Albert Cossery - A Splendid Conspiracy

“I admit I’m somewhat curious about these mysterious disappearances,” said Teymour thoughtfully.

“You’re becoming quite interested in our little city,” remarked Imtaz. “I’m very happy about that. I was afraid you’d need a long period of adjustment, full of suffering and bitterness.”

He rose, took a few slow steps around the room, moving away from the mirror and then back again as if attracted by a magnet. He couldn’t stay seated in conversation for long. His experience on stage forced him to strike various poses, and to shade each of his lines of dialogue differently.

“And what’s going on with you?” he continued. “Weren’t you supposed to start at the factory soon?”

“I’ve decided not to work for the time being,” replied Teymour.

A few days earlier, Teymour had resolved not to accept the chemical engineering position he was being offered. The fear that he would be found out as a fraud had played no role in his decision; his forged diploma still seemed as valid as any other to him. He was motivated by a more disturbing feeling urging him to stay away from any steady occupation just as strange events were transpiring in the city — a vague but insidious feeling that chained him to the town’s fate while demanding his complete freedom of movement and mind. He felt the need to pay as close attention as possible to the slightest vibrations that might occur around him. Ever since he had taken up again with the friends from his youth, things did not seem as simple as they had the day he arrived; appearances were beginning to crumble, little by little revealing to his astounded eyes flashes of an underground life somehow tied to his hopes for happiness. Old Teymour had no trouble accepting his son’s strange ideas and did not attempt to comprehend why he refused to take up a high-level position, thereby losing all the advantages of his long years of study. In fact, his father liked things better this way, for at heart he despised all mercenary aspirations. The diploma, despite being tiny and austere, was sufficient to satisfy his paternal vanity. He jealously guarded it in a wardrobe in his bedroom, but never failed to exhibit it to his relatives and other visitors as if it were a museum piece that had cost a fortune.

Imtaz suddenly stood still, slid his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown, shot a glance at the mirror, then said:

“May I ask why?”

“I didn’t study anything while I was abroad,” Teymour stated. “My diploma is a fake that I bought right before I came home. I had to, for my father’s sake.”

“I see,” said Imtaz. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. We live in a world where everything is false.”

“I know. And it wasn’t my scruples that stopped me. A few days ago I was still willing to accept the job at the refinery. You can imagine that the prospect of living in this city after six years abroad seemed worse than death to me: what more could I have done for myself — better to be swallowed up by the daily grind and forget my misery — but now I have a feeling that I must remain totally available. It’s as if I’m waiting for something. But what it is I’m waiting for, I cannot explain.”

Teymour fell silent and looked at Imtaz as if he held the key to all the mysteries that flourished in the city. But Imtaz was incapable of perceiving the question in Teymour’s gaze; his myopia made him impervious to this kind of quiet desperation.

“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. I had thought for a moment that we were going to lose you.”

“Lose me?”

“That diploma was somewhat of a challenge to my affection. I must confess that I expect nothing from someone with the mentality of a chemical engineer embarking on a career as a conscientious and responsible civil servant. That certainly would have come between us.”

“You thought I had a real diploma,” said Teymour with a hint of reproach in his voice.

“Forgive me. It was’t very shrewd of me. I should have realized that a man such as you has no use for a diploma.”

“A man such as I has nonetheless committed a serious error. I came back here. With a little courage, I could have managed otherwise. And my cowardice is costing me dearly.”

Imtaz moved slowly, as if against his will, and returned to sit across from his guest. He hated playing the teacher, the most outmoded role of all. What he had to say to Teymour now was based on a simplistic idea, one that could seem insignificant and trite if he did not manage to infuse it with enough brotherly warmth to guarantee its true magnitude. Imtaz had no need to simulate this warmth; he felt it so violently that it burst forth from each of his words. From the moment he had seen Teymour again, Imtaz had been charmed by the young man he had known as a teenager and who wore the signs of his fleeting triumph in the reputed dives of the West with a kind of sad nobility. Now, his esteem and tenderness for Teymour had only increased, learning how casually he had bought himself a diploma, the way one buys a melon at the grocer’s, thereby rejecting all the hallowed notions attached to this piece of paper. It was an important revelation, for it indicated a nature hungry for joy, far removed from any preconceived ambitions. Imtaz could see that Teymour was anxious and uncertain about the questionable future the city held in store for him, and he would have liked to cheer him up with his own optimism and affection.

“I am more sensitive than anyone to your distress,” he said, “but I am sure you will get over it easily. Life is the same everywhere.”

He pronounced these last words with difficulty, as if he were ashamed of proclaiming such an obvious truth.

“The same everywhere!” exclaimed Teymour. “How can you say that, Imtaz my brother! You have lived in the capital; you know very well that life there is completely different.”

“There is no difference to a critical mind, for it can find sustenance for its joy everywhere.”

“Even in this town! You’ve got to be joking.”

“I’m talking about mankind. When you live among men, they will always offer you the spectacle of their sordid appetites and their idiocies. It’s an incessant stage show, supremely pleasing to the lucid observer. And it is the same everywhere.”

“But men’s lives are not the same everywhere. And that, for me, is where all the difference lies.”

“That’s an illusion as well. You are still blinded by the ways of a boisterous, eclectic world. This is a small city. So the comedy takes place on a reduced scale and is played without pomp. You have to seek life below the surface — you can’t stop at appearances. With patience and love, amazing things can be discovered.”

“You’re asking too much of me,” said Teymour wearily. “I have neither patience nor love at the moment. I think the only thing left for me to do is to move to the countryside.”

“What a nightmare!” cried Imtaz. “There’s nothing gloomier than nature. You’ll only lose your sense of humor in the country. Unable to criticize the trees, your intelligence will lose its edge as you contemplate the plowed fields, and then, it’ll be very easy for you to sing the praises of your fellow men because you won’t be here to see and listen to them. Don’t make that mistake. You should never cut yourself off from mankind because, with distance, you’re more likely to grant men extenuating circumstances. I love you too much to let you succumb to that weakness.”

The afternoon was drawing to a close and the sky was growing darker through the windows, plunging the room into a hazy gloom from which the mute shapes of the furniture emerged. Imtaz could barely see anything around him. He felt as if he were sitting in a cemetery, alone among the tombstones, addressing his precepts to a ghost. Moving like a sleepwalker, he rose and flicked a switch; then he remained standing with his lovely profile defying the mirror in the distance, dazzled by the partial return of his eyesight and the clarity of the familiar outlines beneath the lamplight. This sudden light drew Teymour out of his dream of a bucolic escape. He gazed at Imtaz, eyes moist with gratitude, and said in a quiet voice filled with emotion: