Proud Beggars

by Albert Cossery

  “I beg you, don’t get yourself in trouble. I know you.”

  “I’m not a child,” El Kordi protested. “I’m not afraid of anyone. I can do what I want with that policeman.”

  To tell the truth, this was just empty talk; Nour El Dine had ceased to be a fearsome enemy for him. Up to now, El Kordi had merely considered this motiveless murder as a personal matter, a kind of epic battle between him and the police. But a new character had now appeared in the drama, a character whom he had deliberately ruled out as a nonentity: the criminal. However, he did exist; Arnaba hadn’t strangled herself. El Kordi wondered if he knew him, because if he were a client of the whorehouse, he certainly would. He knew all the men who came to Set Amina’s. He diligently tried to remember each of them, but they were all so dull, so impalpable, that the idea of accusing them of a crime seemed highly ludicrous.

  His reflections led him to envision a secret inquiry, though not for the purpose of catching the killer—El Kordi would never agree to turn him in. He simply wanted to learn the reasons for the man’s act. After all, since he hadn’t stolen anything, it might be a political crime. The motive: that’s what would be interesting to know.

  He looked at his face in the wardrobe mirror, remembered the medicines locked in there, and turned his head away.

  “Well! I’m going to undress. Make room for me in bed.”

  “That’s all you think about,” said Naila.

  There was bitterness in her voice.

  “Off course it is, my love,” answered El Kordi. “What do you expect me to think about?”

  “How can you love a sick girl like me? I’m so ugly now.”

  “What does your physical beauty matter to me? You still don’t understand that it’s your soul I love.”

  When it came to sleeping with a woman, El Kordi could say anything. Nothing could stop him. In this domain, even the wickedest of lies seemed indispensable to him.

  Though hardly convinced by her lover’s profession of faith, Naila nonetheless kept silent. It was useless to question El Kordi’s extravagant words; she would never know the truth about his motives or the extent of his love. All the same, what a son of a bitch! To pretend that he loved her soul! That was a bit too much. She watched him taking off his clothes and putting them methodically on the chair. Was he undressing for her soul? Fool! Who would buy that! She almost burst out laughing, but contained herself. She went on staring at him with eyes transfixed by anxiety. She too was thinking about the killer. Her anxiety had begun the tragic moment she heard Set Amina’s cries and the girls’ terrified exclamations. In the solitude of her room, even before she had understood the meaning of the tumult, she had been filled with a dark foreboding. It was only later that she had established a connection between the crime and El Kordi’s presence in the house that very day. This simple coincidence, as well as the young man’s behavior during the questioning, had sufficed to create an unbearable doubt in her mind: What if he were the killer?

  During the three days Naila hadn’t seen her lover she had vainly tried to get rid of this horrible suspicion. But El Kordi’s reticence and the mystery of his relationship to the investigating officer only strengthened her fears. She would have liked to question him, but didn’t dare.

  El Kordi was now completely naked; even like this he retained his dignity, for he had forgotten to take off his tarboosh. All of a sudden he realized this, took it off, and placed it on the chair on top of his neatly arranged clothes. Then he lay down beside the young woman, took her in his arms, and held her protectively against his chest.

  “Tell me it wasn’t you!”

  “Me what, girl?”

  “You who killed her.”

  “What are you saying? You’re crazy!”

  “All these days I’ve been thinking it might have been you. I was deathly afraid. So, it wasn’t you?”

  “Of course it wasn’t me. What are you imagining? I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Frowning, he reflected with Naila’s head resting on his shoulder. So she had suspected him of being the perpetrator of the crime. El Kordi was dismayed, but what most unsettled him was the diabolical idea that had begun to sprout in his brain. What if he let her think that he was the young prostitute’s murderer! What was he risking? It was an unexpected chance to clothe himself in romantic glory, to play the part of a shadowy hero.

