Yalo (6 page)

I wanted to surprise her for her birthday. I went at ten o'clock at night and stood under the window, and I stayed there until morning, and I thought, this way when she wakes up tomorrow and sees me standing there like a lamp post, she'll get a surprise, and understand how much I love her.

But Yalo did not say that. The interrogator's words shocked him like the lashes of a whip on his face.

The interrogator said that Yalo had carried two flashlights and a Kalashnikov rifle, had stood beneath Shirin's window, and aimed the beams of both flashlights at the window, and as she opened the window, he raised the rifle and aimed it at her. When she screamed, Yalo escaped.

The interrogator did not use the word “escaped.” His whole sentence was, “And when she screamed, he ran like the wind.”

“What does ‘ran like the wind,' mean?” asked Yalo.

“It means you ran away, coward,” said the interrogator. Yalo pictured himself running as fast as he could with the wind chasing him, and he smiled.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing.” Yalo saw the wind and saw the words. The words took shape before him, and he felt as if he were bumping into them instead of hearing or reading them. He had been afraid of his Black Grandfather because he feared the old man's words. He heard the phrase, “Approach, Bro,” and felt as if there were shears hanging over his head. He shielded his head with his hands and approached his grandfather, as the shears hovered above as if they might sweep all the hair off his head at any moment. When his mother told him to go to school, he would not see a school but naked girls running behind the nuns, and he'd feel his mouth watering. When
his grandfather asked him to fry an egg, he would see an expanse filled with stray dogs. He lived his whole life this way, hearing a word and seeing something else, but this did not mean that he did not understand what was being said. He went to school, and knew that
bro
meant son, and that his grandfather's requests must be obeyed, because a
cohno
's orders could not be ignored.

The
cohno
met his death in an unusual way. At first he stopped eating meat entirely, and ate only eggs, milk, and vegetables, then he cut out the eggs and concentrated on fruit and vegetables, before being struck with amnesia.

Gaby said that her father got lost and Yalo believed her. He began to picture his Black Grandfather inside a labyrinth of crossed lines. The old man no longer knew how to get out of his bedroom or the bathroom. He would enter a place and get stuck there, not leaving until Bro came to the rescue. Toward the end, Bro had to go searching for his grandfather all night long through the streets of the city, to bring him back home.

When the interrogator used the expression “ran like the wind,” Yalo pictured himself climbing the wind, and felt that the sleeves of his coat had become the wings of a bird, and that when he stood there under the window he didn't look like himself, but had become instead a falcon with a long beak. Yalo lifted his arms up as if about to fly, when he heard the interrogator shouting at him.

“Put your arms down and confess, you dog, did you have a machine gun with you or not?”

“No,” said Yalo.

“And the flashlights?”

“No.”

“Why did you stand beneath her window, pointing the flashlights at the home of Miss Shirin Raad? Is it true that you wanted to kidnap her? Is it
true you wanted money? Is it true that you told her you wanted to marry her and take her to Egypt? Why did you frighten her all the time?”

Why had she lied, saying he had forced her to buy him a plane ticket to Egypt?

She had bought the ticket and offered it to him with a thousand Egyptian pounds. She said it was a gift, and that she believed he needed a change of scenery, and that she couldn't leave her job to travel with him. That day she did not mention the name of her fiancé, Emile, and that same day Yalo was convinced she had begun to fall in love with him. It never occurred to him that when he took the ticket and the money he had stepped into a trap and was incapable of seeing things as they really were. He told her to come with him to Egypt, he told her he'd take her to Luxor, where she would see God, but she told him she could not. He took the ticket and put it in a drawer. The thousand pounds, which he decided to hide in the hope that Shirin would agree to come with him to Egypt, he ended up having to convert into Lebanese lira and spend. He had thought of the money as a gift, and as a pledge of love. Anyhow, he was certain that he had not taken money from her, though the interrogator said, quoting Shirin, that he had robbed her.

