Beer in the Snooker Club (Serpent's Tail Classics) Page 9

  We turned into her street. In front of her house a shadow suddenly appeared from the darkness and before I could notice anything else, I received a blow on the nose and was blinded by the tears which usually flow when the nose has been hit.

  ‘I’ll murder you, you dirty wog,’ he screamed. It was Steve. My nose was bleeding and I bent my head backwards to try and stop the flow. Even at that moment I realized he was very drunk and I didn’t feel any anger.

  ‘Steve, if you don’t go away this very instant, I’ll scream for Paddy.’

  ‘I’ll do that Irishman too,’ he screamed.

  If only I could be angry, I told myself, I could knock that Steve out. But I can never hit someone unless I am angry.

  ‘You know why you are despicable?’ I told him. ‘It’s because you can fight and kill people without being angry. I’m unable to hit you back simply because I feel no anger towards you.’

  A door opened and a huge man came out. He wore trousers and singlet and was barefoot.

  ‘Paddy,’ Shirley ran to him, ‘tell Steve to go home, he’s drunk.’

  ‘You bloody Irishman,’ Steve shouted.

  Shirley pulled me inside and closed the door. We were standing in a kitchen; the gas oven was burning low with its door open, and on the floor was a mattress on which Paddy had probably been sleeping. We heard shouts outside, then Paddy came in.

  ‘Be Jeez,’ he said, ‘be sure now and don’t go out again; I’m tellin’ yer that Steve’s in a terrible state now.’ It was the first time I had heard an Irish brogue. Paddy was a handsome man with a full crop of white hair.

  ‘Ram is Egyptian,’ Shirley said.

  ‘Be Jeez,’ he said, ‘your nose is bleedin’ now. I’m tellin’ yer now, don’t let none of these English touch yer; they’ve taken enough out of your cahntry as it is. I’ve seen things when I was a child now, you will not believe when I tell yer. I remember once in Cork …’

  ‘You tell him about it some other time,’ Shirley said. ‘Come in the front room,’ she told me.

  I said good night and followed Shirley into the front room. My nose had stopped bleeding. The loss of blood had cleared my head and made me feel light and cheerful.

  ‘That was Paddy,’ Shirley said, ‘what do you think of him?’

  ‘Be Jeez,’ I said, ‘I loike him.’

  ‘We have terrible fights; but lazy good-for-nothing swine as he is, Vincent and I love him. I’ll get some blankets,’ she said. We were whispering although there was no reason for it. It’s strange how people instinctively whisper when it’s dark. We hadn’t put the lights on.

  ‘I’ll go back to the hotel,’ I said.

  ‘The buses have stopped. But you can wait for Vince if you wish and he’ll drive you home.’ As she said this we heard his car outside, then his voice talking to Paddy. He knocked at the door and came in.

  ‘Hello, Ram,’ he said, half laughing, ‘you’ve tasted an English fist I hear. How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said, also laughing.

  ‘You mustn’t hate Steve too much, you know. He’s really a very decent boy.’

  ‘Jesus, I don’t hate him at all,’ I said. ‘If anything I’m ashamed of myself for what happened.

  ‘Let’s forget Steve, now,’ Shirley said. ‘Vince, can you drive Ram home?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but why don’t you sleep here? I’ve got some beer and we can talk for a while.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  He put the lights on, then switched them off again. They were stark lights and the room was cosier with just the light which came in from a street-lamp. He fetched glasses and beer.

  ‘Let’s ask Paddy to drink, too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Shirley said. ‘All right.’

  I was sitting on the sofa and Paddy on an armchair opposite. Vincent and Shirley were on the floor, Shirley resting her back against my legs. We talked until four in the morning. We just talked, and drank beer, and smoked. I told them the fellah lived exactly the same way he did ten thousand years ago … even to the houses he built and the way he whirled the water from the Nile to his land. At last we were all sleepy. Paddy and Vincent went to bed while Shirley went for some blankets. I kissed her affectionately and as soon as she left I took my clothes off and lay down.

