The Colors of Infamy

by Albert Cossery

  All the while praising the girl’s attire, Ossama never took his eyes off the club’s entrance in the hope that his day would not end in emptiness and melancholy. This did not escape Safira, who started to get up, and, in a humble tone colored with suffering, said:

  “You seem to be waiting for someone, so I’ll be going. Perhaps I’ll have the good fortune to see you again.”

  “On your mother’s life, stay put. I’m not waiting for anyone.”

  “Speaking of my mother, I should mention she’s very fond of you. Yesterday she told me she was praying to Allah for you to stay safe and never be arrested. Don’t you think that’s very kind of her?”

  “Indeed! You mentioned me to your mother?”

  “When she asked me where I had gotten these beautiful shoes” — Safira stretched out her legs and in the shade of the alley a magnificent pair of patent leather shoes with silver-colored metal buckles sparkled — “I couldn’t help confessing that you’d given them to me. You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “And you confessed that I was a thief, too?”

  “Don’t be angry. You know, with the life she’s been leading since my father died, my mother’s gone a bit crazy. She can’t tell one job from another. I could just as well have said you were a banker; it’s all the same to her.”

  “May Allah protect us! So why didn’t you tell her I was a banker?” Ossama asked in a calm, though slightly irritated voice.

  “I don’t know,” Safira moaned, giving the impression she was holding back tears. “Maybe because I’m proud of you. You’re the only thief I know.”

  Ossama didn’t bother to ask how many bankers she knew because he was well aware of the girl’s capacity for avoiding the obvious. The poor thing was going to lead him straight to the gallows if he didn’t quickly find a way to counteract his error in having revealed his line of work to her. Once again, compassion lay behind this unfortunate story; he had bought her the shoes the day she showed up in a tattered pair of espadrilles, touching his heart, and he had done so with the perverse idea that a pair of alluring shoes would allow Safira, in exchange for her amorous dealings, to ask for a sum of money equal to her refinement. He now regretted this over-generous act — he had expected some gratitude, not a threat to his career. Soon, thanks to this love-struck scatterbrain, the entire police force of the capital would be in on his act. Dressing elegantly to feign respectability would no longer be of any use to him if he didn’t manage to nip this bad publicity in the bud. Of course these bitter thoughts lasted only the span of a few sighs and in no way altered his conviction that nothing on this earth is tragic for an intelligent man. With his tolerant and joyful ethics, he was hardly predisposed to spite and he had to laugh at himself for thinking that telling the girl he was a thief would turn her away from him. Instead of alienating her, confiding in Safira had only made him more esteemed in her eyes, convinced as she was — no doubt by the example of the very wealthy characters popularized in the papers — that the profession of thief was synonymous with an elevated social standing. She followed Ossama ceaselessly, accumulating so-called “chance” encounters and giving him slyly languorous glances. Ossama had to admit that, for an expert in feminine ways, he had gone pathetically astray: any imbecile knew that women in love were impervious to all moral considerations. For a moment he silently made fun of himself, an ironic smile playing on his lips.

  Safira could only interpret this smile as implicit criticism, and she tried to absolve herself by saying in a faintly trembling voice:

  “I may have made a terrible mistake. Forgive me.”

  “No, there’s nothing terrible about it. Don’t worry about me. At heart, your mother seems a very sensible person. Please thank her for her prayers. Who knows, I might need them.”

  “Do you seriously mean that?”

  “A person who makes no distinction between a banker and a thief cannot be classified as crazy. In fact, for evaluating mental health it’s the only criterion. There are no others.”

  Ossama failed to divulge to the girl that this criterion was of his own devising. Even though Safira believed everything he told her, evaluating madness according to such a simplistic standard seemed insufficient for judging her mother’s mental state. “Are you sure?” she asked nervously.

  “On my honor!” Ossama swore, placing his hand over his heart to prove the sincerity of his diagnosis.

  “That makes me happy. I was afraid of seeing her go completely mad. You have warmed my heart.”

  He could make out real relief on the girl’s face; a yearning to teach this exemplary neophyte his conception of the world welled up in him. But the impulse did not last long. Popularizing such a subversive concept for the benefit of a creature as hopeless as Safira seemed like offering pearls to a dying old woman.

  “Tell me,” he began again in an amusing, conversational tone, “do you speak with your mother often?”

