by Rawi Hage
Pavlov, she said. What a fitting name for a man who likes to observe the repetitive gestures of others. She whispered this, and her voice recalled the conversations of sad creatures conspiring in hushed tones, in good faith, across bloodstained tables or dangerous rooms, across dirty sheets.
Now she walked her knees over his stomach, his chest, and positioned the lips of her vagina on his face and nostrils.
Pavlov stretched his tongue clumsily, without aim, seemingly missing everything. She adjusted herself and pressed downwards, then rocked forwards and back, making his lips open wide as he gasped for breath.
Breathe, she instructed him. Breathe and I will untie you.
When she did finally untie him, he stood up, a little bashful, contemplating violence towards her. He hesitated, his palm open, and looked at his ring; it was the only one he had kept from his father’s collections of jewellery from the dead. He twisted it.
But Nadja sensed his intention and said, It was just a game. You take captivity too seriously. If anything, surrender will liberate you from the burden of yourself.
He wanted to leave, but she held his hand and said, You should have come more often. I like your sad self. I always want something different with you…And now I have to think about leaving the country. I think I am done here. The war is too dangerous for a foreigner like me. This place is lawless, and the men take off their belts and lay their guns on the table, even before taking off their shoes. If I leave, and if you ever decide to move from this place, please find me.
Pavlov was unsure how to respond. He placed all the money in his pocket on the table, and left.
MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER
In the morning, Pavlov went across the road as usual to buy cigarettes. Two bearded militiamen were standing in the grocer’s doorway, eating sandwiches and drinking Pepsi. Their breath reeked of killing. They submerged themselves in their food, parting the bread with big bites, leaning their heads sideways to watch everything. They kept an eye on their jeeps, the guns at their waists and the women who passed by.
They want to be seen, Pavlov observed. They want to be feared and revered, and they will offer their bodies, their blood, to the earth and its diggers, in return for a heroic tale. Real killers should be willing to be killed. That’s the deal, Pavlov thought. That’s the pact they make with life. And a fair game that is.
Pavlov wondered whether he would eventually turn into a killer himself. Would he one day take his father’s gun and point it at Son of Mechanic and pull the trigger?
He caught himself staring at the weapon of one of the fighters. The fighter glanced back. Do you like this? he asked, pointing at the handgun at his waist.
My father had one just like it, Pavlov replied.
Is it for sale? asked the fighter.
It’s already sold, Pavlov said.
The fighter nodded and chewed and watched Pavlov, and knew he was lying. But he was also flattered. He enjoyed having his gun noticed.
The fighters hardly used their guns in battle. They were for show and status, and were mostly brought out in close combat. Handguns were meant to be waved at comrades, and at allies when they ceased to be allies, not used on enemies who remained far away and out of the pistol’s reach.
Pavlov had handled a handgun before. His brute uncle Maurice had showed him how to use one. This was when Pavlov’s father was still alive and everyone in the family was pretending to fall into line and love each other. Once in a while during those times, the family would drive a convoy of deathmobiles up to the mountains for a picnic. They would start a fire and bring out the meat and meze. That was when Uncle Maurice had taught Pavlov how to fill a handgun’s chamber with bullets, then crank it and aim it at cans and empty bottles.
Pavlov walked away before the fighter had finished eating. He wondered what killers do after they are done killing, and why no one from the militia had approached him to join up. All the young men around him had been slowly lured and recruited into the militia. But no one had approached the undertaker’s son. A legion of cadavers protected him, and his father’s thick eyebrows, thick hands, quiet manner and laconic nature had made people uneasy around the family. And then there was his mother, Josephine—the wild woman, as everyone had called her. She had been shunned by the world, always wearing a black dress, always loud and vulgar in her manners and in her madness—her mental illness and her fits and her delusional episodes. Her madness had begun on a deceptively calm morning. She had awakened the neighbourhood with her loud screams as she pointed at the cadavers. The voices of the dead! she had screamed. And from then on she had complained of their scent on her husband’s clothing, on his breath and his hands that touched the dead and fumbled across her body.
