Alexandrian Summer

by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren

  He tried to evade them, but they asked again that he wear his costume for them, and his mother also urged him, wanting to show off her work. And so Robby gave in.

  Embarrassed and ashamed, but also excited to have all eyes on him, Robby found his way between the folds of the long dress, which grew wide around the ankles. A small beach bucket was atop his head, its narrow base acting as the famous conical crown of the stunning Egyptian queen. For scepters he had his father’s fly swatter, nick-named “Can’t Miss,” as well as—no lie—David Hamdi-Ali’s whip, which he used to spur his horse, Esperance.

  “Like a girl … just like a girl!” the women cheered. Robby blushed, but never took his eyes off them, and even tried to afford himself a regal air of condescension. All of them, all of them, other than the venerable Madame Livia, all of them fat with big butts, too big for the narrow seats to accommodate, culos, as his grandmother says when she’s cross with them. He was happy to see them in their wretchedness, laughing and purring and shaking their bellies. Only the beautiful, proud Madame Livia earned his respect and reverence. “Like a girl, like a girl.”

  In a shaded corner, Robby noticed the twisting silhouette of the gloating Victor, making lewd gestures with his fingers, the kind he’d only ever seen the Arabs make.

  “When he was born,” Grandma said, “did I ever tell you this story? When he was born, little Robby, oh, how his sister cried …”

  “You don’t say!” Madame Marika exclaimed in false wonder. She’d heard the story before, but wanted to please Grandma.

  “Yes. Because she wanted a sister. When she heard she had a little brother instead, no demandes! Don’t ask!” Grandma mimicked her granddaughter’s wails, to the pleasure of the coconas: “Send him back! Exchange him at the store!”

  “What?” Madame Marika called. “Eleven years old and she still didn’t know kids didn’t come from the store?”

  Grandma poked her elbow in Madame Marika’s rib cage, to remind her that the child was listening. With amazing speed, Marika changed the planned ending of her sentence and said, “Didn’t she know the stork brings them?”

  Victor couldn’t help himself anymore, and let out an ugly moan, which could be easily confused with something else, and then burst into teasing laughter and escaped. The women were shocked and upset.

  “I didn’t know until I turned nineteen,” Grandma said and started laughing again. “We were such fools back then!” All the women laughed again. Robby used the opportunity to get away as well, almost falling flat on his face when his legs got caught in the dress. The bucket on his head slid down to his nose and bruised it a bit. The pain was bearable, but the insult burned, and he cried in his mother’s lap and wished a plague on the houses of all the members of the card club.

  12. A VERY NICE GAME

  Slowly, the sounds of laughter and gaiety died down, and around three o’clock a strange silence fell upon the house. Everyone was at the races, and Robby stayed home alone with Victor. The racetracks were closed to children. The two of them stood on the balcony and watched silently as the festive crowds moved along the sidewalk of Rue Delta toward the Sporting Club racetracks, beyond the tram tracks. The women in white, fluttering summer dresses, wide-brimmed hats and small sun umbrellas. The men in flashy, enviable white faux-silk or dazzling sharkskin suits. A carefree group, yearning for pleasure on this hot, sunny, humid summer’s day. A light, salty, tickling wind rose from the sea, waving the tulle ends of hats, and mischievously raising a dress up over someone’s knees, to Victor’s snorts of satisfaction. Robby placed his cheek against his folded arms upon the cool railing and dozed off, his half-closed eyes watching a white fog of woolly clouds, moving in soporific waves. When he awoke, the sidewalk was empty and the clouds were gone, as if a sorcerer had made them disappear with a flick of his magic wand. Suddenly, he heard Victor’s steady snorts, his heavy breathing. Only then did he feel a strange percolation sending vibrations through his body. His underwear was like a tent, and Victor’s hard penis rubbed against him, back and forth. Though he knew very well that this was crude behavior, he did nothing to stop his friend, and even pretended to still be asleep and gave in to the pleasure, feeling a charge of power flowing and releasing from the tip of his penis. He pushed his body up against the wall of the railing, shoving his burning gut at the rough coolness. A strong, pleasant pain spread through him.

