The Mirage

by Naguib Mahfouz

  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?”

  56

  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.”

  As the motor revved in preparation for the car’s departure, I said imploringly, “It’s daytime, so please avoid the busy streets.”

  “Are you afraid someone mi
ght see you?”

  “Yes,” I said in an embarrassed tone.

  “Ah! I forgot you were married! Pardon me, Mr. Husband, but we’re going to Heliopolis!”

  And the car took off at its usual break-neck speed.

  On the way she asked me, “What did you do with your wife yesterday?”

  I furrowed my brow involuntarily and made no reply.

  “Do you hate to mention her that much?”

  Then, disregarding my silence and discomfort, she asked, “Don’t you sleep in the same bed?”

  I tried to force a laugh, but I couldn’t, and I felt a resentment that ruined my tranquil mood.

  “How I’d love to see her!” she said with a raucous laugh.

  Wanting to cheer me up in her own way, she caressed my lips with her finger and, like a mother speaking playfully to her little boy, said, “My little chickadee!”

  The car pulled up in front of a tea shop. We sat there chatting happily away about whatever came to mind, and she told me she’d chosen the seamstress’s house as the place for our lovers’ trysts. As we left the place at noon, she wanted to pay the bill, but I wouldn’t let her, and we parted after reaffirming the evening’s meeting time. We met repeatedly, and when the vacation ended two days later, we continued our meetings in the evenings. The experience of success convinced me that love is health and well-being. My habit of spending the evenings out was a secret to no one, and although Rabab preferred, as she said, for me to spend my evenings with her on her endless visits, she didn’t press me about it. Hence, we each lived our lives in the way we pleased. This was no secret to my mother, either. Once she said to me, “I’ve noticed, son, that you haven’t been yourself lately. I’ve been afraid that if I said anything you’d be angry. In any case, if you enjoy spending the evenings out, spend the evenings out. All men are like that!”

  57

  I spent a month or more in a state of unmitigated bliss. Peace took the place of suspicion and doubt, and my relationship with Rabab was restored to one of goodwill and pure affection. At the same time, I surrendered myself to Inayat in tumultuous passion and triumphant joy. She was a woman of means, and not once did we go to our beloved nest in the seamstress’s house but that she presented her with a gift of a riyal, and sometimes half a pound. As for me, my sense of dignity required that I, too, be generous toward her, albeit within my more limited means. Without realizing it, she made it possible for me to resume drinking on a regular basis, since the seamstress would keep bottles of whisky and soda in constant supply for us. In fact, she nearly got me into the habit of smoking. In addition, she had certain virtues, and what virtues they were! She was possessed of perfect femininity and vitality, as a result of which she was a source of pleasure to lovers despite her middle age and her lovable homeliness. At the same time, however, she possessed such virtues alongside an alarming degree of wantonness and audacity. For her, loving a man was everything, and for its sake she deemed anything and everything permissible. She may not have been truly the type that devotes herself unstintingly to her man. Rather, she may simply have been a woman driven by anxiety and despair. In other words, she may have been driven by an awareness of the fact that the brightness of her youth was fading, as a result of which she couldn’t bear to let a day go by without a taste of love. The most peculiar thing about my passion for her was that the things about her that enchanted me were the very things that might normally be looked upon as shortcomings—her maturity, her homeliness, and her audacity. She filled me with boundless confidence, and when I was with her, I worried about nothing. If it hadn’t been for the angst that would come over me as a result of the frightening divorce I experienced between body and spirit, I would have enjoyed life in unruffled tranquility. Yet even with such perturbation, it was a happy life.

  Then one afternoon, right after I’d finished lunch, I went in to spend some time with my mother over a cup of coffee as was my custom every day. As soon as I walked into the room, I noticed her limpid eyes searching my face anxiously as though there were something on her mind. Looking intently into her face, which looked drawn and languid, I realized immediately that she wanted to say something.

  I felt worried, but I said with a smile, “What is it, Mama? Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  A look of hesitancy flashed in her eyes for a few moments.

  Then she said, “Yesterday I heard some things that shocked me. Could you tell me more about what’s going on between Rabab and her mother?”

  This was the last thing I’d expected to hear. My eyes clouded over with dark memories and my fluttering heart wondered: Has the woman gone back to her nagging? Rabab had told me nothing about her mother’s visit to her the day before, contenting herself with conveying her mother’s greetings to me.