  It had been a pleasant time, yet there was something lacking … a sense of climax. There is only one perfect ending to everything, and that is death, but there are other good endings as well. In spite of all that happened that day, and the nice conclusion of talking quietly in the darkness, there was a vestige of frustration in me as I lay there. And then I heard the door open and felt her warm body next to mine. This was the good ending. Even though we did not love each other, even if there was no lust between us, just to caress and kiss and to sleep close to one another was the final touch to end the day. And I understood how some men have to reach that fulfilment even between man and man.

  I was wrong to think caressing Shirley’s body was the climax to that day. There was another end to it when I returned to the hotel.

  I slipped away from Shirley’s house quietly, early in the morning, without waking anyone. I went to Edna’s room as soon as I reached the hotel.

  ‘I’ve been unfaithful to you,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Aren’t you jealous?’

  ‘Do you want me to be?’

  ‘I want you to be passionately jealous and threaten suicide and weep and lament and … isn’t there another word similar to weep and lament? … and strew ashes over yourself. Edna, what was the idea behind these Biblical people who strewed ashes over themselves when they were unhappy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Edna, what is this? What is happening to me? T am Egyptian and have lived in Egypt all my life and suddenly I am here, and at the end of three weeks I have slid into this strange life where I meet a girl and think it natural to go to bed with her at the end of the day, under the same roof as her brother and mother and Paddy, and find it natural they find it natural that she sleeps with me if she wants to. Such things don’t happen in Egypt, so how can I come here and live in an entirely different manner and yet feel I have been living like this all my life? What will happen to me when I go back to Egypt? Have you ever met my friends Yehia and Jameel and Fawzi? I’m not going to apologize for having spent the night with Shirley. You don’t love me and I don’t in the least feel guilty about it. I haven’t slept much and am rather tired; perhaps that’s why I want to speak the truth. Look, Edna; don’t attribute to me qualities I don’t possess. I just like to gamble and drink and make love and no matter what act I put on, you should know the truth.’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Egyptians are not found in Cairo or in Alexandria,’ she said. ‘You’ve never really known Egyptians. I hate Egyptians of your class as much as I do my parents.’

  ‘What am I, then, if I am not Egyptian?’

  ‘You are what you are; and that is a human being who was born in Egypt, who went to an English public school, who has read a lot of books, and who has an imagination. But to say that you are this or that or Egyptian, is nonsense.’

  ‘What are you, Edna?’

  ‘I can’t be generalized about either, except that I was born Jewish. But the difference between you and me is that I know Egyptians and love them.’

  ‘Edna,’ I said, ‘you said I was well read and had an imagination. I’m also intelligent. Intelligent enough to know you are not in love with me …’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve said I don’t love you.’

  ‘… and to wonder,’ I went on, ‘why you befriended Font and me and why you are being so generous to both of us. Let me be frank. Font is a lovable person and I can understand you may have genuine affection for him. But as for myself, since I set foot in London, my character has changed, or perhaps my real character has suddenly emerged. I am neither “lovable” nor “sweet” nor “nice”; on the contrary, I’m a conc
eited, arrogant, all-knowing, unlikeable creature. So I wonder why you don’t tell me that to my face. Perhaps you feel responsible because you brought me here. But here and now I absolve you of all responsibility. Edna, please, let us shed all vestige of sophistication and “double-talk” this instant and let us tell each other the truth. Tell me about yourself, Edna.’

  She closed her eyes and lay still for a moment. I took my shoes off and curled into an armchair.

