Beirut Hellfire Society

by Rawi Hage

  At this, his father had giggled; he enjoyed dressing up the dead. He brushed their hair, raised their torsos and lifted their necks to wrap them in white collars and formal ties. Powder and blush were puffed upon cadaverous cheeks to encourage the illusion of potential resurrection. His father had hummed while he worked, urging his bodies to relax and bear everything with patience. He would lift his head and smile at Pavlov, and once in a while ask him to shake the stiff’s hand.

  Look, son, see how perfect he is. All the fellow needs to do now is speak. Watch and learn, his father had told Pavlov. And then he had added: And those who don’t have the chance to dress up and be buried—they will be taken by the winds and the burning sun.

  GAS BONBONS

  Pavlov hopped into his father’s hearse, turned left and exited the cemetery road. He suddenly realized that he hadn’t left the street for days. Yet he was satisfied with his routine, his immobility, his view of the passage of seasons over the headstones, his chain-smoking, and his conversations with Rex—all of which made him strangely content.

  On his way out that morning, he had remembered to bring breakfast to the Lady of the Stairs. She still hadn’t uttered a word since the day of the massacre, but now when he sat next to her, she touched his face, combed his hair with her fingers and smiled at him. With time comes progress, he declared to her. Then he’d walked out of the house, fed the dog and steered the hearse towards the highway. The city roads were almost empty under the falling bombs, which he ignored. Only an occasional fast car would pass by him in a flash. On the highway, he found himself behind a pickup filled with militiamen, their rifles pointing towards the sky. Some were wearing jeans, some had helmets and military boots, and others wore American baseball caps and cheap shoes. They were sitting in the back of the truck, in two rows facing each other, bouncing up and down with their rifles. Upon seeing Pavlov’s car, some of the men crossed themselves and began shouting to their driver. The driver looked in his rear-view mirror and accelerated to get away from the omen of death.

  Fearful that one of the soldiers would shoot at him, Pavlov accelerated too, and tried to pass the militia truck, but the driver blocked his way and the men in the back jeered at him, raising their fists and aiming their guns at his windshield. To escape their wrath and superstition, Pavlov took the next exit, which veered towards the neighbourhood of Dawra. He passed a bus terminal, the drivers in sandals busy fanning flies and luring passengers. Trucks in this area bore bold prophecies on stickers slapped on their doors and trunks: This is what God bestowed on me and may the jealous guy get a stick in the eye.

  For a while, Pavlov followed a slow bus, reading the sign on its rear: Do not speed, Father, for death is faster. He repeated this a few times, laughing, singing the phrase in an incantation: Do not speed, Father, for death is faster.

  Pavlov was used to the reaction towards his deathmobile. When, in his childhood, his father had driven the family out of the city towards the mountains or along the seashore with its wavy beaches—past salty restaurants with hay roofs shading straw chairs that had been woven by blind pupils in orphanages and charity homes—an uneasiness would settle on the road as they passed. Other cars would distance themselves from the family’s long black vehicle; some even stopped and changed direction. The deathmobile was the family car, and alternated between carrying the dead and carrying the family to the rare social events to which an undertaker was invited. Once, when they arrived at a cousin’s wedding, the groom became furious. As Pavlov’s family stepped out of the hearse in their Sunday clothes, the father of the bride crossed himself and a relative of the groom hurried over with incense in her hands, circling the car and mumbling prayers. The bride remained hidden in the kitchen with the windows shuttered, and then two cousins of the groom came out of the house, threatened Pavlov’s father with violence and asked him to leave.

  Pavlov’s sister had turned red from embarrassment. She shed tears, and the makeup on her face melted and rushed down her cheeks and dripped off her chin, staining her dress. Pavlov had watched silently as his sister’s fingers clutched her fake-leather handbag while his mother started to ululate, wishing the bride happiness, until his father put a hand over his mother’s mouth and pushed her back inside the car. They turned around and drove back towards the cemetery road.

