The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz
He smiled. “Do you believe in God?”
The man replied in astonishment, “Naturally. What an odd question.”
“Then tell me what He is.”
He laughed openly, for the strange questions had removed all ceremony. “Will your infatuation for Warda last long?”
“Of course.”
“Couldn’t it…?”
He interrupted. “If you tell me what God is, I promise I’ll let you have her immediately!”
The man rose, bowed once more, and said on his way out, “I’m always at your service.”
ELEVEN
He kissed her with fervent gratitude. “I know it’s a great sacrifice to quit your job.”
Her wide eyes shone with tears. “For your sake.”
The Oriental room exuded the breath of love. He’d never dreamed he would love her so intensely. She withdrew a dark blue box from the pocket of her robe and handed it to him shyly—a gift of golden cuff links.
He exclaimed, as though he’d never owned gold before, “Sweetheart!”
“The cuff links, you can see, have two hearts.”
“Because your heart is made of gold, as I told you.”
Running her fingers through his thick black hair, she asked, “Why did you bring all your clothes with you today?”
His face clouded, and he said in a voice devoid of tenderness, “I’ve left home for good.”
She exclaimed in astonishment, “No!”
“It’s the only solution.”
“But I told you, I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
The room’s atmosphere in the silence of dawn was electric. She looked at him with angry and desperate eyes, her makeup smudged with all the tears she’d shed. How ravaged by anger is a face which had remained placid for twenty years.
“You should train yourself to accept the facts.”
“While you stain your honor with a prostitute.”
“Your voice will wake everyone up.”
“Look at the lipstick on your handkerchief. How disgusting!”
Overcome by anger, he shouted, “What of it?”
“Your daughter is of marriageable age.”
“I’m ridding myself of death.”
“Aren’t you ashamed? I’m ashamed for you.”
His anger increasing, he replied, “Accepting death is even more shameful.”
Her head dropped as she wept. “Twenty years without knowing your filth,” she said in a choked voice.
He said insanely, “So, let it be the end.”
“I’ll wander around aimlessly.”
“No, this is your home; so stay. I’ll go.”
You threw yourself on a chair in the living room, your eyes closed with pain. Hearing a noise, you raised your head and found Buthayna standing before you, pale-faced and still drowsy-eyed with sleep.
The atmosphere was charged with guilt and reproach as you gazed at each other in silence. You remembered the disgraceful lie, and in all your life had never felt so ashamed.
“I’m sorry, Buthayna, for upsetting you.”
The compressed lips revealed her wounded pride. “There’s no use talking,” she said, then reverted to silence, succumbing to the burden which had fallen upon her.
“Your mother will remain in the house, provided with every comfort.”
He prayed to God that she wouldn’t cry. “It’s distressing,” he murmured, “but I’m ridding my soul of something more serious.”
She looked sadly into his eyes. “But you told me there was nothing.”
His face burning, he sighed. “The truth was inappropriate.”
“Why?”
“Let’s preserve what love there is between us.”
You left, unable to meet her glance again until she pardons you.
Warda commented, “You’ll regret your decision.”
“No, I can’t stand the hypocrisy anymore.”
She said anxiously, “I’m so afraid that I’ll fail to make you happy.”
“But I am happy, really.”
And so he applied himself to happiness and shunned all disturbing thoughts. Anticipating resistance from Mustapha, he accosted him. “I’m happy. Does that displease you? I even feel some poetic stirrings.”
He also became more receptive to work, though he was still reluctant to accept cases. His work breaks were spent talking to her on the phone, and at the end of the day, he would rush back to his nest and she would welcome him with a shining face. They usually stayed in the Oriental room, but sometimes they’d go out to the distant parts of Cairo, to the rendezvous of lovers; sometimes they’d take night excursions to Fayum or to the rest house on the Desert Road. When she learned that his poetical aspirations of the past were again seeking expression, she encouraged him with superb recitations of her own. As a student at the Drama Institute, she’d memorized Shawki’s plays, and many love poems as well.
He said to her admiringly, “Your love of poetry is wonderful.”
She urged him to start writing again, but he was reluctant. “Isn’t it better to live poetry than to write it?”
One day she remarked, “You haven’t asked me about my past.”
Giving her a kiss, he answered, “When we’re in love, we accept everything on faith. There’s no need to ask questions.”
But she wanted to talk about her past. “My father was an English teacher, a wonderful teacher, the sort that students never forget. If he’d been alive when I decided to enter the Drama Institute, he would have given me his blessings and encouragement. But my mother’s a very pious, narrow-minded woman. I entered the Institute against her wishes, and when I decided to take up dancing, she was furious. So were my uncles, on both sides. It ended in our cutting off relations. I deserted my family.”
“And how did you manage on your own?”
“I lived in the house of one of my actress friends.”
He fondled her soft hand and asked, “Have you always loved dancing?”