  ‘My family has been in Egypt for more than five generations,’ she started. ‘I am the first person in the family to speak Arabic. I had a Greek nurse called Rosa who was married to an Egyptian policeman. My parents used to go on long trips and leave me in Rosa’s care. She used to take me secretly to live with her husband and his family in a small village. At first I was disgusted with the dirt and the lack of comfort; the cows and chicken as much inmates of the house as we. But I went more often to the village and loved every person in it. They would never accept a gift without returning it ten times over, no matter how poor they were. I loved the way they woke up at dawn and worked till sunset then lay to sleep either in their mud-huts or in the field. I loved the dignity the fellah possesses and which no one who hasn’t lived with him knows anything about. I loved the way they helped each other naturally and all took responsibility for the many orphans there. At home my parents and their Egyptian friends used to say “he is nothing but a fellah” about someone they considered ill-mannered and vulgar. I was very lonely as I grew up. I found nothing attractive about my friends, whether they were Jews, Europeans, or Egyptians.

  ‘Rosa’s husband had a young brother of my age. His name was Adle. He had very large brown eyes with long eyelashes. He would never have anything to do with me. He never accepted a gift from me and never spoke to me. His brother bought him a pair of trousers and a shirt once, but he never wore them in my presence. He insisted on remaining barefoot whenever I was there. I used to watch him from my window each morning, washing under the village pump. I was very much in love with him. From the age of fourteen I loved him with every fibre in my body.

  ‘When I was eighteen, we were living in Alexandria. Rosa’s husband had also been transferred to Alexandria and managed to bring Adle with him and to put him in the police force. Rose told me Adle never accepted a bribe in his life, although all the other policemen did – they had to. I gave myself to Adle that summer. I wanted to marry him and give him everything he lacked in his life. But he refused. Rosa gave me hope; she told me he whispered my name in his sleep.’

  She was speaking her sentences slowly and one at a time, with pauses in between.

  ‘Suddenly I was taken to Europe by my parents. I was supposed to return in two months, but they enrolled me in a university and returned without me. I wrote hundreds of letters to Adle in Arabic, but he never answered. I realized the only thing I could do was to try and forget him.’ She paused.

  ‘I returned at the end of two years. A few months after the end of the war between Israel and Egypt in ’forty-eight.’ She paused again and took a deep breath.

  ‘With the help of their Egyptian friends, my parents had bribed the necessary people and brought an action against Adle for “inciting” me. He refused to utter one word in his defence. He was put in prison for four months. All this took place while I was in Europe. I had no idea my father knew anything about Adle. Rosa, of course, was not with us any more when I returned to Egypt. It was she who told me all about it, when I finally found her. She also told me Adle had died in the war between Israel and Egypt.’

  ‘Enough,’ I wanted to tell her. ‘Enough. I don’t want to hear about such things. I’ll take an academic interest in politics and injustice, if you wish, but keep these real things away from me. I don’t mind reading about them, but keep your story away from me.’

  ‘What did you do, Edna,’ I whispered.

  ‘I joined the Communist Party. I worked like a slave for it. I wanted to kill my own personal life and only be an organ of the Party. The Party has always had to be clandestine in Egypt. I met the cream of humanity in it; Egyptians, Jews, Greeks. Inevitably, we were discovered. My father once again used his money and I was rushed to England. Then the revolution in Egypt took place and I rushed back to fight for it and with it and support it. But who could use me? I am a Jewess.’

  I didn’t move or say anything for a long time.

  ‘Are you asleep, Edna?’

  ‘No, Ram.’

  I was miserable. I remembered my cheap facetiousness – ‘weep’ and ‘lament’ and I wanted to bleed to death at her feet in repentance. I learnt at that moment that when a situation is very real and true, all this business of splitting into two and watching oneself act, is far away and dead and non-existent.

  ‘I first saw you and Font about twelve years ago,’ she said, ‘you were about eleven then. It was your cousin Mounir’s birthday. I was with the grown-ups and saw you and Font leave all the other children and play with the gardener’s son and give him the enormous amount of cakes and crackers you were hoarding in your pockets. I had been wondering why you kept filling your pockets with everything on the table. I always remembered that scene whenever I went to the village with Rosa. Then I saw you again at your aunt’s that day you made a mess of her party. Do you understand, now, it was natural for me not to want to lose you and Font? I was very happy that year we spent in Cairo together. You were so honest and sincere, both of you.’