  Suddenly he heard Victor whispering, “Now it’s your turn.” At first he didn’t understand, but then he felt Victor slowly separating from his body and taking his hand and leading him into the house. For a while they walked carefully through the dark hall, as if they’d found themselves in a cave. The first thing Robby saw clearly was the pink hook between Victor’s legs, flapping around like a small, quick animal, like some sort of reddish, restless rat. In his hurry, Victor managed to grab a large pillow, and now dropped it to the ground, lay on top of it and spread open his behind to expand his rectum. The sight of the brown hole made Robby feel nauseous, but before he could even tell what was going on, he was ripping into his friend’s body. A heavy, sour smell of sweat. The stench almost choked him, but also awoke a wondrous animal lust within him.

  “And that’s nothing,” Victor chirped, clicking his tongue. “Just imagine what it’s like to do this to a girl!”

  “To a girl? Just like this? In the ass?”

  “No,” Victor whispered, “in the front.” He stretched out his neck and laughed his nervous laugh.

  “In, in her front?” Robby didn’t understand. His imagination, shaped by the agreed-upon, petit bourgeois norms of Alex, was incapable of picturing such fantastical things.

  “Yes, where she pees from.”

  “But … but it’s so small.”

  “What’s so small?”

  “The hole.”

  “How do you know? Have you seen one?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “I have.” Victor’s blue eyes shot flames. “Our servant in Cairo has a little girl …”

  Robby was appalled. With the remains of his strength, he asked, “And you … you … did you do it?”

  “No, her whore of a mother caught us just when I was about to stick it to her, because that little stupid girl was crying. Damn!”

  “Stick it to girls?” Robby mumbled. The thought didn’t make him feel any passion, only disgust. He was getting accustomed to the idea that boys could enjoy this, and though their parents would probably be angry if they caught them, the pleasure was worth the risk. But with girls … he was embarrassed by the mere idea of a girl seeing him naked.

  “You idiot, what are you so surprised about? That’s how you were born.”

  “Me?”

  “Not just you, also you. Your parents …”

  “No! It can’t be.” Robby didn’t want to hear one more thing. He’d believed Victor so far, but the idea of his parents, his mother and father, naked in bed, and his father … and his mother … Robby was appalled and wanted to hear nothing more. He stopped listening and only heard a muffled version of the rest of the lesson on reproduction: “And the sperm … the semen … like milk … but not like the milk you drink, more like Nestle condensed milk … and there … in the woman’s hole … it gets bigger, and there’s a baby inside.”

  “And I thought that … that the wine the parents drink when they get married …”

  Victor’s laughter was wild. He turned over and jerked around on the rug, naked. Finally he lay still, helpless and satisfied.

  13. HE SEES YOU!

  The doorbell rang. Have they all returned from the race already? For a moment the children panicked. Victor quickly pulled on his pants and scampered around, awkward and confused, all his bravery and gusto evaporating. Suddenly he grabbed Robby’s arm and stuttered, “You won’t tell anybody, will you?”

  “Of course not,” Robby said, a wave of guilt sending a deep blush to his cheeks.

  “Because if you do,” Victor tried to transfer his own fear into Robby, “they’ll
beat you up. They’ll kill you.”

  “No one will touch me,” Robby said proudly. “My father never lays a hand on me. But your father and big brother will beat you to death!” He found satisfaction and a sense of supremacy in the thought. It was his small revenge for all those childhood myths violently shattered by Victor’s hot breath. He was still shaken by the vision of his father and mother, naked in bed, in coitus, doing just as he and Victor had done. He ran to open the door, ready to confess everything he’d done, ready to bear the punishment, whatever it may be.

  “What are you doing here?”

  At the door was Claude Cohen, chubby and bespectacled, grinning broadly.

  “What are you doing here?” Robby repeated.

  “What am I doing here? You invited me. Me and Isaac and Maxie Ephraim.”

  “Isaac and Maxie?”

  “You said we’d play with marbles. In your hall, on the rug.”

  “Here, in the hall, on the rug?”

