8 Great Hebrew Short Novels

by Неизвестный

  Chapter nine

  Autumn and winter passed, and the summer and autumn after these, and nothing happened to give Nimmer even a gleam of hope.

  He continued living his life of waste and idleness, given over entirely to intoxication, revelry, and oblivion. Each day was like the day before, each night like the nights preceding it. The coffeehouses and the singing were his entire world, hashish and cards his joy and vision. Accustomed as he was by nature to being considered a leader always surrounded by a circle of admirers who went with him everywhere he went and hung on to his every word, here too he behaved magnanimously, surrounding himself with sycophants of all kinds whose tongues were milk and honey in their flattery; through these he made the acquaintance of the songstresses, and met secretly as well as in the open with the beautiful Khasibah, the nightingale of the East, the rising crescent of song. With these Egyptians and with his Nablusite friends he spent his days and evenings in games and pleasure, and his nights in the intoxication of hashish. At the last watch of the night he would totter home, stumbling and tripping at every step, or, as happened most often, supported by Abd El-Kadir, who dragged him along against his will while appeasing and calming him and trying to coax him to stop his shouting and cursing and wild behavior, because of which they had just been thrown out of the pleasure house by the policemen patrolling the city, to be shamed and scorned by believers.

  Living this way, he wasted the remains of his property. The money he had soon dwindled and seeped through his fingers; want and poverty began knocking on his door, showing him their terrifying faces. The proceeds from his house and other possessions, which his relatives had sold for him the year before, were already gone, and the other remnants of his properties were quickly decreasing. He was coming to the end of the last money that had been sent him, and for some weeks now his relatives had been unable to raise more money and had even stopped replying to his letters. His Egyptian friends were quick to sense the change that was soon to befall him, and were the first to turn their backs on him and to begin to avoid him.

  Nimmer was the only one who did not sense the need to find out how things stood with him. He had no desire to examine the changes occurring around him. With a bitter stubbornness that distorts the reason he continued acting as he had till now, increased his rash spending, and tried to keep the worries, which gnawed at him from being seen by those who surrounded him. The only thing he did to extricate himself from his situation was this: during the few hours when he was sober he would draw up a mental list of all those who owed him something, recalling dubious loans made a long time ago. He would grasp at these as a drowning man at a straw, rejoicing as if he had discovered a treasure. In his mind he wrote them threatening letters, firmly demanding what was due to him. In his tiredness and laziness he postponed the writing of these letters to another time. Then, under the influence of hashish, which confuses illusion and reality, it seemed to him that he had already sent them off to his debtors, and he waited impatiently for the replies with the assurance of a child.

  But finally the days came when poverty became his daily lot. His mind froze at the thought of the day when his money would be entirely gone, and he would be forced to forego the heavenly drug, which had become the life and soul of his spirit. Just the thought of this would set his whole body trembling like the papyrus reed in the hot east wind; a cold sweat would moisten its neck and drip down his tingling back. In dread of this horrible possibility he became lost and hopeless, and like a man standing before the gaping jaws of a terrible beast, he decided to sacrifice everything in order to extricate himself from this situation.

  It was then that Nimmer suddenly changed his whole attitude. He put aside his stubborn rebelliousness and reconciled himself to the inevitable—to go and look for work. Having seen that most of the exiles from his town earned their livelihood by selling Nablus soap in the streets, he decided to grasp at this last hope and to try his hand at it.

  Abd El-Kadir was astonished when Nimmer told him of his decision and asked for his help. Nimmer’s face, in this, his first admission of his plight to someone else, wore an expression of indescribable weakness and despair. He looked like a man who no longer cared what people thought of him or what would become of him.

  The next morning Abd El-Kadir accompanied him to the warehouses of the soap agents, where Nimmer discussed arrangements with the officials and bought several sacks of soap, a pair of scales, and some baskets.

  The men in the warehouses apparently knew Nimmer, for they received him with wonder and pity, and gazed at him questioningly. As he walked out the door bent under his load as if carrying the burden of agonies on his back, they accompanied him with sympathy in their eyes. Nimmer knew what they were thinking, through that heightened power of observation that is the possession of those who have settled their accounts with the present and in whose souls there is a bitterness unto death.

  In a dark and gloomy mood Nimmer carried his merchandise to his room, dropped onto his mat, and hastened to cross the border into intoxication and oblivion while it was still day.

  The next day, as soon as he awoke sober, he leapt up decisively from his mat. He quickly took off his silk caftan and donned the blue robe worn by all vendors. Outwardly calm, he picked up his baskets and scales and weights, slung them over his back, and with quick rough strides and lowered eyes he crossed his street and headed for the Old City of Cairo.

  He lasted as a vendor for several days. His efforts, his stubbornness, and his struggle against his weak will during this brief period were like the flame of a lamp in which there is no more oil, glimmering and lighting up before it finally goes out. Very soon he grew weary and impatient with his work, doing it as if compelled by a demon.

