Beer in the Snooker Club (21 page)

Levy is teaching her brother, dim-wit Hamo, Arabic and he is very much in love with her. He has never told me, but I know.

‘Yes,’ I said. Didi Nackla is one of those strange flowers which can suddenly blossom from a bed of weeds.

‘Delighted,’ she said, and curtsied jokingly.

‘I’ll visit your mother first,’ I said, ‘then come to you if I may.’

‘Good,’ she said. She has two rooms and a kitchen of her own in a wing of the house. Mrs Nackla, her mother, is blind, and it is the custom to stay with her a few minutes when visiting the house. A maid servant sitting at her feet told her who I was as I came in.

I kissed Mrs Nackla on both cheeks and sat on a chair facing her.

‘How is your mother, Ram?’

‘She is very well, thank you,’ I said.

‘And your aunt?’

‘Which one?’

‘Aida.’

‘My Aunt Aida is very well, thank you,’ I said.

‘And your other aunt?’

‘Which one?’

‘Noumi.’

‘My Aunt Noumi is very well, thank you,’ I said.

‘And how is your Aunt Samiha?’

‘My Aunt Samiha,’ I said slowly, ‘is also very well, thank you.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘My uncle in Upper Egypt is also well,’ I said.

‘I haven’t asked,’ she said.

‘No, but you were going to.’

She laughed. She likes to laugh, Mrs Nackla, and also to hear the latest events and gossip. So I made myself comfortable and started.

‘Marie,’ I said, ‘bought a new car for six thousand pounds because the old one was costing too much in petrol. Ti and Sina are in New York for their trousseau. My cousin Madi is engaged and will get married next month. Lolo is having an affair with a German industrialist and her husband is as impotent as ever.’

‘You’re a dog, Ram.’

‘Well, it’s the truth. Hassan Abdu, the eldest son of the Abdus, is getting married to a Norwegian girl. Lotfy Safwat, the husband of Gida, has been put in a concentration camp for being a communist. We shall never see
him
again. Claro Hanno has lost her jewels gambling in Italy. Farah Farah is divorcing his wife and marrying Fatma, the belly-dancer. Kicko Rassoom is turning Moslem for business reasons. Assam the Turk, Yehia and Jameel are gambling with your husband in the next room. There is talk of a match between my cousin Mounir and your daughter Didi. I pushed the same Mounir in the swimming pool yesterday and now I am going to go and visit your daughter.’

‘No, no, Ram, stay a bit. I want to laugh.’ She nudged her maid with her foot. ‘Go and call Jameel,’ she said, ‘I haven’t had a good laugh for weeks.’

I lit a cigarette and waited. Jameel appeared in the doorway and ran towards me.

‘Ram, Ram; some skin. Give me some skin; I haven’t had a card the whole day long.’

‘I can’t,’ I said, ‘I’ve used all I have today.’

‘Not a card, Mrs Nackla,’ he moaned. ‘I haven’t had a winning hand the whole day long.’

‘Give him some skin,’ Mrs Nackla said.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’ve still got a little bit left, but it’s on my feet.’

‘Give it to me,’ Jameel said.

‘But you know, skin from the feet must be picked by the mouth.’

‘This is a well-known fact,’ Mrs Nackla said. ‘This morning my husband tried to pick some skin from my feet which I have been saving for my son Hamo’s big game tomorrow. I thought it was the dog licking my feet.’

‘You can laugh,’ Jameel said. ‘Assam the Turk swears he buys skin from a local skin-giver, and he’s winning like anything.’

So I took my shoes and stockings off, and Jameel rubbed his mouth against my soles for luck while the maid translated the scene to Mrs Nackla. He rushed back to the gambling.

‘This gambling,’ Mrs Nackla complained; ‘it’s terrible. Now that they have closed the baccarat establishments, my husband grabs every visitor I have for a game. What happened to Font?’ she suddenly asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Come, come, Ram. I’ve known him long enough. What is this foolishness of working like an ordinary …’

‘He’s gone mad,’ I said, depressed now and annoyed.

‘But …’

I left her and crossed two beautifully furnished halls to Didi’s apartment. She was sitting, her legs pulled up beneath her, with a semicircle of skirt covering them; a delicate hand-made lamp-shade behind her sofa shed a soft light on the work in her hand; a book, leather, and instruments for book-binding. The walls of her sitting-room are lined with books she has read and then bound in leather herself. ‘I have never bound a book I didn’t like,’ she once told me. The perimeter of the room with its mahogany and books, together with a large desk in a corner, would have given the room too masculine an appearance if it were not for a little circle of femininity in the corner she now occupied. A white, wrought-iron table with a light pink tablecloth, on which is set a blue tea-service for two. This corner is carpeted in plain brown and the sofa and single armchair are also upholstered in brown, but paler and of a shiny material, like satin.

