The Time and the Place (8 page)

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?”

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 beard and trim his mustache every week, and would strut about in new clothes. Finally he took to dyeing his hair. Precious gifts embellished the bride's neck, bosom, and arms. Now there was a Chevrolet and a chauffeur waiting in front of our house.

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.

All eyes were fixed on the beautiful widow, who answered defiantly. We had recourse to the police, and there were investigations and searches. As my mother had predicted, we came out of it all “without a bean.” The beautiful widow went off to her parents' house, and the curtain was brought down upon her and the inheritance. My mother died. I got a job, married, and achieved a notable success. I became oblivious of the past until the lawsuit brought me back to it.

“It's really the height of irony,” I said to the lawyer, “that I should be required to pay maintenance to that woman.”

His voice came to me from between the files on his desk. “The old story does on the face of it appear worthy of being put forward, but what's the point of unearthing it when we have no evidence against her?”

“Even if the old story may not be open for discussion, it's a good starting point, whose effect should not be underrated.”

“On the contrary, we would be providing the woman's lawyer with the chance to take the offensive and to attract sympathy for her.”

“Sympathy?”

“Steady now. Let's think about it a bit objectively. An old man hoards his wealth in a cupboard in his bedroom. He then buys himself a beautiful girl of twenty when he's a man of fifty-five. Such and such happens to his family and such and such to his beautiful wife. Fine, who was to blame?” He was silent for a while, scowling, then continued. “Let's look at it from your side. You're a man who's earning and has a family, and the cost of living is unbearably high, and so on and so forth…. Let's content ourselves by settling on a reasonable sum for maintenance.”

“Too bad!” I muttered. “She robbed us; then there was the death of my brother and my mother's distress.”

“I'm sorry about that, but she's as much a victim as you are. Even the fortune she made off with brought her to disaster. And now here she is begging.”

Prompted by casual curiosity, I said, “It's as though you know something about her.”

He shook his head with diplomatic vagueness. “A woman who couldn't have children, she was married and divorced several times when she was in her prime. In middle age she fell in love with a student, who, in his turn, robbed her and went off.”

He did not divulge the sources of his information, but I surmised the logical progression of events. I experienced a feeling of gratification, which a sense of decency prevented me from showing.

On the day of the court session, I was again seized by a mysterious desire to set eyes on her. I recognized her as she waited in front of the lawyers' room. I knew her by conjecture before actually recognizing her, for the beauty that had made away with our fortune and ruined us had completely vanished. She was fat, excessively and unacceptably so, and the charming freshness had leaked away from her face. What little beauty was
left seemed insipid. A veneer of perpetual dejection acted like a screen between her and other people. Without giving the matter any thought, I went up to her, inclined my head in greeting, and said, “I remember you…perhaps you remember me?”

At first she gazed at me in surprise, then in confusion. She returned the greeting with a gesture of her covered head. “I'm sorry to cause you trouble,” she said, as though apologizing, “but I am forced to do so.”

I forgot what I wanted to say. In fact words failed me, and I felt an inner peace. “Don't worry—let the Lord do as He wills.” I quietly moved away as I said to myself, “Why not? Even a farce must continue right to the final act.”

Mohammed Rasheedi, in a tone shaky with sorrow and emotion, said, “To the mercy of God the Merciful, to the proximity of your noble Lord, O Zahia, my life's companion. To the mercy of God I commend you.”

He sobbed as he bent over the body laid out on the bed, leaning, through his great weariness, with his right hand on the pillow, until the old servant woman took pity on him, gently patted his hand, and took him from her who lay dead into the sitting room, where he sank with loud sighs into an armchair. He stretched out his legs, moaning, then mumbled, “Now I'm alone, without a companion. Why did you leave me, Zahia? After being together for forty years, why did you go before me, Zahia?”

