For the twentieth, the seventieth, the hundredth time, he read through the same piece of news. This time the letters drilled themselves into position with superb precision, some moving forward, others taking a step back, while yet others had disappeared completely, had fled the held: some were as big as walking sticks, others as small as ants; some a mere whisper, others a bugle blast. The item of news, scattered over the page of the newspaper, now read approximately as follows:
Tawfiq Hussein Baligh
one of the passengers of the ill-fated plane
on a mission connected
with the organization he represents
had put forward the time of his departure in order
to be beside his eldest daughter
who is expecting a happy event
The sun was flooding the balcony. A beautiful warm day. His wife appeared, wearing a pink-colored knitted housecoat. Her body looked as though it had been stuffed with numerous articles of clothing; on her feet she wore a pair of his old socks and shabby slippers. He almost let out a short childish laugh but managed to stifle it. What did it matter? She sat down beside him on the other cane chair, the one with arms, and busied herself with her knitting-needles, without saying anything. Her face was still, still as a tranquil pool, though wrinkles had begun to make their incursions upon it. She was followed by the maid who placed the tray on the table, and then passed him his unsugared cup of tea. The newspaper was now on the table in front of him; the words had disappeared, had sneaked away in indifference between the lines of the newspaper as though some secret pact existed between them and him. She thrust the needles into the ball of wool, put it on the table and took up her tea which had become tepid. This was what she always did. He felt his heart thumping. These were the minutes during which she would take up the newspaper and start commenting. He was longing for the secret to come to light, it had to do so. He would have to speak, if only she remembered the name! If only she would prompt him into speaking!
“Good heavens, what a terrible accident! Sixty-three passengers. The plane must have been full—did you read about the accident?
“I wonder how it crashed. They say here that the exact reason isn’t known. These airplanes are really frightful. This poor family—the husband, wife, and three sons. God bring comfort to their relatives.”
She put the paper down on her lap and went into a daydream. Perhaps she had read enough, perhaps the tranquil pool had been sufficiently disturbed. He almost despaired. She glanced at the paper once more before throwing it on to the table.
“Did you read the story of this man? He put forward his departure so as to be with his daughter when she was having her child. What an ill-omened birth! Look how they wrote up the news in the paper: “Because his daughter was expecting a happy event.’ Happy!?”
“Don’t you know this man?”
Again she gazed at the name, then looked up at him perplexed.
“I mean—don’t you remember the name?”
She shook her head and he experienced a feeling of resentment toward her. He felt obscurely that her having forgotten the name was a neglect of himself. In exasperation he muttered:
“Tawfiq Hussein Baligh—don’t you remember him?”
A certain worried irritation, as though the surface of a pond had become muddied, appeared in her eyes. It was of no avail, though.
“Don’t you remember the case I once brought, the case I brought in the Supreme Administrative Court, because they promoted someone over my head?”
She bit her lower lip.
“Of course. You wore yourself to shreds over it; for years you wore us all out too, and then you lost it.”
He gave a wan smile.
“This Tawfiq was the colleague of mine they promoted over my head. God rest his soul. He was hasty in everything.”
“Even in death.”
“Even in catching the plane.”
His eyes suddenly sparkled.
“Can you imagine, it might have been I who died in that blazing plane. Didn’t we compete for one and the same place our whole lives? Do you see where this haste has taken him? To the seat in the airplane. Don’t be alarmed. Always it seemed to me that he took my place, so much so that many a time I forgot that there was a place for me apart from the one Tawfiq occupied. Yet here I am sunning myself on this balcony, while Tawfiq is over there, a charred corpse on the mountain.”
She pursed her lips and returned nervously to her knitting. No doubt she was remembering bitter conversations that had taken place in the middle of the night and had brought him to early diabetes and blood pressure.
“I haven’t told you much about Tawfiq,” he said with sudden tenderness. “We were fellow students at secondary school. He wasn’t my friend. No, he was never once my friend, though we were always mentioned in the same breath. As for him, no one knows where he came from. His father was a government official or something of the sort. He was a lovable, soft person who after a while made friends with all his classmates. As for myself, I was always accused of being a bit snobbish and mixed with the boys from my own village, a few of whom were my particular friends. He and I were rivals, in continual competition in the various subjects we were taking.”