  Today, as Pavlov drove, he passed people on the streets hurrying among the few stores where owners were still selling merchandise through small gaps under their metal doors before the bombing resumed. By now, he thought, the people of Lebanon should be used to the sight of his long black vehicle of death with its high, grey-roofed top and tinted windows. At the very least, they should have accepted its necessity alongside all the killing and death. But our utilitarian species, Pavlov thought, only tolerates my kind when faced with their own bereavement. He drove farther, taking narrow streets until he reached the highway again. Then he continued along the coastline ravaged by warlords, who had confiscated the sand and the waterfront for their corrupt building projects. On his trips with his father to the cremation house, his father would rant as they drove along the coast: Ugly hotels, he might say, depriving access to swimmers and bathers and the original inhabitants of the land. Those greedy contractors and their lovers, those beneficiaries of shady deals, have ruined the beaches…

  Pavlov pulled over outside a factory on the shoreline. There, he bought two industrial-size propane tanks and ten metres of pipe and some bolts. A little farther along, he also stopped at a grocery and bought food—some loaves, tea, sugar, a bottle of whisky, fruit, and bones for the dog. And before getting into his car again, he went back inside to buy some chocolates for the Lady of the Stairs.

  He drove up into the mountains, instinctively finding his way to the cremation house. When he arrived, he lifted the vase under which the key rested, alongside the vermin who had made the bottom of the dead plant their home. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  Inside, the rooms were damp and cold, and the walls were deteriorating. But blocks of wood waited by the stove, and on the bed was a book. Sometimes, while a body was burning in the furnace, his father would read. And sometimes he would recite, under his breath, passages by heart. Pavlov picked up the book, but he didn’t recognize the language in which it was written. His father had made notes in the margin, and drawings that looked like circles and divisions. Pavlov peered more closely: they were drawings of serpents and stars.

  He walked around the house, looking for clues. He opened the cupboards and drawers, and checked under the sink. Finally he lifted the mattress on the bed and found books underneath. He flipped through them; they all seemed to be in different languages. Some had beautiful illustrations—drawings of lions, a child, a woman—and from what Pavlov could make out, Latin and Syriac text. His father had scribbled in Arabic in the margins, Sophia.

  Pavlov lit the wood in the stove, heated some food and ate. He lay on his father’s bed and drank from a bottle of whisky. The books were a mystery. They were old and strange. They had been read repeatedly, judging by the stains on the pages and the cracks in their spines.

  Father, he said. Father, what are you?

  He slept deeply. The next morning, waking early, he started work on the crematorium. He locked the gas faucet, removed the old propane tanks and examined the pipes, which were starting to show signs of fissures and cracks. He followed their trajectories through the opening of a small metal door and beneath the furnace. He cut them and pulled them out. By noon, he had attached the canisters, which his father had always called bonbons, to the new bolts on the ends of the pipes, securing a stream of gas to the furnace.

  Fearing a leak, he opened the windows. Then he lit the furnace and a burst of flames flared immediately. He could regulate the flow of gas by twisting the bonbons’ opening and using the faucet in the wall, and now he watched the heat transform from red to purple to a dark blue.

  He let the furnace run, and went outside to smoke and gaze at the steep hills. As he stood there
, he noticed the outline of a narrow road. He stubbed out his cigarette and walked along the winding path, registering the passage of time by the growth of trees in front of steep rocks.

  Upon reaching the end of the road at the edge of a cliff, he took a handful of dust and let it drop. The dust flew back in his face and he swallowed it. As he coughed and spat, he recalled his father’s knowledge of the wind and its directions. His father would stand at the edge of the cliff and sniff the air before pouring the deceased into the valley.

  The sun was now above the mountains and the valley was covered in a haze of heat. By the time Pavlov had returned to the house, he was covered in sweat. A sense of melancholy settled over him, and he wiped his brow with the back of his arm.

