Albert Cossery - A Splendid Conspiracy

He thought he was lost for good in this maze of alleyways haunted by bad omens when suddenly his drink-addled mind made out some slight chink in the silence, like the scurrying of a famished rat ferreting about in the trash. He immediately stopped moving and pricked up his ears, all the while seeking with his eyes this providential animal that, in his obsession, he imagined capable of giving him the brothel’s address.

As Rezk continued to tail Samaraï, he had no preconceived ideas and certainly no intention of spying on him as if the man were carrying some miniature bomb. He had obeyed the police chief’s order solely out of a sense of duty, and because he had detected in the veterinary student’s odd behavior some terrible grief. At first, he had been puzzled by how easily this newcomer to the city had been admitted to the group Rezk admired; then, when he learned about his affair with Salma, he had begun to feel sorry for him: he was aware of the young woman’s reputation as a despot. He was now certain that serious dissensions between the lovers had arisen, and Samaraï’s deplorable state was enough to prove that these dissensions were more than a simple lovers’ quarrel. Motivated by his natural kindness, Rezk had nothing in mind but to stay close to Samaraï and to come to his aid in the event that, were he to lose his faculties completely, he might need Rezk.

The faint glow from a nearby streetlamp lit Samaraï’s face, accentuating his coarse features — he seemed exhausted, as if he were dying a slow death, and traces of tears remained. When he saw Rezk arrive, he looked stunned, then bowed to the ground in a grandiloquent salutation full of panache.

“Excuse me, brother,” he said in a thick voice. “Can you tell me how to get to the house I’m looking for? I can’t seem to find it.”

“Of course,” answered Rezk. “I would be happy to be of service to you.”

Samaraï let out a sigh of relief and his eyes shone with mad hope, as if all his sorrows would finally end in joy.

“I’m looking for a brothel run by a woman named Wataniya. I’ve heard about it, but I’ve never been there.”

“I know it,” said Rezk. “It’s the one with the most beautiful girls.”

“Are there many?” asked Samaraï anxiously, as if the number of girls were extremely important to him.

“I don’t know exactly. There are at least ten.”

“Ten, you say? Well, that will do. That’s exactly what I need.”

“But I must warn you, they cost a lot. It’s the most expensive brothel in town.”

“I don’t care!” shouted Samaraï. “I’m ready to spend my entire fortune tonight. I shall sleep with every one of them, you can count on it. Because love is killing me.”

He took the wad of bills from his pocket and, showing it to Rezk, said: “Look. I’m going to buy myself a good time that will make the earth tremble.”

So, this was the object that had aroused Hillali’s suspicion! Rezk was no less horrified by the sight of all that money than he would have been had it been an actual bomb. He looked at Samaraï’s hand waving the wad in the dismal light of the streetlamp as if he were trying to tempt him, corrupt him, or simply provoke him. Did Samaraï take him for a thief and an assassin, and was he trying to get attacked so as to end it all? All this smacked of a suicide by proxy. Rezk was suddenly very afraid, as if Samaraï’s exhibiting such a fortune in this sordid and deserted alleyway could cause lightning to strike them.

“Put that back in your pocket,” he said gently. “I’ll walk you to the brothel.”

“I don’t want to bother you,” answered Samaraï, whose teary eyes were staring at Rezk with bizarre intensity, as if he had just recognized in him a long-vanished friend.

“It’s no bother; it’s on my way,” lied Rezk with his usual kindness. “In fact, it’s not far.”

“Let’s go, then,” said Samaraï, speaking as if in a dream and stuffing the money back in his pocket. “I am grateful for the honor you do me.”

“The honor is all mine,” answered Rezk, grabbing Samaraï by the arm and pulling him along.

They started off, moving deeper into the opaque shadows, their two shapes merging into one in shared distress. Wataniya’s brothel was not far from the spot where they had met, but in the tangle of alleyways it would have been impossible for Samaraï to find it without the help of someone who knew how to negotiate the anarchic ramshackle development so rife in this part of the city. Rezk had not let go of Samaraï’s arm; he guided him, doing his best to adjust his own steps to the drunkard’s spasmodic gait. The veterinary student walked with irritating slowness, almost letting himself be dragged by Rezk, as if he wanted to put off the moment of their separation as long as possible, as if he were hesitant to carry out his resolution to hurl himself into licentiousness and debauchery now that the time was near. But Rezk could not have guessed this and, for his part, he was eager, without seeming discourteous, to free himself of this companion and his importunate riches that jeopardized their safety. He gestured nervously to make Samaraï pick up his pace, and immediately regretted this petty impulse so contrary to his desire for friendship. Samaraï shot him a glance full of inexpressible surprise, seeming not to recognize in Rezk the charitable soul who had come to his rescue earlier, then shook his head uncomprehendingly and let himself be led on obediently, with a kind of painful humility. A few minutes later, they found themselves in front of an old house with barred windows where no light filtered through; a lamp hung over the door, which was painted a bright red. The light coming from this single lamp emphasized the house’s isolation; it was surrounded on both sides by empty lots where the rubble of the neighboring hovels completely demolished by time had accumulated.