The servant consoled him with trite phrases, though the sight of the old man in his nineties weeping was a truly sad one. His furrowed cheeks and pitted nose gleamed with tears. The servant left the room, struggling with her own tears. He closed his eyes, on the rims of which there was only the occasional single eyelash. “Forty years ago I married you,” he continued, “when you were still in your twenties. I educated you myself, and we were very happy despite the difference in age. You were the best of companions, you kindly person—so I commend you to the mercy of God.”

For his age, he was in excellent health, tall and thin. The surface of his face had completely disappeared under wrinkles and furrows, while the bones protruded sharply, skull-like.
Deep within his eyes there lurked a gaze beneath a pale veil on which the visible things of this world were not reflected.

The funeral was attended by many people, not one of whom was a friend or acquaintance of his. They came to give their condolences to his son, or in deference to his daughter's husband, employed at an embassy abroad. As for him, not a single friend of his was still alive. He went on welcoming the faces that were unknown to him and asking himself where the first generation of educators were. Where were the real politicians from the time of Mustafa Kamil and Mohammed Farid?

When the obsequies were concluded around midnight, his son Sabir asked him, “What do you intend doing, Father?”

His son's wife said, “It's not possible for you to stay on here alone.”

The old man understood what they meant. He complained, “Zahia was everything to me. She was my mind and my hand.”

“My house is yours,” said Sabir, “and if you came to live with us you would bring a blessing to it. Your servant Mubarka will come to look after you.”

Certainly he could not live in this house on his own. Yet despite the kindness shown by his son and his son's wife, he believed that by moving he would be losing a lot of his freedom and authority. But what was to be done? In his youth and early manhood, he had been a robust person, and he still retained his dignified bearing. How many generations of educators and outstanding personalities had he trained—but what was to be done?

With a dejected air, the man witnessed the liquidation of his home. He saw it being demolished, just as he had seen the death of his wife, and they left nothing intact but his clothes, his bed, his cupboard of books (books he no longer looked at), some bibelots, and pictures of members of the family and of certain great men of literature, politics, and entertainment, like Mustafa
Kamil, Mohammed Farid, al-Muwailhi, Hafiz Ibrahim, and Abd al-Hayy Helmi.

He left his house for Heliopolis in his son's car. A bedroom had been prepared for him, and the old servant Mubarka got ready to serve him. “We're all at your beck and call,” his son said.

Munira, Sabir's wife, gave him a welcoming smile. It showed a kindly disposition, but this was still not his house—that was his overwhelming feeling. He sat in an armchair, exchanging glances with her in an almost embarrassed way. If only his daughter Samira were in Egypt. He would have found a more congenial atmosphere in her house. Tutu appeared in the doorway. He looked from one of his parents to the other, then ran and clung to his father's legs. He regarded his grandfather, and the old man smiled and said, “Hullo, Tutu. Come here.”

It was only occasionally that Tutu would go with his father to visit his grandfather. The old man loved him very much and did not spare himself in playing with the boy whenever possible, though Tutu was violent in his fun. He used to like to jump on those who were playing with him, and would threaten to scratch their eyes and nose. All too soon the old man would gently avoid him, preferring to love him from afar.

Tutu pointed at his grandfather's tall tarboosh. “Your head!”

He meant that the old man should take off his tarboosh so that Tutu could see the sloping oblong of orange baldness that had drawn his attention and inquiries from the first time he had seen it. When his wish was not fulfilled, he began pointing at his grandfather's furrowed face and pitted nose, and went on asking questions despite his father's attempts to shut him up. The old man told himself that the dear child would not cease to annoy him and that he required protection. But where was Zahia? And his watch, his flyswatter, and his cigarettes—how would he keep them out of the reach of the boy's prying hands?
Tutu tried to get to his grandfather to implement his wishes himself, but his father caught hold of him and called the nurse, who carried him off, screaming in protest.

“When I finish work in the evenings,” said Sabir, “Munira and I go to the club, so why don't you come with us?”

