The Mirage

by Naguib Mahfouz

  48

  Some weeks—possibly no more than two months—then passed in serenity and bliss. When I remember those days, I’m afflicted with pain and sorrow. It isn’t a longing for a happiness that no longer exists. Rather, it’s a feeling of grief over the hugest deception I’ve ever been subjected to in my life. In other words, there was nothing to be happy about at all, and if I did enjoy comfort and happiness for a time, it was only because I was ignorant, gullible, and blind. There’s nothing wrong with a blind man enjoying an illusory happiness so long as he goes on being blind. However, if his sight is restored and he sees that his happiness was nothing but a mirage, what will he reap from the memories of his happiness but an even greater unhappiness and never-ending sorrow? This was precisely my situation, but I only became aware of it with a painful slowness commensurate with my ignorance and stupidity.

  I’d noticed that, what with her work at school and visits to her relatives, Rabab was spending all day and part of the night away from home. I’d gone with her in the beginning despite my reclusive nature, but when it became a hardship for me, I withdrew and stopped accompanying her on more than the occasional visit. My mother went back to making her embittered, sorrowful comments on the situation, while I came tirelessly to my wife’s defense even though, somewhere deep inside me, I agreed with the criticisms. In the past I’d encouraged my wife to make such visits to help her get her mind off what I felt was lacking in our married life. Now, though, there was no reason that I could see to go to such excess in this regard.

  Hence, after gathering my courage, I said to her one day, “It seems, sweetheart, that you’re boycotting our house. Wouldn’t it be possible for you to cut down on the number of visits you make?”

  Looking at me suspiciously, she asked with a sharpness I wasn’t accustomed to, “So, does she still busy herself criticizing me?”

  I realized that she was referring to my mother, and it pained me to see that she harbored such a negative attitude toward her.

  “My mother doesn’t interfere in what doesn’t concern her,” I replied soothingly. “This is my request and no one else’s. The fact is, I can’t bear our house when you’re not in it.”

  “Let’s go out together, then,” she said, having recovered her composure. “Why don’t you like to be with people?”

  “That’s just the way I am,” I said gently.

  I don’t know what changed her after what I’d said. However, she said testily, “Well, this is the only way life is bearable for me.”

  Ah, my love! I thought to myself. Your gentle-heartedness wouldn’t allow you to speak this way! What’s happened?

  However, that wasn’t all there was to it. After all, my heart would sometimes see things that my eyes missed. I had to rend the curtain of blindness and meet the truth face-to-face, bitter though it might be. It seemed to me that Rabab wasn’t as happy with my recovery as I was. It was a bizarre reality, and one that had me completely baffled. But how long would I go on deluding myself? She seemed to be afraid for night to come and want to avoid it. As soon as we found ourselves alone together, she would be gripped by torment that I could see in her limpid eyes. And particularly of late, she’d begun making all manner of excuses, from tiredness to feeling ill to being desperately sleepy. And when she did yield to me, she would do so in a way that made it seem like a joyless capitulation. Then she’d wrest her body away from mine as though she were offended and angry. For all these reasons, she was no longer the smiling, cheerful, serene girl I’d once known her to be. Her laugh was tainted with affectation, her cheerfulness had grown tepid, and her affection had turned to flattery. Far be it from me to say that she openly declared any bitterness or resentment or that she behaved discourteously. After all, my sweetheart was above such things. However, I could sense her anxiety with my heart, and I picked up instinctively on her ambivalence. God knows, the whole world wouldn’t have amounted to a hill of beans as far as I was concerned if my beloved was in pain. But what was bothering her? I missed her, but couldn’t find her. And I had to find her lest I die of sorrow.

  My misery reached its limit. Her seeming aversion to me had affected me deeply, making its way into the inner recesses of my being. It provoked a recurrence of my old malady, and the magical recovery I’d experienced went the way of the wind. Not even liquor did the trick anymore. I was so grief-stricken, I came close to losing my mind. Was impotence to be my lot again? Was I to be doomed once more to that deadly despair?

  Once I said to her despondently, “What’s wrong, Rabab? You’re not the sweetheart I’ve always known.”

  She made no reply. Instead, she just lowered her eyes with a look of consternation and uncertainty on her face.

  Imploringly I said, “My heart doesn’t lie to me. So please, tell me what’s changed you.”

  “Nothing,” she whispered with a somber look in her eyes.

  “But there is something!” I cried. “In fact, there’s more than one thing. I’m your husband, Rabab, and I’m all yours. So don’t hide anything from me. Oh, Rabab, how I grieve the happy days we once knew!”

  She sighed, and a look of pain and embarrassment came over her face. Then she murmured tremulously, “So do I.”

  Stunned, distressed, and utterly confused, I asked her, “How could that be, Rabab? I don’t understand a thing. Shouldn’t our life be happier than this?”

  The look on her face indicated that she was as confused as I was, a fact that stunned and baffled me even more. I wanted her to reveal to me what was causing her distress and, in so doing, to relieve me of my own. I waited fretfully until I began to suspect things that struck terror in my heart and, if true, would plunge me into humiliation and despair.

  When I could bear to wait no longer, I said, “Why don’t you tell me honestly what you’re thinking?”

  She wanted to reveal what was weighing on her delicate heart, but she either didn’t know how, or didn’t have the courage.

  As for me, fear and despondency tightened their grip on me until my anguish knew no bounds.

  “Rabab,” I said. “You’re not comfortable with the new development in our lives, are you?”

  She looked at me strangely, then lowered her glance and began nervously chewing her fingernails. The cat was out of the bag now. However, her silence had started to disturb me, and with a feeling that bordered on exasperation I asked, “Isn’t that so?”

  She looked at me as though she were begging me to have pity on her.

  Then, in a voice that was barely audible she said, “Shall we go back to the way we were before? It was a nice life.”

  I looked down in humiliation and dejection as though I’d been slapped in the face. This wish of hers could have given me a convenient excuse by which to conceal the impotence I’d begun suffering anew. Even so, my only response to it was to feel utterly mortified.

  As though she saw the pained look on my face, she said gently, “I don’t mean to upset you. It’s just that I miss the life we had before. It was a pure, happy life.…”

  As if to finish her statement for her, I said, “… and there was nothing in it to disturb your peace of mind?”

  She blinked her eyes, and in them I could see a look of sympathy.

  “We were happy, weren’t we?” she said gently. “We lacked nothing at all.”

  I don’t know why, but her gentleness caused me pain.

  Then I remembered some of the things I’d heard from my fellow employees at the warehousing section and I said, “But that’s the only thing that will make a woman happy!”

  Blushing, she assured me hastily, “No! No! You’re wrong about that!”

  I looked at her in bewilderment. Is she really telling me the truth? I wondered. But what reason would she have to lie? I was nothing but a gullible, ignorant fool, and you won’t find an easier prey for words of assurance than gullible, ignorant fools. Hence, I was moved profoundly by what she said.

  Again I thought: Should I disbelieve my beloved and believe the
harebrains at the ministry? Didn’t this statement of hers express a belief that I myself had held before I was persuaded otherwise by my coworkers’ bawdy remarks? Add to this the fact that now that she’d spoken this way, and now that I was impotent again, I couldn’t have relations with her anymore.

  So all things considered, I pretended to be relieved.

  Feigning a smile, I said with resignation, “There’s nothing I want more than your happiness, Rabab.”

  Her worries dispelled, a look of relief flashed in her eyes. Then she moved up close to me until we were touching and kissed me.

  Thus we went back to the way we’d been before, and I went back to being a chaste husband with an ugly habit. I would say to myself: It isn’t my fault that we’ve ended up this way. I’m an able-bodied man, and if it weren’t for her disposition, I wouldn’t have suffered this relapse. On the contrary, I’m enduring this strange life for her sake! It was a solace I’d badly needed. But did I really believe myself?

  Whatever the answer, the memory of our era of blessedness didn’t leave me for a single moment. How had it passed with such astonishing rapidity? And how could my beloved have been so troubled that she would end up breaking her silence with this sort of manifest grievance? Didn’t this mean that I was a wretched soul with no way out of my wretchedness? I was sorely tempted to flee and reclaim my freedom, and I would think back nostalgically to the days when I’d go wandering aimlessly in the streets.

  Had everything gone back to point zero?

  Love continued to bring us together in embraces and sympathy, and my beloved went back to being her smiling, cheerful self as she divided her days between her school and the houses of her family and relatives. It sufficed me to see her happy and content. At the same time, her disposition may have undergone a slight change, a change that became apparent in recurrent episodes of gloom, as well as in a quickness to lose her temper over the slightest thing my mother would say.

  Was I happy?

  As far as I could tell, my beloved was happy, so it was only natural that I should count myself happy too. I hadn’t stopped suffering from obsessive thoughts. But then, when had my life been free of obsessive thoughts? Life’s current flowed inexorably along, its waves tossing me to and fro, with my beloved’s happiness bringing me joy, and my mother’s severity bringing me equal misery. I would spend tedious hours at the ministry followed occasionally by dreamy hours at the pub. As for my conscience, on account of which I’d long suffered a feeling of guilt, I regularly drowned out its wails and laments with mirthful laughter and carousing. Hence, whenever its pangs beset me, I would say to myself in a loud voice: I’m happy, and everything is fine.

  Another winter passed, followed by spring and summer, until it was time to greet the autumn and the new school year together with the precious memories they ushered in.

