Beer in the Snooker Club (17 page)

‘What’s this job you say you do?’ he asked after a while.

I belong to a secret organization the head of which is Dr Hamza, Jameel’s father. He is collecting documents, pictures and literature, concerning atrocities carried out in our political prisons and concentration camps. He is the type: as I said earlier, a French-educated intellectual of
les droits de l’ homme
beliefs, he is compiling a
dossier
about these things which he intends to present to the United Nations. The strange thing about these prisons and camps is that the rich landowners and reactionaries who still favour a régime like that of Farouk, are well treated, allowed special privileges and given lenient sentences. The others, though, the communists, the pacifists and those who see no economic future unless a peace is arranged with Israel, are tortured and terribly ill-treated. The trouble with Dr Hamza is that although he already has more than enough material for his purpose, he keeps putting off presenting it, or carrying out whatever his plan is.

I drive once a week to those places to visit police officers supposed to be friends of mine. They hand me an envelope containing pictures and reports written by the inmates and in return I pay them a certain km of money. I have the terrible feeling that some of the pictures wouldn’t be so gory if we didn’t pay for them.

This is all I do.

‘What’s this job?’ Font asked again.

‘Nothing,’ I told him.

I have never wanted anything tragic to touch me, to afflict me. I don’t even want to see anything tragic. And yet,
since … well, since London and all that, I always seem to move towards the tragic things, as though I had no free will of my own. It is funny how people – millions and millions of people – go about watching the telly and singing and humming in spite of the fact that they lost brother or father or lover in a war; and what is stranger still, they contemplate with equanimity seeing their other brothers or lovers off to yet another war. They don’t see the tragedy of it all. Now and then one of the millions reads a book, or starts thinking, or something shakes him, and then he sees tragedy all over the place. Wherever he looks, he finds tragedy. He finds it tragic that other people don’t see this tragedy around them and then he becomes like Font or Edna, or joins some party or other, or marches behind banners until his own life, seen detachedly, becomes a little tragic. I hate tragedy.

‘Nothing,’ I repeated. ‘Come, Font, let’s have a game.’ Sometimes we still have a quiet, friendly game, Font and I. Not for money or anything like that; just friendly and sarcastic about each other’s game.

‘Got anything to eat in the kitchen, Font?’

‘Yes. Make some more Bass and I’ll get something.’

He went into the kitchen and came back with a tray full of little plates; hazel-nuts, peanuts, pickled onions, white cheese, celery stuck in beer glasses. The Bass had put us in a better mood.

‘Cheers, Font.’

‘Cheers, Ram.’

Font switched on the light over the snooker table, we rolled our sleeves up, chose sticks, rubbed the ends with chalk and powdered our hands. The rest of the hall was
dark and cool because Font had closed all the shutters, and that oblong light reflected on the green table with the coloured balls was nice to look at.

Font hit the triangle and all the reds dispersed.

‘You’re a good shot,’ I said. ‘Another yard to the left and you might have pocketed something.’

I tried to pocket a comparatively easy red, but missed. Font said he’d see about ordering a snooker table with larger pockets for me. We were just getting into our stride, so to speak, when we heard loud voices and bangs on the door.

‘Police—open up!’

‘Kyria lysoon
,
’
I said. I don’t know what
Kyria lysoon
is, neither does Font, but we have often heard high Coptic priests sing it in the churches of Egypt. There they stand under their magnificent beards and sing what sounds like
Kyria lysoon
to four ugly, orthodox youths, who sing
Kyria lysoon
back to them. Long ago Font and I came to the conclusion this was a secret tennis match being played between the priest and the youths, with
Kyria lysoon
for balls. Font got a tummy cramp once, laughing. The priest serves a
Kyria lysoon
and you can see the four youths bumping each other trying to hit it back to him. They often miss, and a
Kyria lysoon
is heard bouncing in a corner of the church. But that particular priest was a fantastic player. He used to take a
Kyria lysoon
from the youths before they even served it as it were, modulating it cunningly in his own corner, and before you knew where you were, he had a smasher right out of the window, the youths looking at each other in perplexity. Once the priest came to speak to us after church and Font said: ‘Well played, sir,’ in English. I nearly died laughing.

I don’t know why I suddenly said
Kyria lysoon
when I heard ‘police’ at the door. Perhaps because my religion never went further than laughing at
Kyria lysoon
, and because one looks to God when in fear.

