Yalo (30 page)

Yalo did not see colors, he was living with his eyes closed. Yes, sir, I kept my eyes closed, I wanted to stay in the heart of black. Black was my life, I lost all sensation, I was living as if in a long dream. Then a woman entered my life, a respectable woman for whom I had nothing but esteem. This woman, whose home I lived in as a guard, viewed me as a poor and solitary kid, she had compassion for me. She then taught me to love my body. Had it not been for her, my black and blocked pores would never have opened. The first time she spoke with me, she asked, “Why are you a shade of blue? I am olive-skinned and tan easily, and I didn't know that my skin had turned such a deep blue-black. When I went back to my house below the villa, I looked in the mirror and discovered that my skin had turned as black as the things I had seen. This mirror had restored to me my color and my sense of life. The sex and love I tasted with Madame Randa Salloum were greater than the love tasted by all the men in the world. Her love brought me back to life, but opened in my heart a bottomless well. I became, when I stood in the garden and breathed in the scent of pine, I felt excited. Yes, sir, I became a part of nature, and nature knows
no boundaries between things. That is what led me to the cars and all the trouble. Right away I felt as if I were living in a dream – up at the villa, with the lady teaching me the subtle art of love, and down in the woods I felt as if the cars were animals constantly mating with one another. And the odor of sex was everywhere.

I lived in the Villa Gardenia, which belonged to Michel Salloum, near the Church of St. Nicholas. I only went to mass once, because I missed the icons and the fragrance of the incense. Ballouna became like a triangle: the villa, the forest, and the church.

Yalo went astray by stealing, but stealing was not his objective. He stole by chance; he stole because they made him steal. That is, when he went down to watch from up close. He fell into the trap of money, and the lure of jewels, and that is not right, sir, not only because stealing is a sin, but also because money distorts things and dilutes pleasures.

As for rape, it is true that I raped, but I did not know that it was called rape. I thought that was what sex was – you came upon a woman and didn't need to explain anything. That was stupid.

Yes, Yalo was stupid, because later on he discovered, when he was stricken by the affliction of love, that this sort of sex was meaningless. Even so, not even love could prevent him from having this sort of sex, because human beings are sinful by nature.

I was confused, sir. Yalo was Shirin's lover and thought only of her, but even so continued to take lovers and have sex with women whenever the circumstances permitted him to. Perhaps it was the place – the place, sir, the forest was full of devils that swarmed around the fragrances of pine sap and wild grasses. I don't know, I never lived on the mountain. My grandfather lived in a village that was said to resemble Paradise, but me, I have only lived in the city, in the Syriac Quarter in Mseitbeh and al-Mrayyeh in Ain Rummaneh. Our first house had a yard full of trees, mostly acacia trees with white and yellow flowers that have a beautiful scent. But the smells of our yard have nothing to do with the smells of the Ballouna forest.
When the fragrance of pine mingled with that of cypress, the place became strange and lust-inspiring.

I am sure that Shirin loved me. My problem is that I didn't understand her love and I didn't know how to deal with it. The girl had a nervous breakdown after her fiancé left her, and she fell in love with the doctor who gave her an abortion. Yalo's relationship with her would have worked if Yalo had shown his true personality, but he played games with her and scared her away. He had a true passion for her and dreamed of marrying her. When in love, a person takes risks, sometimes everything is lost, and this is what happened. Shirin was afraid, and she was right to be. When a person wants something too much, it escapes from him. This is what happened to Mme Randa with me, I began to feel like an object in her hands and that she could no longer do without me, that's why I took off. The same thing happened with Shirin, only she loved Yalo. I can assure you, sir, she loved me. She would tremble with love whenever we met, I realize that now. Before I thought she was trembling because she was afraid, and that I would make her even more afraid, but now I know that she loved me and was jealous of Ballouna. Instead of telling her that I was an artist, a calligrapher, and educated – that is, an intellectual – I told her about the crimes I had committed, and some that I had not committed, which made me fall from grace with her, and that's why she wanted to be through with me by any means possible.

