Alexandrian Summer

by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren

  The beads slipped between his fingers, the touch of the cold amber making him feel peaceful. A light nap. Was this death? An old man, falling asleep in the afternoon sun, his eyes closed, his mouth open, his fingers spreading by themselves and the beads slowly falling to the carpet.

  David stood before him in a sharkskin suit, white as the angel Gabriel when he showed himself to Muhammad, white as the fresh morning, blessed by Allah with a rejuvenating breeze from the sea.

  Joseph shook off the sleep and bits of dream. He stood up, encouraged, and linked his arm with his son’s, whispering in his ear: “Yalla, ya ibni.”

  22. UNE P.

  Victor and Robby stood on the balcony, their chins pressed against their arms on the cool stone and the rough, peeling plaster. They watched the two men moving away up the street: a tall young man, blinding white, his blond hair reflecting the rays of the sun as they lingered on the brilliantine; a firm but slightly hunched older man, wearing black, a red fez burning atop his head in the afternoon sun.

  “Do you know where he’s taking him?” Victor whispered in Robby’s ear, his breath hot and sticky. He did not wait for an answer and added, “To une P.” Robby’s eyes told him the hint was insufficient, and so he elaborated: “Une prostituée.”

  Robby had never heard that word, but his heart told him that it’s meaning lay in those moldy, mysterious corners, in the appealing, frightening world of sex. Plug your ears, hear no more. But every cell in his body thirsted for more knowledge. In a strange voice he asked, “What’s that?”

  Victor’s laugh resounded like a pile of empty cans tumbling down from the balcony.

  Robby regretted asking. Once more he was dragged in spite of himself into a dangerous zone. He wanted to take it back. In his mind’s eye, he once more saw his parents walking around naked, cheerfully playing games that were not suitable for adults. He hated Victor Hamdi-Ali so. Hated him and waited, waited impatiently for his words.

  “A prostitute is a woman who screws for money.”

  “People pay for it?”

  “You bet.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t believe me. Fine, don’t believe me. But there are houses like that, there are. You go there, walk in, pay, then they put you in a room where a woman waits for you, totally naked. You take your clothes off and screw her. After you finish, you pay and leave. It’s simple.”

  Robby looked back at the two men walking away. “What! You mean to tell me that your father is taking your brother to a woman like that?”

  “Shh … the whole house will hear you.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “You’re an idiot. What do you know, anyway? You’re a baby.” He turned his back on him with ridicule.

  A father taking his son to a prostitute. Would his father also come to him one day and say, “Robby, let’s go,” then take him by the hand to a big, dark house? What do those houses look like? Maybe they’re more like palaces? Rooms upon rooms, like cells in a beehive. In each cell, a naked woman. His father would motion and say, “Choose, son, the world is your oyster,” twisting his face with a small, lusty smile. The whole world is gaping, pink genitalia. He wouldn’t know what to do. His eyes would cling to his father for help. Once he almost drowned in a whirlpool in the capricious sea, in the Agami neighborhood, and thought his end was nigh, but then he felt his father’s arm grab him, ripping him away from the water’s death grip. This time, however, his father would not come to his aid. On the contrary, he’d say, “That’s it, from here on out, you’re on your own.” On his own in a small, seedy room with cobwebs and … a woman. A big, writhing woman, a womb of quicksand …

  “But … why?”

  Victor smiled and hugged him almost paternally. “So that he can let go of all that tension. So he can be light for his race, and win.”

  A simple, satisfying explanation. Emotional pressure. Stress and nervousness before his race. A bit of entertainment (apparently, going to a prostitute is somewhat entertaining) can help release such tensions. Robby never imagined that such a release could be a basic, simple, physiological process, just like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube, and inquired no further. Not that he had all the answers now, but the serenity of the afternoon made him feel languid and sleepy. The sun sprawled out among the clouds, like a giant orange on a pile of white blankets. A light breeze caressed tired eyelids.