  In a calm voice—or, at least, in a voice that I made appear to be calm—I replied, “Everything’s just fine between them.”

  Shaking her head skeptically, my mother said, “There may be things you’re missing. I wasn’t able to receive Madame Nazli yesterday because I hadn’t been feeling well, so when Sabah came to tell me she’d arrived, I pretended to be asleep. The visit went on for quite a long time. At one point, I slipped out of the room to go to the bathroom. On my way back, I came past the sitting room door. When I did, I was shocked to hear the woman say, ‘This is intolerable!’ Then Rabab came back at her angrily, saying, ‘Don’t meddle in my affairs!’ As for me, all I could do was come back to my room.”

  My forehead burning with humiliation, I felt furious and unspeakably bitter toward my meddlesome mother-in-law.

  Intruding on my thoughts, my mother asked, “Don’t you know anything about it?”

  “Their disagreements are none of our business,” I said firmly.

  When I returned later to our room, I found Rabab reclining on the long seat. When she saw me, she drew her legs toward the back of the seat to make room for me, and I sat down broodingly. How could she have kept such a thing from me? Was she afraid of upsetting me?

  As if she hadn’t noticed my altered state of mind, she began talking about how it was Friday and suggested that we go to the cinema together.

  I let her finish what she had to say. Then I asked, “How’s your mother?” to which she replied that her mother was fine.

  Then I looked her straight in the eye and asked her, “Did yesterday’s visit go well?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked with a disconcerted look in her eyes.

  “Rabab,” I said gloomily, “Don’t hide anything from me. Has your mother started harping on that old theme again?”

  Her face clouded over and she made no reply.

  “What would you know about it?” she retorted sharply.

  “I want to know everything!”

  So I told her what my mother had told me.

  After listening to me attentively, she exploded, “Your mother! Your mother! Always your mother!”

  Feeling the same sting that I always did whenever I was reminded of their mutual dislike, I said, “There’s no reason to get angry. She heard what she did by chance, and she passed it on to me with good intentions as far as I can see. I beg you, don’t get angry. Just tell me: Has your mother gone back to that old subject?”

  Drawing her legs out from behind me and planting them on the floor, she looked down gloomily and angrily.

  “The thing I hadn’t wanted to upset you with was that she suggested that I go to a doctor to see why I haven’t gotten pregnant. I rejected her suggestion, of course, and we got into an argument!”

  We carried on with the odious conversation for quite some time until she asked me not to say anything more, and to lie down and get some rest after my day at work. Complying with her wishes, I went and lay down on the bed, grieved and melancholy. It took me quite some time to doze off, and I don’t know how long I slept. However, I woke to the sound of something that caused slumber to flee from my eyes. I opened my eyes feeling disturbed, and my ears were bombarded by a ruckus coming from the l
iving room. As I listened attentively, it soon became apparent that Rabab and my mother were exchanging the harshest of words in a noisy shouting match. Alarmed, I jumped out of bed, then rushed into the living room.

  I found Rabab with sparks flying from her eyes as she screamed, “This sort of spying doesn’t become a respectable lady!”

  When my mother saw me, she lowered her eyes as she said, “This impertinence is more than I can take!”

  “Rabab!” I cried.

  However, she avoided me and stormed back into our room in a rage. As for my mother, she turned around and proceeded to her room with heavy steps. As I came toward her in a pained silence, I saw her take hold of the doorknob, then stand there without turning it as though she’d changed her mind about going in. Then she placed her hand on her forehead and seemed to gradually slump over. I rushed over to her, and no sooner had I touched her than she fell into my arms. Terrified, I called to her, but she didn’t respond, her head and arms drooping lifelessly. I summoned Sabah with a shout and she came running, then together we carried her to the bed and lay her down. I brought a bottle of cologne and sprinkled some of it on her face and neck, then used it to massage her limbs. Hysterical by now, I began calling to her over and over in a hoarse, trembling voice. She remained unconscious for several minutes that dragged by like hours. Then she opened her eyelids to reveal lusterless eyes.

  “Mama!” I cried with a gulp.

  She focused her gaze on me, then pointed to her heart without uttering a word. I left the flat and took off for the grocery on the first floor of our building, where I called her doctor and asked him to come. Then I went back up to the flat and sat beside her feeling terrified and grieved. I didn’t take my eyes off her for a moment, and eventually her lackluster gaze drew out the tears that had been trapped inside me. I felt like the most miserable person on earth, and my soul was filled with bitterness and despair.