“Don't bother yourself about me. Just let things go on as usual.”

Sabir and Munira went off, and the old man welcomed being left on his own so that he could recover. But being alone became more quickly tedious than he had imagined. He cast an indifferent glance at the room and was then enwrapped by loneliness. When would he become accustomed to the new place and to life without Zahia? For forty years he had not seen a day go by without Zahia. Since she was brought to him in marriage in Helmiyya, and Sarrafiyya had danced before them, the house under her direction had enjoyed an ordered cleanliness, with its fragrant smell of incense. What was the point of Ramadan and the feasts without her?

The funeral had been lacking generation upon generation of his students. Did nobody remember him anymore?

This had not been so with the friends who had departed long ago. But though they were gone, it seemed he saw every one of them as on the day they had been brought together at Mustafa Kamil's funeral.

While the old man had never known any serious illness, his poor wife had been afflicted by dengue fever, typhoid, and bouts of influenza, and she had finally died from a heart condition, leaving him as attached to life as he had always been. He went to a window and saw a large garden in the middle of a rectangle of buildings, instead of the large mosque he used to be able to see from the window of his room in Munira's house. A warm dry breeze blew against him. He enjoyed the restful silence,
though it accentuated his loneliness. The day the British had occupied Cairo, he had got hold of a stray horse, but his father, fearing the consequences, had beaten him and had taken the horse by night to the Cairo Canal, where he had let it loose. The city had been shaking with fear and sorrow.

Returning to where he had been sitting, he saw a small cat by the foot of the chair. It was pure white, with a thick coat and a black patch on its forehead. In the look in its gray eyes he saw a willingness to make friends. Zahia had always had a fondness for cats. Liking the look of it, he followed it with his eyes as it moved around the chair leg. He stroked its back, and it rubbed itself against his foot, making him smile. He passed his hand along its back, and it answered the palm of his hand. Its back throbbed, rising and falling. He took this as a sign of affection and once again smiled, revealing teeth with moss-colored roots, while the cat arched with pleasure. He shifted to his left slightly to give it room, but Tutu's voice, tremulous with the effort of running, blared out as he rushed into the room. “My cat!”

Resigned, the old man said, “Here's your cat,” and asked him affectionately about its name.

“Nargis,” answered the boy gruffly, as he seized hold of it roughly by the scruff of the neck and ran off outside with it, while the old man pleaded, “Gently…gently….”

Suddenly he jumped. What in heaven's name had happened? It seemed that something had struck him on the forehead. He frowned with annoyance, and Tutu's laughter rang out from the doorway as he picked up the small ball that had bounced back to him. The old man put his hand up to feel his glasses and make sure they were all right, then he called Mubarka, who hurried along and carried off the child before he could throw the ball again.

“This dear child is tiresome and cruel. That poor unfortunate cat!”

Five years ago his daughter Samira had lost a child of Tutu's age, and he had consoled her with tears. “It is I who should have died….” It had seemed to him, as he sat at the funeral, that all eyes were contemplating his old age in amazement, pointing out the glaring contradiction between his own survival and the passing away of his grandson at the age of three. That night he had said to Zahia, “A long life is a curse.” But how gentle she was as she said to him, “We'd all do anything for you—you're a bringer of good luck and fortune.”

Late in the afternoon, on his return from work, Sabir said to his father, “Seeing that you don't want to go with us to the club, choose yourself some café in Heliopolis. We have fine cafés quite near the house.”

While choosing a café nearby was perhaps the sensible thing to do, he liked the Mattatia. It had been his favorite place for a very long time. He made his way to the bus stop, walking at his own slow pace but with his body held erect. He used a stick but did not support his weight on it. Many people looked at him in astonishment, an astonishment mingled with admiration.

