Читать книгу The Cruel Fire - Edward Atiyah - Страница 6

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The car from Tripoli, in which Faris Deeb took a seat for Barkita, deposited him on the main road in the valley a few minutes before midnight. From there to his house on the hillside was a short walk of some fifteen or twenty minutes by a footpath which passed close to his apple orchard, whose crop he had sold that morning, while it was still on the trees, and was to deliver the following Sunday. The light of a large moon flooded the valley, but the only noises to be heard in it, as Faris Deeb started to walk, were those of the receding car that had brought him from Tripoli and was now on its way to the next village, and of the river, lapping its banks or tumbling over a rock here and there. The pool, which the river formed in a pocket among the rocks, gleamed with silver reflections in the distance.

Faris Deeb was still thinking of the Egyptian dancer. The shapes and motions of her body filled his drunken brain, and his own body ached with the hunger they had provoked. In imagination he sought the fulfilments which had eluded him in reality, constructed the scene which had never taken place. Would it really take place if he bought the property within the coming week? His avarice made further fantastic concessions. He would pay twenty pounds, twenty-five pounds. But was the estate agent serious? Without him he could do nothing, even with twenty-five pounds. He did not know how to set about these things. He couldn’t go to the cabaret by himself, take a table, invite a girl, didn’t know how to start, what to say. His dependence on the estate agent for the pleasure he wanted tormented him. And, rough villager though he was, a strange sense of shame made it impossible for him to go to the agent and say, “Look here, I want that girl. I’ll pay twenty-five pounds for her. I’ll buy that property if you fix it up for me.” Why couldn’t he? They were both property, weren’t they? Both for sale?

His thoughts were suddenly arrested by something he saw. A figure moved on the river bank just behind his orchard, shadowy and, as it seemed to him, stealthy. He stood still and peered through the trees. The figure appeared and disappeared, with slow and careful motion, as though picking its way on the rocks that surrounded the pool, some hundred yards from where he stood. His suspicious nature instantly prompted the thought that somebody was coming to steal his apples, fill a sack with them and sell them the next day in the market. By God, he would teach the rascal and the whole village a lesson! He would catch the thief red-handed and give him the thrashing of his life before dragging him to the police post!

With this intention he went into the orchard and began to advance slowly and noiselessly in the direction of the moving figure. For a few moments he lost it behind a clump of trees, but he was getting very close to it now and he took careful steps so as not to frighten the marauder away before he could catch him in the act of committing his crime. When a few moments later the figure reappeared, now only ten yards away or so, Faris Deeb was dumbfounded. It was the figure of a woman, standing among a group of rocks above the pool, with her back to him, taking off her clothes. He stood utterly still behind a tree, so that she could not see him even if she turned round, and gazed at her. He was certain, without seeing her face, that she was not a local woman. No woman of the village would be mad enough to come bathing in this pool at midnight by herself. It must be an English or American woman from the hotel. These Westerners were eccentric enough for anything.

Although the woman obviously thought that she was completely unobserved, Faris Deeb at first imagined that she had a bathing costume on underneath her dress, and that all he was going to see when she had finished stripping was a sight similar to some he had seen once or twice on the beaches of Tripoli when he had visited the town in summer, but rendered more exciting by night and the solitude of the place. He and this woman were alone in the valley, and she did not know that he was watching her as she removed her surface clothing. He waited to see her in her bathing costume. But when the clothes came off—some pulled over her head, some unfastened behind her back, some sliding down her legs—there was no bathing costume. She stood for a moment naked in the moonlight, then bent forward and dived into the pool.

Shameless woman! thought Faris Deeb with provoked lust masquerading as offended modesty. What does she think this place is—a brothel? I have a good mind to give her a thrashing when she comes out; she deserves it even more than an apple thief would have done. By God, I’ll take her clothes away before she comes out! That would make her look a fool of a bitch, having to go back to the hotel naked!

While these expressions of hypocritical indignation were whirling round the surface of his mind, Faris Deeb’s eyes gazed immovably at the bathing figure, and his body clamoured with a dark and imperious urge. When the bather swam towards the farther end of the pool, he crept forward and stood behind the trunk of a nearer tree, only a few yards from where the woman’s clothes were. Then the bather swam back towards him. At first she was doing a gentle breast stroke, and he could only see her head above the water, but the face was distinct enough to show him that she was both young and pretty. The water around her rippled with broken gleams of moonlight. The head came nearer and nearer. Then it stopped, and Faris Deeb’s heart beat with a giddy excitement at what he saw next. The bather spread her arms out, dipped her head into the water and let her body rise to the surface in a straight, motionless line, the legs held close together, the feet thrusting gently in and out of the water. She remained thus for a few seconds, then she turned over and floated on her back, her breasts and the swell of her belly just above the edge of the water.

A hundred thousand Egyptian belly dancers could not have provided such a spectacle for the eyes of Faris Deeb. Although he had little poetry in his soul, the beauty of this secret, natural vision in its setting of moonlit water among the rocks and trees had a magic which overwhelmed him. The desires which had first stirred in him in the public, artificial atmosphere of the cabaret sharpened to an unbearably exquisite yearning. And—the thought flamed up suddenly in his brain, sweet and terrifying with its seductive power—here, the object of his desire was immediately accessible. He would not have to pay twenty-five pounds. He would not have to wait on the estate agent’s favour. What his eyes saw, his hands could stretch out and seize. He had heard that these English and American women were only too willing. Perhaps, she was lying there hoping that some man would see her. Perhaps that was why she had done this thing.

At these thoughts a terrible agitation shook him. A great desire urged him on, but a great fear held him back; and in this state of tormenting conflict he remained for a few minutes motionless behind the tree. Afraid of the vision, and of the temptations it was whipping up in him, he shut his eyes. Then, desire overcoming fear by the weight of a straw, he opened them again and took a step forward. And just then, the bather came out of the water. Faris Deeb’s courage faltered again. He gazed, helplessly and furiously, at the bather as she dried herself with a small towel. The minutes were slipping quickly. Soon she would be dressed, she would be gone. Yet, he could not move. Sick with rage at her provocation, at his cowardice, he took comfort again in moral indignation. “Shameless woman!” he muttered to himself. “Harlot! I shall report this to the municipality; they must not allow it to happen again. This is my orchard. I won’t have naked women swimming next to it. By God, I won’t!”

In a moment the woman had put on her few clothes and departed, walking back to the hotel. Faris Deeb watched her go, then, raging with frustration and self-contempt, he left the orchard and headed again for home—and Rosa.