The dead are everywhere, they are walking in the cemetery, they are coming to snatch our children, she would scream, and she would tear off her clothes and run to hide in the bathroom. She suffered a breakdown, and ended up in the psychiatric hospital. A classic case of depressive disorder, the doctor said. Pavlov’s father would often repeat this as he wandered around the house, muttering, Your mother has a bad case of mental disorder.
Who in their right mind would live in the middle of a cemetery? the neighbours whispered, with their viper-like tongues.
When Pavlov’s father had met her, Josephine was living with her mother in a small apartment under the stairs in a three-storey building. Josephine had a limp, and her feet curved inwards, and her smile revealed long black teeth. She and her mother shared one room with a tiny stove, and a tiny bathroom. The door of the apartment opened right onto the street. In the summer, Josephine and her mother would sit on low chairs between the parked cars that blocked the entrance to their home. Pavlov’s grandmother sold cigarettes, tissues and chewing gum through the open window that gave onto the street. She wore an apron, whether she was cooking or not, and plastic slippers in all seasons, exposing the resilience of her toes, and she carried a lit cigarette that hardly left her lips. Smoke had shut one of her eyes like a buccaneer. She was loud, she cursed and spat on the ground like a pimp, and she fought with the owners of the cars that parked too close to her door, impeding her entrance or exit. The exhaust from these cars had stained the walls inside the house, as well as the hair and clothing of mother and daughter. She constantly fought with men and threatened them by waving her slippers in the air and calling upon the names of warrior saints to curse them.
Then one day Pavlov’s grandmother fell from her chair and never woke up. She died in her apron, a cigarette still burning on her lips. It was Pavlov’s father who noticed the daughter, and he fell in love with her. He took care of all the funeral arrangements for free, and he sent Josephine flowers. He bought her a new dress and shoes and invited her to his house. He courted her for forty days, and then they went straight to the priest and got married. Josephine refused to take off her black dress of mourning. Sabah, a church regular, stood as her witness, and Maurice, the elder of the brute brothers, stood as witness to Pavlov’s father.
Pavlov’s grandmother was buried across from the window of his home, under a pink granite headstone that Josephine could spot at a glance. Pavlov would often catch his mother talking to the pink stone and smoking, making an offering of cigarettes. Then one day her mumbling became prolonged, and the flaming cigarettes turned into razors that Josephine used on her own arms. She would stab herself with glowing embers and run naked towards the pink stone, screaming Audette, Audette—her mother’s name. The burns left round spots on her arms and legs, releasing a smell of seared flesh that Pavlov, as a child, had imagined to be an offering to the gods.
Look, the dead are coming back towards us, his mother would say, pointing at the cemetery. Look, she would say, they are laughing at my mother, they are stealing her cigarettes. The guy who never paid us and the big guy over there still come to visit her at night. I used to see them moving under my mother’s quilt, and moaning and rocking, and the few bills that guy used to leave under the dish rack he now lays on the ed
ge of the stone. Look, he’s helped himself to a pack again and he’s smoking outside the gate and looking at us. He’s eyeing your sister, dear Pavlov, hide her, hide…
One day, Josephine reached for a large kitchen knife and ran towards the cemetery gate. There she delivered a monologue to an invisible man in a tweed jacket who was holding a keychain and pointing to her mother’s bed. Your daughter has grown, was his reply to Pavlov’s mother. She has grown, Mashallah. At that, Josephine swung the knife in the direction of the sycamore tree, stabbing at the shadow it cast on the crosses.