‘Sit down, Ram.’

‘In a moment.’ I walked around the room while she continued with her work. There was peace in that room, a peace which someone of my type hardly ever comes across or even knows of. Serenity: a serenity which suddenly descended upon me in its profound beauty. It had affected me before, but I didn’t want to remember that now. The last time I had seen Didi was in London. I stood where she could not see me and watched her. Like Edna, she has no mannerisms or affected poses, except that her French education has given her a touch of coquetry which Edna lacks. She wore white sandals – a simple platform for her
feet, with a single golden loop for her toe. Once, in London, we were lying on the grass in Hyde Park and I suddenly kissed her feet when Edna wasn’t looking. On her desk is a tall, slender vase made of metal with an equally slender young rose shooting out of it, and near the vase a massive black candle on an iron stand. I lit the candle and walked a few steps away to watch the effect. The lunch-time and early afternoon whisky was beginning to tell. Headachey drowsiness and sudden heart palpitations. The unfilled moments of exhilaration, the frustration and depression. I could still see the serenity around me, but had already lost the power to feel it.

I sat down.

When Didi Nackla smiles, two tiny dots, dimples, suddenly appear on either side of her mouth and you are surprised because her face is perfectly smooth, without any lines to indicate the position of those dimples. She touched her necklace, a Nefertiti one made of brass and corals, then her hand went higher and touched her throat and neck. She smiled. ‘If I hadn’t chanced to open the door,’ she said, ‘you would be playing baccarat with my father and your friends.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Come into some money?’

‘Played bridge with my cousin Mounir, then snooker with Doromian, the Armenian.’

‘How long have you been back?’

‘About a year.’ I lit a cigarette then put it out quickly – nausea, and I wanted to vomit.

She continued with her book-binding. I stood up again, trying to fight the headache. When she was in London, I
used to make her laugh. I used to describe the people living there and mimic them. I used to describe Paddy and speak like him. This business of love. And then Edna has no sense of humour. I used to mix politics and humour and love with Didi Nackla; but with Edna politics is politics. As it should be, I suppose.

I sighed.

This whisky. The headache had arrived in full force. I went into the bathroom, found aspirin, gargled, brushed my teeth with her tooth-brush, and started sucking a peppermint tablet.

‘What happened after I left London?’

‘I quarrelled with Font and Edna something terrible. The Suez war. I refused to return.’ I sat down, then stood up, and kept moving about the room. I blew out the candle, then relit it. Then I sat down on her desk and started playing with a paper knife.

‘I wrote you a long letter once,’ I told her.

‘I still have it.’

‘Levy is in love with you,’ I told her.

She didn’t answer.

I went and sat on the arm of her sofa.

‘And Font used to love you when he was fifteen; and I love you.’ My temples were throbbing with pain.

‘And Edna?’

‘Yes, and Edna too.’ I kicked the wire connection and her lamp went out. I caught the book in her hand and threw it on the floor, then lay on the sofa and put my head on her lap.

‘Didi.’

‘What is it?’

‘Didi,’ I said, ‘Edna has been whipped in the face by an officer.’ Her hand came down and gently pressed my head to her lap.

After a while she asked whether whisky or a cup of tea would do me any good.

Tea.

I woke up about midnight. The candle was still burning, a violin concerto was just audible, coming from the radio; my shoes were off and I was covered with a light blanket. I had no headache whatsoever and remained still, listening to the music.

‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’ll make some fresh tea.’

I put the lights on and pulled my knees up to my chin, still covered with the blanket.

‘Tell me about Paddy,’ she said from the kitchen. I could see her making sandwiches, opening and closing her fridge, humming bits of the concerto. She is happy. Everyone should be like Didi Nackla. I mean the world should be put in order and everyone should have a nice flat like Didi Nackla and go about humming tunes. Like birds.

