The girl kept her eyes down and pretended not to notice his presence. Karim stroked her hair. He leaned in and murmured passionately in her ear:
“So, my love! Shall we give each other instructions?”
The girl didn’t respond. Pouting, she turned her head as if a fly was bothering her.
“What is it?” Karim asked. “Are you breaking up with me or what? Answer me, oh my love!”
Without turning to him the girl said in a low and musical voice:
“Where are the presents you keep promising me, you liar?”
“Women!” lamented Karim with mock indignation. “Always so materialistic! And I thought you loved me for myself. Oh, how unhappy I am!”
He leaned on the desk, resting his forehead in his hand, and let out a series of deep sighs, all the while peering at the girl out of the corner of his eye. He waited to see what would happen. It didn’t take long.
He felt the girl move, then touch his arm.
“But, I love you,” she said in a whisper.
Karim silently rejoiced. Games of love like this made him happy. Whether they were seven or seventy, women always fell for the same tricks. Age didn’t matter; you seduced them all the same way. He stroked the girl’s hair lightly, a tender gesture of reconciliation, and looked around the class. How marvelous to be sitting at a school desk again: suddenly he felt the desire to act like a student. He grabbed the girl’s notebook and, writing meticulously, began to translate a popular proverb about human ingratitude: “We are the ones who taught them to beg, and now they beat us to our own benefactors’ doors.” Karim copied the sentence several times, as devoted as a star student. He’d forgotten his age and the absurdity of his presence here. All he wanted was to shine. The girl watched him, captivated; she’d never seen such a serious student.
There was still a quarter of an hour left before the end of class, but Urfy cut the session short.
“All right, children, be off!”
“But it’s not time yet, sir!” protested several students, waking up with a jolt.
“No protests,” interrupted Urfy. “I’ve seen enough of you for today.”
With heavy hearts, dragging their feet as much as they could, the children succeeded in gathering all their belongings and left the classroom. But they didn’t go far; they just scattered into the narrow street, searching for dark corners not too far from the school. When the last student had left, Urfy stepped down from his desk and went over to Karim, who hadn’t budged from his seat.
“I didn’t expect you so early,” he said, by way of an excuse.
“I had nothing else to do,” Karim admitted. “And I couldn’t wait to read what you’d written. You’ve finished, I hope?”
“Just,” responded Urfy. He pulled a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and offered it to Karim: “Here, read.”
“You’re happy with it?”
“That’s a question to ask His Excellency the Governor. I am but his humble biographer.”
Wanting to indulge fully in the delight he anticipated from this reading, Karim assumed a comfortable position. Then he unfolded the paper, and what he read made him almost crazy with pleasure. A storm raged within him, it seemed, making him shake with insane, unstoppable laughter. Urfy hadn’t expected such a success; he was passably proud of the text but was still surprised. Some of the children, overhearing this bout of hilarity, crept out of the shadows of the nearby houses and spied on them through the basement windows. Seeing the beardless wonders preparing to jeer at them, Karim calmed down immediately. He wiped the tears from his cheeks and turned to the schoolmaster.
“It’s…sublimely grotesque,” he said, jubilation in check. “With the portrait above it, this will make a sensational poster!”
“Do you really like it?” asked Urfy.
“It’s…well…monstrous! I can’t wait to print it.”
“That’s your domain. But tell me: How do you know about printing?”
“By chance. I worked for a few months as a typesetter in a printshop. It was during the time when I wanted to live among the people. So I took different jobs.”
Urfy slumped onto a bench and stretched his legs, which were numb from inactivity. His gaze fell on his worn-out shoes, and he noticed something strange: one was more worn than the other. Briefly the mystery absorbed his mind, then he snapped back to attention and placed his hand fraternally on the young man’s shoulder.
“You were very young,” he said, “and you wanted to defend the cause of the people, is that it? And you got sent to prison.”
Urfy wasn’t asking a question but stating a simple fact. Everyone knew that defending the cause of the people led straight to jail.
“Naturally,” responded Karim. “Not that I regret it, because at the end of the day, it was in prison that I did get to mix with the people. See, in a factory you slave away like beasts — there’s never time to talk to your co-workers. All your conversations come back to the job, the awful pay, or the contagious misery that tears families apart. Nothing but painful subjects. But in prison there is downtime; you talk for the pleasure of getting to know one another. It’s funny, but a prison is less sinister than any workplace. Do you know that before prison I believed that ‘the people’ were sullen by nature and were somehow predisposed to misery and hardship? I never would have believed they were so lively, so full of humor. Yes, it was only in prison that I discovered this fundamental truth about our people — and realized that all my ideas about them had been false.”
Like any intellectual worthy of the name, Urfy had also fought for the people in his youth. But his unassuming air, his shyness and fear of attracting attention made him all but invisible to the police, who cared more about revolutionary looks than about actual revolutionary fervor. As a result, he’d never gone to jail. Now his curiosity was piqued; he realized he could learn from Karim’s experiences. He pressed Karim’s shoulder, encouraging him to continue.
“Tell me about it.”
“Well,” resumed Karim, “I’d seen the people as I’d wanted to see them, consumed by hatred and dreaming of revenge. And I wanted to help them carry out that revenge. I thought they were oppressed — but then I realized they were freer than I was. You wouldn’t believe how they laughed when I tried to explain that I was in prison because of my political ideas. It was a disaster; they thought I was an idiot. And I thought that by announcing my revolutionary position — how I was declared an enemy of the government — I’d earn their respect! How presumptuous! They’d always known that the government was a joke. But with all of my intelligence, I’d taken it seriously! I felt like an ass, playing the martyr to the working class. I was the only one who took the government seriously.”
“What a blow to your ego!” Urfy observed. “I bet you weren’t happy about it.”
“At first, no. But then my position began to seem silly. Soon I was laughing at everything, too, and in the end I was converted. And there was plenty to laugh about, believe me. It’s amazing the different characters you meet in prison! Their ideas about the government were fantastic — it was nothing more than a bunch of perverts. I loved everything I heard.”
“So prison was a decisive experience for you.”
“It was a start. And then I met Heykal.”
At the mention of Heykal, Urfy flinched. He withdrew his hand from the younger man’s shoulder and went back to contemplating his worn-out shoes. He thought of the pleasure Heykal must have felt hearing Karim talk about his time in prison; it was a story that would feed right into his endless appetite for the ironic. Urfy refused to be seduced by the strange buffoonery of the world; he actually fought against the temptation of enjoying it too much. He was well aware that the world was ruled by idiots and crooks who deserved no respect, but this gave him no pleasure; instead, he felt the full bitterness of the situation. Unlike Heykal, he would try at times to find a semblance of sincerity or justice in human institutions. Sadly, facts always proved Heykal right — he triumphed at every turn. And it wasn’t just that he triumphed; he shocked Urfy with his mania for seeking out the sick, risible side of every activity — as if to find the slightest grain of sanity in the whole comic routine might spoil his happiness. But Urfy was often incensed. In spite of everything he held on to a vague hope, and this condemned him to moral isolation from his friends — men whom he loved and admired.