Chaos of the Senses (7 page)

I was about to open the window, but decided not to for fear that people would see me. Then I sat waiting for the man in black to say something so that we could be on our way.

‘Do you know somewhere we could go?' he asked the driver.

The driver gave him a bewildered look, since it was the first time a passenger had ever asked him such a question.

The driver's expression then turned to one of amusement, which seemed to mean either that he felt sorry for us, or that he commiserated with our madness.

‘Where do you want to go?' he asked us.

The man in black replied, ‘Anywhere we won't be bothered. Are there any quiet cafés or tea shops around here?'

The driver smiled sardonically at his request and, having apparently concluded that we were from out of town, started the engine and took off at top speed.

It was a fairly long drive, and all the way there I had an overwhelming desire to sit with this man at last, to be next to him or across from him, not behind him. As the smell of his cologne wafted back in my direction, borne on the breezes of a speeding car, the two of us shared the same current of air, and countless unuttered questions.

The first question was: Why had he sat beside the driver? Was it to put some distance between us for one reason or another? Or was it simply because every taxi driver in Algeria insists that his male passengers sit in the front seat rather than the back, and if one of them should happen to do otherwise, he might scream in his face, ‘Listen here, brother, I'm no servant of yours!'

However, the most important question wasn't why I was sitting behind him, but, rather (of course), why I was with him at all.

How had I ended up where I was? Had my literary curiosity led me into this bizarre adventure? Or was I running after love on a literary pretext?

How could a man who'd only spoken a few words to me bring me all this way without my even asking him who he was? It was
as though all my mental faculties had been suspended and replaced by my senses, which had stored up this man's fragrance and made me follow him wherever he went.

At one point I nearly asked him, ‘What kind of cologne are you wearing, sir?' Then I hesitated. It would have been madness to ask a man what cologne he used before asking him what his name was! As for asking him his name now, it would have been an affront to the dream, since a dream has no name.

And he, did he know my name? If so, which name did he know: my name, or hers? Who had he been sitting with in the cinema: with me, or with her? And with whom was he going to some unknown destination: with me, or with her?

The taxi stopped in front of the Sayyidat al-Salam Café, which lay nestled in an idyllic, elevated spot overlooking deep, deep valleys.

The driver took off, richly laden with our verbal and monetary thanks, and leaving us in the face of innumerable questions.

When the waiter came to take our order, our joint reply was, ‘We want Coke!' or, in other words, ‘We want to be left alone!'

Then we fell silent, clearing the way for bigger questions.

I'd been expecting him to say quite a bit. However, he didn't say anything. He just lit a cigarette and began scrutinizing me between one train of thought and another. Then, as he poured me my drink with the same hand that held the cigarette, he said, ‘Here you are at last!'

His tone conveyed a yearning or pleasant surprise that was so intense, it was as if it had to be condensed into those five words.

He seemed to be continuing a previous conversation with some other woman. Maybe it was that woman to whom he'd given nothing but his silence, and maybe it was someone else.

It perplexed me to arrive at this sort of conclusion. After all, would it make any sense for him to mistake me for her?

However, as he continued to speak, he confirmed my suspicion. He said, ‘How strange that I should have run into you in that café. If it hadn't been for my friend, I wouldn't have gone there!'

After a brief pause, he went on, ‘Something about you has changed since the last time I saw you. Maybe it's your hairstyle. I like you in long hair. You know, if it weren't for that black dress you're wearing, I wouldn't have recognized you.'

‘And do you know this dress?' I asked, surprised.

‘No,' he replied with a laugh, ‘but I know your way of wearing black, which turns it into a colour that's glamorous rather than plain and sober.'

I didn't know how to respond to flirtation that I didn't think of as being intended for me.

However, going along with him in his confusion, I said, ‘As for me, I've got to admit: you surprised me. You're the first man I've ever seen wearing black in this city, even in mourning. It's as if men hate this colour, or are afraid of it.'

‘So what colour did you expect me to wear?'

‘I don't know, but people around here tend to wear clothes that don't have any colour.'

Then, after a bit of thought, I went on, ‘Your friend doesn't seem to be from around here either.'

‘Why?' he asked, laughing. ‘Because he wears a white shirt and white trousers?'

‘No, because he wears white with a kind of happy flamboyance, whereas everybody else in this city wears it to show how pious they are.'

He smiled and said, ‘My friend isn't really happy. He just has an extravagant way of showing his sadness, that's all. White, for him, is actually the equivalent of black!'

Seeing my confusion, he continued, ‘The colour white is a kind of optical illusion. Didn't you know that?'

‘No,' I said apologetically, ‘I didn't.'

I sank into a moment of silence.

How was I supposed to carry on a conversation with a man who appeared to be as insincere in his show of happiness as his friend was extravagant in his show of sadness?

And I, who'd turned up by coincidence in a black dress, how could I justify my appearance when I'd never connected with the colours of things?

Trying to get off the subject of colours lest I expose my ignorance in this area, I said, ‘Isn't it amazing the way our relationship started in the dark? Ever since that day I've wanted to shine some light on this story!'

‘But we didn't meet in the dark,' he replied with a smile.

I nearly asked him, ‘So where
did
we meet?' However, it would have seemed strange to ask a question like this, and it would have exposed me in the event that he thought I was ‘her'.

So I tried to lure him into a confession of sorts. I said, ‘I love stories about people coming together. In every meeting between a man and woman there's a miracle, something that transcends both of them and that places them in the path of a single lightning bolt. That's why, even after they break up, lovers go on being captivated by the beauty of their first meeting, because it produced a state of rapture that can never
be repeated, and because it's the only pristine reality that survives love's destruction.'

