The Cheapest Nights Read online

  That night we were sitting together, just a handful of boys from the town, their muddy feet full of cracks, their clothes in rags, their faces an indefinite blur of tanned hide. We sat exhaling odors of our dinner in the light summer air: onions and cheese and pickled peppers and sardines and leeks. The wheat was all around us, some of it swaying in the fields, some of it already tied in sheaves and lined up in small bundles like rows of prostrated worshippers. Nearby the threshing machine crouched like a kneeling camel, and the scent of the new crop floated in the air mingling with the smell of the earth, wet with dew, and the reek of our sweat which, like ourselves, had suffered a change, acquiring an odor which was intensely male.

  It was nights such as this that gave Mohamed’s talk its peculiar fascination. His voice, where a manly ring had already settled, unlike ours, was steady, and he held us spellbound by his manner of recounting a story. He told us about many places, near and far, some of which we knew, some we didn’t, nor he himself for that matter. Strange, exotic places which called up visions of well-dressed people, and railways, and tall buildings. We usually kept him till the end, after we had exhausted our own stock of gossip about our town, and its women, and how we ogled them, and how they ogled us. And then we would let Mohamed take over.

  That night we could tell from the way he began that he wanted to tell us about the bedouin woman he had met at the village fair. But we stopped him when we saw he was beginning to cheat, rehashing things we had heard before. We wanted something new for we knew him by now. He had a trick of starting with a lengthy preamble then stopping abruptly in the middle so that we would coax him to go on, promising wheat and maize and eggs in return. Sometimes too he would clam up suddenly for no reason and nothing we said would make him change his mind.

  “Listen, boys,” he began that night. “I’m going to tell you something that happened to me on condition you don’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”

  “Promise.”

  “You swear on God’s Holy Book?”

  “Swear.”

  “And anyone who squeals . . .”

  “Is a stinking creep.”

  “And the son of a dog.”

  “The son of a dog.”

  “Well,” he began. “I was going to Mansura one day, on business . . .”

  “Liar, you’ve never been to Mansura.”

  “I have, I swear on the Holy Book.”

  We believed him, panting with excitement. We couldn’t help it. He was going to tell us about Mansura which none of us had ever seen. But we had all heard about it, all sorts of fantastic things. We imagined it to be a vast Garden of Eden, full of Europeans and milk-white girls, and women draped in shiny melayas1 that shimmered when they walked. We imagined their bodies to be boneless, and their flesh soft and malleable like Turkish delight. We imagined their men to be sops; no match for their women who desired real men. Men like ourselves, coarse peasants with the strength of a bull.

  “Go on,” we said to Mohamed.

  After he got off the train, he said, he had seen to the business that took him there, and seeing he still had some time left before he caught the train back, he bought himself a loaf of bread to eat while he took a stroll down the road where the station was. It was full of big houses with large verandas. It was late afternoon and most of the women were out taking the air. Bunches of them; had they been dealt out to the men in our town each man would have come out with a cluster.

  Well, as he was going along, his eye was caught by one veranda where a women was leaning over the railing wearing a red dressing gown.

  “What’s a dressing gown?”

  “Oh, something like a robe.”

  We were always skeptical of the things he said. We listened to him like magistrates oscillating between belief and disbelief. There was always a suspicion he was pulling our legs.

  Mohamed went on with his story. He was just passing under that balcony, he said, when the woman smiled at him. He thought she was smiling at someone else but the street was deserted except for himself and when he looked back at her she smiled again. We grabbed Mohamed by his gallabieh.

  “Careful now, don’t you leave anything out,” we said, gasping.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you everything.”

  It didn’t matter whether his story were true or not as long as he kept on with it.

  “Well,” he continued, “she smiled again, boys, and my heart began to pound, and I said to myself, this is your lucky day, boy. I pretended I didn’t notice and looked at her again and she laughed. I could do with a glass of zibib, I thought to myself.”

  “What’s zibib?”

  “That’s brandy, boys.”

  “And what’s brandy?”

  “That’s drink, liquor.”

  Here, we got afraid. Mohamed taking liquor? We allowed him women, but not liquor. However, for Mohamed’s sake we were willing to close an eye to that.

  “Then what.”

  “I found a tavern open, owned by a European. So I went in. ‘Hey, mister,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Give me a zibib. I want the real stuff. And I want cucumbers for a snack.’”

  “Snack? What’s that?”

  “Cucumbers.”

  We didn’t dare repeat the question, as we were more anxious to hear what was coming.

  “I drank it up, and what do you think? It turned me on. My blood caught fire. And to make double sure I ordered another one before I took myself back to her street.”

  “And you went past her house again?”

  “I did.”

  “And she smiled at you?”

  “A smile that gave wings to my soul, boys. One hell of a beautiful woman, and she was wearing . . .”

  “What?”

  “She was wearing embroidered clogs, and I could see the curves of her body under her dressing gown, and she was smiling. So I looked at her and smiled. So she smiled back.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, I was in my best clothes. My camel-hair cap, and patent leather shoes, and my silk scarf was draped over my shoulder. Besides, I’m quite a smasher, don’t forget, being young and all that. Well, I gave her a wink so she went inside and came back wearing a new dressing gown, of green silk. Then she signaled to me to come upstairs.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “That’s right. I must say, though, I was a little shaky. I was a stranger, after all, entering a strange house just to see a woman. Suppose I were caught, where would I be? Or suppose she had relatives. Anyway, I went up. It was the two zibibs that did it.”

  “And you went inside her house?”

  “Can’t you be patient? I rang the bell . . .”

  “What bell?”

  “A bell at the door, with a push button . . .”

  “A bell with a push button?”

  “You ignorant peasant clots. You’ll never learn. Of course, stupid, bells have buttons. Well, she opened the door and told me to come in . . . a voice like spun sugar . . .”

  “And you went in?”

  “Stop interrupting or I won’t tell.”

  “All right, go on.”

  “I stood at the door, a little uncertain. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘don’t be afraid, my husband is away.’ So I said to myself, ‘Come on, boy, get yourself in, you only die once.’”

  “That’s right, Mohamed, damn you. Go right in.”

  “So I went in, and sat in the sitting room. Gilt chairs, boys, fit for a king, and mirrors on the walls, and colored baubles and things. After a while I found her coming in wearing a navy blue dress, something out of this world. She had a bottle and two glasses with her. She said, ‘What’s your name, young man?’ ‘Your servant, Mohamed,’ I replied. ‘You’re my master,’ she said. ‘Bless you. Would you like to sit on the chair, or just make yourself comfortable, wherever you like . . .’”

&nb
sp; “The chair, of course, you fool.”

  “No. I’m not used to sitting on chairs. I was afraid it might make me dizzy. Well, then I asked what her name was. ‘Fifi,’ she said, and then she asked if I would have a drink, and I said yes and we sat drinking, glass after glass until the room began to spin. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Are you getting tight?’ ‘Oh, no,’ I replied. ‘Would you like something to sober you up?’ she asked. I didn’t dare say yes.”

  “Silly boy. And did she get you anything?”

  “You bet. I found her coming in with a huge tray loaded with food.”

  “What was on it?”

  “Turkey stuffed with pigeon, and roast potatoes, and mutton.”

  “You lucky devil! And you ate all that?”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. She just kept feeding me . . .”

  “Have you no shame, boy?”

  “Shame, my foot. I was all wound up and I stretched my hand and I touched her.”

  “Without washing your hands?”

  “I washed them, damn you. Look, who’s telling this story? I’m getting tired of you.”

  We begged him to go on, although he didn’t need to be begged. He was so carried away with his tale nothing could have stopped him.

  “I touched her, boys, and her flesh was like honey paste.”

  “Was her skin fair?”

  “Fairer than beaten cotton.”

  “And her hair, was it black?”

  “Black as pitch, down to her knees.”

  “Go on, tell, boy, what else? Mind you don’t skip anything.”

  “And her skin, boys! It was smooth and soft as silk. I said, ‘Please, I can’t stand it any longer.’ She said, ‘All right, come along.’ And she took me to the bed, and let down the mosquito-net. It was pink, I swear, and then she turned off the light.”

  “Easy now, mind you go slowly.”

  “Well, and I looked and saw the mosquito-net was shimmering. It must be doomsday, I thought to myself. And you know what? She had turned on another light inside the mosquito net. There were small colored bulbs at the top, red, green, blue, yellow . . . and I looked and saw her before me, gorgeous, bewitching. She was all colored, like a sprite . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “Then nothing. Boy, what a night! Better than anything in The Arabian Nights.”

  “What happened? Go on, you’ve got to tell. What happened next?”

  “Nothing. That’s all.”

  “Come on, what happened next? Don’t be mean, boy.”

  He condescended to add a thing or two which did nothing to satisfy our curiosity.

  “Leave him alone, he’s fibbing,” said one boy.

  “Swear all this is true,” said another.

  Mohamed swore and we got even more excited. We did not believe him. He swore on his mother’s grave that what he told us was true, every bit of it.

  “Did I ever lie to you?” he asked.

  “You’re lying now.”

  “All right, have it your way.”

  “Suppose we go to Mansura, will you take us to the place?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right, let’s go now. Right away.”

  That was a great idea. We raised a roar and cheered and yelled and shouted as we pushed and shoved one another. We got hold of Mohamed by his arms and legs and swung him about then tossed him up on the haystack. Then we took a spin on the threshing machine. We had gone quite wild. Little clouds of hay blew up in the air and settled in our eyes and covered us with dust.

  “Come on, boys, off to Mansura.”

  “Off to Mansura!” everybody shouted.

  “It’s too dark, boys.”

  “And all the digging to be done tomorrow . . .”

  But nothing was going to keep us from going to Mansura, and we started off.

  After having walked for a while we realized we had covered a large part of the way. Our town lay behind with its borders and its fields. Only then did we realize we were actually on our way to Mansura. Already we could smell foreign soil beneath our feet. It felt different back home where everything was familiar and we moved freely. Every palm tree, every field, every house where we had played and romped in our childhood was familiar, and every man was our kin. Each one of us, blindfolded, could tell the soil of our town from that of another. Suddenly we knew we were far from home.

  We were seized with panic as we stared into the dark and realized we did not know where the road was leading us. But none of us dared voice his fear. We moved on in a mass like an enormous giant with multiple heads and arms and legs, trying to melt our fears in the shelter of one another. We continued on our impetuous march, glum, silent, unbridled by reason, drawn by the magic call of Mansura, driven in spite of ourselves.

  There was only the dull sound of our bare feet on the road, like a caravan of camels. Those of us wearing shoes had long removed them and carried them tucked under their arms. We were gasping, our faces were shining, and dust kept blowing up in our wake. The night was huge and black and fearful, full of secret whispers. The plantations stretched like a vast shoreless sea. The crops stood still, moving only with the breeze, slowly, inanimately. Water-wheels creaked from afar like mourners bewailing a corpse. Gunshots sounded in the distance, out of nowhere into nowhere, and cocks crowed before their time. The barking of dogs came from reaches unknown, and a vast wind blew over a vast land, and the earth murmured, and obscure whispers came up from obscure places, sly and treacherous like the sound of huge whales twisting and turning in a sea of darkness.

  Someone stretched a hand and jabbed another in the ribs and he jumped with a yell. Soon it caught on, and we were all in an uproar, shouting, jumping, and falling all over one another.

  “What about her legs, Mohamed? Did she have legs like ours?”

  “You call those tree stumps legs, man?”

  “What were hers like?”

  “Milk-white.”

  “Like Safeya’s, the dancing girl?”

  “Don’t be an ass, Safeya’s not a patch on her.”

  “And did she have a fish tattooed on her belly?”

  “What fish, you fool! What are you talking about?”

  “Well what did she have on her belly?”

  “Nothing. A belly like hers is not made for a tattoo.”

  “And was her face painted?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “How come, silly? Didn’t you look?”

  “I think it was.”

  “And what’s her talk like? Does she speak like city folk, or like us?”

  “Like city folk, of course.”

  We all broke into a riot again. The woman had taken substance and she was standing alive before our mind’s eye, beautiful, palpable, just as we desired her.

  We jogged on, pushing and shoving and laughing and talking. Every now and then we’d make a guess as to how long it would be before we reached Mansura.

  Suddenly we realized Mohamed had disappeared.

  The shock was like a stab. We shot out wildly in all directions to catch him. Any doubt that he was telling the truth vanished. Every little detail of his story was indelibly engraved upon our minds. The lady of the red gown and the bottle became a vivid reality not just another creation of Mohamed’s brain. She was the woman each one of us already possessed. She was going to swoon with happiness when one after the other we were going to climb up to her iron-railed balcony. In her joy she was even going to give us each a one-pound note, for we were the strapping braves unmatched in all Mansura.

  And the swine goes and disappears!

  We spread ourselves out in a tight network. By the graveyard, and the railway line, and the bridge. We were not going to let this whole venture come to nothing when Mansura was already within reach. Another stretch and we woul
d find our quest. Hundreds of European women, milk-white, and so beautiful you could eat them alive, sweeter to the taste than bees’ honey and cream.

  “There he is boys,” came a shout from the distance.

  We flew in the direction of the voice and there we found Mohamed struggling with the boy who’d caught him. We threw ourselves on top of him. It wasn’t difficult to pin him down. He fought vigorously, dealing out powerful blows like a man’s. But we closed in on him like an army of ants attacking a bread crumb, until at last he was overpowered and he ceased to struggle. One boy ripped off his gallabieh and tied him with it.

  “What do you want now?” asked Mohamed defiantly.

  “You’re going to show us that place.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Yes you will.”

  “You can’t force me.”

  “You wait and see.”

  “I’ll show you, you effeminate lot of bastards!”

  “Get up!”

  He held fast to the ground and we dragged him up by force while he spluttered out angrily: “It’s a long way to Mansura, I tell you.”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m warning you. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”

  We walked on in silence, all of us tense and on edge. We thought of singing to relieve the tension. But we didn’t know any songs. Only the girls were any good at singing. One boy knew the first line of an old lay and he started to sing it but his voice was so ugly we made him shut up. Tiny luminous dots were beginning to speckle the horizon like the eyes of grasshoppers when they catch the light. They were the lights of Mansura which meant we were almost there. We broke into a run dragging Mohamed along until we were out of breath. Then we slowed to a walking pace. We walked a long time and still the lights were no closer, almost as if the nearer we approached the farther they receded, sinking in the dark.

  “Let’s go back, boys,” said Mohamed.

  “Shut up, you. Hurry up, boys, it’s getting late.”

  We summoned the remainder of our strength and walked on. All of a sudden a great peal of laughter cut through the emptiness of the road. It was Mohamed. He was doubled up, unable to control himself, and when he saw us looking at him he forced himself into new convulsions.