  He was so happy with his idea that he began to think of making love. Without moving he started to nibble at the young girl’s ear while murmuring joyous obscenities to her.

  When he was ready to take her, Naila looked in his eyes and said, “Swear to me that it wasn’t you.”

  “I swear to you. Now don’t worry. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  But there was something like an invitation to doubt in the tone of his voice, an evident desire not to be believed. Naila was so clearly aware of this that the blood froze in her veins; for a long time she remained inert and rigid in his arms.

  7

  THE SORDIDNESS of the decor made him all the more sensitive to his feeling of having fallen low. This pastry shop was truly ignoble, but it had the advantage of being situated within the native quarter, in an area frequented only by stray dogs and the dregs of society. It was an ideal spot for the kind of meeting Nour El Dine was fond of; he’d chosen this one over several others to shelter his clandestine loves. Here, at least, he risked no indiscretion. True, his young friends didn’t share his point of view at all; they were scarcely happy to be invited to this unsavory hole that Nour El Dine persisted in calling a pastry shop, where they were served inedible cakes. Where was the pleasure? They wondered if Nour El Dine wanted to mortify them, and they strove to understand why. As a result, these rendezvous took on a sinister air, conducive to unhappy endings. Nour El Dine himself felt uneasy in these squalid surroundings. He deplored the circumstances that obliged him to hide as if he were a conspirator. But how else could he go about it? His police inspector’s uniform didn’t make things any easier; everywhere he went, he felt himself to be the target of all eyes. He would surely have been less noticeable walking around stark naked.

  For greater safety, Nour El Dine had chosen a table at the rear of the shop. Seated across from him, young Samir maintained a stubborn, almost premeditated silence; since his arrival he hadn’t opened his mouth. On the table were two small plates each holding a vile-looking pastry. Neither man had yet touched his. It was always like this: they only ordered the pastry for the sake of appearances. They would have to be truly famished or at the end of their resources to resign themselves to ingesting that abomination.

  “You’re not eating,” Nour El Dine finally said to break the silence.

  That was the wrong thing to say. Young Samir quivered with disgust and glared at Nour El Dine with stinging contempt.

  “You want me to eat that? Really, Inspector, what do you take me for?”

  “Forgive me, my dear Samir. I said that without thinking. I beg you, don’t touch it.”

  “I swear you’re doing it on purpose!”

  “What?”

  “Inviting me to such a disgusting place!”

  “I’ve already explained it to you. I cannot permit myself to go places where I risk meeting acquaintances.”

  “Why? Are you ashamed of me?”

  “That’s not it, as you know very well. My dear Samir, please understand. It’s as painful for me as it is for you to stay here, but circumstances demand it.”

  Samir broke into a sarcastic laugh.

  “Circumstances! That’s what you call it—circumstances?”

  “I beg you, calm down.”

  Samir resumed his sullen expression and said nothing more. Nour El Dine’s basely conciliatory attitude filled him with disgust. He was an eighteen-year-old young man with fine, regular features not lacking a certain virile charm. He was bareheaded and wearing an open-collared shirt and a well-cut sports coat that denoted his bourgeois origins. He had none of the effeminate mannerisms that characterized
most inverts; in fact, he wasn’t one at all. His relations with Nour El Dine had nothing to do with passion or lucre; they were based on a feeling of wild, irrevocable hatred. This hatred was not merely an antipathy for Nour El Dine’s person; what Samir especially hated in Nour El Dine were the principles of the conformist morality from which Samir had suffered so much in his family and of which the police inspector seemed to be the perfect incarnation. After his father, the procurator—that righteous murderer—Nour El Dine was the person he most hated. To have in his power such an active representative of this tribe of hypocrites, to see him unmasking himself and wallowing in the basest passion, gave Samir an almost sadistic pleasure. Thus, his meetings with Nour El Dine were only meant to allow him to deepen his hatred, to get to know its multiple ramifications.

  Several months ago, unbeknownst to his family, he had quit the university, where he had been studying law, with the intention of studying life, not in books but in the daily practice of the streets.

  Nour El Dine couldn’t understand why the young man agreed to see him. That was still a mystery to him. So far he hadn’t managed to sleep with him, or even to gain his confidence. The arguments he usually employed to pull off this kind of conquest had only succeeded in stimulating the young man’s scathing irony. Samir defended himself by making sarcastic remarks with remarkable intelligence and cunning. That was the difficulty with him: he was too intelligent. Sometimes Nour El Dine had the impression that Samir was openly making fun of him, and that he came to see him only with the intention of provoking him.

  “I’m sorry,” Nour El dine said contritely. “I know this place isn’t worthy of you. But why don’t you want to come to my apartment? We could talk much more easily there.”

  “Talk! What an obvious trap, Inspector. Do you take me for a child?”

  “Really, my dear Samir, you insult me. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” answered the young man, casting Nour El Dine a look filled with hatred. “But I will not come to your place.”

  Nour El Dine grew pale under the shock of this hate-filled gaze. To be sure, he expected to contend with a certain aversion, even to suffer some wounds to his self-respect, but he never thought he would encounter such an exorbitant feeling as hatred in this distinguished young man. It was an obstacle he had not expected. Bewildered, he put his hand to his forehead like a man struck with a mortal pang. Nonetheless, he didn’t forget his critical situation. He continually kept glancing toward the door, fearing to see an acquaintance enter. This fear was stupid. None of his acquaintances would come to this sordid pastry shop. The two of them were quite alone, relegated to the borders of the world, escaping all gazes. Even the owner turned his back to them. He presided over the counter set up at the entrance to the shop, chasing away innumerable flies and vaunting the delights of his despicable merchandise to passersby. Most of his customers ate their pastry standing in the street; some of them took it away wrapped in a piece of newspaper. They were silent people, fallen into such decay that they seemed to be alive by a kind of miracle. Nour El Dine couldn’t quite believe in their reality. He closed his eyes, reopened them, contemplated the young man facing him, and sighed.

  The pastries abandoned on the plates had attracted a swarm of flies. Samir tried vainly to chase them away; they whirled around, swooped down on his face, and nearly got into his eyes.

  “These damned flies are going to kill me,” he said furiously. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I beg you. Stay just a moment.”

  “What for?”

  “Aren’t you happy to be in my company?”

  Young Samir smiled ironically, driving the inspector to despair.

  “Why, it’s a great honor and pleasure for me! However, there is something that breaks my heart.”

  “What is that?”

  “I would have liked for everyone to see us together so that I could brag.”

  The sarcasm was so plain that Nour El Dine could find nothing to say. This aggressive spirit and these insolent ways filled him with terror, even though they were the source of his passion for the young man. He was accustomed to more submission on the part of his young friends, but then they were mostly cowardly beings without character. They only had their beauty; they were almost women. Samir was from another class. Never in the course of his numerous adventures with professional inverts had he met such a highly bred individual, such a proud spirit. It was the first time in his life that he felt a real attachment to someone. It was no longer a matter of a vulgar, sensual passion, fleeting and shameful, but of a meeting of two elite souls. This meeting had lifted him out of the horror of his work; it had made him glimpse spiritual joys that would have made his destiny bearable.

  He was still astounded by Samir’s hateful look. This boy was too young to be able to hate so easily, or else it must have been for an exceptional reason. Nour El Dine was afraid to learn why. Could Samir be a revolutionary, one of these young men who dream only of crushing the government, and for whom the police represent all that is most hateful? That would explain his attitude. Nour El Dine contracted his jaw and held himself rigidly on his chair, as if the presence of an anarchist facing him suddenly reminded him of his judicial duties.

  But this didn’t last long. Sweat soon appeared on his forehead, and his features expressed defeat and humiliation. He put out his hand to touch his companion’s arm, hesitated for a second, then let it drop to his side in a movement of extreme weariness.

