The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (5 page)

           

T
his act of faithlessness set off a reaction twice as intense and he felt he was in a desperate race with insanity. In the end those swaying branches would speak. Mustapha asked, “Do you really think this is the remedy?”

“Maybe. It's the only thing that's helped so far.”

He stopped the car in front of the Capri Club and said as they were getting out, “I've tried so many things, as you know, to no avail. I did feel a heartthrob with Margaret. Passing illusion that she was, the heartthrob was real.”

They sat under a trellis roofing. In the dim light, the people sitting at the other tables appeared to be phantoms.

Mustapha remarked, “The manager of this club is a friend of yours,” and indicated a man standing at the far end of the stage. He was a short barrel of a man, with a fleshy white face and heavy jowls puffed up like a water-skin. His heavy-lidded eyes peered drowsily yet they had a
certain mischievous tilt. When he saw Mustapha he moved toward them with surprising speed for one so heavy. Omar recognized him as a former client for whom he'd won two cases. The man shook their hands warmly, then sat down, saying, “Omar Bey, this is a pleasant surprise.” He ordered whiskey and went on. “I never dreamed you'd stop by here, but after all, those who work hard deserve to play.”

Mustapha interrupted with a decisive voice. “Let's dispense with the formalities, Mr. Yazbeck.” As the manager looked at them warily, Mustapha laughed. “It's as you suspected. The time has come to return the good services of your lawyer.”

“Omar Bey?”

“I thought of asking you to recommend a suitable girl for him.”

The man smiled broadly and said, “A refined and beautiful girl…of good family.”

“I'm speaking about love, not marriage!”

“It's up to him, sir.”

“Do you have any such cultivated lovelies?”

He waved his small, soft hand in deprecation and said proudly, “Capri's main attraction.”

He went on to elaborate, still glancing at Omar a bit skeptically. “She was a student at the Drama Institute, but wasn't a success at acting. She loves to dance, though, and has created a sensation at the Capri.”

“Warda!”

“None other.”

Mustapha said apologetically, “I didn't think of her because of her height, which would naturally discourage me.”

Yazbeck gestured grandiosely toward the stage, where the musicians had started playing an Oriental dance. A storm of applause greeted the dancer, a magnificent statuesque woman with wide-set languid eyes and a high forehead which gave her face a certain aristocratic distinction.

Mustapha murmured, “Marvelous.”

Yazbeck said jestingly, “You're immune to such delightful temptations…”

“I'm self-sufficient. It's a pastime enjoyed by the best of husbands.”

Omar smiled, remembering how Mustapha once said that he couldn't betray his wife since he wasn't able to make love with anyone else. Then he drifted away from the voices around him as he followed the movements of the lovely body, lithe in spite of her height. He loved her smile as he loved the cypress tree. Yazbeck's outstretched hand, bidding them goodbye, drew him back to awareness. After the man had gone, Mustapha looked at him seriously and cautioned, “The raptures of love are seldom found in nightclubs.”

Omar muttered sarcastically, “He who strives will be rewarded.”

“You know whenever I see Zeinab now my conscience bothers me.”

He said scornfully, “These pains are more severe than the luxury of conscience.”

Mustapha pointed out the problems involved in such affairs, but Omar interjected, “In the feminine sex, I seem to see life on two feet.”

Warda walked directly toward them, without pretense of delay, her wide, gray eyes glancing steadily at Omar.
The scent of the jasmine flowers she wore in her bracelet diffused in the air. Shaking his hand, she exclaimed happily, “At last I've found a man I don't have to look at from above!”

She sat down between the two men and flicked her hand so that the jasmine spilled onto the red tablecloth. The champagne came and bubbled forth. Warda seemed composed, but there was a look in her gray eyes that cautioned against haste. She exchanged a smile of familiarity with Mustapha and listened to the accustomed praise of her dancing and beauty. Throughout, she continued looking at Omar with respect, while he searched her gray eyes for some clue, some answer to his unsatisfied longings. I came not because I loved but in order to love. The complexion is clear, the scent pleasant, and the long eyelashes alluring.

“So you're the famous lawyer?”

“That's of little importance unless you have problems.”

“My problems can't be solved through the law courts, unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately?”

“They might have been solved by you.”

Mustapha said, laughing, “He's trustworthy, both in court and outside it.”

He noticed her long neck surrounded by a simple pearl strand, the bare spread of her chest, the healthy passion expressed in her full, colored lips and flowing from her eyes, and felt his being throb with a strange and unbounded desire, like the mysterious yearnings which assailed him in the late hours of the night. He wished to address the depths, and to have the depths speak to
him without an intermediary, but if the long-sought ecstasy eluded him, he would find a substitute in the firebrand of sex, the convulsive climax which consumes the wine of life and all its dreams in one gulp. He was delirious with longing, anticipation, the titillation of adventure, the effect of abandoned drinking, the scent of jasmine pressed under his glass, Warda's encouraging glance, a star blinking through a gap in the trellis. As the club showed signs of closing, he said, “Shall we go?”

Mustapha said his farewells and left.

