Oliver of the Levant

by Debra Jopson

  I had to get Sabine out now. Dad or Jess might be home soon. Babette may get up. This would be risky but I had to hold my nerve, just as Lawrence had when he’d galloped towards Aqaba. I guided Sabine up the hallway and yodelled, ‘Hopping out for a minute.’

  ‘I can smell the perfume from here. Is this some Sabine-wooing sorcery you’ve dreamt up?’

  My face nearly burst with embarrassment, but Sabine didn’t understand, proving there was a God after all. I pulled Babette’s door closed. Sabine clanked past with Babette’s stuff bursting from her wide, woven handbag. I got her to the lift and grabbed at the bag. She pulled away and rattled down the stairs, leaving a perfumed wake.

  I headed out to the pinball parlour. It was the only place where I was going to win at anything.

  34

  Duck Pyjamas

  When I got back, the apartment was empty. Souhar had been and gone, leaving scrubbed floors and a tomato-and-something-green stew bubbling on the stove. The pink cardigan had disappeared from my pillow, and it wasn’t in Babette’s bedroom. Someone had shoved newspaper clippings into my stash-hole, stabbing angry red biro circles around photos that showed victims of the Lebanese troubles. One was of a man rigid on his back where he had fallen from a wooden chair, with wire wound around his wrists, tethered to a rope looped around his neck. He had a bullet hole in his forehead.

  Another was of a man leaning on a stone fence as he rested. He had been hauling his brother’s corpse over his back, a caption said. The corpse had a cross swinging from its neck and a wobbly Lebanese cedar flag tattoo on its bare arm. Another held the ghost of a girl, shimmering in black and white dot clusters, fixing her image into soft newsprint. I ran the backs of my fingers over her. She lay on her side, her fingers clenched over her pyjamas with ducks stamped on them. I wanted to brush away the dust powdering her clothes and hair, to wake her up.

  ‘Aaaach.’ Acid surged into my throat. I supposed Souhar had stuffed the photos in there for me to find, but why?

  I took it out on Jess, who had been asleep in his room. ‘I dunno why they print pictures of dead people here. Gruesome!’

  ‘Yeah. Gross. Sabine brought those. She shoved them in my face. She’s a weirdo. She creeps me out.’

  I remembered what Sabine had said about the priest being pulled into four pieces. How her brother Jacques beat her up, and how she got back at him. Was she using the sick-making photos to get at me? Or hoping I’d become a Phalangist fighter, like Abdo? I didn’t want to fight anyone.

  Say someone tried to hurt her and I was there and could choose to pick up a camera or a gun?

  I closed my eyes and remembered the rich coffee taste of her mouth, the press of her fingertips in my hair.

  I’d probably pick up the gun.

  I lay on my bed, boiling inside.

  I’m not from here. I don’t have to decide. Bullets and bombs don’t hurt anyone if you use them only for fun, do they?

  I let my thoughts drift back to the smoothness of Sharkie’s father’s lawn. I bombed it again in my mind, but this time soil, roots, rock, leapt high into the stratosphere, leaving a hole in Earth so large that I could peer down into the hot molten core. And the only casualty was an earthworm.

  ‘Why in heaven’s name does anyone drink?’ Babette had a hangover the next day. Her face was skin stretched over wire. Pain made her mouth a slit. I took her a pot of Lebanese coffee. The tray wobbled and muddy drips fell onto the white doona, but she ignored that. ‘I’m doing bed suicide today, while your father’s still off with his aeroplanes. Twenty-four hours where the rest of the world is dead to me. Except for one very large irritation. How could you let your girlfriend take my precious things, Oliver?’

  She turned hurt eyes onto me.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Khoury girl. The concierge’s daughter.’

  ‘She isn’t my girlfriend, and anyway, she wasn’t here.’

  ‘Did you let her in or did she break in?’ I gave her wide eyes; innocence. ‘All right, I take it from your obfuscation that you invited her here and colluded with her. I knew that you’d snooped in my room. For someone who fancies himself as a spy, you’ve been sloppy about details, such as closing my trunk. And don’t imagine I don’t know who the little cigarette thief is. I turned a blind eye, because I do remember being your age, unlikely as that may seem to you. But I didn’t think you’d stoop to this.’

  Her hard voice alarmed me. Usually, she spoke to me in a smoky purr.

