Authors: Naguib Mahfouz
“That’s about the first day. But what about the second and third days?”
A fitting answer came to me off the top of my head. So, overcoming my shyness, I said softly, “You were the reason for the second and third days.”
She looked at me with a laugh and said shrewdly, “Are you telling me the truth, or are you just trying to evade the question by flirting?”
“No, I’m telling the truth,” I said.
Looking back at the road coquettishly, she said, “So then, why do you keep sitting up against the door as though you don’t want to touch me?”
Feeling muddled, I didn’t know what to do.
“But we’re on the road,” I said apologetically.
She burst out laughing, then said, “We’re in the car, not on the road! Besides, even the road wouldn’t keep people like us from sitting up next to each other if we wanted to. Don’t make phony excuses. Now tell me, how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“For shame! And how many women have you been with?”
I made no reply, feeling I wasn’t up to her and her questions. Then, as though she were surprised at my silence, she said reproachfully, “Do you mean to say you’ve never been with a woman before? Am I the first woman in your life? My Lord! Haven’t those green eyes of yours snagged anybody yet? If not, then I got to you just when you were about to drown, and may God reward me richly for my good deed! My Lord, who could believe this? How do you live, and what are you doing with your life?”
Again I made no reply, as her words had pained me without her realizing it. However, she may have seen the look of discomfort on my face, since she let up on me and asked me no more questions for some time. Then she asked me about my work, and I replied that I was a government employee. I added that I was on a short vacation, after which silence reigned once again. Meanwhile, she shifted slightly in my direction until her shoulder was gently touching mine. The contact sent life coursing through my cowering heart, whose pulse raced to the beat of my fear and shyness.
When I went on clinging to the door and not making a move, she stifled a laugh and said pithily, “A step from me and a step from you. Now are you still scared?”
Her invitation met with a willing soul and a fearful heart. Resisting the fear with everything in me, I slid over
ever so cautiously until my side—from the lower leg to the top of the shoulder—came in contact with tender flesh that was redolent with a sweet, captivating perfume. I paused for a moment to take in the luscious feel of it, my whole body trembling. Then she turned toward me, and I felt her breath on my cheek.
“Are you still scared?” she whispered in my ear.
Not at all. I’d been intoxicated by passion. Still breathing on my cheek, she leaned her head toward me until my mouth dove into her swelling lips, whereupon she quickly shifted her head away from me and looked back at the road ahead of her. I placed my left arm around her thick waist and began covering the side of her neck with kisses.
“Easy does it!” she murmured with a laugh as she veered off to the side of the road.
Then she stopped the car, saying, “Let’s rest for a while here. It’s a safe place.”
Looking out, I saw that she’d chosen a spot halfway between two streetlights. It was pitch dark and the area on either side of the car was vacant. Aside from the cars whizzing by us at lightning speed, we were surrounded by a deep silence.
“Isn’t it dangerous?” I asked her in a whisper.
Wrapping her right arm around my neck, she said, “It’s safer than your house.”
She then turned until her right shoulder was touching the back of the seat and folded her right leg under her left thigh. We were now face to face, and the neck opening in her dress receded to reveal her swelling bosom. I leaned forward and rested my head on her chest, filled with amazement and tenderness, and I was intoxicated by the fragrance of a human body more delectable than the sweetest
perfume. I rested there peacefully for I don’t know how long as her hand played with the hair on my head. Then I lifted my face toward hers and devoured her lips, and she devoured mine. It was as though we were eating and swallowing each other alive. Fear was gone now, since there was nothing left to justify it, and I was filled with life, with madness, and with boundless confidence. I don’t know where the confidence came from, but this woman was fully in charge of the situation, and in her I found the guide that I’d lacked all my life. She restored to me both confidence and peace of mind because she relieved me of all responsibility and took me slowly and gently. At that moment, more than ever before in my life, I realized that the laying of any responsibility on me was liable to cause me to lose myself, and that I could only find this fragile self of mine when I was in strong, steady hands. The world melted away in a wild, magical intoxication, and I emerged drunk on the wine of victory and profound satisfaction. Deep inside, I felt a desire for this woman equaled only by my desire for life itself. In fact, she herself was life, dignity, manhood, confidence, and happiness. My lips parted in a smile of victory and joy and I cast her a look of gratitude the depth of which she couldn’t possibly have fathomed. In her presence I was wallowing in the dirt. But it was good, loving dirt that yielded confidence and happiness. I realized the mistakes I’d made in the past and I remembered my beloved wife with a sense of grief and despair that nearly shattered my dreamlike bliss. Yet I had no hesitation about holding her responsible for all my misery. That’s how it seemed to me. At the same time, my heart pined for her even at that moment and in that place.
