The Honorable Correspondent Read online

  Danny then came on to lampoon and harass, to point out those who were rich, yet miserly; ecclesiastic, yet riddled with earthly vices; powerful, yet timid; stylish, yet in yesteryear’s fashions. He shifted from subtleties to raunchy jokes, then cupped his hands around his mouth, trumpeted a screechy imitation of a racetrack trumpet, and asked for silence.

  “Ladies and gentlemen …,” (a pause). “Oh yes, I see one there,” he said, and had to quiet the crowd again with spread and downturned hands. “We are so very fortunate to have Naama Harouni for our hostess. Not only has she given us all this free food and drink, and tamed Claude for one whole evening so that we might consume all these goodies in peace, but she has arranged the most wonderfully original after-dinner fun for all. Naama has thought up for us not one, but two diversions: carousel rides, and a simultaneous prize raffle drawing, which will be held in the lower gardens behind the house. Ladies and gentlemen, Naama Harouni!”

  Naama stood to tumultuous applause. She thanked them all for being there and for their generous gifts to Claude. At this, Danny did an uncanny imitation of cackling hens, at which all but the Druse guests laughed.

  “We have decided, Danny and I,” Naama continued, “who goes first to the carousel and who goes down to the garden. It is only fair that Danny got to pick, because that way everyone is certain to be equally offended.” She and Claude, she explained, would take the first ride on the carousel, then the first group of guests. “And then, the groups will switch.”

  Danny fussed for long minutes designating people to their groups. There was much shouting, laughter, and mock and not-so-mock protests. In an effort to mollify the garden group, Chantal and Maurice, as the Harounis’ close friends, were designated to the latter. Finally, all the lights in the house and grounds were turned down and everyone headed, giggling and whispering in the darkness, out to the lawn.

  When anticipation had finally stilled them, Naama raised her arm, then dropped it. At once hundreds of light bulbs, blue and green and red and white, lit up the carousel, winding up and down the poles and around every curving line of its circumference. The horses, black—spotted, white, and brown—had tiny light bulbs running up and down their manes; even their nostrils glowed red. The crowd was enthralled, applause broke out, and gushing compliments flew Naama’s way.

  Claude made a pronounced showing of his appreciation. He embraced her, raising and holding her arm above her head, like a boxing champion. Naama was moved; then, regaining control of the proceedings, she asked everyone to find their designated group. Some balked, and Danny screamed in a high falsetto, a standard tool of his comedy routines, “It will be better this way, really, darlings, I promise.”

  When at last the garden group had cleared the area, he turned to the others. “Now, our hosts will ride first, to show us how they do it in Junieh, you understand,” he squealed, stressing the “they.” After a pause and a giant wink, he added, “I mean of course, but of course, how “they” ride the carousel, I mean nothing else, you filthy minds.” He led Claude to a white horse, made a show of demonstrating how to mount, and tumbled farcically to the ground, tried again, and tumbled again. “Let me show you how ‘we’ do it in Junieh, Danny, my friend,” shouted Claude, brushing away tears of laughter. Danny feigned anger at the white horse that had so shamelessly betrayed him. He slapped its rump with a loud sound and shrieked in pain. Squeezing more laughter from the crowd, he ran towards the house, howling and blowing on the offended hand all the way until he disappeared inside.

  Now in the saddle, Claude beckoned Naama to him, lifted her, and installed her before him. She turned to look for Bobo, but could not see him. Claude mistook her movement for an invitation and promptly kissed her on the lips. The crowd cheered and whistled and hooted. At last the carousel’s operator, who had been quietly standing by throughout, pushed a lever and the horses started to spin as a Nino Rota tune came over the loudspeaker.

  On its second go-around, just as the white horse came into view again, the carousel disintegrated. With a terrific din and an explosion of jagged orange flames, it fragmented into a thousand bits. There followed a second of utter silence, as if the world held its breath to learn what was to come. Then the silence too was smashed, by howls and screams from the dozens of broken bodies strewn about the wreck. Those who screamed did so from torn throats choked with blood. Those not screaming lay on the lawn, cut down by the savage storm of shrapnel, bits and pieces of wood, metal, and glass that had so recently been their promise of pleasure to come. Others stumbled around as if in a final giddy dance, their faces and bodies slashed. From the bodies closest to the wreck there came only low moans or silence. Blood was the dominant substance on the lawn, red the prevailing color. Somewhere in these puddles of red were the remains of Claude and Naama, together in death more than they ever had been in life.

