The Cheapest Nights

by Yusuf Idris

  I was supposed to keep silent and listen to the sermon like everyone else but then I had embarked on a subject in which Abou Ebeid did not stand a chance against me, and I was keen to make an impression.

  He was familiar with drugs and injections and high-sounding technical terms, but when it came to corpses only a doctor was competent. And so I went on with my discourse while the people divided themselves. The majority followed the sermon while the rest preferred to listen to me. I was speaking with an ear cocked to the sermon. The preacher was declaiming about the punishment awaiting the iniquitous in the hereafter and everyone seemed to be in a trance. I mean it was the palm-tree clippers who were more particularly impressed. The higher-ranking were starting to yawn, and to look at their watches, and were arguing about the right time. The preacher’s haggard and desiccated audience sat nailed to their seats, their pale faces wilted like cotton leaves devastated by plant pests, their mouths gaping, their eyes bloodshot from trachoma. They were dodging the glare of the petrol lamps the better to concentrate on the preacher’s lurid descriptions of the tortures reserved for sinners. How they were going to be delivered to four colossal demons who were going to make them strip and lash them with a scourge made of iron with prongs that dug into their flesh and crushed their bones. Then they were going to be moved to an upper story where they would be thrown into a blazing furnace. Every time the skin burned off, a new layer would form to prolong the torture, and when they thirsted they were going to be given the water of hell to drink, which was made of burning lava.

  They followed raptly, hardly knowing what a scourge was, or lava, or a furnace. Nevertheless the Sheikh’s powerful rhetoric and the strange and terrifying things he recounted had moved them to tears.

  Meanwhile my imagination was running away with me beyond the bounds of credibility. I told my listeners how we thought nothing of taking our meals next to a gutted belly, and how we played cards on top of a dead man’s chest, and that I was fond of carving inkwells and rulers and pencils out of skulls and human bones. I told them a tall story about an arm I had once bought from the morgue janitor and how it had caused a scare when I took it home with me to my room.

  “And how much did you pay for it, Doctor?” asked the Sphinx, unable to contain himself any longer.

  I pretended I was trying to remember.

  “Something like twenty piastres, I think,” I said.

  “Well! For heaven’s sake! Then how much is a whole body?” he asked in amazement.

  “I’ve never bought one,” I said, shrugging, “but I should think something near a pound or two.”

  “And where do they get these bodies?” asked the Sphinx, getting suddenly animated.

  I hadn’t the slightest idea, but I made out there was a contractor for them just like the one who supplied us with frogs during our preparatory year.

  Meanwhile Sheikh Abdel Hamid had reached the end of his sermon. The people had by now utterly lost patience, having listened for hours to the Sheikh’s gruesome descriptions. When in peroration he exempted “those who fear their God” from the horrors he described, a great roar went up as the people sighed with relief at this hope of acquittal.

  I saw Sheikh Abdel Hamid turn his plump face, clustered with sweat, to look at his audience. He rubbed his hands with satisfaction as he watched the effect of his eloquence on their faces.

  I too looked at my audience. Everything was as I wanted it to be. I was on the verge of rubbing my hands with satisfaction too, like the Sheikh, when I happened to glance at Abou Ebeid and saw his silly grin was still on his face. I made one last bid to throw him in the shade. I went on to tell them how bored I had grown with the long holiday and how I longed to practice dissection again. And to show them how serious I was I declared I was ready to pay as much as five pounds for a body, if only I could lay my hands on one.

  I walked away with my head high that night and Abou Ebeid saw me to the door saying, “Go in safety, my Bey.”

  I never gave another thought to the things I said that night. I forgot all about them and the “rigor mortis” business and the iron scourges with the prongs. It was all small talk one was bound to make where there was company and I thought no more about it.