  She made me bring her a jewellery box from her dressing table. It was unexpectedly heavy and painted with thorny pink roses twisting inside in a bright-green jungle. When she opened the lid, tinkly music started up and a toy ballerina popped out and pirouetted on a satin stage. Babette opened a drawer in the box with shaking fingers, revealing gold and silver necklaces snaking through diamond clusters.

  She sighed and gave a pale smile. ‘The music’s Scheherazade.’ I relaxed a little when she declared, ‘All there.’

  ‘Sabine wouldn’t –’

  ‘You wouldn’t know what she’s capable of. Loving someone doesn’t mean you know them.’

  Babette tipped back the ballerina and pulled a thin blue plastic cuff from a secret cavity. Mum had kept one of those in her purse; a hospital name tag cut from Jess’s wrist as a newborn. I strained to read the label, but Babette pushed the cuff under her pillow and flashed a warning look at me. I said nothing, diverted by the glow of a gold bar hidden in the secret compartment.

  ‘Caramba,’ I whispered to myself.

  ‘My gold’s safe. That’s our passage to Cyprus, if things get bad.’ Babette had begun to speak again in that unfamiliar, hard voice. ‘This is what you will do to make things right. Bring me ice cubes in two separate tea towels for my eyes. Pull the curtains so there’s not one crack of light in here. Then go downstairs and get my Chanel Number Five, my Chamade and my Zen perfume back from the little bitch.’ The wire tightened in her face. ‘These are my comforts, my compensations for all those nights without your father in this barbaric land, for all the hands that have grabbed me, for all the cars I’ve passed, wondering if they were slung with bombs – and that little vixen who’s never even learnt to appreciate eau de parfum, let alone the real thing, couldn’t begin to understand what she’s taken from me.’

  ‘What if she hasn’t got them?’

  ‘I’ve been violated.’

  ‘Maybe it was Souhar.’ I blushed with shame as I said it, but it was all I could think of to save myself and Sabine.

  Babette’s back stiffened against her flock of feather pillows. Her eyes turned marbly. I’d never seen her like this. ‘I’ll go straight downstairs and speak with that girl’s parents about her … criminal … behaviour if you don’t bring my precious things back.’

  ‘Oh, please, Babette, don’t. Do the bed suicide. Forget about the world, like you said. I’ll pay for the perfumes and stuff. I’ll stage a million magic shows. I’ll get Grandad to send me money.’

  She didn’t even smile. ‘You can’t charm your way out of this. Your father’s right about you. I regret having defended you.’

  I groaned.

  ‘The mother’s son,’ she shot out as I left.

  I fetched her the friggin’ ice cubes. Lumbered down the stairs. Sabine’s oldest brother, Jacques, welcomed me at the Khourys’ door with the tip of his gun muzzle pointed at my knee. ‘You are friends with fedayeen.’

  ‘Huh?’ I moved away from the gun. A numbing terror surged up from my heart to my head. The day felt dark and mad.

  ‘I see you on the Corniche, playing Palestinian commando.’

  ‘I’m not playing anything. I just have friends who are –’ There was a snuffle from close by in the Khoury rat-hole. ‘Is Sabine here?’ She appeared from behind him, a shadow become solid. She held Jacques’ arms and moved him aside. He was meek beneath her hands and leant against the door frame, with the gun pointed towards me.

  Sabine had thinned her eyebrows into a mean bow an
d caked her face with orange goop. She looked much older than I’d ever noticed. Too old for me. ‘My brother will not shoot you now, but Abdo has a gun, and he will if I tell him about you.’

  I couldn’t move. I could feel my eyes gaping.

  ‘Swear you leave my sister alone. She say you spy on her.’ Jacques stabbed two fingers towards my eyes. ‘Always looking, looking …’

  Still, I was rooted to that spot. I wanted to seem brave, but my voice came out pinched and high. ‘Sabine, make him stop …’ The wrong gonad kicked in. My naked fear seized me. ‘I’ve gotta go. Babette –’

  Jacques grabbed the back of my jacket. ‘Swear it.’ My heart went wild.

  The TV babbled behind Sabine. She smirked, as if we were in a scene from one of the Arabic dramas she watched. ‘You come back today to spy again,’ she hissed.

  Babette’s going to tell on Sabine and then Jacques might shoot me, or Abdo will, or, or …

  ‘Babette wants her perfume back.’ I was trembling.

