The Colors of Infamy (3 page)

“I listen to you, too,” he objected, out of sheer goodness
and so as not to distress the girl by his constant refusal to
understand.

“
Th
at's true, you do listen, but only
to make fun of me.
Th
e other day, for example, when
I told you I was looking for a job, you said not to bother because, with my
luck, I would probably find one. And then you burst out laughing.”

Having seen him laugh so often when she was describing certain
aspects of her miserable life, Safira had formed an idea of the young man in
keeping with his cavalier attitude — selfish and frivolous, disdainful of the
suffering of others. And sometimes, so as not to thwart this blasphemous
exuberance, she, too, would try to laugh about her woes, perhaps with the
superstitious idea of warding off ill fortune.

“Sorry to bother you with my stories,” she said with a forced
smile. “I'd rather hear about your exploits.
Th
ey're
bound to be more amusing than my discussions with my mother. I'd like to become
a thief, too. Unfortunately, I don't have your courage. I think I'd get arrested
before I even tried.”

“Listen, Safira, you're wrong, I don't have any courage,” answered
Ossama with feigned weariness. “When I told you I was a thief, I was just
joking. I'm sorry you believed me. You shouldn't take what I tell you so
seriously all the time.”

Th
e girl's face contorted horribly, as
if she had just learned of some unforgivable treachery.
Th
e young man's dishonorable profession had led her to believe that
her own dissolution wouldn't be an obstacle to a love affair between two
individuals similarly debased by poverty. But if Ossama wasn't a thief as he had
claimed, how could he be interested in a romance with an insignificant little
prostitute? Her eyes clouded by tears, she looked at the young man as if he were
a renegade gone over to the class enemy.

“What's the matter?” asked Ossama with a tinge of remorse in his
voice. “Have I offended you?”

Th
e girl remained silent, more from
modesty than from the anger that was suffocating her. She could not explain to
Ossama that his lie was depriving her of the only free gift ever allotted to the
miserable of this earth.

“So it was a joke!” she said at last, bitterly.

“I only told you that to amuse you. I'm sorry, but don't turn it
into a tragedy. On the contrary, you should be glad to know I'm not a
thief.”

“Glad of what? If you're not a thief, how can you go around with”
— she did not say love — “a girl like me? After all, I'm just a prostitute.”

“I don't care what you are. Have I ever snubbed you? Even if you
murdered someone, you'd still be completely respectable to me. In fact, I'd
admire you all the more.”

“I don't want to murder anyone.”

“Well, you should. Plenty of people deserve to be murdered. A few
years ago all I dreamed about was doing away with all those bastards. But now I
want them to live long lives, because they make me laugh.”

“Who are all these bastards?”

“Maybe some day you'll know, maybe you never will. Anyway, believe
me. Bastards don't just exist, they even prosper all over the world.”

Safira seemed upset, even frightened, by these enigmatic
statements. Although she was used to his crazy ideas, Ossama's harangue about
complete strangers set her mind awhirl. Her companion — this joyously mocking,
distant young man — had suddenly turned into an unknown character with
bloodthirsty ideals. First he'd claimed to be a thief, now was he going to
metamorphose into an assassin?

“By Allah! I don't understand you. Everything you say upsets me.
Nothing worries you. You laugh at everything. You dress like a prince and yet
you walk through the crowds without worrying about getting dirty. Can you
explain this mystery to me?”

“If I am dressed, as you say, like a prince, it's because I
inherited my father's suits when he died,” Ossama replied with all the composure
of an inveterate liar. “He was an important civil servant and always had to be
impeccably dressed. To honor his memory, I like to go out in decent clothes too,
so as not to disappoint him in his grave. It pains me to talk about such things,
but I haven't hesitated to share them with you so that you can learn a little
more about me.”

