The Jokers

by Albert Cossery

  “Let me ask you: Do you really want him to disappear?”

  “To tell the truth, no. Where will we find a buffoon to match him? But in the end, unfortunately, we’ll be forced to give him up. There’ll be no choice.”

  “I’m getting the feeling,” said Khaled Omar, “that I’m finally going to have some real fun.”

  A young goddess sailed toward the terrace, her breasts bobbing in her blouse like a ship on the high seas. Then, like a fleeting vision of debauchery, she was gone, leaving innumerable passions stranded in her wake. Right away the customers at a neighboring table started analyzing her beauty like real connoisseurs, and when they got to her rear end, it was as if they’d discovered the fundamental truth of the universe. A vigorous debate rich in imagery ensued, and no insult was spared when any disagreement arose in the course of their critique, which extended to the most intimate details of the unknown young woman’s body.

  “Women,” said Heykal. “Aren’t they enough for you?”

  “I love women,” responded Khaled Omar. “But they’re nothing compared with the delights you propose.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Of course. I’m a respectable businessman! But I should explain: It’s not always the same model. I’m not one of those rich imbeciles who changes his car each year while keeping the same wife. Me, I change wives each year—and I don’t even own a car.”

  “I’m happy for you,” said Heykal.

  “Sometimes I get rid of them even quicker. Women age faster than cars, believe me.”

  After a pause, he began again.

  “Let’s get back to business. What do you need from me?”

  “What I need,” said Heykal, “shouldn’t be very difficult to find for a man with your resources. First I need a printing press, then a private place to do our work. Can you provide that?”

  “Anything you wish. You’ll have the printing press in two or three days at the latest. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

  “That’s all for now. Thank you. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “I assume you’ll write the text for the poster?”

  “No, not me. I’m going to ask one of my friends to do it. A schoolmaster named Urfy. Maybe you know him.”

  “I know him very well. I’m one of his students; I’m going to him to learn to read.”

  “You’re going to Urfy’s school!” exclaimed Heykal with genuine admiration. “My word! You’re a remarkable man. Why do you want to learn to read?”

  The businessman was tired of seeing Karim and his other literate friends laughing over articles in the papers. It demoralized him to feel so outside the loop. He had to beg them to read passages aloud. Once he’d been clued in, he could laugh too—even louder than the others—but this delayed satisfaction was tinged with bitterness. To end his dependency, he’d decided to learn to read; he wanted to be able to keep up with the delicious depravity of the ruling party all on his own.

  “I wish I could really savor their lies. It’s a pleasure I’m longing to experience. Unfortunately, I’m not making much progress. I’m a lousy student.”

  “Do you go regularly?”

  “Oh, no! Only from time to time. I like Urfy a lot. Did you know that his mother’s gone mad?”

  “Yes, I knew that,” said Heykal. “A few months ago she fell into a state of nervous prostration, a kind of gentle derangement. It could be much worse.”

  “Still, she’s become a burden. He can’t look after her and also attend to his students. Before she fell apart, she helped at the school; she was an educated woman. Believe me, our friend’s situation is tragic, even though he won’t admit it. Many times I’ve offered to pay for her care in a residential clinic that specializes in her kind of madness, but he always refuses. I’m afraid to go on insisting—I don’t want to hurt his feelings. It’s a delicate business. Couldn’t you speak to him about it? With all my heart I want to help him, and I’m sure he’ll listen to you.”

  Heykal had turned thoughtful. He’d known Urfy for a long time and knew all about the love and tenderness the schoolmaster felt for his mother. However crazy she got, he’d want to keep her close.

  “I know Urfy very well. He’s an eminently intelligent man. He claims that his mother isn’t mad, that in this world to call someone mad is absurd. I think he makes perfect sense.”

  “I’ve heard that she still fills in for Urfy when he’s away. Apparently the students don’t notice a thing. They think she’s just sick.”

  “It’s very possible,” said Heykal. “Personally, that’s something I’d like to see.”

  Khaled Omar seemed taken aback by this display of cynicism.

  “I can see that you’re a man who lives according to his ideas. I like that.”

  “Why should there be a difference between a friend’s madness and other people’s?”

  “I see what you mean,” said Khaled Omar, exploding with laughter.

  But this time, there was no corresponding echo from the surrounding tables. The customers all looked as if someone had died. For almost a quarter of an hour, not a single young woman had paraded before the tables.

  6

  A SMALL, distinct sound interrupted the silence that prevailed in the classroom. Urfy could identify it without lifting his eyes: one of the boys in the back was snacking on toasted watermelon seeds. Urfy had hesitated to intervene, not wanting to rouse the rest of the students, who—though momentarily subdued by the deadly midday heat—were apt to get excited about even the most minor occurrence. But the sound of the little brat gorging himself broke in on Urfy’s concentration and inspiration. He was working on the text for the poster praising the governor, which Heykal planned to paste up all over the city. He seemed calm on the outside, but inside he was savoring this opportunity to compose an apologia for this important figure. As he shaped his masterpiece it came to resemble an epitaph, something for the tombstone of an illustrious hero. Urfy was so caught up in his role that he almost began to believe the inane compliments he was lavishing on the governor. With characteristic generosity, he’d given him every imaginable virtue, using language usually reserved by the newspapers only for notorious criminals, with one or more wars on their conscience.

  Again the irritating noise: Urfy stopped in mid-sentence, raised his head, and decided it was time to put an end to this behavior, which was disrupting the sacred hours of siesta. A quick glance identified the guilty party. It was the redoubtable Zarta: a very bright ten-year-old boy who was also one of the most ingenious liars of the century—Urfy sometimes wondered whether he had a minister of the current government in his class. To unleash the devious powers of the boy might turn out to be a fatal error. Urfy knew the whole class was just waiting for a sign to awaken from its torpor, so he resigned himself to suffering through his student’s obnoxious behavior. His desk was mounted on a platform, and he towered above the students: twenty boys and girls, aged six to ten, who’d been assigned the task of copying a list of words for common objects from the blackboard into their notebooks. Since the exercise was optional, most of them were dozing in their seats; in the stifling heat, they were in no mood for learning. Worn down and deflated, they let the flies devour their faces with impunity. Located in the basement of an old house, the classroom was a part of an apartment that Urfy shared with his mother. It was a fairly big room; a little daylight came in through the basement windows, which faced the sidewalk of a narrow commercial street. Most of the day, passing throngs of shoppers distracted the kids, who liked to shoot at their legs—the only visible part of them—with slingshots. But at this hour the street was empty; nobody would think of venturing out into this furnace.

  Urfy took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his prematurely balding head. The bald spot was a mark of his professorial dignity; he never failed to groom and polish it well, like an expensive article of furniture in a poor person’s home. It was a local belief that premature baldness indicated wisdom and knowledge, and Urfy liked
to encourage this illusion, lifting his hand frequently to his pate—especially when faced with skeptical parents who had the audacity to treat him like a worthless young boy. But baldness wasn’t the only physical mark of his genius: Urfy was also seriously nearsighted. He wore steel-rimmed glasses with impressively thick lenses that magnified the severity of his discerning gaze. A bald schoolmaster afflicted with myopia—that was more than enough to inspire the confidence of an illiterate population that had been raised with the axiom that a blind man can do no harm.