  Gunfire came from down the road, from the gates, and from nearby—from the house itself. The hired servants, still in their service whites, were firing automatic rifles both into the air and in the direction of the carnage on the lawn. Those of the second group of partygoers, who were just making their way to the scene from the garden, fell screaming to the ground. The servants, shouting in French—the Maronites’ preferred language—and in Arabic, ordered everyone to stay where they were and to keep their eyes down. The gunfire ceased.

  A large blue Mercedes taxi scampered up the drive and onto the lawn. From its front passenger seat a well-dressed man emerged. Deliberately, he walked the blood-soaked lawn, pointing with a small black pistol at one or another of the surviving wounded from the carousel group. A militiaman following the newcomer and fired a fusillade at the designated person.

  Finally, the dapper executioner arrived at the doorway of the house, where the Harouni children were being held by a couple of the sham servants. Danny the comedian held Antoine, the eldest, in a cruel vice, his forearm tucked forcefully under the boy’s chin, making him gag.

  The man gave the children no more than a glance. “I am told your father has been looking for me,” he said. “Well, when you see him, tell him I found him first.” He spat in Antoine’s face, then raised his pistol and when the muzzle was level with the boy’s head, fired. Then he shot the younger boy. The baby had been propped against the doorway because she could not yet stand on her own. He looked around as if to make certain there were no more children, then shot her too. Because of her small size, the bullets lifted her body off the door.

  The man stood there another moment, a finger resting lengthwise on his closed lips, as if contemplating things past and future. Then he walked to the blue taxi and resumed the front passenger seat. Some of the servants piled in the back seats, others headed down the hill on foot, their rifles held behind their necks like so many shepherds carrying their staffs, at peace after bringing in the flock at day’s end.

  As the Mercedes started to move, Chantal, her green dress now red and yellow tatters, made a frenzied dash forward. “You will die in the sewers, Atrash, in buckets of pig shit, you mad son of a filthy whore, Atrash Forjieh,” she screamed, at each word pounding her clenched fists against her bloodied thighs. Atrash Forjieh leaped out of the slow-moving car and in two steps stood in front of her. He slapped her face hard, with the palm and back of his hand. “Be careful what you say about my mother, you fancy slut,” he said in French, then aimed his pistol at her belly and fired twice. When she lay on the ground, bucking and thrashing as if in the culminating throes of love-making, he fired a third bullet into her head. He resumed his seat and the car drove away.

  In the living room, Bobo de Bossier warily lifted himself from behind the table he had used for a shield. He listened for a moment, then, satisfied that the action had at last subsided, walked to the fireplace mantle and reclaimed his gift to Claude. Pleased to see that the watch was still in its velvet case, he pocketed it and left.

  Chapter Two

  Eighteen years later. A car is traveling north, away from Beirut’s airport. The men who had
earlier forced Gaspar Bruyn inside are making no attempt to keep him from observing the way. Their nonchalance makes him ill. He feels feverish, his bones and joints ache, his mouth and eyes are dry. They are permitting him to see the way because they know he will never describe it to anyone. They intend to kill him.

  The car is small, a European-made Ford, Gaspar thinks. The young men at either side press against him, their thighs hard and unselfconscious against his, as if they were all school chums returning from a football match, their comradery having long since dissolved any male queasiness about being touched by other males. They are lean, with dark hair and eyes and skin. They wear jeans, casual shirts, Puma running shoes.

  Next to the driver—a young man, like those on either side of Gaspar—sits a man different from the others, a man whose posture and demeanor are those of a patron, a man of power. He is older than they, in his late twenties or early thirties. His skin is pale, unusually so for the Levant. He wears beige slacks, a white dress shirt, its sleeves folded halfway up his forearms, brown loafers, and dark green socks.

  It was the young men now sitting by Gaspar who had come up to Sarah and him in Beirut airport and lured him to the car.

