Love in the Kingdom of Oil (13 page)

In her childhood her head had become filled with this thought, and also innumerable other thoughts that poured into her from all around as she watched the stars. Under these lights, she saw life with the utmost clarity, like an open book, in total simplicity. She saw that death is simpler than life and begins at the moment of birth, that pregnancy accelerates death, that marriage is illogical, that kings and gods are villains and have committed many sins, and that she had witnessed the death of her father while she was a fetus in her mother’s womb, and had been so happy at that event that she had slipped out of the womb.

At that moment she felt her body slip of its own accord under the bridge. When she returned to the house she would receive a heated telling off or would remain without supper. However, every sunset she would walk to the bridge, sit in her place there and wait for the stars to appear, as if she was discovering something new every time the lights appeared.

‘What in the name of the Lady of Purity can any of us women lose?’

Nevertheless, none of the women thought of running away. She did not understand the mystery. Why was the woman forced to return when she would not lose anything if she did not return? Perhaps apart from a violent beating. But the women began to make off in the darkness. All she heard of them were distant whispers like the rustling of the wind.

‘This woman is thinking of running away.’

‘A woman without a mind.’

‘Satan’s got hold of her mind.’

‘Rather it’s the jar that heats up the mind.’

‘Curses on that jar. It’s a headache to all of us.’

‘Have mercy on us, Lady of Purity.’

* * *

The man had returned suddenly. He began to lift the jar off the ground while she knelt down on her knees like a camel. With a single movement the jar came onto her head. All that separated it from her hair was the wase wrapped round and tied above the forehead. The heat began to seep through and her neck began to twist. She was wondering what she could lose. There was nothing that she could lose apart from that rubbing that occurred while she was asleep, when his arm reached out in the darkness and took hold of her hand, and she would abandon it to him simply because she was sound asleep. If she was not sound asleep, she would also abandon it to him, but with stabs of conscience. Then she would withdraw it from him with a yawn and turn over on the other side to face the wall.

‘Is there not even the beginning of love between us?’

Perhaps that was his voice, or her voice. Both of them discovered this doubt too late. It had been clearly present right from the beginning. But everything was obscure and difficult to understand. Perhaps it was the oil or the heat in the head. Perhaps it was also the shyness that occurs when love is absent and when friendship between a man and woman is not there. If these are absent what can bring the man and woman together?

‘What are you saying?’

‘Pregnancy.’

The man was standing in his place with his shoulders drooping. His chest was bare against the night. She saw him tense the muscles of his face and open his mouth. A movement very similar to a smile of love. However, it was more ferocious than a wolf’s snarl. He may get involved in acts of love, but that was only because of his despair, the intense heat or the swollen skin.

‘Man is superior to woman, even in love.’

‘Do you mean self-love?’

‘Listen! What are those voices?’

She could not hear anything. Perhaps they were voices emerging from the past, or from an imagination affected by sunstroke. In spite of that she could understand the relationship between self-love and the sex instinct.

She raised her arm upwards and took hold of the bottom of the jar, afraid that it might fall. She plunged her feet in the well. As she plunged in she realised that there was something else in her childhood that she could not forget, namely the look in her aunt’s eyes before the cart disappeared into the night with the dogs. The rain beat down more fiercely because of the wind, and the black particles were flying about more swiftly, resembling cockroaches flying in the night. In spite of the rain and the slipperiness of the ground, she had to carry two or three times the number of jars in the hope of obtaining a return ticket, or half a ticket. They may cut the price by half for child minors or for women of good reputation, or for sick or feeble-minded men.

She plunged in to the bottom fearlessly. She let the gushing waves of oil slap her chest and tear her
jallaba.
Her body became naked and twisted with the movement of the wave. She panted like a child swimming. Water entered her lungs and she groaned. She raised her arm and shook violently, in a dance like that of a chicken just after it has had its throat cut.

