The Seventh Heaven (12 page)

“I don’t know what’s going in there,” he answered. “Hands reach out to take the chairs and the tea inside, then the door closes again immediately.”

The manager shrugged his shoulders. So long as no one
complained, he told himself, then he was not to blame for anything.

Blind Sayyid the Corpse Washer came up to him. “I’d like to remind the lady that I am here waiting,” he said.

“She promised to call you at the appropriate time,” the manager told him, with a feeling of futility.

The man wouldn’t move, so he called the lady again, handing the mortician the telephone at her request.

“Madam, it’s already past the afternoon prayer, and the days in winter are very short,” he chided.

He bent into the receiver listening for a moment, then put it back and returned to the lobby, clearly disturbed. The manager damned him from his deepest heart. The woman was responsible for inviting this ghoul to the hotel, he thought as he glanced at the lobby’s door with aversion and disgust. Meanwhile, some of the lady’s guests came down on their way outside, and the manager’s apprehensions about the goings-on in room number twelve seemed to lessen.

“Some of the visitors will go sooner and some later; they’ll all be gone by nightfall,” he assured himself.

He began to worry that his position of responsibility would force him into a confrontation with them—and they were from a powerful class. His dismay redoubled with the wind that whistled violently outdoors and the sense of distress that cloaked the roads. Yet despite these forbidding conditions, he saw a group of men and women wearing raincoats gathered at the door, and his heart sank in his chest. He surprised them by asking, “Madam Bahiga al-Dahabi?”

One of them, laughing, replied, “Tell her, if you please, that the delegates from the Association for Heritage Revival have arrived.”

So he telephoned the woman, and as she gave her consent for them to come up he pleaded with her, “There are ten of them, madam, and the lobby downstairs is at your disposal for any number of visitors.”

“There’s plenty of space in the room,” she retorted.

As the male and female delegates ascended, the manager shook his head in total confusion.
Sooner or later, there’s going to be a clash.
The fury of heaven was about to descend outside—provoked by the assorted oddballs in room number twelve. The manager chanced to turn around to the lobby, and caught sight of Blind Sayyid the Corpse Washer creeping toward him. So he rapped the table with his knuckles in agitation, then put the man directly in touch with the woman by telephone before he could open his mouth. The manager listened to him complain to her, then heard him accede. The undertaker hung up the receiver by himself, but then grumbled as the manager began to walk away, “Waiting around with nothing to do is very boring.”

The manager became enraged, and would have scolded him if the lady hadn’t telephoned at that moment, asking to be connected to the restaurant. Her conversation with them continued for some minutes. Would she and her guests remain in the room until dinner, the manager pondered, and where would they dine? How he wished he could examine her room now: it had to be a scene beyond all imagining—an insane spectacle indeed.

While the torrent continued outside without any hint of slowing, a group of university professors and men of religion came—so immersed in deep discussion, that the manager simply let them go upstairs. The situation was becoming more and more nightmarish, as a mysterious man went up without first passing by the desk. The manager called out to the intruder—who did not respond. One of the bellhops followed him, but stopped when the man ducked into room number twelve. The manager now felt he was all alone, that he had lost fundamental control of the hotel. He considered summoning the head bellhop, but then a man appeared, the mere sight of whom brought him relief. They shook hands and the manager told him, “You’ve come at the right time, honorable informer, sir.”

“Show me the register,” the informer said calmly.

“Strange things are happening here,” the manager blurted.

As the informer perused the names in the ledger, jotting down notes as he read, the manager said, “I suppose you’ve come because of room number twelve.”

“Eh?” the informer coughed quizzically.

“Mad depravity is running riot in there,” warned the manager.

“Anything found in nature must be natural,” the informer said dismissively. Then, taking his leave, he said, “If anyone wants me on the phone, I’ll be in room number twelve.”

The manager became even more confused—yet at the same time, he was comforted to think that the government’s eyes and ears knew what was happening in the
hotel. He remembered that he was going to summon the head bellhop, and just as he pressed the ringer to call him, he observed Blind Sayyid once again slinking up to him. Losing his grip on his nerves, he shouted, “She told you to wait until she invited you up!”

The man grinned in habitual servility to the rebuke, then pleaded, “But I’ve been waiting so long….”

“Wait without any backtalk—and remember you’re in a hotel, not a boneyard!” the manager fumed.

The man retreated in feigned patience, as the manager recalled the head bellhop. “How are things going in room number twelve?” he queried.

“I don’t know, but there’s a lot of racket in there.”

“How can they all squeeze into that place? They must be sitting on top of each other!” the manager marveled.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” the head bellhop mused. “In any case, the officer is inside with them.”

The man wandered off as the manager went to look once more out the window, and saw the night weighing heavily in the void. The lights were on throughout the hotel, casting a wan radiance through the atmosphere thick with damp from the howling, raging wind outside. A battalion of waiters came from the restaurant, bearing trays crammed with all kinds of food, and the manager’s astonishment grew. The room had only one dining table, so where would the woman’s guests put all those plates? How could they consume their meals? One of the bellhops told him that the room’s door no longer opened, and that the food only went in now through the little peep window.

What’s more, the uproar from the room was afflicting
the entire hotel: the whole spectacle was now simply incredible.

After a half hour, the bellhop came back to confirm that the lot of them were drunk.

“But I haven’t seen a single bottle go up there!” exclaimed the manager.

“Maybe they hid them in their pockets,” the bellhop surmised. “They’re singing, shouting and clapping—a case of drunken rowdiness, to be sure. And sinfulness too, for there’s as many women as men in that room.”

“And the informer?”

“I heard his voice singing, ‘The World Is a Smoke and a Drink,’” said the bellhop.

Thunder boomed outside as the manager said to himself, “I could well be dreaming—and I could just as well have gone mad.” At that instant, a group of common people approached—their faces and clothes proclaimed their low social status. They asked the inevitable question, “Is Ms. Bahiga al-Dahabi staying here?”

The manager smiled despairingly as he contacted the woman. She asked him to keep them waiting in the lobby and to serve them drinks as well. He pointed the way to the group of them and ordered the staff to give them tea. The lounge was overflowing, upsetting the undertaker. The manager again smiled hopelessly, muttering, “This hotel is no longer a hotel, and I’m no longer the manager, and today is not a day, and lunacy is laughing at us in the shape of meat and wine!”

The rain began to gush down again in sheets, and the sky to thunder. The asphalt at the hotel’s entrance
gleamed with the light of the electric lamps as feet scurried in from outside. The waiters all cried, “There is no god but God!” while the passersby took refuge in the foyer. The battering blows of the rain rattled the window-panes without ceasing.

The manager left his post and went to the entrance, turning his face up to the blackened sky. Then he looked down at the water sluicing stones over the sloping ground. First the rain beat down, then it flared up with wrath, before detonating in a surging deluge over the hapless earth.

“There hasn’t been rain like this for at least a generation,” he declared.

Digging back in his past, he remembered a similar flood from his childhood. He recalled how it stopped all means of transport, blocking up the alleys and completely drowning rooms—and those in them—beneath porous roofs. He then went back to his desk, intent upon his work with the hotel records and expenditures, but he also issued orders to tighten the surveillance of the rooms and of the roof. He called for the head bellhop and asked him, “What news of room number twelve?”

“The singing and laughing show no sign of stopping,” the man said, twisting his lips. “They’re crazy in there!”

Blind Sayyid the undertaker loomed at the lobby’s door.

“Get back to your place!” shrieked the manager.

The man held up his hand in entreaty, and the manager yelled at him once more, “Not another word!”

The thunder clapped like bombs as the massive rain pounded the pavements with incandescent intensity.
The manager mused that the old hotel wasn’t built with reinforced concrete—and the night warned of yet more travails.

Another bellhop told him, “There are complaints in room number twelve about the leaky roof and the water pouring in.”

“You mean they’ve stopped laughing and singing?” the manager demanded, exasperated. “Then let them all leave the room now!”

“But they can’t!” protested the bellhop.

The manager dismissed him once again and called the head bellhop, asking him about what his assistant had said. “The rooms are all leaking, so I’ve mobilized all the men to plug the holes in the roof with sandbags.”

“And what about room number twelve?”

“They’re all jammed in there too tightly. Their stomachs have inflated so much, they can’t open the door. They can’t even move!”

Cosmic ire was smiting the night outside, while inside a frenzied air of activity filled the hotel as the bellhops scurried about with sandbags to halt the invading rain.

Then a most peculiar thing happened: the people who’d been waiting in the lobby rushed voluntarily to aid in the effort. The manager watched all this with delight— made greater by the fact that Blind Sayyid the Corpse Washer did not take part.

After a while the head bellhop reported on the work’s progress. “They’re putting all they’ve got into it,” he said with pride. “But as for our friends in room number twelve, their condition is very bad—and getting worse and worse all the time.”

What the man said struck the manager like a shock— and amid the violent, pent-up tension of the entire day, he snapped. His anger taking hold of his flesh, his blood, and his nerves at once, he finally surrendered his last shred of sanity.

“Listen.” he said. “Remember exactly what I’m about to tell you….”

The bellhop stared at his face in terror as the manager shouted with stark resolve, “Ignore room number twelve and everyone in it!”

“Sir, the men are screaming and the women are crying!”

Bellowing like a beast, the manager railed, “Concentrate on the roof over the guest rooms—but as for room number twelve,
leave it alone—and everyone inside it!”

The bellhop tarried for merely a second, and the manager foamed with an even more animal-like fervor, “Carry out my instructions to the letter—without dragging your feet!”

He moved to face the window and watched the storm crashing in the heart of the darkness, waxing more and more perilous with each passing moment. Yet he felt his great burden lighten, as his confidence returned with his clarity of mind.

A
fter long hesitation, I decided to go.

The curtain dropped at nightfall. Engulfed by the waves of gloom that swept Virgo Star Alley, I knew my path by the backlight of memory—the destroyer of darkness and the sojourner’s guide. I squeezed through the iron gate that hung ajar, to be struck by the scent of a familiar incense. To my good fortune, I found no visitors in the house. She appeared to me alone, sitting cross-legged on her Persian divan, wrapped in a robe of many quiet colors embroidered with a pattern of crescent moons and flowers, drawn over the curves of a distinctly firm form. Her eyelids dangling like veils, in her fingertips she held some cards—she never grew bored peering into the Unseen on her own. She did not lift her eyes toward me, as
though she knew who was coming by the sound of his footsteps, and as if she intended to pay him no heed. Sensing strongly that I was intruding, I did not offer her greetings, but sat in the chair nearest her, seeking refuge in silence. She continued reading her cards as I contemplated how to open our conversation, when all that I had prepared to say evaporated from my mind under the effect of this room, grave with the remains of days gone by. Suddenly she started, as though the cards had yielded an unusual revelation.

“I see a final assault upon his stubbornness!” she whispered.

She let out an “Oh!” of pleasure, muttering as she completed her vision, “A lead-tipped whip shall scourge his back!”