Proud Beggars (9 page)

The medical examiner had finished his work; he came into the waiting room, his face flushed, his eyes burning with a concupiscent flame. He could have passed for a drunkard. He was still young, and the sight of Arnaba's naked body had strongly affected him. In a voice choked with emotion, he asked where he could wash his hands.

“At the end of the corridor, Excellency!” answered Set Amina. “Show him, Zayed.”

Zayed, the house servant standing respectfully in the corner, showed the doctor the way and disappeared with him down the hall.

This scene seemed to reawaken the police inspector's interest; he addressed himself to Set Amina.

“Tell me, woman! This Zayed, is he your pimp?”

“What an ugly word, Inspector!” Set Amina protested. “He just takes care of the house and helps out the girls.”

“Where was he during the afternoon?”

“How should I know? He only comes in the evening. He arrived just after us. He is an honest man, he's worked for me for years. His work has always satisfied me.”

With all her explanations, Set Amina was trying to confirm the idea that the criminal was a stranger to the house, and thereby escape the sanctions that were sure to come down on her business.

“I'll deal with him later. Tell him not to budge from here; you're responsible for him.”

“May God protect me!” moaned Set Amina. Then without a transition: “May I get you a coffee, Excellency?”

“We're not here to drink coffee, woman! You don't seem to realize what has happened. Let me tell you, this is the end of your career.”

“Take pity on me, Excellency!” implored Set Amina. “What will become of me? Why don't you just kill me right away then!”

“Stop this playacting, woman! For the last time!, I'm not here to drink coffee or to listen to your jeremiads.”

He was going to add that he was here to find the murderer, but that seemed inept and he said nothing more.

Moved by the new character of his mission, Nour El Dine behaved like a child jealously guarding his secrets. He used all of his cunning to conceal his conviction that the killer was neither in the house nor, above all, in the multitude of sordid offenders swarming through the native city. He was convinced that the man he was after was an exceptional being, a stranger to the rabble. However, Nour El Dine was aware that this conviction was based on very risky psychological reasoning. He felt himself sliding down a dangerous slope. Where would it lead him? Wouldn't it be better to follow the usual routine? In either case, he had to arrest the killer. But how? If at least he had stolen something, some trace of him could have been found. But the damned murderer had stolen nothing; he had only killed and disappeared. For what reason? Vengeance perhaps! He would have to reconstruct the life of the victim, this young whore of fascinating beauty, to try to find a clue to the men who frequented her, to learn if she had a lover. Nour El Dine was under no illusion; before him lay an exhausting inquiry in a rebellious milieu immune to violence, rich in expedients and tricks that he had to foil by dint of a cool head and perseverance. And, in the final accounting, all this to find what? The murderer of a prostitute.

How could he get out of this mess? The triviality of similar investigations always left him diminished, with a sense of frustration. The unremitting repression of his aesthetic tendencies in the exercise of his duty made him bitter and unjust. However, he was in the service of the law; he had the prerogative to see that it was respected, and to punish the guilty. Unfortunately, the feeling of this power had begun to crumble; he no longer believed in the efficacy of the cause he was serving. That was serious.

He struggled to fight his weariness and prepared to begin the interrogation.

Just then, there was a knock at the front door. After a long silence, Nour El Dine signaled to the guard, who cautiously opened the door.

El Kordi entered the vestibule with a jaunty step, his face lit with a jovial smile, then abruptly he stopped, bewildered, as if he were in the wrong place. Seeing the bizarre assembly before him, his slanted eyes grew wide with astonishment. He no longer was smiling. He wanted to say something, perhaps to excuse himself, but the guard did not give him time to speak; he caught him by the arm and pushed him before the inspector, saying, “Another customer, Excellency.”

“I can see that your house is prosperous,” the inspector said to Set Amina.

This sarcasm revived the madam's grief. No one knew better than she that her house was prosperous. And now to think she risked losing everything because of this shameless murderer. Again she broke into lamentations.

“Why does misfortune pursue me? I am a poor woman!”