“Here it is,” said Rezk, pointing to the door.

Samaraï seemed flabbergasted by this rapid arrival at their destination. He glanced at the door, then raised his eyes to the rooftop as if he were looking for a construction defect, a crack in the façade, the smallest risk of collapse of a kind that would prevent him from going in. True, there was nothing seductive about the house, but it was quite obviously solid on its foundation. Samaraï turned to Rezk and said, with a strain of terror in his voice:

“Don’t you want to accompany me? You’ll be my guest, you are a brother. Come, we’ll talk about women and about love. It’s a very mysterious subject, don’t you think? I’d like to discuss it with you.”

“I thank you, but it’s quite impossible,” said Rezk apologetically. “They’re waiting for me at home. Really, I am terribly sorry to leave you.”

Suddenly filled with remorse, Rezk was hesitant to go. He had a premonition that danger awaited the veterinary student behind the blood-colored door; it weighed on his conscience and made leaving seem like an act of treachery. They remained motionless for a long time, staring at each other, like two travelers meeting in a strange place, fascinated by the fluke of the encounter. Then abruptly Samaraï stood up straight, seemed to regain his pride and his energy, and said in a voice that was firm but fraught with terrible melancholy:

“So, then, farewell, my brother!”

He dashed toward the brothel door with the rage of a man fleeing a vengeful fate, opened it, then slammed it noisily behind him.

The noise echoed through the neighborhood like a

voice of misery wailing in a world of iniquity, and Rezk had the foreboding that his companion of a moment before had just vanished forever. He was still thinking about the enormous sum of money Samaraï kept in his pocket that made him so vulnerable. Then, all of a sudden, he grasped the danger of his own situation. He was now completely alone as he wended his way along these narrow, twisting alleys that were more macabre than a cemetery of infidels, and it seemed to him that the dubious shadows cast against the high walls moved with him as he passed by. Although his poverty — visible even to a blind man — had the ability to move the most ferocious murderer to pity, for the first time that night he felt fear clutch at him like a bony old woman and he began to run toward the square whose faint lights in the distance seemed to promise mad merrymaking. The tall streetlamps on their steel stems poured their moribund light down on the immutable peasant woman standing on her pedestal, her hand still stretching toward the horizon, her face fixed in stone reflecting the boundless futility of her gesture. Rezk stopped, relieved to have arrived without incident in this tolerably civilized part of town. It was not yet his time to die; he still needed to live in order to see just how far man’s infamy could brazenly spread beneath the sun without provoking the slightest outcry from the universe. His hatred of Chawki was the scourge and bane of his existence, but it was also his talisman against forgetting all the disparaged miseries and humiliations. As if the intensity of his hatred had caused the living image of this despised individual to materialize in front of him, Rezk thought he recognized Chawki crossing the square at a quick tempo, a black satin cape draped around his shoulders, like a disoriented vampire. He was swinging his cane as if it were a weapon and moving from one streetlamp to another as though trying to follow a projector’s brightly-lit path. Rezk froze with surprise and for a moment thought he was seeing a mirage, a kind of provocation of his suffering; then he leapt with catlike agility on to the dusty ground of the vast square. He drew closer and closer to the man in the cape but, unlike that man, who sought out the light of the streetlamps, Rezk slipped cautiously into the patches of shadow, careful not to show himself. Even from behind and despite the ridiculous way he hopped about — a complete breach with the formal, stilted gait he used in public — Chawki stood out among all the other criminals of his class by a vileness so complete that it saturated the air around him. Rezk’s instinct had not been wrong; it was indeed Chawki heading toward some dark destination. Rezk had simply allowed himself to get swept away; in his zeal he had not yet thought through what he was going to do. He was frightened by whatever it was that had driven him to this pursuit, and by some unformulated notion that was developing on its own, outside of him, vesting him with a purificatory power. Was he going to appoint himself executioner and eliminate Chawki, kill him right then on this isolated square, with as sole witness that hideous statue, symbol of resurrection? But could destroying this prosperous bastard — a highly justified act — obliterate everything else? In any case, Rezk knew he was incapable of violence and rejected the idea with disgust. Most pathetically, he was starting to feel sorry for Chawki.