Beer in the Snooker Club (Serpent's Tail Classics) Read online

  I went from Groppi’s to the snooker club. It is a large place with thick carpets in between the tables, a cosy bar and deep leather armchairs. It impresses with its subdued luxury and, one feels, bad manners would be sacrilege there. Jameel’s father having accepted defeat in educating his son, gave way to the boy’s passion for snooker and built this place for him; which turned out to be excellent business. He is a strange man, Jameel’s father. Believe it or not, he’s a sincere socialist, a genuine one. Not a rich ‘Liberal’ nor a wealthy The Nation reader; no, he is active in his ideas and was once imprisoned by Farouk’s gang. He often comes for a game: a tall, lean, elegant man who had a French education and who writes to L’Express of France. I like Dr Hamza; as a matter of fact I’d like to be like him: well-dressed and soberly aristocratic and having been imprisoned for socialist views. I would not like to go to prison, but I’d like to have been. Of course Font isn’t going to be patronized and Dr Hamza isn’t going to be patronizing; so there is a layer of sympathy separating them.

  As I said, I went to the snooker club. I went behind the bar and watched Font run the vacuum cleaner over the carpets. There is a perpetual look of amazement on Font’s face which makes one want to answer an unasked question. The way he works the vacuum cleaner over the carpets with his eyebrows uplifted and his eyes wide, probing into the difficult turns and corners between tables, gives the impression that if he could only get the machine into that particular corner, he’d find the answer to whatever was puzzling him.

  ‘Draught Bass, Font?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  I opened two bottles of Egyptian Stella beer and poured them into a large tumbler, then beat the liquid until all the gas had escaped. I then added a drop of vodka and some whisky. It was the nearest we could get to Draught Bass.

  There is a street off the Edgware Road in London, where a gang of Teddy boys, Irish labourers and other odds and ends used to play dice on the pavement. We Egyptians are gamblers. Wherever Egyptians are gathered, you can be sure that sooner or later they’ll start gambling. It’s not that we want to win money or anything, we just like to gamble. We’re lazy and we like to laugh. It’s only when gambling that we are wide awake and working hard. Font and I won a lot of money on that pavement once, and went to a silversmith in Edgware Road and bought the two silver beer mugs we now keep behind the snooker club bar. We had our names engraved on them and vowed to drink nothing but Draught Bass from them. I now poured my concoction into the mugs and waited for Font to switch the sweeper off.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ Font said. ‘How much did you make?’

  ‘About two pints each.’

  ‘I’m going to be nicely boozed all day.’

  ‘I’ll spend the day here, too,’ I said.

  If Font hadn’t been so lonely, he would never have spoken to me. But he is lonely and he wants to discuss something with me; I knew that, or I would have known better than to come and chat with him.

  ‘The real trouble with us,’ he said (when Font says ‘us’ for him and me, it means he’s exceptionally kindly disposed towards me), ‘is that we’re so English it is nauseating. We have no culture of our own.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I said. “I can crack jokes with the best of Egyptians.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said. ‘Perhaps our culture is nothing but jokes.’

  ‘No, Font, it isn’t. It’s just that we have never learnt Arabic properly.’ That is the way I have to speak to Font. I have to contradict him, at least in the early part of any day we are to spend together, and I have to speak slowly or he’ll accuse me of trying to be eloquent instead of carrying on an ordinary conversation.

  ‘Then what do you mean by saying that cracking jokes is culture?’

  ‘What I mean is,’ I replied, ‘that jokes to Egyptians are as much culture as calypso is to West Indians, or as spirituals and jazz to American Negroes. In fact,’ I continued, saying whatever came to my mouth, for that is the way to coax Font into trusting my sincerity, ‘it is no less culture than playing the organ is culture.’

  I filled our beer mugs again and started preparing some more Bass. Font pondered over what I had just said. I sometimes say such things and then a moment later they sound less silly than they do when I utter them.

  It was past eleven, and the first two customers came in; Arevian and Doromian, two rich Armenians who own the shoe-store downstairs. Two fat and greasy individuals with a sense of humour.