I caught Font’s head and covered his mouth with my hand.

‘Listen,’ I whispered, ‘you don’t know where I am.’ I let him go. ‘Take your time opening the door. Give me time to jump from the window.’ I was trembling.

‘Open up! Open up, Font, you rascal. Look what we’ve got.’

I recognized Jameel and Fawzi’s voices. I sat down wiping the sweat off my face. I went behind the bar and poured myself a large cognac. Font opened the door.

‘We’ve got a present for you, Font,’ they shouted. They were drunk. They had three Greek prostitutes with them. I recognized one of them, called Ellena; she sits at the bar of the Hotel de Paris. They caught Font and danced ringa-ringa-roses with him. The girls were also drunk. One of them lay on a snooker table and pulled her skirt up, while another took a snooker stick and pretended to be an impatient man. Jameel saw me and ran towards me: ‘Ramos – Ramos.’ He took a bottle from behind the bar and went to the girls.

I sat on a stool and poured myself another cognac. It was the first time in my life I had experienced real fear. Terror. It was like a fantastic smack on the face. It was as though I had been drunk all my life and had suddenly sobered up.

‘Ram.’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Your hand is shaking.’

‘The Bass has turned my stomach somehow. I wanted to vomit.’

Font sat gazing at me, his eyebrows high up in his forehead.

‘Why did you want to run away when you heard the word “police”?’

‘Run away? I was only joking; pretending they were real police and that they were after me.’

He kept on staring at me. Sometimes your emotions are unexpectedly stirred and you suddenly become angry or sentimental or sad. I wanted to pat Font on the back.

‘Why don’t you take one of the girls to your room, Font?’

‘Ram,’ he said. ‘Are you involved in some organization or something dangerous?’

‘No.’

‘Ram, are you a member of the Communist Party?’

I laughed.

‘Ram …’

‘Font, take Ellena and go home.’ I took a bundle of notes out of my pocket. ‘Take Ellena and have a good time. Take a bottle with you. Go on, Font. I know you haven’t had a woman for months.’

He wants to go, but he is shy. In England Font could share both his ideals and his body with someone of the opposite sex; but here it is impossible.

I poured him a cognac.

Times like this must drive him mad, thinking of Brenda Dungate in London. There was talk of marriage between them. The Suez war put a stop to all that.

I had calmed down and began to regain my old self. Jameel was in the kitchen with a girl and Fawzi was sleeping in an armchair. Ellena and the other girl were eating from the tray and drinking cognac from the bottle.

This Ellena. I used to know her as a child. She is the daughter of one of the dressmakers my mother and aunts used to go to. When young I used to go with my mother to those dressmakers; Greek, Armenian, Maltese, sometimes French. Always the same. A threadbare room with a sewing machine and pins and pieces of cloth and thread all over the place; also a large horse-shoe magnet. Maria or Talma or Juno or Georgette of whatever that particular dressmaker’s name was, would have about four children, pale little things playing on the floor. The dressmakers had sidelines such as making halawa, which is a sticky paste made of lemon and sugar and used for peeling hair off the body. They also knew secrets such as how to beget boys and not girls, or girls and not boys, or none at all. And while my mother wriggled in and out of dresses or screamed and shrieked because of the halawa, I used to pick things up with the magnet.

‘Where is your father?’ I asked Ellena once, trying to pick up scissors with the magnet.

‘Which one?’

‘What do you mean, which one?’ I asked. ‘Your father.’

‘I have many fathers,’ she replied.

‘Is that so?’ I said, astonished, finally picking up the scissors.

Another time after school, I went to her mother, Camille – I remember her name – for a dress of my mother’s.

‘How many fathers have
you
?’ Ellena asked.

‘None,’ I said, ‘but I have four mothers.’

‘Silly!’

‘I have four mothers,’ I said. ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’

‘Dressmaker, and you?’

‘I don’t know. A jockey perhaps.’ I decided I wanted to be a jockey and started riding the sofa’s arm and whipping it.

‘Come, I’ll show you something,’ she said.

I followed her behind a curtain where she took her underpants off and raised her skirt.

I looked at her and touched her with the magnet, then went home.

I looked at Ellena now, swinging the bottle of cognac to her lips. She hadn’t yet seen me. When she does, she will bend her head and shake hands with me: ‘Monsieur Ram,’ she will say, embarrassed and ashamed.

