“No, for the moment it’s not forbidden,” admitted Nour El Dine.
“In future too, I hope. But it wouldn’t surprise me if it were otherwise.”
“I see. I gather you don’t agree with the laws. Do you have something to complain about?”
“I will complain when the time comes,” El Kordi said enigmatically.
Nour El Dine felt a rare kind of satisfaction never experienced during his numerous investigations. He was in the presence of an educated man with real knowledge of the world who was implicated in a crime, rather than just another heap of degenerates incapable of recognizing their own children. This was the godsend he had been searching for for years. His face expressed an almost childish contentment; he felt a resistance, an aggressive tone in this young man that responded to his long-suppressed need for confrontation.
Clearly El Kordi was no young ephebe. However, the masculine beauty of his features, accented by the exoticism of his slanted eyes, strongly affected Nour El Dine. He seemed to relax, to forget his bitter thoughts for a moment. A notable change took place in him; his manners became affable and singularly sweet. But El Kordi was far from noticing this. The hatred he felt for all forms of authority blinded him to such an extent that he could not see the suspicious nature of this unexpected graciousness.
Nour El Dine gloated over him with a kind of lubricious tenderness, as if on the lookout for a sign of complicity.
Why did he suddenly begin to speak in English?
“You come here often?”
“As often as my physical needs require,” answered El Kordi in the same language.
“It seems that you have a marked preference for one of the girls. You are her lover, or am I mistaken?”
This conversation in English unfolded in solemn silence. Understanding nothing, the reporter stopped transcribing. At first, thinking he had gone suddenly deaf, he began cleaning out his ear. Then, feeling things were too much for him, he put his indelible pencil down in front of him and assumed a helpless pose. As for Set Amina, she believed that the use of this foreign language hid a trap meant to ruin her. She sighed and said, “On my honor! It’s the end of the world. Now they’re speaking English in my house!”
Nour El Dine resigned himself to resuming the interrogation in Arabic, not to please Set Amina but because the reporter had begun to object to being left out: he was grumbling through his teeth.
“Are you in contact with the men who come here?” Nour El Dine asked in a worldly tone. “I’d like to know your opinion of them.”
El Kordi grasped the full implication of this insidious question.
“If I understand you correctly, you want me to name the persons who could have committed the crime. Let me tell you, Inspector, I am not an informer.”
“Of course not. You misinterpreted my words. I simply wanted to know the ambience of this house. Can I count on your cooperation?”
“In no way,” said El Kordi indignantly. “I will do nothing to help the police. Besides, I don’t know a thing about this affair!”
“Really, you have no ideas about the crime?”
“I have many ideas. But I doubt that you could understand them.”
“Why? I would be very happy to listen to them.”
“Very well! I believe that society alone is responsible for this crime,” El Kordi said grandiloquently.
“What are you saying, my son!” cried Set Amina. “By Allah! you’ve gone crazy!”
She thought that the “society” El Kordi spoke of referred to all the persons present and to her in particular.
“Be quiet, woman! Continue, my dear fellow, you interest me,” said Nour El Dine, his eyes shining with a strange sympathy.
But that was all; El Kordi went quiet. He was convinced he had said it all in that revolutionary phrase.
“I have nothing more to add,” he said.
It seemed that the source of his revolt had dried up.
“That’s too bad,” said Nour El Dine. “I would have liked you to go into that idea more deeply. It doesn’t matter! We’ll keep it for another time. I still have several questions to ask you.”
It was an auspicious situation. Even if this young man weren’t the killer, he was, nonetheless, a serious lead. Hadn’t he just betrayed himself? This excessive idealism that rejected everything in society was inspired by the same spirit as the murder of the whore. An anarchist! Perhaps there were many who thought like him. Nour El Dine felt himself drawn irresistibly as though toward an abyss; all of his faculties were on the alert. This young civil servant was surely going to lead him to sensational discoveries. It was only a question of not offending him.
“Would you permit me to ask you where you were this afternoon between two and six o’clock?” he continued.
