It was a stucco building, adorned with mosaics, architecturally reminiscent of an opulent Hindu tomb. Heykal entered the room with the quick, irreverent step of a gambler who can’t wait to bet the house. An intense, oppressive, almost agonized silence greeted him. He’d arrived at the critical moment: the croupier had just thrown the ball onto the roulette wheel. It rattled around, struggling like a trapped mouse, and the sound filled the room. The atmosphere was feverish, the heat suffocating; no breeze came in through the enormous picture windows with their panoramic view of the sea. Heykal walked past the groups of gamblers glued to the edges of the long table, but nobody turned — even an earthquake couldn’t have wrested their concentration from the wheel. The ball went on rattling as Heykal made his way to the rear of the room where a ramp led from the side of an immense bar back to the bathrooms. The men’s room was empty. Heykal held his ear to the door to make sure nobody had followed him down the corridor; no footsteps, just a muffled rumble in the distance — the ball must have finally landed, releasing the gamblers from their agony. The moment seemed right for him to go to work. He pulled the poster from his pocket, slapped glue on the wall above the urinals, and quickly put it up; now the governor would get to see all the casino’s clients unzip. It was simply fantastic! Heykal stood back to admire his masterpiece. He was still savoring it with malicious delight when he heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor. This complicated things: for him to be seen would inevitably arouse suspicion. And if it was someone he knew, he’d be hard-pressed to avoid a conversation that might drag on dangerously. The light switch was within reach; he flipped it, plunging the bathroom into darkness, and slipped behind the door. The footsteps, heavy and ungainly, came closer, and a man entered the bathroom. The pale light from the corridor revealed an enormous mass stumbling toward the urinal, a middle-aged man, very fat, and, at first glance, unfamiliar to Heykal. He was mumbling indistinctly and must be very drunk. Heykal stood still, holding his breath. He didn’t dare move yet; he was waiting for the man to start urinating so he might escape unnoticed. The man had turned his back and spread his legs, his massive silhouette cut out against the background of white tile; he seemed to be struggling with his fly. He was drunk enough not to be bothered by the lack of light, and Heykal was about to hand it to himself when the man began to sputter complaints about the casino management. He leaned over — with surprising agility, given his condition — to the light switch; there was a click, and the brightness returned. Before Heykal could make a move, the man saw the portrait of the governor on the wall. After a moment of shock, he let out a hoarse, strangled cry and collapsed, waving his hands above his head as if hoping the universe itself might come to his rescue. Heykal jumped, startled by the suddenness of it all. Slowly he approached the man, who lay splayed out on the floor, his fly gaping open; such an enormous mass and so still, as still as a corpse. He was dead. His bulging eyes continued to stare at the governor’s portrait with ferocious intensity; to Heykal it looked like the two men were engaged in a grotesque standoff. He left without waiting to discover the reason for this furious antagonism.
The clamor in the casino made Heykal think the news of the stranger’s death had already spread, but he soon realized his mistake. Someone had hit the jackpot, and the gamblers were celebrating this outbreak of luck. Heykal took advantage of the sparkling mood to cross the room unnoticed and go out onto the promenade. When he got to the disco, he claimed an empty table next to a dwarf palm and sat down to wait for events to take their course.
There was no doubt the man had suffered a heart attack while looking at the governor’s portrait. This death wasn’t part of the plan, but Heykal didn’t mind — it was the hand of fate (and proof of its sense of humor). The first man to see the poster had dropped dead! As long as the rest don’t follow him down this path — in which case we’ll be looking at a wholesale slaughter! Heykal didn’t want that. Alert to the slightest development, he turned a benevolently ironic gaze on the complacent bourgeoisie gathered there, all pumped up with their pathetic privileges. The casino was the most fashionable spot in the city, with admission restricted to members of the elite. But fascinated though Heykal was by the inanity of the crowd he soon came to a glum realization: these people were all intolerably ugly — an ugliness that was unforgivable, unremitting, and untempered by even a trace of kindness. They weren’t even having a good time! They were stuck in their roles, unwitting players in the lugubrious comedy that was unfolding around them. Humanity is ugly: Heykal had always known that. But this — this was almost more than he could bear.
He turned to look at the governor’s box, something pleasant to latch onto. There was Soad with her father and the governor. The others had disappeared; even the governor’s mistress was gone, probably off to sing in one of the nightclubs. The young girl was seated on the armrest of the governor’s chair, and she seemed to be begging him to grant her some favor, using all the charms of her precocious femininity. She leaned toward him and stroked the back of his hand softly, the way people stroke hunchbacks for good luck. The governor, clearly struggling to resist her juvenile attempts at seduction, looked mortified. Heykal couldn’t tell what Soad wanted from the governor. It intrigued him, and he continued to watch with curiosity.
The governor was the sort of public figure who stumps even the cleverest caricaturists. What could they do that nature hadn’t already accomplished? Short and potbellied, with stubby legs, he had a squashed nose and huge bug eyes ready to pop out of their sockets. Under his gaze, you became a miscreant microbe, magnified a thousand times over by those monstrous, staring orbs. But in fact the governor was only trying to show that in this city of chronic sleepers he was awake. No one could deny that. He saw everything that went on around him; he took himself for an eagle and acted as if he had an eye to match. He’d been appointed governor by one of his army pals (who was promoted to a government minister as a reward for his perfect mediocrity) and jumped at the chance to make up for years of inactivity. He governed the city as if he were commanding a troop of new recruits, inventing prohibitions each day, always with painful consequences for the long-suffering people. You would think he wanted to break a record. The only thing he hadn’t dared to outlaw yet was the playing of trictrac in cafés. He was said to be considering it all the time, but so far his advisers had dissuaded him by arguing that trictrac was an essentially reactionary institution that deserved government support.
Soad was standing next to the governor’s chair, tugging at his sleeve and gesturing with her head toward the dance floor. At last Heykal understood what she wanted; she wanted the governor to dance with her. But the governor was stubbornly refusing, trying to wrest his arm free while a look of comic alarm spread over his gnomelike face. Heykal felt a flash of admiration for Soad; the girl was going out of her way to put on a great show. At one point, she glanced at him with a malicious smile on her lips, as if to make sure he noticed how much trouble she was taking to provide him with entertainment. It was true: to see the governor dance would be a veritable godsend for anyone with a taste for the local color. Heykal flashed an encouraging smile at Soad, then went back to observing the crowd.
The mood in the room had changed in the last few minutes. There was an imperceptible nervousness among the personnel; the waiters and maître d’s were running around looking confused. Several customers had risen hastily and gone into the game room. Around him Heykal could feel the ripples of an underlying tension, a gust of mysterious panic. People who’d been speaking loudly suddenly began to whisper among themselves; others fell silent altogether. Only the orchestra sustained its deafening clamor, but then some mistakes in keeping time made it clear that the musicians, too, were aware that something terrible had happened. Someone, Heykal concluded, must have discovered the dead body on the bathroom floor. His heart fluttered as he thought of what would happen next.