  The house’s interior was boiling. Every object bore the heat of the furnace. The books that he gathered to put back under the bed seemed crisper, and some of the pages had curled, making letters rise and fall in their landscape of mysterious words. He shut off the bonbons and the faucet, and opened the oven’s door. A blaze of heat hit him in the face. Sweat rolled down his forehead, ran over his eyes and settled above his lips. The heat was comforting, and soon he couldn’t tell if it was sweat that poured from his eyes or tears.

  He gathered what was left of his food but left the bottle of whisky. Then he locked the door and replaced the key under the vase.

  TOWARDS THE BOMBED CITY

  Pavlov drove back towards the war. He passed through villages and small towns, his long hearse coursing down the curving roads of steep valleys. Death, he reminded himself, also existed at this altitude. Sometimes there were flights off the cliffs by drivers who lost control—drunk urbanites in search of small restaurants with authentic cuisine who filled their bellies and drove, intoxicated by the alcohol and the fresh air, experiencing a last ride in their shiny machine before plummeting into the valleys.

  Pavlov passed little shrines housing bearded saints, statues planted like flowers where sleepy drivers had experienced the last surges of their existence, crosses marking the final curves for those who couldn’t hang on to the road as their headlights beamed into the quiet drop below. Pavlov drove his deathmobile through this orbit of accidents. Locals don’t fly off the roads, he mused. They are born to this terrain, to the sloping sky and steep valleys. They are born with goats’ feet, like mischievous Pan, their hooves conveniently curved, their eyes shining at night under the brilliance of the howling moon, their thick fingers matching the knotted tree roots and rocks. When they climb, they hunch their backs; when they descend, they lean forwards and dangle their heads into the abyss. But reckless city dwellers, living like rodents in Beirut—they are forever distracted by their mirrors, by perfume in the glove compartment, by the luscious thighs of their passengers, as they roll down the speedy hills. And when they spin off the road, they hover briefly in their best casual attire, their ties suspended parallel to their tongues, and their scent leaves a trail of sweetness and a whiff of the coming fall. And as the car plunges, its tail lights paint a red line above the darkened valley, and afterwards, loud music bangs on through the early morning like the underwater sound of aquatic mammals. When the early risers in the village spot the smoke and smell the gasoline, they follow the music that echoes through the valley. They rush to the cliffs early on Sundays before the tolling of bells and the resurrection of smoke. There they gather and cross themselves, shaking their heads and murmuring to each other: city folk, city folk.

  Pavlov amused himself with these thoughts as he drove towards the bombed city. Cars rushed past in the other direction, seeking to avoid the bombs—but Pavlov knew that these drivers increased their chance of death when they accelerated in fear. One should be as cool as ice, he reflected as the bombs fell ahead and behind, and he saw uprisings of grey smoke from mortars landing on the roofs of nearby houses and shops. He concentrated on the road ahead, briefly noting a long cement wall covered in war slogans—The Bats passed by here; Christians Forever—and cedar-shaped triangles, badly painted, punctuating these slogans at intervals. He read all this quickly as he drove by, leaving the signs and words of this world behind, remaining composed while the bombs fell around him.

  As he crossed the Nahr bridge, he was as patient as a war refugee occupying the slums of the earth in a house made of cardboard; and he was patient as he watched animal-shaped clouds resting outside his windshield. He drove slow and calm, eyeing the clouds as they drifted and changed into monsters and other fleeting creatures.

  NADJA ONCE MORE

  By mid-August, a ceasefire was declared, and the passage of the dead along the cemetery road slowed. Pavlov lingered at home, reading the Greeks and smoking. He fed Rex and, from above, watched the dog welcoming the rare funeral procession. The dead who passed below his window these days were mostly older people, and their funerals tended to be less noisy, more expected. If tearful outbursts arose, they elicited condemnation from bystanders, as if excessive sadness for the passing of the elderly was an indulgence. The young have died by the dozen, some of the bystanders said. These deceased had full lives and we should be grateful they have lived so long.

