“Hello, Heykal.”
Before him was a young man as beautiful as a wild gazelle; his slender face swayed gracefully at the end of a long neck, which set off the extreme prettiness of his delicate features. He had big, bedroom eyes with soft eyelids, and he used them to dazzling effect. He was a particular kind of social climber, a borderline gigolo often seen with women of a certain age and a certain fortune. His name was Riad. One of Riad’s ambitions was to get into Heykal’s circle, for he admired Heykal without reserve and tried to imitate him whenever he found himself talking to people who were unacquainted with the original. Heykal didn’t enjoy his company and kept him at a distance, but Riad’s obsessive interest in the goings-on among the city’s elite made him valuable; he kept Heykal abreast of the gossip and rumors that were spreading through government circles. Riad flaunted his connections shamelessly; he hoped to dazzle Heykal with the depth of his penetration into the most sophisticated milieu. It never occurred to him that such people disgusted Heykal, that his sole interest in them was as fodder for his cruel humor.
“Heard the news?” Riad said, sitting down at Heykal’s table.
“No, but I hope you’ll be kind enough to tell me.”
Riad paused, batted his eyelashes, and his neck swayed as it always did when he set about charming a reluctant audience. He soon realized that he’d better hurry up. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t afford fancy phrases; Heykal might hear the news any minute, and Riad would lose the benefit of bringing it to him. But it pained him to omit the preliminary niceties, so he allowed himself to be just a little mysterious.
“Well, the governor’s going to be very happy!”
“Why?” asked Heykal. “Isn’t he happy enough already?”
“His worst enemy just died,” Riad finally blurted out. “You know, Abdel Halim Makram, the rich industrialist. He had a heart attack in the bathroom of the game room.”
“He deserved it,” Heykal said. “What an imbecile! How could anyone be the enemy of the governor — such a delightful man!”
“You don’t know the story? A few months ago the governor stole his mistress from him — that old relic, Om Khaldoun, the singer. Now she’s the governor’s trophy.”
“But everyone knows Abdel Halim is impotent.”
“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t know everyone knew. On the contrary, he was worried the singer had told the governor — she was a woman, it was inevitable. So he developed a virulent hatred for him. Old men can be terrors when it comes to their virility.”
While talking with Riad, Heykal never lost sight of the governor’s box. The moment was approaching when the death of Abdel Halim would become common knowledge. He couldn’t wait to see how the governor would react. Soad had renounced her magnificent plan to make the governor dance and was sitting quietly next to her father, listening with a bored expression as the two men carried on an energetic discussion. The governor looked pained, like someone whose vanity was being bruised; his interlocutor must have been feeding him the usual stream of sarcasm. His mustache twitched and he lifted his hand now and then, as if to fend off the flood of offensive eloquence. Heykal saw Soad yawn with perfect innocence, making a public display of her boredom. In their box, separated from the public, they seemed to be the only ones not affected by the anxiety that was in the air.
“Virility,” said Heykal. “Poor Abdel Halim was only so sure he’d lost his because he was wasting it on an old woman with faded charms. His snobbery — his obsessive desire to be the lover of a famous singer — overwhelmed everything else. It would have been unworthy of his fortune to sleep with some unknown young woman who nobody talked about but who would have satisfied his desire. People would call him cheap. He just wanted to impress his fellow citizens.”
“That’s entirely correct,” said Riad. “But that’s not all. Would you believe what they found on the wall above the urinal? A poster with a picture of the governor and a text extolling his virtues! Strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“What exactly are you saying? That the portrait of the governor was responsible for the heart attack?”
“Indubitably. Abdel Halim was, by several accounts, drunk. The governor’s face looking down on him while he urinated — reminding him, you could say, of their bone of contention…What a terrible shock!”
“Interesting theory,” admitted Heykal.
“And it’s a crime! You could justifiably claim that the governor killed him. Indirectly, of course, but still — doesn’t change the fact that it happened that way. So what do you think of that?”
Once again Riad batted his eyes; he was like a novice hooker who has but a single trick with which to launch her career. He wanted Heykal to know that he too possessed a critical mind, that he could savor the humor of the situation just as much as Heykal. But his plan fell flat. His companion was uninterested.
“Nothing to say?” Riad was downcast. “I would’ve thought a story like that was made to please you.”
“It pleases me enormously,” said Heykal, in order not to disappoint the young man totally.
Riad smiled hopefully but without batting his eyes; it was useless. He launched into a violent diatribe against the governor, certain that Heykal would approve.
“The governor has launched a brazen ad campaign,” he said. “He must think we’re imbeciles. What I read on that poster was absolutely inane — stupefying. His abuse of power has gone too far, don’t you think?”
“My dear Riad, you’re much too young to be able to appreciate the man and his merits,” responded Heykal. “He’s an exceptional person; he knows what he’s doing. I admire him more and more with each day. Your naiveté pains me.”
Riad’s delicate, feminine features expressed infinite disappointment, as if he’d just been told of his own death. But it was worse: it was the collapse of a whole way of looking at things he had believed he shared with Heykal. He searched in vain for an appropriate reply to Heykal’s condescending allusion to his youth, but his thoughts were interrupted by the distant roar of an ambulance heading toward the casino. It got louder as it approached, piercing the air with its anguished wail. At the sound of this harbinger of disaster, the people around them froze in expectation. Riad, head swaying, looked Heykal up and down, and his smug expression returned, as if the noise of the siren had proved him right. But Heykal had turned back to the governor’s box; he was transfixed by the spectacle taking place there. The governor was standing on his chair, scanning the room with his big, bulging eyes in an attempt to locate the origin of the danger; he looked ready to crush a revolution. Then the siren stopped, and Soad let out a peal of laughter. She was looking at Heykal; their eyes met, and his smile was more mocking than ever.
9
That morning, looking out at the sea from high up on his sunny terrace, Karim had had an intuition that the day would be ripe with comical events. Now, giving them time to materialize, he took short, even steps down the long, dusty avenue, stopping from time to time in the shade of one of the bordering trees. He was ready, primed for the unexpected; he noticed the smallest detail of the dizzying spectacle the street presented as workers and people seeking work milled around, ran into him, jostled past, and overwhelmed him with words and gestures that seemed to be invested with an inscrutable, fateful significance. Karim was as happy as could be. Nothing gave him more pleasure than to wander the streets in search of the unexpected. Everything he saw and heard made him indescribably happy, increasing his good cheer. The darkened interiors of the shops looked like dens of mystery, and his mind filled with sensual images of the refinements of seduction, so that he lingered in the doorways hoping to glimpse something thrilling inside. One thing he always hoped to stumble on was the kind of meaningless incident that becomes a pretext for bouts of invective. He loved listening to the men angrily insulting each other in the most colorful language. There was one particular expression that he was always certain to hear every time he observed an altercation between two men. No matter what their social class — and most of the time these fights broke out among the poorest of the poor — one man was sure to say to the other, with an air of outraged dignity, “Don’t you know who I am?” This delighted Karim. How did people come by this exaggerated self-regard? He’d always wanted to find out. It was unbelievable: in this city any old bum took himself for a luminary. Start with the government baptizing that crumbling road by the sea a “strategic route.” These delusions of grandeur trickled down from on high! All the arrogant trash-talkers were only following the honorable example of their government.