  In the mornings, before the heat of the day, he had no sooner loaded his heavy basket on his aching and burning back and crossed a number of streets, shouting his wares, than he began to lose breath and feel weak. The sweat started to burst like water from all his pores, wetting his blue robe and making it stick to his skin, inflaming his face and burning his eyes. His legs were suddenly as weak and soft as rags, and he felt as if his bones were folding up with every step he took. His arms trembled under the heavy weight he was carrying, and as the trembling increased the basket would slip off his shoulders, even though he held on to it with all his might.

  Sticking to his decision to succeed in this enterprise and not to stop selling until he had made enough for his day’s needs, he would drag his burden on with the remains of his strength, stopping for breath at every step. But after several moments his stubborn will would evaporate. Hesitant and bewildered, like a man caught out in a crime, he would look around for a shady place in which to drop his goods and himself. When he found a cool dark coffeehouse from which came the sound of the little wooden discs pounding fiercely and joyfully on the backgammon boards he quite forgot his wares and the purpose for which he had come out. With his neck thrust forward like a camel when it scents water he would rush to the doorway of the coffeehouse, and with the motions of a prisoner liberated from his chains he would unencumber himself of his load, push it aside with his foot, and drop helplessly into the concavity of the stool.’

  For a long time he would sit there like a silent statue, his dull eyes fixed on the lifeless bodies circling to and fro on the board according to the blind and mysterious luck contained in the fall of the black numbers inscribed on the bone dice. In this game he saw his vision of everything, of the world and of himself, of the things that had happened and that were about to happen to him. In the combinations of numbers, which depended on chance, which defeated all reason and always at the last moment confounded all certainties, he thought he saw the iron hand of fate that suddenly descended upon a man at the height of his fortune, thrusting its fingernails into his neck to defeat him. In the desperate plight of the lone disc caught in territory not its own, where all others blocked it and injured it, he saw the adventures of the exile torn from his homeland, his wanderings and his ho
peless efforts to extricate himself from the circle of traps surrounding him on all sides, while in the total siege which led inevitably to a final departure from the field he saw the last surrender to the invisible forces from which there is no escape.

  In this way the best hours for selling passed in idleness. Those playing when he sat down had already finished, other players had taken their places, and also gone, and Nimmer still sat absorbed in the depths of his visions. He stared into space without seeing a thing, dazed and stupefied by the incessant knocking of the wooden discs which still continued their circuits in his head, like a miller’s horse circling around the wheel, stamping its hoofs and turning around itself even in its sleep.

  When he finally decided to get up and leave the day was already over. The light of the sun, white as chalk when he had come in, was orange when he left, and on the horizon the sky burned like beaten sheets of blazing tin. On these summer evenings people walked around like powerless shadows, weakened by the hard struggle against the heat of the day; the Europeans drove their pale and tortured ladies, who looked as though they had withered in the hard climate of this land of heat, in carriages and motor cars. The streets were crowded with people streaming to the banks of the Nile in search of some air and moisture to refresh their spirits. Through and among them rolled a long line of carriages and cars with no spaces between them. Haughtily reclining in them were the wealthy elite of the land, pashas and their deputies, beside their wives who wore veils up to their noses. Beneath their foreheads, which were white as alabaster or brown as bronze, their eyes blazed with fire at one moment and closed under indolent heavily lashed eyelids the next. Down the long avenues lined with tall palms standing still as if bewitched, this reveling Babel moved and hustled in a single direction, carrying with it the variegated masses of Cairo —Syrians, Negroes, Copts, Armenians, and Greeks. A vast mixture of strange races and costumes.

  All these throngs of people had come out to greet the evening breeze before the coming of night, with its hot air that was as heavy as lead. In an ever-growing babble of noise they walked among the rows of thick date palms and the eye-entrancing plots of lawn beside the river bank, where a number of orchestras, Arab and European, played a confusion of gay and boisterous tunes and heartbreaking melancholy Oriental melodies full of longing and emotion. In the intervals they would gaze with weary eyes at the streams of tepid water and at the distant horizon stretching like a sorry strip of silver over white sands, from where they hoped would come the caress of a breeze which might ease their breathing and bring them some relief.

  And Nimmer, trying to silence the roar sawing through his brain like an insistent cricket, ran this way and that with his soap, simple laundry soap, among all these pleasure seekers, whose only object was entertainment and revelry and who had no time or interest in everyday needs. Inexperienced in his trade he would mix with all the other hawkers and vendors of confections and cold drinks, who were shouting their wares in deafening cries. With them he would silently press among the groups of strolling people and fearfully offer his wares, almost as if they were stolen goods. Each time he offered his soap he would feel offended and insulted deep inside his soul, both by the angry gestures of refusal with which some of those he approached responded to him, and by the way others turned their heads away and ignored him. Bewildered and agitated, the film of tears in his eyes blurring his vision, he would hurry away, making detours and then running straight ahead as if rushing to a particular place without looking to the sides. Covered with sweat and dust, dizzy and stumbling, he made his weary way as hastily as he could through desolate quarters and suburbs, to arrive at his room at dark, breathing heavily and groaning like an ox that has pulled the plow all day through rocky ground and, its yoke and harness removed, falls to the ground with trembling limbs.