  49

  Then something happened to me that seemed trivial, but that nearly turned my life upside down. Strangely, it came to light as a result of a coincidence, and it seems only right for me to wonder: Would my life have taken a different direction if it hadn’t been for that coincidence? Then again, what is a coincidence? Doesn’t life seem at times to be an endless chain of coincidences? What, other than coincidence, had placed Rabab in my path? Would it have been possible for me to marry her if my father had died a single month later than he did? What would have happened to me if my father had insisted on taking me back the way he did Radiya and Medhat? In the same vein I wonder: Isn’t it possible that my life would have gone on just the way it had been till the day I died if the time I spent with my mother on that unforgettable day hadn’t lasted a few extra minutes?

  It was an afternoon in late autumn. I was planning to spend my usual evening out, and I’d just bidden Rabab farewell. As I left our room, I encountered my mother in the living room and discovered that she wasn’t feeling well. Consequently, I went with her to her room and we sat there talking for quite a long time. Then I excused myself and left. As I was on my way out, I happened to glance in the direction of our bedroom. The door was open as it had been before, and I saw Rabab sitting on the edge of the bed and reading a letter. I realized immediately that the postman must have brought it when I was sitting with my mother, since otherwise, I would have known about it when it arrived. I assumed it was a letter to me from my brother, since Rabab didn’t receive letters from anyone, so I went back to the room to inquire. As I approached the door, Rabab was so engrossed in reading that she didn’t notice me until I said to her, “Is that a letter for me?”

  She looked up at me in astonishment and her hand folded up the letter in a rapid, robot-like motion.

  “Did you forget something?” she asked, obviously uneasy.

  Feeling an anxiety I didn’t quite understand, I said, “I was in my mother’s room, and as I was leaving her I saw you reading this letter, and I thought it was for me.”

  She got up from where she’d been sitting and backed toward the dressing table. She was clearly trying to keep her emotions under control. However, her eyes betrayed the profound, unexpected effect my sudden appearance had had on her.

  Letting forth a terse, dry laugh that did nothing to conceal her distress, she said, “It isn’t a letter. It’s just some comments I wrote down relating to my work at school.”

  A fear came over me that numbed my joints. She may have been telling the truth. However, her distress was catching, and I too had begun to feel a strange sort of fear, as though some unnamed, ominous presence was gathering on my already cloudy horizon. What reason would she have to lie? Yet I was certain that I’d seen a letter in her hand! I feared acting too suspicious lest she be in the right and I find myself in an embarrassing position that I could well do without.

  Even so, I couldn’t help but say, “But I saw a letter in your hand.”

  My statement came out sounding bad to me, and I felt I hadn’t chosen my words well, since they expressed obvious suspicion.

  I looked at her apprehensively, waiting for her to show me the paper irritably as she shot me a look of disdain and reproach. However, she was struggling with other sorts of feelings.

  As if she were overwhelmed with some unnamed emotion, she turned her back to me, saying, “I told you it was comments having to do with my schoolwork.”

  Then suddenly I saw her tear it up, walk over to the window and throw it out. The move she made came so unexpectedly, I froze in place as if I’d been paralyzed. She turned to face me with a show of nonchalance. Furious and desperate, I felt as though a huge wall had collapsed on top of my life and buried it beneath its rubble. My eyes were being opened—after the delusions of blindness—to ugly realities. After all, what but ugly realities would provoke such distress and such clever deceit?

  Mad with rage, I screamed, “You’re lying! You said it was a paper with comments relating to your schoolwork, but it wasn’t anything of the sort. It was a letter! I saw it myself! And you tore it up to hide something shameful from me!”

  The blood drained out of her face, leaving it deathly pale. However, she didn’t appear willing to give up without a desperate defense.

  “You’re wrong,” she mumbled, “and you’re not being fair. It wasn’t a letter!”

  By now I was seething with rage, and pain and despair were pounding on my head like a hammer.

  “Why did you tear it up, then?” I cried. “Why did you panic? Talk to me! I’ve got to know the truth! I’m going down to the street to pick up the pieces.”

  I rushed distraughtly over to the window and looked down into the street, where I saw the narrow blind alley that separated the back of our building from the church garden. The minute I looked out, I despaired, since it was obvious that the wind had carried the bits of paper over into the churchyard. The world looked black to me, and it seemed as though she had emerged from a world of demons dancing in a stream of fire. How was I going to extract the truth from her lips? I turned around and found her standing where she’d been before, with all the life dra
ined out of her face and a look of terror and consternation in her eyes. My heart went cold and I shot her a long, hard look.

  “It was a letter,” I insisted angrily, “and I won’t back down until you’ve confessed everything to me.”

  She stepped back with a groan and leaned on the wardrobe mirror.

  Then in a plaintive voice she said, “I beg you not to think ill of me. There’s nothing at all for you to be angry or suspicious about. Please, don’t look at me that way!”

  However, I went on looking at her sternly and cruelly, my soul yearning to know the truth. It was either deliverance, or death. Lord! I thought. I’m having a nightmare! Could I ever have conceived of taking such a stance toward her in anything but a nightmare?