hair gleamed; her ears were partly concealed by a violet band. Pinned to her unbleached muslin blouse was a safety pin adorned with a blue stone, like a brooch. A necklace of square green beads was loosely knotted around her throat.
The dead man’s head was resting on her feet. She did not seem to feel its weight.
Rachida screamed and leaned even further over the railing of the balcony, revealing her bony shins and darned stockings. Why was she in such a condition? She was in danger of toppling off the balcony.
One day Boutros had killed a crow with a single shot. He had been so pleased to see the bird fall out of the top of the tree! In the sunlight the crow was black, tinged with grayish light and blood-stained. Remembering this made her feel anxious. If she were to tumble into the alley between the houses, she would be black and gray, with blood on her skirt and her hair disheveled.
The other woman was far away. All of this seemed like a tale that one might hear while standing on the railway platform waiting for the train to leave. A story from some distant place.
Rachida screamed. She screamed. Her voice was becoming hoarse. She shook her head; she looked straight ahead. Not once did she turn around.
If Boutros had been there, if he were not already icy, he would have come to his sister’s side. Without hesitating, he would have come to her. He would have gotten up and joined her on the balcony, and they would have stood together with their shoulders touching. They were almost the same height. The two of them would have leaned over together above the balustrade. They would have cried out with one voice.
After a while Boutros would have turned around. He would have asked Rachida to be quiet and he would have turned to face Samya.
He would have taken several steps forward, then, with his arms crossed, he would have looked inside the room, into the armchair and beneath the violet headband. If he had not already been cold, he would have been there facing Samya, harsh, implacable, shaking his head as if scolding a child.
Then he would have returned to the balcony to his sister’s side. Their voices would have risen together again.
This is what he would have done if he had been there with his face animated under the red cap. Now the fez lay in the center of the room, abandoned to the last rays of the sun.
Later, Boutros would have said:
“Did she have anything to worry about? She had everything. It was my sister who was wearing herself out. Did I ever deprive her of anything? Was I unfaithful to her? She had everything!”
These would have been his words if he had been able to stand on his stiffening feet.
“She had everything! A husband, a home, good food! What more could a woman want? I have known for a long time that she would come to a bad end. My religion prevented me from denouncing her. Now I can do nothing more for her! Take her! Do whatever you want with her!”
Motionless, the high back of her chair rising above her head, the woman would have gone right on killing herself.
Today as yesterday, she would have continued to wear herself out until she succeeded in killing herself.
Light was flowing into the corners of the room, catching the flecks of dust, gathering upon the artificial flowers in the earthenware vase. They could live without water, these immortal flowers, rustling like dry leaves when anyone accidentally brushed them in passing. The two green leather chairs were waiting for no one. A halo of sunlight encircled the fez.
Still clinging to the balcony railing, Rachida went on screaming. Everyone seemed to have grown used to her cries.
The mirror gave to each object wrested from the shadows an image both realistic and cruel. The woman saw nothing but these objects. She did not look at herself, nor did she look any longer at the red stain on the chest of the dead man.
. . .
Since dawn she had known that Boutros would be lying in this way in this exact place. After that she had thought no more about it. Between her boredom and the comings and goings of Rachida, the woman had passed this day as she passed all the others. No sooner had Rachida left one corner of the room than she reappeared in another, her lips moving endlessly. When she disappeared into the adjacent room, her grumbling seeped in under the doorsill. Countering the incessant disturbance of Rachida’s motions, the semi-darkness gave the other woman an opportunity to close her eyes for a while and to forget everything.
It was around six o’clock when Rachida went down for her evening walk. Soon after this Boutros would come upstairs. The woman always waited for him. Because of the closed shutters,. she was surrounded by darkness, and she sat tensely in the dark, lying in wait for his footsteps.
She heard him cross the threshold and she raised herself a little in order to hear better. The various objects were barely visible in the half-light of the room. The woman was attentive only to his steps, deliberate and heavy. She counted them step after step as they rose toward the slightly open door.
His face tense, she envisioned Boutros stopping at the door of the storeroom, stopping at the door of the office, his manner suspicious as he tested the keys in the locks. She easily envisioned the manner in which he crossed the landing before entering the foyer. Then the harsh sound of his cane when he dropped it into the umbrella stand.
Boutros never loitered.
She felt a current of air brush the back of her neck, and she knew that he had opened the velvet draperies. His steps entered the room. Soon Boutros would stand before her and he would embrace her, kiss her. This time she knew that it would be too much to bear.
Since dawn when she was placed in her armchair, she had been hiding the gun. Most of the time Boutros carried it in the right pocket of his jacket. He often said: “It is necessary to carry a gun. You never can tell. . . .” But sometimes he left it in the chest of drawers between his shirts.
At first Samya had thought of it as a dangerous object. Then one evening, while her husband and Rachida stood talking on the balcony, she had opened the drawer near her bed, removed the revolver and laid it on the sheet. She had turned it over and over in her hands until its feel became familiar. She had tested the trigger with her finger. Then she had replaced the revolver in the drawer. Rachida and Boutros were always talking together on the balcony. They spoke in such low tones that she was unable to hear what they said. She had slipped the gun back between the shirts. The woman was not yet thinking of using it.
Why this particular day? The night had not been disturbing. Still, it was on this particular morning that she had decided to end everything. She knew that she would use the gun. Boutros would bend over her, his arms dangling, offering his lips. He would be wearing his fez tilted toward the back, exposing his forehead on which a few drops of sweat always glistened. His lips would approach, huge and brown, filled with saliva at the corners. He would bend over her. She would see nothing but his lips and his scarlet fez. This would be unbearable. He would stoop over her once more. He would stoop over her one more time.
. . .
He would never get up again.
The shot had gone off so close to his chest that the noise had been muffled.
The man had lost his balance, his arms waving about grasping for support. He had fallen forward and the fez had tumbled off his head and rolled into the middle of the room like an empty flowerpot.
Samya had fired
