Yitzhak Goren - Alexandrian Summer

An hour went by. The eruptions became less frequent. The child even managed to sleep for a while. His mother stood at his side, watching his face as it twisted with pain from time to time, and felt a surge of love for this boy. She swore that if he recovered, she’d give him much more attention than in the past. David was all grown up and would soon marry, and his wife would be there to take care of him. He won’t want her, Emilie, with them anyway. Such is the way of the world. And this little one, who would he have left, other than her? And his father, she quickly added with alarm.

When Victor awoke there was a large, curious package at his side. He looked around quizzically and saw everyone surrounding him, smiling and gesturing for him to open the package. Quickly and enthusiastically, Victor began fussing with the ribbons and wrapping paper, finally removing the lid of the box and revealing the great wonder to one and all.

It truly was a wonder. Even Robby couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d never seen anything like it.

Purring with joy, Victor hopped around on the rug like an excited monkey, not allowing anyone to come close. Victor made a special point of keeping Robby, Salem, Thérèse and Juliette away, for the adults posed no real threat to the shiny toy sprawled over the rug.

Train cars scampered over shiny metal tracks with something between a rattle and a hum, passed through artificial tunnels, stopped at stations and intersections with red lights, attached themselves to locomotives, detached again, returned to their starting point, and embarked all over again, in mesmerizing circuitry. An imported train set, electric-powered, a world in and of itself. The user, the child, need only find a socket, flip the switch, and the busy system would come to life. Victor was ecstatic. His food poisoning faded into the background.

“Tell them! Tell them how much it cost!” Victor called out to his father.

Joseph looked at his son with pleasure and embarrassment. “Twenty. Twenty pounds.”

And they all repeated with amazement: “Twenty pounds!”

Salem the servant stood in the corner and thought, how many times does two pounds eighty — Robby’s father added thirty piasters to his monthly salary, despite Grandma’s protests — how many times does that sum go into twenty pounds? He thought and thought, and when he couldn’t calculate the answer, he concluded that if he could have done such math by himself, he would already be earning twenty pounds per month … but … seven! Seven was the answer. Two pounds eighty goes into twenty seven times, seven times his salary! Salem was proud to have solved the problem so quickly, but when the reality of the numbers sank in, his humiliation was overpowering. Salem was practical, a realist, like most other servants he knew. The fact that the world contained masters and servants was perceived by him as the moral foundation of a normal society, the way of the world, just like rising sun and the flow of the Nile. Nevertheless, there it was: a toy cost more than he earned in seven months? Would he ever be able to buy such a toy for his own son? Would his son end up a servant, just like him? His grandson?

Victor grabbed his father’s neck once more and kissed his cheek. His father stood there, exhilarated, as if having achieved some spectacular feat. All the children were envious of his son, the little outcast. Just then Claude, the bespectacled mama’s boy with the newsboy cap, appeared. He saw the train and begged Victor to let him play with it, but Victor wouldn’t. Joseph caressed his happy son with his eyes, and suddenly, once again, but this time — how shameful it was! — in front of everyone, even the children and the servant and the two Coptic girls, tears burst from his eyes. The children stared at the crying old man and couldn’t figure out what was happening. No one dared say a word.

Victor stopped his convulsions of joy and stood silently in front of his father. Then he jumped up at him once more and screeched, “You’re the best father in the world. The best!”

Joseph wanted to die.

As simple as that, to die. His son was hanging on his neck, shouting into his ear that he was the best father in the world, and at that very moment Joseph felt that he wanted to die. Not for shame at having shed tears in spite of himself, not for rage at the things that had befallen him in recent days, not for desperation at the downfall of his career, not for disappointment in himself and his eldest son and his withering body, not for any clear, known reason. Just to die. For no reason at all. To cease …

Then, again for no clear or known reason, the train cars began changing directions, crashing into each other, making terrible noises, running off the tracks … running off the tracks … running off the tracks …

A short circuit ignited a white flash of light in the dimness of the hall, and the entire system shut down and died. In an instant, the complex web of trains turned into a heap of junk.

Joseph was acquitted in the court of law, but not on the racetrack. Al-Tal’ooni was now the hero of the track, a national symbol. His wind-swept face, his deep, throaty voice, his unrestrained existence awoke deep yearning in a mob oppressed by an indifferent king who was surrounded by corrupt advisers, leaning on a crumbling empire, yearning for days of power and heroism in the free air of the scorching desert. Ishmael shall live on his sword! No more of Farouk’s stockpiling, his paunch, his European suits, his fez and beads, his impotency. Al-Tal’ooni reminded the public of the days when Muhammad rode from Mecca to Medina and initiated a new calendar, of the days when Omar and Abu Bakr excited the imaginations of believers with the cry, “ Din Muhammad bi’l seif — the law of Muhammad will be enforced with the sword!”

Al-Tal’ooni ruled the track, and his name resounded beyond the white fences and green grass of the Sporting Club.

Joseph didn’t return to the track, despite his wife’s and son’s pleas. He knew he did not belong there anymore. You go, he told David. You go and take hold of your career, without your father’s help, liberated from that dark shadow I cast around myself. Joseph snickered. Go, ya ibni , go… but he never believed his cowardly boy would go on his own.

David went. He trained alone, his Arab groom at his side. He slowly regained his previous form after a three-week break. He registered for the Sunday race, the final one that marked the end of the season in Alexandria.

“I’ll participate in the final race,” David said.

“The final race,” Joseph repeated, his eyes glowing.

“I’ll break that Arab,” David said, enraged. “The whole world will know that the Hamdi-Ali name is the greatest of all!”

Joseph was happy. The zeal in his son’s eyes — this is the boy he’d hoped for, this ambition, this determination. He could finally pass the torch in this inter-generational relay. He closed his eyes and said gravely, “I’ll pray for you.”

“You’ll what?”

“I’ll pray to our God that you win,” said Joseph. “At the synagogue. I’ll say … I can’t remember the words from the last time that …” He went quiet. His conversion was an untouchable subject in the Hamdi-Ali family. They were all to pretend that Joseph had been born Jewish. He’d never come so close, dangerously close to stepping out of bounds, but he held his tongue just in time. Especially since little Victor knew nothing of the matter. That’s what they thought, anyway, in fact, there was nothing Victor didn’t know. “Still, I’ll pray,” he said, squeezed David’s shoulder, sighed and stood up.

Rabbi Ferrera, in a fez and with a goatee, sat on the balcony sipping coffee with his eyes almost shut. In the tradition of Sephardic rabbis, he was known as “Hakham Ferrera”—“Ferrera the Wise.” He fiddled with his prayer beads, and when his lips weren’t touching the cup, they moved in a ceaseless mumble — the Psalms? — and his large Adam’s apple, poking out of a thin, slightly twisted throat, went back and forth like a piston.