Albert Cossery - The Jokers

The clamor in the casino made Heykal think the news of the stranger’s death had already spread, but he soon realized his mistake. Someone had hit the jackpot, and the gamblers were celebrating this outbreak of luck. Heykal took advantage of the sparkling mood to cross the room unnoticed and go out onto the promenade. When he got to the disco, he claimed an empty table next to a dwarf palm and sat down to wait for events to take their course.

There was no doubt the man had suffered a heart attack while looking at the governor’s portrait. This death wasn’t part of the plan, but Heykal didn’t mind — it was the hand of fate (and proof of its sense of humor). The first man to see the poster had dropped dead! As long as the rest don’t follow him down this path — in which case we’ll be looking at a wholesale slaughter! Heykal didn’t want that. Alert to the slightest development, he turned a benevolently ironic gaze on the complacent bourgeoisie gathered there, all pumped up with their pathetic privileges. The casino was the most fashionable spot in the city, with admission restricted to members of the elite. But fascinated though Heykal was by the inanity of the crowd he soon came to a glum realization: these people were all intolerably ugly — an ugliness that was unforgivable, unremitting, and untempered by even a trace of kindness. They weren’t even having a good time! They were stuck in their roles, unwitting players in the lugubrious comedy that was unfolding around them. Humanity is ugly: Heykal had always known that. But this — this was almost more than he could bear.

He turned to look at the governor’s box, something pleasant to latch onto. There was Soad with her father and the governor. The others had disappeared; even the governor’s mistress was gone, probably off to sing in one of the nightclubs. The young girl was seated on the armrest of the governor’s chair, and she seemed to be begging him to grant her some favor, using all the charms of her precocious femininity. She leaned toward him and stroked the back of his hand softly, the way people stroke hunchbacks for good luck. The governor, clearly struggling to resist her juvenile attempts at seduction, looked mortified. Heykal couldn’t tell what Soad wanted from the governor. It intrigued him, and he continued to watch with curiosity.

The governor was the sort of public figure who stumps even the cleverest caricaturists. What could they do that nature hadn’t already accomplished? Short and potbellied, with stubby legs, he had a squashed nose and huge bug eyes ready to pop out of their sockets. Under his gaze, you became a miscreant microbe, magnified a thousand times over by those monstrous, staring orbs. But in fact the governor was only trying to show that in this city of chronic sleepers he was awake. No one could deny that. He saw everything that went on around him; he took himself for an eagle and acted as if he had an eye to match. He’d been appointed governor by one of his army pals (who was promoted to a government minister as a reward for his perfect mediocrity) and jumped at the chance to make up for years of inactivity. He governed the city as if he were commanding a troop of new recruits, inventing prohibitions each day, always with painful consequences for the long-suffering people. You would think he wanted to break a record. The only thing he hadn’t dared to outlaw yet was the playing of trictrac in cafés. He was said to be considering it all the time, but so far his advisers had dissuaded him by arguing that trictrac was an essentially reactionary institution that deserved government support.

Soad was standing next to the governor’s chair, tugging at his sleeve and gesturing with her head toward the dance floor. At last Heykal understood what she wanted; she wanted the governor to dance with her. But the governor was stubbornly refusing, trying to wrest his arm free while a look of comic alarm spread over his gnomelike face. Heykal felt a flash of admiration for Soad; the girl was going out of her way to put on a great show. At one point, she glanced at him with a malicious smile on her lips, as if to make sure he noticed how much trouble she was taking to provide him with entertainment. It was true: to see the governor dance would be a veritable godsend for anyone with a taste for the local color. Heykal flashed an encouraging smile at Soad, then went back to observing the crowd.

The mood in the room had changed in the last few minutes. There was an imperceptible nervousness among the personnel; the waiters and maître d’s were running around looking confused. Several customers had risen hastily and gone into the game room. Around him Heykal could feel the ripples of an underlying tension, a gust of mysterious panic. People who’d been speaking loudly suddenly began to whisper among themselves; others fell silent altogether. Only the orchestra sustained its deafening clamor, but then some mistakes in keeping time made it clear that the musicians, too, were aware that something terrible had happened. Someone, Heykal concluded, must have discovered the dead body on the bathroom floor. His heart fluttered as he thought of what would happen next.

“Hello, Heykal.”

Before him was a young man as beautiful as a wild gazelle; his slender face swayed gracefully at the end of a long neck, which set off the extreme prettiness of his delicate features. He had big, bedroom eyes with soft eyelids, and he used them to dazzling effect. He was a particular kind of social climber, a borderline gigolo often seen with women of a certain age and a certain fortune. His name was Riad. One of Riad’s ambitions was to get into Heykal’s circle, for he admired Heykal without reserve and tried to imitate him whenever he found himself talking to people who were unacquainted with the original. Heykal didn’t enjoy his company and kept him at a distance, but Riad’s obsessive interest in the goings-on among the city’s elite made him valuable; he kept Heykal abreast of the gossip and rumors that were spreading through government circles. Riad flaunted his connections shamelessly; he hoped to dazzle Heykal with the depth of his penetration into the most sophisticated milieu. It never occurred to him that such people disgusted Heykal, that his sole interest in them was as fodder for his cruel humor.

“Heard the news?” Riad said, sitting down at Heykal’s table.

“No, but I hope you’ll be kind enough to tell me.”

Riad paused, batted his eyelashes, and his neck swayed as it always did when he set about charming a reluctant audience. He soon realized that he’d better hurry up. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t afford fancy phrases; Heykal might hear the news any minute, and Riad would lose the benefit of bringing it to him. But it pained him to omit the preliminary niceties, so he allowed himself to be just a little mysterious.

“Well, the governor’s going to be very happy!”

“Why?” asked Heykal. “Isn’t he happy enough already?”

“His worst enemy just died,” Riad finally blurted out. “You know, Abdel Halim Makram, the rich industrialist. He had a heart attack in the bathroom of the game room.”

“He deserved it,” Heykal said. “What an imbecile! How could anyone be the enemy of the governor — such a delightful man!”

“You don’t know the story? A few months ago the governor stole his mistress from him — that old relic, Om Khaldoun, the singer. Now she’s the governor’s trophy.”

“But everyone knows Abdel Halim is impotent.”

“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t know everyone knew. On the contrary, he was worried the singer had told the governor — she was a woman, it was inevitable. So he developed a virulent hatred for him. Old men can be terrors when it comes to their virility.”

While talking with Riad, Heykal never lost sight of the governor’s box. The moment was approaching when the death of Abdel Halim would become common knowledge. He couldn’t wait to see how the governor would react. Soad had renounced her magnificent plan to make the governor dance and was sitting quietly next to her father, listening with a bored expression as the two men carried on an energetic discussion. The governor looked pained, like someone whose vanity was being bruised; his interlocutor must have been feeding him the usual stream of sarcasm. His mustache twitched and he lifted his hand now and then, as if to fend off the flood of offensive eloquence. Heykal saw Soad yawn with perfect innocence, making a public display of her boredom. In their box, separated from the public, they seemed to be the only ones not affected by the anxiety that was in the air.