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

  Jameel and Yehia came. The only striking thing about Jameel is his hair; not the hair itself, but the way he wears it. He has a parting in the middle. This helps keep his face characterless and benign.

  ‘We were at the club,’ he said. ‘Two beautiful ones arrived today. German and Norwegian.’

  The club is the Gezira Sporting Club, and the ‘ones’ are nurses or governesses or whatever you want to call them. ‘Top’ Egyptians still have foreign governesses for their children, although nowadays the governesses are pretty girls in their twenties who come for a year or so and have an expensive time with – although I hate the word – the ‘bloods’.

  ‘Yehia,’ I asked, ‘do you know that chap sitting behind me at the bar reading a magazine?’

  ‘That’s Coco, don’t you know him? He works at General Motors. His father is …’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said.

  ‘What are you having?’ Jameel asked.

  ‘I’ve already had three whiskies.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ He waved his hand nonchalantly and went to the bar.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ Yehia asked.

  ‘I’m going to Font’s.’

  ‘So you won’t be using the …’

  ‘No,’ I answered. Six of us share a flat in town with nothing but beds in it, and dirty sheets. I say ‘share’ although I have never paid anything towards it.

  ‘Are you using your car tonight, Yehia?’

  ‘No, we’re taking Jameel’s. You can have mine.’ He gave me the keys as Jameel came with three whiskies. Someday, I thought, one of them is going to refuse to pay for my drinks or to lend me his car or something like that, and I shall never see them again.

  ‘What’s the matter, Jameel?’ He was nervous and started to speak to me twice but changed his mind.

  ‘Nothing important, really.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Font was drunk today.’ There was silence for a while.

  ‘Why don’t you throw him out?’

  ‘I can’t do that, Ram. We’re all fond of him.’

  ‘Anyway, what’s it got to do with me?’

  Yehia started smiling. ‘Do you know what he did? He hit Arevian with a snooker stick. I never laughed so much. They kept running round the tables and every now and then whizz, the stick came down on Arevian’s back. Arevian was screaming at the top of his voice and kept shouting brand-new Armenian words. Doromian was encouraging Font and nearly died laughing.’

  Jameel started laughing too, and now they were both roaring. They stopped laughing after a while and told me what had happened. Doromian had spent ten minutes thinking of a way to pocket a ball from an impossible position. Of course Arevian was full of sarcasm; ‘you couldn’t pocket that ball in a well’, and ‘even if you picked it up with your fat hands it would be difficult’. Everyone, including Font, was watching. Finally Arevian said he’d burn a ten-pound note if the ball was pocketed from that position. By an amazing fluke the ball trickled into a pocket, whereupon Arevian took a ten-pound note from his wallet, lit a match and started burning the note. This enraged Font who took a snooker stick and started beating him.

  I laughed. ‘Frankly, Jameel,’ I said, ‘if you want to complain about Font don’t come to me.’

  ‘No, really, I’m not complaining. If he could only … I mean he should be a little …’ and he tapered off into nothing.

  Font has two rooms behind the Citadel in old Cairo. His neighbours are barrow–keepers, servants, and sometimes beggars. It is the prettiest and most colourful part of Cairo and anywhere else the arties would have flocked to it, but not in Cairo. The Cairo arties, if not slumming in Europe, are driving their Jaguars in Zamalek. I would like to live in that part of Cairo; I genuinely would prefer to live there. But with me it would be gimmicky. There is a touch of gimmick in whatever I do.

  I was feeling relaxed and cheerful as I drove to Font’s. Four whiskies drunk in the space of an hour and a half have that effect on me. What am I worrying about? Edna and all that? How silly. I’m free to do whatever I want. Au fond I don’t see why I put up with Font’s sneers and jeers. I won’t get angry of course, but I’ll … well, tell him to stop it. As for putting out my tongue at Time readers and such, it’s too childish. It’s time I pulled myself together. I’ll even talk to my cousin Mounir and he’ll manage to squeeze me into Shell or Canadian Insurance or something like that. Yes, I’ll give up that other business. I’ll get caught one day and have my nails pulled out. Yes, I’ve had a long holiday and sowed my wild Quaker oats and Fabian rubbish and now it’s time for maturity, etc, etc. No, there is no reason to go to Font’s and meet them with any feeling of guilt. Guilt? Guilt for what? For not letting Edna rule my life?