“Be quiet,” Nour El Dine ordered, “or I'll send you to prison. Let's see this young man.”

“Me!” said El Kordi.

This was the only word he managed to pronounce. He still didn't understand into what trap he'd fallen. His presence in this place seemed like part of a dream. An idiotic joke. He couldn't stop blinking his eyes as if to chase away this annoying vision. What was this inspector doing here? Then everything became clear: it was a police raid. He almost laughed.

“Yes, you,” said Nour El Dine.

Realizing that the affair was of no consequence, El Kordi regained his spirits and his smile reappeared. It was the smile he usually reserved for the representatives of order: an ironic, almost insulting smile. The inspector looked at him severely. This new arrival was going to prolong the interrogation; for that alone Nour El Dine resented him. However, he noticed that he was the first decent-looking person he'd found mixed up in this strange affair. A glimmer of hope pierced his brain and checked his desire to be brutal.

“What's going on?” asked El Kordi.

“I'll explain everything to you in a minute. Sit down. Above all, be quiet.”

El Kordi shrugged his shoulders, adjusted his tarboosh, and looked over at the couch; the girls were still pressed against Set Amina, now confined to mute despair. At the sight of Naila, her face pale and ravaged by tears, he recovered his passionate fire and rushed toward her. He already saw himself in the role of defender, saving her from the clutches of the police.

“Make room for me.”

The girls pressed together a little to give him room; El Kordi sat down next to Naila, took her hand, and held it tightly. But this touching attention didn't seem to comfort the young woman. On the contrary, her lover's presence seemed to irritate her and even to add to her distress. For Naila had dignity! Ed Kordi's schemes—eccentric and impracticable—to remove her from a cheap whore's life exasperated her. She was realistic enough to know that El Kordi was incapable of saving anyone. Sometimes she wondered if he were sincere, or if he weren't playacting. Besides, she didn't want to owe her life to anyone. Her relations with El Kordi degenerated into arguments each time he mentioned his desire to see her leave this degrading life.

“Tell me, girls,” asked El Kordi, “what is this raid in honor of?”

“It's not a raid,” explained Salima. “Arnaba was murdered.”

“Murdered! How and where?”

“This afternoon. She was strangled on her bed.”

The announcement of this crime left El Kordi stunned for a moment, then his tragic sense awoke, and he took on the air of someone highly conscious of the drama around him. He looked at Naila, touched her as if to assure himself of her presence, and felt his heart gripped with pity. “It might have been her!” The thought filled him with sadness, and he did his best to cry. But all this lasted only an instant. Then he began to look with growing interest at the inspector, the recording clerk, the two policemen—the whole machinery of justice. Curiosity had replaced his anguish; unconsciously, he now thought only of enjoying himself.

“Have they arrested the killer?”

“No,” answered Naila.

“What a frightful story!” said El Kordi. “When I think that it could have been you.”

“That would have been a happy event; no one would have cried for me.”

“Don't say such nonsense. I will never leave you alone, my darling. From now on, I will always be close to you.”

“By Allah! You're the one talking nonsense. What will happen to the ministry deprived of your superior mind?”

“The ministry can go to hell! I've found another way to make money. I'll tell you about it later.”

The medical examiner returned, looking less feverish. Nevertheless, he seemed anxious, still under the influence of a carnal vision that would affect his life.

“Nothing new?” the inspector asked.

“For the moment, nothing,” answered the examiner. “I'll send you my report after the autopsy tomorrow. I'm going now. Peace be with you.”

“Would the good doctor like a cup of coffee?” offered Set Amina. “You can't leave like that. By Allah! Do us the honor.”

“Thank you very much,” he replied. “But really, I'm in a hurry; another time.”

“Tell me, woman!” Nour El Dine exploded. “When will you understand that this is not a courtesy call. I already told you to be quiet.”

“Very well, Excellency. I understand. After all, I'm only doing my job; I wanted to be pleasant.”

“Shall we start the questioning?” asked the clerk.