As for the woman, she tapped my nose with her fingertip and said, “Happy?”
“Very,” I replied from the heart.
She took my left hand in both of hers and murmured, “What a wonderful child you are.”
“A child in his third decade!” I said with an embarrassed laugh.
Then a look of seriousness and concern flashed in her eyes, and I noticed her running her fingers over my wedding band. With a stunned look on her face, she cried, “Are you married? That never even crossed my mind!”
Fear came over me, and I looked at her without saying a word.
Then she laughed out loud and said, “How is it that that never even occurred to me? But how can I believe this? My Lord, why did you run after me? Isn’t your wife to your liking? How dissolute can you get?”
Discomfited and befuddled, I looked down and didn’t say a word.
“Don’t you love your wife?” she asked in a tone of concern.
I was vexed by the question, and I hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to say. However, the delicacy of the situation forced me to say in a voice that was barely audible, “She’s a nice lady.”
She broke in, saying, “I’m asking you whether you love her!”
Sensing that lying becomes a virtue when in the presence of women, I said with an indignation that I concealed with a smile, “No.”
Her features relaxed.
Then again she asked with concern, “How long have you been married?”
“Nearly two years,” I said, saddened by the mention of marriage.
“Didn’t you love her before?”
“No.”
“They married you to her without your having known her previously?”
“Yes.”
“What an unforgivable sin!” she cried angrily. “And she, doesn’t she love you?”
And for the first time I replied truthfully, “She doesn’t love love.”
Her eyes widened with incredulity, and she opened her mouth so wide that I saw a couple of gold teeth that I hadn’t seen before.
“Ahhhh,” she said. “Now I get it. There are women like that. And why wouldn’t there be? Not all women are complete.”
We exchanged a long, wordless look accompanied by a smile.
Then I asked her with a laugh, “And you. Aren’t you married?”
Without taking her eyes off me she replied, “I’m just a widow. My husband was a prominent rear admiral by the name of Ali Pasha Salam. When we married, he was old and I was young. Then a few years later he died. So I came back to live with my mother. And only God knows who I’ll be living with tomorrow!”
She smiled at me and began to whistle. Then she picked up her purse, took out a powder puff and proceeded to dust her face and her neck with it. After arranging her
disheveled locks of hair, she cast a glance at her face in the car’s side mirror.
“When does your vacation end?” she asked.
“In a few days.”
“We’ll meet often,” she said calmly. “Every day, if possible. The car will do until we can find a more suitable place.”
She sat up straight again behind the steering wheel. However, I took hold of her wrist, then put my arm around her neck. She let out a brief chuckle and held me to her rounded bosom as she said, “Who do you think you are, smarty pants, making me spruce myself up all over again?”
I
got back home at exactly 10:00 p.m. I didn’t ask myself whether I’d erred, since what I’d recovered by way of confidence and happiness went beyond questions of right and wrong. My mother had gone to sleep, and Rabab was sitting in bed reading a magazine. The minute I saw her lovely face, a joyous light glowed in my spirit, and I felt as though I were being transported from one world to another. I had a sudden pang of revulsion at what I’d done with myself, but it didn’t get the better of me, since it was driven out of my consciousness again by the thick veil that stood between me and my wife. She received me with a smile, conveying her aunt’s greetings and her reproach for my not having come with her. Then she told me that my supper was waiting on the dining room table, so I went in and devoured it like the hungry, tired person that I was. I came back to our room wondering what my wife would do if she knew of my transgression.
