Proud Beggars

by Albert Cossery

Yeghen understood from this smile that he could finally speak.

  “Well, Master, what’s new?”

  “Quiet, my son, I had a memorable day.”

  “How so?”

  Yeghen exulted and rubbed his hands, grimacing more than ever. Gohar’s tone told him he was going to hear an extraordinary tale.

  Gohar recounted his morning’s misadventure. He talked about his dead neighbor, the polluted water that had flooded his room, and the mourners’ strident cries.

  “I’ve been in the street since noon. It’s been terrible.”

  “That story is so funny,” Yeghen guffawed, “that it’s worth any sacrifice. Those adventures only happen to you, Master. Really, I’m jealous!”

  “I looked everywhere for you,” said Gohar. “Where were you?”

  Yeghen looked mournful, and said, as if he were telling a secret, “I went to visit my mother.”

  There was something related to his mother that Gohar tried to remember. What was it? Oh, yes. Now he remembered.

  “I heard that she died. I hope it isn’t true. If it is, my dear Yeghen, please accept my sincere condolences.”

  “You, I can tell, Master,” laughed Yeghen. “It’s not true. She’s still alive, so alive that she managed to make me fed up with her moralizing. All I want is to pick up a little money. What do you think?”

  “I must admit that it’s a splendid idea. I wish you lots of luck.”

  “Really,” said Yeghen, overjoyed, “I was sure that you would approve. Besides, she’s a surprising person.”

  “Who, your mother?”

  “Yes, sometimes she says things that take my breath away. However, I’m convinced she doesn’t use hashish. Do you know what she told me one day?”

  “No, but I would be happy to learn.”

  “I’ll repeat her words. She said to me, ‘You’re now big enough to handle your affairs with God all by yourself.’ It’s distressing, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t exactly understand,” said Gohar.

  “She no longer wants to serve as an intermediary. Can you see me dealing with God all alone? I’ll never manage it.”

  “What are you talking about? Since when have you been in touch with God?”

  “Personally, I have never been. My mother took care of everything. There is a tacit accord between us. But now it’s finished. I have to manage it all alone. So I got the idea to hustle a little money, supposedly for her burial. She at least owes me that.”

  “I see that your reasoning is impeccable. All the same … ”

  Gohar sat openmouthed. The marvelous effect of the hashish was carrying him to a state of euphoria where everything took on extraordinary dimensions, where nothing seemed suspect or impossible. Slouched in his chair, his hands resting on the handle of the cane that he kept between his legs, Gohar meditated on the peculiar relations that Yeghen maintained with God. He distinctly saw God talking at length with Yeghen, discussing various confidential affairs with the air of an affable, distinguished man. The two interlocutors seemed to have known each other for a long time; they were trading strong words without getting angry or raising their voices. But what was truly sensational about this vision was that God was wearing modern clothes and didn’t have a beard.

  A brief laugh shook Gohar.

  The barbershop was situated next to the Mirror Café, bordering a vacant lot invaded by rubbish and puddles of urine. At night it served as a haunt for the regular crowd of little beggars and cigarette-butt scavengers who came there to sleep, piled up like beasts in a den. Each morning the infuriated barber had to chase them away with kicks and cruel threats. He should have put a door on his shack, but he could not afford to. Gohar had found this spot one night when he was looking for peace and quiet, and, since then, he often parked himself there to savor ideal serenity. This barber’s chair was truly made for meditation.

  “Master,” said Yeghen, “I want to tell you a secret.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, such as I am, I am involved in a sentimental adventure.”

  “Congratulations! Who is the chosen one?”

  “She is a girl who’s not like the others.”

  “Stop right there,” said Gohar. “What exactly is a girl who is not like the others? My dear Yeghen, I thought you were more discerning.”

  “I meant that she’s not a whore.”

  “She’s a middle-class girl?”

  “Yes. Probably the daughter of a civil servant.”

  “Oh, how terrible! Are you in love with her?”

  “You take me for El Kordi. Master, I’m not a child.”

  “El Kordi isn’t a child either,” said Gohar. “Believe me, you misjudge him. He’s simply under the influence of an entire European literature that claims to make woman the center of a mystery. El Kordi struggles to believe that woman is a thinking being; his need for justice drives him to defend her as a social individual. But deep down he doesn’t believe it. All he asks of a woman is to sleep with him. And most of the time without paying, because he is poor.”