  Sarah and he had been depleted, so very weary there in the grimy, worn-out lounge that had only recently been reopened to air travelers. They had joked about doing a coffeetable book on airports that had survived wars: Kuwait, Kabul, Beirut. Their humor had been designed to make them immune to the place, to reassure one another that they had regained their capacity for levity.

  The mangled streets and buildings of Kuwait City had dampened their good cheer. The eyes of its citizens broadcast a blend of rage and bewilderment, like the eyes of well-heeled travelers on a luxury ocean liner suddenly set upon by pirates whose ferocity and rapaciousness the genteel travelers had not imagined possible.

  Gaspar and Sarah had gone to Kuwait just after Saddam had been thrown back. Sarah had accepted a Sentinel Sunday magazine assignment to do an article on the place and Gaspar had come along, as he had on all her working trips following the final events at Belle Marais.

  After Belle Marais, they had agreed to be apart as little as possible.

  The two young men had approached them in the passenger lounge wearing expressions of familiarity and friendship, their easy demeanor placing them in a world far away from the one inhabited by the edgy, grim-faced travelers awaiting transit in the ruin of an airport. Sarah had just removed a cigarette from its box and one of the men promptly fished out his cigarette lighter. She accepted the light, smiling gratefully. The same man then bent down to whisper to Gaspar, to tell him how pleased they were that he was in Beirut and that an old friend of his and Bobo’s wished to greet him.

  Gaspar was unperturbed that these strangers knew of his presence in Beirut. To the contrary, it only served to lend them credibility: friends of his and Bobo’s from the old days had been in the business of knowing such things. It had, however, been sixteen years since Bobo had been stationed in Beirut, since Gaspar had joined him there for that brief holiday.

  “Which friend?” Gaspar inquired.

  “Forjieh. Atrash Forjieh’s boy.” The man whispered the answer, glancing at Sarah as if the trust implicit in his willingness to confide the name extended to her too.

  The other man made a quick survey of the sullen travelers as Forjieh’s name was mentioned. A better-safe-than-sorry survey, a you-never-know-who-is-listening survey.

  Things in Beirut still being what they were—risky, in flux—Atrash’s son could not leave his car, the man explained. So would Gaspar accompany them? Atrash the younger had not had the opportunity to speak to anyone about Bobo, about his father, about the loss they had all suffered upon Bobo’s and his father’s sudden deaths three years earlier.

  The Ford pulls off the road at a point high up the side of a hill. The top man turns to face Gaspar and says in accented French, “Nice view, what?” His intonation is heavy with sarcasm. His eyes, large and black, shine brightly. But for the thinness of his lips and the way the upper covers part of the lower when at rest, he would be handsome.

  The view is indeed nice. They are looking west, onto the Mediterranean. The blue sea is speckled with flakes of sunlight, small patches of gold that dance to the rhythm of the gentle waves beneath them. All the long way to its vaporous vanishing point, far off in the west, the sea is open, unhindered, in the way that evokes in men the certain knowledge that the soul is real, that freedom is possible.

  “My brother Claude used to see a nice view from his house,” the top man says. When Gaspar’s face betrays his incomprehension, he elaborates, “Harouni. My brother was Claude Harouni. You and your pal Bobo blew him and his family to bits sixteen years ago.”

  They drive on higher into the hills, then through a rusted wrought iron gate which is opened for them by two armed men. They drive past a house, whitewashed, iridescent in the early afternoon sun, and onto a dirt track that stops at a shed made of corrugated metal once shiny, now dulled by time.

  Gaspar is taken out of the car. One of the young men clamps a rough hand around his wrist and pulls him through the shed’s door, a sheet of metal framed by roughly hewn wooden planks. The shed’s vertical center supporting beam, a steel I-beam, is anchored in a concrete cone embedded in the damp earthen floor. To this, the second man fastens a chain about a meter and a half long with a shackle at one end. The man holding Gaspar’s wrist forces him to sit, placing his free hand on top of Gaspar’s head and pressing downwards hard. Gaspar’s muscles comply even as his comprehension lags and he drops abruptly to the dirt floor. They fasten the shackle around his ankle, over his pants leg.

