Beer in the Snooker Club (Serpent's Tail Classics) Page 4

‘Where do you live then?’

  ‘Oh, just here.’

  ‘Which house?’

  ‘In one of the doorways, it doesn’t matter which.’

  ‘You mean you have no home?’

  ‘No, but in winter I sleep behind the police officer’s desk at the station.’

  ‘Police officer?’

  ‘Yes, he is my friend,’ he said proudly. I watched Font’s face. I could see the genuine frustration and the anger at his inadequacy and the injustice of it seep up to his eyes and blind him with useless fury.

  ‘How old are you?’ Edna asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Just then Kharafallah, the coffee-house owner, came and peered at the boy. ‘No father, no mother,’ he sighed. ‘What can we do? It’s God’s will.’

  ‘Where does he eat?’ Levy asked.

  ‘Here and there. A loaf here, a bit of cheese there; we do what we can – he is not the only one. What can we do? It’s Allah’s will.’

  ‘Doesn’t he go to school?’ Font in his dreaminess asked.

  ‘School? What school? He has no father or mother I tell you.’ Kharafallah shook his head. ‘School indeed!’ He laughed. ‘This one is lucky; the police officer, a good man, may God keep him, helps him in the cold. What can we do?’

  Edna gave Kharafallah some money and told him to look after the boy until we made some arrangement for him.

  We drove towards the Pyramids, Edna and me in the back seat, and Font driving with Levy by his side. Levy had his arms crossed in resignation. He is authentically lonely. We first met him in London, working in a Lyons Corner House, shouted at by an unpleasant manageress. He has never quite fitted in with us. Apart from our having had an English education and he a French one, there is an aura of humility about him which is sometimes embarrassing. Edna paid his passage to Egypt and Font befriended him. He teaches Arabic now to adult Egyptians who have suddenly been faced with the necessity of knowing that language, which he had studied under Moslem Sheikhs at the Azhar University. He would probably have become a scholar of repute in the Arab world had it not been for the Suez war. I wondered why he didn’t go to Israel.

  ‘Levy,’ I asked, ‘have you ever thought of going to Israel?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You can be sure that at one time or another, every Jew has thought of going to Israel.’

  I don’t know why, but it reminded me of: ‘At one time or another every married man has thought of divorce.’

  ‘In the midst of Jews,’ he continued, ‘I lose all individuality. I agree with everything they say. I act and say whatever they expect of me; I end up by having no thoughts of my own. It would be an act of suicide from my part.’

  … Un acte de suicide de ma part,

  Si je ne me tiens pas a I’écart.

  ‘I’m a poet,’ I told them.

  We passed the house where my aunt lives and where I met Edna for the first time. I saw her smile slightly. I wondered whether the closeness we had recaptured at Font’s had dissipated. I searched for her hand and found it, but there was no response to my caress. I was afraid she would imagine I was feeling sorry for her because of the wound. I was feeling sorry, but that had nothing to do with my desire to hold her hand. I loved her.

  We drove up to the base of the Pyramids and went out of the car. There they stood. Material monuments of immaterialism. In the darkness they didn’t seem man-made, but a godly imposition on this earth, a sign of the stability of some unearthly power. Had they been built much earlier, and had their history been unknown, some Moses or other might well have used them as a sign to some Abraham:

  And lo! fire was kindled in the bosom of whoever it was and three earthquakes moved the earth and the waters, and the heavens showered square pillars and filled the earthquakes and behold! built three monuments one by the side of the other: three hundred and three score something or other in height and as many steps as a young lamb will use in one day and one night in breadth. And the fire smouldered in his heart and he bade his five sons to be brought unto him and he smote them and gave orders to sacrifice all the newly wedded on the base of the largest of the monuments. For such was the Lord’s wish.