  “But in my case the goal is different. I don’t want to sleep with her.”

  “Platonic love! That’s even more serious.”

  “It has nothing to do with love, Master. It’s something else.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Yeghen was quiet. He had just noticed a band of unkempt children standing in the entrance to the shop, listening to their conversation in meditative silence. They seemed dumbfounded by what they’d just heard.

  “This is a nonsmoking salon,” he said. “There are no cigarette butts here. You’re wasting your time.”

  “We’re not looking for butts,” said an eight-year-old girl covered in multicolored rags. “We want to sleep. This is our place.”

  “You want to sleep already? But it’s still too early. Go take a little walk.”

  “Give me a piaster,” the little girl ordered. With her hennaed hair and the colors of her outfit, she looked like a dirty doll.

  “A piaster!” Yeghen said indignantly. “What do you want a piaster for? Aren’t you ashamed to beg? Go on, leave us alone. We have serious things to discuss.”

  “Let’s go,” said the girl with a disdainful look. “They’re pederasts.”

  “Here indeed are the misdeeds of darkness!” said Yeghen.

  The band of children stationed themselves not far from the shack. Yeghen kept them in sight; he saw them scuffling about and trading insults. No doubt they were planning the best way to get the adults out of the place. Yeghen knew they were a persistent bunch and that they would return to the attack.

  This place was becoming excessively perilous.

  “To tell the truth, that girl amuses me.”

  “Who, the cigarette scavenger?” asked Gohar.

  “No, Master! The civil servant’s daughter. Imagine! She looked at me without disgust. And in full light. She even smiled at me. I almost think she finds me attractive.”

  “You’re not going to become conceited, are you?” Gohar asked worriedly. “So then, she’s appealing to your vanity. My dear Yeghen, that girl is an abyss of perversity.”

  “I forgot to tell you that she takes piano lessons.”

  Gohar didn’t have time to answer. Again, they were disturbed. This time it was a whining, one-armed lottery-ticket vendor. In his good hand he was holding a last dirty, crumpled ticket, probably picked up on the ground.

  “How much does that ticket win?” Yeghen asked.

  “A thousand pounds, sir,” the man answered.

  “That’s not enough. Do you have one that wins ten thousand?”

  “There aren’t any tickets that win ten thousand pounds. Only a thousand. And this is the winning ticket. Buy it from me. May Allah augment your prosperity.”

  “Go on, get out of here. A thousand pounds! That’s only good for a bum.”

  The man went off into the shadows of the vacant lot, murmuring vague insults against what seem
ed to be a demanding, shrewish wife.

  “Can you imagine, Master, if we had a thousand pounds?”

  “For what, my son?”

  “You could finally go to Syria.”

  The allusion to this journey wounded Gohar instead of pleasing him, for, indirectly, it reminded him of his crime. Another dream was crumbling. Would he ever make this journey now? He had just spoiled what was perhaps his only escape from the anguish in which the world was floundering . It was painful to renounce that paradisiacal Syria he had conjured up and where he wanted to spend happy days. It was only a dream, true, but wasn’t renouncing a dream the most horrible renunciation?

  “I could even accompany you,” Yeghen continued.

  Gohar turned his head and looked at his companion. How could he tell him that it was no longer possible; how could he explain his dreadful crime to him? He didn’t feel ready for such a confession. Later, perhaps, he would tell him everything.

  Yeghen’s face contorted in astonishment; El Kordi’s silhouette stood out against the opening to the shack.

  “A frightful thing has happened! I’m beside myself.”

  The two men were not at all concerned by this preamble. It was part of a kind of ritual. El Kordi usually approached people with the vehemence of a man who had just escaped a massacre. He needed some time to compose himself, so they abstained from questioning him. They waited patiently for him to tell them the subject of his affliction.

  In this concerted silence, El Kordi sighed.

  “I warn you, it’s not a joke,” he said. “I just left Set Amina’s. The house is teeming with policemen.”

  “A police raid!” Yeghen exclaimed.

  “No! That’s what I thought at first, but it’s much worse. Someone just killed Arnaba, the new girl.”