He was silent for a moment; his face was slightly flushed and he looked younger. She placed the two knitting needles and the wool in her lap, tilting her head slightly as she listened to him.
“We joined the College of Engineering together and were in the same class. We went up together year by year, remaining rivals at the top of our year. Coming out first was now regarded by the students as of more importance, not like at secondary school, where leadership generally went to the tallest student or to the captain of the basketball team. The rivalry between us became sharp and bitter though we were polite enough when meeting face to face. Though he remained pleasantly friendly, he now began to employ his talents with the teaching staff; he made himself known to them from the very first day, after which he went on to ingratiate himself with them. Even so, though, I often beat him to first place. And so came the year for taking our finals.
“The country was boiling with revolution and among those who met their deaths in the streets were colleagues of ours. Even so an English lecturer ventured, within the hearing of us all, to make a remark insulting to Egypt. Finding myself unable to disregard it, I insulted him back. The man kept silent and didn’t react at all. The emotional coldness of the English! At the end of the year, though, I found that I had failed in his subject. This was unbelievable. Who knows, I might well have been failed again had not the lecturer left the Faculty and returned home. This put me a year behind Tawfiq and he was therefore ahead of me, both in being sent abroad to complete his studies and in taking up his first appointment. Yet I still did everything I could to establish my superiority over him by putting more into my work.”
She gave a deep sigh; she tried to return to her knitting but found that she had miscounted. She knew well what had happened after that. He had no longer tried to talk to her about his work and achievements, which meant his having to use long English words which had been meaningless to her; instead he talked about his work in a bitter, resentful manner. Later, when the other man was chosen for the important post, his zeal had cooled of completely. And what post a it was! From what he had to say it had seemed to her that the person occupying it was all-powerful. And so the legal case had been brought and replaced work as a subject of conversation. She had listened and had then tried to amuse him, to distract him with other things.
He looked at her. Her face had begun to fade with age, yet it gazed at him imploringly, like the face of a child. Had she gazed at him like this in the old days?
“But he was always smooth as a snake. I never knew how he managed to twist his bosses round his little finger. I used to hear about some frightful things, though, some filthy things that went on between them. I wasn’t able to mention everything when the case was brought as I lacked evidence.”
Was he able to mention everything to her now? Had he ever talked to anyone about his dreams, strange dreams that he still remembered whenever he looked at his wife? When he remembered them he would turn away his head to escape from himself. But what dreams were these? Dreams without meaning, nightmares. Was it possible that these dreams were at all connected with those ‘filthy things’ he had heard? But what connection had these dreams got with his wife? Why, for nights on end, did he dream that Tawfiq had come and taken his wife away from him. his wife who was still a bride, sweet and good, and whom he loved most dearly? He had heard people saying behind his back that she was the most marvelous choice he’d made in his life, and the funny thing was that after these dreams of his he found himself incapable of loving her as he should. He would also feel fear of Tawfiq, together with extreme hatred. No, Tawfiq had not known Hana, had perhaps never seen her in his life. But this was not at all the crux of the matter. Besides, he had never doubted his wife. Yet, even in his waking hours the dream did, sometimes, appear possible, and he would release his closely guarded secret to twist about like a worm in his bosom, careful to appear outwardly calm and strong.
“Five years you wasted on that case. How you burnt yourself up over it and lost it in the end!”