  I drove away from Font’s address, back to it and away again. It is nice to drive with a little whisky in me. When I haven’t been smoking for an hour or so, and I have been drinking and then smoke, the cigarette suddenly depresses me. (It’s the same with hangovers. No matter how much I’ve been drinking the night before, I wake up in the best of spirits, but as soon as I smoke, I am all depressed.) I stopped the car and lit a cigarette.

  … For not letting Edna rule my life? What life, for heaven’s sake? Call this a life? Call this a man?

  I took more time than necessary to park the car in front of the house where Font lives; half of it on the pavement, otherwise there would be no room for other cars to pass. I put the radio on to listen to the news and finish my cigarette before going upstairs. A little boy watched me lock the car.

  ‘I’ll look after it for you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘I’ll polish it too,’ he promised.

  ‘All right,’ I said and started going upstairs. Then I returned to the car and told him he could sit inside if he wished. I unlocked it and showed him how to work the radio. He was thrilled; his bare feet contracted with shyness.

  ‘I’ll clean every bit of it,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said and went upstairs.

  Edna was sitting looking out of the window, with a cup of coffee in her hand. She was well dressed in a black suit, her elegant legs crossed. She didn’t turn when I came in. I shook hands with Levy who was helping Font wash up some dishes in a corner. Levy is tall. He thrusts his head forward, his chin horizontal, giving the impression that this is the only position to keep his spectacles from falling off. In contrast to Font, Levy’s eyebrows are pushed as far down as possible. I watched him dry the dishes, his movements awkward and absent-minded. There was something pathetic in the scene: Font handing Levy the dishes and Levy taking them, each with his own type of puzzled expression, a strange virus having struck them both and the symptoms of the disease so apparent. A silent why? on their faces. If you asked them why what? they would not be able to answer precisely.

  I took a chair and sat half-facing Edna.

  ‘It was, therefore,’ Levy was telling Font, ‘both criminal and stupid.’ Levy is a product of one of the French Lycées in Egypt. This becomes obvious when he is with either Font or myself. Compared to our English education sloppiness and vagueness, his clarity in thought and speech is conspicuous.

  ‘But do you think England and France would have attacked us if Israel had refused to participate?’ Font asked.

  ‘Yes, and Israel would have attacked without the active participation of England and France. If Israel had added her voice to that of the Arabs in protesting against the troop concentration in Cyprus, and had told the Arab people: whatever our differences, we shall not be an instrument of imperial designs on you, an inestimable amount of good would have been done.’

  ‘Yes, yes; but all your “ifs” are nonsense. You know very well that all Israelis would like to see us dominated by Europe or America. Your “if” hasn’t got a leg to stand on.’

  Levy was hurt at this. He is always being hurt anyhow.

  ‘It is a fact, Font,’ he said, ‘that a very large number of peo
ple in Israel objected to the Suez aggression. There is a large number of sincere socialists in Israel.’

  ‘Sincere socialists! I know your sincere socialists. Maurice Edelman – there is your sincere socialist.’

  I smiled. Maurice Edelman is a very handy name for us when discussing socialism with Jews.

  ‘Don’t take him as an example,’ Levy said, ‘there are people like Victor Gollancz.’

  Font has a weak spot for Victor Gollancz. ‘Victor Gollancz is not an Israeli,’ he muttered.

  ‘And neither is Edelman.’

  Those two can go on like that for hours. With English personalities as a nucleus, they circle round and round, unaware that it is the Middle East they are discussing and not the United Kingdom.