  Having obtained his surprise effect, El Kordi calmed down. He now could consider the event from a less tragic angle.

  “Do they know who the killer is?” Yeghen asked.

  “No, all they know is that he didn’t steal anything. He simply strangled the girl. That’s what is driving the police inspector crazy. He can’t find a motive. I came here precisely to warn you not to go there. I went through an interrogation; it was very rough.”

  “What kind of interrogation? Did they beat you?”

  “They didn’t dare. When I told them I was a government worker the inspector quickly changed his tone. That seemed rather fishy. He’s a funny fellow. Do you know that he suddenly began to speak to me in English?”

  “No!” said Yeghen. “In English!”

  “Exactly. But Set Amina didn’t like it. She was infuriated that people were speaking English in her house.”

  “I know that kind of policeman. He wanted to impress you.”

  “No one impresses me,” said El Kordi.

  He began to describe his interrogation, reserving the best role for himself, insisting on the revolutionary implications of his answers to the inspector. From his story it became clear that he had undergone violent questioning but had defended himself with the utmost energy.

  “I literally stunned him. He didn’t know how to extricate himself.”

  Seeing that Gohar wasn’t saying anything, he grew quiet. His master’s silence on such an important affair that touched everyone so closely seemed inexplicable. Was he, by chance, dead in his chair?

  “What do you think, Master? I would like to know your opinion. It is a sinister crime, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps it was an error, my son,” answered Gohar, as if he were talking to himself.

  “An error! What are you saying, Master?”

  Then without a transition, El Kordi broke out laughing.

  “Ah, I forgot to tell you that there was an extraordinary fellow there. He pretended to be the friend of a minister.”

  Just then a barefoot man wearing rags pushed El Kordi aside and entered the shop; he looked frantic.

  “Where’s the barber? I want a shave.”

  “That’s me,” said Gohar, standing up. “Would your Excellency please be so kind as to sit down.”

  The man collapsed in the chair and fell asleep right away. They could hear him snoring.

  “Let’s go,” said Gohar.

  “I would love a glass of tea,” said El Kordi. “All these emotions have made me thirsty.”

  Arm in arm the three men proceeded toward the café lights, joking and laughing about the pitiful debt collector whom El Kordi had seen at the brothel. They had already forgotten the crime, Gohar more completely than the others.

  6

  IT WAS eleven in the morning. Seated behind his desk in the Ministry of Public Works, El Kordi was growing bored watching the flies buzz about. The large room, lit by high windows and containing several desks behind which other clerks were laboring, was as odious to him as a prison. It actually was a sordid kind of prison, where one was in eternal contact with common-law prisoners. El Kordi would have accepted being in prison, but in a private cell, as a political prisoner. His rancor against such overcrowding derived from noble, aristocratic instincts of which he was not at all aware. He was embittered by the lack of privacy that became intolerable in the long run. How could he reflect at ease on problems of universal importance in front of these dusty, congealed figures devoted to unending slavery? To protest against this injustice, El Kordi abstained from practically all work, intending thereby to show his disapproval and his spiritual independence. But since no one noticed his protest, he grew bored.

  It was not just laziness with El Kordi; his decision was due in large part to the futility of giving himself over to work that any child could do. To be here, cooped up in this funereal room, in the company of his shabby colleagues, when life demanded other things of him, made him feel like the victim of a cruel joke. What had he done to deserve such punishment? El Kordi believed himself destined for hopeless, but no less glorious, causes! Seeing himself reduced to this nothingness, to this stupid, vain, bureaucratic routine, he doubted his fate. Actually, he didn’t know what else he could do. When he was prey to despair, as he was now, he easily imagined the people’s misery and the frightful oppression of which he was a victim; he then enjoyed dreaming about a brutal and bloody revolution. But when he was once again in the street mingling with the crowd, the people’s misery became a myth, an abstraction, and it lost all of its explosive virulence. He felt especially attracted to the picturesque details of this poverty, to the grandeur of its inexhaustible humor, and he immediately forgot his savior’s mission. By some inexplicable mystery, he found such an intense faculty for joy among this miserable people and such a strong will to happiness and security that he had come to think that he was the only ill-fated man on earth. Where were the ravages of oppression? Where was the unhappiness? It was as if all the images that he had wrought on the subject of this misery receded into nothingness like phantoms engendered by sleep. El Kordi had to strain to find the pitiful element indispensable to his revolt. Just when he should have been sad and choked with tears, an immense laugh shook him.