  Victor came out and glanced at the guest with a curious smile. Claude was wearing a white suit with a red tie. His shorn hair was covered with a small, red newsboy cap with the initials “C.C.” embroidered in gold. A pampered little boy. Victor’s bouncy eyes could already see the suit folded carefully on the chair, and Claude lying on the rug, his round, white behind served up as if on a platter. Victor trembled with expectation and said in a hoarse voice, “Do you want … want to play with us, Claude?”

  “Yes,” said Claude. “What are you playing?”

  “A very nice game,” said Victor. “Right, Robby?”

  “Ye…es,” Robby stuttered.

  “You want us to show you how to play so you can join us?”

  “Is it a new game?” Claude asked naively, his smiling eyes shifting from one boy to the next.

  “A new game,” Victor laughed. “Robby wants to show you.”

  “No,” Robby called out with alarm.

  “Why not?” asked Victor.

  “Why not,” asked Claude, “is it dangerous?”

  Robby could imagine himself playing all these forbidden, even dirty games, as they’d been categorized in his puritanical mind, with Victor. He could file away and push aside all these acts in a secret drawer, never to be discussed. But he could never imagine this good little boy—his parents were an elderly couple blessed in their old age with little Claude and they treated him with kid gloves—agreeing to bare his dainty behind and receive Victor’s iron rod. He would probably escape, disgusted, and that would be the end of their friendship. Robby knew that Victor was trying to push him away from his other friends, jealous and wanting full control of him. Claude mustn’t know that he’d been seduced by Victor, mustn’t even suspect it. But while he busied himself with these thoughts, Victor was already standing before them, naked as the day he was born, wagging his reddish penis.

  Claude was confused. “What’s going on? Does he need to pee?”

  Victor twisted on the rug again in a wild dance of laughter. Finally he said, “I want … I want to show you the game we’ve been playing.”

  “What, you play this game naked?” Claude asked incredulously. His English nanny, Miss Pleasance, would probably advise against such games, but … to hell with his nanny! Claude looked at Robby expectantly, hoping for confirmation. Robby shrugged. Whatever happens, happens! He sat down on the armchair and watched Victor, who didn’t hesitate and whispered something in Claude’s ear. Claude blushed, and immediately smiled. The more the devil whispered in his ear, the more his smile grew. It seemed that this delicate mama’s boy was not disgusted by Victor’s indecent offers in the least.

  “Each of us will lie down in turn, and the others will stick it to him,” Victor set the rules of the game. To prevent any potential objections, he volunteered to lie down first, and raised his thin, pointy, dirty behind. Claude quickly removed his clothes, not even taking time to arrange them carefully, as was his habit. He put all his weight on Victor and tried to push his tiny member into him, giggling with pleasure. He breathed hard, going up and down, and never stopped making sounds of liberated joy, a kind that Robby had never heard him make before, not even when they played with marbles.

  “Enough!” Victor said. “Now it’s Robby’s turn.”

  “Already?” Claude grumbled, but he respected authority. Victor had taken on the role of Miss Pleasance, and he had to be obeyed. He stood up with a heavy breath, his penis, blushed with friction, hiding beneath his small white paunch, resembling the whitewashed dome of a mosque.

  “Come on, Robby,” said Victor.

  Claude urged him on. “Don’t you want to? You should, it’s good.”

  “I know it’s good, I knew it before you!” Robby announced. This little spoiled brat was going to tell him it was good? As if he wasn’t already the more experienced one. He quickly undressed and pounced at Victor, who sounded a loud “Ayyy,” Robby’s weight almost breaking his bones, but then immediately closed his eyes and gave himself into that vibrating, caressing pleasure. What a difference between Robby’s light agility and Claude’s bear-like clumsiness. But it would all be worth it once it was his turn to ride Claude. A plump, soft behind held pleasures that surpassed even his wildest imagination.

  “Now it’s Claude’s turn to lie down,” Victor announced, barely stopping himself from jumping for joy. Claude obeyed at once, lying down on the rug and trying to mimic Victor’s posture. It was hard for him to disguise the discomfort of lying on his stomach atop the coarse rug. His penis was pricked by the hard bristles, but he didn’t say a word. Victor sensed his discomfort and suggested moving to the back room at the end of the hall, where there was a soft sofa. Robby objected vehemently. Victor argued that in the back room they’d be better protected from unpleasant surprises, because if anyone suddenly entered the room, they would have to cross the entire hallway, giving the kids time to get dressed and pretend to have been doing something else. “Besides,” Victor added with an ingratiating smile, “this rug is too rough for Clau-Clau’s fine skin.”