  One night, shortly after, I awoke to the sound of furious barking in front of our door until I thought the dogs were chasing Azrael himself. Then I heard a knock. It did not alarm me as we were used to having people knock on our door at all hours on account of someone being taken with sudden colics, or a case of retained urine. My father was the only one to be annoyed by the disturbance. It made him curse the day he sent me to medical school. He always feared that I should go out in the night to see a patient and get killed by someone lying in wait. Why anyone should want to kill me was a question my father never asked himself.

  I opened the door to find a man standing before me bending under a huge load he was carrying on his back.

  “Evening, Doctor.”

  The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t distinguish the face although it was the small hours of the morning and the light of day was beginning to come through.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “It’s Saleh.”

  “The Sphinx?”

  “That’s right, Doctor, I’ve been knocking nearly an hour. The dogs almost tore me to pieces. Here, make way.”

  I stepped back a little to let him in. He put the load down on the ground.

  “The goods,” he said.

  “What goods?” I asked, peering into his face.

  In the dim light I could see only that he was smiling. That was the first time I ever saw him smile and I realized there must be more in the matter than appeared at first.

  He told me he was on his way back to his little hamlet, after having sat up rather late in the town, when he saw a body floating in the stream. His heart turned over with joy for that was exactly what he had been looking for. So he went and fished it out and laid it on the bank until he ran to Abou Shendi’s house and begged him to lend him some sacking which he promised to return, forfeiting his wheat. He ran back to the stream and crammed the body into the sack, and carried it through the cornfields to avoid being seen, until he reached our house.

  Dumbfounded, I tried to follow his account, staring at his enormous bulk and his swollen eyes, while I suffocated with the stench rising from the sack. Suddenly I found myself barking all sorts of abuse at him.

  He waited until I finished before he spoke again.

  “Easy now, Doctor. Any wish of yours is a command. This is the least I can do for you. It’s not as if I’m keen on the five pounds. I’ll take anything you give.”

  I barked at him to take the damned thing back wherever he got it from.

  He waited again until I finished then he blinked.

  “Don’t upset yourself so, Doctor. I’m not a greedy man, I’ll settle for one pound.”

  I flared up again.

  “Are you mad, man? Have you gone completely out of your head?”

  He made a sign of impatience.

  “All right, I’ll come down. I’ll take twenty piastres. Come on, same as if it were only an arm.”

  At long last, after my voice had risen to a roar, and he could see from my face that my fury was genuine, he was able to realize I wasn’t haggling and that I meant what I said about his taking the body back immediately. His face froze and he resumed his usual grim expression, shutting his eyes.

  “Is that a proper way to treat me, Doctor? Do Effendis tell lies? Did you or did you not say a body was worth five pounds? Would you swear on the Koran that you didn’t? Would you?”

  There followed a long argument where I insisted I remembered nothing of the kind and where he repeated everything I had said word for word giving proof and evidence. I couldn’t persuade him to return the body as my growing embarrassment was making me falter. But when I saw he was adamant I thre
atened to inform the Omdah. His face darkened at that and he looked on the point of a tremendous explosion.

  “This is no way to treat me,” he broke out. “No indeed. After all, it’s you who asked for it, and now you say you’ll go and report me. I’m not taking it back, I tell you. I swear by my father’s head, I’m not. You can do what you like.”

  The shouting must have awakened my father, for now he was coming out of his room.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  I hurried up to him, and tried to explain there was nothing, only a case of colic, but it was too late. He had already spotted Saleh standing in the doorway with a face that augured nothing good.

  “What does this boy want here? He’s a thief.” To all landowners all fellahin are thieves. “He’ll filch the kohl right off your eye, he will. He and his father before him. What brings you here at this hour, boy?”

  As he said this, Father was walking toward Saleh who was still standing in the doorway. I couldn’t do anything about what happened next. Father stumbled on the sack and nearly fell on his face, wondering angrily what had brought the thing there and what had brought Saleh.

