Читать книгу The Cruel Fire - Edward Atiyah - Страница 5

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Faris Deeb spent the morning arguing with the corn broker and transacting the sale of his apple crop. The bargaining was hard and lengthy, and he conducted it with his usual toughness and cunning, obtaining a price which both satisfied his cupidity and flattered his vanity as an artist in these matters. In the afternoon he took a seat in a car going to the town of Tripoli, where he wanted to look over some property that had been recommended to him as a good investment.

The estate agent who hoped to sell him the property was lavish in his hospitality. He insisted that Faris Deeb should stay for the evening, and took him to dine at the city’s most popular cabaret, hoping that good food, plenty of liquor and the sight of pretty, scantily-clad dancing girls would induce in his client a mood favourable to purchasing. Faris Deeb, whose partiality to liquor was held in check when he had to pay for it himself, drank several glasses of arak while he and the estate agent ate and watched the dancing girls perform. This was the first time that he had seen a cabaret spectacle; and the hot, pounding blood in his arteries pounded with new excitements at the sight of young, semi-naked female bodies swaying and jerking provokingly at only a few paces from him.

Noticing his entranced gaze, the estate agent said:

“This is the famous Egyptian belly dance. Ever seen it before?”

“No,” said Faris Deeb with assumed indifference, but following the motions of one particular belly with hypnotized eyes.

“Well, you must come to Tripoli more often, and we will show you more of these pleasing sights. If you buy that piece of land, you will probably want to build on it—everybody is building now with rents soaring as they are—and that will give you more occasions to visit the city. You could divide your life then between Barkita and Tripoli. Waiter, two more please.”

“Maybe,” said Faris Deeb, his eyes fixed on the navel in the middle of the shivering belly. The belly itself, white as milk, was completely naked, but below it the dancer wore a triangular loin screen of beads and tinsel, and the same sparkling fabric covered the mounds of her breasts. Faris Deeb found this local veiling an impediment to his full enjoyment. He tried to penetrate it with his imagination, but as he was doing so he suddenly felt very uncomfortable, thinking that everybody around the dancing floor was watching him and divining his thoughts. Well, what the hell! He could wager all the men there were having the same thoughts, the same desires. He wrenched his eyes off the dancer for a moment to survey the audience, and was reassured. He was not different from other men; and though a villager, he had heard enough about town life to know what went on at these places. Perhaps, if he bought that property he might, as the estate agent had suggested, become something of a townsman himself. His eyes returned confidently to the object of their desire.

“This girl here,” said the agent, noticing Faris Deeb’s special interest in the person concerned, “comes from Cairo. She’s a very good dancer, and a lovely piece to look at, think you not?”

“Ay, she dances well,” said Faris Deeb, sipping his drink and pretending to share his companion’s ostensible appreciation of the art of dancing.

“The management pays her ten pounds a night for her dancing apart from the commission she gets on the drinks the patrons order when she’s sitting with them.... And this is not to mention the money she makes on her own account in other ways. What say you, Khawaja Faris, shall we invite her to our table after this number?” The estate agent gave his client a smile which the serpent might have given Eve when they were discussing the apple.

“What for?” asked Faris Deeb, uncertain whether the agent was making him a serious proposition or merely pulling his leg.

“We could invite two of them to make a little party, and then take them for a drive in my car after the performance. Only, then we should have to order something more expensive than arak. They will want whisky at least, if not champagne. But you don’t have to worry about that. It will be all on me. Have you ever tried champagne?”

“No,” said Faris Deeb, maintaining a stolid outward calm but dizzy with excitement and panic at the things he might try that night, if the estate agent was serious, if the thing was possible. Rosa was the only woman he had ever made love to, the only woman he had ever seen undressed, and his senses had long since become blunted with the sight and the touch of her, so that when he took her now, it was like taking a bite of dry bread because you were hungry; and now after years of dry bread he saw a feast before him, and his appetites gnawed at him with a sweet and fierce craving. Yet, he dared not say “yes,” for fear that the estate agent was laughing at him, for fear that he would not know how to set about these matters because he was a villager unused to the ways of the town. And there was a greater fear still. Though the estate agent had offered to pay for everything, this might be only an empty gesture. When it came to paying the big bills for the whisky and the champagne, when it came to settling with the girls themselves, he must offer to pay his share, and the agent’s generosity might waver. Faris Deeb had one hundred pounds in his pocket. He had brought this large sum in case he decided to buy the property and had to pay a deposit on it. As he gazed at the swaying figure of the dancer, his hand went automatically to his breast pocket where the money was. He clasped his wallet firmly through his coat, protectively, his avarice struggling with his lust.