It was only when Pavlov’s mother turned her cigarette stabbing on her children that his father took her away and had her locked up. The nuns welcomed her in and kept her in a room in a monastery up in the mountains. Josephine disappeared for a few years, and then one day she showed up again, with prayer beads in hand, planting Virgin Marys and hanging crosses on every wall. She was in love with Mary now, and had forgiven the man who had slept in her mother’s bed, and touched her—the fat man who, when she passed him on her way to the bathroom, would brush his organ against her, reciting under his filthy breath, Mashallah you have grown. For a time, Pavlov’s household was in the service of the Virgin Mary—Mary blessed be her name this and Virgin Mary that—until slowly Mary’s name was forgotten and all that was left were icons, relics of saints and crosses on the walls.
Over time, Josephine began to take care of the business side of the household. She turned away from the worship of a virgin goddess towards the worship of the mercantile Baal. Her offerings became price lists and an unparalleled variety of expensive coffins. She started to make flower arrangements for the dead. She mastered the choice of pillows, wood, funeral wreaths. She would note the name to appear on the wreath, and Nathalie would invent the most affectionate phrases to be written diagonally across the ribbons—an arrangement that made Pavlov think of the Greek letter pi.
This was the happiest time that Pavlov remembered from his youth—the time after his mother had accepted the dead and surrounded her family with decorative objects. At night over dinner, conversation about the choice of coffins brought intimacy to the table. On her deathbed, she asked Pavlov’s father to bury her in the same spot as her mother, under the pink stone. She had picked her favourite coffin in cherrywood finish with delicate brass handles. And she asked him to bury her at night—so that no one would attend the funeral but the priest, their children and the Virgin Mary.
RESURRECTION
Pavlov was hungry, so he walked to Abou-Antoun’s restaurant at the other end of the cemetery road. Abou-Antoun made arguably the best foul and hummus in the region. But the man was loquacious—he never shut the fuck up.
Pavlov sat and listened, just as all the men there sat and listened. Abou-Antoun was capable of cooking and talking nonstop behind his counter from dawn until afternoon, when he packed up and left.
I learned to close early, Abou-Antoun said, because it’s a killing field behind us. I heard that some evenings those militia boys bring people and shoot them right behind us in that field. Sometimes I see the burned cadavers, but the next day they disappear. I don’t know who picks them up. Someone in the neighbourhood said he saw a man picking them up all by himself. This man said the collection of the bodies was done by some kind of organization that will bury anyone, regardless of their religion or their past.
Pavlov stood up, paid the man and left. He arrived home to find that his front door was broken, and to his horror the Lady of the Stairs had been beaten. She had a black eye and cowered in the stairwell, small and quiet. When she saw Pavlov, she cried and released little muffled screams. Pavlov tried to talk to her, but it was hopeless. He rushed upstairs. His house was in disarray, and the little furniture he owned had been turned upside down. His books were thrown on the floor, and even the kitchen drawers had been removed and his utensils scattered on the ground.
He rushed downstairs with ice and bandages, held the Lady of the Stairs in his arms, and applied ice to her face. Then he carried her upstairs and laid her in his bed, where she stretched herself out under the covers and slept. Pavlov went back outside to his brute uncles’ house, and stood outside the door. He began to pace back and forth, waiting for his family to see him and witness his rage. He was drooling with anger. At last he banged on the door, but no one answered. He picked up a rock and threw it at the door, then picked up another and threw it at a window and broke it. Still no one came out.
He walked towards the cemetery gates, found Rex the dog and paced around—and Rex talked to Pavlov. First, Rex tried to calm him down. Then he told Pavlov that humans were beyond help. He recalled theriomorphism, theriophily and Diogenes, who slept in a bathtub, barked at people and tried to imitate the manner of dogs. But you, Pavlov, Rex said, courted me out of admiration for my warrior master, who leapt to his death from a grand height. What a Spartan, a flying Spartan! Rex said. He wondered if his past master had experienced regret or sorrow during his fatal descent. The wind must have been overwhelmed by the weight of such a presence, the wind must have parted and retreated. Suicide, the dog continued, is the most heroic act, which no animal save for man dares to commit or could ever contemplate.
When the dog had finished lamenting, Pavlov left him at the gate of the cemetery and returned home.