  Compared to the outside, the classroom was a cool oasis. Urfy loved the stillness of the afternoon, when the children, dazed by the heat, quieted down for once. He gave himself over to the pleasures of reflection. After years spent in the dusty offices of one government ministry or another, he’d finally found a profession that suited him. His generosity and the sweetness of his character had always led him to prefer the company of children to that of adults. Adults scared him: in each of them he saw a potential killer. Urfy needed to be able to love without an ulterior motive, without beating around the bush, without trickery, and, above all, with forgiveness. But how can you forgive an adult? Too much selfishness, foolishness, brutality, stymied hopes, and bitterness separated him from his contemporaries. And ambition! They were all racked with ambition. The wanted to make it! But make it where? And when they finally had made it—to the heights of glory or wealth—they turned into brutes: repugnant, arrogant monsters incapable of feeling the slightest human sentiment. What Urfy admired in children was, above all, their complete lack of ambition. They were content with their daily lot; they strove for nothing but the simple joys of being alive. But for how much longer? It passed quickly—childhood and the marvelous pointlessness of youth—an undeniable truth that filled Urfy with bitterness. These children would later become men. They would join the pack of wolves; they’d abandon their intransigent love of purity and lose themselves in the anonymous crowd of murderers.

  One day he had the idea of opening a private school; it was a strike against the official system of education, which aimed to initiate children into the ignoble trickery of a society in decay. The system was an insult to the charmed, innocent dreams of childhood. For a long time Urfy had felt that if he ever did have something to say, he’d say it to children; he had no use for adults. So he lost no time putting his plan into action. With the consent of his mother, who would be assisting him, he freed up a room of their small basement lodgings, furnished it with a few benches and a blackboard, and then—to add a touch of seriousness to the enterprise—had a local painter make a majestic sign, which he hung above the door of the building. A handful of neighborhood families, tempted by the proximity of this hallowed hall of science (and even more so by the modest fee), enrolled their children before the paint on the sign was dry. And then something extraordinary happened. Against all expectations, the children manifestly adored their schoolmaster; they would kill their own parents before relinquishing their seats in this unlikely school. The parents—good, simple people who’d never imagined their offspring would exhibit such hunger for learning—were stunned. What they didn’t understand was that at school their children inhabited an anarchic world that was perfectly to their liking, and that Urfy —despite his bald head and thick steel-rimmed glasses—was a dangerous practical joker. He spoke to his charges in a language that openly contradicted the language of adults. He inculcated them with a single principle: to know that everything grown-ups told them was false and that they should ignore it. So his classroom became a breeding ground for a generation of skeptics who honored no authority. Urfy was sometimes stunned by the unorthodox pronouncements that sprang to the children’s lips.

  Young Zarta’s lousy manners were fully on display as he spat seed shells onto the classroom floor. This was too filthy for Urfy, who did the cleaning. It was time to intervene. In a quiet but firm voice, he said:

  “Hey, kid! Go chew your seeds out on the street.”

  Zarta swallowed the seed he’d just crushed in his teeth and pretended to study the route of a fly that was circulating near the ceiling. Urfy took the ruler that hung from his desk and pointed it at the child.

  “Hey, Zarta! I’m talking to you.”

  Seeing that he’d been found out, Zarta began to whimper—a pathetic sound that didn’t fit his body, which resembled a well-fed pig. Zarta ate rapturously; he ate everything he could get his hands on, and by now he’d acquired a robust corpulence unusual for his age. He rose to respond.

  “On the street, sir! In this heat! Do you want me to die?”

  “Couldn’t care less. Go on, scram!”

  “But I was hungry, sir! I haven’t eaten in three days.”

  “May Allah protect you,” said Urfy, bowing his head. “What would we do without you and your lies? But, sadly, you’ll be leaving us soon; you’re almost a man.”

  This insinuation by his schoolmaster struck Zarta as the ultimate betrayal. Trembling, he clutched at his stomach as if to quell an all-consuming hunger. He appeared to speak through tears:

  “Why do you humiliate me, sir? What have I done to deserve this?”

  The few students who’d been copying words from the board into their notebooks abandoned their noble endeavor; the rest woke up, yawning, and observed their classmate, who—proud of being singled out by the schoolmaster—groaned for appearance’s sake and tried to look as hungry as possible.

  “I’ll tell you why you’ll be leaving us,” Urfy explained calmly. “First, because you’re becoming fatter and fatter; second, because you lie like a rich man. It’s distracting to have someone like you among us. Your lies are worth nothing here—it’s time to go share them with the world. And now, stop gnawing those seeds. Go to sleep like your friends!”