He took on the chagrined look that any man wears at the memory of
certain deaths.
Th
e girl seemed satisfied with his
explanation, yet her face remained resolutely sad; the origin of Ossama's
stylishness did nothing to change the fact that she was a betrayed lover, and it
was clear to her that the time for banter and courtship games had passed.
Decorum required her to leave the young man so he could muse in solitude over
the memory of his father, the important civil servant with his admirably
tailored suits who had swept suddenly into their conversation.
Th
at ghost continued to haunt her and with a timid
look, she said:

“All right, then, I'll be going now. I hope we'll meet again.”

“Of course we will. I'm always happy to see you.”

Ossama had regained his optimism. He was pleased with his
apocryphal tale about where his suits had come from, a tale he could use again
in other circumstances, plausible even to an obtuse policeman. Allowing the girl
to carry on with her leave-taking preparations, he let his eye roam across the
still-dense crowd, on the lookout for a breach in that human wall which would
permit him to catch a glimpse of the club's open gate. He had an intuition that
— as a kind of reward for this exhausting tête-à-tête with Safira — the day had
a magnificent gift in store for him.

She rose slowly, as if she did not wish to wake Ossama from his
daydream, and then moved nimbly, passing from the shade of the alley into the
sun of the street, her cheap jewelry shimmering one last time before she
vanished into the crowd.

Left alone, Ossama let out the sigh of a dying man coming back to
life. After each encounter with Safira he had the feeling he'd been drained of
his blood and, even worse, that he'd become mindful of prosaic human suffering.
He got a hold of himself and attempted to forget this gloomy interlude. Freed
from the shackles of chivalry, he stretched his neck and riveted his gaze on the
opposite sidewalk. And after a moment, his wish was granted.
Th
ere, as if in belated response to his vigil,
appeared a man: he stood motionless on the threshold of the venerable entrance,
blinded by the dazzling light of the street. He was a precious specimen of the
brotherhood of notables, a man of about fifty, tall and satisfyingly stout,
dressed in a navy blue suit that hugged his plump body, the kind of uniform
favored by his fellow creatures, all graduates of the same school of high
crime. He was nervously fingering a string of amber prayer beads as if he were
trying to relieve a toothache or the twinges of a stomach ulcer. His physique
was repugnant enough to disgust a nanny goat in heat, yet everything about him
oozed opulence — theft on a grand scale. But his face, bloated from the fat of
sumptuous foodstuffs, somehow lacked the usual haughtiness and self-assurance of
parvenus of his ilk; all the standard arrogance now seemed sorely diminished by
a tenacious anxiety linked to some private calamity that Ossama attributed to a
loss of money or a mistress's betrayal. Standing on the threshold of the club,
the man was fidgeting about in every direction, his gaze searching the tangle of
cars beyond the crowd, obviously hoping to attract his driver's attention to his
remarkable self.

With the majesty of an aristocrat accustomed to bringing the
riffraff under control, Ossama rose and crossed the street with an authoritarian
stride, counting on his distinguished dress to arrest the bellicose drivers in
their ardent race toward oblivion. He reached the opposite sidewalk at the
precise moment when the man's car stopped directly in front of the club door.
Th
e man, who'd been awaiting this arrival with
the exasperation of a master abandoned by his servant in the midst of a riot,
pushed forcefully through the slow parade of peaceful passersby, who showered
him with the most offensive curses and insults. During this short but difficult
journey, he bumped against Ossama who, with the dexterity of a magician,
relieved him of his wallet.
Th
e man must have felt
nothing in the crush, for he dived into his car with the fiery spirit of someone
trying to escape a lynching.