  “What’s this?” he asked, feeling the bundle with his hands. “Have you been stealing watermelon, you son of a bitch? And why should you bring it here, hey? Hey? What’s the doctor got to do with watermelon?” Then, “Well, for heaven’s sake!” he exclaimed with a shock. “That’s not watermelon! What’s that stink, boy? Well, for heaven’s sake! For heaven’s sake!” My father was shouting uncontrollably. I had never seen him so terrified before. Saleh and I rushed up to steady him in time before he fell over. I led him back to his bed. He was speechless with shock. But it only lasted a few minutes. He sat listening to me, utterly flabbergasted, as I told him the whole story. He kept shaking his head unable to believe it.

  “The thief!” he kept repeating, “the Goddamned thief and son of a thief!”

  When I returned to the Sphinx I found him sitting on the ground with his back to the wall and his head hanging down. He was obviously very upset. He stood up when he saw me.

  “I say, Doctor, anything wrong with the gentleman? It’s all my fault! Oh my God, why did I do it?” he moaned.

  I was just preparing the dressing-down I intended to give him when he spared me the trouble.

  “Believe me, Doctor. I never swear by my father’s head in vain,” he said, bending to check the cord that tied the sack. “But I will make an exception for your father’s sake. I am so ashamed of myself. The devil be damned! What got into my head? I was going back home in peace, why did I not mind my own business? Moris rigo indeed! What’s that got to do with me? But then I’d thought to myself, ‘The doctor will take you in with open arms, boy, you can count on that.’ Well, as I told you, I never swore by my father’s head in vain, but this time never mind. . . .”

  He stood the bundle up.

  “Here, Doctor, give me a hand. Mind your clothes. Here goes,” and he hauled it up onto his shoulders with fantastic strength.

  “Never mind, Saleh, I’ll make it up to you,” I blurted, quite tongue-tied.

  “That’s all right,” he said as he turned, his bundle turning with him. “It’s only a bundle after all. Can’t be worse than that scourge the Sheikh was talking about. Only a bundle, no worse than that I’m used to carrying.”

  He went out of the door and had nearly disappeared in the dark when he suddenly stopped and turned to face me.

  “Only try to remember, Doctor. By the Prophet, and your conscience and all that’s holy, did you or did you not say you were looking for a body?”

  THE DREGS OF THE CITY

  I

  It is almost impossible for a person to lose his wristwatch, because usually if one takes it off one keeps it in a place that is safe and if one has it on, the strap, or whatever contraption keeps it in place, is so firm that even a skilled pickpocket can do nothing with it. That’s why it must be a strange feeling for a man to turn his wrist in order to know the time and find his watch missing. “Must have left it somewhere,” he says to himself and soon remembers where, because there aren’t many places where one’s likely to leave a wristwatch lying about. That’s what happened to the judge.

  In the middle of a court session boredom drove him to want to know the time and when he turned his wrist, his watch wasn’t there. And while the lawyer for the defense was pleading the cause for the defendant, Judge Abdallah was mentally reviewing all the places where he could have left his watch. Perhaps on the dresser in the bedroom, but he couldn’t be sure. Better ask Farghali. Farghali was the court janitor, and asking Farghali was the first thing that occurred to him when something went wrong. If he couldn’t find his pen, Farghali would look for it; if he mislaid a file, Farghali would know where to find it; and when he had a headache, Farghali was the first to know. Dismissing the court was no problem. All he had to do was stand up and give the order. So when the lawyer for the defense paused for breath, he saw his chance and immediately ordered the court dismissed. Everyone stood up, the puzzled attorneys wondering whether the lawyer’s force of language had anything to do with the adjournment, or whether it was simply in order to investigate the law on work contracts more thoroughly.

  Back in his room Judge Abdallah was about to ring for Farghali when he looked up and found Farghali already there, all of his fifty years in an upright column of bland obsequiousness. His stomach politely pulled in, his tarboosh leaning to the right so that the tassel came exactly over his right ear, he was leaning forward ready to catch every word.