  “I’m not tired,” whimpered Zarta, deeply upset at the prospect of leaving school. “But I promise to stop eating seeds. You’ve spoiled my appetite, sir!”

  “Let’s hope it’s for good,” said Urfy.

  Some of the students began to reproach Zarta for having woken them for nothing; then they demanded fiercely that he share his seeds. It was turning into a bad scene. Urfy put a stop to this nascent offensive by pronouncing the magic formula he reserved for such cases:

  “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to kick you all out and close down the school!”

  This threat, like a death sentence, produced the desired effect. Instantly the class fell silent, and Urfy was able to return to his text. He’d already finished, but he was enjoying fiddling with it, prettying up the sentences with outlandish adjectives and turns of phrase. Printed and posted on the city’s walls, it would be worse than a price on the governor’s head. Urfy was keenly sensitive to the subtlety of Heykal’s maneuver: to put the terrible weapon of irony in the service of the revolution. Urfy acknowledged the power of irony and scorn. But for the last few months, an open wound in his heart had clouded his customary lucidity. He suffered from a pain that no dose of irony could alleviate: his mother had gone mad, becoming a caricature of a human being. He could not bring himself—dutiful son that he was—to appreciate the absurdity of this scary apparition, who, as a woman and mother, had been all sweetness and self-sacrifice. What good did it do to deny it? But seeing her now—the decrepit body, the pathetic face that seemed to sink deeper into darkness every day—he couldn’t muster a laugh; he had no right. At some moments he gave up completely, relinquished the privilege of insight and fell back into the tormenting chaos that, from the beginning of time, has been pitted against it. Soon suffering would devour him whole. He’d lose his sense of humor, succumb to pessimism and unhappiness, and end up a truly miserable man, unable to teach the children he loved so much. He felt that he was betraying not just his own sensibility but also Heykal and his jovial crew. Because Heykal, though he maintained a strict silence on the subject, was not fooled. Nothing escaped the gentle authority of his gaze; it stripped away the useless trappings of the soul and enveloped it with proud love. There was no doubt
in Urfy’s mind: Heykal would have liked him to make a joke of his mother’s madness. He was waiting, patient as the devil, for his friend to offer him this supreme proof; he anticipated it as a prodigious honor, a higher satisfaction. Why be upset, he seemed to be saying. Doesn’t madness make the world go round? Whenever Urfy met Heykal he felt ashamed, like a traitor who knows he’s been found out. It was ridiculous and demeaning, and it left Heykal looking brotherly and kind while Urfy sank into cruel confusion.

  Footsteps resounded in the corridor and Urfy looked toward the back of the classroom. For a few seconds he remained frozen in an anxious state of expectation, dreading the inevitable appearance of his mother. But when he saw Karim instead, he smiled, relieved. The young man responded to his smile with a gesture that indicated he didn’t want to disturb him and would wait to speak to him after class. Then, to be discreet, he tiptoed toward a school bench and sat down next to a young girl, whose red-tinted hair and orange dress made her look like an exotic fruit. She was very beautiful, and Karim liked to flirt with her.

  The girl kept her eyes down and pretended not to notice his presence. Karim stroked her hair. He leaned in and murmured passionately in her ear:

  “So, my love! Shall we give each other instructions?”

  The girl didn’t respond. Pouting, she turned her head as if a fly was bothering her.

  “What is it?” Karim asked. “Are you breaking up with me or what? Answer me, oh my love!”

  Without turning to him the girl said in a low and musical voice:

  “Where are the presents you keep promising me, you liar?”

  “Women!” lamented Karim with mock indignation. “Always so materialistic! And I thought you loved me for myself. Oh, how unhappy I am!”

  He leaned on the desk, resting his forehead in his hand, and let out a series of deep sighs, all the while peering at the girl out of the corner of his eye. He waited to see what would happen. It didn’t take long.