Warda was impressed by the sight of his Cadillac, an elegant little coupe de ville. “Where's your home?” he asked.

“It's out of the question. Don't you have a place?”

“With a wife and two daughters.”

“Then take me home as those without homes do.”

He drove out to the desert by the pyramids, racing madly, seeking the shelter of the open sky as he had with Margaret. The half-moon was sinking toward the west. He reached toward her and gave her a light, artful kiss as a start. Then they exchanged a long kiss, incited by passions as old as the moon.

She sighed, whispering. “This is nice.”

He pressed her against him with a fervor which stretched into the solitudes of the desert. His fingers entwined in her hair, which was lit by moonbeams, and he said in a strange, breathless voice, “When the dawn comes.”

With his cheek pressed against hers, they gazed at the sleepy moon, on a level with their eyes, and followed its languid beams on the sand. Its beams would die, leaving
the heart still thirsting. No power on earth can preserve this godly moment, a moment which has conferred a secret meaning to the universe. You stand on its threshold, with your hand stretched out imploringly toward the darkness, the horizon, and the depths where the moon has fallen. A firebrand seems to burn in your chest as the dawn breaks forth and fears of bankruptcy and want recede.

“Are you a dreamer?” she asked.

“No, I'm realistic to the point of illness.”

She laughed. “But you're not a woman beater.”

“I don't beat men either.”

“That's good.”

Pressing her closer, he said, “But at one time, I was about to kill.”

“Because of a woman?”

“No.”

“Don't talk of such things in the moonlight.”

“In the end I decided to kill myself.”

“In my presence?”

“In your arms.”

“In the moonlight?”

“Now the moon is disappearing.”

When he returned home and switched on the bedroom light, Zeinab opened her lifeless eyes. As he greeted her indifferently, she said tensely, “It's almost dawn.”

“So?”

She sat on the bed, her eyelids swollen, looking tormented and desperate.

“I haven't heard this tone from you in all the years we've been married.”

He put on his pajamas in silence and she cried out, “I've never heard anything like it.”

He muttered resignedly, “Illness is like that.”

“How can I bear such a life?”

“My days are spoiled. Don't spoil the nights.”

“The girls are asking questions.”

“Well, let's face the situation with a certain amount of wisdom.”

She buried her face against the wall. “If only I had some place to go.”

He turned off the light and lay down, closing his eyes. Soon, the first movements of the morning would be heard, and tears would be shed next to him, while betrayal gnawed beneath like an insect. Only a few moments remained before this existence would die. She's cut off from the tree and no longer has anyone but you. It's strange that you should be filled with such determination. Tonight's ecstasy is as erratic as a bolt of lightning. How can it fill the emptiness of life?

On Friday he sought out Buthayna on the balcony while she was watering the flowerpots. He smiled somewhat bashfully, but she welcomed him by racing over and presenting her cheek to be kissed. In spite of her happy glow, he detected in her evasive glance a faint reprimand.

“I've missed you very much,” she said.

He bit the inside of his lip and said, “I'm sorry, but I'm determined to get well, and just need a bit of forbearance.”

She turned back to the flowerpots, and he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, then added after a pause, “But Mama's not.”

“That's understandable. But things will change. Just be patient.”

She pointed out a jasmine bud, still barely visible, and exclaimed happily, “The first jasmine. It's very small but the scent is strong. Shall I pick it for you?”

           

H
ow strange it seems, going to work every day in an office which had become so alien and meaningless. When would he have the courage to close it down?

The head clerk remarked, “Every day we lose another case. I've become almost inactive.”

In fact, he'd left the burden of work almost entirely to others and did very little supervising or reviewing anymore. Gloomy eyes stared at him from the walls in the stagnant, musty air. His creative energies were spent outside now in setting up the flat in Soliman Pasha Square.

“I'm glad we're setting up our own place,” he said to Warda. “We can't go to the pyramids in winter.”

She asked, swinging her shoulders to a jazz beat under the trellis of the Capri, “When winter comes, will you still be interested in our affair?”

He raised his glass of champagne. “To a permanent affair.” Yazbeck was standing in the distance, the grand master of ceremonies. Omar returned his smile and said, taking Warda's hand, “I owe a lot to him.”

“He's nice and better than most of his sort, but greedy, as you'd expect.”

“But I'm a champagne customer.”

She frowned slightly. “It's extravagant to come here every night.”

He beamed, murmuring, “Your concern is encouraging.”

She embraced him with her eyes, and said, “Haven't the pyramids already witnessed that?”

“Yes, love, and for me it's not just an affair as I said, but…”

She urged silence with a press of her hand. “Don't name it. Isn't it better that it names itself?”

“You're so lovely, it drives me mad.”

“I have no confidence in words, since I was originally an actress.”

“And a lady through and through.”

“Thank you, but you know most people have a low opinion of the art. For that reason I left my family. It's just as well I have no brother or father.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “Certainly acting would be better than dancing at the Capri.”

“I didn't have the proper devotion to it, and they said I had no talent. Dancing was my real love all along, so it was the Capri, and the rest followed, inevitably….”