Sir, I am sure she is tormented now. Shirin and I committed a grave offense against love, and I want her to know that I am ready to correct it. I am ready to turn over a new, clean leaf with her, and if she wants marriage, I have no objection. I want Shirin to know that I am ready to marry her whenever she wants, and she'll know I am saying this because I love her.

I did not sleep with her only in Ballouna, when I surprised her in the car with that worthless doctor; her fiancé was not with her, as she claimed, but I don't want you to interrogate her because I know how fragile she is. Her delicate body could not bear torture. But I slept with her several times after that in a hotel in Jounieh. I beg
you to forgive her for lying and saying she was in the forest with her fiancé, Emile, – a despicable coward, that guy – he shook with fear during my interrogation, even though I was the one who was being tortured, not him.

And concerning the explosives, I am prepared to go along with my confession about Haykal and al-Naddaf, if you judge it necessary. That would be my sacrifice for the sake of civil peace in Lebanon.

I hope, sir, that this new information will be useful, and helpful toward closing my case and proving my innocence. I rely on you, sir, for I am an orphaned young man. I do not know my father, my grandfather is not my father, and my mother is not my sister.

Finally, sir, I would like to thank you, to thank the interrogator and all of his assistants who permitted me during this period in captivity to make peace with myself and discover things that had never come into my mind.

Y
alo closed his eyes and spat on Satan. He was sitting in the interrogation room, his insides churning. The interrogator's face reached him through the glow of the dim fluorescent bulbs fixed in the ceiling. Yalo stood under the light and looked around. The interrogator's gray hair had a yellow tinge to it, his small face seemed planted on the table, he turned the pages and looked at the tall specter under the fluorescent light.

Yalo closed his eyes and saw with his third eye. He felt a tremor move through the muscles of his arms and legs, and spat on Satan. In prison Yalo had learned how to spit in his heart, he no longer puckered his lips to eject a clot of phlegm onto the ground. Now it was enough to say “I spit on Satan” and promise himself that the day he was free of this nightmare, he would spit on all the devils he had been forced to deal with. He said “I spit on Satan” to stop the tremor in his heart and muscles, but the trembling spread in gentle waves through the body of the tall specter from his head to his toes. And before the interrogator had spoken a single word, Yalo understood that he had fallen into a trap.

“What's this – you're the king of sex?” said the interrogator, spacing out his words to suggest that his words implied a variety of threats.

Yalo was not afraid, or so he convinced himself; after all this what could he fear? What could be more terrifying than the sack, than the feeling of
being castrated, than being rolled like a ball under boots? So why should he be afraid? He put his hands firmly on his thighs in an attempt to stop the tremor in his body, but in leaning over he heard a cracking in his neck. How had the interrogator gotten behind him so fast to slap him? Yalo straightened up again and saw the short interrogator standing behind him, waving the pages.

“You're screwing with us, huh, king of sex?” the interrogator said, circling the tall, bewildered man, who didn't know where to look to acknowledge the words of the interrogator. Yalo spat on Satan and closed his eyes. He thought of suggesting that the fat-thighed, round-faced interrogator stand on a chair to face him so that they could communicate. But before Yalo could open his mouth, the interrogator punched him in the stomach so that the air was cut off from his lungs and he doubled over, his mouth wide open as if begging for some air to breathe before closing his eyes to die.

Yalo would say that he felt death coming on. When he was in the sack, under the whip, in the leg braces for a beating, or in the pool of water, he had not felt final death. Perhaps he died without knowing it, but he was certain that he would make it, but now, faced with the circling interrogator holding the pages, punching him in the stomach and kicking his buttocks, Yalo entered the labyrinth of death, despising himself for being unable to draw a breath.

