Leaning over the dagger’s blade, he added coldly, “I told you that a man—like a sheep—has articulated joints and that you can’t kill him if you don’t understand them.”
The leader gazed at him in astonishment. Then, staring at the men around him, he discovered that the coldness in their eyes was even more intense than that in his longtime comrade’s.
Ahallum finished his statement, “This is the difference between heroism and courage. A man who knows the articulated joints earns the title of hero. Now that I’ve revealed my secret to you, I assume you’re keen for me to corroborate it.”
He turned coldly toward the leader and plunged the dagger into his chest with a blow faster than a flash of lightning. The blade sank into his chest up to the hilt. It sailed in with astonishing, even incredible, ease, as if the leader’s chest were not a chest, as if it lacked a bony rib cage, a network of veins, or chunks of flesh, as if his chest were composed of teased wool, a cloud of steam, or … an air pocket. An air pocket is the only space that a foreign body could have penetrated with such ease. The leader emitted a groan of pain, but a restrained one.
The warrior shouted, “Here’s your proof!”
The leader seized the hilt and said in a firm voice, as if he had not just been stabbed, “I thought you would never do that.”
Ahallum replied frigidly, “We always see our error too late.”
He did not give voice to his pain. He did not shake, and continued to hold the dagger that was planted in his chest. He replied, as if participating in a normal discussion in the council, “I admit I deserve this punishment because I, because I deceived myself and assumed that a true friend could be found in the desert.”
He extracted the blade from his chest with the same astonishing ease—as if the blade had not been planted in a chest but thrust into a scabbard. He returned the dagger to the warrior. Ahallum stroked the edge of the blade with the palm of his hand and wiped the scant amount of blood off it. Then he presented the weapon to Imaswan Wandarran, who grabbed the hilt and brandished the blade in the air, saying, “Is it right for someone who thought himself more virtuous than anyone else to expect loyalty from his mates?”
The leader retorted firmly, “I’ve never claimed to be virtuous.”
“You weren’t satisfied with that but led everyone to imagine that you’re the only one in whose heart the Spirit World resides.”
“God forbid that someone like me should claim to possess the Spirit World.”
“Had you not claimed to possess the Spirit World, you wouldn’t have used the Law as a pretext for humiliating us. This is our response, because we are forced to defend ourselves.”
He moved forward on his knees and stabbed the leader below his throat, but this was a different type of blow from the previous one. It made a sound, because the blade slammed into bones on its way in. The leader emitted a long cry of pain, like the groan of a dying man. He immediately withdrew the blade, however, and clung to the handle for a time before returning the dagger to Imaswan.
He said, “I knew that you were all hatching a conspiracy. But I didn’t know man could surpass even the jinn in wickedness. Can gold turn men into jinn and change a comrade into an enemy in such a brief period?”
The chief merchant intervened, “You’re further mistaken if you think we’re taking revenge on you for confiscating our belongings or in order to acquire treasures of gold. You still don’t grasp that the secret’s in the game. You’ve never been good at playing games.”
“The game?”
“You’ve forgotten that the whole affair, from the beginning, has merely been a game that’s part of another game.”
“I don’t know what game you mean.”
“Wasn’t I a member of the group that visited your house and asked you to take power? Wasn’t I a leader of the campaign that demanded a puppet leader who walks on two feet instead of a leader reposing in a mausoleum like a pile of bones? How can it have escaped you that all we wanted was a puppet? How can it have escaped you that this matter, like any other affair in the desert, was only a game? How, then, could you have grown arrogant and contentious, insisting on transforming the way of life in the valley?”
He held both hands against his chest. Blood had begun to flow and was soaking his shirt. In a voice that never registered any change, however, he said, “But I’ve never been good at games.”
“Woe to any creature who isn’t.”
Ahallum repeated, with the intoxication of a person in an ecstatic trance, “Woe to any creature who doesn’t excel at games nowadays.”
Imaswan also repeated this phrase, followed by Amasis the Younger. They all repeated the phrase humbly, as if it were an ancient charm.
The chief merchant returned to the debate with the dying leader. “You say you’ve never been good at games but don’t admit you didn’t try to learn. You know a man can learn anything.”
The wounded man shouted disapprovingly, “Even lying?”
The two-veiled man responded icily, “Lying is one of the pillars of life. Life isn’t viable without lies. Do you know why?”
He did not wait for an answer. He said at once, “Because life is a lie!”
The leader gasped, “Life is a lie?”
The chief merchant did not reply to this question but made an even more extravagant claim, “For this reason, you should know that our holy Law is a game. We play games in everything we do. Even what we’re doing now is a game.”
The victim gasped out a feeble question. “According to your rules, stabbing a man is a game?”
“The real game isn’t killing a man with the edge of a knife. The real game is to kill a man who doesn’t play well with others.”
The wounded man shook and struggled to comment, “I’m astonished to hear all this from the mouth of a man who once sang about commerce the way a passionate lover sings of his beautiful beloved.”
“I’m afraid you got confused that day and misunderstood me. I’ve never denied that commerce is my true love. Similarly, today I don’t deny that commerce is my favorite melody, my song I rely on to help me confront life’s harshness. Playing games also necessarily involves songs. Commerce is my song, my consolation, my antidote, and the balm for my worries. So how can you expect me to refrain from singing my lyrics? How can you expect me not to repeat the melodies of my ecstasy?”
“I don’t understood you today. I didn’t understand you the other day. I’ve never understood you.”
“I’m sad we part before you catch on.”
He trembled again, feeling dizzy. He struggled to control himself and to regain mastery over a body weakened by loss of blood. He made an effort to recover the mellifluous expression of a nobleman. “At any rate, I can’t help but thank all of you, because you … because you’ve spared me ever seeing your faces again.”
The chief merchant resumed the debate zealously. “Your problem is that you’ve never been able to understand that a man has never acted as another man’s friend—from day one—without also being his enemy. How can you aspire to happiness, if you don’t care to understand this?”
“God forbid. …”
“Right: God forbid that a man should experience happiness if he hasn’t learned how to play.”
“Play your games, horse around, and know the happiness of living creatures, but reality belongs to the dead. Playing games is the lot of the living, but happiness is the secret of the dead.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The wounded man did not reply. The chief merchant repeated his question, but the leader stubbornly refused to answer. The two-veiled man took the dagger from Imaswan and directed a ferocious blow to the body, which quivered. The chest emitted a groan. He withdrew the bloody dagger and presented it to Amasis the Younger, who advanced toward the body and brought the dagger down on the chest, which was washed in blood. He withdrew the bloody dagger but the painful moan from the chest did not end. It continued to emerge faintly, weakly, muffled, like a
sleeper’s snore.
The hero shouted, “Help me drag the body to the altar if you want to end this business at last.”
They dragged the body to the corner altar. The warrior then took the dagger and sliced off the chain of amulets with the deftness of a hero. He tossed this necklace, which was composed of bits of leather, far away, and the man’s breathing stopped at that same instant. Bringing the vicious blade down on the man’s neck, he drew it across the throat with the same ferocity he would have used in slaughtering a sheep. After severing the head from the body, he told his peers, “You can carry the head out to the crowds in the plaza now.”
Thun (The Swiss Alps)
The 24th of October to the 16th of November, 1997
The Puppet (Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) Page 12