  At the Café de la Paix, old men and women in summer garb began taking over the round white tables scattered over the sidewalk, their large, colorful sun umbrellas unable to protect the diners from the warm, diagonal rays. The elderly breathe in the wind and, with half-shut eyes, sip their Turkish coffee with creamy brown kaimak on top. Among them is a young couple, their faces tan and their arms bare, a floral dress with a cheeky neckline. A throaty voice bubbles up, like the cooing of pigeons in love. An Arab selling jasmine wreaths enters. Multiple flower necklaces hang from his neck and arms, and he pushes a reed cart full of them. From the height of the second floor, Robby becomes intoxicated with the aroma of flowers, or maybe it is his imagination, not his nose, that enjoys the scent. The young man buys some wreaths and wraps them around his girl’s neck. She laughs, her bouncing chest spraying off shreds of flowers, and the white of the jasmine sprays like sea foam over tanned curves. Waves of perfume rise again with a light wind. The breath is calm. The eyes close.

  David sat slightly apart from the rest. From within the cloud of heavy smoke, illuminated by the red lights of the club, his father’s fez appeared again, red hot, like the floating barrel that bobbed among the waves at Sporting Beach. At his side were several other fezzes—the old men spoke emphatically, their faces businesslike and their wrinkles vibrating. With dreamy, covetous eyes, David watched the frantic curves of the dancer Shakra Roomy. Her twitching navel hypnotized him into intoxication. Her protesting breasts, demanding to remove the burden of the golden brassiere, decorated with glass necklaces and jingling coins, also swirled in circles through the air, and in a moment of delusion he imagined them rubbing his burning face. The raki, that Turkish anise spirit, diluted with a drop of water, created hot steam inside his head, thickening clouds of fog before him, and through it all, the sounds of rhythmic eastern music, going round and round in endless cadence … In his blurry mind, David wondered if the girl had a price. He was once told that every woman had a price, but, in his natural decency, refused to believe it. Women like his mother, for instance, could not be bought. Suddenly it occurred to him that women like Robby’s sister could not be bought either, and the thought sobered him, like a broom sweeping away the cobwebs of merciful drunkenness. He quickly brushed the thought away and returned to his expedition around Shakra Roomy’s jiggling belly.

  Shakra wasn’t an Arab. Her parents had migrated to Alexandria from the Balkans, possibly in the same period that Joseph and Emilie Hamdi-Ali and Robby’s parents arrived as well. David once read a book, perhaps by the great Flaubert, a travel book about 19th century Egypt, in which Turkish belly dancers, who in Egypt served as high-end prostitutes, shaved the pubic hair off their romantic triangle. The thought sent a tremble of lust through him. A woman, white from head to toe (in his excitement he forgot the brownish-pink halos around her nipples), a little girl, blown-up. He’d often seen little girls in the nude. In his virginal imagination, he tried to illustrate this metamorphosis, but he couldn’t conjure up a clear image of a shaved woman, which served only to further ignite his elusive lust. This Shakra must also have a price. Distractedly, he rummaged through his pockets, feeling some bills and coins. Had his father not been with him, he would have tried to discuss a more intimate meeting with her. He looked at his father, and though the latter was conversing with the other men and paying no attention to his son’s endeavors, David blushed and curled up in his corner.

  “Hamdi-Ali, ya omri, my soul!” one fat Armenian in a fez tried sweet-talking Joseph. “Ya Hamdi-Ali, my brother, who knows better than you that the God above gives only one chanc
e, whether you’re a wise man or a fool, you only get one. The wise man jumps at it, grabbing it like … like a woman’s breasts. While the fool …” He waved the thought away.

  Joseph said nothing. His eyes were dark and stubborn. Once in a while, he glanced at his son, glad that David wasn’t listening to this shameful conversation he was forced to have with his friends. His friends! One trainer and two bookies. The trainer, his old Greek friend, Panayotti Helikos, who’d been Ahmed Al-Tal’ooni’s trainer and business manager for a long time. He was a small man, with a shiny black mane and a hooked mustache that looked as if it were painted over his thin top lip with pencil liner. He spoke with exhausting speed, switching languages to create a mélange of Turkish, Greek, French and Arabic, with a few English words to spice things up. With his will of steel, he’d decided to turn his employer into a champion, no matter what, even recruiting the support of the two craftiest bookmakers in Alexandria, the Armenian twins, Toto and Sisso Georgian.