  All this wasn’t serious. El Kordi would have liked a people who measured up to him: sad and animated by vengeful passions. But where to find them?

  His young blood boiling with impatience, he dreamed of being a man of action. This ridiculous job, which he did for starvation wages, wasn’t designed to quench his thirst for social justice. He was so disgusted by it that most of the time he farmed it out to his more unfortunate colleagues—married men and fathers of numerous children—for a moderate payment. Thus, at the end of each month a paradoxical spectacle took place: the colleagues who had done some work for El Kordi came to collect their meager fees in a line before his desk. At such moments, El Kordi assumed the irritated air of a boss paying his workers. All the same, with the little money left over, he managed to survive. He led a life of extreme poverty, but decent and, he thought, very dignified. Keeping up appearances was his constant worry. For example, when he was obliged to live on boiled beans, he would tell his grocer that
he was sick of eating chicken and that a common dish would surely excite his jaded appetite. The grocer wasn’t fooled, but honor was saved.

  From his chair, he distractedly contemplated his sorry colleagues and thought he saw the chains of slavery everywhere. These constraints imposed on his freedom several hours each day made him extremely sensitive to the sorrows of the oppressed masses of the universe. He stirred in his chair and sighed loudly. Some of the slaves, seriously occupied with their work, raised their heads and gave him a look full of incomprehension. El Kordi answered these sad looks with a kind of aggressive pout. He despised all of them. The revolution would not be carried out by this wretched breed. They’d been there several years—how many, no one could say—rooted to their chairs, covered with dust, with their mummified faces. A veritable museum of horrors. At the thought that one day he might be like them, El Kordi shivered and felt like leaving at once. But then he told himself that it wasn’t yet a decent hour to go, and so he stayed on quietly being bored.

  To escape the depressing influence of his colleagues, El Kordi tried to take refuge in his amorous reveries. He hadn’t seen Naila since the night of the crime, that is, for three days, and he had begun to feel the baneful effect of enforced chastity. The brothel was still guarded by the police; to venture there was very risky. El Kordi thought of the young girl and pictured her sick and solitary; he imagined her at death’s door asking to see him, pronouncing his name with her last breath. For a long moment he delighted in this pathetic vision; then the desire to write Naila a letter suddenly seized him. He would tell her of his love, and, at the same time, of the people’s suffering. Unfortunately, it was impossible to execute his project: he couldn’t find his pen anywhere. He then recalled that his supervisor had taken it away from him awhile ago, under the false pretense that it was growing rusty from lack of use. At first, El Kordi felt anger overtake him at the memory of this outrage, but very quickly he felt profound relief; he now had an excuse not to write the letter; besides, Naila didn’t know how to read.

  Flies were buzzing about the room and landing on his nose. El Kordi tried to catch several in order to submit them to a cruel fate, but they thwarted him. He was so dazed that he lacked the agility necessary for this kind of relaxation. At the end of his resources, he took hold of the newspaper on his desk and looked it over for the tenth time. Everywhere, headlines proclaimed that the whole world was arming itself with a view to a future war. In the newspaper, it all had the appearance of something distant, without direct repercussions on his daily life. It was proclaimed with such indecency that one couldn’t believe the reality of the thing. But at the moment, El Kordi was in such a state of despondency that he was attentive to the slightest danger: for the first time, the announcement of all this weaponry seemed to conceal a concrete and monstrous reality. They weren’t simply words printed in a newspaper. The accumulation of such war potential did not appear to be directed only against humanity but almost against his very security. It was as if they were aiming directly at him by the obscene display of all these marching armies. A terrible anguish overwhelmed him. So the massacre was premeditated: they were after his skin. And what was he doing all this time? Vulnerable and defenseless, he was tranquilly seated behind his desk. He had to do something, and the first thing was to buy a gun. In a universe where everyone was armed, it was insane to remain empty-handed, waiting for them to kill you. He had to return their fire, not remain passive. “I must talk to Gohar about this,” he said to himself. But the thought of Gohar armed with a machine gun made him smile. It was his first smile of the day.