by Rawi Hage
Finally, in the afternoon, I went to the desk downstairs. Hakim, I said, you are my friend, no?
Hakim laughed and said, What do you need?
Just a small question. Could you find out the address and name of someone from their car’s licence plate?
Leave me the number. It might cost you something, he said.
How much?
Later, he smiled. I will see what I can do for the brother.
I CALLED RHEA AGAIN, and this time she answered.
I am coming to see you, I said.
No! she shouted.
I am coming to see you, I repeated.
No, she said. I will not open the door.
I walked to her building and buzzed the intercom. She answered, Go away!
I held my finger on the buzzer.
Then, through the glass of the thick door, I saw an old lady with two tiny sausagelike dogs coming toward me from the elevator. I walked to the door, and when she opened it, I said with utmost politeness, Laisse-moi vous aider, madame.
I held the door for the old lady and entered the building.
I took the elevator up, and ran to Rhea’s door, and knocked.
She opened her door, but when she saw it was me, she tried to close it. I forced my foot inside and pushed the door wide open.
Get out! she said and ran to the kitchen. Get out, she shouted. Out!
I could see that she had a black eye. Her hair was a mess, and she was clearly tired.
Who is the man from last night? I asked her.
Get out, she repeated and opened a kitchen drawer, plunged her hands inside, frantically scraped metal on metal, then pulled out a knife and brandished it at me. I told you not to follow me and not to interfere in my life.
I approached her, and she slowly retreated. I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled the knife from her hand. Then I dragged her back to the living room. I threw her on the sofa and said, I know that George would want me to protect you, and I will do so as long as I am here.
George! she screamed. George does not even know of my existence. I am free, do you understand? You do not interfere with my life! I will tell the police about you, and send you back to George and wherever you came from! She waved her hands at me. Then she took a deep breath, her hands fell, her voice softened, and she said, Leave. Please leave. You are causing me trouble. She gently pushed me.
Who is he? What is his full name? I said.
Vas te faire foutre, she said.
No one hits George’s sister, and no one pulls a knife on either of us. I will find your Moshe, I said and walked out the door.
Yes, go! she said, following me. And take this with you. She threw an envelope at my back. Leave, and mind your own business. Collant de merde!
I picked up the envelope and ran back down the stairs. The envelope contained a ticket to Canada. The flight was in six days.
I walked slowly back to my hotel, and when I arrived, I called my generals and told them, We need to find the man from last night, and lay a plan.
At the hotel, I sent an officer to interrogate the man at the desk, to ask him if he had the information on the plate number. He came back with a negative answer. My officers and I paced and smoked pipes. Some of my officers had their feet on the table, showing their boots. The campaign room was filled with smoke, and maps on the table that detailed flowing rivers, mountains, and long plains.
We should attack soon, before your voyage to the new continent, comrade, one general with a droopy white moustache declared.
I agreed. We decided to dismiss the meeting and to each go on our own way and wait to hear of the enemy’s whereabouts.
FOR TWO DAYS I sent my officer to ask the man at the front desk about the licence-plate number, and always the answer was the same: He was working on it. Finally, on the third day, a messenger on a horse entered the military complex, breathing heavily. We have it, he said.
I opened the letter. The car was registered under Mani and Associates, Jules Favre, 52 rue de la Commune.
I called the revolutionaries. We met and decided on an attack plan.
I WENT TO THE address in the letter and watched the place. Eventually I saw the man I was waiting for, driving the same car as before. He parked his vehicle in the lot and went inside the building. I waited for a little while and then entered the building and watched from the bottom of a set of spiral stairs as his leather jacket ascended toward the heavens.
I went back home and consulted with my fellow fighters. All night we stayed awake, preparing for the attack. In the afternoon of the next day, I went down to the basement of my hotel. I opened the garbage bin and looked inside. Then I walked around the basement, searching, until I found a metal pipe lying on the floor between a pile of old chairs, a broken table, and an old sink.