He took his place in the café under the arcades, as he said to himself half-jokingly, “Why's the café so empty?” The café was not in fact empty, and very few tables were unoccupied. It was, though, empty of any friends or acquaintances. It was his habit to gaze at the chairs that had been used by dear departed friends of old, and to bring to mind their faces and movements, and the discussions: of the news carried in
al-Muqattam
; of the hotly contested games of backgammon; and of politics. God had decreed that he should walk in their funeral processions, one after the other, and should mourn them all. The time came when one sole companion remained, Ali Pasha Mahran.
This was the chair where he used to sit. Short, thin, and hunched over his stick, with the brim of his tarboosh touching his bushy white eyebrows, staring out at his friend with a fragile, half-tearful look from behind dark blue-tinted glasses, he would ask, “I wonder which of us will outlive the other?” Then he would guffaw with laughter. At that time his hands had the permanent shaking of old age although he was two years the old man's junior.

When Ali Pasha Mahran had died at the age of eighty-five, the old man had grieved a long time. Afterward the world had become empty, the café too.

Here was Ataba Square, gyrating as usual before his dulled eyes, but it was a new square. As for Mattatia, there was not a sign of its original self but the site. Where too was its friendly Greek owner? And the waiter with the handlebar mustache? And the solidly built chairs, the sparkling white marble tables, the polished mirrors, and the buffet with its soft drinks and narghiles—where were all these?

On the night of the Shamm al-Nesim holiday in 1930, the old man had retired. He had spent the evening at the Ezbekiyya Theater with a group of friends, in an atmosphere of merriment and music. And he had spent the following day at the Barrages, celebrating the end of work, and Sheikh Ibrahim Zanati, the Arabic language inspector, had delivered a poem composed for the occasion. That night the old man had had so much brandy he had become drunk as he sat listening enraptured to the voice singing, “O friendship of the beautiful past.” When at the end of the night he had gone to sleep, he had dreamed that he was playing in Paradise. Ibrahim Zanati had expressed the wish in his poem that his colleague might enjoy a long life of a hundred years. It seemed that the wish was going to be granted, though the café was empty now, and Sheikh Zanati had passed on while still in his post. The waiter came to take away the tray, but
retreated apologetically, reminding the old man of the forgotten and untouched cup of coffee.

When he returned to the house he found it quietly sleeping, its owner not yet back from the club. He found his supper of yogurt on the dining room table. Without assistance he changed out of his clothes with slow laboriousness. Then, sitting down to his supper, he remembered Nargis. If only the kitten would share his supper with him! How lovely it would be to make friends with it and have it for a real companion in this house so preoccupied with itself! Perhaps it was somewhere in the house. He leaned slightly toward the door and called, “Puss…Puss.” Then he went out and called, “Nargis…Puss…Puss.” A meowing came from behind the door of the room next to his own, where Tutu and his nurse slept. After some thought he approached the door and gently opened it, and the cat passed through, its plump tail held erect like a flag.

Pleased, the old man went back to his room with the cat following him, but an angry shout rang out from Tutu. So, he thought, smiling, the little boy had not been soundly asleep. Tutu came running in and pounced on the cat, grabbing it violently by the neck. His grandfather patted him on the head and said pleasantly, “Hold her gently, Tutu.”

But the small boy tightened his grip until it seemed to the old man that Nargis would be throttled. “You go, and I'll bring her to you in bed,” he pleaded.

But Tutu would not listen, so the old man bent down and released the cat from the child's grip, saying, “I'll feed her, then bring her back to you.”

Tutu jumped up angrily and pushed against his grandfather's knees. The old man staggered, then took an uncertain step backward, swayed, and would have fallen had it not been that the wall supported him. With the cat still on his arm, he remained in his tilted position, unable to right himself. His head was reeling
slightly. He pressed his foot down onto the floor and his shoulder against the wall in order to straighten himself but was unable to do so. The cat crawled up his arm to rest on his raised shoulder. Despite the slight dizziness in his head, he realized the danger that threatened his bones. With such strength as he had left, he called out, “Mubarka!”