Albert Cossery - The Colors of Infamy

“Yes, I speak with my mother, but not often. It pains me to see her get all confused when we talk. I wind up feeling dizzy.”

“What do you talk about?”

Safira hesitated a moment before answering. She looked at Ossama with atypical boldness and said, in an almost sardonic tone of voice:

“Well, just what is it that poor people talk about, in your opinion?”

It was a low blow, a perfidious move on the girl’s part, and Ossama was momentarily mortified by his tactlessness. He was sure that the two women could only talk about money — or more specifically, the lack of money — and he decided to change this thorny subject quickly by making a little joke.

“I know that poor people only talk about money, but talking about money never made anybody any richer.”

And he emitted a pleasant and contagious little laugh to encourage the girl to follow him down the path of cheerfulness.

But Safira stubbornly refused to laugh; on the contrary, Ossama’s unfortunate joke only succeeded in making her more despondent in regard to the young man’s feelings about poverty.

“I don’t care about money,” she said. “What good is money if there’s not a little love in life?”

She lowered her eyes and stayed completely still with an expression of dread on her face, as if she were expecting an earthquake. Ossama didn’t fall for it; he could easily see her message and he had to pretend it wasn’t directed his way. Feminine wiles, even in this girl who had barely reached puberty, always amused him because they were such a fragile weapon, at best good for confusing the gullible or the idiotic. Still, he was touched by this frustrated admission and he grabbed hold of the girl’s hand in a gesture of friendship and consolation. Yet once more the compassion he felt for his companion seemed like a defect that would destroy his freedom.

“Do you speak about love with your mother?”

“Who else can I speak to? She’s the only one in whom I can confide. At least she listens to me.”

Ossama admired Safira’s ruse: criticizing him without naming him, all the while knowing he would recognize himself in this allusion to his indifference. Posing as an innocent victim, she was using her female cunning to reach her goal, which was to snare him in the web of a pitiable love affair. But how could he be angry at her for this? It was nothing but idle talk, with no long-term consequences. He was lenient with Safira and her insinuations, because this stubborn, lovelorn girl was so very young, and her wiles so absolutely ineffective. What he would never have tolerated from an adult woman, he easily accepted from this girl who was experimenting, at his expense, with all the folly and uncertainties that eminent psychologists attribute to the feminine mystique. But since Ossama had never discerned the slightest mystery in any woman, poor Safira’s wiles rarely perplexed him; he felt only a vague pity for universal stupidity.

“I listen to you, too,” he objected, out of sheer goodness and so as not to distress the girl by his constant refusal to understand.

“That’s true, you do listen, but only to make fun of me. The other day, for example, when I told you I was looking for a job, you said not to bother because, with my luck, I would probably find one. And then you burst out laughing.”

Having seen him laugh so often when she was describing certain aspects of her miserable life, Safira had formed an idea of the young man in keeping with his cavalier attitude — selfish and frivolous, disdainful of the suffering of others. And sometimes, so as not to thwart this blasphemous exuberance, she, too, would try to laugh about her woes, perhaps with the superstitious idea of warding off ill fortune.

“Sorry to bother you with my stories,” she said with a forced smile. “I’d rather hear about your exploits. They’re bound to be more amusing than my discussions with my mother. I’d like to become a thief, too. Unfortunately, I don’t have your courage. I think I’d get arrested before I even tried.”

“Listen, Safira, you’re wrong, I don’t have any courage,” answered Ossama with feigned weariness. “When I told you I was a thief, I was just joking. I’m sorry you believed me. You shouldn’t take what I tell you so seriously all the time.”

The girl’s face contorted horribly, as if she had just learned of some unforgivable treachery. The young man’s dishonorable profession had led her to believe that her own dissolution wouldn’t be an obstacle to a love affair between two individuals similarly debased by poverty. But if Ossama wasn’t a thief as he had claimed, how could he be interested in a romance with an insignificant little prostitute? Her eyes clouded by tears, she looked at the young man as if he were a renegade gone over to the class enemy.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ossama with a tinge of remorse in his voice. “Have I offended you?”

The girl remained silent, more from modesty than from the anger that was suffocating her. She could not explain to Ossama that his lie was depriving her of the only free gift ever allotted to the miserable of this earth.

“So it was a joke!” she said at last, bitterly.

“I only told you that to amuse you. I’m sorry, but don’t turn it into a tragedy. On the contrary, you should be glad to know I’m not a thief.”

“Glad of what? If you’re not a thief, how can you go around with” — she did not say love — “a girl like me? After all, I’m just a prostitute.”

“I don’t care what you are. Have I ever snubbed you? Even if you murdered someone, you’d still be completely respectable to me. In fact, I’d admire you all the more.”

“I don’t want to murder anyone.”

“Well, you should. Plenty of people deserve to be murdered. A few years ago all I dreamed about was doing away with all those bastards. But now I want them to live long lives, because they make me laugh.”

“Who are all these bastards?”

“Maybe some day you’ll know, maybe you never will. Anyway, believe me. Bastards don’t just exist, they even prosper all over the world.”

Safira seemed upset, even frightened, by these enigmatic statements. Although she was used to his crazy ideas, Ossama’s harangue about complete strangers set her mind awhirl. Her companion — this joyously mocking, distant young man — had suddenly turned into an unknown character with bloodthirsty ideals. First he’d claimed to be a thief, now was he going to metamorphose into an assassin?

“By Allah! I don’t understand you. Everything you say upsets me. Nothing worries you. You laugh at everything. You dress like a prince and yet you walk through the crowds without worrying about getting dirty. Can you explain this mystery to me?”

“If I am dressed, as you say, like a prince, it’s because I inherited my father’s suits when he died,” Ossama replied with all the composure of an inveterate liar. “He was an important civil servant and always had to be impeccably dressed. To honor his memory, I like to go out in decent clothes too, so as not to disappoint him in his grave. It pains me to talk about such things, but I haven’t hesitated to share them with you so that you can learn a little more about me.”

He took on the chagrined look that any man wears at the memory of certain deaths. The girl seemed satisfied with his explanation, yet her face remained resolutely sad; the origin of Ossama’s stylishness did nothing to change the fact that she was a betrayed lover, and it was clear to her that the time for banter and courtship games had passed. Decorum required her to leave the young man so he could muse in solitude over the memory of his father, the important civil servant with his admirably tailored suits who had swept suddenly into their conversation. That ghost continued to haunt her and with a timid look, she said: