by Yusuf Idris
“I’m not saying anything, only Moneim has quit his job.”
“Who’s Moneim?”
“My husband.”
“Oh. And why did he quit?”
“They say they’re retrenching or something.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a tanner.”
“Where?”
“In a tannery, somewhere near the slaughterhouse.”
He muttered something but made no comment. Suddenly he was filled with a loathing not directed at anyone in particular. The more he looked at her pallid face, and those moist beads on her forehead, and her submission, and the more he thought of her children and her jobless husband, the more the hatred and revulsion grew. The idea of her husband’s profession brought up revolting visions of dirty hides, and the stink of cattle and glue, and Shohrat’s embraces and his bed.
“All right, go,” he roared at her. She turned and went.
He cursed himself afterward for having started this conversation. It gave him no end of a headache. Where before Shohrat hardly opened her mouth, now she never stopped complaining. One day it would be about her husband. He had found a job in a dairy. Next day he had quit the job. Then it was her daughter. She had fever and diarrhea. Next her daughter was dead. And then the landlady. She was harassing them for the rent. There was no end to her tales and he had brought it all on himself. She had become a nuisance and he simply had to get rid of her. But he lacked the nerve. He was also human. He could not bring himself to sack her when he knew she was in such hardship. There was nothing but to put up with her—but even that had a limit, and no sooner would she start complaining than he would quickly shut her up. On the other hand he was still a man, and she was still that woman who had appealed to him once. And his flesh was weak even though at times he was put off by the thought of her husband’s profession.
One day he heard her suddenly laugh out loud. A long, unrestrained peal that startled him. For in spite of what there was between them she knew her place, and he had a good deal of consideration for her which she herself inspired. She was not given to levity. That’s why it alarmed him when he heard her laugh that way. It was coarse and vulgar, very unlike her.
“Shohrat!” he called.
“Yes.”
He thought he suspected a hint of coquetry there. When she came he found he did not know what he wanted to say or why he had called her, so he asked her if she’d gotten rid of the cockroach he had seen in the kitchen.
“I found him cuddling up to a female roach,” she said with a giggle. And she laughed again, loud and shrill. He stared at her, amazed. The expression on her face was new. It was no longer that of the plain good woman who was a wife and a mother he had known at the beginning. Her cheeks were sunk, and around her eyes there were incriminating shadows. Even her smile was no longer the candid smile it used to be, but an artful grimace, full of affectation. He was appalled.
He kept worrying. Had he done that to her? Was he the one who had made a whore out of that simple married woman? He knew in his heart that he was, but he wasn’t going to be bothered by qualms of conscience. A man feels remorse only when he is afraid of punishment. Abdallah had no punishment to fear. What he feared was the new suspicion that gnawed at him night and day. Was he alone to blame for what had happened to Shohrat or was she carrying on with others? The doubt made him mad with jealousy. The jealousy of a master over his slave, not that of a lover over his beloved. The mere thought that she should put him on a level with some errand boy or a mean mechanic was unbearable.
From now on he regarded her with suspicion. If she went out shopping he would question her closely when she returned. Where had she been? Whom did she see? Sometimes he would hear her laughing all the way up the stairs. As soon as she was inside the door he had to know why and with whom she was laughing. And he never let the slightest offense pass without comment.
The change was amazing. Before, she never dared raise her eyes when she spoke to him. Now she looked him in the face and muttered if he scolded. The former gentle soul became a hard, nagging, irritable creature. She argued and answered him back word for word. He cursed himself for his weakness. What made him put up with her?
The fact was that the more her hold on him grew, the weaker he became. Very often he could not keep up his side of an argument. Almost as if there was something in her that he dreaded. Did he fear for his reputation if she chose to speak? Should things come to a confrontation he knew he would not be equal to her brand of logic, sound and irrefutable where his arguments were based on assumptions and delusions derived from his obsession with her conduct.
Strangely, he met her arrogance with compliance. Sometimes he even played up to her in subtle ways like affecting concern for her family. That husband of hers puzzled him. She never stopped complaining about him, lamenting the day she had agreed to share his life, cursing his apathy and his indolence. But somehow it was all on the surface, as if she didn’t mean what she said. Some days he was employed, but more often he was not, while she continued at her job. The children were her favorite topic. It was she who had to answer for everything to everybody, she told him, even to their landlord and her husband’s current employer. Sometimes he worked in the slaughterhouse, sometimes he delivered cheese from door-to-door. Sometimes he made coffee in a coffee shop, and sometimes she herself would prepare the mixture for the bean rissoles which he fried and sold at their street corner. He never lasted more than a couple of days at any one job which made Judge Abdallah marvel at this family, forever hanging on the brink of destitution, wondering how they would have managed had Shohrat not been working for him. He was full of compassion for them, just as he would be for the victims of an earthquake in some distant corner of the earth. It was only compassion, however, and it was soon dispelled by the boredom inspired by Shohrat and the tiresome problems of her family.
One day around the middle of the month she came asking him to lend her a pound. It was no coincidence that it was the day after he had gone to bed with her.
“What for?” he asked, a little irritated.