Why did the interrogator shout at him, “What is the truth?”

Should he have replied that the truth was love? But how could he talk to the interrogator of love.

“Love is humiliation, sir,” he told the interrogator.

“I loved her, and I still love her. No, now, after what happened, I don't know, but the thing is that I loved her and I was ready to do whatever she wanted.”

“And the money?” asked the interrogator.

“The money, sir. There was no money. Money means nothing.”

“You liar! Is that why you frightened her, and forced her to pay?”

How could Yalo talk to the interrogator of love, when the interrogator
held a thick bundle of papers and was saying that in them he had all the information about Daniel, and all the members of the gang, and everybody? At this point Yalo understood that “everybody” meant Madame Randa and her husband, the lawyer Michel Salloum, so he decided to refuse to respond to all the questions relating to this topic. What could he say about the wife of the lawyer who had saved him from starvation and homelessness in Paris, and brought him back to his homeland? No, he would say nothing. It was true that he was depraved, as Madame Randa told him when she found out about his nighttime adventures in the lovers' forest, but his depravity would not extend to his confessing his relationship with Madame Randa, and harming the reputation of the good man who had saved him. Even if he confessed, the interrogator would not believe him, even the husband would not believe it. But it was certain that the Madame would not be able to say that he had raped her. Shirin could, if she wanted, talk about rape, because her situation was different, but the Madame, no. Shirin came to the interrogator's room and sat beside her fiancé, and said that he had raped her in the forest.

Why did she say in the forest, why not in the hut or at his house?

The forest was better for rape, thought Yalo, there a rape was the real thing. What did this poor girl know about rape? But that other one, now she was a woman. A woman of forty, with the taste of cherry. Her boyfriend sat on the ground and put his head in his hands when Yalo took her behind the huge oak tree. He had stalked her by chance. That summer night, with the road jammed with cars fleeing Beirut's heat for the mountain, he was sure that he wouldn't find anything. He wore his long black coat and crossed the road that divided the Villa Gardenia from the forest, sat in the pine shade, and waited without waiting. He dozed off, or so it seemed, because he did not see the car approaching the trap. He awoke to the sound of tires screeching to a stop. He opened his slumber-heavy eyes and saw the woman. He
felt the flashlight in the pocket of his coat and straightened up. Yalo would never be able to describe how he succeeded in standing up and catching his victim in the beam of his flashlight at the same moment. Then things happened quickly. He approached the car window and motioned with his rifle. The man got out first, then the woman. He motioned to the woman and she followed him, and there under the oak tree he took her, while her companion sat on the ground, head in hands. All Yalo remembered was the taste of cherry. He laid his rifle on the ground and approached the woman, pulled her to him, then put his hand behind her waist and she sank to the ground. She did not undress, neither did he. He even kept his coat on and pictured himself immersing himself in water. Never in his life had Yalo tasted anything like this. The woman's water gushed out pure and soaked everything, and he shuddered with bliss. Everything trembled within a man and woman entwined inside a black coat, making love beside an idle rifle and extinguished flashlight. When Yalo finished, his spirit spent and his trousers drenched in feminine water, he tried to pull away but he could not. The woman was holding him tightly, so much that it hurt. A cry started to gather in his throat; it was as if he were on the verge of starting again when he saw her hands pushing at his chest and pulling him out of her. He stopped, zipped up his pants, bent over to pick up his rifle, and went home. He did not wait for them to leave. He craved a hot cup of tea so he left. When he turned back toward the car, he saw the woman opening the door as the man started the engine without daring to turn on the headlights.

“But I . . . but not in the forest,” said Yalo. “I did not rape her.”

What did Shirin tell her fiancé, Emile?

He sat here in the interrogation room, beside her, nodding as if he knew everything, but he did not know anything.

Had she told him the truth, or lied to him?

