Yalo had not noticed how small her eyes were before they had come to the Albert Restaurant. There in Ballouna he saw, and yet did not see, because the fragrance penetrated him and made him unable to see.
“Do you remember? I don’t know how you felt, but there, I felt like I was drowning in the smell of incense, I couldn’t see anything. Look at me close up so I can see the color of your eyes.”
Shirin had selected this restaurant and they drove there in her white Golf. He sat beside her but could not think of what to say. She had told him on the telephone to wait for her in Sassine Square in front of the Bashir Gemayel memorial at one o’clock in the afternoon. He had stood there and waited in the rain, never budging from his spot. In vain he sought shelter from the torrents of rain under part of the memorial. He did not go to the Café Chaise nearby. He was afraid that she would not find him, afraid that she would not recognize him, afraid that he would not recognize her car. And when she arrived, he did not recognize her because he had been gazing at the passing cars without really seeing them. The car stopped beside him. She opened the door and motioned to him. He saw her and fell onto the leather seat, droplets dripping from his long black coat forming puddles on the floor.
“You’re still wearing that coat?” she asked.
He did not know what to say. He had worn it for her so that she would remember that night. But he was lying without even opening his mouth, because this was a coat he could not bear to be without. He wore it in Beirut, he wore it at the war barracks near Adlieh, he wore it in Paris, and he wore it in Ballouna, and he could not bear to take it off. He even hated summer for its sake. He never parted from this coat on his hunting trips in the forest. But he did not know what to say. The spinal column idea occurred to him, and he wanted to tell her about love that could unhinge vertebrae, but he said nothing. He waited in silence until they arrived at the Albert Restaurant, where she stopped the car and they got out. She went in ahead of him and found a private corner where they were seated. Before he had a chance to tell her that he had missed her, as he had planned to do after she had agreed to go out to the restaurant with him, the waiter appeared and she asked what he wanted to drink.
“Arak,” said Yalo.
“Arak,” said Shirin with a little hesitation. “Why not.”
Yalo began to order mezze. Shirin seemed oblivious to the different dishes, or was not listening. Yalo was certain that her consent to have lunch with him would lead her, in the end, to his house in Ballouna or her house in Hazemiya.
When he had bathed at eleven o’clock that morning, as he worked the green shampoo into his hair, standing under the hot shower and closing his eyes, he saw Shirin. Water cascaded over him and his love poured out. He felt that everything was surging off his shoulders, his whole life was rushing by with the hot water, and he felt a strange elation. He pleasured himself without knowing it, and everything flowed away as he finished. He came to her, leaving his sexual desire at home. He came to her naked, without desire. His desire had washed away and he came to her with love. Love alone, he said to himself, love for the sake of love, like Abd al-Halim. A love that he did not know how to express, but he would express it. From the first time he met Shirin, he had not stopped listening to the songs of Abd al-Halim. True, he had gone out on hunting parties but did so without any real desire. He had stopped seeing Madame Randa; he had slept with her only three times in six months, and each time she had put a pornographic movie in the VCR, for he never slept with her without a movie on.
Shirin said that she would meet him in Sassine Square. So Yalo parked Madame’s car at a corner near the Lala Grill and walked toward Sassine Square.
When he had caught Shirin with the gray-haired man bent over her neck, he had thought she did not own a car. The man had sped off in his car and left her alone, shivering in the forest, and Yalo took her to his cottage because he had no other solution.
Why had she told the interrogator that he had ordered her to get out, and had asked the man to leave?
“She is lying, sir.”
When he said that she was lying, he raised his palm to his right cheek, and felt small white circles spinning out of his eyes, and then everything was a blur.
Was this really what had happened?
Yalo would spend long days in his cell trying to re-create the event exactly as it had happened, but he would fail.
When the light shone on the two victims and he ran toward them, he heard nothing. His footfalls, the sound of his cheap shoes smacking the ground, filled his ears. As always happened with him, the sound of his footsteps rose when he was on the hunt, and he heard nothing else.
He cast the beam of the flashlight on them and then advanced. When he reached the car, he saw the gray-haired man lift his head in terror before getting out of the car and standing before Yalo. Yalo looked at the girl and gestured with the muzzle of his rifle, and while his movement was not intended as an order to get out of the car, the girl opened the door and got out. Yalo turned and walked toward her, and at that moment the gray-haired man jumped back into the car, took off fast in reverse, then turned and sped off with the wheels spraying dirt. Yalo lifted his rifle and aimed it at the car, cocking it in preparation to fire, or so he thought, and he heard the girl crying. He lowered the rifle and went to her side, and silence fell between them.
Yalo guided the girl to his house after asking her to remove her high heels. He held her by the hand and stopped her and then walked with her, and when he realized she was stumbling because of the high heels, he looked at them and she understood, so she removed them without being asked. She carried her shoes in her right hand and walked beside him. Still, she kept stumbling and also fell down at one point. She bent over as if about to fall, and he bent over her, but she regained her balance and stood up. He grasped her left hand and led her to where he had smelled the radiating scent of incense from her beautiful white arms.
Why had she lied to the interrogator, telling him that she had been with her fiancé?
Yalo did not remember that he had told her that her arms were like rice pudding, but there in the restaurant, after he had slapped her, and they had finished eating, Yalo ordered rice pudding. Shirin had smiled because she remembered that he had told her that her arms were sweeter than rice pudding.
No, he had not slapped her because of the sparrows as she claimed to the interrogator, but because she had offered him money and he despised money. He ate a dozen fried sparrows and drank half a bottle of local arak before slapping her for insulting his honor.
No, what she said was not true. He had not ordered her to kneel, she and her fiancé. She had knelt down after the gray-haired man left. Nor had she been with her fiancé. The young man who sat in the interrogation room had not been with her there in the forest.
She told the interrogator that he had ordered them to kneel and then pointed his rifle at them, intending to kill her fiancé, Emile Shahin, but she implored him to spare him, and he did.
“You are Emile?” asked the interrogator.
“Yes, yes, Emile Shahin,” replied the young man.
“Do you have anything to add?”
“Shirin said it all,” said Emile.
She said that he had ordered Emile to say his prayers before he was killed in front of his lover. “Then I began to plead with him, and I cried, but he was still stubborn, with his gun aimed at my fiancé’s head, so I screamed, I don’t know where I found the strength. Emile jumped up and ran to the car and escaped, thank God, my fiancé was able to escape, but I was trapped with this bandit.”
“Daniel, what do you have to say in response?” the interrogator asked.
Yalo felt tongue-tied, he fell mute. The pebble came back. His mother used to put a small pebble under his tongue so that he could learn to speak without stuttering. Then he forgot the stutter when he saw the blood, that is what he would have written had he been able to see his life in the mirror of days, but he was standing here, feeling his mother’s pebble under his tongue, and found no words to speak.