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A Pipe

Susie Gharib

    Except for only one neighbor downstairs, we were the only inhabitants of a new building of spacious apartments. I had a seminar to prepare for my first year at university, so I stayed behind at home. I never felt apprehensive about being alone since I was quite accustomed to sacrificing delicious dinners at restaurants for any type of homework. When the doorbell rang, I impulsively opened the door and there at some distance stood a young man in his twenties with folded brown paper in his hand. He asked for my dad claiming that he had some business at hand, pointing now and then to the brown paper, which he seemed to have folded in a way to give it extra thickness but looked empty all the same. I inspected the contents of his hand with growing concern. It looked like the brown shopping bag in which grandmothers used to put their groceries a long time ago. I politely told him that Mr. Tilani was away for the day and he could contact him the next day at work. When he felt that I was about to close the door, he suddenly stood in the doorway and blocked it with his outstretched, arched arm and intrusive boots. I remained calm and formally asked about his name and if he could just wait for me to bring a piece of paper and pen to register his phone number and address in the most secretarial manner I could muster. My calm tone and confident words made him reluctantly debar the door. He was examining my face all the time, assessing the veracity of what I said. His body looked convulsively agitated.
    I closed the door very slowly and the moment it clicked, I bolted it and rushed to the balcony preparing my vocal chords for any needed strenuous feats. I examined the building opposite. The whole neighborhood looked empty. The new telephone line was not connected yet. He insistently rang the bell for more than seven minutes and violently knocked the door with all his might. I thought a respectable client would have the dignity to leave after such a reception. Finally, there was stillness and I began to stretch my neck to see if he appeared on the street.
    Dressed in what looked like a priest’s black habit, he and another similarly dressed man, both angrily inspected my balcony as they nervously waited for a taxi. I was sure he was wearing a pair of trousers and a blouse, so why was he then in disguise? When the taxi drove away, I started trembling with the strain that began to show on my knotted nerves. It took me some time to regain habitual calm. I reported the events in tiresome details to my dad as soon as he stepped into the entry hall but he shrugged his shoulders and assured me he had no such client and was not expecting any paper work at home. The description did not fit anybody he knew. I kept inquiring about the young man for a week but he never called at my father’s office or at home again. When the whole incident wore itself out with no further comments, I had to consult the opinion of my oldest friend, Rita Paroli, who gave her technical interpretation of the scene after I had tirelessly narrated every detail of the event then successfully completed Rita’s oral questionnaire.
    “When you opened the door for the first time, where was the gentleman standing?” asked Rita in the fashion of a detective in some TV series to which she had been addicted.
    “I opened the door only once Ð he was standing away from the door,” I answered with the seriousness of an eyewitness.
    “Did he look surprised at seeing you open the door, instead of your father?” asked Rita, deliberating on what to ask next, while she continued plucking her thick eyebrows and feathery moustache.
    “No. I think not,” I said, after some time, trying to recapture the scene with some alarm.
    “So he must have come to see you, not your father. He must have watched your family leave before he came up. He must have wanted to relieve himself,” said Rita, abandoning the mirror to give the last verb extra emphasis with her green eyes.
    “What do you mean by relieve?” I asked, not liking the way Rita spoke and eyed the word.
    “You must know how a man relieves himself,” said she, a smile oscillating between her eyes and naughty mouth.
    “I am afraid I don’t,” I said, not feeling guilty at such ignorance.
    “He was trembling when he blocked the door and this tremulousness indicates a sexual urge to relieve himself, or why would he tremble in your presence?” said the sex-educated Rita emphatically.
    My baffled looks exasperated my wiser friend so Rita summed up the purpose behind the mysterious visit in one technical statement.
    “He badly wanted it, to insert his pipe in some hole, and it happened to be yours,” said Rita nonchalantly, not wanting to say more.
    I had privately considered a few reasons for his call, to steal, to murder, or to score a threat at our own door, but not to penetrate a hole.

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