“Oh, just a loan,” she replied wantonly, looking at him boldly which so unnerved him that he gave her the money. This was her last month with him, he decided firmly.
“When will you return it?”
“I’ll pay it back by installments,” she answered and followed this remark with a ripple of laughter that made him shudder.
A few days later he was astonished to see her come for the first time without her melaya. She was wearing a new skirt made of a cheap checked material, and on top of that she wore an old rag which with a little indulgence could pass for a blouse. Her head was uncovered and her lips were painted a faint red, probably with a red pencil. She was repulsive to look at.
“What are you all rigged up like that for?”
“I’m ashamed of my melaya in this building. Isn’t this better?” she added over her shoulder as she took a few steps forward and turned to display herself, looking at him boldly. He turned down his lip.
“And what does your husband say?”
She exploded an air bubble in her chewing gum before she replied.
“Don’t ask me.”
“Why? Where’s he gone?”
“Over at the café. He’s been sitting there for three months.”
“Why?”
“Out of work,” she said with a stream of laughter. She strolled across to the mirror and looked at herself this way and that. “Well now, don’t you think I look much better like this?” she asked.
He vowed to himself she must go at the end of the month. She stuck her hips on one side and passed her hand languidly in front of her face with a dramatic gesture.
“Don’t you think I’d do well in the movies?” she asked as she stood striking poses in front of the mirror.
“They all say I should go into pictures,” she sai
d again, when she got no answer, as though in reply to herself.
V
The following day she turned up in her melaya. He asked sarcastically what had happened. Nothing. Her old blouse wouldn’t do anymore, she had to have a new one. She had the material but needed a pound to pay the seamstress. This time he was certainly not giving her even one millieme. He couldn’t figure out her new attitude. Whatever lay behind it portended nothing good.
He often wondered what she did after she left him. Probably walked the streets. Melaya-clad women were cheap. Perhaps with a skirt and a blouse she could raise her price. He was almost certain his guess was right but that wasn’t his business. He was finished with Shohrat anyway. A few more days and he would tell her to go for good. She could do what she liked.
When she came the next day she asked for the pound again, saying the blouse was ready. But he wouldn’t let her have it. She had borrowed enough as it was and he never expected to see his money again. Besides, he had quite made up his mind she was going. He wouldn’t wait until the end of the month. He’d tell her tomorrow.
That’s what he told himself every day. And every day he forgot. He had every intention of doing it as he left the apartment every morning. He would go down to the garage and walk around his car to make sure it had been properly cleaned. He was certain every time to find reason to reprove the garage boy. Then he’d drive down to the court which would start to come to life with his arrival. Greetings from right and left, people shuttling to and fro, moving up and down. And Farghali, no sooner would he see the car coming than he’d scuttle downstairs, all in a fluster, to open the door and bow and take his briefcase, trotting behind him at a respectful distance. In the waiting room he would take a quick look at a couple of cases that were shortly coming up before him, and which he had put off considering several times before for lack of time. Then the old clerk would come in, with his spectacles and his slow movements which were even more depressing than his spectacles. It took him five minutes to say good morning, and he’d hang around forever. Then coffee, and rushing madly through the files as the hands of the clock drew near to ten and the people got impatient outside in the courtroom, and he heard their protests grow steadily louder. Then he’d rise and take his seat in the courtroom as the sound of Farghali’s voice calling the court to order made the ceiling rise like an arch of triumph.
For a while he would concentrate on the cases that followed one another in quick succession. Then his attention would start to wander, and he’d fix his gaze on the face of some witness which he found repellent or on a lawyer who irritated him. And then he’d start playing with the idea of resigning from the government and setting up a private practice.
And so the day would come to an end, and the car would take him back to the garage where he’d park it and go up. As soon as he’d opened the door and seen Shohrat’s melaya lying on the floor like a black banner, he would remember he must speak to Farghali about firing her. He would speak to him in the morning.
But in the morning too, he would forget.
VI
This, then, was the story he told Sharaf. It was all very clear. Shohrat stole the watch in order to sell it and pay for her blouse since he had refused to lend her the money. She had probably also guessed his intention of firing her. Sharaf was listening, stretched in his chair, limp and lethargic. Judge Abdallah was irritated: he had expected more from his friend than this cool response. He felt Sharaf had let him down, leaving him to deal with the situation on his own. The impudence of the woman; a mean low-down servant, to dare to steal his watch knowing that sooner or later he would find her out. That was not just impudence but an insult. That shameless woman was daring him, but he was going to show her, he was shouting now to Sharaf. She won’t get away with it. He wasn’t going to let her make a monkey out of him.
They sat thinking what to do, Sharaf sprawled in his chair, and Abdallah pacing the floor. It was Sunday, Shohrat’s day off. That had been a new arrangement. It had been introduced when Abdallah had begun to tire of Shohrat, and he’d started to nibble around for variety. He reverted to the old game in order to clear the apartment for other visitors.