  ‘Good day, good day, professors,’ they said to Font and me (Font’s degree is a source of great amusement to them). ‘We have come to play marbles for your amusement, Herr Doctor Professor Font. It is the ambition of our humble life to divert your knowledgeable eyes with our childish efforts, thus allowing your brain to dwell upon lofty matters.’ They bowed down to Font and made as though to kiss his hands – an ancient custom in government circles.

  ‘Look at them,’ Font said, ‘they pay that miserable man downstairs six pounds a month to work twelve hours a day for them, and then they come here and gamble for thousands as though for peanuts.’

  ‘Forgive us, forgive us, Herr Doctor,’ Doromian sang. ‘If our Hassan had so much as a minor degree from Heidelberg or the Sorbonne, we would give him … eight pounds.’

  When I said they owned the shoe-store downstairs, I wasn’t quite exact. One of them owns it and the other has lost it. They play for fantastic amounts of money, and when money has been exhausted, they play for their share of the shop. They never lend money to one another. I remember Doromian losing everything including his car, and Arevian refusing to lend him the price of the tram home.

  Font started laying out the snooker balls for them. I finished two pints of this Bass which makes me comfortable and allows my Oriental brain to wonder over non-Oriental things such as Font, and other Fonts I’ve known, and even the Font that I am myself at times. Fonts who are not Keir Hardies but Jimmy Porters in the Egyptian Victorian age; Fonts who are not revolutionaries or leaders in the class struggle, but polished products of the English ‘Left’, lonely and without lustre in the budding revolution of the Arab world.

  These thoughts on the one hand and on the other the pleasure in sitting in Groppi’s and drinking whisky without having to pay for it, or of coming to the snooker club and sitting within reach of the bottles. Thinking of this, I reached out and swung the Martell bottle to my lips. Life was good.

  Font came back, the Bass having lowered his eyebrows somewhat. He asked me if I had seen Didi Nackla since London.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I saw Edna and Levy yesterday,’ he began. ‘They are coming to my place tonight. You come too.’

  Levy and Edna … and Font. I wish they would all leave the country and leave me alone. Levy and Edna, especially Edna. I turned round and was going to have another swig at the bottle when he stopped me.

  ‘Don’t be such a bloody coward,’ he said.

  I sighed and drank my beer instead.

  ‘I haven’t seen Edna for such a long time.’

  ‘You can see her tonight.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Well, don’t come then.’

  ‘You know very well I’m coming,’ I said.

  He smiled.

  ‘I hope we’re all chucked in jail,’ I said. ‘Somewhere on the Red Sea. The four of us. Then you’ll really have something to be angry about. I can just see your eyebrows raised to the back of your head in amazement.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Why should we be chucked in jail?’ His eyebrows started rising again. ‘Are you involved in something …?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Ram …’

  ‘I’ve told you a hundred times, no.’

  I longed to see Edna again. Her long, auburn hair and large, brown eyes. We’d both sit on the floor, myself behind her, Arab fashion, combing her hair. One long stroke after another, then a parting and two long plaits with a bit of string tied to the end of each plait.
/>   ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ I said. ‘Let’s have another Bass.’ I shared the remaining Bass and watched his eyebrows go up before he spoke.

  ‘Did you read what he did?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gaitskell.’

  ‘Gaitskell. Gaitskell! For God’s sake, Font, do you think I’m going to worry about …’ and then I saw the lonely look on Font’s face. ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘What do you expect? So many years being a politician, you end up by being a politician.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ he shouted, ‘look at Konni Zilliacus, look at Fenner Brockway …’

  ‘Stop shouting, Font.’ Three men had just come in and were looking at us. ‘Go,’ I said. ‘Go and fix them some balls.’ He took some keys from behind the bar and went unsteadily towards them. I was getting drunk. I took another mouthful of Martell and lit a cigarette.