  Sabine passed her palm under her chin and out towards me. Lebanese sign language to go fuck myself. ‘You love the wife of your own father. But she does not love even him. She loves my cousin, Walid. In your family, everybody tries to steal love.’

  Sabine and her brother stood there, in the reek of fried fat, sharp aniseed and sewerage, as if they were Really Someone in their mean home – because of the gun, because of Abdo, because they were from here and I wasn’t.

  ‘You’re the thief.’ A cold anger was saving me. I pressed the brass elevator button. The lift whined from the top floor, too far away to rescue me.

  ‘Abdo gonna make you die a bad way,’ Sabine spat. ‘Flies will crawl on the blood in your mouth. Your soul will never rest; always go looking for some home and never find it.’

  ‘We don’t wait for Abdo.’ Jacques waved the rifle at me.

  I ran three steps at a time up the staircase, which felt as if it was collapsing. But that was my legs quaking.

  ‘You got it all back? The Dior, too?’ Babette called as I fumbled into the apartment.

  Oh, just die for the day, Babette.

  I blasted the joint with Jimi. Lit up a pipe of Lebanese gold. Hurtled into inner space, reliving Al Orentz’s last minutes before he crashed his bike so far from the Arabian sky. He couldn’t have known that he was an instant from death, from an infinity of nothingness. He was outside, always outside, and couldn’t reach the place where love lives.

  35

  The War of Paramount Apartments

  As soon as Dad walked through the door a few days later, Babette told him that Sabine had stolen her perfumes. Dad summonsed Joseph, who appeared in the living room with a toolbox, hoping for baksheesh. I took up my position at the mushrabiyah as he turned worry beads around his fingers. ‘You don’t need me to take trash? Or fix electric?’ His voice was whiny.

  Dad spoke in a loud but even voice. ‘Your daughter, Sabine, came to my apartment the other day and had a bath. She made a mess.’ He waved his arms, maybe to describe the hurricane effect of the bath.

  ‘I am very sorry. If this is true, I clean it.’

  ‘No, Joseph, the maid’s done that. It’s worse. Your daughter took Babette’s perfumes.’

  Joseph lifted his shoulders back. ‘My daughter is a good girl. She never take nothing.’

  ‘It’s bad news, Joseph, and it’s a mess. We’ll fix it this way. Just tell her to give the perfume back.’

  ‘I will ask.’ Joseph left, his body stiff, his face grim.

  This is it. One of these guys is gonna come here and shoot me.

  ‘I could get him sacked,’ Dad said to Babette that night. ‘The entire family would be thrown out of the building, pronto.’

  ‘That would alleviate the pressing Oliver puppy-love problem. That thug she’s engaged to … Ugh.’ Babette sighed. ‘It must be sad to be poor, but the fact is, the poor don’t know how to make money, only how to make trouble.’

  ‘By definition. Four fingers of gin or two, honey? Party or diet?’

  ‘Party while we can.’ Her voice was high and wild. That was how they’d saved their marriage, by partying. That’s what Babette told The Slave on the phone, anyway.

  The following morning, Joseph pressed the doorbell. When I saw him through the fisheye, I flitted away and let Babette answer.

  ‘Please, Madame Lawrence. I must speak with Monsieur Lawrence only.’ Dad was in bed, eating a slice of Babette’s burnt toast, washed down with a bottle of K-Cola. He’d already tossed his hangover cure of breakfast eggnog down his throat in one swallow. He pulled on his kimono stamped with navy blue storks in flight and straddled a chair, one leg pushed out to the side so his balls could loll about. Through the mushrabiyah, with his rusted steel-wool sideburns, Dad was a samurai, with toast crumbs in his ginger whiskers.

  Joseph stood side-on to the mushrabiyah, his woolly eyebrows and shining eyelids lowered in the presence of The Captain. But, underneath, he had a steely eye. ‘I speak to you as man. My daughter swear she have no perfume. But I am ashamed. She did come here with your son, alone. So now I worry about her honour. This is not a problem for you in your country, but in Lebanon a girl can lose her honour. Please, tell your son to leave my daughter alone.’

  Dad laughed and rearranged his balls. ‘Sorry, Joseph. I know this is serious for you. I’ve heard about the fees the docs charge for making girls virgins again. The operation … Sheesh. Highway robbery. But, Oliver’s just a kid with a crush. Nothing happened. Believe me, he’s too awkward. He’d love to get it on with a girl, but he’s just not capable.’