  How dire, that Joseph was forced to sit here, at his age, with his flawless reputation, like a city under siege, suffocated with smoke, attacked from all directions. He wanted to go out to the night air, stand by himself, lean beneath the yellow glow of a streetlamp and smoke his cigarette quietly, his cigarette alone, inhaling only its smoke, without the nauseating mixture of smoke and hot breath, turning the air inside the club into an unbearable mush. The repetitive rhythmic music, looping endlessly, pounded inside his head like a stubborn hammer.

  For a moment, he thought he was going to have a heart attack: sudden suffocation, grotesque spasms, his eyes popping out of their holes, panic … doctor! Is there a doctor in the house?

  He gritted his teeth and prayed it wasn’t happening to him. Not here, not here, surrounded by his so-called friends, Panayotti, Toto and Sisso, the three men he’d joined countless times in this club so favored by the racing industry. He’d often joked around with them, enjoying their company, and truly thought they were his close friends. But Joseph Hamdi-Ali never had true friends, and therefore had no point of reference.

  Toto worked him with his slick tongue, and then Panayotti tried his luck with quick rhetoric, and finally Sisso delivered a short series of threats. But Joseph was firm in his opinion–not for all the money in the world.

  The three men saw this as an invitation to raise their offer. They exchanged quick looks of consultation, a crooked smile to signal that every man had his price, and righteous Joseph was no exception. Toto named a higher price than before. Joseph chuckled and said, “No!” They could not believe that modest, bashful Joseph, whom they thought of as a simple, naive lamb, dared demand a higher price than they’d offered, and never imagined that here was a gullible man, honest to the point of boredom, who could not be tempted with money.

  Joseph laughed silently. He thought: my son must be a real star if these three vultures, may their names and memories be wiped from eternity, are willing to pay, and in advance, no less, so certain are they that my son is going to win. Thank you for the vote of confidence, gentlemen!

  While he pondered this, he heard Panayotti name a new, dizzying price. Joseph pictured hundreds of Egyptian pound notes swirling through the wind in front of his tired eyes. He hoped with all his heart that David heard nothing. He could not guess his son’s reaction to such an offer.

  Luckily, David’s eyes were captivated by the charms of the beautiful, snow-white odalisque. The Turks like ivory flesh. Joseph looked at him, then at her, and thought, why not? His son wants her, and he shall get her, no matter the price. David is a prince, and a prince deserves it all. This was also a chance to escape from the three predators and their shameful offer. He waved over to the waiter, his old friend, a Maltese man with a quiet face and a paternal look, gestured toward Shakra and asked, “How much?”

  The Maltese shook his head as if to say, You couldn’t afford it, ya ahi, these kind of goods are for the pashas and the beys and the diplomats.

  But Joseph insisted, and a price was named. “Does she take checks?”

  “From you, ya sidi, certainly.”

  “Let’s go, ya ibni,” said Hamdi-Ali, dragging along his amazed son.

  23. IVANHOE

  The next day was the day of the race.

  The entire household was in attendance, except for Robby and Victor, of course. Even Salem went, wearing his Sunday best, a calm and solemn expression on his face. As did the Murad sisters, in new dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats, laughing ceaselessly. Only Robby’s sister didn’t take part in the excitement. Early in the morning, before the rest of the house woke up, she left for a picnic and a bicycle ride in the Nuzha Gardens with Maître Ramzi.

  The teasing began:

  “Since when does that cocona wake up so early in the morning?”

  “The power of love!”

  “Just don’t let her get attached. A Christian!”

  “Not Christian, Coptic,” Grandma corrected, but deep inside she knew the difference was insignificant.

  “The Copts are Christian.”

  “The Greeks are Christian!”

  “So what are the Copts?”

  “Copts.”

  “Christian or Copt, they’re all the same—they do not love the Jews!”

  “Shh, watch your tongue, Madame Marika. Madame Murad might hear you …”

  They all left the house and flocked to the sidewalk. The sounds of chatter rose to the sky. Robby and Victor were home alone. The slamming of the doors still echoed through the hall, mixing with the ticking of the grandfather clock.

  Without a word, the two of them dropped their pants and began rolling around on the carpet.