  I stopped listening to them and turned to Edna. I wondered whether Font and Levy were sexless. I wondered whether one has to be sexless to be completely sincere. I knew they had never considered Edna as a woman to be physically possessed. Doromian the Armenian once said that most men have their brains in their instruments and I wondered why Freud took so many volumes to say just that. Of course I go about pretending otherwise, but the fact is, no matter how important the subject I am discussing, let a beautiful woman appear and I know where my brain is. Except when I am seriously gambling. Perhaps, I thought, gambling is to me what socialism is to Font and Levy, but that didn’t strike me as true.

  ‘Edna,’ I whispered. She moved her head slightly but continued to gaze out of the window. I ran my finger slowly up and down her sleeve. ‘Edna … Edna … Edna …’ She turned her head and looked at me. For a moment I thought it was a shadow playing on her cheek; at the same instant my hand involuntarily flew to my eyes and covered them. There was silence and then I heard Font and Levy go outside. From the corner of her lips, up her right cheek and to the lobe of her ear, was a thick line of raw flesh. The centre of the line was depressed and of a darker hue than the rest. The stitching had pulled her lips slightly to one side, and part of the skin on her neck was similarly stretched because of the wound.

  ‘Give me a cigarette,’ she said very softly. My hands were wet with sweat. I gave her a cigarette, then took one myself and lit both.

  ‘How do you like me now,’ she said.

  ‘I love you,’ I answered.

  ‘I mean aesthetically.’

  A bloody officer. She didn’t have to tell me. A bloody bastard of an officer, come to search her house. A dashing swine of an officer with a moustache. Charming at the beginning. ‘Just routine,’ he must have said. A good lay, someone must have told him … a Jewess. What with? A knife? A broken glass?

  ‘A whip,’ she said without being asked.

  ‘So what?’ I shouted. ‘So bloody what? Aren’t there bloody officers in Israel? Haven’t they massacred Arab women and children? Isn’t Kenya full of bloody British officers? Isn’t Algeria full of bloody sadists in uniform? So what? Aren’t there Jewish officers in filthy Nato hand in hand with ex-Nazi officers? … oh, Edna … Who was it?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Who was it, Edna?’

  But she wouldn’t tell.

  She looked very much older than myself, and very tired. A storm of affection for her whirled in me, and the uselessness of it all and the unfairness of it all dulled my senses and made me want to cover myself with bedclothes and not open my eyes or emerge for a long time. I tried to pull her towards me, but she pushed me back. I desisted and she sat back, giving me her unscarred side.

  All this is London. All this is London I told myself. All this comes of hearing Father Huddleston speak, of knowing who Rosa Luxemburg was, of seeing Gorki’s trilogy in Hampstead. It comes of Donald Soper at Speaker’s Corner, of reading Koestler and Alan Paton and Doris Lessing and Orwell and Wells and La Question and even Kenneth Tynan. Of knowing how Franco came to power and who has befriended him since, of Churchill’s hundred million to squash Lenin and then later the telegram; of knowing how Palestine was given to the Jews and why … of the bombing of Damascus and Robert Graves’s Good-bye. Oh, blissful ignorance. Wasn’t it nice to go to the Catholic church with my mother before I ever heard of Salazar or of the blessed troops to Ethiopia?

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she answered.

  ‘Where do you live now?’

  ‘A few yards from here.’

  ‘And your parents?’

  ‘In South Africa.’

  I st od up and walked about the room. I looked under Font’s bed and found a bottle of cognac but I didn’t feel like drinking. I looked out of the other window and saw Font and Levy downstairs with the owner of a coffee-house, sitting in chairs on the pavement and playing dominoes, the three of them. Did Font really like to play dominoes, or did the scene of himself and Levy playing with a man in peasant clothes complete a cherished self portrait?

  ‘Do you want some cognac, Edna?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. I took the bottle from underneath the bed and poured her a glass.