  Ossama wanted primarily to keep the dialogue going and not give his companion the impression that she bored him. To be honest, the girl’s problems fascinated him against his will, as if all the injustices from which she suffered — all that she had inherited from her ancestors since the beginning of time — had their roots in distant lands and not in his immediate surroundings. Since he had ascended to thief heaven, he no longer paid any attention to the plaintive songs or moans of a fatalistic people who continued to believe in a mythic heavenly paradise. As he listened to Safira, he could hear the faded but enduring echo of the past when he, too, had been suffering in a world of triumphant falsehood. Although he couldn’t admit it to himself, he was hoping to hear her complain and lament, thereby opening his heart to the lost paths of his childhood with its trail of misfortune and cruelty — everything that in his new-found wisdom he had relegated to the ranks of insignificance. This vague nostalgic longing, however, did not distract him from his main purpose, which was to keep an eye on the club entrance, which waves of passersby sporadically blocked from his view. Until now he had only caught sight of servants in uniforms coming out one at a time to inhale the sweltering air of the street and cast reproachful glances at the never-ending stream of people strolling lazily beneath the sun, excluded from the club. No doubt the club members — the notables themselves — were in the process of whetting their appetites by swilling their alcohol of preference while fomenting new, shady deals. But lunchtime was drawing near and Ossama knew that none of these bastards would miss a meal; filling their bellies was the only work to which they devoted themselves with competence and honesty.

  “Yes, I speak with my mother, but not often. It pains me to see her get all confused when we talk. I wind up feeling dizzy.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  Safira hesitated a moment before answering. She looked at Ossama with atypical boldness and said, in an almost sardonic tone of voice:

  “Well, just what is it that poor people talk about, in your opinion?”

  It was a low blow, a perfidious move on the girl’s part, and Ossama was momentarily mortified by his tactlessness. He was sure that the two women could only talk about money — or more specifically, the lack of money — and he decided to change this thorny subject quickly by making a little joke.

  “I know that poor people only talk about money, but talking about money never made anybody any richer.”

  And he emitted a pleasant and contagious little laugh to encourage the girl to follow him down the path of cheerfulness.

  But Safira stubbornly ref
used to laugh; on the contrary, Ossama’s unfortunate joke only succeeded in making her more despondent in regard to the young man’s feelings about poverty.

  “I don’t care about money,” she said. “What good is money if there’s not a little love in life?”

  She lowered her eyes and stayed completely still with an expression of dread on her face, as if she were expecting an earthquake. Ossama didn’t fall for it; he could easily see her message and he had to pretend it wasn’t directed his way. Feminine wiles, even in this girl who had barely reached puberty, always amused him because they were such a fragile weapon, at best good for confusing the gullible or the idiotic. Still, he was touched by this frustrated admission and he grabbed hold of the girl’s hand in a gesture of friendship and consolation. Yet once more the compassion he felt for his companion seemed like a defect that would destroy his freedom.

  “Do you speak about love with your mother?”

  “Who else can I speak to? She’s the only one in whom I can confide. At least she listens to me.”

  Ossama admired Safira’s ruse: criticizing him without naming him, all the while knowing he would recognize himself in this allusion to his indifference. Posing as an innocent victim, she was using her female cunning to reach her goal, which was to snare him in the web of a pitiable love affair. But how could he be angry at her for this? It was nothing but idle talk, with no long-term consequences. He was lenient with Safira and her insinuations, because this stubborn, lovelorn girl was so very young, and her wiles so absolutely ineffective. What he would never have tolerated from an adult woman, he easily accepted from this girl who was experimenting, at his expense, with all the folly and uncertainties that eminent psychologists attribute to the feminine mystique. But since Ossama had never discerned the slightest mystery in any woman, poor Safira’s wiles rarely perplexed him; he felt only a vague pity for universal stupidity.

  “I listen to you, too,” he objected, out of sheer goodness and so as not to distress the girl by his constant refusal to understand.

  “That’s true, you do listen, but only to make fun of me. The other day, for example, when I told you I was looking for a job, you said not to bother because, with my luck, I would probably find one. And then you burst out laughing.”

  Having seen him laugh so often when she was describing certain aspects of her miserable life, Safira had formed an idea of the young man in keeping with his cavalier attitude — selfish and frivolous, disdainful of the suffering of others. And sometimes, so as not to thwart this blasphemous exuberance, she, too, would try to laugh about her woes, perhaps with the superstitious idea of warding off ill fortune.

  “Sorry to bother you with my stories,” she said with a forced smile. “I’d rather hear about your exploits. They’re bound to be more amusing than my discussions with my mother. I’d like to become a thief, too. Unfortunately, I don’t have your courage. I think I’d get arrested before I even tried.”

  “Listen, Safira, you’re wrong, I don’t have any courage,” answered Ossama with feigned weariness. “When I told you I was a thief, I was just joking. I’m sorry you believed me. You shouldn’t take what I tell you so seriously all the time.”

  The girl’s face contorted horribly, as if she had just learned of some unforgivable treachery. The young man’s dishonorable profession had led her to believe that her own dissolution wouldn’t be an obstacle to a love affair between two individuals similarly debased by poverty. But if Ossama wasn’t a thief as he had claimed, how could he be interested in a romance with an insignificant little prostitute? Her eyes clouded by tears, she looked at the young man as if he were a renegade gone over to the class enemy.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Ossama with a tinge of remorse in his voice. “Have I offended you?”