I grabbed the pipe, pushed it inside my sleeve, and took the stairs back to my room.
I called my lieutenant and informed him that the ammunition had arrived.
He brought the horses, and that evening we rode to the enemy’s territory. Our enemy’s car was now parked down the street. I went over to it and started to rock it, until the car alarm went off. Then I pulled on my hat, rushed over to the stairs of the apartment building, hid between two floors, and waited for a door to open.
In the dim moonlight, I watched a man’s silhouette rushing down the stairs. When he faced me, I lowered my hat over my eyes and said, Bonsoir, in a muffled voice. As soon as he passed by me, I hit him from behind. And before he had the chance to recover, I rushed toward him and gave him many blows from the whistling pipe in my hand. I frisked his pockets, pulled out his wallet, and picked up his car keys from the floor. Then I rushed down the stairs, jumped on my horse, and we galloped across the Parisian cobblestones while, in the background, we heard the car alarm lamenting in sorrow and pain.
THAT NIGHT, I had a series of nightmares. In one of them I saw myself drowning in a large sea that had shrunk to the shape of a tub. I dreamt of Roland pouring wine for me, and then, when he turned around from the sizzling stove, I saw Rambo’s face telling me, Ya habbub, we will send you back home. As I ran down the stairs in my dream, George appeared to me, smiling and with a gun in his hand. He stood on the stairs, and leaned against the wall, and spun the barrel of his gun.
I woke up in a sweat; it took me a few minutes to realize that I was in Paris. I rushed to the door of my room and checked that it was locked. Then I locked the bathroom door. I sat at the window and gazed out at the darkness, and made sure that Paris was still Paris.
Still, flashbacks came to me rapidly, and I could not sleep. I thought of George, and I expected Rambo to come to my room and ask me to take a walk. I called myself a coward and many other names for fearing the ghost of that dead brute. The dead do not come back, I chanted and chanted.
I cursed Roland for asking me to throw away my gun. I blamed everything on my gun’s absence. I did not have those dreams when my gun slept under my pillow, I thought to myself.
I paced my room. I chain-smoked, because in the underground torture dungeon, a lit cigarette was the thing I had most longed for.
I remembered how, when Rambo had held my neck and filled my nostrils with cold water, I had wondered about underwater smoking. And I remembered how my mother had smoked while thieving water from the neighbours’ reservoir. As a kid, I had watched her climbing the thick pipes to reach the water tank. It had mesmerized me to see her plunging her entire upper body, including the cigarette on her lips, into the metal tank, and resurfacing with the cigarette still lit on her lips and a bucket filled with water in her hand. I had watched her before every dive, stretching her toes like a ballerina, exposing her thighs above my small figure while she fished for water, and like a sailor muttered curses (that echoed inside the water tank) of her life of sacrifice and her marriage to that good-for-nothing gambler father of mine.
And years later, I, like my mother, dived into that tub, under my torturer’s supervision; I plunged my upper body, thinking of
my mother’s intact cigarette, of the phoenix brand that never ceased to burn and never ceased to die. And when Rambo whispered to me, assuring me of my nearing death, I was relieved at my parents’ absence, for my death like all death should be a death and an end — no memory, no photograph, no stories, and no mother’s tears. In death, everything should cease. All else is nothing but human vanity and make-believe.
THE NEXT MORNING, cars passed by and honked, and the flags of a football team split the winds and trembled above cars, and people danced in the streets, drank and chanted aloud. When I opened the window, the noise rose; when I closed the window, the noise settled like the bedsheets that the hotel cleaning lady had flipped over my bed the day before while I sat in her presence and watched the sheets fall slowly, gracefully, like the flight of the partridge above sunny waters.