  I held Edna’s hand and we went off together to see the Sphinx. We stood looking at it in silence for a quarter of an hour, then I turned round and faced her and put my hand on her scarred cheek and told her I loved her. She continued looking at the Sphinx, but I put my mouth on hers and kissed her and held her tight. We walked back to the car, my arm round her waist and hers round mine, like English couples at Brighton.

  We drove back in silence. No matter how many times I go to the Pyramids at night, I am always awed, and the return journey is made in silence. We dropped Levy on the way and then Font drove to his rooms. He left the engine running, said good night, and went upstairs. We sat for a while in the back seat without speaking. It had been a long day for me; I had drunk too much and was tired. But I had an overwhelming desire for Edna; a chokingly tender need to caress her and to love her.

  ‘Where do you live?’ I asked.

  ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  One room, Moorishly furnished with a low sofa on which she slept; but I couldn’t see very much because she didn’t turn the light on. I knew she wouldn’t want lights any more. I sat, Arab fashion, on the sofa and then she came and sat in the same way in front of me. I started to undo her hair as I had often done before, then she handed me a comb and I combed her auburn hair with long, slow sweeps, from her forehead down to her waist; then I plaited her hair and tied the ends with a piece of string she gave me, and undid her clothes and peeled her jacket off, then her blouse and everything else, and she sat in front of me, bare and very beautiful with her head bent. I told her ‘I love you’ many times, and kissed her, and whispered love and tenderness and memories in her ear. At last she turned round and breathed close to me and we became one. Two bodies and two brains and two lives clasped together, and nothing else mattered. To be loved by, and to possess the person we love is why we were born.

  PART II

  About six years earlier the aunt who had signed away those acres, was having a reception – a soirée they called it – in honour of her son Mounir, just back from America. It was a large affair in her Pyramid Road villa. Liveried servants, cut glass and champagne. I went late. There were about thirty guests around an enormous table having supper; my chair conspicuously empty.

  ‘And here comes our revolutionary,’ Mounir’s mother said, ‘Nasser’s disciple.’ A fat, ugly, rich woman. ‘Aren’t you going to tell them to take our house and silver?’ She squeaked in laughter. Everyone else laughed mirthlessly. They were being served by eight servants, permanent staff. I was sitting next to my mother.

  ‘At least say hello to Mounir,’ she whispered, ‘you haven’t seen him for three years.’

  I started looking round the table for him. I gave him a glance but my eyes rested on the girl next to him. She had this unique, even, very light brown skin with a mass of auburn hair piled at the back of her head. Her eyelids were moist, I could see that from where I was sitting.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked my mother.

  ‘That’s la fille Salva, my dear. Just back from Europe.’

  Her father and mother were there too; I had met them before. One of the richest Jewish families in Egypt – our Woolworths.

  ‘Long time no see,’ shouted Mounir. God, I thought; Long time no see!

  I looked at him and said hello.

  ‘How’s tricks, buddy? Sure will have some fun together soon, eh?’ And he winked.

  ‘Tout-à-Jait Americain,’ someone said, and ‘c’est mignon’ and ‘il est sympathique.’

  I kept my eyes on my plate, imagining that handsome idiot squirming in his seat. Now and again I gave the Salva girl a look; she always seemed to be smiling at Mounir.

  ‘Hey, Ram,’ he shouted to me again, ‘what’s that I hear about you being Red? Don’t fall for that stuff, buddy. I’ll give you some information’ll m
ake you think.’

  I was neither Red, Pink, Blue, nor Black. I had no politics in me then. I didn’t consider the Egyptian revolution and getting rid of Farouk to be politics.

  ‘You do that,’ I said.

  ‘Believe me,’ he continued, and he was speaking to the whole table now, ‘American Democracy is the thing. Boy, you wanna see that country.’ Everyone was nodding at him wisely and contentedly. His American accent, whether intentional or not, added to his insipidness.

  ‘I was there and I saw for myself. Man, that’s the country for me. I tell you …’

  Two days earlier, I had been with a group of ‘freedom fighters’, all students, harassing the English troops at Suez. Three of my friends had died, and Font was lying in hospital with a bullet in his thigh.