  The girl remained silent, more from modesty than from the anger that was suffocating her. She could not explain to Ossama that his lie was depriving her of the only free gift ever allotted to the miserable of this earth.

  “So it was a joke!” she said at last, bitterly.

  “I only told you that to amuse you. I’m sorry, but don’t turn it into a tragedy. On the contrary, you should be glad to know I’m not a thief.”

  “Glad of what? If you’re not a thief, how can you go around with” — she did not say love — “a girl like me? After all, I’m just a prostitute.”

  “I don’t care what you are. Have I ever snubbed you? Even if you murdered someone, you’d still be completely respectable to me. In fact, I’d admire you all the more.”

  “I don’t want to murder anyone.”

  “Well, you should. Plenty of people deserve to be murdered. A few years ago all I dreamed about was doing away with all those bastards. But now I want them to live long lives, because they make me laugh.”

  “Who are all these bastards?”

  “Maybe some day you’ll know, maybe you never will. Anyway, believe me. Bastards don’t just exist, they even prosper all over the world.”

  Safira seemed upset, even frightened, by these enigmatic statements. Although she was used to his crazy ideas, Ossama’s harangue about complete strangers set her mind awhirl. Her companion — this joyously mocking, distant young man — had suddenly turned into an unknown character with bloodthirsty ideals. First he’d claimed to be a thief, now was he going to metamorphose into an assassin?

  “By Allah! I don’t understand you. Everything you say upsets me. Nothing worries you. You laugh at everything. You dress like a prince and yet you walk through the crowds without worrying about getting dirty. Can you explain this mystery to me?”

  “If I am dressed, as you say, like a prince, it’s because I inherited my father’s suits when he died,” Ossama replied with all the composure of an inveterate liar. “He was an important civil servant and always had to be impeccably dressed. To honor his memory, I like to go out in decent clothes too, so as not to disappoint him in his grave. It pains me to talk about such things, but I haven’t hesitated to share them with you so that you can learn a little more about me.”

  He took on the chagrined look that any man wears at the memory of certain deaths. The girl seemed satisfied with his explanation, yet her face remained resolutely sad; the origin of Ossama’s stylishness did nothing to change the fact that she was a betrayed lover, and it was clear to her that the time for banter and courtship games had passed. Decorum required her to leave the young man so he could muse in solitude over the memory of his father, the important civil servant with his admirably tailored suits who had swept suddenly into their conversation. That ghost continued to haunt her and with a timid look, she said:

  “All right, then, I’ll be going now. I hope we’ll meet again.”

  “Of course we will. I’m always happy to see you.”

  Ossama had regained his optimism. He was pleased with his apocryphal tale about where his suits had come from, a tale he could use again in other circumstances, plausible even to an obtuse policeman. Allowing the girl to carry on with her leave-taking preparations, he let his eye roam across the still-dense crowd, on the lookout for a breach in that human wall which would permit him to catch a glimpse of the club’s open gate. He had an intuition that — as a kind of reward for this exhausting tête-à-tête with Safira — the day had a magnificent gift in store for him.

  She rose slowly, as if she did not wish to wake Ossama from his daydream, and then moved nimbly, passing from the shade of the alley into the sun of the street, her cheap jewelry shimmering
one last time before she vanished into the crowd.

  Left alone, Ossama let out the sigh of a dying man coming back to life. After each encounter with Safira he had the feeling he’d been drained of his blood and, even worse, that he’d become mindful of prosaic human suffering. He got a hold of himself and attempted to forget this gloomy interlude. Freed from the shackles of chivalry, he stretched his neck and riveted his gaze on the opposite sidewalk. And after a moment, his wish was granted. There, as if in belated response to his vigil, appeared a man: he stood motionless on the threshold of the venerable entrance, blinded by the dazzling light of the street. He was a precious specimen of the brotherhood of notables, a man of about fifty, tall and satisfyingly stout, dressed in a navy blue suit that hugged his plump body, the kind of uniform

  favored by his fellow creatures, all graduates of the same school of high crime. He was nervously fingering a string of amber prayer beads as if he were trying to relieve a toothache or the twinges of a stomach ulcer. His physique was repugnant enough to disgust a nanny goat in heat, yet everything about him oozed opulence — theft on a grand scale. But his face, bloated from the fat of sumptuous foodstuffs, somehow lacked the usual haughtiness and self-assurance of parvenus of his ilk; all the standard arrogance now seemed sorely diminished by a tenacious anxiety linked to some private calamity that Ossama attributed to a loss of money or a mistress’s betrayal. Standing on the threshold of the club, the man was fidgeting about in every direction, his gaze searching the tangle of cars beyond the crowd, obviously hoping to attract his driver’s attention to his remarkable self.