He said with warmth, “But you have a heart of gold.”

“That I've never heard before.”

He commissioned a couple of men to work on the new flat—the furniture, the bar, the objets d'art and decor. And soon the place was quite beautifully set up. Apart from the bedroom, dining room, and entrance hall, there was an
Oriental room which recaptured the fantasies of
A Thousand and One Nights
. He spent without limit, as though ridding himself of a painful financial tumor. He followed Mustapha's amazed eyes as he toured the place, and when they finally met his glance, said, “Instead of reprimanding me, talk to me about the meaning of life.”

“Life!”

“I'll knock the deaf walls at every spot until the voice inside betrays the hidden treasure.”

Mustapha shrugged resignedly and said, “There is a certain beauty in the madness.”

“The last few days have given me a taste for life I've never had before. Nothing else matters.”

Mustapha said, smiling, “Yazbeck's uneasiness proves the girl's loyalty.”

“She's loyal and honest or else the greatest of actresses.”

“But she's a failure as an actress.”

The apartment overwhelmed her when she entered it the first time. She exclaimed in admiration, “You really do have champagne taste, but you've been too extravagant.”

He gave her a light kiss and said, “This is our little nest.”

“I don't want to burden you or give you any false impressions about me.”

“If I didn't know the real Warda, I wouldn't have made any effort.”

She laughed coquettishly. “You're alone responsible for your understanding.”

“And the pyramids?”

“Just because we shriek when fire burns us doesn't mean shrieking is in our nature.”

He stretched out on the divan, saying, “Mustapha tells me Yazbeck is upset.”

“I refused to go out with anyone else. He can jump in the lake.”

“And stay there indefinitely.”

“I'll restrict my work at the Capri to dancing.”

“You're so sweet.”

“It's hot today. I'm going to take a shower in the new bathroom.”

He changed from his street clothes into a gallabiyya, for that, he decided, was more in keeping with the Oriental room than pajamas. Looking contentedly around the elegant place, he reflected that happiness was enough to cure him; he could let up on the regime. A sudden lightheartedness prompted him to ask in a booming voice, “What's the shower water up to?”

Her voice responded behind the bathroom door, “Something very impolite!” The door opened, she darted past him, wrapped in a towel, and shot into the bedroom. He closed his eyes in contentment. May this nest repeat the ecstasies of the pyramids, and what he now holds in his hands, may it satisfy her longings. For its sake he has tread on other hearts and learned recklessness and cruelty. May she not vanish as Margaret did. Your colleague, the great lawyer, said to you in your office, “You look too dapper these days for a successful, hardworking lawyer.”

You laughed. “Less so for a happy lawyer.”

He glanced at him with misgiving, the brazen lover, then quickly changed the conversation to politics, his favorite subject. “So, what are people doing these days?” he asked.

Uninterested in politics, you answered, “Searching madly for ecstasy.”

He didn't understand. He's a womanizer, but you're not. You're neither brazen nor frivolous, but who distinguishes
between the slayer and the worshipper, or believes you're building a temple from the wreckage?

The bedroom door opened halfway, and her head appeared. “Making up is tedious. I'm dying for a kiss.”

He rushed over to her and held her cheeks between his hands, pressing her mouth closed, and as he kissed her, he savored the fragrance of her soap, the scent of her skin. “Shall I come in?” he whispered.

Laughing, she pushed him away and said, “Don't be primitive.”

He reclined again on the divan, and looked at the radio-television console in front of him. In a playful mood, he got up and turned both of them on at once and was assaulted by a discussion of juvenile crimes running simultaneously with “Listener's Request.” He turned them off, but still feeling playful, went to the bedroom door and knocked. “Hi,” the voice called.

“I love you.”

“With all my heart.”

“What do you want most in life?”

“Love.”

He continued in a playful tone. “Have you ever thought of the meaning of life?”

“It has no meaning apart from love.”

“Have you finished making yourself up?”

“Just a minute more.”

He persisted. “Doesn't it bother you, love, that we play while the world around us is serious?”

She laughed exuberantly. “Don't you see that it's we who are serious while the world around us plays?”

“Where do you get such eloquence?”

“After a while you'll learn the secret.”

When the night is spent and the relentless dawn overtakes us, you'll return inevitably to the dreary room where there is no music, no ecstasy, where sad eyes and a wall of stone will close upon you. Then the chords of somber wisdom will ring out with reproaches as harsh as the dust of a sandstorm. Make your reply as resolute and final as your aversion.

“Don't disturb me.” Deafen your ears to all words. “I said, don't disturb me. This is the way I am, today, tomorrow, and every day….Accept matters as they are, and leave our daughter out of the quarrel.” “There is no point in arguing, I'll do as I please.” And don't back down if Buthayna asks why you've changed. “Think what you want, I'm too bored by it all to make excuses.”

The door opened and Warda emerged in all her splendor. “What do you think of me, sweetheart?”

He looked at her dazzled, and murmured, “Let me be a sentence never uttered by a tongue before.”