  “Yes, sir,” he said in a tone which years of servility had tempered to convey his submission and his perfect willingness to carry out orders.

  The tassel of his tarboosh shook violently as Farghali denied knowing anything about the watch. Quite the answer Judge Abdallah expected since he knew Farghali couldn’t possibly have seen his watch, but he had to ask him from sheer habit.

  Probably on the dresser in the bedroom, he mused again, and the first thing he did when he got home was to look for it there. He was annoyed not to find it. Some inner pessimism, which has a habit of surfacing at such times, made him suspect the watch had been stolen. He had to make sure, just the same, so he began to search the drawers, and the bedside table, and inside the wardrobe, and under his writing table. He turned the house upside down to no effect. He had partly undressed meanwhile, keeping on only his shirt, socks and shoes so he could bend and stretch more easily in order to reach all the places that came to his mind, only to find cobwebs and heaps of dust.

  He sat down to think, crossing one bare leg over the other. It annoyed him to have the even flow of his life—dull and monotonous as it was—disturbed by this petty incident. The disappearance of his watch from a room with four solid walls vexed him, as he could find no reasonable explanation for it. He was nagged by the usual sense of loss one can’t help feeling for even the most trivial objects. This watch for instance was worth nothing in itself, and only the fact that he had lost it enhanced its value. It was neither platinum nor gold. Just a plain fifteen-stone Ancre he had bought before the war and which had stayed with him ever since. In fact it gave him a good deal of trouble as it frequently broke down and the cost of repairing it had come to exceed by far its original price. He didn’t particularly care for it. Nevertheless, it annoyed him to part with it. Had he flung it out of the window himself he would probably not have felt a pang of regret. But losing it in this fashion irritated him in spite of himself. He didn’t care about its material value. He was well-off, and money had never been a problem to him. He was born and raised in easy circumstances. Even when he was a student at law school he had his own Topolino. His father was alive then, and he was used to spending lavishly.

  For a bachelor, his apartment was furnished quite luxuriously but that did not mean he was a rich man. Just average. In fact everything about him was average. If one were to pick a hundred men
at random from all over the world and consider their height and weight and the color of their skin, the result would be something like Judge Abdallah. There were no extremes about him. Even with his tea. “How many lumps?” Mrs. Shendi would ask as she poured his tea. And then she’d remember. “Oh, I know. You like it just right. One and a half.” “You know me, madam,” he’d say, looking up from his game of bridge, “moderate, that’s what I am.”

  Speaking of bridge and Mrs. Shendi, it shouldn’t be imagined he had made a habit of going there. In this too he was moderate. His calls were neither too frequent nor too scarce. Just enough to sustain a cordial relationship. In this respect, like in all others, he was a gentleman. A gentleman with a fixed smile he reserved for strangers. And he never took the lead in getting familiar. He spoke little and with reserve. And since life treats people according to what they are, it treated Judge Abdallah moderately, neither raising him suddenly nor suddenly pulling him down. He proceeded evenly from law school to the office of public prosecutor, and from there to the bar, just as he had planned it, and his father before him.

  So that such an event as losing his watch was bound to cause a ripple.

  He needed a cigarette to help him sort things out. He was not a smoker but he kept cigarettes in his desk for visitors. Occasionally, he didn’t mind a puff. He got up now to light one, then came back to his place and crossed his legs. He realized then that he was practically naked. He got up again and slipped on his pajamas before anyone saw him. Not that anyone was likely to. Being a bachelor he lived alone. He did intend to marry, of course, but not before he turned thirty-five. He was thirty-two now which left him a margin of three years. The reason he had decided to marry at thirty-five was that this would be midway in his life-span, as he had reckoned he’d live to be seventy or so like his father who died at that age and his grandfather before him. There was nothing foolish about that. Many people make serious decisions in their lives based on groundless intuitions that do not stand close scrutiny.