It was curiosity rather than fear of an unlikely arrest that sent
Ossama in search of a taxi. He was eager to examine the fruit of his larceny and
to learn his victim's name, a name that he felt must enjoy — he didn't know why
— some dreadful notoriety.
Th
e man must have
committed some grandiose misdeed: that explained his state of doleful
despondency leaving the club, which Ossama had witnessed. All the while thinking
with jubilation about what he was going to find, Ossama endeavored to get a taxi
driver's attention in the maelstrom of traffic. Hailing a taxi amid all those
vehicles in perpetual motion was something of a wartime raid, especially since
all those damn drivers now had the habit of only picking up passengers from the
Arabian Peninsula, recognizable by their traditional dress and the surplus of
women in their harems.
Th
ese desert potentates were
reputed to hand out money like peanuts, making them the designated targets of
the entire business class. Ossama cursed these invaders — they reeked of oil and
they monopolized all the services in the hotels, casinos, and cabarets by
ostentatiously displaying their wealth: even hapless belly dancers saw in them
their salvation.
Th
e crush of cars speeding by
nonstop despite the craters and mounds of dirt left by the endless roadwork —
you'd think they were competing on an obstacle course — exhorted Ossama to be
cautious. Only when traffic had slowed slightly because a bus had collapsed
under the weight of its passengers did he decide to place himself deliberately
in the path of a taxi that had been forced by the mishap to temporarily renounce
its creed of speed.
Th
e taxi driver, shocked by this
impolite and suicidal way of calling upon him, hurled abuse in an infuriated
voice, as if Ossama had insulted both his most distant ancestors and his
descendents yet to be born.

“Curses upon your mother! I almost ran you down. If you want to
die, go drown yourself in the river!”

“God provides for everything,” Ossama replied calmly. “Besides, I
fear nothing. I'm wearing an amulet.”

Th
e taxi driver had time to note
Ossama's stylishness and his face softened at the thought of an excessively
expensive fare. For lack of a Saudi prince, this young man would do — yes, he
could do justice to his brand-new car. He loathed the lower classes that
clamored aboard en masse and dirtied his seats, eating watermelon as if his car
were a picnic ground.

“And where would you and your amulet like to go?”

“It's a big city. Take me wherever you'd like.”

“Your wish is my command, your lordship, and may Allah protect
us.”

Ossama climbed aboard, closed the door, and settled comfortably on
the seat cushions that smelled of new leather. As if to give his noble client a
demonstration of his virtuosity, the driver grasped the wheel and shot the car
forward at rocket speed.
Th
is barbaric conduct did
not worry Ossama in the least; it fell within the norms of mass hysteria.
Completely at peace with himself, he pulled from his pocket the wallet he had
just appropriated and opened it with the daintiness of a lover unsealing a
missive from his mistress. Crocodile skin, the wallet had no doubt had cost a
fortune; it exuded a strong whiff of corruption. A letter was inside; Ossama
took it out and read the name of the addressee on the envelope — previously slit
cautiously with a letter opener, it didn't have the slightest nick — sent in
care of the Club of Notables.
Th
e man's name had
been in the news for a week due to a dreadful scandal.
Th
is fabulously wealthy real estate developer was being sued for
causing the death of some fifty tenants of a low-rent apartment building
constructed by his firm; it had collapsed shortly after being unveiled with
great pomp by a government delegation. Dumbfounded, Ossama plucked the letter
out of its envelope and began to read.
Th
e note,
written by hand on the letterhead of the Ministry of Public Works, seemed to
come from an accomplice who was terrified of the legal consequences of the
carnage. He warned the addressee, in a scathing tone (stamped with unintentional
humor), not to count on his present or future collaboration now that fifty
corpses lay between them — it was not his intention, he said, to increase the
prosperity of undertakers. As for the commission he was owed for his most recent
intercession with the ministry in question, he would spare the addressee. Under
no circumstances could he continue to have the slightest contact with a man
obviously better suited to tombs than apartment buildings, even moderately
priced ones. In short, it was a break-up letter to a discredited associate from
a thief stripped of all good manners by the idea of prison. It was signed by the
Minister of Public Works' brother — a worthless man very popular with the
capital's shadiest wheeler-dealers.

Although Ossama counted himself among fate's privileged few, this
magnificent bounty was the last thing he'd expected. He reread the letter
several times with fierce satisfaction until he realized he was holding a bomb
in his hands and he did not know how to explode it.