  Suddenly he realized he could no longer keep silent; he had to say something, to invent something, anything, to hold on to the young man.

  “My dear Samir.”

  “Yes.”

  “I promise you that next time I’ll take you to a chic spot in the European quarter.”

  “Really! The inspector is getting modern.”

  “Only, my dear Samir, you’ll have to do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, I would like to see you wearing a headdress. It’s not decent to go around bareheaded.”

  “So that’s it! Let me tell you that I dress how I like. Besides, I don’t have a tarboosh.”

  “Permit me to offer you one.”

  Nour El Dine thought that by wearing a tarboosh, the young man would look more respectable. He imagined, wrongly, that Samir’s extreme youth carried with it the obvious signs of inversion.

  “A tarboosh! Oh no! I want a car. Why don’t you offer me a car?”

  “That’s beyond my means,” answered Nour El Dine.

  “Calm down. That was a joke. What would I do with a car? Besides, to be perfectly honest, my esteemed father has one. I’ve never ridden in it. I would rather die.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I won’t tell you. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Again a silence settled between them, broken only by the buzzing of the flies, now more perfidious than ever. Nour El Dine was no longer breathing; he was thinking quickly, gazing at the young man whose last words seemed to condemn him irrevocably. To accuse him like this of incomprehension was to cast him off into the depths, to let him know he was an obtuse being unworthy of confidence. It was the most severe kind of insult his self-respect could suffer. He couldn’t let it pass without reacting.

  Looking once more toward the shop entrance—this was becoming a veritable mania—he breathed deeply, then said with a trembling voice, as if discussing the end of the world, “How can you say that I’m incapable of understanding? My dear Samir, your distrust of me breaks my heart. I would like to know everything that concerns you. If it were in my power, I would be happy to relieve your troubles. I hope that you aren’t suspicious of me.”

  “You’re very kind, Inspector,” said the young man, smiling. “But I don’t have troubles.”

  “Then what makes you so bitter? Forgive me, but from your words, I thought I discerned that your relationship with your father isn’t the best.”

  “Don’t mention that man to me.
I hate him!”

  Nour El Dine expressed his consternation by a grotesque look. So he wasn’t wrong; what he had read in Samir’s eyes really was hatred.

  “That’s just it! My dear Samir, you astound me. How can you hate your own father?”

  “You really want to know? All right! It’s very simple: my father is a man like you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Nour El Dine, growing pale.

  “Oh, no! It’s not what you think. My father is a lady’s man. Your resemblance to him stems from something deeper, even more hateful.”

  “I confess I don’t understand.”

  “I already told you that you wouldn’t understand. But it’s not at all important.”

  It was the first time he’d talked about his father to anyone, and it seemed to him like a sign of destiny that he had done so precisely to this pederast police inspector worried about his reputation. Who else but Nour El Dine was qualified to receive this terrible secret about the hatred he bore not only for his father, but also for all the manifestations of the bourgeois ideal? Wasn’t his father the armed supporter, the vile mercenary who defended the caste of disguised assassins, more bloody than jackals in the desert? Samir had grown up almost alone among older brothers who had followed their honorable father on the road to ambition. Samir himself had only narrowly escaped the temptation of an easy, comfortable future. Hadn’t he wanted to be a famous lawyer? Even so, since his earliest years, he had felt like a stranger in that base and sordid milieu. His desire to become a well-known, respected man had been short-lived. He had awakened one day nauseated with it all.

  For a long time he confined himself to disillusioned contempt. But contempt is only a negative position leading nowhere. The anguish he felt so strongly as to spoil his youth, surrounded as he was by glorious, self-infatuated corruption, bred an implacable hatred in him. Irresistibly, plans for murder sprouted in his mind. To mow down the lives of such beings seemed to him a duty, a mission of exceptional grandeur.