Nour El Dine looked at him vacantly, as if he didn't understand. What questioning? He had totally forgotten that abject, ridiculous comedy. Still, he would have to begin; routine demanded it. It was especially this dirty, depressingly ugly clerk who sickened him. Nour El Dine dreamed of a beautiful young man for his clerk; with this sinister fellow, justice made no sense.

He motioned for one of the customers to approach, the so-called friend of the minister. The man stood up and marched toward the inspector with a robot's jerky step, mumbling unintelligible words. He was a skinny fellow wearing a threadbare suit and a dirty, crumpled tarboosh. He planted himself reproachfully before the inspector.

“You can't do this to me,” he cried. “You don't know who I am.”

“Shut up,” Nour El Dine said calmly.

“You don't know who I am, I tell you.”

“And I'm telling you to shut up. Only answer when I ask you to.”

“Me, shut up! Never. When you know who I am, you will beg my forgiveness.” He pounded his chest as if to show his importance.

“Well! Let's be done with it. Tell me who you are,” Nour El Dine brought himself to ask.

The man breathed deeply and said in a voice trembling with pride, “I am a debt collector.”

For a moment El Kordi looked at the scene without fully grasping its burlesque side. He had an intuition that somewhere the mechanism of humor had been set in motion, but he remained a stranger to the thing, still refusing to understand. For a few seconds he hesitated to laugh, then suddenly, all the absurdity of the situation, all the savor contained in this professional pride burst on him, and he broke into an irrepressible laugh.

The so-called friend of the minister stopped gesticulating and shouting; he seemed to be struck with horror, as if El Kordi's laugh had flayed his noble dignity. This new insult left him without a reply. He glared at El Kordi in complete incomprehension. The thought that anyone could laugh at him—a debt collector!—was an unspeakable outrage.

No one besides El Kordi laughed; moreover, no one understood the reason for this hilarity. At the very least, it seemed improper. To laugh in a house where a murder had just taken place, and in the middle of a police investigation, could only be the act of a madman. Naila herself was shocked by her lover's unwonted impropriety. All of her supplications for him to be quiet were in vain. The young man seemed incapable of controlling the joyful delirium that possessed him; each time he looked at the fellow, he broke into new bursts of laughter.

As for the debt collector, he had draped himself in his dignity, waiting for the end of this explosion in order to resume his speech. He still understood nothing. Only Nour El Dine was able to appreciate El Kordi's laughter; he too would have gladly laughed had he not been at the center of this grotesque discussion. He suspected that the laughter was also aimed at him, and he wasn't in the mood to be laughed at.

“You, stop laughing!” he said. “We're not in a brothel.”

“But we are, Excellency! We are in a brothel,” El Kordi answered, laughing even more.

Nour El Dine acknowledged the blow; he had just committed a monumental blunder. Boiling with rage, he shut up. It was true they were in a brothel. What was he thinking? At any rate, he would take revenge on this extravagant young man. He decided he would pay him back when it was his turn to be questioned.

During this interlude, the debt collector had recovered his arrogance.

“So now do you know who I am?” he asked.

“Where are you a debt collector?” the inspector asked.

“Listen, good people!” cried the debt collector, taking the audience as his witness. “What does he mean, ‘where'? I collect debts everywhere. You've never seen a debt collector?”

“Like you, no!” Nour El Dine admitted.

“Inspector, I protest against these insults. Furthermore, I intend to complain to the minister.”

Nour El Dine saw that he must act quickly or he would never get rid of this wretched person. All the machinery of justice was at stake; this interrogation was incontestably degenerating into vaudeville. He couldn't risk allowing this fanatic to continue his buffoonery. Brusquely, he stood up and slapped the alleged debt collector twice with terrible force. The man spun around, uttering a little cry, then covered his face with his arms. But he was too late: Nour El Dine had already sat back down and was looking at him with hatred. All this had taken place in a second.

“And now, go sit down. You'll have plenty to tell the minister.”

The fellow sat down silently; he walked bent over, as if he had suddenly aged, and seemed empty of all his dignity.