  The ludicrous position of an Egyptian sitting in Cairo and being furious because of Gaitskell’s stand on the manufacture of nuclear weapons in England doesn’t strike Font. Admittedly he began by being furious about Egyptian internal politics as well, but that too was ludicrous, like a Lucky Jim would have been in England during Dickens’s time. It was like trying to ice a cake while it was still in the oven. Font knows how to trim the cake, and frost it, and garnish it with the latest decorations, but he doesn’t know how to bake the cake. So he has to wait for Nasser to bake it for him before he can add his own refinements – and he’s not too sure that he will be allowed to do that, even later on. In the meantime he sits and judges all the cooked cakes and hopes that the Egyptian, or Arab, cake, is going to come out the correct shape.

  I have this silly habit of suddenly laughing. I actually saw the cake in my imagination, and it was not as flat and smooth on the surface as I would have wished. I saw myself nibbling at it here and there. Of course by then I was drunk and this cake business was very funny, especially the nibbling. I laughed out loud.

  ‘Hoy, professor,’ shouted Arevian, ‘are we amusing your loftiness?’

  ‘Did you ever meet Gaitskell, Arevian?’ I shouted back.

  ‘Of course,’ he answered, pocketing a ball, ‘Gaitskellian the great Armenian.’

  ‘And Dr Summerskillian and Lord Stansgatian and Kingsley Martinian; do you know them all?’

  ‘Played snooker with them all,’ he said.

  I left the snooker club without looking at Font. I was drunk again and wanted to find something to do before I became depressed. I took a bus home.

  We have a pretty flat overlooking the Nile at Zamalek. It is strange, but I have never asked my mother how much money she has. We have this pretty flat and we seem to be eating as well as ever.

  ‘Tu as essayer de t’employer?’ she asked.

  ‘Penses-tu.’ Of course she spoke French, and t’employer she said, not chercher du travail.

  I am not working. I haven’t been working since I came back from Europe. Don’t think I have any money, though; I haven’t, nor do I have a father to support me. In fact to possess a father in Egypt is an uncommon luxury. Our mothers are legally married and all that, but their husbands die young, the average age being thirty-five or thereabouts. My mother took me to live with her parents when I was four. By the time I was seven, there were three widowed aunts and eight orphans living with Grandfather and Grandmother (people like my grandparents raise the average age somewhat). The fact that my aunts were very rich but not my mother, never occurred to me. I drifted on that rich tide. I was as well dressed as the other orphans and went to the same school. Each orphan was expensively equipped and was sent to England, France or Switzerland as soon as he matriculated. When my turn came, however, I was rather coldly eyed by one aunt after another and I had to realize that the tide had dissipated and that I didn’t possess locomotion of my own. So now I am drifting on the tide of my school friends. Why, they themselves wouldn’t have it otherwise. Honestly, this word ‘sponging’ is as disgusting to me as it is to Font. If you want the truth, when I came back I thought that Nasser had finally blown a magic air and that all tides had vanished. I would have worked then if I could have got as much money as my friends. As it is, if I work I would have to leave my rich friends, and I like my friends.

  I rang up Assam the Turk. His sister answered.

  ‘Hello, Zouzou; is Assam there?’

  ‘No,’ she answered, ‘I suppose you’re looking for a game?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Zouzou; you know I don’t gamble any more.’ My mother heard the word ‘gamble’ and came running to hear the conversation.

  ‘Well, he isn’t here,’ Zouzou said, ‘but I’ll tell you where he is if you promise me something.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Tell him to take me to the ball at the Semiramis next Saturday.’

  ‘Why don’t you go with your friends?’

  ‘You know what we Turks are like,’ she said, ‘I’m lucky they let me go at all.’

  ‘I thought you Turks were modernized forty years ago. You’re all American now and members of NATO.’

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing, I was only joking. Yes, I promise to tell him. Where is he?’

  ‘He’s at Nackla Pasha’s.’

  ‘Thanks, Zouzou.’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s baccarat they’re playing, not poker.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He borrowed a hundred pounds from me, that’s how I know.’

  ‘Thanks, Zouzou; good-bye.’ My mother waited for me to explain.

  ‘So it’s baccarat they play now,’ she said. ‘Well, well. Assam will take all their money. He has wonderful luck, that boy.’

  ‘I have better luck,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, your luck’s not too bad either. Of course there is no question of you gambling any more.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Where are they playing?’

