The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (4 page)

           

A
t the end of August, the family returned to Cairo. The view of Al-Azhar Square on his way to work the first day was upsetting. It remained a depressing thoroughfare, unchanged since his departure. He was warmly welcomed at the office, especially by Mahmoud Fahmi, his assistant, and the files were soon brought out, the postponed cases and those under review. September had its sticky days, but a gentle breeze had arisen and the early mornings were shaded by the suggestions of white clouds. Mustapha embraced him at length. They stood face to face, Omar towering above his friend, whose bald head, tilted back, was spotlighted by the silver lamp.

He said, sitting on the leather couch before the desk, “You're as slender as a gazelle. Bravo.”

He took out a cigarette from the box—a wooden box ornamented with mother-of-pearl which played a tune when opened—lit it, then continued. “I often thought of visiting you in Alexandria, but family obligations called
me to Ras el Bar. Apart from that, I was tied up in preparing a new radio serial.”

Omar looked at the case files, then at his friend's eyes, pleading for an encouraging word. He smiled enigmatically, then finally said, “I worked without stop this morning.”

Mustapha breathed a sigh of relief, but then Omar murmured, “But…”

Mustapha inquired anxiously, “But?”

“Honestly, I've regained no desire to work.”

An uneasy silence prevailed. Mustapha exhaled the cigarette smoke with a tense expression, then suggested, “Maybe you should have taken more rest.”

“Let's stop kidding ourselves. The problem is more serious than that.”

Then he lit a cigarette in turn and continued to the echo of new tunes. “The problem is more serious, for it's not only work which has become unbearable. This illness is consuming other things, far more precious than work—my wife, for instance.”

“Zeinab?”

He said with something like shame, “I don't know how to put it, but sadly enough, I can't bear her now. My house is no longer the happy abode.”

“But Buthayna and Jamila are part of it.”

“Fortunately they don't need me…”

Mustapha frowned and blinked his round, filmy eyes. In his inquisitive glance was a sorrowful, pressing desire to solve the riddle. “But someone of your intelligence can discover the secret.”

He said, smiling bitterly, “Maybe the universe in its eternal, monotonous revolving is the primary cause.”

“I'm sure you're exaggerating, at least as far as Zeinab is concerned.”

“It's the appalling truth.”

He asked with solicitude, “What's to happen in this state of affairs?”

“I live, questioning all the time, but with no answer.”

“By now, you must be convinced, at least, that you're going through some sort of psychological crisis.”

“Call it what you wish, but what is it, what do I want, what should I do?”

“You're too sensible to be plagued by questions. Probe your hidden desires, look into your dreams. There are things you want to run away from, but where to?”

“That's it. Where?”

“You must find the answer.”

“Tell me, what makes
you
stick to work and marriage?”

Because the question seemed somehow funny, he smiled, but the sober atmosphere quickly dispelled his gaiety. “My attachment to my wife is based on reality and on habit. My work is a means of livelihood. Besides, I'm happy with my audience, I'm happy with the hundreds of letters I get from them each week. Acceptance by the public is gratifying, even if it means selling popcorn and watermelon seeds.”

“I have neither public, nor reality, nor habit.”

Mustapha paused a while and then said, “In fact, you've been extraordinarily successful in your work and your wife worships you, so you're left with nothing to fight for.”

Omar smiled sarcastically. “Should I pray God for failure and adultery?”

“If it would help you regain some interest in life!”

Each retreated into himself and the tense silence carried ominous forebodings.

Omar spoke. “It sometimes consoles me that I hate myself just as much.” He squashed his cigarette butt in the ashtray impatiently. “My work, Zeinab, and myself are really all one thing, and this is what I want to escape from.”

Mustapha looked at him quizzically. “An old dream is enticing you?”

He hesitated before confiding, “Buthayna wrote some poems.”

“Buthayna!”

“I read them, and while we were discussing them, I felt a strange yearning for the old books I'd deserted twenty years ago.”

“Ah, how often I've thought that would happen.”

“Hold on. Yes, a certain sensation crept into my sluggish brain and I began searching for lost tunes. I even asked myself whether it might be possible to start again. But it was just a fleeting sensation which soon disappeared.”

“You retreated quickly.”

“No. I went back to reading, and jotted down a few words, but it came to nothing. One evening when I was at the cinema, I saw a beautiful face and felt the same sensation.”

“Is sensation what you're after?”

“Sensation or intoxication—the creature within me revived all at once and I believed it to be my aim, rather than work, family, or wealth. This strange, mysterious intoxication appeared as the sole victory among a series of defeats. It alone can vanquish doubt, apathy, and bitterness.”