The agent, for his part, had not been serious in his invitation. He had merely wanted to increase his influence with his bucolic client by showing him what doors of pleasure he could open for him, without actually opening them. Through those doors he had no wish to enter with Faris Deeb, being himself a sophisticated townsman and regarding his client with a certain derision as an unpolished countryman. Deciding therefore that the moment had come for him to extricate himself nimbly, he said:

“I see that you have no desire for such frivolities to-night.”

“Such pleasures are for a young bachelor like you, Khawaja Jamil,” said Faris Deeb, assuming a respectable married man’s aloofness, but sick with disappointment at the withdrawal of the prospect which the estate agent had dangled before his eyes for a moment. Now that the money in his pocket was safe, and the dancer’s body no longer accessible, it gleamed and swayed before him with a more teasing appeal than before.

“Come, come, Khawaja Faris,” said the estate agent, “you’re only a few years older than me, and this is the modern age we’re living in. You think only bachelors permit themselves these distractions? What’s the harm in it? But if you’re not in the mood to-night, some other time perhaps.” Having extricated himself from all immediate commitments, Khawaja Jamil could afford to become expansive and seductive again. He enjoyed toying with the whetted but not-to-be-fulfilled desires of this limited, primitive village merchant.

Faris Deeb had never been more in the mood. In fact, he had never been in it at all till that night. In the village, he had from time to time lusted in his heart after this or that woman in a passing way, never as a practical proposition, never with fulfilment as a possible, attainable goal. He did not know how to court women, how to make the first move. In his courtship with Rosa twenty-five years before, it was she who had made the first move, and since then the experience had not been repeated. But here it was different. Here the women were there specially for it. All you had to do was to pay, and he could pay if he wanted to. His hand clasped his wallet again. How much, he wondered? Three pounds? Five pounds? The dancer, wriggling her belly, swaying her hips, clicking the fingers of her two hands held together above her head, and jerking her bust with convulsive little movements that shook her breasts provokingly under their veil of beads, came forward towards their table, giving Khawaja Jamil a smile as she did so.

“You seem to find favour in her eyes,” said Faris Deeb.

“Oh, she smiles at all the patrons,” said the estate agent, casually.

The dancer stood before them for a few moments, only six feet away, and the lust in Faris Deeb, vanquishing his avarice as nothing had vanquished it before, made a mental bid of ten pounds. With a violent thumping in his heart and a growing weakness in his knees, he said to his companion:

“If you have a mind to invite her, don’t let my presence stand in the way. I shall have to be leaving for the village shortly anyhow.” Desperately he hoped that Khawaja Jamil would take the hint, invite the girl and one of her companions, press him to delay his return to the village. The bidding in his mind went up to fifteen pounds as his eyes gazed now at the dancer’s navel, now at the tips of her trembling breasts. Surely, fifteen pounds should cover everything—the whisky, the champagne and all that was to follow. On these hopes and daring calculations, Khawaja Jamil slammed the door by saying:

“I didn’t want it for myself, Khawaja Faris; I’m here every night. It was to provide you with a little entertainment—but as you must be going back to Barkita soon there will be no time. Let us hope there will be other occasions. I will accompany you to the car stand. What time were you thinking of leaving?”

Faris Deeb’s thwarted desire turned into a murderous hate for his companion. He pulled at his watch-chain and took out of his waistcoat pocket the old, nickel watch, his father had given him on his twenty-first birthday. “I think I will be going now,” he said curtly. “It’s eleven o’clock.”

“Well, let me know as soon as you’ve made up your mind about that little property. If you decide to buy—and, by my honour, you will not find a better bargain going in Tripoli for a long time—we will have a big celebration. We will come here again, and there will be no nonsense about your having to go back to Barkita so early in the evening. The fun here begins only after midnight. You’ll have to stay till morning. But let me whisper a secret in your ear: this pretty piece from Cairo you’ve taken such a fancy to is only staying another week, so don’t let matters slide for too long.”