  Doorbell. Claude and the Ephraim brothers joined in, silent and understanding as co-conspirators, wasting no time on meaningless talk. The shutters were closed. Through the dark, sounds of laughter resounded. Victor proposed asking Louis to join in as well. Robby refused vehemently. He recalled his skinny, fragile friend and his sad eyes. He wanted to leave him out of it, to protect him from sin.

  After they were satisfied and a bit nauseous, someone suggested going to the beach. A redeeming idea: a purifying dip; a quick one, because Claude had to get going.

  “Then go,” said Victor. “Who’s keeping you?”

  “My clothes … they’re at your house.” He had borrowed a bathing suit from Robby.

  Victor growled unhappily

  “What are you getting angry about, like an idiot?” said Robby. “You can stay, I’ll go with Claude. I’m sick of this sea anyway.”

  Victor looked at them suspiciously, but did not argue.

  At home, while they undressed, dimples appeared in Claude’s cheeks.

  Robby understood and answered with a smile: Why not?

  It was all done quickly, with haste. Claude was excited, knowing that his mother was already waiting for him, worried. Robby was happy to do this behind Victor’s back. Claude asked Robby to come over sometime. “But without that Victor!” he said in his voice, which was too high for a boy his age.

  Then Robby was left alone and sat down to draw. What should he draw? That was always the question. He never thought to draw anything he saw around him. What would he draw? He picked up drawings left behind by his two brothers who went to Israel, and began “correcting” them and giving them titles as his vandal imagination saw fit. The wonders of boredom!

  If children in Alexandria were allowed at the horse races, Victor might have never taught Robby a chapter in sodomy, and his brothers’ drawings might have preserved their chaste beauty.

  His sister walked in and showered him with loud kisses, which she called ventouses, cupping. She called him mon petit Didi, or worse, ma petite fille—my little girl. Robby was never happy to hear the latter, and in his naivety sometimes even tried protesting, but whenever he did so, he was told the same story:

  It was the end of December, and everyone prophesied that the baby wouldn’t be born before the new year. The ninth month had gone by, and still we were waiting for a mi
racle.

  “Why should he hurry to come out into a world of suffering?” asked Madame Marika philosophically, and shoved a piece of Turkish delight into her mouth—heaven for the tongue and hell for the teeth. Her plump face, shifting as she chewed the candy, did not seem to be in a world of suffering. But that year there was a war going on in Egypt and all over the world. The worst was behind us. After El Alamein, it was clear the war would be over in just a few months, possibly even weeks. Maybe the baby would be born into peaceful times? A new year, a year of peace … A baby, born in January, making his first steps through the world, hand in hand with the new year … Then, in the end of December, as Alexandria became a forest of Christmas trees and artificial snow fell in store windows (the only snow to be found in Egypt was that ever-prevalent cotton); as British and Australian soldiers walked the streets, drunk, singing Christmas songs and missing their faraway homes; as the sea hummed and swelled, and drops of its seething foam reached all the way to the balconies on Rue Delta—at that very moment, the contractions began. It had been eleven years since Robby’s mother gave birth to Robby’s sister, and she wasn’t sure these were indeed contractions. Doctor Lachover was called. He whispered with her in the bedroom, and finally determined in his throaty, nasal voice, plagued by moments of falsetto (his French was tinted with an eastern European accent), “Yes, this is it. Would the lady please join me, I shall drive her to the maternity ward in my car.”

  “Doctor, it’s going to be a girl, right?” asked Robby’s eleven-year-old sister.

  The doctor patted the child’s head and mumbled something unclear about the mysteries of nature and God’s will.

  Then Grandma told the famous folktale of the rabbi who, whenever asked to foretell whether a baby would be a girl or a boy, always said, “A boy, Madame, a male child. Mazal tov!” while hiding behind the door a note that read, “Girl.” If a boy was born, the rabbi humbly accepted praise; if a girl was born, as sometimes happened, the righteous rabbi would open the door with fanfare, and with a mysterious grin pick up the note and present it knowingly, saying, “I knew it was a girl …” sigh, “but I didn’t want to upset good people. I thought, maybe a miracle would happen? But I hid the truth behind this door, like a truth at the gate. What is left but to celebrate our all-knowing God?” Grandma summed up, “And what’s left for us to do but to celebrate the genius rabbi?”