  ‘Why don’t you go away, Edna? Why don’t you go to Israel or South Africa or France or anywhere else and live and be happy?’

  ‘Because I am Egyptian,’ she said.

  It took me some time to realize that this scar on Edna’s face was actually a disfigurement, and that it affected me as such; not as a repulsiveness, but in the tender way it endeared her to me. Somehow it made her more real and an individual. If only she would cry, I was thinking, if only she would cry and allow her emotions to overcome her thoughts. But in all the six years I had known her, she had never cried.

  ‘Do you ever cry, Edna?’ She brushed the question away as stupid.

  It is strange. A man gets to know a woman. For a long time they are one. They have mingled their thoughts, their bodies, their hopes, their odours, their lives. They are one. And then a while later they are strangers. They are not one any more. Just as though it had never happened, as though looking at oneself in the mirror and seeing a stranger instead of one’s reflection.

  I fetched a glass. What do people who do not drink do on such occasions? Face the facts perhaps. But facing a fact is one thing, and overcoming it is another. Cognac was going to overcome the facts: overcome Edna’s willed hardness and overcome my lack of suitable words and actions. I filled my glass and hers once more, then sat at her feet in silence, she with her thoughts and I with mine. The cognac was already taking control of things. One more glass each and I kissed her on her knee, softly and affectionately. Slowly her hand came down and played with my hair and rubbed my head against her side. Spontaneous, perhaps, and unpremeditated; nevertheless a scene probably already encountered in a film or a play or an opera or a book which the brandy unknowingly evoked. Artists try to depict people; and people depict the artists’ conception of people.

  And then the obvious thing to say and talk about came to me: ‘Do you remember?’ Would I have thought of that if it weren’t for the brandy? Perhaps I would have and even did; but it wouldn’t have come softly and at the right moment.

  ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘What?’ she whispered.

  We remembered, and the stranger in the mirror became familiar once more, recognizable and close and one and the same.

  Font and Levy came in and ignored the fact that my head was against Edna’s knee and her hand on my head. Such irrelevant things are never worthy of the attention of socialists. I was going to ask Font what, in his opinion, Lenin would have done had he discovered his wife with another man, but I changed my mind.

  ‘Everything is Allah’s will,’ Font began. ‘Ask him how much money a year he makes, and he answers: “Allah be praised, enough.” Ask him whether he is happy Nasser has rid us of Farouk, he answers: “Whatever God brings is good.” Ask him how much he pays his waiter, he says: “Allah knows, more than enough.” ’

  Levy said there was a ‘psychological barrier’ between Font and Kharafallah downstairs. But Font said he was only a hired hand in the snooker club, and therefore no
such barrier should exist, and Edna said something about being careful not to patronize. I waited to see how the conversation would turn to English politicians. If it didn’t turn in that direction soon, I was going to steer it that way myself because they are never so happy as when beating the bush in London. However, Edna told Font he was acting like a Fabian, and Levy illustrated Fabianism by describing Bernard Shaw, and Font defended Wells, so they were on the right track and I rubbed my head against Edna’s knee.

  ‘I’ll drive you home,’ I told Edna.

  ‘I live next door,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s all go for a drive.’

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  Just as we were going out of the door, Levy turned to Edna and said: ‘ Tu te sents mieux?’

  I saw her frown slightly; she didn’t like this particular intimacy simply because they were both Jewish. At the same time Levy’s face reddened at his mistake.

  We heard music as we approached the car, and I remembered the little boy who offered to clean it. He was curled up in the front seat, asleep, the rag with which he had cleaned the car still clasped in his hand. We all peered at him as I explained how he came to be there. Edna put the radio off and woke him gently.

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked. He rubbed his eyes and looked at us from under his eyebrows, his head bent. Then he saw me and smiled.

  ‘I’ve cleaned it three times,’ he said.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Edna asked again. ‘Your mother must be worried about you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right, mistress,’ he said, ‘I have no mother or father, so it’s all right.’