Elias Khoury - Yalo

When they returned, Madame Randa was wearing a blue dressing gown over her blue dress and bearing a tray on which she had placed a long-handled coffeepot and glasses of cognac. She poured the coffee and the cognac and offered them to the two men before sitting down. She crossed her legs so he could see the sole of her tawny foot and her calf rising and falling with the smoke of her American cigarette, which she exhaled into the air of the salon.

Yalo drank his coffee and cognac quickly and left with Monsieur Michel for his house, where he understood that his job would be to guard the villa as well as Madame and her daughter, that he must not openly carry a weapon by night or by day, that he would receive a monthly salary of three hundred American dollars in addition to the meals that would be sent to him from the villa.

But Yalo had erred, he would write that he had erred, and would feel moments of regret for the Madame during his long stay in detention. No, the truth was that his feelings of regret for the Madame began when he saw Shirin with her slender, trembling thighs in the interrogator’s room. Suddenly everything ran together in his head and he tasted thorns, and saw before him the Madame’s flirtatious calf, before he fell captive to Shirin’s small eyes.

Yalo had erred that night two months before he was arrested and he was incapable of justifying or explaining his foolish behavior. Madame was wearing a white nightdress, stretched out on the sofa in the salon, her full breasts nearly exposed by the opening of her dress, emanating the fragrance of her perfume, Madame Roche. Yalo took his usual place on the floor beside the sofa. He told her he was tired and his eyes hurt, but she didn’t believe him. She poured out two tumblers of whiskey and told him to drink. She picked up the remote control and started the movie, and began ruffling the hair of the young man sitting by her. That night Yalo did not wait for the end of the movie, just as he did not wait for her teasing — that slow sexual ritual that she imposed on him. Fed up, he took her on the sofa. He heard her voice pleading, “No, not like this,” but he didn’t stop. He had never before slept with her here. She would take his hand and lead him to the bedroom and there slowly undress, drawing him to her slowly, and when he took her she asked him not to come quickly. She languished and delayed as she gazed at her naked body in the huge mirror placed at the foot of her bed and Yalo was immersed in the fragrance of her perfume and writhed between her thighs and at the cleft of her large, firm breasts. He came near at a signal from her eyes and moved away at a signal from her hands, and when he heard her final sighs and sank beneath the water that flowed freely from inside her, seeming to disappear, he felt that he was shooting his whole soul into her and that he wanted to fall asleep in her arms. But Madame transformed quickly at the final moment into a stranger, covered herself with the bedclothes, and her dilated pupils began to shift feverishly, and she said that she was afraid that her husband would be showing up. Yalo would laugh and go back to her but she firmly resisted him and he understood that he had to go. He put on his underwear and his rumpled pants tossed beside the bed, and he felt that his feet were as rumpled and limp as his trousers. He would walk on trembling feet to his house, where he’d drink a bottle of red wine and fry three eggs, then take a shower and sleep like the dead.

That night Yalo felt nauseated and did not know how he had been able to get erect and feel desire. He felt sure that he would not be able to sleep with Madame Randa, but suddenly he got hard and was proud of himself. Yalo had wanted to ask her to postpone it but she did not understand his hint. He sat down on the floor like a dog, watching a movie that was like all those movies. All pornos were alike but possessed an undeniable excitement. He drained his glass in a single swallow, then jumped on top of Madame, took her in seconds, and got up. He did not take off his clothes. He unzipped his pants, flung himself on her, and finished. He refastened his pants, sat on the opposite sofa, poured himself another drink, and lit a cigarette.

Madame Randa got up and covered her naked thighs in a nightdress, left the television bright with the movie, and went into her room, dragging her feet. At that moment Yalo saw how Madame’s gaze came from above and broke on the floor. He did not finish his drink. He put out his cigarette and went home.

In the days that followed, they spoke to each other. She scolded him and he scolded her, but she never uttered the words “I love you.” She never once told him that she loved him, even when her water would spill in his arms. She’d rise like a ghost then sit cross-legged on the bed, her eyes dancing and shifting above her long neck before settling down and gazing afar.

In the course of that long week she still never uttered those words. Her pleading, broken eyes spoke but did not speak. Yalo felt a mixture of fear and pride. He saw her at the entrance to the villa and felt the bliss of that night. He followed her as usual to help her carry her purchases, but she did not look at him.

One night she summoned him to the villa. He went up, grumbling, sure that this would be another bickering session. He went in and saw her sitting alone in the salon, drinking whiskey. She motioned for him to approach and sit down. He sat on the floor beside her sofa and reached out to pour himself a drink, but she said no. She did not reach out to fondle his head. She drank and drank while he sat in his place. Then she turned to him and pointed to the door. Yalo left, stumbling, and realizing as he slammed the door that it was all over. He sensed that his days in the villa were numbered, and began to prepare for a new turn in his life, but he still could not let go of Shirin. He called her every morning, went to her house and stood in front of it, followed her to the company where she worked, and stood in front of the building entrance. Now he went home to the villa only at night. His hunting activities ended; he no longer had any desire to stand under the oak tree waiting for lovers who would fall prey to his flashlight. Ghada returned the books he had stolen for her from the Ras Beirut Bookstore on Bliss Street. Yalo would live sad and alone and would never stop buying the music tapes of Abd al-Halim Hafiz. He would spend his nights listening to the song “Her Beloved.” He thought about writing a letter to Shirin, but realized that he could only write in Arabic, and doubted that the girl knew how to read Arabic. From then on, his encounters with her would depend on pure chance.

That is what he told the interrogator.

He said it was by pure chance that he met Shirin.

“And the telephone calls every day, you dog?” asked the interrogator.

Why did he ask him about the phone calls as if he didn’t know the answer? People made phone calls because they felt lonely. Yalo wanted to tell the interrogator that he felt lonely because he had no friends. There was no one Yalo could talk to about his love story with Shirin because he lived with no one. From the day Tony abandoned him in Paris, he had lived alone, he and his shadow, he and his rifle, he and himself.

Yalo discovered his loneliness with Shirin when she left him there in the Albert Restaurant after lunch, and after having agreed to pocket the hundred-dollar bill, refusing the larger amount she had offered him. There, he felt lonely, and missed his friend Tony Atiq.

Why had Tony done that?

Why had he left him in an unfamiliar city where he didn’t speak the language, why had he left him alone with no language and no money?

“There, sir, there, if you’d allow me to say so, it was cold. Real cold, sir, that makes everything in you shiver, every muscle in your body, every shudder of your eyes, everything. There, sir, the cold made you blue with fear and loneliness.”