Mustapha looked at him steadily, his chin resting on his hand, and asked, “You wish to bid love a final farewell?”

He said, rather vexed, “So you think it's a symptom of middle age. However, this is easily cured when the respectable husband rushes off to the nightclub or marries a new wife. And maybe I, too, will run after a different woman. But what aggravates me is more serious than that.”

Mustapha couldn't refrain from laughing. “Is it really a strange intoxication or simply a philosophical justification for adultery?” he asked.

“Don't laugh at me. You were once in a pretty bad way yourself.”

A smile spread on his face as he looked into his memories. “Yes,” he said, “I was starting to write a new play when suddenly I lost my grip. Art shattered in fragments, disintegrated into dust in my hands. So I exchanged it for another type of art, one which has given happiness to millions of our citizens.”

“Well, I've missed the way. I turned from art to a profession which is also dying. Law and art both belong to the past. I can't master the new art, as you have done, and like you, I failed to study science. How can I find the lost ecstasy of creation? Life is short and I can't forget the vertigo caused by the fellow's words: ‘Don't we live our lives knowing that our fate rests with God?' ”

“Does the idea of death disturb you?”

“No, but it urges me to taste the secret of life.”

“As you found it in the movie theater?”

He doesn't know of your walks through the streets and squares of Alexandria, yearning for a face which promised the long-sought ecstasy, of your lingering under the trees by the stream which swayed with the cries of your burning
emotions. The mad giant searching for his lost mind beneath the damp grass.

He referred to these times at some length, speaking with a solemnity befitting the mysterious and strange. “Those nights I was not an animal moved by lust, but I was suffering and in despair.”

           

“A
passionate song. Who's the singer?”

“Margaret. The star of the New Paris.”

The crescent-shaped garden which bordered the dance floor was cooled by the autumn breeze. The music came from a stage set inside red walls and lit from within.

“She looks English.”

“That's what the owner of the nightclub claims, but what passes for English in the nightclubs could easily be something else.”

The fine lines of her face, a certain look in her eyes, the lightness of her movement—perhaps it was the harmony of all these which evoked something of the long-sought ecstasy.

“I envy your expertise in these forbidden pleasures.”

“Just part of my job as editor of the magazine's art section!”

“Bravo…You said her name is Margaret.”

He answered laughing, “Or twenty pounds a night, not counting the liquor.”

The gentle autumn breeze carried greetings from an unknown world, a world not inhabited by just one mind, a world whose four corners lay behind the darkness of the cypress trees.

“I'm in a mood where anything could happen.”

“But don't drink more than one glass!”

“The first thing is to invite her to the table.”

Mustapha went to look for the waiter. The fragrance of lilies spread in the air, and in the intervals of silence, the whispering of the branches was audible. He was eager to enter his life of fantasy. Strange shapes of human beings passed before his eyes and he said to himself in apology that all this was the effect of illness.

Margaret approached the table, swaying in her dark evening gown, and greeted them with a smile which displayed her perfect set of teeth. The waiter, her shadow, stood a few feet away.

“Champagne,” Omar ordered.

You first drank it on your wedding night. It was a cheap brand, a joint present from Mustapha and Othman. What would the prisoners do if struck with an epidemic of your strange disease?

Mustapha's greeting indicated that he had known the woman previously. “Margaret,” he said, “we both admired your voice, and my friend is quite taken with you. It seems that every time you meet…” He winked, laughing. “He's a prominent lawyer, but I hope you won't need him in any professional capacity.”

Her mouth spread in a soundless laugh, and she said, “I
always need someone to defend me. Isn't that the case with women in general?”

Omar summoned forth a gift for flattery which had lain dormant for many years. “Except for those with your beauty and voice.”

Mustapha said, with a cunning blink of his filmy eyes, “He started out as a poet, you know, but he hasn't yet reached the standard of ‘I can't help wanting you more.' ”

Inspecting Omar, Margaret said cautiously, “A poet…but he looks so sedate!”

Omar responded, “That's why I gave it up so quickly.”

“So now he regards beauty as a treatment which will cure him of the strange illness he's been suffering from recently.”

The champagne bottle popped open and the bubbles raced into their glasses.

“That means I'm some sort of medicine?”

Mustapha followed quickly with a smile. “Yes, why not, of the sort that one takes before sleep.”

“Don't rush things. The cure doesn't come as easily as you think.”

Omar asked her to dance. Out on the floor, with his arm around her waist and the fragrance of her perfume quickening his senses, he savored the night. The humidity had relented, and the trees, alight with red and white lamps, seemed to have bloomed.

“May it be a happy acquaintance.”

