The Beggar, the Thief and the Dogs, Autumn Quail (7 page)

           

N
o 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:

Warda whispered, “How true.”

One glance exchanged between you and Margaret would be a giveaway. So they left at his suggestion, and drove aimlessly in the cold night through the empty roads. There's no need to be agitated, no reason to be. But her sudden return gave impetus to his vexation. You'll stand at the edge of the abyss again, prey to the forces of destruction summoned forth by despair.

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?

They raced out to the pyramids in his car. “The night's cold,” she objected. He turned on the heater, but she kept on. “Why don't we go to your home?”

“I have no home.”

He stopped the car in the darkness. A heavy bank of clouds covered the sky. “Not a star in sight,” he said happily.

He pressed her to his chest with desperate force. She whispered breathlessly, “The darkness is frightening.”

He silenced her with a kiss, then said, “Now is not the time for fear.”

How wonderful her touch was, yet in itself it meant nothing. To touch life's secrets is all that matters. Their words were lost in sighs, the silent language of the night; a song of harmony seemed to herald a better life, and their intermingled breaths warmed a heart stricken with cold. The darkness was free of peering eyes. The heart could relax and rejoice triumphantly. He sighed with the fullness of pleasure, he sighed with relaxation, but then, dear God, he sighed with weariness and distress. He looked into the black night and wondered where ecstasy was. Where had Margaret gone?

He returned to the nest discontented. She faced him with rigid features, he smiled in greeting, and they remained
standing for an uncomfortable minute. Then he flung himself on the couch, saying, “I'm sorry.”

“There is no need to invent excuses.” She walked back and forth across the room, and then sat in a chair near him.

“It's been clear to me that you've needed a change.”

“Things aren't that simple.”

Unable to control her anxiety, she said, “I'm not going to conduct a cross-examination. Just one simple question. Have we failed?”

He answered truthfully, but wearily. “No one can match you. I'm sure of that.”

She looked off into space. “Were you with a woman?”

He hesitated a moment before answering, “To tell you the truth, I'm not yet cured of the illness.”

She spoke sharply for the first time. “An illness whose only cure is a woman!” Then she resumed her calm tone. “All I can offer you is love, so if you refuse it, all will end.” She observed his silence with a kind of desperation, and then went on. “Fickle passions in the young can be cured; in wise men like you they can't.”

His eyes wandered hopelessly around the room. “Am I insane?”

“Oddly enough, your personality doesn't seem unstable.”

“But I'm accused of insanity because of my behavior.”

She burst out, “If you mean living with me, then go back to your wife.”

“I have no wife.”

“Then I'll go. My situation's easier than your wife's since I can always get a job and a place to stay.”

Her words stung him, almost causing him to shout, “Go!” but instead he stretched out his legs and closed his eyes.

“So you were with a woman?”

He answered with annoyance, “You know.”

“Who?”

“A woman.”

“But who is she?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“You knew her before knowing me?”

“We'd met casually.”

“Do you love her?”

“No.”

“Then why did you go out with her?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe you felt a sudden desire?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you always give in to your desire?”

“Not always.”

“When?”

He was getting vexed. “When I feel ill.”

“Are you a womanizer?”

“No.”

“Weren't you in love with me?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“But no longer?”

“I love you, but the illness is starting again.”

She said impatiently, “I've been noticing a change in you for the last few days.”

“Since the illness set in.”

“The illness…the illness!” she shouted with exasperation, then asked, her expression distorted, “Are you going to meet her again?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you enjoy torturing me?”

He blew out a breath. “A rest break, please.”

He took Margaret one cold, starry night to the rest house on the Desert Road, and on the way back she said tenderly, “Wouldn't it be better to have a place of our own?”

“No…” he said vaguely, having decided there was no point in continuing with her.

Displeased with his answer, she said coldly, “I really don't enjoy affairs in parked cars.”

He drove her back to the hotel without saying another word.

           

T
he ecstasy of love fades and the frenzy of sex is too ephemeral to have any effect. What can we do when we find no food to satisfy our hunger? You'll be swept into the tornado and annihilated. There is no way to bring back stability after it has died.

A brunette dancer at the New Paris attracted him with her gaiety and lithe body, so he went after her. He saw Margaret on the stage, returned her smile, then invited the brunette to his table. To Margaret it must have seemed a clumsy ploy in the game of love, but in the storm he'd lost all sense of humor. The brunette left with him, enticed by money. It didn't really make things better, but he thought his heart stirred slightly as she laughed. If his heart didn't stir, it would die. Poetry, wine, love—none of them could call forth the elusive ecstasy.

Every night he picked up a woman, from one club or another, sometimes from the streets. At the Capri he sat with a dancer named Muna. Yazbeck rushed over to greet
him, exhibiting obvious pleasure. It angered Omar, for he saw it as a kind of death notice of his frustrated hopes.

“My good man. Did…?”

Omar looked at him sternly and left with Muna. As he pressed her to him, he trembled with an unaccountable urge to kill her. He imagined himself ripping open her chest with a knife, and suddenly finding what he'd been looking for all along. Killing is the complement of creation, the completion of the silent, mysterious cycle.

“What's wrong?” Muna whispered.

He awoke, startled. “Nothing, just the dark.”

“But there's no one around.”

He raced the car at such a speed that she grasped his arm and threatened to scream. Later, as he was undressing, he felt that the end was coming—the answer to his search—insanity or death. Warda sat on the bed. “I'm going away,” she said.

He answered gently, “I feel responsible for you.”

“I don't want anything.” After a moment's silence, she spoke again. “What's sad is that I've really loved you.”

He said wearily, “But you're not patient with me.”

“My patience is at an end.”

He felt such revulsion toward her in his soul that he didn't comment.

Finding no trace of her when he returned the next night, he smiled in relief and lay down in his suit on the divan to enjoy the silent, empty flat. Every night he brought a new woman to it.

Mustapha laughed and said, “Hail to the greatest Don Juan on the African continent.”

Omar smiled lamely as Mustapha continued. “It's no secret anymore. Several of my colleagues have spoken
about you. The news has also reached your cronies at the club. They wonder what's the story behind your rejuvenation.”

He said with distaste, “Honestly, I hate women.”

“That's obvious!” Then he continued more seriously. “Empty your heart of what's troubling you so you can settle down, once and for all.”

In the spring it was a relief to sit outdoors in the nightclub gardens, rather than in the closed halls. But the agitation remained, and he was exhausted by his dreams. Occasionally he found solace in reading, especially the poems of India and Persia.

His nighttime adventures took him once more to the Capri. As he sat under the trellis, sipping his drink and receiving the spring breeze, Warda appeared again on the stage. He felt no emotion, surprise, agitation, or pleasure. In autumn it had started. Ecstasy, love, then aversion; when will the grieved heart smash these vicious cycles? When will it break through the barrier of no return? She sees him, then continues dancing, while Yazbeck steals worried glances. He felt no determination. But after the show, noticing Warda not far from him, he invited her to his table. She approached with a smile, as though nothing had happened. He ordered the usual—the drink which had earned him renown in the clubs—and said with sincerity, “I'm really sorry, Warda.”

Smiling enigmatically, she said, “You shouldn't regret what has passed.” Then gaily: “And the experience of love is precious even if it brings suffering.”

He said, biting his lip, “I'm not well.”

She whispered, “Then let's pray to God for your recovery.”

He felt the glances of the other women who'd gone with
him, night after night. As Warda smiled, he muttered, “I didn't desire them.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I knew them all, without exception, but there was never any desire.”

“Then why?”

“Hoping the divine moment would unlock the answer.”

She said resentfully, “How cruel you were. You men don't believe in love unless we disbelieve in it.”

“Perhaps, but that's not my problem.”

