Albert Cossery - Proud Beggars

THE POLICEMAN who had brought in the whole gang gave a confused explanation, but Nour El Dine was not listening to him. He was finding it hard to resume his official character; all this was so far from his mind. This story of a café brawl was becoming more and more complicated. Who had started the fight? No one knew. Seated behind his desk, Nour El Dine took in the whole group with one look of unspeakable disdain. Now and then he sighed loudly, like a weary man ready to commit a desperate act. They were lined up before him: three broad-shouldered men with rough hands — probably cart drivers — and a skinny man dressed in rags with a bloody face. According to the policeman, he was a beggar. He stood with head high, and with swollen eyes stared at the police inspector with haughty defiance.

Nour El Dine finally decided to question him.

“Are these the men who beat you? Do you recognize them?”

The man with the bloody face quivered and took one step toward the police inspector, as if he had just insulted his mother.

“Beat me!” he cried. “Who would dare beat me?”

“So what are you complaining about, you son of a bitch!”

“I’m not complaining, Excellency! Who told you I was complaining?”

The three men built like carters remained motionless and silent. They studied their victim with malicious pleasure. Nour El Dine moved as though to stand up — he felt like hitting everyone, but he suddenly sensed the futility of his gesture and refrained. On the outside, he was still a police inspector, tough and uncompromising, tightly laced into his uniform, but deep inside everything was dissolving. He understood nothing of the mortal illness that had taken possession of his being and that rendered him unable to exercise his authority. It seemed that the power from which he drew his strength no longer existed, had never existed. To the astonishment of his audience, he brought his hand to his forehead and leaned on his desk in a pose of profound depression.

The policeman leaned toward him and said quietly, “Are you sick, sir?”

“Throw the whole bunch in the cell,” answered Nour El Dine. “I don’t want to see them anymore.”

When the policeman and the four men had left the room, Nour El Dine looked at the plainclothesman seated on a chair, who had been waiting for a moment. It was the man he had assigned to watch the brothel.

“What do you have to tell me?”

“Actually, Excellency, I have nothing new to report. I think my job has become useless. Everyone there seems to know who I am.”

“That doesn’t surprise me coming from you. No doubt you did everything to stand out.”

“But I did obtain results, Excellency! The confession of the young man—”

“I know,” Nour El Dine interrupted. “He made a fool of you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t try to understand; you’ll hurt yourself! Tell me: did you notice anything new about this Gohar Effendi?”

“No, sir. He is a courteous and well-behaved man. He never seemed suspect to me.”

“Well, that’s why I find him suspicious. You may go now.”

Once alone, Nour El Dine took his head in his hands and breathed a sigh of relief. His nerves were exhausted. This gang of bastards gave him no respite. He would have liked to kill them all, so as never to hear about them again. For some time he had been carrying out his duties in a grotesque fashion. A troubling element was interfering with his vitality and making him cruelly perplexed. What could he call this strange weakness, this weariness of the soul that had paralyzed him right in the middle of an interrogation, annihilating all will in him? It was making him stupid.

What he found incredible was this pride he was discovering everywhere around him, even among the most destitute people, those least likely to have any. The memory of the starving beggar with the bloody swollen face continued to haunt him. A strange fellow. He had not wanted to admit that he had been beaten. Who’d have expected to find pride there? Nour El Dine was faced with an enigma he could not penetrate, an enigma beyond any police investigation. What kept him in this fool’s profession? Did he still believe in it? To spend his life seeing this accursed brood file before him, to suffer the frightening pride of these vagabonds — what a wretched curse! And that, just when he himself had forsaken all pride. For hadn’t he almost groveled in the dirt before Samir, trying to soften him? The bitterest thing was that this shameful humiliation had not achieved anything; the young man had remained unmoved, coldly hostile. And when he had tried to touch him — most unhappy gesture — Samir had drawn a small knife from his pocket and had threatened him. Nour El Dine would never forget the hatred he had read in his eyes. That murderous light! He shivered again just thinking about it.

It was not so easy to forget, to overcome his sadness. At every moment as he carried out his duties, he ran up against the imbecilic pride of this miserable rabble. That only reopened his wound. And what on earth for? What joy could he hope for? More and more he felt that he must relinquish the responsibility of this endless, useless battle where he harvested only bitterness and deceit. Let murderers prosper and die in their beds. After all, he didn’t give a damn.

It was already night when he rose and went out to the street. The yellow lights of the streetlamps sparkled all around the immense square bordered by stores and noisy cafés. Nour El Dine hurried across the road without paying attention to the swirls of traffic. The noise of streetcars and automobiles rushing by reached his ears as if muffled by distance. It seemed to him that for some time things were moving away from him, and that he saw them through a veil. Eyes wild, the collar of his tunic unbuttoned, he advanced, pushed toward his destiny by a malevolent force. He could not lie to himself; what now drew him to Gohar had no connection with the investigation of the murder of the prostitute. Since meeting Gohar, and especially since the conversation he’d had with him while accompanying him to his door, there had been a change in the way he thought about his work. Nour El Dine was beginning to waver. He, who had never questioned the sacred power that he held, was beginning to wonder where truth lay. He was no longer sure of anything. Despite his conviction that Gohar was the killer he sought — although admittedly he had no tangible proof — he continued to be far more interested in Gohar’s personality than in the act of arresting a criminal. He realized that Gohar posed a problem whose solution would be fundamental to his future. All the time he had been compiling the facts accusing Gohar, he had felt he was dealing with explosive material that, once ignited, would leave only rubble behind. But he also felt that out of this rubble would come peace, the peace that he had felt in Gohar’s presence and that at this moment he lacked terribly.

Nour El Dine plunged into the maze of alleys dimly lit by an occasional streetlamp. He could not quite remember where the house was located; all these shacks resembled one another in their common dilapidation. He made several detours, scrutinizing the cracked façades, trying to remember at which door he had left Gohar that night, but in vain. Everything was jumbled in his head; he couldn’t recognize the precise spot. Bitterly disappointed, he was about to turn back when chance favored him: passing by a door, he bumped into someone.

“What a pleasant surprise!” said Gohar. “Were you coming to visit me? Welcome.”

“I was passing through the neighborhood and thought of coming to see you,” said Nour El Dine. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all. It is an honor for me. Really, what a pleasant coincidence. I don’t usually come home so early, but I wanted to leave this package in my room.”