I expected him to describe some rendezvous or tell me a story. Instead, he said, ‘All beginnings to love are wonderful. But the most wonderful of them is ours.'

‘Really?' I said, feigning surprise.

‘Of course,' he replied, ‘since it's a miracle that repeats itself every time we see each other.'

And that was all he said. However, his statement led me to the conclusion that we must have met before that film showing. But where, and how? These were questions he didn't seem prepared to answer. He'd entered into a state of silence, placing between us declarations as opaque as a cloud of smoke.

I studied him for a while as he sat there distracted from me by thoughts of us, or of her.

I broke the silence with the first thought that crossed my mind.

I said, ‘A man who wears black puts distance between himself and others. So there are questions I don't dare ask you, however simple they might be. You don't seem to like questions.'

‘Who said I didn't like questions?' he asked abruptly, seemingly taken aback.

For a minute I thought I'd made a mistake. But then he continued, ‘I like big questions, scary questions that don't have any answers. As for nosy, naïve questions, they irritate me, and I think they irritate other people, too.'

‘So how do you answer the questions people around you ask?'

He took a deep drag on his cigarette as though he hadn't expected my question. Then, with a touch of derision, he replied,
‘People? The only questions they usually ask are stupid ones, and they force you to give them answers as stupid as their questions. They ask you, for example, what work you do, not what you would have liked to be. They ask you what you own, not what you've lost. They ask you about the woman you married, not about the one you love. They ask you what your name is, not whether this name suits you. They ask you how old you are, not how much of your life you've actually lived. They ask you what city you live in, not what city lives in you. They ask you whether you pray, not whether you fear God. That's why I usually respond to questions like these with silence, because when we don't say anything, we force people to correct themselves.'

This man was astounding. His words were as unsettling as his silence, his logic was as complex as it was simple, and his answers were nothing but the outlines to more questions.

And although he left me no room to ask him any ‘normal' questions, I discovered that, by the laws of his own logic, I could legitimately corner him and draw him into telling truths that could only be extracted from him in an upside down, backwards sort of way.

So, a bit sarcastically, I said, ‘You're a man who tries to get other people to ask questions in reverse. So, would you have the guts to answer my questions?'

‘Well,' he replied with a playful defiance, ‘that depends on how smart you are!'

So, upping the ante, I asked my first question: ‘What name would you have liked to have?'

His reply bowled me over: ‘The name you chose for me in your book suits me quite well.' He giggled as he said it.

I couldn't believe my ears. What he'd said meant that he knew who I was. But who was he to be talking to me as though he'd just stepped out of a story I'd written?

‘I haven't chosen a name for you yet!' I retorted playfully.

‘So be it,' he quipped back. ‘It's fine with me to remain nameless!'

‘But,' I admitted, ‘this bothers me. Can't you take off your cloak of mystery for just a little while?'

‘Only love strips us naked, Madame!'

‘Am I to understand from this that you aren't in love?'

I could see my question dangling from his silence. So I posed it in a different way: ‘Has love ever stripped you naked?'

‘It did happen once. After that, I put on my disappointment, and I haven't taken it off since.'

With girlish triumph, I said, ‘So, there's no woman in your life?'

‘Madame,' he replied, ‘how much silence do I need to answer your questions?'

What I was supposed to understand him to mean was, ‘Madame, how much patience do I need to put up with your nosiness?' or perhaps, ‘. . . to answer your stupid questions?'

It wasn't this politely worded insult that drew me up short, but, rather, a certain polite word he'd used.

‘Why do you call me “Madame”?' I asked. ‘Who told you I was married?'

He smiled and said, ‘There are women who were born to be addressed with this title, and to call them anything else would be an insult to their womanhood!'

Before I had a chance to take satisfaction in his reply, he continued, ‘Apart from that, your marital status doesn't matter to me any more.'

The way he'd worded his last statement took me by surprise. It seemed to conceal precedents of some sort, or something he wanted to divulge.

‘Why do you say “any more”?' I asked.

‘Did I really say that?' he replied mischievously, answering my question with a question.

Then he said nothing more.

It was obvious that he knew something about me. The worrying thing was that I still didn't know anything about him. So I decided to carry on with the challenge, adopting his own topsy-turvy method of posing questions.

I said, ‘I've never met anybody like you in this city. So I'm curious to know what city lives in you.'

As though he'd divined the aim behind my question, he retorted, ‘My answer to a question like that won't do you any good. Like authors who live in one city in order to write about another, I live in one city so that I can love another, and when I leave it, I don't know which of the two cities had been living in me, and which of them I'd been living in. At present, I'm a vacant flat. I left Constantine for love, and she left me out of disappointment!'

‘Are you from Constantine? That's strange. I thought you were from somewhere else.'

‘Let's say I am.'

‘So, what kind of work do you do? I mean, what would you have liked to be?'

Chuckling at the way I'd rephrased the question and the sarcastic tone in which I'd corrected myself, he said, ‘Actually, I wanted to be an actor or a novelist so that I could live more than one life. One life isn't enough for me. I belong to a generation
that's suffering from an age crisis, one that's spent its life even before it's lived it.'

Then he added, ‘In any case, I'm an artist, and quite satisfied with my profession.'

‘You're an artist?' I blurted out in amazement.

‘What did you expect me to be?'

‘I don't know, but . . . '

‘But what . . . ?'

‘I used to know an artist from Constantine. I just now thought of him. He was so obsessed with the city that all he used to paint was . . . '

‘. . . bridges!' he said, finishing my sentence for me.

‘Did you know him, too?' I cried.

He smiled and said, ‘No, but I'd expect an artist who loves this city to do something silly like that.'