The scent of orange blossoms drifting from the dark fields suggested secret worlds of delight. Feeling suddenly light and unfettered, he asked her fervently, “Tell me, Warda, why do you live?”

She shrugged her shoulders and finished her drink, but when he repeated the question, he was so clearly in earnest that she replied, “Does that question have any meaning?”

“It doesn't hurt to ask it once in a while.”

“I live, that's all.”

“I'm waiting for a better answer.”

She thought a moment, then said, “I love to dance, and to be admired, and I hope to find true love.”

“To you, then, life means love.”

“Why not?”

“After loving once, weren't you disillusioned?”

She said with annoyance, “That may be true of others.”

“And as for you?”

“No.”

“How many times have you loved?”

“I told you once…”

He interrupted her. “What you told me once doesn't matter; let's discuss things openly now.”

“Your violent nature is getting the better of you.”

“Don't you want to talk?”

“I've said all that I…”

He sighed, then continued feverishly. “And God, what do you think of Him?”

She looked at him distrustfully, but he entreated, “Please answer me, Warda.”

“I believe in Him.”

“With certainty?”

“Of course.”

“How does such certainty arise?”

“It exists, that's all.”

“Do you think about Him often?”

Her laugh was a bit forced. “When in need or adversity.”

“And other than that?”

She said sharply, “You love to torture others, don't you?”

He stayed in the club till 3
A.M.
and then raced out in the car to the Pyramids Road. Going out alone that night, he reflected, was an interesting development. He parked the car along the side of the deserted road and got out. The darkness, unrelieved by ground lights, was peculiarly dense, unlike any night he could remember. The earth and space itself seemed to have disappeared and he was lost in blackness. Raising his head to the gigantic dome overhead, he was assaulted by thousands of stars, alone, in clusters, and in constellations. A gentle breeze blew, dry and refreshing, harmonizing the parts of the universe. The desert sands, clothed in darkness, hid the whispers, as numberless as the grains, of past generations—their hopes, their suffering, and all their last questions. There's no pain without a cause, something told him, and somewhere this enchanted, ephemeral moment will endure. Here I am,
beseeching the silence to utter, for if that happened, all would change. If only the sands would loosen their hidden powers, and liberate me from this oppressive impotence. What prevents me from shouting, knowing that no echo will reverberate? He leaned against the car and gazed for a long time at the horizon. Slowly it changed as the darkness relented and a line appeared, diffusing a strange luminosity like a fragrance or a secret. Then it grew more pronounced, sending forth waves of light and splendor. His heart danced with an intoxicated joy, and his fears and miseries were swept away. His eyes seemed drawn out of their very sockets by the marvelous light, but he kept his head raised with unyielding determination. A delirious, entrancing happiness overwhelmed him, a dance of joy which embraced all earth's creatures. All his limbs were alive, all his senses intoxicated. Doubts, fears, and hardships were buried. He was shadowed by a strange, heavy certitude, one of peace and contentment, and a sense of confidence, never felt before, that he would achieve what he wanted. But he was raised above all desire, the earth fell beneath him like a handful of dust, and he wanted nothing. I don't ask for health, peace, security, glory, or old age. Let the end come now, for this is my best moment.

The delirium had left him panting, his body twisted crazily toward the horizon. He took a deep breath, as if trying to regain his strength after a stiff race, and felt a creeping sensation from afar, from the depths of his being, pulling him earthward. He tried to fight it, or delay it, but in vain. It was as deep-rooted as fate, as sly as a fox, as ironic as death. He revived with a sigh to the waves of sadness and the laughing lights.

He returned to the car and drove off. Looking at the road dispiritedly, he said, as if addressing someone else,
“This is ecstasy.” He paused before continuing. “Certainly, without argumentation or logic.” Then in a more forceful voice: “Breaths of the unknown, whispers of the secret.” Accelerating the car, he asked, “Isn't it worth giving up everything for its sake?”