I had watched the cleaning lady disappear into the bathroom, tossing the towels in the bin, ignoring me, perhaps feeling my lusty looks at her short skirt, or my eyes untying her white apron. I had thanked her for every cup she changed, every paper she picked up, for every bend, for every sweep, every pillow cover she caressed, every quilt she tucked. When I offered her cigarettes, she smiled and said that she did not smoke. She took my ashtray and emptied it in a bag. I had asked her name. I had asked where she came from. And when I held her hand and shouted, Linda from Portugal, I will wait for you to come to my room every day! Let me caress your breast, let me fall gently upon you, she had pulled her hand back and rushed quickly out of the room, pushing her cleaning cart toward the freight elevator, sticking her head through the doors as they shut, making sure I did not follow her and hold her waist, and offer her money, and breathe in her ear, and push the elevator’s stop button, and untie her white apron.
After that, an older man came to clean my room. He pushed the same cart and gave me a look that said, I know you, I know your type, the type who feeds on kitchen maids, single hard-working mothers, illegal workers, and silent cleaning ladies. He didn’t greet me, and he treated me with disdain, turning the soft flight of the white sheets into suicidal falls, plane crashes, depriving me of the soft landings that I so longed for from Linda’s hands.
Where is Linda? I asked him.
He spoke to me with hostility, in French with a heavy Portuguese accent. You stay away from my niece, you understand! he said, spitting on the carpet and flinging the door closed behind him.
THAT DAY, I RECEIVED an invitation from Rhea. Please come and see me, she said. It is important.
I walked to her house. She opened the door, not looking at me, not saying a word. I sat at her window; she chose to sit in the chair farthest away from me.
The French embassy in Lebanon just got in touch with us, she said. We have been trying to get George a passport, but they have not been able to find him. They sent people to his house; they asked about him. They even got in touch with someone in the militia. No one knows his whereabouts. They checked the hospitals, the morgues — nothing. But you know something, don’t you? Yes, you know something; I feel there are things you are not telling me. What do you think happened to him? I hate your silence. Look at your eyes! You do not even look me in the eyes. You do not even care, do you? You do not care. Talk to me, she said. Talk.
I stood up to leave. She shouted, Please, tell me. Please.
I kept silent and walked out of her house.
Bassam! Dis-moi, Bassam. Dis-moi quelque chose, putain, she shouted after me.
I walked toward the river. I sat on a bench and looked at the passing water and the returning clouds. Then I made a decision. I stood up and walked back to Rhea’s place.
I buzzed the doorbell, but Rhea did not answer. I went across the street and called her name, but she did not answer. I waited, and ten thousand cars passed, and I watched and inhaled their fumes until one of them stopped on the street. I recognized Roland sitting inside it, along with the man I had beat with the pipe. I walked back behind a wall and watched Roland get out of the car. He leaned through the window; the two exchanged a few words. The man in the car nodded like an employee, and Roland walked away and buzzed Rhea’s bell.
NOW I WAITED on the streets of Paris with the impatience of a hungry lion for night to come. It rained, and still I waited and watched every fading light, every single ray that left and disappeared to the other side of the earth. And when night ascended from beneath the rivers, I rushed to the bridge where I had thrown away my gun. I saw a small fire flickering and a couple of old men around it, nursing a bottle of wine with their miserable palms and their toothless lips. I walked straight to the rope I had left there, and pulled it, but a weight held the gun from coming back to me. I fought the ten thousand devils who held on to the other side of the rope. Like the steady motion of the waves, they all counted to three and pulled away from me at the same time. I wrapped the rope around my arm and pulled it back toward me with all my strength, but the devils mocked me with their hairy, hunched backs, their featherless wings, their thick, meek, spiteful chanting voices. They rejoiced as they watched me clinging to the river stones and the metal beams, shifting from side to side and hovering above the unlit waters.
