gold lira. He was to have had another twenty gold lira after your murder. Can you think who that man might be? And above all, why anyone would want to murder a decent, able confectioner like yourself? But the assassin may be lying, and there could be something else behind it. We haven’t been able to find out by our usual methods of questioning. Would you like to ask him yourself?”

  “Yes,” said Elias. His throat felt dry.

  When the policeman brought in Musa Salibi, Elias was horrified. The “methods” of the French police had made a formerly tall, proud man into a broken, subservient creature. The marks of torture were obvious.

  “Sir, I don’t know who the man was,” stammered the prisoner, “but I’ve said it a hundred times: I only met him twice, and after that I never saw him again. He was tall and he wore sunglasses. Once they slipped a little, and I saw that he had blue eyes like the French, maybe he was a Frenchman … that’s all I know. He, he … but I said it all in my statement. The devil possessed me, and now I’m left paying for it.”

  “How did the man speak?” asked Elias.

  “He spoke … well, it was just the way he spoke, but not like a Damascene. He spoke with an accent like … like the mountain folk. Like the people of Mala.”

  Musa Salibi fell silent. He was shaking all over.

  “Could it be someone from your village?” the officer asked Elias.

  “Do you know anyone who wanted to kill you for some reason?”

  “No,” he said, looking at the miserable specimen of humanity before him, a man who had once been
such a heart-throb. He rose to his feet. “Do you need me any longer?” he asked the officer.

  “No, monsieur, thank you very much,” the man replied, and he accompanied Elias to the door while the two police officers took Musa back to his cell.

  “The confectioner was lying,” said the young Frenchman later to the man who had been taking down the statement. “Did you see him twitch briefly when the gunman said the man who commissioned him to do the job spoke with the accent of his native village?”

  The other policeman nodded. “What shall I add?

  “Nothing. Sounds like a blood feud, some kind of clan vengeance, and that’s none of our business. We have our criminal, and he’ll get the maximum sentence.”

  A week later Elias sent a Jesuit priest who was a friend of his to Mala, entrusting to him the delicate task of finding his father and letting him know, straight out, that Elias had survived the murder attempt, and moreover had proof that his brother Salman had given the criminal Musa Salibi the gun and charged him with his father’s mission. He, Elias, wanted an apology and his father’s word that he would never plot against his son’s life again; otherwise he would go to the CID and give them his evidence against Salman. Under the law of the French occupying forces, the penalty for incitement to murder was death and expropriation of all the guilty man’s property. If anything were to happen to Elias, the message said, someone he trusted would take the envelope containing his evidence to the CID.

  Father François Saleri was a brave man. He had stayed on in Damascus after the fire in the monastery, and was now teaching mathematics in the schools of the elite Christian classes. He loved Elias like a brother, and was horrified when he heard the story.

  He left at once in the luxurious cab provided by his friend, and he did in fact come back to Damascus next day with an apology from Elias’s brother and his father’s word, sworn with his hand on the Bible.