  For about a month Nimmer repeated his depressing and shameful attempts, with less success each day. In this short time he slipped from bad to worse. This backbreaking physical work, for which he had never been trained, completely exhausted his strength, irritated his weak and angry nerves, and did not bring in its wake that pleasant tiredness which leads to tranquility of soul and the sweet sleep of the laborer. The contrary was the case: even when his tiredness wore off, his mind kept foreseeing evil and bitter things ahead. Things went so far that the slightest noise would fill him with fear and horror, increasing the ache that pressed permanently around his head like an iron ring.

  At nights, even though all his limbs and muscles were as heavy as lead, he was unable to close his eyes without doubling his dose of hashish. One night his Nablusite friends found him lying unmoving on his mat, his legs spread out, his caftan off and rolled up under him, his hairy chest bare, and his eyes wide open and staring at the rusty tin lamp hanging on the wall above his feet, gazing at it without any other sign of life. His lower jaw was shriveled and contorted like a dead man’s.

  After a number of weeks Nimmer suddenly realized that he was ill. When he woke up and tried to get to his feet, the floor started moving and the walls danced around him; even the mat began to move horizontally, rising into the air until it almost reached his face, and then sinking slowly with circular movements. For half a minute or so Nimmer stood where he was, amazed at what was happening, his arms reaching for the collapsing wall to stop it from falling. Then he started shivering; a tremor of weakness passed down the length of his spine, and continued to his knees and then his ankles. Fear came then, and total powerlessness, and he fell to the floor with a stifled scream of dread that burst through his gritted teeth and quivering lips.

  When he regained consciousness, the terrible dread of death that had frozen the blood in his veins had still not left him. He did not dare remain alone in his room. Strange visions of horror rose in his imagination. A sudden thought flashed through his mind: perhaps he was fatally ill, and was about to die. Then a bout of shuddering ran through him and again he felt he could not stay where he was. An irresistible force drove him to flee, to escape, to be in the company of people, to call for help and to do something.

  Feverishly he jumped off his mat, and, with weak knees, stumbling dizzily like a drunken man, he wandered around for a long time in the hall and in the narrow corridor between the doors, until he succeeded in finding the cubicle where one of his acquaintances lived. Finding the door locked he knocked on it with all his might, until the owner and the Negro boys who served in the khan came rushing upstairs in alarm to see what was happening. When they finally made some sense of the garbled words he was muttering and grasped what was wrong with him, the owner of the khan quickly sent for Sheikh Salame the barber, who was also a doctor known for his grinding of perfumes, unbinding of spells, and annulling the evil eye. In the meantime they carried him back to his room, laid him down on his mat, and remained standing around him, helpless and confused at the sight of the contortions of pain convulsing his body from time to time, and the groans that escaped from his mouth.

  Sheikh Salame, a short fat man with a wizard’s beard gracing his cheeks and chin, examined Nimmer thoroughly, inspected his vomit, kneaded his stomach, and listened to his breathing. On discovering the nature and causes of the illness he shook his head and creased his brow in sorrow, and then, with a lot of fuss, went about his work. He stuck plasters on Nimmer’s temples and drew blood from his ears and biceps, boiled up various herbs, gave them to him to drink, and bandaged the cuts with cotton wool. As he worked he wagged a warning finger at Nimmer, who sat on the cushions looking as pale as lime.

  “This is all from excessive use of hashish,” he said. “Your blood is spoiled and burned out: it’s thick and black. Keep away from it completely, or your end will be a bitter one…”

  Nevertheless, as soon as he felt a little better Nimmer could not deny himself the drug he so desired, and immediately returned to his former way of life. After giving the matter much consideration, he rejected the claim to the understanding and expertise of this barber who prattled on so volubly, and decided that he h
imself knew what was wrong with him better than Sheikh Salame.

  Attacks of this sort grew more frequent. Nimmer grew so used to them that they stopped having a frightening effect on him. They became such a regular occurrence in his life that he became able to sense their coming in advance. To assuage the pains, and to get himself into a condition in which he would not feel their coming or going, he would hurry to his room, close himself inside, and draw the stunning, numbing smoke deep into his lungs. More than any of the talismans and remedies given him by hadjs or holy dervishes, hashish seemed to him the most tested and efficacious means of dulling the pains, blurring his suffering, and submerging the long moments of dread in the twilight of dozing.

  And the more he took of the poisonous and malignant drug, the worse his condition became. He grew thinner from day to day, his skin turned gray and withered, and his posture stooped. His eyes lost their luster and became bleared and motionless. Soon his appetite went completely: hunger stopped troubling him and he forgot to eat. When he felt himself terribly weak, and noticed the stale bitter taste in his mouth, he would suddenly remember that for a long time he had not eaten a thing, and would be amazed and alarmed at his laziness and negligence in looking after himself and at his having ceased to care about his dress or to look after the cleanliness of his body and his room.