“You're as charming as you are tall.”

“You're not short yourself.”

“But your sharp eyes frighten me.”

“They're shining only from joy, but I'm not much of a dancer. I've almost forgotten how.”

“Don't you see you're too tall to be a good dancer?”

“When my friend invited me to the New Paris he said I'd like what I'd find.”

“Really.”

Lying comes so easily in the autumn. Mustapha was clapping for them as they returned to their seats. Omar's face glowed with a boyish happiness, and for a moment, bewitched by the night's charms, he was restored to his lost youth. She touched the ring of his left hand, murmuring, “Married…really, you married men don't give the bachelors a chance.”

Mustapha said, laughing, “You two are getting along famously. I bet you'll go out together tonight.”

“You've lost the bet.”

“Why, my dear Margaret? A lawyer like our friend won't tolerate delay.”

“Then he must learn.”

“Conventions be damned!”

Omar said gently, “In any case, my car's at your disposal to take you wherever you'd like.”

When she got into the car with him, he was elated. “Where to?”

“Athens Hotel.”

“Have you seen the pyramids after midnight?”

“It's a dark night without any moon.”

He headed in the direction of the pyramids. “Civilization has robbed us of the beauty of darkness.”

“But—”

He said reassuringly, “I'm a lawyer, not a playboy, or a highway bandit.”

His heart had not stirred like this since the rendezvous in the Jardin des Familles. He could hardly remember Zeinab's youthful face and hadn't really looked at their wedding picture for the past ten years. You, Margaret, are
everything and nothing. With the desperation of a fugitive, I knock at the gate of the enchanted city.

“Under this open sky by the pyramids, great events took place.”

She lifted his arm from around her neck, saying, “Please don't add to those events.”

He pressed her hand in gratitude nonetheless.

“It's best that we don't stop,” she said. “Don't you see how strong the wind is?”

“We're well protected inside.”

How dense the darkness is around us. If only its density could shut out the world, obliterating everything before the weary eye so that the heart alone might see, might gaze on the blazing star of ecstasy. It approaches now like the rays of dawn. Your soul seems to shun everything in its thirst for love, in its love for love, in its yearning for the first ecstasy of creation and for a refuge in the wellsprings of life.

“Why don't we spend the night here?”

“Be sensible. Please take me back.”

“You've never heard of what goes on at night at the pyramids?”

“Tell me about it tomorrow.”

He leaned toward her and they exchanged a kiss; but then she restrained him, pleading, “I said tomorrow.”

He kissed her cheek lightly, signaling retreat, and started moving the car over the sand.

“Please don't be angry.”

“I yield to the eternal conditions.”

“Eternal?”

“I mean the feminine conditions.”

“Actually, I'm tired.”

“So am I, but I'll arrange the right place for us.”

“Wait till we meet again.”

“I'll start setting things up.”

“Wait a little.”

“I have a feeling that we'll stay together.”

“Yes,” she said, looking ahead at the road.

It was nearly dawn when he returned home, and as he rode the elevator, he remembered how his father used to rebuke him for his late-night escapades. Entering the bedroom, he saw Zeinab sitting on the dresser stool, looking at him with dulled and saddened eyes.

He said quietly, “You should have been asleep.”

She spread her hands in despair. “This is the third night.”

Undressing, he said distantly, “It was unavoidable.”

She asked him more sharply, “Home upsets you?”

“No, but it's true, I am disturbed.”

“And how have you spent your nights?”

“No place in particular, at the movies, at coffeehouses, roaming around in the car.”

“And I'm here with all kinds of ideas running through my head.”

“While you should be sound asleep.”

“I'll grow ill in the end.”

“Follow my advice.”

She sighed deeply. “You treat me with such deadly coldness.”

There's no doubt of that. The man you know has shed his skin and now he runs panting after a mysterious call, leaving behind him a trail of dust, all the joys of yesterday, all his Utopian dreams, even the girl whose youthful beauty held such promise in store when church bells rang.
Infatuated, you once looked into those green eyes and said, “Love is fearless.”

She murmured, clinging to you, “But my family.”

“I'm your family, I'm your world. The Day of Judgment will come before I desert you.”

Today your life hangs on a cheap song.

Sleep, Zeinab, for your sake and mine.

Another woman stood on the red stage, singing,

He leaned over to Mustapha. “Where's Margaret?” he asked.

Mustapha got up to inquire, then returned saying, “An unpleasant surprise.”

“What is it?”

“She's gone.”

“Where?”

“Abroad.”

“Did this happen unexpectedly?”

Mustapha brushed his hand disdainfully. “Let's look for someone else.”