  Harouni enters the shed. He scrutinizes the arrangements, tugs at the chain.

  Gaspar grunts in pain, then blurts out at Harouni a single word: “When?”

  The question’s tone and finality leave no room for doubt as to its sense: Gaspar is asking to be told his time of execution.

  Harouni’s glare turns indignant, as if by posing the question Gaspar has presumed too much. Why should I tell you? his expression says, You will die in my own good time.

  Resigned, Gaspar asks for pencils and paper. The request somehow breaks through to Harouni, altering the prevailing rhythm in the shed. The implicit daring and optimism seem to touch Harouni’s goodwill.

  “What will you write?” Harouni guffaws and turns to his men to make certain they are getting the full measure of this entertaining hostage.

  “Thoughts for my wife. Perhaps you will let her have them one day.”

  “Which wife?” Harouni demands.

  A chill runs through Gaspar. At that moment he understands fully the fierceness of Harouni’s desire for vengeance. To have known that Gaspar had married twice, known that he would be passing through Beirut airport, has required focus, dedication. Gaspar is reminded of Bobo’s similar dedication to his own pursuits.

  Harouni speaks briefly in Arabic to his men. They leave the shed. Harouni lights a cigarette and stares at Gaspar as he smokes it down. One of the men returns with several sheets of paper and a sharpened pencil, both of which he hands to Gaspar.

  Gaspar searches for a suitable place on the earthen floor. He chooses a spot where a ray of sunlight falls, no thicker than the pencil he has just been handed, with glowing bits of dust floating in it. He places himself so that the light illuminates the paper.

  Suddenly Harouni lunges at him and yanks the pencil from his fingers. He tests the pencil’s point against his thumb, strolls over to the shed’s wall, places the point against the wall and scratches back and forth several times. Then he tests the point once more.

  He hands the pencil back to Gaspar. “So you don’t do bad things to yourself,” he explains.

  The executioner’s tenderness, muses Gaspar.

  Harouni and his man leave. Gaspar listens as a lock is snapped shut on the door’s other side. The light that had come through the open door is gone now. Only his writing ray and a few more like it dril
l though, shards of clarity in a murky darkness.

  He huddles in this light-perforated darkness and soon falls into a depression so oppressive that it makes his breathing fall shallow. He succumbs to a paroxysm of self-blame, blame for everything from that first time when as a child of six or seven he had obeyed Bobo, to all the ensuing years of compliance, to his failed marriage to Laura, to his complacency at the airport. He berates himself for having married Laura in the first place, for having remained with her as long as he had, for not having made their marriage work. Others would have, he silently howls at himself. You couldn’t, but others would have.

  He is rescued from his abyss by an image of Sarah. Her name and face become a gentle but irresistible crane that fastens onto the scruff of his neck and lifts him until he is clear of his black mood. He is back in the reality of the gloomy prison shed.

  Now he attempts a rational evaluation of his situation. He examines the shackle and chain, the I-beam. He smirks as he tells himself, with his architect’s perspicacity, that all are sound and would resist all means he could invent to challenge their structural integrity.

  He switches to considering Harouni, to pondering why Harouni didn’t have him shot immediately. Perhaps, he postulates, it’s because Harouni wishes to exact a ransom for him! That’s it! As soon as Sarah pays up, Harouni will let him go.

  Then the heart-wrenching thought lances through his mind that both will be true: that Harouni will collect, then kill him. Just as quickly, he dismisses the thought: Sarah will be too smart to let that happen, too wise for this Maronite brigand.

  Maronite. He remembers Naama, whom he’d met very briefly during that long-ago visit to Beirut. Perhaps, he now thinks, he ought to have known back then—well, if not just then, later when he found out that it had indeed been Bobo and Forjieh who had done in Claude and Naama and their children. Perhaps he ought to have known then that Bobo didn’t play by the rules he had claimed to follow, that someone capable of arranging the killing of his lover, as Bobo had done, didn’t accept any rules. That the first rule of Bobo’s and his world had been to disregard the rules—for the good of the cause, of course. “We break laws so that France can remain a place of order and civility,” Bobo had explained.