The Time and the Place: And Other Stories by Naguib Mahfouz
His unexpected presence let loose an electric charge that penetrated through to the depths of those seated around the tables. The singing stopped, the expressions on the men’s faces contracted, the laughter subsided. Eyes alternated between staring at him and stealing glances at him. This, though, did not last long. Waking from the shock of surprise and terror at his appearance, they refused to allow the stranger to spoil their evening. With gestures they called upon one another to shun him, to continue having a good time. Once again they went back to their conversation, to their joking and drinking, but he was not in fact absent from their consciousness; they did not succeed in ignoring him completely, and he continued to weigh upon their spirits like some inflamed tooth. The man clapped his hands with disquieting loudness, and the aged waiter came and brought him a glass of the infernal wine. He quickly downed it and followed it with a second, then ordered four glasses all at once and drained them one after another. Then he ordered more. A sensation of fear and awe came over them; the laughter died on their lips; they withdrew into a dejected silence. What sort of man was this? The amount of wine he had consumed was enough to have killed an elephant, and here he was sitting like a solid rock, wholly unaffected, his features unrelaxed. What sort of man was this?
The black cat approached tentatively. It waited for him to throw it something. He was unaware of its presence, and the cat began rubbing itself against his leg. But the man stamped on the ground and the cat retreated, no doubt amazed at such treatment, the like of which it had never before experienced. The Greek turned his lifeless face toward the sound. He regarded the stranger at length, then went back to looking at nothing. The stranger emerged from his state of inertia. He moved his head to right and left violently, bit on his lips, then began talking in an inaudible voice, either to himself or to some person of his imagination. He menaced and threatened, waving his fist about. His face took on the ugliest expression of anger. The silence and fear were intense.
His voice was heard for the first time, a harsh voice like the bellowing of a beast.
“Curses…doom and destruction…” he repeated loudly.
He clenched his fist and continued. “Let the mountain come down—and what’s behind the mountain.”
He was silent for a while, then went on talking in a voice slightly less loud, “This is the question, quite simply and frankly.”
They became convinced that there was no point staying on any longer. When it had hardly begun, he had ruined the evening’s entertainment. They might as well go off peacefully. Agreement was reached among them with an exchange of looks, then there was a general movement of getting ready and standing up. It was then that, for the first time, he took notice of them. Emerging from his trance, he let his gaze move among them questioningly. With a gesture he halted them as he asked, “Who are you?”
The question deserved to be ignored and treated with contempt. But no one thought to ignore it or treat it with contempt.
“For a long time we’ve been patrons of the place,” answered one of them, taking heart from his mature years.
“When did you come?”
“We came at the beginning of the evening.”
“Then you were here before I arrived?”
“Yes.”
He gestured to them to return to their places.
“No one is to leave the room,” he said sternly.
They could not believe their ears. They were tongue-tied with amazement, but not one of them dared to answer him as he deserved. The middle-aged man, with a calmness not at all consistent with his feelings, said, “But we want to go.”
He threw them a stony, threatening glare. “Let him who has no care for his life advance!”
There was no one among them who had no care for his life. They exchanged dazed, baffled glances.
“But what’s the purpose of your objecting to our leaving?” asked the middle-aged man.
The stranger shook his head with grim scorn. “Don’t try to fool me,” he said. “You have heard everything….”
“I can assure you we have heard nothing,” said the middle-aged man in astonishment.
“Don’t try to fool me,” he shouted angrily. “You’ve learned what it’s all about.”
“We heard nothing and we know nothing.”
“Deceiving liars!”
“You must believe us.”
“Believe riotous drunkards?”
“You are insulting innocent people and sullying their honor.”
“Let him who has no care for his life advance!”
It became plain to them that the situation could only be handled by force, and this was something they could not muster. Under the spell of his fearsome gaze, they were obliged to return to their seats with suppressed anger and an unprecedented sense of degradation.
“And how long shall we remain here?” asked the old man.
“Until the appropriate time comes.”
“And when will the appropriate time come?”
“Shut up and wait.”
The time passed in painful tension. As they sat subdued by distress and worry, the wine flew from their heads. Even the black cat was conscious of a hostile odor in the atmosphere, so it jumped up onto the ledge of the sole window, then lay down, folded its front paws beneath its head, and closed its eyes, allowing its tail to hang out between the bars.
Certain questions about the man demanded to be answered: Was he drunk? Was he mad? What was the story he was accusing them of having heard? During all this time the Greek owner persisted in his lifeless silence, while the waiter, as though he were seeing and hearing nothing, went on serving the stranger.
The stranger began to look at them with scornful malice, then he said menacingly, “If any one of you has the idea of playing me false, I’ll punish the lot of you mercilessly.”