That night, he tried sleeping in his bathtub, periodically climbing out to check on the woman in his bed. The next morning, he brought her food. She ate, and for the next two days slept in his bed and kept him company. As Pavlov fell asleep next to the Lady of the Stairs, she would look at him and burst out laughing. On the third night, they were woken by bombs falling close by. The Lady of the Stairs stood up, took off her clothes and walked out into the living room, so Pavlov took off his pyjamas and followed her. They both laughed at the musicality of the explosions, the faint smell of rain, the moonlight that passed through the window and fell upon their nakedness. The shower of bombs made them hysterical, and they started to dance and then to re-enact scenes of killing, mocking death, burial and resurrection. And then Pavlov pretended to be a flying horse, and the Lady of the Stairs, in the manner of heroes and prophets, sat on his back and flew to heaven. They slow-danced, brushing their genitals against one another, clumsily stepping on each other’s toes, lightly touching each other’s thighs and buttocks. They walked around the room on hands and feet, sniffing each other’s behinds and howling.
Silly humans, Pavlov whispered, the things they believe.
The things they believe, the lady repeated.
You talk! Pavlov said, overjoyed. Talk some more.
But she pushed him away, giggling, and started to dance alone. Her breasts were small and her nipples rosy, her toes round and light on the ground, with a gradual reduction in size from big toe to the smallest, slicing the marble floor at a side angle. Her shoulders were two small, pointy bones that stood out beneath her skin. Her round hips and luscious thighs made Pavlov pursue her in the manner of an unabashed canine.
In bed, she laughed at him and said, Resurrection. She laughed again and turned away, wrapping herself in the heavy quilt, and went back to sleep.
Resurrection, Pavlov repeated, as he lay on his back panting, smiling with another erection under the weight of the cover. He recalled a burial he had witnessed when he was little. He had been standing between the priest and his father. Everyone had been looking down at the grave while the priest swung the incense burner and promised resurrection. Pavlov had asked the priest if the dead would be resurrected naked or wearing clothes. The priest gave him a severe look, but his father had beamed a triumphant smile, proud of his son.
In his youth, Pavlov had thought often of Resurrection. It had consumed him—the idea of the flight upwards. At the sound of the largest bell in the universe, the bell of the Second Coming, Pavlov had imagined he would surely be standing at the window, facing the cemetery, as the earth started to crack open. He would intone, Dust and sand shall mushroom upwards! The stones and crosses of the earth would t
opple, and millions of cadavers, all naked, would dust themselves off with their bony hands, brushing their skulls with the tips of their fingers. They would form two separate lines—the good and the sinful—and begin an ascent towards the open sky, or a descent into hell. A small flood would be sent by the jealous Yahweh, Pavlov had assumed, to cleanse the muddy bodies. The good would then scrub themselves before their celestial departure, and naked women with clean, tender skin would form a migration of flying beauties, restored to their youth. All wounds, headaches, menstrual cramps, bad hairdos, chagrin, money troubles and petty inconveniences would be erased, and the resurrected would take flight towards Jesus, guided by Buraq, the flying horse, to lands of milk and honey, and new beginnings…
Ha-ha, Pavlov laughed, and fell into a coma-like slumber.
* * *
The next morning, Pavlov heard the first tuning note of the brass band. He climbed out of bed. Another shortened life, he thought. Too soon, too fast, had death come to it. He hummed the rest of the brass band’s tune.
He washed his face, fluffed his curly hair, grabbed his round glasses, changed his clothes, faced the window and waited for the procession to appear. All the stories of the dead now seemed ordinary to him. The trope of war had been played and replayed since Homer—a play for the Gods to observe from on high. And if humans were not being manipulated by Olympian gods, they were manipulating each other for their own ends. What a naive species we are, Pavlov thought. The stories we die for.
As the wedding procession for the young dead began, he felt the Lady of the Stairs standing next to him. She, too, was looking down—at the women in black, who walked slowly along on the cemetery road.
