The Jokers - Albert Cossery [63]
Suddenly she shut her eyes—she seemed to have fallen into a state of intense meditation. With her head thrown back on the pillow, she pressed the bouquet of jasmine hard against her nostrils as if she was breathing in the scent of the world outside, the world of the living, and trying to remember it.
Urfy struggled against a feeling of unreality. He was standing behind Heykal, and over his shoulder he could see his mother stretched out on her bed like a corpse. He didn’t dare intervene in what seemed to him to be a gift from heaven. By what miracle was Heykal able to carry on such a conversation with his mother? He spoke to her naturally, as if she was sane, and the old lady responded in the same way, as if the sheer magic of his presence had made her disordered mind begin to function. Right then Urfy began to wonder if his mother was really crazy or if she had been playing a part. But he banished the question from his mind; what was most important for now was to see her emerging from the darkness to regain her dignity and good humor.
The old lady opened her eyes, lowered the bouquet, and asked, a little anxiously:
“How is humanity these days, prince? I remember it as being nasty.”
She seemed to be asking about a foreign country she had once visited in her youth but to which she’d never returned.
“It still is,” responded Heykal. “But human foolishness remains entertaining enough.”
“There’s no hatred in you. I could tell in my dream the other night. I didn’t see a single spark of meanness in your eyes when you were fighting the dragon. And yet he wanted to devour you, prince. I would never have gotten over it. Be careful.”
“I won’t let myself be eaten up. I’m not the type. I know how to defend myself, even without hatred. Don’t worry about me.”
She gripped his hand and brought it to her lips, like a woman crushed by her lover’s departure for a pointless war.
“Yes, defend yourself. And come back victorious!”
Heykal contemplated her, touched to previously unsuspected depths of his being by this emaciated but smooth face, unwrinkled even by age. He knew no face so transparent, so utterly without blemish. Even the face of the little girl in the tearoom now seemed to bear a stigma of impurity. Her animation had been founded on guile and will, born of unflinching determination to seduce a cunning adversary—already she displayed the tools of her femininity. But the peace of this moment was something else entirely. Saved! Yes, he was saved from the oppressive hypocrisy of men. Only opposite this madwoman, who had forgotten the torments of vanity and lucre, could he feel at peace with the world. For him she had become the incarnation of a human being free of rancor or ambition.
He could see that the old woman was also observing him with an expression of happiness, as if she couldn’t believe the marvelous peace she was feeling.
“We understand each other, don’t we, prince?”
“Yes,” said Heykal. “But it’s our secret and we mustn’t tell anyone.”
Then she leaped from the bed and began to skip and spin around in the narrow space between the bed and the dresser. Her dress flared away from her feeble body, revealing her skinny brown-spotted legs, as she began a melancholy chant that was nonetheless full of spirit and youth, and her voice was that of a young girl happily playing in the garden of her childhood.
Heykal didn’t make a move to stop this spontaneous outbreak of dancing. He was happy watching her, delighted; the scene seemed as beautiful to him as a supernatural vision.
Urfy blanched; for a moment, he’d wanted to intervene, to interrupt the charm of this wild dance that was leading his mother back into madness. But as he observed Heykal, something shifted. He understood that madness and its ways held nothing terrifying. He could live as easily with his mother as with any human being. Madness makes no difference. He seized onto this as if it were his salvation, and, looking at his mother, he began to smile.
The old lady abruptly stopped spinning. Gasping, she curled