Beer in the Snooker Club

by Waguih Ghali

  So I took my shoes and stockings off, and Jameel rubbed his mouth against my soles for luck while the maid translated the scene to Mrs Nackla. He rushed back to the gambling.

  ‘This gambling,’ Mrs Nackla complained; ‘it’s terrible. Now that they have closed the baccarat establishments, my husband grabs every visitor I have for a game. What happened to Font?’ she suddenly asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Come, come, Ram. I’ve known him long enough. What is this foolishness of working like an ordinary …’

  ‘He’s gone mad,’ I said, depressed now and annoyed.

  ‘But …’

  I left her and crossed two beautifully furnished halls to Didi’s apartment. She was sitting, her legs pulled up beneath her, with a semicircle of skirt covering them; a delicate hand-made lamp-shade behind her sofa shed a soft light on the work in her hand; a book, leather, and instruments for book-binding. The walls of her sitting-room are lined with books she has read and then bound in leather herself. ‘I have never bound a book I didn’t like,’ she once told me. The perimeter of the room with its mahogany and books, together with a large desk in a corner, would have given the room too masculine an appearance if it were not for a little circle of femininity in the corner she now occupied. A white, wrought-iron table with a light pink tablecloth, on which is set a blue tea-service for two. This corner is carpeted in plain brown and the sofa and single armchair are also upholstered in brown, but paler and of a shiny material, like satin.

  ‘Sit down, Ram.’

  ‘In a moment.’ I walked around the room while she continued with her work. There was peace in that room, a peace which someone of my type hardly ever comes across or even knows of. Serenity: a serenity which suddenly descended upon me in its profound beauty. It had affected me before, but I didn’t want to remember that now. The last time I had seen Didi was in London. I stood where she could not see me and watched her. Like Edna, she has no mannerisms or affected poses, except that her French education has given her a touch of coquetry which Edna lacks. She wore white sandals – a simple platform for her feet, with a single golden loop for her toe. Once, in London, we were lying on the grass in Hyde Park and I suddenly kissed her feet when Edna wasn’t looking. On her desk is a tall, slender vase made of metal with an equally slender young rose shooting out of it, and near the vase a massive black candle on an iron stand. I lit the candle and walked a few steps away to watch the effect. The lunch-time and early afternoon whisky was beginning to tell. Headachey drowsiness and sudden heart palpitations. The unfilled moments of exhilaration, the frustration and depression. I could still see the serenity around me, but had already lost the power to feel it.

  I sat down.

  When Didi Nackla smiles, two tiny dots, dimples, suddenly appear on either side of her mouth and you are surprised because her face is perfectly smooth, without any lines to indicate the position of those dimples. She touched her necklace, a Nefertiti one made of brass and corals, then her hand went higher and touched her throat and neck. She smiled. ‘If I hadn’t chanced to open the door,’ she said, ‘you would be playing baccarat with my father and your friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Come into some money?’

  ‘Played bridge with my cousin Mounir, then snooker with Doromian, the Armenian.’

  ‘How long have you been back?’

  ‘About a year.’ I lit a cigarette then put it out quickly – nausea, and I wanted to vomit.

  She continued with her book-binding. I stood up again, trying to fight the headache. When she was in London, I used to make her laugh. I used to describe the people living there and mimic them. I used to describe Paddy and speak like him. This business of love. And then Edna has no sense of humour. I used to mix politics and humour and love with Didi Nackla; but with Edna politics is politics. As it should be, I suppose.

  I sighed.

  This whisky. The headache had arrived in full force. I went into the bathroom, found aspirin, gargled, brushed my teeth with her tooth-brush, and started sucking a peppermint tablet.

  ‘What happened after I left London?’

  ‘I quarrelled with Font and Edna something terrible. The Suez war. I refused to return.’ I sat down, then stood up, and kept moving about the room. I blew out the candle, then relit it. Then I sat down on her desk and started playing with a paper knife.

  ‘I wrote you a long letter once,’ I told her.

  ‘I still have it.’

  ‘Levy is in love with you,’ I told her.

  She didn’t answer.

  I went and sat on the arm of her sofa.

  ‘And Font used to love you when he was fifteen; and I love you.’ My temples were throbbing with pain.

  ‘And Edna?’

  ‘Yes, and Edna too.’ I kicked the wire connection and her lamp went out. I caught the book in her hand and threw it on the floor, then lay on the sofa and put my head on her lap.

  ‘Didi.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Didi,’ I said, ‘Edna has been whipped in the face by an officer.’ Her hand came down and gently pressed my head to her lap.

  After a while she asked whether whisky or a cup of tea would do me any good.

  Tea.

  I woke up about midnight. The candle was still burning, a violin concerto was just audible, coming from the radio; my shoes were off and I was covered with a light blanket. I had no headache whatsoever and remained still, listening to the music.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll make some fresh tea.’

  I put the lights on and pulled my knees up to my chin, still covered with the blanket.

  ‘Tell me about Paddy,’ she said from the kitchen. I could see her making sandwiches, opening and closing her fridge, humming bits of the concerto. She is happy. Everyone should be like Didi Nackla. I mean the world should be put in order and everyone should have a nice flat like Didi Nackla and go about humming tunes. Like birds.