She told me she’d been invited to give private lessons to
a first-grader who was the daughter of a prominent judge, and she asked me what I thought. Although I didn’t see any reason for suspicion, I wasn’t enthusiastic about the proposal, and I said, “You tire yourself out enough all day long!”
“You’re right,” she said casually.
Pleased by her quickness to agree with me, I thought to myself: I’ll never find the slightest reason to doubt her! I lay down beside her, whereupon she shoved the magazine aside, turned out the light and lay down peacefully. I had every reason to go right to sleep. Instead, however, I experienced a strange sort of wakefulness. My thoughts went flying away to Inayat, and to the car on Pyramids Road. I’d been unfaithful. How astounding! Who would have thought that an impotent husband would take a lover! At that moment I wished my wife could know of this astounding fact. However, the moment was a fleeting one, and it wasn’t long before my heart had shrunk in fear and shame. I’d gone trailing my wife, suspecting that she’d been unfaithful to me, and I ended up being unfaithful myself beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt. In her, I’d seen no evidence of anything but integrity and modesty. How was it that with her, my portion had been impotence and failure, whereas in the arms of the homely, crude woman, I’d been blessed with the wildest bliss? I was unspeakably confused, and my soul longed for a ray of light.
What made my confusion even worse was that I felt deeply that I couldn’t do without either of them. In fact, I couldn’t find any way to compare them in such a way as to see which was superior to the other. One of them was my spirit, and the other was my body, and my torment was that of someone who isn’t able to reconcile his body with
his spirit. What would the world be worth without that lovely, pristine, nay, perfect face? But then again, what pleasure and sense of manhood would I have left if I lost the other woman? I became so engrossed in thought that there was no way to sleep. First Rabab would appear to me, and then Inayat. Then suddenly the vision in my mind’s eye turned for no apparent reason into my mother, who took her place in the string of successive images. My confusion finally reached the point where I was enveloped in a cloud of sadness and gloom. Nevertheless, the feelings one experiences by night rarely survive the light of day. By night they merge into the stream of a mysterious melody in a fog-enveloped, ethereal atmosphere. But once the day breaks, nothing remains of them but faint echoes that do nothing to prevent us from searching out our paths in life.
The morning of the fifth day arrived, and I took off as usual for Abbasiya. But was I really going there to trail Rabab, or was I going in obedience to that irresistible summons? My wife’s behavior left no room for doubt: what she was on the outside, she was on the inside. Hence, she must have told the truth in what she said about the ill-fated letter, and if there was a traitor, it was I.
I went to the Nubians’ coffee shop, which was the perfect symbol for my new love. I waited until the window opened, and we greeted one another with an amiable smile. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared, ready to go out, gesturing to me to wait for her at the previous day’s rendezvous spot. I hadn’t expected us to meet in the morning. However, I called the waiter without hesitation, paid the tab, and headed straightaway for the bridge, which wasn’t far away. On my way there, it seemed to me that I’d realized a fact of life, namely, that there isn’t a single movement
among men but that there’s a woman behind it. Women are to men’s lives what gravity is to the stars and other heavenly bodies. Hence, there isn’t a man alive but that there’s a woman in his imagination, be she present or absent, attainable or unattainable, loving or hateful, faithful or unfaithful. Now I understood in a new way the meaning of the saying, “Love is life, and life is love.” In fact, it hit me so forcefully, it was as though I were thinking about it for the first time. It wasn’t that there was life, after which there was love. Rather, there was love, therefore there was life. And at that moment I swore that never as long as I lived would I turn away from love!
The car arrived, and I took my place in it as I had the day before.
Laughing, the woman asked, “What brought you at this hour? Hadn’t we agreed to meet this evening?”
“You, you’re the reason,” I said with a smile.
Smiling back at me happily, she said, “We’ve got to stick ourselves together with glue so that we’ll never be separated.”