The interrogator went back to his chair behind the table and his head reentered the fluorescent white. Yalo found himself trying to reconnect the words coming from the interrogator's mouth so that he could grasp their meaning.

Yalo heard the names Michel Salloum and Randa several times and gathered that the interrogator was asking him about the few pages he had added to his confessions. However, he did not understand the question sufficiently
to answer it. He heard the names splintering between the interrogator's thin lips.

“Why aren't you answering me, you dog?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“You don't know? So who does know?”

“Sir, I wrote that I would start my life over, give me a chance. I swear to God, it's over.”

The interrogator said that he understood the game, and that Daniel was going to taste whatever torture would force him to tell the truth.

“You think you're pretty smart, huh? You think that you can screw with us, you dog? We gave you paper so that you could write the truth, not so you could make up stories, make accusations against honest people and destoy their families. Do you dare tell me, bastard, that you slept with Madame Randa? Go ahead, say it! What are you afraid of?”

Yalo said nothing, but he felt the urge to dance, for the interrogator sputtered his sentences as if he were singing along to discontinuous music from his throat. A smile formed on the lips of the thin specter.

“Are you laughing, you son of a bitch?” he asked, signaling with his hand.

Three giants appeared. Yalo had not been unaware of their presence in the room. The fluorescent light gave a yellowing glow to the inspector's mass of gray hair falling into his round face. Yalo gazed for a long time at this face and suddenly a shudder of fear ran through him. It was as if this face, the crack in whose lower half emitted words, was not a real face at all. Yalo had never before seen a face like this one: a soft nose that blocked the lips, as round as a ball. His activities in the forest had made him an expert when it came to faces. He could tell a good face from a wicked face with no trouble: a big nose meant fear, thin lips meant wickedness, a fat face meant surrender, and so on . . . He would judge them by their faces, which he'd
read in the light before deciding how to proceed. Should he use violence? In that case, he'd frown with his eyebrows and rap against the window with the muzzle of his rifle. Or should he be polite, lowering the rifle and signaling with his head? Or perhaps be apathetic, lowering both his rifle and his head? Yalo knew all the faces, but this face . . . Before, he hadn't looked at the interrogator's face; he had been the prey and the prey does not see the hunter's face. But that day, after Yalo had written his story so many times, he shivered with fear when he saw the interrogator's face: a soft nose that disappeared in the fleshy, round face, lips like two lines drawn in green, oval eyes that didn't appear to have pupils, and a voice coming from some mysterious slit in this ball resting on the table.

When Yalo finished writing the story of his life, he felt sure that his journey through torture had ended. He wanted the story to end so that he could go back to the life he had left behind. Yalo discovered, when he sat behind the table, broken by physical and spiritual pain, that his life had been unreal. The life he had written down came to him like dismembered, incomplete stories. He saw himself in these stories as someone else, and so Yalo hated writing and hated himself. “Shit!” He closed his eyes and said, “Shit! This Yalo whose story I am writing will go from these pages to the hangman's rope, will stand under the noose, will dangle from the end of the rope like an unreal specter.” This is how he saw himself, as if in a nightmare, and now he was coming out of his sleep and standing before the interrogator. He would say that he had written down everything and that he had nothing new to add, so there was no need for torture.

Yalo stood before the interrogator to tell him that he wanted to become a real person again and leave the stupor where his memories and the story of his life had taken him. He had become a shadow like his grandfather Abel Ephraim Abyad. The grandfather, who had become a shadow of himself in his last days, used to talk about his life as if it were not his own, and Yalo
would listen to him with only half an ear. Here in the cell, Yalo discovered that he had not been able to listen to him because the
cohno
was dying, and the living could not listen to the dead unless they died with them. But fragments of his grandfather's voice came back to him in his solitude, and he heard in his cell the words that his ears had refused to hear, and lived with death, and his story became a shadow of his life. Yalo lived in the shadows and hated the color black that spread ink on the page, but then, all at once, he decided to come back to life.