  ‘At the Nacklas.’

  ‘Pas possible! … has it come to that? Le Nackla playing with boys of your age?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘unfortunately it hasn’t come to that yet, although it is time it did. No,’ I said, the alcohol making me angry, ‘this is only a little aperitif for le Nackla. Just a few hundred pounds to amuse the young with. Later on in the evening the real thing will come.’

  ‘But what are you getting angry at?’ my mother asked.

  ‘You’re sweet, Mummy, but you don’t understand. Le Nackla has no right to have all that money.’

  ‘But it is like that all over the world,’ she said.

  ‘No, Mummy, it isn’t. It isn’t like that in …’ I was going to say Russia or China, but if I did, my mother would be terrified to think I was a communist. Not that communism alarms her – she doesn’t know what it is – but she has heard that communists are imprisoned and tortured, and my aunt tells her they are murderers … with a hint that I am one of them.

  ‘Not like that where?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘In Luxemburg,’ I said. ‘Come, Mummy, let’s have a cold beer and eat. I’m very hungry.’

  She asked me whether I had seen Font lately; ‘ce brave garçon’, what had happened to him? wasn’t it tragic, going mad like that all of a sudden? But really I must tell her what happened during those four years in London. Didn’t I feel responsible? After all it was I who talked him into going with me. How we ever managed to do it without a penny between us is a mystery of course. Is it true what people said? That we worked as ordinary labourers there? Of course she had never believed it … her own son …

  London came back to me, those four years with Font, and I really became miserable. I drank more beer; it was ice-cold and all of a sudden I felt so fed up with everything that I picked up my beer glass and smashed it and we went over the same old scene again: go back to London if you’re not happy here, I’ll find the money somehow … perhaps your aunt … what is it really? Did I love a girl there? and so on and so on. It wasn’t the f
irst time.

  ‘Go,’ she said, ‘go to the Nacklas and gamble.’

  I would have gone; but it meant seeing Didi Nackla. The last time I had seen her was in London and since my return I have evaded seeing her. I don’t know why. She probably thinks I am still abroad.

  ‘No,’ I said, and apologized for smashing the glass.

  I slept till five in the afternoon.

  ‘Try and find something to do, dear,’ my mother said. ‘Public relations or something like that would just suit you.’

  ‘Yes, Mummy.’

  ‘After all,’ she said, ‘we don’t even have a car; aren’t you ashamed to see your own mother ride the trams?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said..

  I kissed her then went to Groppi’s. I walked because I didn’t have the bus fare. Ragab the barman poured me a whisky as soon as he saw me.

  ‘They were all here and said they’ll be back at seven,’ he told me. It was six, which meant I had to wait until someone came to pay for my whisky … or many whiskies, if I were to wait for an hour. There were three or four people sitting at the bar. One was a young man of my age reading a magazine. It had a glossy coloured cover which meant it was American. From the way he was reading it, absorbed and keen, I knew what it was. The one thing Font and I still have in common is our vehement phobia towards Egyptians who read the American Time Magazine. We call them Dullesian, which we consider the ultimate insult. They are well-dressed, the Time readers, and are called ‘educated’ by the American colony and journalists. They make me sick.

  I had another whisky and began to feel well again. I was worrying about seeing Edna later on. No, not worrying, but afraid. No, not really afraid, but ashamed. Yes, ashamed is right. Ragab’s shift behind the bar was ending and he collected the money from his customers. He didn’t look at me, but whispered to his colleague and I saw him place my bill in a glass behind the bar. So even Ragab was in the secret conspiracy to keep my worklessness respectable; or had my friends told him to keep my bills for them? I didn’t know. I didn’t care either.

  I caught the new barman’s eye. He immediately started pouring me another whisky. I took my glass and sat on a cushioned bamboo armchair, having idiotically put out my tongue at the Time reader who looked at me as I moved. Groppi’s was by then packed with people, all well-dressed and magnanimous with their orders. I was annoyed that all these people hadn’t been dealt a heavy blow by the revolution. Why did they continue speaking in French? They all moan of not having enough money now, but they still live in the style they were accustomed to.