They took heart when he resumed talking, so the middle-aged man said with evident sincerity, “I swear to you, we all swear to you…”
“If I asked you for an oath, by what would you swear?”
A tiny hope invaded them, and the middle-aged man said eagerly, “By what you want—by our children, by the Almighty!”
“Nothing has any value with patrons of such a vulgar tavern!”
“We’re not as you think, we’re decent fathers and faithful believers. That may be just why we so need to refresh our burdened spirits….”
“Depraved scoundrels, you are dreaming of building castles not by hard work but by the contemptible exploitation of the story!”
“We swear by God Almighty that we do not know of the story and have no idea what it’s about.”
“Who of you is without a story, you cowards?”
“You did not speak. Your lips were moving, but no sound came from them,” said the old man.
“Do not try to deceive me, you old dodderer!”
“You must believe us and let us be.”
“Woe to you if you make a move! Woe to you if you act treacherously! If it comes to it, I’ll smash your heads and I’ll use them to block up the passageway.”
The man was truly fearsome, maybe also fearful, which would in itself increase the possibility of things ending badly. Despair crept into their hearts like a wave of deadly cold. He did not stop drinking, though he did not get drunk or become listless or torpid. And here he was, barring the sole way out of the place, powerful, violent, and as steely as the bars at the window.
They went on hopelessly exchanging glances. Whenever they glimpsed a shadow behind the bars, hope sprang to their hearts, though they were unable to make the slightest movement. Even the black cat seemed to have deserted them completely, and continued to enjoy its slumbers. One of them, finding the restraint too hard to bear, asked apprehensively, “Can I go to the toilet?”
“Who told you I was a wet nurse!”
The old man sighed and said, “Are we fated to remain like this till morning?”
“You’ll be lucky to see the morning!”
To argue was futile:
Once again they exchanged glances. Concern was to be seen in their eyes, and whisperings, just discreet enough for the stranger not to hear, were passed between them.
“What a disaster!”
“What a humiliation!”
“What ignominy!”
And suddenly a glance was embellished with something that resembled a smile, was in fact an actual smile. Was it really a smile?
“Why not? It’s a funny situation.”
“Funny?”
“Look at it with passing objectivity and you’ll find it’s enough to make you die laughing!”
“Really?”
“I’m frightened I’ll explode with laughter.”
“Remember,” said the middle-aged man in a voice that was only just audible, “that the time we normally leave is still a long way off.”
“But there’s no longer any real evening gathering.”
“Because we’ve discontinued it without reason.”
“Without reason?”
“I mean without a reason to prevent us continuing as of now.”
“And in what sort of humor would we go on with it after what has happened?”
“Let’s forget the door for a while and see what’s what.”
No one welcomed the suggestion and no one rejected it. The glasses of infernal wine were produced. Though this was in front of the stranger’s eyes, he paid the men no attention. They drank too much, heads became dizzy, and they were carried away in their intoxication. Magically their worries were lifted and their laughter rang out. They danced on the chairs, capped each other’s jokes, and sang “Good news is here of friendship’s feast.”
And all the time they ignored the door. They completely forgot its existence. The black cat awoke and began moving from table to table, from leg to leg. They drank to excess, they enjoyed themselves to excess, they became boisterous to excess, as though savoring the last of their nights at the tavern.
A miracle occurred, for the present retreated and melted away in a rising flood of forgetfulness; memory dissolved, and everything that it had stored away in its cells was demolished. No one knew his companion. The wine was truly infernal, and yet, yes and yet…
“But where are we?”
“Tell me who we are and I’ll tell you where we are.”
“There was some singing.”
“Or was it, as I remember, weeping?”
“There was some story. I wonder what story it was?”
“And this black cat, it is without doubt something tangible.”
“Yes, it is the thread that will bring us to the truth.”
“Here we are, getting close to the truth.”
“This cat was a god at the time of our forefathers.”
“And one day it seated itself at the door of a prison cell and made known the secret of the story.”
“And it threatened woe.”
“But what’s the story?”
“Originally there was a god, then it was changed into a cat.”
“But what’s the story?”
“How can a cat talk?”
“Did it not divulge to us the story?”
“Indeed, but we wasted the time in singing and weeping.”
“And so the threads came together and the way was cleared for grasping the truth.”
The voice of the old waiter was raised as he scolded someone, threatening and shouting, “Wake up, you idle wretch, or I’ll smash your head in.”
A huge man, his head bent in dejection, came along. He began taking up the glasses and dishes, cleaning the tables, and collecting the refuse from the floor. Immersed in a deep sadness, with his eyes bathed in tears, he worked without uttering a word or looking at anyone. With mournful compassion they followed him with their eyes. One of them asked him, “What’s the story?”
But he did not turn, and continued with his work, silent and sad, his eyes streaming with tears.
“When and where have I seen this man?” the middle-aged man asked himself.