Font was looking at Ellena in the mirror behind the bar. There is something in the warm Egyptian afternoon which is torture to young men. I have known those terrible yearnings, too. After school, at two in the afternoon, just finished eating, my mother in her room, the flat darkened, there would be this buzz of heat in our ears and we would lie, Font and I, each in his bed, tossing. The warm, white sheets and the near-feverish body, sensual and uncomfortable, as instinctively we tried to find a cool place in the bed. The stomach would be satiated with food and we would know a profound yearning for a woman’s body to share this damp sultriness. If we were lucky, we fell asleep.

‘How much money have you got, Font?’

‘Fifteen piastres.’ We would count our money, usually borrowing something at fantastic interest from Corollos,
who knew why we wanted it, then tiptoe by my mother’s room. Suddenly:
‘Qu’est-ce que tu fais?’

‘Rien.’
She also would be tossing, the miserable widow, still in her thirties. Perhaps we had woken her, and to awaken someone in the Egyptian afternoon is a terrible thing. A scene would take place: ‘You are inconsiderate’ – ‘What have I done?’ – ‘You are selfish’ – ‘Why?’ – ‘I can’t go back to sleep’ – ‘I didn’t know you were sleeping’ – ‘What do you want anyway?’ – ‘Nothing.’ I would slip the car-keys in my pocket because I was too young to take the car. And then downstairs Font and I. ‘I’ll drive’ – ‘No, I’ll drive’ – ‘No, I’ll drive’ – ‘All right, you drive.’ And when that was settled, the cramp in the stomach just as when entering the examination hall. Then the hours’-long search. ‘Here, here is one’ – ‘No, that’s the one wouldn’t come’ – ‘No, it’s another one’ – ‘All right’: but by the time we had reversed, another car would have stopped and picked her up. We would search again, in all the little streets and alleys where they ought to be; but it would be early in the afternoon and a bad time; although early in the afternoon was the time we wanted it most. And if it did happen, she’d say twenty piastres, and we’d say yes and she’d say where, and we’d say in the car. Driving feverishly towards the desert. Hot. Sticky. One of us leaves the car, comes back ten minutes later – it never lasts longer. The other one leaves the car. Back at home we would be disappointed and frustrated. Nothing as voluptuous as our thoughts. When we had grown a bit, we went with the married women in the club, but Font doesn’t go to the club any more.

I had recovered completely from that short panic I experienced when hearing the word ‘police’. I wanted to go
home for a bath and change of clothes, but kept putting off seeing my mother.

The telephone rang and Font went to answer.

I wanted to sit somewhere alone and nice where I could think. I thought of Edna and my hand went to the bottle of cognac. But I stopped myself.

‘It’s your mother,’ Font said. ‘She says you’re to go home at once. Your aunt is there, and your uncle Amis is arriving any moment from Upper Egypt.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘I pushed Mounir in the swimming pool yesterday and I shall never hear the end of it.’

I left the bundle of notes on the bar for Font and took a taxi home.

‘Il faut qu’il se marie
,
’
my aunt was saying, ‘Enough is enough.’

‘I have done all I can,’ my mother said. ‘I have sacri …’

‘… ficed my life for him.’ I finished her sentence.

‘No, no, no,’ my uncle, the Pasha said. ‘More respect, more respect.’

They sat there discussing me. This business of pushing Mounir in the pool would never end, it seemed. The Pasha, one of our few surviving male relatives, lives in Upper Egypt looking after the land. As each aunt lost her husband, or each cousin his parents, the Pasha liquidated his assets and bought land near where he lived. He is the only one amongst us not westernized, and I would like him, if only it weren’t for the infuriating respect he pays to the ‘educated’ part of the family. Originally we had about four Pashas in the family, but as they all died early, my aunts put their heads together and it was decided to buy a title for this one. It cost thirty-five thousand pounds, and this is how it was done: a cheap plot of land was bought and converted into a park, and it was then announced that my uncle was giving the park away to the public. Ministers were invited for the giving-away ceremony and my aunts and their influential friends acted as hosts at the party which followed. The plot of land and its conversion had cost one thousand pounds. The other thirty-four thousand pounds … well, never mind; just the other thirty-four thousand pounds. Two days later Farouk announced my uncle a Pasha. He is illiterate, my uncle. Three years after that the revolution took place and titles were abolished, but all those who were Pashas are still called Pasha.