  Awkward? That wasn’t me. It was my rogue gonad.

  ‘Please, Monsieur Lawrence, eyes are everywhere. People talk too much. My daughter can be innocent, and still they talk. And I have seen your son and my daughter up, with my birds.’ He pointed to the ceiling.

  ‘Together?’ Dad sat forward.

  ‘Yes. Girls must stay … clean. Sabine will marry soon. You know she has fiancé.’ He rubbed his two forefingers together: Abdo and Sabine, joined together.

  ‘That’s one thing,’ Dad said, pinching his nose. ‘Here’s another. She did take my wife’s perfumes. Oliver’s got no use for them, so it wasn’t him.’

  Joseph ran the fingers that were Abdo and Sabine through his sideburns. ‘Maybe he took to give to my daughter. But I can’t give you perfume. She don’t have it.’

  Dad shrugged. ‘I’m the captain out there, but at home … Babette’s got to have some acknowledgement that your daughter did something wrong.’

  Joseph pleaded with his curved palms held upwards. ‘Monsieur, until now I never tell Abdo about your son. He follow my daughter like a hungry dog. He sit at the stair and wait.’ Joseph made his hands into begging pooch paws.

  I had an urge to poke his eyes through the mushrabiya. Then the dark-red blood of shame pulsed into my head. How did she see me? As a mangy, pathetic stray she could keep at her heels by doling out orange slices and pats? And Dad reckoned I wasn’t capable? Well, I’d never done it, but I could.

  Dad guffawed but Joseph pressed on, his voice cracking: ‘This take my family honour away.’

  Dad fell silent and a crease deepened across his forehead. Maybe he was getting the idea that they were thinking of shooting me. ‘Joseph. Oliver’s like a foal. You know? Baby horse. He’s learning to use his long legs. He wobbles and falls over and gets up and does a small gallop, copying the big stallions. But he hasn’t learnt to walk yet. Sure, he’s got a crush on your daughter. It’s harmless. But she’s older – she can flick her hands and he’ll shy away.’

  Joseph nodded his head, as if this was true.

  Am I a bloody dog or a horse?

  ‘Monsieur Lawrence, I only understand a little what you say. But, you see, I am poor. My family have much trouble. Abdo want Sabine, and he is cousin. He have special place to marry her. He is a strong man, very big in our village. He can make many problems for us if we say no. So we say yes. We not make war. We don’
t want anyone hurt.’

  ‘I get what you’re saying, Joseph. And I’m saying my boy’s no threat … Poor Oliver, mooning at the bottom of the stairs.’

  Now I’m a boy. Just a boy.

  I hung my head, made heavy with humiliation. Joseph lifted his chin. ‘Abdo is Kataeb. Your son makes friends with Palestinian fedayeen. With devil.’

  ‘Ah, Joseph, come on …’ Dad scoffed.

  ‘Khalas. No more. The Palestinians are not friends. They will kill us. They will kill you.’

  Dad walked right into Joseph’s body space, looming over him, becoming Captain Lawrence. ‘Your daughter’s no angel. You want to keep your job? No more threats.’

  Joseph cursed Dad’s mother in Arabic and left. I was filled with wonder. Dad had defended me.

  That night, the power and water supply to our apartment failed. Dad called me in to his candlelit den. ‘The Sabine thing, Oliver. You won’t believe me now when I say you’ll get over her, but you will. There’ll be another one and then another.’

  My eyes slid away in embarrassment. He grinned. ‘Just the other day, in Paris, there was this dolly bird with a skirt up to here and boots up to yay high and hair down to there. Brunette, sassy, with half-moon dimples, and we drank a pint and a half of Pernod between us. Brought out the dimples in her cheeks.’ He sighed.

  I said nothing. My love for Sabine was pure. Even though she had been cruel to me, it would not end like Dad’s did for Mum. Some adults were disgusting. I’d known I had to save Babette from Walid, but here was Dad, out of control.

  Dimples!

  There would be no more sitting at the bottom of the stairs for me. I’d swagger in and out of Paramount Apartments, my head full of violent secrets, like Abdo. I’d grow my pinkie nails long and curl my forefinger on the trigger of a Kalashnikov, like Ringo. If Sabine realised that I was a man who could explode a bomb, wouldn’t she love me?