The obvious thing to do was call the police, but on second thoughts it was better not to. For one thing the police have seldom been known to trouble about petty thefts. What’s more, once it gets known that the police are on the track, stolen things have a habit of disappearing into the bowels of the earth. Besides if he informed the police, he would have to answer a lot of questions which were better left alone. He did not trust Shohrat not to reveal their real relationship which could damage his reputation. So there was no question of the police.
Farghali, then. After all, it was he who had brought her, on his responsibility. He must be told what had happened and it was his duty to recover the watch. But Sharaf pointed out that Shohrat might not be as naïve as she seemed; she might not give in so easily in the first round. And then curiosity might lead Farghali to pry too closely into his private affairs. It would be more prudent if Abdallah were to handle the matter himself, the better to keep things under control.
The problem was how to reach Shohrat at this time of day when neither of them knew where she lived. Farghali was the only one who knew her house, and neither of them knew where he lived either. If they waited till the next day there was no guarantee that the watch would still be waiting. It had to be now. She must be taken by surprise if they hoped to recover the watch. So Farghali had to be found. Abdallah remembered he had been in the same situation once before when he had left his keys with Farghali and the latter had to be summoned after hours. He remembered now, it was the garage boy who had found him.
He called the porter and ordered him to send up the boy immediately. He paced the floor until the bell rang and the garage boy came in followed by the huge black porter. He was only a young boy, peasant-like and in rags. He was fairly dark and obviously a runaway from his native village. It took Judge Abdallah a good five minutes to make the boy coherent, so frightened was he at being summoned by a judge, and overawed by the luxury where he stood and all those eyes fixed upon him. At first he denied any knowledge of Farghali. But under the pressure of a cigarette and many assurances that he would come to no harm, which Sharaf and the porter sustained, his memory returned and he volunteered to find Farghali. The porter was immediately given a pound and told to get into a taxi with the boy and not to return without Farghali.
While awaiting Farghali, Abdallah sat down to lay out the strategy. Suppose Shohrat were found and he were to face her, would he trust himself, when before, he, her master, had never been able to stare her down? He didn’t allow the thought to linger; in his present mood he felt able to stare down a whole battalion of Shohrats and wrench from her not only his watch but her very guts. If she insisted on denying it he would threaten her with the police. But to get her properly rattled he needed to dangle a policeman before her eyes. He knew a young adjutant from the second precinct at Giza, a pleasant young man who might be willing to cooperate. But on the other hand if the young man refused, Abdallah would have exposed his private life unnecessarily.
Suddenly he had a great idea. Sharaf. Who else? Sharaf could be made to play the part. Sharaf was a little taken aback at first but gradually the idea began to appeal to him. He got up and went to the mirror and tried a few grimaces in rehearsal. He was going to enjoy this. He went back and announced to Abdallah that he was accepting the part. Abdallah cheered and his laughter, buoyed by his irritation, rang loud and hollow as Sharaf continued to fool about, ruffling his hair, making faces and striking attitudes, warming to his part.
The bell rang and when the door was opened Farghali stood panting in the doorway. The porter had refused to let him use the lift and had dragged him all the way up the back stairs. Farghali was wearing his usual old oversized suit and his dark tarboosh, slanting on one side, while sweat poured out of his face. No sooner was he told what had happened th
an he recoiled in horror. “The damned bitch! The damned bitch!” he kept repeating, all the way downstairs, and until they got into the car.
Abdallah sat at the wheel with Sharaf at his side and Farghali on the edge of the backseat almost standing on tip-toe had the roof of the car allowed him. He muttered and swore. He would show her, he promised. He’d bring ruin on her house. He’d make orphans of her children. He’d get her hounded out of the neighborhood. She’d see. He kept talking of the “neighborhood” as though it were a place known to all, and when Abdallah asked him where that would be he answered promptly, “Right next to El Roum Lane.” And when again Abdallah asked where that would be he named places neither he nor Sharaf had ever heard of. Finally, it turned out that the “neighborhood” was a blind alley somewhere behind the mosque of Al Azhar.
VII
Abdallah was elated as he started off on his quest for Shohrat. It was a novel and thrilling adventure not only because he was certain to recover his stolen watch but because it was going to prove his perspicacity. He looked forward to tracking Shohrat down, to catching her red-handed, to watching her reaction, observing her fear, her denial. New complications would surely crop up but he would know how to handle them. He could already see himself later, telling his friends how adroitly he had handled the whole affair. For the moment he refused to consider adverse possibilities even though they crowded in his mind. He was weary of thinking and debating and making new plans every time he discovered a leak, and from that moment he decided to shut off his mind to everything but the scene unfolding before him.
He felt himself melting into the landscape as he rolled along. He could not remember the exact moment when it happened or any specific incident that relegated Shohrat to the back of his mind. He could only recall the dim beginning from El Gabalaya Street. The long, clean, shaded street; the open spaces and the tall stylish buildings. The peace and the quiet, except for the noiseless flow of elegant cars and a few pedestrians. The air was serene and the Nile flowed gently, and the car glided along as though on a carpet of silk. And Sharaf beside him smoking in silence, smiling with amusement when he remembered his part. Farghali was in the back, holding on to the front seat, the car reeking with his smell, spluttering into Abdallah’s right ear every time he spoke.