The man, with his dark clothes composed of a black sweater, dark gray trousers, and brown rubber-soled shoes, made his way toward the passageway. Again the middle-aged man asked himself, “When and where have I seen this man?”
The Lawsuit
I found myself suddenly the subject of a lawsuit. My father’s widow was demanding maintenance. Awakened from the depths of time, the past with its memories had invaded me. After reading the petition I exclaimed, “When did she go broke? Has she in her turn been robbed?”
“This woman robbed us and deprived us of our legal rights,” I said to my lawyer.
I felt a strong desire to see her, not through any temptation to gloat over her but in order to see what effects time had had upon her. Today, like me, she was in her forties. Had her beauty withstood the passage of time? Was it holding out against poverty? If the lawsuit was not genuine, would she have stretched out a demanding hand to one of her enemies? On the other hand, if it was specious, why had she not stretched out her hand before? What a ravishing beauty she had been!
“My father married her,” I told the lawyer, “when he was in his middle fifties and she a girl of twenty.” A semiliterate, old-fashioned contractor, he did not deal with banks but stored his profits away in a large cupboard in his bedroom. We were happy about this so long as we were a single family. The announcement of the new marriage was like a bomb exploding among us—my mother, my elder brother, and myself, as well as my sisters in their various homes. The top floor was given over to my father, the bride, and the cupboard. We were struck dumb by her youth and beauty. My mother said in a quavering voice choked with weeping, “What a catastrophe! We’ll end up without a bean.”
My elder brother was illiterate and mentally retarded. He was without work, but considered himself a landowner. He flared up in a rage, declaring, “I’ll defend myself to the very death.”
Some of our relatives advised us to consult a lawyer, but my father threatened my mother with divorce if we were to entertain any such move. “I’m not gullible or an idiot, and no one’s rights will be lost.”
I was the one least affected by the disaster, partly because of my youth and partly because I was the only one in the family who wanted to study, hoping to enter the engineering college. Yet even so, I did not miss the significance of the facts—my father’s age and that of his beautiful bride, and the fortune under threat. By way of smoothing things over, I would say, “I have confidence in my father.”
“If we say nothing,” my brother would say, “we’ll find the cupboard empty.”
I shared his fears but affected outwardly what I did not feel inwardly. All the time I felt that our oasis, which had appeared so tranquil, was being subjected to a wild wind and that on the horizon black clouds were gathering. My mother took refuge in silent anxiety, with each new day giving her warning of a bad outcome. As for my elder brother, he would brave the lion in his lair, pleading with his father. “I am the firstborn, uneducated as you can see, and without means of support, so give me my share.”
“Do you want to inherit from me while I’m still alive? It’s a disgrace for you to doubt me—no one’s rights will be lost.” But my brother would not calm down and would pester my father whenever they met. He would hurl threats at him from behind his back, and my mother would say that she was more worried about my brother than she was about the fortune.
For my part, I wondered whether my father, that capable master of his trade, the man who was such a meticulous accountant despite his illiteracy, would meet defeat at the hands of a pretty girl. Yet, without doubt, he was changing, slipping down little by little each day. He would take himself off to the Turkish baths twice a month, would clip his
My brother became more and more angry. “Where did he get her from?” he would say to me. Was it so impossible that she might get hold of the key and find her way to opening the cupboard? Would she not take from him something to secure her future? Did she not have the power to make him happy or to turn his life into one of misery and turmoil as she wished?
Arguments would develop between my brother and my father that would go beyond the bounds of propriety. My father would grow angry and spit in my brother’s face. In an explosive outburst, my brother seized hold of a table lamp and hurled it at his father, drawing blood. Seeing the blood, my brother was scared, but even so persevered in his attempts to do Father in, with the cook and the chauffeur intervening. My father insisted on informing the police, and my brother was taken off to court and from there to prison, where he died after a year.
“How did she find the courage to bring her case?” I asked the lawyer.
“Necessity has its own rules.”
In the midst of our alarm and our mourning for my brother, my mother and I heard the noise of something striking the floor above us. We hurried upstairs and found ourselves standing aghast over my father’s body. As is usual in such circumstances, we asked ourselves again and again what could have happened, but no amount of questioning can bring back the dead. It seems that he had had a paralyzing stroke a whole day before his death without our knowing.
We waited till he had been buried and the rites of mourning were over, and then the family gathered together. My sisters, their husbands, and their husbands’ parents were there, and the lawyer was present as well. We asked about the key to the cupboard, and the young widow answered quite simply that she knew nothing about it. Sometimes the mind boggles at the sheer brazenness of lying. But what could be done? We then came across the key, and the cupboard finally divulged its secrets, exhibiting to us with profound mockery a bundle of notes that did not exceed five thousand pounds. “Then where is the man’s fortune?” everyone called out.