“Greetings, Excellency!”
He was a man of around forty, wearing a long, worn-out black coat and boots with yellow buttons; his skinny neck was wrapped in a large chestnut shawl whose ends flapped at his sides like a crow’s wings. He was one-eyed, but his one eye was worth several, it sparkled with such murderous malice.
“Well? Have you found him?” asked Nour El Dine.
“I must say it was a tough job. Still, I finally found him. That son of a whore changes residence almost every two hours. He doesn’t have an easy conscience, evidently.”
Nour El Dine grew impatient.
“Where is he now?”
“Number 17 on this street.”
“A hotel? What’s the name?”
“I don’t know; there’s no sign. He’s staying on the second floor, the room facing the stairs.”
“Very well, you may go. I don’t need you anymore.”
“As you wish, sir!”
Nour El Dine left the one-eyed policeman, crossed the street, and slowly followed the sidewalk bordered by decaying odd-numbered buildings. After a few minutes’ walk, he finally stopped before number 17; for a moment, he inspected the dilapidated façade, looked right and left as if he feared being seen going into such a shabby hotel, then crossed the threshold and entered a fetid, somber hallway. No clerk came to meet him; the place seemed long abandoned. Guided more by his instinct than by his visual organs, Nour El Dine came to a stone staircase with worn steps and climbed to the second floor. When he reached it, he glimpsed what looked like a door in the darkness and began to bang on it with his fist.
No one answered his frantic knocking. Nour El Dine strained to listen: nothing moved inside. Without waiting any longer, he turned the doorknob, opened the door, and entered a room whose size and furnishings he couldn’t make out for lack of light. It was still the same darkness, barely attenuated by the feeble daylight seeping through the slats of the closed shutters. Nour El Dine’s first impression was that the room was empty. Little by little his eyes became accustomed to the shadows and he perceived a bed, and in this bed a human form lying under the covers.
“Hey, you! Wake up!”
The form lying under the covers remained inert as a corpse. Nour El Dine grew annoyed and began to think that the man might be dead. He approached the bed and with unspeakable disgust raised the blankets. This operation revealed the naked body of a man, whose skeletal thinness would have terrified the hardest of hearts.
“May Allah preserve us!” murmured Nour El Dine.
The cold he felt at being thus uncovered had more effect on the sleeper than an earthquake, because he woke up, blinked his eyes, yawned, and finally asked, “What’s this?”
“Police!” Nour El Dine yelled, as if he wanted to break all resistance in the sleeper’s mind with this single word.
But the word “police” clearly held no terrors for the bed’s occupant, for he replied with perfect calm, making as if to go back to sleep, “You can search everywhere; there isn’t a speck of hashish in this room.”
“It’s not that,” said Nour El Dine. “Come on, get up, I want to talk to you.”
“Talk to me!” exclaimed Yeghen, now completely awake. “By Allah! Inspector, how have I deserved this honor? How can I be of use to you?”
“I’ve come to talk to you about a murder.”
“A murder, Excellency! What a black day!”
“You can say that again. It’s a black day for you.”
Yeghen threw back the blankets completely and sat up on his bed, his legs folded under him; with his rickety torso, bony face, and wild eyes, he resembled a Hindu fakir shrunk by fasting and mortification.
“A murder!” he repeated. “What does a murder have to do with me?”
“I’m going to tell you. But first, answer me — do you know that one of the girls at Set Amina’s house was strangled a few days ago?”
“I heard that,” said Yeghen.
“It seems that you are a habitué of the house.”
“That’s true.”
“Then you knew young Arnaba?”
“Very well. She was the most beautiful of the lot.”
“So! Since we agree on all that, can you tell me where you were at the hour of the crime?”
Yeghen didn’t even bother to think, or to ask what the hour of the crime was; he was sure not to be wrong. He answered smoothly, “I was sleeping, Excellency!”
“Where were you sleeping?”
“I don’t know. I sleep everywhere.”
“So, you son of a bitch, you don’t know anything about this affair?”
“No, on my honor! I don’t know anything. I could perhaps give you some information about certain drug dealers. But a crime! Really, that’s beyond my power.”
“Let me tell you that you are a prime suspect.”
“Me! But I was sleeping, Excellency. How can an intelligent officer like you make a mistake like that?”
“Stop the monkey business!” Nour El Dine scolded. “I know how to make you talk!”
He realized he had just uttered an absurdity, one of those commonplaces he often used in the course of an interrogation and which meant absolutely nothing, despite the threat they implied. The truth was that he felt sick with disgust and almost moribund. In this state he would never make anyone talk, at least as long as he continued to breathe the polluted air of this room. He glanced toward the window with closed shutters, ardently desiring to open them but trembling at the thought of letting in daylight. Darkness suited him; it prevented Yeghen from noticing his agitation. From the street rose the deafening noise of cars, the curses of nearly demented carters, and the interminable clanging of streetcars trying desperately to open a path through the eddying apathetic crowd. These stale sounds of life nearby revived his will. Looking for some furniture to lean against, he took a few steps and ended by sitting on the edge of a table. This visit was going to be a total failure if he didn’t change his tactics. The difficulty of an interrogation with Yeghen lay in the fact that the fellow was gifted with a subversive intelligence that made fun of everything. He was an old offender and an inveterate hashish smoker; he was in contact with all of the dealers and ne’er-do-wells in the native quarter. Still, Nour El Dine didn’t believe he was guilty. What he was after here was simply a trail, a clue that could lead him to the real killer. He knew that the man before him was exempt from all violent passions, taking nothing seriously, except drugs, and thus could be suspected only of cowardice; he was incapable of committing a crime. Because for Nour El Dine, to be unaware of the vicissitudes and abominations of existence was a sure sign of cowardice. Could he permit himself not to take life seriously? Where would the world be if misfortune no longer mattered?
Once more he was overcome with bitterness, and he gave Yeghen a haunted look. He couldn’t help finding something laughable and distasteful in this whole situation. This naked, emaciated man seated on his bed undergoing police questioning seemed like an absurd, unnatural thing. Mockery was everywhere. It was the last straw when Yeghen began to laugh.
“There’s nothing here to laugh about,” said Nour El Dine. “You’re involved in dirty business.”
“Excuse me, Excellency! But the world is becoming more and more amusing. Don’t you think so?”
“What makes you so optimistic?”
“The bomb,” said Yeghen.
“What bomb?”
“You haven’t heard about the bomb? Really, Inspector, you astound me! Even children know this. It seems they’ve invented a bomb capable of destroying an entire city with one blast. You don’t think that’s funny? What would amuse you then?”
For a moment Nour El Dine was dumb with stupor, trying to understand. This interrogation had become pure folly.