The storm died down a little, and her body became calmer as well. Her mind began to work. Yes, her mind had no other work apart from thinking about running away. She could have run away at that moment, except that her body was buried in the ground. The man also was standing above her head like a hawk. Her boss at work did not stop asking how many jars she had carried. Why are you late coming to work? There was a register to be signed on arrival and departure. She had to sign every day, on arrival and departure, and enter the number of jars that she had carried.

‘Yes, if her body is buried in this place, why not begin digging immediately?’

She determined immediately to take up the chisel and begin searching again. She had no other goal apart from discovering her body. If she did not find the whole body, perhaps she would find a limb or two, or some remains. Perhaps chance would smile on her and she would discover a goddess as well. Enthusiasm poured into her like a surge of muscular energy. She pulled on the strap like someone who was about to hit two birds with one stone.

It was very hot. She took the bag off her shoulder, and the strap as well. She undid the buttons of her cloak and rid herself of her clothes completely. Her body appeared younger than she had imagined. The thought came to her that another body other than her own had slipped with its power into the space that she was occupying. In vain she tried to put her hand on it. There was someone holding her hand in his hand. Perhaps it was the man. Who else? He was telling her off because she had not prepared the supper. The evenings when he did not rebuke her, he used to go off into a deep sleep, without saying a word or even looking at her.

The heat did not disturb her, perhaps because she was naked. A slight breeze caressed her breasts. Her eyes widened as she saw that naked body. Her astonishment increased when she moved it the other way and it disappeared.

She had to move her head a little to see it again. A tall body with tort muscles, particularly her stomach muscles, no doubt because she had never been pregnant, and her neck muscles, no doubt because of the jars. Also the muscles of her right arm, no doubt because she had been digging with the chisel. Her fingers were long and tapering, suggestive of movement without actually moving, and her nails were black.

She had never previously considered her body from as close as this. The bridge of her nose was red and inflamed because of the sun and her eyelids were swollen. Her shoulders fell away sharply to right and left. They were a dark bronze colour like the colour of the mummy. Her real flesh began at the chest. Two breasts that stuck out proudly, hot as if heated from inside by a hidden spirit, and two coy nipples that beat with another pulse emanating from an unknown depth.

Her eyes followed on downwards and her body slipped away. They froze on a forest of hair below the stomach. She tried in vain to look. She had never been able to see clearly. If she tried to look closely, she felt her eyes becoming inflamed. She could never penetrate this forest, which appeared hollow to her, in spite of its thickness. Was that because of the emptiness of the world!?

What most used to disturb her was that she was incapable of gazing for a long time into her eyes. She saw them as hollow under the bone of her forehead that was as dry as the ground. She looked at them as if they were two remote spots on the horizon, more distant than the stars, as if they were the eyes of another woman looking out on her from behind the clouds.

‘No doubt the eyes of a goddess.’

She had determined the place according to the map. She continued to dig throughout the day from sunrise to sunset. She had no doubt about the place. The smell of her body rose from the depths of the earth. There was nothing that indicated the body apart from the smell. However, by the end of the day, she had not come across anything. She came out empty-handed with the chisel.

Perhaps she had been mistaken about the place. There was nothing like a mistake for restoring hope to her. She picked up her bag and moved to another place which she imagined to be the right one. The smell rose more strongly from it. The stronger the smell became, the more convinced she was that she was near her body. She dug until she reached the bottom. She did not find anything and moved to another place. She was not prepared to accept despair. The day passed while she dug in vain. She continued day after day to hug hope to her bosom, and every day she moved from one place to another. Finally, when the last day came to an end and the sun set, her body collapsed in exhaustion and she burst into tears.

‘Would it be better to go back to carrying jars?’

But tears flowed down like compressed steam. Her head was lightened somewhat from the pressure, and then she opened her eyes. She realised that her eyelids were swollen and that her tears had mixed with the particles of oil. However, her mind was strangely clear, and a thought came to her from afar like a star shining in the darkness of the night. The absence of goddesses in this place did not mean their absolute absence. Moreover, the earth rotates, so perhaps places are exchanged as the earth rotates.