  ‘… the Red menace … free enterprise …’ he went on, to the worthless admiration of the nodding seals there. ‘We sure must be vigilant,’ he said. ‘Look what happened to China.’

  I asked him what had happened to China. He didn’t know. He didn’t know there was any racial discrimination in America. He had never heard of Sacco and Vanzetti, he did not know what ‘un-American activities’ was. No, he did not believe there were poor Puerto Ricans or poor anyone else in America. Who was Paul Robeson? Red Indians without full citizenship? What was I talking about? I must be mad. All he knew was that he had spent three years in America, had picked up their pet phrases and had been given a degree. He was all set to be given high office, and what sickened me was the knowledge that he would get it. It made me sick because apart from Font and myself, all the other students dying at Suez were from poor families and Mounir and Co. were going to lord it over the survivors.

  ‘England,’ he said, ‘must stay at Suez and protect us from the Red Menace.’

  Politics or no politics, that was too much for me. I don’t remember what happened exactly; we came to blows and I told him to ‘wipe his backside’ with his American democracy. Of course my mother started crying, and the servants separated us, and even calling the police was suggested.

  I found myself in the street. Strangely, I was in a good mood. I even laughed when I remembered the way my aunt had shouted ‘murder, murder’. It was too late for the Pyramid Road tram-line, and I started walking the seven-mile journey home. My mother still had her car then, and I thought she might pick me up later on. I heard my name being called, but walked on without looking back. Then footsteps started running towards me.

  ‘Stop, blast you!’ she said.

  ‘What do you want,’ I asked, looking at the Salva girl.

  ‘Your mother tells you to take her car; here are the keys.’

  ‘How will she get back?’

  ‘My parents will drive her.’

  I started walking back with her.

  ‘I’m the daughter …’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ I said. ‘You’re the rich Salva girl.’ I started the car.

  ‘Will you drive me home?’ she asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ she said, ‘I’ll get my handbag.’

  She returned a few minutes later and I drove for a while in silence. Suddenly I decided to go and visit Font. He had a private room, and I knew I could enter the hospital any time I wanted.

  ‘You live in Heliopolis, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  I went to our Zamalek flat first and asked her to wait in the car for a moment. Upstairs I collected two bottles of wine and two glasses; then I took another glass.

  ‘Why did you leave the party?’ I asked in the car.

  ‘Are you going to seduce me with this wine?’ she said, not answering my question. I told her about Font in hospital and that I wanted to tell him about what happened at my aunt’s.

  ‘Do you often go to Suez?’

  ‘I don’t, but Font is a regular.’

  ‘How old is Font?’ she asked.

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  ‘You’re twenty-one also?’ I nodded.

  ‘I’m twenty-five,’ she said.

  She came with me to the hospital. No one saw us and we slipped quietly into Font’s room. I introduced him to Edna and opened the wine. Edna and I sat at the foot of Font’s bed, and I started to tell him about Mounir.

  ‘I was so happy when you hit him,’ Edna said.

  This surprised me. ‘I thought you were smiling at him all the time.’

  ‘I can’t stand him or any of the people there.’

  ‘Even your parents?’ I asked.

  ‘Particularly them.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ It was Font who asked.

  ‘A rich girl’s gimmick,’ I replied.

  ‘No,’ she said calmly, ‘it isn’t.’ And I believed her. That was the first time Edna made me ashamed of myself, because I knew that my own behaviour that day was not without the support of some kind of gimmick.

  Edna asked Font how he came to be wounded. We talked until dawn. We drank and laughed and were very careful not to mention Israel because Edna was Jewish. My hand accidentally touched hers and somehow it seemed natural that we hold hands for the rest of the night. The wine and the dawn and Edna’s beauty made me feel very much in love. It was a happy night.