Had she told him that she went to Ballouna with her doctor lover, where
they had sex in the car? Or did she say that she had gone with him on an innocent drive, when they had been attacked by a wild beast in a long black coat, that raped her?

Why did the fiancé agree to play this role? Did he think he was gallant? Had he been gallant, things would have ended differently, thought Yalo. Why had he not called him and settled the matter with him man to man? He could have invited Yalo to the café and spoken with him, told him that he loved her too. He could have proposed that one of them give in to the other as befitted a noble-minded man, as Cohno Ephraim had done with the tailor Elias al-Shami when he learned that his daughter had gone back to her original lover.

Cohno Ephraim had told the story to his grandson, and at the time Yalo understood nothing, but now he understood everything.

At the time, his grandfather ended the affair gallantly, and told his grandson the story to teach him the meaning of gallantry. “Life is a word of honor that you say, and that remains etched into the earth.”

When Gaby found out, she went crazy. She went to her father and started cursing him, and dragged him out of his room. The
cohno
was wearing white pajamas with blue stripes when his daughter dragged him by his arms, staggering as if pleading with her as she ordered him to leave the house. He spoke unintelligibly, swallowing his words, and swore by all the saints that his intentions were honorable and that he had wanted to explain to his grandson the importance of telling the truth. Then suddenly the
cohno
dropped to his knees and stretched out his arms crucifixion-style, and his tears flowed.

The story had disappeared into the depths of Yalo's memory and resurfaced now before this white interrogator with his snub nose and deep-set eyes.

The interrogator raised his finger as if he wanted to say something,
or perhaps he did say something, but Yalo was not listening to him. Yalo couldn't stop asking himself the question posed before him as if it were up on a blackboard.

Why had Emile not done as Ephraim had?

Ephraim had demonstrated courage; he told his grandson that he had castrated his rival. “He came like a puffed-up rooster and left crowned with shame, he went in a rooster and left a hen. I didn't do a thing. I just brandished the weapon of speech before him. Humans are weak when faced with speech, my boy, and that is why God the Father called his son Word. What is meant by the Word of God? It means his mystery and his truth. Your son is your word, and you are my word, my boy. Be my word, just as the Son was the word of the Father.”

Ephraim sent for Elias al-Shami. The tailor thought that the
cohno
wanted him to sew a white robe for an imminent elevation to the head of the priesthood, as he told all the
cohno
's congregation: “Someday, in a year or two or three, you'll call me, sir.” And the years passed and the
cohno
waited, as since the death of his wife after that journey to Homs to seek healing from St. Elian, he had told everyone that it was the will of God. He did not shed a single tear at his wife's funeral. He stood and accepted the people's condolences, but instead of saying the traditional words like “May God compensate you” or “Live on,” he only uttered, “Christ is risen,” and waited for the mourners to respond, “Truly, he is risen.” The
cohno
said that God had yearned for his servant, meaning his poor wife who had died of cancer, because there was wisdom that we mortals could not comprehend. The misfortune was yearning, and God yearned for his servants through misfortunes, and perhaps this misfortune was a yearning of a special kind, as if God wanted something we knew nothing about.

Of course, no one took what he said seriously, for Almighty God had not been diminished to the point of naming the old prelate the shepherd
of his humble flock. But in spite of the scornful looks, Cohno Ephraim still dreamed of being head of the priesthood. White hair overtook him and old age preyed upon him, but he performed his prayers as usual, awaiting the moment of glory.

The tailor arrived, thinking that he would joke with the
cohno
about becoming an archbishop, when he found himself facing the most difficult test of his life. The tailor Elias al-Shami was sixty years old and seemed eternally youthful; he sucked in his stomach to appear slender, and smiled broadly so that people could see his clean white teeth. The tailor was one of the first residents of Mseitbeh in Beirut to discover an Armenian dentist, Nobar Bakhshigian, and exchanged putting in a plate of false teeth for a set of permanent bridgework, which looked like real teeth.