Albert Cossery - A Splendid Conspiracy

“I seem to have seen you before. You were speaking to a young girl on a bicycle. It was yesterday afternoon, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” admitted Rezk in a conciliatory, almost obsequious tone that had the effect of making Chawki regain all his smugness.

“She is a lovely girl,” he said. “You must have a fine time with her.”

The image of the young girl of whom he had caught a quick glimpse astride her bicycle, her skirt sliding up her thighs, brought a perverse smile to Chawki’s lips that Rezk understood as an insult to his sister’s virtue. The young man was once again overcome by hatred and his eyes blazed. Chawki recognized this gaze that had shot through him the previous day and his suspicions returned.

“You don’t remember me?” he asked sardonically. “I passed not far from you. I’m sure you noticed me.”

“I don’t recall. The street was very crowded.”

“It doesn’t matter. You were no doubt too taken with your pretty companion. Have you known her for a long time?”

“Yes, a very long time.”

“How old was she when you met, then? She is still so young.”

“I like them just barely out of childhood,” said Rezk with a certain impertinence, as if he wanted to shock his interlocutor. “And you, Excellency?”

“Unquestionably, so do I,” answered Chawki, casting a sidelong glance at the tireless statue frozen on her pedestal, witness to this impudent confession. “I see,” he continued, “that despite appearances, you are a young man of quality. And to think that I mistook you for an ill-intentioned fellow. So, tell me about this girl on her bicycle.”

Chawki was sliding into fetishism. The bicycle was exciting him more than anything else, he didn’t know why.

“Ah, yes… the bicycle,” sighed Rezk. “You have to see with what skill she steers that machine. She seems to fly though space, like an angel gliding above the squalid alleys—”

“How I would love to see this performance,” interrupted Chawki, who was charmed by this poetic description as by a child’s dream.

It seemed to Rezk that this polite conversation with his worst enemy was heading toward total absurdity. And although his hatred was becoming stronger, it was no longer based on vengeance — just on a kind of disgust, only a step away from the nothingness of death. But he would not kill the monster; he had found instead a means of torturing Chawki in his flesh by holding out the false promise of a meeting with Felfel. He could not repress a little inner laugh as he imagined Chawki’s reaction to such a proposal.

“Would you like to see her in private?” he asked in a whisper.

Chawki reeled under the impact of this unexpected offer; he leaned more heavily on his cane and continued playing with his mustache, a look of dissolute sensuality spreading across his face.

“Really! You could manage to set up a meeting?”

Rezk fought the impulse to spit in his pompous face. He felt he was being put to a decisive test, and sensed that beneath the sham surface of this provincial potentate he had neglected an essential element: the innate ordinariness of the man. For an instant he was absorbed in contemplating the potbelly under the leafy-patterned vest; the sensualist’s mouth twisted in a seductive pout; the big red rose in the buttonhole like a spreading splotch of fresh blood; the black satin cape — the classic, indispensible vampire accessory — cloaking the massive structure stuffed with fat. And suddenly, as if under the impact of some liberating trigger, Rezk’s mind was overpowered by an obvious truth that left him dazed for a few seconds but filled him with breathtaking joy. He had just realized that Chawki, despite his ancestral wealth and the intangible power of his race, was nothing but a pitiable buffoon. How could he have despised this minstrel of a putrefying society and taken him so seriously? No doubt it was distance that lay at the root of this psychological error. Since his father’s misadventure several years ago, Rezk had never come so close to Chawki, nor had he had occasion to study his degenerate features so thoroughly. From afar, Chawki had always seemed endowed with a demoniacal importance. Rezk’s laughter burst forth, splattering the night.

Chawki was waiting for his answer, frozen in his elegant pose, and this laughter came as a relief to him as well.

“She’s my sister,” said Rezk, who had stopped laughing.

It took Chawki a moment to grasp the significance of this confession.

“What?” he stammered, slightly aghast. (Then, in a bantering tone:) “Well, that’s fantastic; it makes everything easier. Obviously you will be rewarded for your trouble. I’m very respected in this city; you can count on my complete discretion.”

“I am at your service,” answered Rezk maliciously. “Whenever you’d like, Excellency.”

Rezk’s sarcasm and flippancy remained imperceptible to Chawki, who was totally captivated by the way this extraordinary adventure had played out.

“I see that we understand one another. I am very pleased to have made the acquaintance of such a reasonable boy; it’s so rare these days. Come see me; here’s my address.”

He pulled his card from a vest pocket and held it out to Rezk as if he were giving a coin to a beggar. With the respect due a precious object for which he would feel almost unworthy, Rezk took it. Regaining all his self-confidence, Chawki strode boldly away and, making his way to Imtaz’s house, he rejoiced at how easily he had just added to his conquests.

The young whore was totally unrecognizable. Dressed in the smock purchased the previous day at a dry-goods store, her face thoroughly cleansed and a yellow ribbon around her hair falling in a thick braid down her back, she looked more like a schoolgirl than a schoolgirl. Her own mother wouldn’t have recognized her, nor, especially, could Chawki, who had never ventured into the brothel where she was the magnificent resident. Lingering over some final touches and drinking champagne from teacups, the three young men who were the architects of her metamorphosis guffawed at the phenomenal success of their prank. The girl, amused at first, now seemed sorrowfully resigned, as if she missed her pretty sequined dress and tawdry jewelry that Imtaz had locked away in the wardrobe, or as if she had found deep within her some disturbing memory of her childhood. Impenetrable to this kind of humor, her mind could not understand all the childish exuberance the young men displayed. She was totally illiterate and this ritual in which she was being forced to take part aroused in her nothing but a listless torpor. Seated at the table in the middle of the bedroom, she was letting herself be guided in her role as a studious pupil, gazing helplessly at the schoolbook open before her, the notebook placed to the right, the pen held between her ink-stained fingers. She was angry with Medhat for having inflicted these humiliating marks on her, which would require intense scrubbing to remove. But Medhat, finicky artist that he was, had been determined to make his work look authentic, claiming that these ink-stained hands, in addition to being proof positive of her schoolgirl status, had the extra attribute of being a stimulant to the senses. This explanation did not make the girl any less morose.

When the front bell rang, Imtaz went to the door and ushered Chawki into the living room.

“Is she here?” inquired Chawki softly.

“Look,” whispered Imtaz, pointing to the door that opened on the bedroom. “She’s doing her homework.”

Indeed, by some cleverly calculated staging, the girl could be seen from the living room sitting at the table, the lamp shining down on her head as she leaned pensively over her schoolbook.

“God help me!” sighed Chawki, sent into raptures by this tableau.