“I was walking,” said El Kordi without taking the time to reflect.
“I see. That’s a very common sort of alibi. But, unfortunately, it cannot be verified. Have you nothing else to offer?”
“Perhaps you could retrace my footprints. My shoes leave marks.” El Kordi raised his foot so that the inspector could admire his shoes at leisure.
Nour El Dine didn’t have time to answer, because just then the door opened and two ambulance attendants in white shirts entered carrying a stretcher. The policeman on guard led them into the dead girl’s bedroom, where they disappeared. After a moment, they came out with young Arnaba’s body covered with a tarpaulin. Seeing this, the girls began to howl and wave their arms about like madwomen. Nour El Dine stopped up his ears and waited patiently for this collective frenzy to end.
El Kordi smiled inanely. The vivid memory of the shabby fellow who proclaimed himself a debt collector with such pride engrossed his thoughts. He had called himself the minister’s friend. After all, why not?
5
THE SOUND of voices and the brightness of the acetylene gas lamps welcomed Yeghen like a kindly place of refuge. At this hour of the night the Mirror Café was full of a rowdy crowd occupying all of the tables and a slow parade of people strolling up and down the dirt roadway. The ever present radio poured forth a stream of stormy music amplified by loudspeakers, drowning the magnificence of the words, the cries, and the laughter in the same confusion. In this grandiose tumult, ragged beggars, cigarette-butt scavengers, and wandering merchants indulged in a pleasant form of activity, like saltimbanks at a fair. It was like this every night: the atmosphere of a fun fair. The Mirror Café appeared to be a place created by man’s wisdom within the confines of a world doomed to sadness. Yeghen always felt amazed by this idleness and this delirious joy. It seemed that all of these men knew nothing of the anguish, the painful uncertainty of a miserable destiny. True, poverty marked their clothes made of innumerable rags and inscribed its indelible imprint on their emaciated, haggard bodies; yet it hadn’t managed to erase from their faces the shining joy at still being alive.
Curious population! Delighted with this fraternal and wonderfully comforting togetherness, Yeghen made his way through the crowd. He was on his own territory; here, his ugliness didn’t offend anyone. On the contrary, in contrast with these humble men it acquired a kind of radiance. He was quickly recognized and greeted by friendly exclamations. Several times he was invited to have a glass of tea, but he declined on the pretext of some vague business. Actually, he wanted to find Gohar; he must certainly be waiting for him, deprived of drugs and prey to suffering. Gohar’s suffering was the only iniquity that Yeghen couldn’t tolerate in a world full of iniquities. He put all the generosity he was capable of into offering Gohar his daily portion of hashish. To give this scrap of joy to a man—be it only a few hours’ worth—seemed to him more effective than all the vain attempts of reformers and idealists who wanted to lift sad humanity out of its sorrow. Yeghen gloried in being the apostle of immediate, tangible efficacy in this domain. In his opinion, elaborate plans and wise theories destined to relieve a people’s misery were only sinister jokes. He laughed derisively, taking care to maintain his public i
mage.
Without wanting to admit it to himself, he was still obsessed by the memory of his recent encounter with the young girl. Now that he had made contact with her by means of a poem, he worried about the probable repercussions of this adventure on his private life. First of all, he was certain he did not feel any kind of love for her. For him, it was at heart an endeavor devoid of any desire for conquest. To sleep with the daughter of a civil servant, and a minor at that, implied considerations to which Yeghen was hardly disposed. Nonetheless, this girl intrigued him by the effrontery of her behavior; she seemed to defy him. Her reaction to his ugliness denoted a nature that was sly, at the very least. Yeghen saw revealed in her behavior something abnormal, unhealthy, and it incited him to pursue what was a unique experience for him. This was the first time he found himself to be the object of a woman’s attention, and he was not beyond deriving a certain smugness from it. He could not resolve to easily abandon such a source of amusement and perhaps, who knows, sensual excitement. He was aware of the laws of probability enough to recognize that such an amorous adventure would only offer itself to a man like him once every three generations. He must, then, take advantage of it. Moreover, those piano lessons added to the strangeness of the adventure. Not that Yeghen liked music; on the contrary, he abhorred it with all his heart, but he doubted that the young girl would ever have the occasion to play in his presence.
Should he tell Gohar about it? First, he must find him. His my-opic gaze grew completely dim in the garish light of the acetylene lamps reflected by the enormous mirrors decorating the walls. He was advancing with difficulty through the throng when he felt someone take his arm.
“My dear Yeghen, do me the honor of sharing my table.”
Yeghen turned around. The man was a notorious pederast of majestic corpulence wearing a green silk robe and an ample aubergine-colored coat. His hair and mustache were dyed and he wore heavy rings on his fingers. He was a very rich fabric merchant who prided himself on his literary taste.
The fat merchant’s affability toward him always amused Yeghen because of the ambiguity it cast over their relationship.
“Well then, how is poetry doing these days?”
“It’s dying.”
“Never mind! Come have a glass of tea with me. I’m eager to hear you talk.”
“Excuse me, it’s not possible. I’m looking for someone. I absolutely must find him.”
“Ah, I understand,” the man said, with a knowing wink.
“You understand nothing. I’m not at that game yet. But perhaps some day … ”
“Well, that would be a great day. I will be happy to count you among my friends.”
“You don’t mean it!” Yeghen protested. “With my face?”
“Don’t forget that you have other charms for me. I’m sensitive to genius.”
“In other words, you want to sleep with my genius.”
They burst out laughing.
“But that too is impossible,” Yeghen continued. “I have no genius. Take care. I’ll see you very soon.”
“Your modesty becomes you. At least give me the pleasure of accepting a cigarette.”
He held out a pack of expensive cigarettes to Yeghen, who took one which the man lit with a gold lighter.
“Thank you.”
Yeghen left the fat merchant and resumed his search for Gohar. Where was he hiding? He didn’t see him anywhere. He began to grow more uneasy, especially since he felt the presence of a little cigarette-butt scavenger behind him, glued to his heels, watching and waiting for the moment he would throw away his cigarette. The allure of this expensive butt seemed to exercise a kind of fascination on the little boy. He followed Yeghen’s trail with the look of a starving dog. Finally Yeghen had had enough of this pursuit and threw him the half-smoked cigarette.
“Here, you wretch! You won’t be up my ass anymore!”
“May God forbid!” cried the child, picking up the cigarette.
It was completely by chance that he spotted Gohar.
In a barbershop, a kind of hovel without a door lit only by the distant café lights, Gohar sat enthroned on the only chair, exhausted by fatigue, given up to the desolate wisdom of a universe crumbling all around him. Yeghen’s voice made him jump.
“Greetings, Master!”
“You’ve come at last, my son!”
Yeghen bent to the ground, parodying a bow. The respect due his master did not exclude a joke.
“Ever at your command. I hope I didn’t disturb your meditations.”
“Not at all. Sit down.”
Yeghen ran to fetch a chair from outside, then sat down next to Gohar with a happy grin. Each time he was transported by the same elation; one would have thought that Gohar’s presence made the most unbelievable bliss possible. All Yeghen’s sorrows, even those buried in his unconscious, disappeared at the sight of his master. He even forgot his ugliness.
In the intimacy of the barbershop, Gohar’s silence acquired an ineffable power of eternity. Yeghen respected this silence; he knew that it hid secret, incommunicable joys. But suddenly he was alarmed by the feeling of a major oversight; even though he never asked for anything, Gohar was surely waiting for one thing: the drug. Yeghen quickly took a folded paper from his pocket, opened it, and broke in two the piece of hashish it contained. He offered the bigger part to Gohar, who took it without a word, rolled it around in his fingers to make a ball, then raised it to his lips and began to suck on it. Already, he felt life slowly returning to him and blood flowing in his atrophied veins. He closed his eyes, savoring, in all its fullness, that delicious moment that follows extreme privation. A little flabbergasted by this too hasty manner of taking the drug, Yeghen didn’t move. This oral drug-taking that Gohar appreciated because of its ease always startled Yeghen like some sleight of hand. In his view, drug-taking demanded a more complicated ritual. Yeghen loved the fantastic atmosphere of the smoking rooms, the heavy smoke, opaque and stagnant like fog, and especially the sweet, lingering odor that stayed in one’s clothes for a long time, more insidious than a woman’s perfume. All this had a certain romanticism dear to his poet’s soul that Gohar swept away with one stroke by stuffing the hashish directly in his mouth. Each time, Yeghen experienced a kind of dread at this waste. Even though he told himself that the desired effect was the same, he couldn’t help regretting this lack of interest in the preparations and the decor.
In the shop’s darkness, he indulged in his favorite grimaces, attentive to the slightest sign of the revival taking place in his companion’s organism. He was already looking forward to being able to talk with him soon. But Gohar still remained silent; only a faint panting indicated that he was slowly returning to life.
After having left the house where he’d just strangled the young prostitute, Gohar had wandered through the streets in search of Yeghen. His obsession with the drug had the effect of attenuating the feeling of his act for a while. He remembered it like a tragic error whose importance was lost in the void. What was the importance of one crime among all the other crimes perpetrated each day under the most diverse forms: wars, massacres, repressions? He certainly wasn’t incapable of pity. The memory of his victim had wrung his heart all during his desperate course through the city streets, but it was as if he were thinking of a regrettable incident to which he had been only the impotent, horrified witness. In all conscience he had never wanted or premeditated this reprehensible crime. He was powerless to reconcile his innate horror of violence with the atrocious evidence of the facts. How then to explain the crime? Gohar refused to believe that fate wanted to bring him back to the bosom of a monstrous, criminal world that he held in contempt. He wouldn’t admit belief in an ineluctable destiny from which no escape was possible. Was it his destiny to be a respectable professor teaching the foul lies with which a privileged class oppressed an entire people? Was it betraying destiny to flee this imposture? Nothing was less certain. No doubt he was a marked man, the product of an anguished civilization that prospere
d through murder. But he thought he had escaped anguish and recovered peace and tranquillity in this plot of still-unviolated land where the nobility of a people inclined to joy blossomed. Had he succeeded in his escape only to bring with him terror and murder stuck to his skin? Was his adventure about to end in failure? No, that could not be.
All the same, he knew he would have to reckon with man’s justice. The police would hardly get entangled in abstract analysis; for them destiny meant the executioner’s blade. They conceived of fate only as an oppressive will, intent solely on keeping the slaves in their servitude. Gohar knew they would nose about everywhere, deploying colossal energy with the single aim of catching him. Not that the murder of a prostitute was an odious, inhuman act in their eyes, but it disturbed their tyrannical order. The concept that each transgression should receive its punishment was one of those hypocritical lies serving as a bulwark to a rotten, dying society. What a road he’d traveled in so few years! That rigid morality that he had taught, that he had believed in as in an inalienable richness, had revealed itself to be the most baneful conspiracy hatched against an entire people. It was merely an instrument of domination destined to hold the poor in awe. Perhaps, after all, this crime was only the expiation of his old lies, his blind complicity with infernal powers. If that were so, he had broken once and for all, shattered forever the bonds that still tied him to that detestable world. From now on he belonged to the mass of hunted men, thrown back to the borders of horror but relentlessly animated by a healthy confidence in life.
No justice would be able to bring young Arnaba back to life, but he, Gohar, was alive. The police would have to combat a living enemy, the most terrible kind of person alive: an optimist. They would have a hard time cornering him. He would fight with all the force of his inertia to preserve this new life acquired at the price of superhuman effort.
Bountiful magic of the drug! Gohar moved in his chair, opened his eyes, and smiled in the shadows.
Proud Beggars Page 8