I walked into the river, and my feet plunged into the reflection of the old men’s fire that danced on its surface. I waded into the river and pulled the rope from under the weight of sand and wicked litter. I advanced toward the ten thousand creatures underneath the banks of the river, and the water magnified my feet and made me seem like a giant warrior on a fearless path to hell. Slowly, I liberated the rope from the weight of open cans that clinked like metal crosses, and chased the demons away. I plunged beneath the water, and the men behind me watched me sink. They shouted and called me back; they asked me to change my mind and not to listen to the current and its diabolic sirens.
But I, with my bare hands, dug into the soil beneath the river and pulled out the bundle of nylon, and I felt the weight of my gun again. I held it under my arm. I rushed to the edge of the polished stones, and I scrubbed the rope around the nylon until it broke, and my gun was freed.
I walked above the wet streets and into the city gates with an arm in my hand.
21
THERE WAS WATER UNDERNEATH ME, AND WATER WITHIN me, and water from above me fell from the clouds.
I covered my gun with my jacket and walked back to my hotel. Before the concierge had a chance to squeeze out a comment about my wetness, I took the stairs to my room. I pushed a chair against the door. I took off the dead man’s clothes I had been wearing and left them dripping on a chair. Then I took a warm shower, put on my old clothes, stole the soap in the bathroom, packed my belongings, and slipped down the stairs to the basement and out of the hotel through the kitchen to the little alley outside.
The rain had stopped.
All night, I rode the trains to nowhere. I watched doors open and close, swallowing humans, moving them from one place to another. I sat in the corner of the train, just as George always had. Always sit with your back to the wall, he used to say, and let your gun hang loose.
After midnight, the trains stopped, and I got off nowhere. I contemplated staying at the station, but there were police officers on a regular beat there. So I walked, and when I got tired, I sat in back alleys behind restaurant doors. I smoked and counted the little drops of rain that tumbled through the walls and whirled against the city’s lamps.
IN THE MORNING, I called my hotel. I had decided to give Linda her tip and apologize for my devouring, lusty looks, and for chasing her with my eyes. Is Linda working today? I asked.
Linda?
Yes, the cleaning girl.
The voice paused, then said, No, it is her uncle’s turn today.
What time does he finish work?
At noon.
AT NOON, I WAITED on the street outside the hotel.
When I saw the old man, I followed him. He had a bag under his arm and walked with his head down, close to the walls, counting cobblestones.
I followed him, and from behind, I
shouted, Señor! Señor!
The old man turned and stopped. He did not recognize me.
I said, Señor, I am the man in room 201.
He turned and walked away. I trotted beside him like a dog, dipping my head and searching for his eyes.
Señor, I want to talk to you.
He was silent.
Señor, I just wanted to tell you that I regret what I said to Linda.
Now he stopped, looked me in the eye, and said, You people think that you can take advantage of poor working girls.
No, señor. I have respect, señor.
Respect. He paused, then said, She was afraid. She has to see men like you all the time. This old man, the night before, was playing with his thing. He knew she would enter, so when she knocked at the door, he did not answer. She is a good girl, and you people . . . He said something I could not understand in Portuguese and walked away.
Señor, I said. Please give Linda my regards, my respects. Tell her I am sorry and that she is a beautiful girl.
No.
Please, señor! I said and trotted beside him some more.
Young man, you come to this country, and you do nothing. I left Portugal at your age. I took Linda after her father was killed by Salazar. I worked to raise my niece and she is a good girl. You are not worthy of her hair! He waved his hands in the air around his chest.
Yes, señor. Yes, I am. I am worthy.
No, you are a man in trouble.
Why do you say that, señor?
The police came yesterday to the hotel and searched your room.
Police?
Yes, two policemen.
Are you sure they were police, señor?
Go away now, stop following me, he said.
Did one of them have a bandage, señor?
Go away.
Did he have a bandage on his head? Please, señor, tell me.
Yes! Now go away.
Señor, thank you, and tell Linda that I will always remember the way she flips the bedsheets, and her round, beautiful eyes. Tell her that I will wear black that matches her long lashes.
