Nina said that Yalo was terror-struck when he saw the skeleton and ran to his comrades to tell them of the marvel. And when they came, that sector had come under fire from the enemy camp and no one was able to get to where Alexei had shed his body and left a skeleton so they abandoned him. “And when I found out I went out by myself and brought him back to the house. His bones were as white as snow, as if they had been scrubbed with soap and water. I went myself, under fire, and brought him back. All his comrades refused to come with me, afraid for their lives — what cowards! And to think that I’d taken them for soldiers of the White Army! I went by myself and brought back his bones so that his name would be remembered. His grandfather was an officer in the czar’s army and I wanted him to become like him. The bastards, they let his flesh fall off his bones. They abandoned him there and no one saw the miracle, not even that tall Syriac, Yalo, Gaby’s son, who’d seen the miracle with his own eyes, he stood there like a mute. Tall and stupid, what could he say? Alexei’s grandfather told me, this is the kind of miracle that happened in Russia in the civil war times. He said that when an officer died he became a skeleton, the bones were as white as snow. That’s what happened with my son. In Russia, they blessed the officer who shed his body at the moment of his death, and they declared him a saint. But they abandoned Alexei because they’re cowards and they don’t believe in the Holy Trinity. I offered him up to the Trinity. His father died when he was young, and I have no one left but the Trinity and that boy.”
Sister Blajiah listened and wanted to believe her, but Nina began to make scenes in front of the other old ladies, she shed her clothes and her body. The nun became certain that this woman was crazy and repeatedly told her that these thoughts were the work of the Devil.
Why did Nina come back from the old people’s shelter in Atchaneh cursing the Syriacs? Sister Blajiah knew that her son was a Syriac, like all these youths, and that her family came from the Mardin region. Where had Nina come up with the story of the grandfather who had been an officer in the White Army?
The nun decided that the woman was crazy, and gave orders that she should be given strong sedatives that put her into a hallucinatory lethargy, which may have been the cause of her vision of the Devil that led to her death.
Yalo remembered nothing that happened in the cemetery, he had erased the scene from his eyes, and the woman was wrapped in what seemed like fog. He went back to his house and decided to leave his buddies, the war, and everything.
At first, Yalo saw himself as a hero, the war had come to teach him the secrets of life. That was what he felt in the training camp where he had become a Goat. He and his comrades, poor kids from the Syriac Quarter, became the masters of the streets. Yalo understood little of the complications and convolutions of the war that made talk of it seem so useless. He believed that he was fighting for the existence of a people who had disappeared into the darkness of history, as the cohno had described the continued migrations that had brought him from Ain Ward to Beirut. “We came from the darkness of history, and we will stay in the darkness, until the sun of justice rises.” When Yalo asked him about the “sun of justice,” the cohno replied that it was the Messiah. “My boy, we are awaiting the Kingdom of the Messiah, and He said that His kingdom was not of this world.”
Yalo did not understand Lebanese politics or the language of war. He played along as if he were acting in a movie, and when he took part in a battle he felt as though he were a hero. But his feelings of heroism disappeared with time. He felt sad when he heard his mother, quoting the cohno, saying that war was useless. “We have to be yeast. We do not fight, my boy. The yeast does not fight the dough, but becomes part of it and leavens it so that it becomes bread. Leave the war and go to school. You should become a cohno like your grandfather.”
Yalo was frightened by the image of himself he saw in his mother’s eyes, for it had become a miniature version of his grandfather with his immense white beard. But what he feared above all else was the emptiness, not the sight of the bones covered with shredded clothes, but the profound emptiness of this war, which had become monotonous. The idea of war was seductive and gave you a feeling of heroism, but the war itself was tedious and repugnant.
Said al-Mansurati dreamed of becoming a singer. What a shame how he had vanished, no one ever discovered even his bones. And so Yalo agreed to go away to Paris. He saw his own apparition walking around in Paris before he became an apparition in the night of Ballouna, under the pine trees, among the sighs of lovers. When he found himself in prison, with the sheets of white paper before him, it seemed ridiculous. He had always hated writing, and hated being forced to write in school. But now he had to write a long story of his own life!
At the St. Severus School Yalo had not been a special student. He had been average at everything. He studied, managed to move from one grade to the next, but he did not possess the spark of faith that his grandfather the cohno had. He did excel at Arabic because of the books his mother had but did not read, and that was all. But Yalo did not hate school. His head rose above those of the other students in his class, because he was the tallest. He sat in a chair at the back, and Malfono Halim told him that he was as beautiful as a pretty girl.
“I’m like a girl, Malfono? What?” Yalo asked in the office of the principal, who was always summoning him to give him books to read. The malfono stroked his pupil’s wide eyes and told him that his lips were like cherries.
At that time, Yalo did not understand the meaning of sex, yet he saw something burning in the eyes of the malfono who taught them Arabic and mathematics. No, it was not true, what Said al-Mansurati told him: “We all dropped by Halim’s — he couldn’t get enough.” Yalo remembered only the malfono’s hands on his eyes and lips. But his friends spoke of something else, they spoke of the malfono’s deftness, and drew with their fingers circles around their buttocks.
“Halim, oh man, Halim!” Tony said, after pouring himself a glass of arak. “I swear, there is no one in the world with fingers as light as his.” He put his hand on his member and made as if to encompass it. “I swear — no one.” The strange thing was that unanimity regarding the malfono, that he had been with all of them.
Yalo’s memory said otherwise. It had not gone that far, in his view. The circumstances were innocent. The malfono would sit behind his desk and ask his pupil to come close in order to see his errors, and when he neared the desk the malfono had him squeeze in on his own side of the desk. The malfono would reach out and put his hand on the pupil’s bottom.
“I swear, there’s no one like him” exclaimed Tony. “Where are you, Halim, where have you gone!”
“Don’t say Halim,” said Said al-Mansurati. “We used to call him Malfono Halib because he was as delicious as milk. Good lord, what ever felt so good? His hand was wonderful, how he played. In all my life, I’ve never felt anything like it.”