‘I lived there for a while, you know.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I lived in Vincent’s house when Edna and Font returned to Egypt. Paddy and I used to sleep in the kitchen. He’d always be reading the Greyhound something or other.’ I imitated Paddy’s Irish brogue. ‘Be Jeez, now,’ he would say. ‘I tell yer now, that dog can’t be beaten.’ He’d shake his head. ‘Well, by God, that dog’ll be half a mile in front
of the others. Twenty to one at least. I wouldn’t be surprised now, if Frank Maloney is in on this. Shirley,’ he’d shout, ‘d’yer know where your mother is, now?’

‘No,’ she’d shout back.

‘I bet yer she’s at the Whoite City now,’ he’d tell me. ‘Wouldn’t say she was going. Be Jeez now, if that dog wins she’ll be sorry now.’

‘What’s the dog’s name?’ I’d ask Paddy.

‘Trafalgar the Third,’ he’d say. ‘A foine dog, I tell yer. Well I tell yer now I saw his gran’ father, t’was in Cork and this Frank Maloney comes to me and says: Paddy, he says, if you can raise the price of two tickets so we can travel with that dog to the Whoite City, we’re alroit, boy. He had twenty pound he showed me; that was to put on the dog, now. Well, I tell yer I ran home as fast as me legs would go. The old man was out havin’ a drink and I go up to his room and under the mattress, be Jeez, a bunch of five-pound notes wrapped up in an old towel.’ He’d stop talking and laugh. ‘Well I tell yer, no sooner am I with Frank Maloney, than I see me father come as fast as he could towards us. He was an old man but, be Jeez, he could run fast. Well there we were; me and Maloney running as fast as we could towards the station, and Pa running behind us brandishin’ his stick. Well I tell yer, if that train started half a second later, he would have caught us, now.’

So I’d ask Paddy if the dog won.

‘Well I tell yer truthfully now. I swear that dog was the best Whoite City ever saw.’

Shirley would come in and stand near the door. ‘He was the best dog there,’ she’d tell me, ‘but all the other dogs were doped except Trafalgar the First, so naturally he
arrived a mile behind the others; and Paddy didn’t dare go back to his father for a couple of years.’

‘Be Jeez,’ Paddy would say, ‘The old man had a nasty temper I can tell yer. Well I remember now going to Dublin with him and a man called Jimmy O’Donovan …’

Didi was laughing.

‘How long did you live there?’ she asked.

‘About a year. This Paddy was terribly lazy and would keep sitting for weeks on end doing nothing. Sometimes his friends would come with cases of Guinness: “An how are yer, Paddy Tynan? I bet me wages, Paddy Tynan, you have two large callus on the seat of your trousers. Let’s have a peep, Paddy Tynan. You’ll be walkin’ on your backside soon, be Jeez”.’

‘Were you content, living there?’

‘You know, Didi, this reading too much, and Font and Edna being away, used to make me feel very lonely at times.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘The police found me. I hit a policeman in Trafalgar Square during the Suez war and my visa had expired and not been renewed. Besides which it was impossible for me to work anywhere and I had no money. It is funny how all my
New Statesmen
friends and fellow “intellectuals” dropped me one by one when I was in trouble. All except Vincent. Even the Dungates, you know. Anyway, I was thrown out of England.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘Went to Germany because it was the only place I could go without a visa. I worked in factories here and there. But never mind all that now.’

‘Why did you come back?’

‘Probably because of Font. I kept on seeing his eyebrows going higher and higher in amazement at this world around him and then …’

‘Then what?’

‘I like Font very much, you know. And then, Didi,’ I said, ‘I thought I could do something useful. Teach or something like that; even help in villages and things. You know, Didi Nackla, I am …’ I was going to tell her I wasn’t as bad as I seemed, but didn’t.

‘Even with you, Didi. I mean I told you frankly I loved Edna. Do you remember how we laughed? With Edna I was never really natural, I don’t know why. Anyway, when I came back I saw that life here is exactly as it used to be. Even to the Mahrousa. I mean how can I go and work in a boiling village when
he
is travelling about in Farouk’s yacht which costs a million just for upkeep? And all this nationalization business makes me laugh, although I don’t tell Font that. The money goes to that useless army. Even the Asswan dam; by the time it’s completed we’ll have increased by ten million.’

‘What do you want him to do?’

‘Birth control and all that.’

‘He would become unpopular.’

‘And Israel too. Imagine a third of our income being pumped into an army to fight a miserable two million Jews who were massacred something terrible in the last war. So what if he becomes unpopular? He is strong enough to take unpopular steps. Besides, you know, we Egyptians don’t care one way or another about Israel. No, Didi Nackla,’ I said, ‘it’s stupid living under a police state without the benefits of the control.’