“Yes, I loved to dance, but I had aspirations of being an actress. I tried, and failed, and so ended up as I started, as a dancer.”
He asked, disturbed, “Did Yazbeck bully you?”
“Actually, he’s kinder than the others, and I knew what working in a nightclub entailed.”
“You’re my first and last love,” he said fervently, pressing her to him in gratitude. Then he asked, “Why didn’t you return to your mother after you’d failed in acting?”
“It was too late. I have my pride, and failure only intensified it.”
Failure! The curse that never ends. It’s awful that no one listens to your songs, that your love for the secret of existence dies, so that existence itself loses all mystery. Sighs of lament will one day destroy everything.
The office witnessed sober visits from his uncle, a justice, and from his only sister. They besought him not to marry “the dancer” and his uncle observed, “If this relationship continues, you won’t be considered for the justiceship.”
He said rather abruptly, “I haven’t striven for it or wanted it.”
He defended his happiness fiercely, with all the force of despair which had seized him. He seemed so childishly gay and innocent that Mustapha remarked, laughing, “Now tell us about the meaning of life.”
Omar laughed loudly. “That question nags at us only when our hearts are empty….A full vessel doesn’t produce hollow sounds. Ecstasy is fulfillment, so I can only hope that love will bring everlasting ecstasy.”
“Sometimes I pity you, other times I envy you.” Omar’s eyes shone triumphantly as Mustapha continued. “As fast as I speed through life, now and then the old sense of failure, buried deep in my heart, returns—perhaps on one of the dusty days of the sandstorm season, and I’m bedeviled by questions about life’s meaning, but I soon repress them, like shameful memories.”
A wintry wind rattled the windows of the office and the late afternoon faded into night. Mustapha’s
“What a hero you are!”
He continued enumerating his achievements. “The way I made love to my wife last night was so fantastic that I suggested to the editor that it be written up as ‘The Artistic Event of the Week.’ My son Omar, unfortunately named after you, has become a sulky adolescent, as mad about soccer as we once were about overturning the world.”
He overturned the world and landed in jail. But someday he’d get out, in a few years, and astonished glances would be exchanged. Let others worry about it.
Mustapha remarked in a more serious vein, “The editor suggested that I give a lecture to the employees on socialist consciousness.”
“In what capacity?”
“In my capacity as an old socialist!”
“You accepted, of course?”
“Of course, but I wonder, with the state so intent on applying its progressive ideals, isn’t it better for us to be concerned with our own private affairs?”
“Such as selling popcorn and watermelon seeds and wondering about the meaning of life?”
“Or falling in love to find the ecstasy of fulfillment.”
“Or growing ill without cause.”
They smoked in silence, then Omar asked suddenly, “How are they?”
Mustapha smiled. “Zeinab is fine, back to normal, though exhausted by her pregnancy. But there’s something you should know.”
Omar showed signs of interest.
“She’s thinking of looking for work after the delivery.”
He made a gesture of annoyance as Mustapha continued. “As a translator, for example. I’m afraid that she’ll leave home one day.”
“But it’s her home.”
Mustapha looked at him sarcastically. “Buthayna’s immersed in her studies, and Jamila has almost forgotten you.”
He lowered his eyes, disconcerted.
“And I fulfill my duty by criticizing you relentlessly in the bitterest terms.”
Omar laughed. “You old hypocrite.”
“My wife, on her part, never ceases attacking you.”
“Of course, of course.”
“I often defend you when we’re alone and attribute your behavior to a ‘severe psychological illness,’ reassuring her at the same time that it’s not infectious!”
TWELVE
No one excelled Warda in the art of love. Mad about her man and their little nest, she devoted herself completely to the service of love and to performing all its tasks. Omar would look around the place, smell the roses in the vase, listen to the music in the Oriental room, and would feel he was in paradise. Though she asked nothing of him, he would urge her occasionally to buy clothes and other things. She tried to keep her weight down by taking walks and watching her diet, and urged him also to be careful about his eating and drinking. He felt that she’d become a part of his personality and that she clung to him as her last hope. In the long winter nights they withdrew into themselves and stayed in the Oriental room until late at night, and between kisses and embraces talked endlessly about the past, present, and future, about truth and fantasy, reality and dreams, and were it not for the closed porch overlooking the square, the winter storms and rain showers would never have disturbed them at all. When conversation was exhausted, the silence that fell was one of mutual understanding, security, and comfort. But at times he was overcome by his fantasies, some of them laughable, others more disturbing. He was alarmed by one particular vision: the collision of two cars at a crossroad, a middle-aged gentleman tossed in the air.
“Where are you?” the gentle voice whispered.
He answered, a bit ashamed, “It’s nothing.”
She put her arm around his neck. “It must be something important.”
He shook his head. After a moment’s silence she probed again. “Why wouldn’t Buthayna and Jamila visit you in your office?”