  During this time, Pavlov’s brute uncles came to inquire again about the deathmobile. The elder, Maurice, said that he had heard from high-ranking sources in the militia that the ceasefire would not last long, and another fierce battle was imminent. They would need the hearse for their business. The younger, Mounir, reminded Pavlov of their contract, and tried to shame him by invoking the name of his father. My brother would have disapproved, Mounir said, repeating the word brother multiple times. My brother, may he rest in peace!

  The car is off limits, Pavlov replied simply. And you still owe me and my sister money from the sale of our share of the business.

  What about that woman living at the bottom of your stairs? his uncles asked angrily. Is she your whore?

  Pavlov violently pushed his uncles out of the house.

  * * *

  The next morning, Pavlov was standing on his balcony. Son of Mechanic approached and stood looking up at him, his gun visible at his waist, his shoulders pumped from his military training. He pointed at Pavlov with his index finger and clicked an imaginary gun with his thumb, then touched and thrust his groin in a vulgar manner.

  Pavlov fixed his eyes on him, moving his gaze only to light a cigarette.

  Finally, Son of Mechanic walked away, shaking his head menacingly.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Pavlov got into his car and drove east towards the neighbourhood of Naba’a. He turned into a small street, parked, and went up to a yellow building with green French shutters. He entered and climbed the stairs to the top floor. One of the hookers—he couldn’t remember her name—answered his knock. She was blonde and had blue eyes and spoke in broken Arabic.

  Is Nadja here? he asked.

  It’s not a good time now. Come tomorrow.

  Tell her it’s Pavlov.

  Wait.

  After a moment Nadja appeared. It’s good to see you, she said.

  Pavlov nodded.

  Well, come in. The girls are making dinner.

  The smell of food filled the apartment. In the kitchen, three women ignored him and kept cooking. The music was loud and they sang along to it.

  I was about to take a shower, Nadja said. You can go to my room. I’ll be there soon.

  He walked along the corridor to Nadja’s room. He sat in the chair in the corner and stared at the bed, feeling miserable. He could justify neither staying nor going. He looked at his shoes and contemplated taking them off.

  Nadja entered. She wore no makeup and her feet were bare, and she looked small and pale, wrapped in a towel.

  She lay on the bed and asked him to join her.

  He took off his shoes and lay down beside her. She smelled of shampoo and her wet hair turned everything she touched moist.

  Where have you been? she asked. And how is the burial business?

  Everyone wants a fanfare, Pavlov said quietly.r />
  Nadja replied, They want to bid farewell with dignity.

  There is no dignity for the dead. There are only ceremonies for the living.

  Comforting the living at the hour of departure is an act of love, Nadja said.

  They kissed, and then Nadja removed her towel. She untied his belt and pants and moved her mouth towards his groin. She brushed her lips above his pubic hair, breathing on it, and drew semicircles in brief kisses on his inner thighs, one of her hands pushed against his stomach, almost piercing the skin with her red nails. Her other hand circled his erection, bending him to the side. She teased him for a while, glancing from below at his face and, as their eyes met, closing her eyelids quickly with a playful bashfulness. Then her lips opened again, and she pushed down the skin of his uncircumcised penis, exposing the mushroom top. She took it in her mouth and sucked it fast, then slowed, looking at his face, her strokes alternating speed and power. With her free hand she pushed the veil of hair from her face back over her shoulders, and looked up into his eyes.

  Her gaze was fearless now, bolder the more she sucked him—assertive, even confrontational. She took charge, dominating him, pressing her lips hard against his, and pushed him back on the bed, locking his wrists together over the pillow.

  Repeat after me: I am going to surrender, and let go. Just say that, she told him. When he stayed silent, she said, Fine.

  She went to the window and removed the red ribbon tie-backs from the curtains. These she used to fasten his hands together tightly above the white sheets. Then she caressed him and kissed his chest, neck and lips. She went down on him, then looked up again. She stopped, seemingly hesitant at all the choices open to her. At last, she took his penis and guided it inside her. She moved back and forth, slowly at first, then steadily increasing the tempo into violent fucking. The metal bed squeaked loudly. She slowed, looked him in the eye and smiled an affectionate smile. She kissed his mouth.