Albert Cossery - A Splendid Conspiracy

He went to sit behind his desk, shuffled some papers, and waited for Rezk to take a seat in the armchair across from him. A single glance was enough for him to see that his young informant had nothing new to report. Nonetheless, he asked:

“Still no news about our chemical engineer?”

Rezk turned his gaze from the bookshelf, sniffled, rubbed his nose with a crooked finger, then smiled as if to excuse himself for his wandering attention.

“I’m awfully sorry, Excellency! He’s a charming young man with perfect manners.”

“I don’t doubt it. But that’s not what interests me. Have you spoken to him since the last time we met?”

“No, not yet. I’ve seen him wandering around in different parts of town. He seems terribly cheerful. For a while now he’s been gong everywhere looking like a happy man.”

“That’s very helpful information. I suppose, then, that his projects are well underway. He came here on a mission. I’d like to know of what that mission consists. You haven’t managed to find out anything?”

“Please forgive me, Excellency! But I have the feeling that his only mission is discovering ways to have a good time.”

Hillali shrugged in a gesture of disdain for his protégé’s deductive abilities. Rezk often annoyed him with his excessive naïveté, but Hillali refrained from using harsh words to express his irritation. Rezk’s waif-like figure of a pariah, his sickly and tormented face stirred remorse and compassion in the older man. The boy was of his making; he thought he had loved him as a son, and what he had made of this son was nothing but a monstrous caricature of his concept of a child born of his blood. A lamentable failure.

“Have a good time!” Hillali said with bitter irony. “Don’t tell me that he crossed an ocean to come have a good time with us. That’s absurd! I’m suspicious of young men who return from abroad; they bring with them a world of violence and hatred. Besides, I’m convinced that this Teymour is the bearer of new instructions for his comrades. Otherwise, why would he have come back?”

“He’s supposed to get a very good job at the factory.”

“Yet we know he has not even been to the factory. Instead, he spends his time with the blackest sheep in town. Can you explain that to me?”

“He spent years studying to get his diploma. I think he may be taking a vacation.”

“Think again! He did more than study over there. He was gone for six years and he only needed three for the degree. What did he do the rest of the time? He obviously must have been interested in other things.”

“He’s a scholar. I’m sure he wanted to add to his knowledge by prolonging his studies.”

“What’s to say your scholar’s not here to make bombs! Don’t forget that he’s a chemical engineer.”

Rezk gave a start and stared at Hillali in panic and disbelief. He had observed Teymour, had even chatted with him; nothing in the appearance of this young man from a good family, with his meticulous and slightly aristocratic attire, could lead one to believe he was a maker of bombs. He remembered Teymour’s manicured hands very clearly; not a single trace betrayed unclean work of any kind — that such hands could be used to fabricate devices of death and destruction was hardly thinkable. Once again, it seemed to Rezk that the chief of police was losing his way in a mass of erroneous deductions that had no bearing in reality. Reality was simpler; why, then, did Hillali insist on complicating it by introducing such diabolical assumptions? The authoritarian delusions in all that smacked of perversion.

“Bombs!” said Rezk. “On my honor, Excellency, I don’t think he’s the type.”

“You’re letting yourself be impressed by the fellow’s refined manners,” said Hillali with the patience of a teacher imparting a subtle psychological notion to his favorite student. “And that’s your mistake. You should know that the characters we’re interested in long ago ceased fitting any stereotype. In our day, famished and filthy revolutionaries scarcely exist — they, too, have climbed the social ladder. The more educated and elegant they are, the more they are to be feared.”

“But making bombs! That still seems completely unbelievable to me.”

“I understand your surprise. You think that in a little city like ours such things cannot occur. Well, you are wrong. I’ve studied the question. This business is very serious.”

Rezk remained silent. The puerile and rudimentary nature of his benefactor’s teachings about police methods and psychology amused him; he felt like a kid again, playing cops and robbers. Despite his knowledge and his vast experience, Hillali was no exception to the rule that doomed adults, as soon as they began competing with each other, to the ruses of children. It was as though the entire world — including the most cultivated people — were perpetuating the harmless battles of childhood in crueler and more grusesome guises. Rezk was so captivated by this strange continuity of human instincts that sometimes he let himself get caught up in the game. He was incapable of understanding how an adult of Hillali’s standing could — after all Rezk’s reports — still make such faulty assumptions about a conspiracy, and a nonexistent one at that.

As if trying to convince himself that he wasn’t dreaming, Rezk asked:

“So, according to you, Excellency, this Teymour came here to build bombs?”

“That is a hypothesis we shall need to back up with proof,” Hillali replied. “Monitoring this young man is therefore essential to the investigation of this affair. Watch to see if he’s carrying anything, a large package for example, when he goes to visit his friends. You need materials to build bombs, and you can be sure he’s not undertaking this task in the midst of his family.”

“I’ll do my best, Excellency,” said Rezk softly, bowing his head to signal his perfect subordination.

He had given up discussing the matter. To try to explain to Hillali the reasons he doubted the clear-sightedness of his theory would only exacerbate the slow decomposition of his physical and moral being, gradually reducing him to nothing more than a wreck: these tedious meetings exhausted him. He did not attempt to pull himself out of the mire into which his brain was slipping; he let himself be swallowed up in it, his gaze fastened on the bookshelf, holding itself there hungrily as if it were a last refuge for his wavering thoughts. The sun’s rays coming through the glass of the veranda like fragments of scattered joy shimmered across the long rows of books with their colorful bindings, instilling in him a feeling of intoxication and a certainty that there existed other secrets, other mysteries to be illuminated, more important than the dull and childish schemes in which men took pleasure.

Hillali saw Rezk curl up in the armchair, and the suffering on his face frightened him, as if in his own home he had just come upon the remains of a dead man whom he had tortured in the distant past. He felt his insides contract at the sight of the immeasurable distress on this face that could have seemed handsome were it not for the expression of hideous pain manifest on all the features, even the smile. Was it fever that was eating away at Rezk, or was it the awareness of the stain attached to the role he was playing at Hillali’s orders? Hillali had never managed to create between them the mutual affection of a father and son living in harmony and light. Of course, for that he should have lavished words of tenderness on Rezk and not forced on him the foul teachings of his profession, implanting in his soul the horrid idea of a world peopled with assassins. It was too late now to force these bonds of kindness and intimacy; humble and uncomplaining, he had to admit that his dream of fatherhood had failed, and learn to cherish the bitterness he felt as if it were the gift of an ever-merciful fate. Once again, he was overcome by a feeling of pity that made a mockery of his hopes, and he realized that the emotion would distort his mask of rigid austerity. He grabbed the dark glasses lying on his desk and quickly hid the sorrow in his eyes behind their black opacity. Now he could look at the miserable specter in front of him without giving himself away, and feast on this presence that had become as necessary to his solitude as the slightest flutter of his ulcerated heart. It took him a while before he could steady his voice in order to ask, with a hint of worried tenderness in his words nonetheless: