57. An Unholy Alliance
To his dying day, Musa Salibi didn’t believe it had been his fault. And after a long period suffering from Parkinson’s disease he died, an embittered old man, in a hostel for indigent Christian senior citizens.
When Rimon Rasmalo defeated him in the ring, he had spent two weeks trying to make his peace with his fiancée, but he thought he could tell that Claire already had someone else.
Then she went off to Mala, and he followed her in the general’s car. On the way he went over everything, preparing for a reasonable conversation. But when he reached the village no one would talk to him, and Claire had changed entirely. She turned him away as soon as he arrived. You have to be patient with women, he told himself, and kept calm. Then she threw the little box containing the engagement ring out of the door. He was bewildered. She was acting outrageously, and someone in love never does that. To Musa, it was immediately clear that she was just a whore.
He found her mother as cold as ice too. When he tried getting her to explain herself, she said straight out that she had never liked him. He could always visit his friend in jail and complain to him, she added. Musa took his engagement ring and drove back to Damascus that very evening.
He had been tricked. Mother and daughter, both of them whores! And the malice in that old viper’s voice when she told him Claire was in very good hands, so he had better look for a girl of his own class. Just whose hands was Claire in? The woman he had thought of as his future mother-in-law wouldn’t say. She simply shut the door in his face.
For a long time he couldn’t make out why they had treated him so shabbily, until it came to his ears six months later that Claire had eloped with the son of a rich farmer from Mala. Musa was seething with rage. Eloped — a likely story! The old procuress had fixed it all. He could forget a good deal, but not hypocrisy. Claire always used to say she found the primitive peasants in the village repulsive. Lies, all of it! Camouflage! He had just been used to inflame the desire of other, richer men who took special pleasure in robbing the poor of their women. Musa swore revenge, but until the day when a man came to the boxing club in the summer of 1938 and asked for him he didn’t know how to go about it.
Elias had just bought an old olive warehouse in the Christian quarter, in Bab Tuma Street on the corner of Bakri Alley, and in the record time of three weeks he turned it into a modern confectioner’s shop with a glass and marble façade. Many rich Christians lived nearby, and the nearest good confectioner’s shop belonged to an Armenian, was tiny, and lay in Bab Sharki.
Elias was hoping to be reconciled with his father soon. Claire was in her third pregnancy, and this time he felt sure that, in the safe surroundings of her own city, she would bring a healthy baby into the world. The baby would soften up that old fossil George Mushtak. Nothing in the world touches a man’s heart like a grandchild, he told himself.
The opening of his shop at the beginning of September augured well. People crowded in to try the new sweetmeats, and Elias sold his entire stock that day, down to the very last item. Every customer went away with a present: a china plate with a coloured print of the shop on it. This cheap plate, which cost only a couple of piastres, made the new confectioner famous in a day. It was the first advertising campaign in Damascus. Elias had followed the example of his master Gandur, who always brought the latest ideas home from Paris.
Claire’s belly was rounding out, and she and Elias were glad that August had passed without any mishap, in spite of the heat. In her first pregnancy she had lost the child after two months, in the second one after three months.
One evening Nuri the flower seller came into the confectioner’s shop. He was drunk as usual, but he seemed to have something he was bent on saying. He stood at the counter and waited for the last customers to leave.
“Guess who came asking after you! It’s a small world,” he said, laughing. “My old school friend Musa,” he continued, holding on to the edge of the counter. His gaze strayed around uncertainly for a moment, as if he couldn’t make up his mind what he was looking for. Then it fell on Elias, who wasn’t really interested in his neighbour’s babbling, but like everyone else had to put up with him.
“Musa who?” asked Elias out of politeness.
“Musa who? I know only one Musa — Musa Salibi.”
Elias stopped what he was doing. He had been sorting out the day’s takings; now his hand froze with the lira notes in it.
Nuri noticed nothing amiss. “I said to him, why are you asking me where he lives? Ask him yourself, I said. He’s a nice guy, I’m sure he’ll answer your questions. But he didn’t want to. Where do you live, anyway? I didn’t know what to tell him. He wanted to know what time you come here and what time you go home. ‘He works from six to six,’ I said. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right,” replied Elias. His throat was dry. He watched Nuri weave his unsteady way back to his flower shop. Almost mechanically, Elias cleared out the till and entered the day’s accounts in an exercise book. He listed next day’s tasks and orders on a piece of paper, to leave his memory free for more important things. It was a trick he had learned from the Jesuits. He locked the safe and put his keys in his pocket.
Suppose this boxer, whom he had never met but who, according to Claire, was a muscle-man almost two metres tall, humiliated him here in the middle of the Christian quarter? Suppose he came into the shop, picked a quarrel, and demolished the expensive furnishings? The three crystal chandeliers alone had cost a fortune. And his customers? What would his frightened customers think of the new confectioner?
He was still deep in thought when Ali, who ran errands for him, came out of the stock-room and said good night.
“Wait a moment,” he cried, for the sight of big, strong Ali had given him an idea.
Ali was a young farmer whose small plot of land stopped producing anything but dust and thistles in the long drought. He had come to Damascus to look for work. Ali was a bachelor, and his arms were incredibly strong. That was why Elias had hired him. He had found him a small, cheap room near the shop, and kept a fatherly eye on the young man.
“I want you to help me,” said Elias. “There’s a man who bears me a grudge and wants to attack me, I don’t know why. But he’s two metres tall and a boxer. Could you take him on if the worst comes to the worst?” And he offered the young man a fine Bafra cigarette.
“I don’t know how to box, sir, but I was always best in the village at cudgel-fighting. Give me a good stout stick for a cudgel and no one will touch you. A lot of men carry walking sticks these days. A good oak stick would be best,” said the young man, his eyes shining.
“But what will we do if he comes into the shop?” asked Elias.
Ali had no answer to that.
“Right,” said Elias, “from tomorrow you’ll wear a clean white coat and a white cap, and stand out in front at the entrance to help me. You’ll welcome the customers in and help the old folk. Then it will look as if you’re there as a doorman. And if someone tries making trouble, you take him out quickly and quietly, and once you’re well outside you can break all his bones.”
“That’s fine,” said Ali, “but who’s going to do my work in the stock-room?”
“Don’t worry about that. From now on you’re my bodyguard. I can hire someone else for the stock-room work until this cloud has passed over.”
“But what after that? Do I get my old job back, or will I have to go home?” asked Ali uncertainly.