He was thinking of what a strange house the spider builds to hunt flies. “Buthayna didn’t want to.”
“She knew of your wish?”
“Mustapha conveyed it to her.”
“You haven’t talked to me about it.”
“It’s not important.”
“Whatever concerns you is important to me.”
They began to watch television more. It helped in forestalling the strange fantasies. Mustapha rang them up one day to ask how they were. She invited him to drop by, and so he began visiting them. He asked Omar how his poetry was progressing.
“He does write,” Warda replied
Omar protested, “It’s an abortion.”
“Happiness is more important than poetry,” Mustapha said consolingly.
He was on the verge of asking, “But what is happiness?” but the concern, so evident in Mustapha’s gray eyes, deterred him. Mustapha and the radio and the television rescued them from repetitious talk. And then there were his fantasies, “Oh God!” He saw himself as a magician, entertaining the people with his miraculous powers. He would cause the opera house to vanish in the blink of an eye, as the astonished crowds looked on, and then, to exclamations of wonder, suddenly restore it. Dear God, how much we need such potions of magic. As he gazed at her dreamily, she asked, “Why don’t you invite some friends over to pass the time?”
He said quietly, “I have no friends besides Mustapha.”
She seemed unconvinced, so he explained, “I don’t consider colleagues and acquaintances friends.”
So she arranged, on her own, for them to go out more often, to the theater and the cinema, even to the nightclubs.
“Isn’t this better,” she said, “than staying alone by ourselves at home?”
He nodded in agreement.
She reproached him. “This is the first time you’ve been unflattering!”
Too late, he tried to make amends. “I simply meant to compliment you for arranging these outings.”
“I’ll never tire of your company.”
“Nor I of yours, believe me.”
He was annoyed at his inattentiveness. Dear God, what’s happening? Mustapha, at any rate, was clearly impressed by his happiness, and remarked one day as they were sitting together in his office, “Tell me about love. In the end you may persuade me to adopt a new philosophy of life.”
Omar saw the glint of maliciousness in his eyes. Ignoring the question, he asked, “Have I become so unimportant to Buthayna?”
“You know she’s idealistic and proud, but in her heart she adores you.”
“Hasn’t she missed me, the traitor?”
“She’ll see you again one day, but for God’s sake tell me about this romance of yours.”
“As strong as ever!” he said defiantly.
“A political declaration?”
“You have no right to probe the secrets of the heart, you hypocrite!”
Mustapha laughed at length, and said, “Let me describe the situation as I see it. Those delightful conversations are dwindling, the games are losing their charm, inadvertently you drink more.”
“Drop dead.”
How awful. Warda was the perfect lover and beautiful as well. Dear God, how can ecstasy be aroused again and the dead poetry revived? How dark the late afternoon of winter.
They went one night to the New Paris and suddenly Margaret appeared on the stage. His heart raced, remembering the past, but with a great effort of will, he controlled his nerves.
She sang:
“I can’t help wanting you more every time we meet.
The flame leaps higher with each heartbeat.”
Warda whispered, “How true.”
One glance exchanged between you and Margaret would be a giveaway. So they left at
He called Warda from the office to tell her he’d been invited to a party in honor of a colleague recently appointed justice. He went to the New Paris and listened to Margaret sing while he waited. What brought me here, and why so quickly? What am I looking for? Is it all over with Warda?
Margaret came to the table, along with the champagne. Her face glowing, she said, “I’m sorry I had to leave so unexpectedly.”
“Unexpectedly?”
“I received a cable from abroad.”
He studied her, marveling at the force of her attraction. He asked her to leave with him, but she answered, “Not tonight.”
He tried to control his impatience. “When?”
“Perhaps tomorrow.”
When he returned to the nest, around one o’clock that night, Warda was sitting in the Oriental room. He kissed her and asked, as he’d once asked Zeinab, “You’re still awake?”
She said reprovingly, “Of course!”
She looked at him for a while, then remarked, “I hope you haven’t overeaten or drunk too much.”
Later as he was lying in his pajamas on the couch, she crept over to him and pressed her lips to his, but he felt no stirrings of desire. “Let it be an innocent night,” he said to himself.
She called him at work the next day, but unable to think of any excuse, he made no mention of his plans to be absent. He went off to the New Paris congratulating himself on his indifference. The red lights transformed Margaret into a bewitching she-devil, and her slender neck and rich voice thrilled him.
Spanish lamps hung from a ceiling covered with paintings of nude women. How can ecstasy filter into such a place, filled with cigarette smoke and the odor of wine? Peering behind a huge pillar, he saw a couple embracing as if in the throes of death.
Could Warda be uprooted so easily from his soul, as if only an artificial flower? Why are we reminded of death so insistently, whatever we do? Who can affirm that these drunken souls really exist?