‘A totally logical thought.’

There was evidence in support of this thought. The position of her body had indeed changed. It was no longer in the place it had been in at the beginning. The gushing waterfall had swept her to another place. And in the depths of the earth, the current was also keeping people’s remains in continuous motion. In this way it would be possible for her remains to cross the border, if it were not for the checkpoint, unless of course the guard was sound asleep.

Perhaps it was her bad luck. The guard was awake, for no other reason than that the mosquitoes were awake. The pesticides also were cheated for the mosquitoes gobbled them up in the twinkling of an eye, and one of them would become the size of a frog. Yes, some of the bodies could manage to get through passport control. Perhaps her body would have been successful in running away without a ticket or written permission in her husband’s handwriting, or a yellow paper stamped with the hawk and the signature of her boss at work. She had no intention of breaking the law. She was a model of obedience and fidelity. It would at least have been possible for her remains to pass without tests, if it was not for the establishment of the building that was later called the pathology laboratory. In her dreams at night, she could not look at her body stretched out on the cold marble operating table, her nose full of formalin.

She felt a cupped hand rocking her. It was of course the hand of the man. Who else could it be? His voice in her ear was as gentle as the breeze, ‘When it comes down to it, the smell of formalin is no worse than oil.’

He was totally truthful in what he said. The smell of formalin seemed more delicate. Or perhaps it was the dream, since in dreams things become more beautiful simply because they do not really exist. A thought came to her that she must be beautiful now in the eyes of her husband simply because she was not there.

Following a violent blow she was thrown to the ground and lost consciousness. She could not keep her feet fixed in their place. The current dragged her off in a direction she could not determine. Before she could recover her senses a sound like the siren of a boat rang out. She was being rushed along towards the shore, and she began to hear the sound of waves, like drums.

‘Help!’

The cry broke from her like the sound of a slaughtered animal. She could have lived like the other women, and then died, if it had not been for that chisel and those sunset sessions on the bridge when she was a child, and that light. Enough! Enough! There was no point now in anything.

‘Help!’

Her voice rang out like a whistle amidst the beating of the drums, or the whistle of silence that rings in the ear before the last breath. Apart from the fact that she was seeing the sail from afar. A white dot on the horizon. It was the first time any boat had appeared on the sea. Her eyes discovered the light. A spot of great clarity. As clearly defined as a drop of water. Clear and pure and sweet like the voice of her mother entering her ears before she was born.

‘Hold my hands!’

She saw a long arm with five fingers extended at full stretch towards her. She stretched out her arm as she used to do when she was a child. Her eyes were fixed firmly on the point of light. She jumped forwards shaking with intoxication. The voice in her ears was as clear and as definite as the stars.

‘Put your hand in mine.’

She moved her body so as to stretch out her arm further. The voice disappeared as if the movement had dispelled it or as if it had been drowned out by the din of the drums and the barking of the dogs in the distance. Darkness fell resembling the cavity of the womb. She realised that her mother must have lived this moment, when the sun was setting and the universe was drowning in darkness. She used to sit like her on the bridge. Her eyes were alert and when the lights appeared, her body trembled as she used to tremble, and her heart beat vigorously, on the point of discovering the thing that always used to appear as if it was nothing.

The lake stretched endlessly before her eyes. The man had turned round and returned to the house. His back had become humped after having collapsed in bed. He was sleeping heavily and she was lying down with eyelids closed. In her dreams, she never stopped running away. She surrendered her legs to the wind. Behind her there was something running on two legs, or sometimes four or six. She was not able to count the legs or the paws. The sound of panting behind her was loud. It had a regular rhythm like snoring. When she turned round, she could not see anything running behind her apart from her black shadow on the ground.