  ‘I lived there for a while, you know.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I lived in Vincent’s house when Edna and Font returned to Egypt. Paddy and I used to sleep in the kitchen. He’d always be reading the Greyhound something or other.’ I imitated Paddy’s Irish brogue. ‘Be Jeez, now,’ he would say. ‘I tell yer now, that dog can’t be beaten.’ He’d shake his head. ‘Well, by God, that dog’ll be half a mile in front of the others. Twenty to one at least. I wouldn’t be surprised now, if Frank Maloney is in on this. Shirley,’ he’d shout, ‘d’yer know where your mother is, now?’

  ‘No,’ she’d shout back.

  ‘I bet yer she’s at the Whoite City now,’ he’d tell me. ‘Wouldn’t say she was going. Be Jeez now, if that dog wins she’ll be sorry now.’

  ‘What’s the dog’s name?’ I’d ask Paddy.

  ‘Trafalgar the Third,’ he’d say. ‘A foine dog, I tell yer. Well I tell yer now I saw his gran’ father, t’was in Cork and this Frank Maloney comes to me and says: Paddy, he says, if you can raise the price of two tickets so we can travel with that dog to the Whoite City, we’re alroit, boy. He had twenty pound he showed me; that was to put on the dog, now. Well, I tell yer I ran home as fast as me legs would go. The old man was out havin’ a drink and I go up to his room and under the mattress, be Jeez, a bunch of five-pound notes wrapped up in an old towel.’ He’d stop talking and laugh. ‘Well I tell yer, no sooner am I with Frank Maloney, than I see me father come as fast as he could towards us. He was an old man but, be Jeez, he could run fast. Well there we were; me and Maloney running as fast as we could towards the station, and Pa running behind us brandishin’ his stick. Well I tell yer, if that train started half a second later, he would have caught us, now.’

  So I’d ask Paddy if the dog won.

  ‘Well I tell yer truthfully now. I swear that dog was the best Whoite City ever saw.’

  Shirley would come in and stand near the door. ‘He was the best dog there,�
� she’d tell me, ‘but all the other dogs were doped except Trafalgar the First, so naturally he arrived a mile behind the others; and Paddy didn’t dare go back to his father for a couple of years.’

  ‘Be Jeez,’ Paddy would say, ‘The old man had a nasty temper I can tell yer. Well I remember now going to Dublin with him and a man called Jimmy O’Donovan …’

  Didi was laughing.

  ‘How long did you live there?’ she asked.

  ‘About a year. This Paddy was terribly lazy and would keep sitting for weeks on end doing nothing. Sometimes his friends would come with cases of Guinness: “An how are yer, Paddy Tynan? I bet me wages, Paddy Tynan, you have two large callus on the seat of your trousers. Let’s have a peep, Paddy Tynan. You’ll be walkin’ on your backside soon, be Jeez”.’

  ‘Were you content, living there?’

  ‘You know, Didi, this reading too much, and Font and Edna being away, used to make me feel very lonely at times.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘The police found me. I hit a policeman in Trafalgar Square during the Suez war and my visa had expired and not been renewed. Besides which it was impossible for me to work anywhere and I had no money. It is funny how all my New Statesmen friends and fellow “intellectuals” dropped me one by one when I was in trouble. All except Vincent. Even the Dungates, you know. Anyway, I was thrown out of England.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘Went to Germany because it was the only place I could go without a visa. I worked in factories here and there. But never mind all that now.’

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  ‘Probably because of Font. I kept on seeing his eyebrows going higher and higher in amazement at this world around him and then …’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I like Font very much, you know. And then, Didi,’ I said, ‘I thought I could do something useful. Teach or something like that; even help in villages and things. You know, Didi Nackla, I am …’ I was going to tell her I wasn’t as bad as I seemed, but didn’t.

  ‘Even with you, Didi. I mean I told you frankly I loved Edna. Do you remember how we laughed? With Edna I was never really natural, I don’t know why. Anyway, when I came back I saw that life here is exactly as it used to be. Even to the Mahrousa. I mean how can I go and work in a boiling village when he is travelling about in Farouk’s yacht which costs a million just for upkeep? And all this nationalization business makes me laugh, although I don’t tell Font that. The money goes to that useless army. Even the Asswan dam; by the time it’s completed we’ll have increased by ten million.’

  ‘What do you want him to do?’

  ‘Birth control and all that.’

  ‘He would become unpopular.’

  ‘And Israel too. Imagine a third of our income being pumped into an army to fight a miserable two million Jews who were massacred something terrible in the last war. So what if he becomes unpopular? He is strong enough to take unpopular steps. Besides, you know, we Egyptians don’t care one way or another about Israel. No, Didi Nackla,’ I said, ‘it’s stupid living under a police state without the benefits of the control.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be stupid. If we are to live under a dictatorship, it should be a communist one. I’ll tell you what I mean. Look at India. The people are paying for having a democracy by starving. The Chinese are not starving at all and can look to the future with confidence, because they have a communist dictatorship. Whereas we have the worst of both systems. Both the dictatorship and the starving without any future to look forward to. Not,’ I said, suddenly laughing, ‘that there is much starving going on in our circles.’

  ‘And what do Font and Edna think of all that?’

  ‘I can’t speak to them that way. They’re full of theories and ideals and political sophistication, it makes me laugh. Font used to walk from Aldermaston to London, and Edna travels third-class in our trains as a mark of equality. A fat lot of good that will do.’

  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 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.