  Another period of silence.

  ‘I, too, was very happy that year before we came here,’ I said. ‘It is natural for me to be wholly and completely in love with you. You are, to me, an unearthly creature which, for some reason or another, bestows some of its exquisiteness upon me. I have so much respect for you, and I am so awed by the fact that you allow me to love you …’

  ‘Ram,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘What is it, Edna?’

  ‘I am not as good as you think I am.’

  I smiled.

  That was the only time Edna used the cliché language of lovers, and I ignored it.

  ‘Tell me what you are thinking,’ she said after a while.

  ‘You know how much I have always read? Well, somehow, although I read and read, it was only reading. I mean I never thought what I read had anything to do with life. No, what I mean is, I never imagined that I could be “a character” … I’m not explaining myself properly. What I mean is, what I read were just stories, and …’

  ‘I understand what you mean, Ram.’

  ‘Well, and then somehow, when I came here, or perhaps just before I came here, I unconsciously realized that I, also, could “live”. Perhaps what I am saying is not true. I mean, perhaps there is no reason or excuse for the way I am beginning to behave; perhaps it’s just my character and that’s all there is to it. But I’ve said that already.’

  ‘No, it isn’t your character,’ she said.

  ‘Anyway, Edna; I have decided to …’ I had decided nothing at all, it just came to me as I spoke to her, ‘… leave the hotel today.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But I am going to try and find a cheap room somewhere or other, perhaps in the East End, and I am going to follow that course at the polytechnic, whatever it is. I think it is mathematics or chemistry or something like that. That is the best thing for me to do now, to – excuse the expression – “find myself”.’

  ‘Ram, dear, are you sure a room in the East End is not a part of the books you have read?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ I replied.

  She smiled, but there was no sarcasm in her smile.

  ‘Come here,’ she said.

  I went and sat facing her on the edge of the bed. She pulled me towards her and held me tight against her breast.

  ‘I do love you, Ram,’ she said.

  ‘I love you too,’ I said, ‘very much.’

  She took her arms away from me and asked me if I had enough money.

 
; ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I was glad to find that Font was not in our rooms. I packed my things and left them with the hotel porter. Edna was paying the hotel. Of the fifty pounds I had when I arrived in London, eleven were left.

  ‘Are you coloured?’ she asked. I looked at my hands to see whether I was coloured. Although I had read so much about this in Egypt, I had never encountered it in actual life. I had never wondered whether I was coloured or not (later I went to a library and learnt that I was white).

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  She was a fat woman with a mop in her hand.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me, dear. They’ve told me if you were coloured I was to say the room was already let. You look white enough to me, but you never know.’

  ‘I am Egyptian,’ I said.

  She told me to wait for a moment and closed the door.

  ‘Egyptian, ma’am, is that all right?’ I heard her shout.

  She opened the door a moment later and told me to come in. This was in South Kensington. I had obtained the address from a notice board outside the Underground station.

  A thin-lipped, long-nosed woman said ‘how-d’you-do’ through her nose and asked me to sit down.

  ‘You are a student, I suppose,’ she said. ‘My husband, Captain Treford, and I were in Egypt, you know. We met a surprising number of very intelligent Egyptians there at the Gezira Sporting Club.’

  I was well-dressed, with a snow-white handkerchief sticking out of my breast pocket, and a pair of light brown leather gloves in my hand.

  ‘I wonder if you know the Kamals,’ she said, ‘Mrs Kamal – Sophie – was a very dear friend of mine.’

  ‘I know her,’ I said. ‘She’s my cousin.’

  ‘How lovely!’ Captain Treford’s wife clapped her hands. ‘Sophie is such a wonderful person.’