  Font was discharged from hospital soon after that day when Edna and I went to see him. We began to meet Edna nearly every day. Sometimes she’d come arid pick us up from the university by car, and we would drive for hours on the desert road to Alexandria. Font and I were shy people, and fundamentally very different from our old school friends – different in spite of sharing their taste for drink and gambling: we were bookworms. Font was living with my mother and myself then. Both his parents were dead and we had been friends since childhood. He had a small monthly allowance which he shared with me for books and expenses, while my mother paid for the household. We hadn’t arranged it that way, it just came naturally. We were such avid readers, we sometimes spent weeks on end without going out of my room, reading one book after another. I don’t remember ever discussing a book with Font. We just read.

  The only important thing which happened to us was the Egyptian revolution. We took to it wholeheartedly and naturally, without any fanaticism or object in view. The only time I was passionate about it was that day when I heard Mounir say the English should remain in Egypt. And, surprisingly, that was also the first time I had ever used my reading: racial discrimination and incidents such as Sacco and Vanzetti, I had come across amongst the thousands of books I consumed. To someone of the opposite type to Mounir I could as well have talked about the murders of Karl Radek and the Polish revolutionaries. I read detachedly and was interested only in the stories as such.

  When Edna began talking to us of socialism or freedom or democracy, we always said yes, that’s what the Egyptian revolution was; everything good was going to be carried out by the revolution. To begin with Edna’s politics were not noticed by us at all, but gently she talked to us about oppressed people in Africa and Asia and even some parts of Europe, and Font and I started to read political books with more interest. The more we read, the more we wanted to learn and the more ignorant we felt. We learnt, for the first time, the history of British imperialism and why we didn’t want the British troops in the Suez Canal area. Up to then we had shouted ‘evacuation’ like everyone else, without precisely knowing why evacuation was so important. Gradually, we began to see ourselves as members of humanity in general and not just as Egyptians.

  We started to feel dissatisfied with the university life we were leading. This did not make us work any harder. If we were not playing snooker or drinking beer, we were with Edna, and if neither of these, we were devouring political books.

  Edna and I were not lovers straight away. I had met too many Egyptian girls at the university who were vehement politicians and who considered a man’s physical approach with contempt, so loving Edna silently, I was afraid that she too would find it contemptible if I tried to make love to her. I started to pour so
me of my passion into politics. I later learnt that a man who has passion in his politics is usually attractive to women.

  It was Edna who introduced me to Egyptian people. It is rare, in the milieu in which I was born, to know Egyptians. She explained to me that the Sporting Club and the race meetings and the villa-owners and the European-dressed and – travelled people I met, were not Egyptians. Cairo and Alexandria were cosmopolitan not so much because they contained foreigners, but because the Egyptian born in them is himself a stranger to his land.

  She took me one day to a flat her father owned near old Cairo. It was the first of many trips, bare-foot and in peasant dress, to the poor districts of Cairo and to the little villages in the outskirts. That first day, she made me sit Arab fashion on the floor and told me to comb her hair. She sat in front of me and took some hair-pins out. Her hair fell down to her waist and I combed it and plaited it, then tied the plaits with strings. On the bed were the peasant clothes we were to wear.

  ‘Are you sad?’ she asked without turning her head.

  ‘A little bit.’ It was that calm sadness which … well, which comes over you if you are combing the hair of the woman you love and if you don’t feel good enough for her.

  ‘Now we must wear these clothes,’ she said without moving.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Do you mind if I undress in front of you?’

  ‘Don’t, Edna.’

  ‘Why?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Is it because you love me?’

  I stared at the nape of her neck in silence.

  ‘I am four years older than you.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  After a while she asked me if I were as naïve as I appeared to be. I bent forward and kissed her neck. ‘I am not naïve,’ I whispered, ‘but I am clumsy because I love you.’

  ‘Say it again,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you love me.’

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  Unconsciously, all the books we had read, political and otherwise, began to be more than just interesting reading to Font and me. Edna had read nearly as much as we had, and under her influence we began to talk about what we had read.