  Claude nodded happily, not protesting the nickname. Robby remembered that he himself tried to call him that once, and Claude got mad and forbade him from ever using the name again.

  Robby stood his ground and refused to reveal the reason behind his objections: on the wall of the back room was a picture of a man in his thirties, dressed in fashion predating the Second World War, his hair slicked back carefully, his face grave, almost gloomy, unsmiling, his eyes penetrating and all-seeing, until you couldn’t help but look away from his accusatory gaze. Accusatory? What did I do to deserve this look? Could he have … no! He couldn’t have known … that picture was taken before I was born. Then why is he looking at me that way?

  It was a photograph of his father.

  Once, when he committed some prank in that room, one of his brothers came up to him and said, “Stop, he can see you!” Robby stopped immediately, and then his brother mocked him for it. Nevertheless, Robby couldn’t imagine him and his friends humping one another in front of his father’s stern, open stare. Of course he wouldn’t tell them his reasoning, knowing they would mock him the way his brother had, and try to persuade him.

  Seeing that this was a lost cause, Victor suggested going to his own parents’ bedroom, emphasizing the proposition with a gallant gesture, to signal how much more generous than Robby he was. Claude ran ahead with excitement toward those soft pillows, and Robby could hear the springs of the mattress protesting as he landed.

  When the brothers, Isaac and Maxie Ephraim, showed up, the three boys didn’t even bother to get dressed and pretend to play marbles. The two new arrivals undressed with haste and joined in the fun, as though this had always been their favorite game.

  14. MARCELINO

  After the kids left for their homes, Robby and Victor stood on the balcony and watched the red sun, reclining, heavy and dreamy, among soft pillowy clouds. A light breeze rose from the sea, caressing their flushed cheeks. They were united by their new secret, and Ro
bby felt a kind of affection toward Victor. It was a nice game. A boys’ game. The grownups were enjoying the race that was closed to children, but the children had their own little secret, they had a place where no grownups were allowed.

  “I hope he loses,” Robby heard Victor whisper.

  “Who?”

  “I hope he falls off his horse.” Victor’s voice trembled. “Just once. Have him break an arm or a leg. Not die, but have something happen to him.” Then he kneeled, put his hands together and mumbled, “Dear Lord, please let something happen to him.” This devil, kneeling like a Christian, saying a prayer to the God of Jews. “If you do this for me, I promise I …”

  But Robby didn’t hear Victor’s vow. He remembered Marcelino, a pale Italian boy who lived around the corner, right over Hamis’s store. Marcelino had been sickly since birth. When Alexandria was plagued with cholera, he was at death’s door. The doctors gave up and told his parents that only a miracle could save him. His mother took this literally and went to the church in the Ibrahamiya neighborhood, confessed her sins and prayed to Saint Anthony, vowing that if he spared her boy she’d devote his life to the church and change his name to Sant’Antonio. God made His choice, and perhaps the saint lent a hand too, and Marcelino healed. With Neapolitan vigor, his mother prepared to keep her promise. A deal is a deal. Since then, on Rue Delta, one might come across a skinny little boy wearing a heavy brown monk’s cassock, the rope tied around his waist dangling lower than his ankles, gaily sweeping the sidewalk like a child dressed for carnival. Sant’Antonio!

  Dusk already clutched the corners of buildings and began slowly hovering down and piling on the street. Suddenly, as if born from darkness itself, the lamp lighter appeared at the end of the alley on his bicycle, holding a long magic wand, at its tip a single small and stubborn flame which he used to light the gas lamps along the sidewalk. He didn’t even get off his bike, but instead pedaled his way from lamp to lamp, naively believing that at the same time God was riding his heavenly bike in much the same fashion, lighting the stars in the sky. And indeed, the stars appeared one by one, their light yellow. The entire street was now dipped in a magical aura. It was the aura of Sant’Antonio, who would never again play marbles or hide-and-seek, his life now dedicated to prayer and study.