Yes, he had lost the case, as well as the work which he loved. He had lost life itself because he had been unable to stand his colleagues seeing him defeated and had therefore asked to be transferred. Eventually he had come to rest at his present desk, where he would sit through the morning hours scarcely doing any work. The case had become his one amusement all these years, a bitter amusement of which his wife was not aware, nor yet his colleagues in the office; it was like an addiction, a fell disease. He would search through the papers for news of Tawfiq, reading and re-reading each item till he found that its words and letters often became so engraved upon his mind that when he was sitting by himself on the balcony or lying stretched out on his bed he was able to recall it. At first this had happened by chance; he had not been looking for news of Tawfiq when, amusing himself as was his wont by reading the newspaper at the office, his eye had alighted on the name. It was nothing of any importance, merely the reporter asking him, among a number of other people, about some project, and the space given to what he had to say occupied no more than a few lines following on from a brief description of who he was. But reporters, as is their wont, once having got to know someone, begin writing more and more about him for no apparent reason. Also there was no doubt that Tawfiq was past master at making reporters welcome. In any event, the items of news became both longer and more frequent. At first the reading of them had been a bitter, joyless experience and had stirred up feelings of resentment and opened old wounds. Soon, though, it no longer did so; the bitterness became pleasurable in the same way as when one gets used to bitter sugarless coffee and finds any other sort completely insipid. And so he began to look around for news and stories about Tawfiq, and when he found them he would feel as though he had read something of real interest.
Year after year he followed Tawfiq on his upward path. When he left government service and became a director of an important organization there was a noticeable shift in the attention accorded to him in the press: his name no longer appeared in items of news and stories but in paid announcements. Such announcements, however, had an advantage, which was that his picture would appear in them so that it was possible to ruminate over his expensive clothes, his body which had filled out slightly, and his shining hair now gray around the temples. Apart from this, though, he did not differ greatly from the young Tawfiq returned from abroad, or Tawfiq the student at college, or even Tawfiq the secondary schoolboy.
One day he found himself feeling he would like to meet him again. It was a strange wish, for he didn’t imagine that he would really enjoy the meeting, neither did he know how he would behave at such a moment. Anyway, where could they meet? His activities had dwindled considerably and he no longer went to his professional association, even on election day. But conjuring up pictures of this encounter had become something else on which to spend time at his office, or when sitting on the balcony, or stretched out on his bed.
“What hours I spent with him,” he thought. “All this will now come to an end.” Perhaps a news item or two—the fortieth day after his death and the first anniversary, on that back page. Tawfiq would move from the front page to the back before finally withdrawing. The newspaper would lose its interest and flavor.
“Aren’t you going inside? It gets cold on this balcony, I tell you.”
“H’m, h’m. I’ll be coming in soon.”
The sun had grown decidedly pale as though it had become chilly; its rays gave out light without heat, and from time to time it was covered over by a small cloud seeking warmth. A slight wind rustled the dry leaves. Now he was alone on the balcony. Though he had begun to feel the cold he put off the moment for getting up. He was at the climax of his discussion with himself and didn’t want to abandon it without reaching a conclusion. It was as though his eyes had looked down on a minute, wondrous spot which would be lost to him if he shifted to either right or left; as though he were balanced precariously on the side of a ship: he had only to move a hair’s breadth and he would fall.
Admit it! Admit it! What were you doing all these years? This man rained your life, and now that he is dead, what will you do? Nothing, of course, your life will merely become more empty. Why don’t you admit it? As time went on he became your main concern, and life seems wholly trivial without him. What irony! Some people have a love story in their lives, others a story of strife, while your whole life has been made up of a story of hatred.
The girl handed him a blanket. “Madam says you should put this round your feet.”
“Where is she?”
“In her room, sir.”
“Listen, Hamida—tell your mistress—or—never mind.”
His was a love story he had failed to make anything of, like a book that has fallen apart before its pages are cut. How sweet and full of vitality she had been as a young woman! Now nothing mattered to her at all: her two children had grown up and gone away and nothing remained but the two of them face to face and the long lonely nights of winter.
The time for love had passed. Had he tried to inspire any feelings in her now she would have experienced nothing but distress. Such affection as existed between them was shown by the blanket she had sent to him on the balcony to protect him from the cold.
If only he could see his children now!
Tawfiq came so as to be with his daughter while she was having her baby. What an affectionate father he was! We regard our children as being what we have made them; we do not know what life will make of them later.
Could his son become like him, he asked himself, and his daughter like her mother? God forbid! Were his children beside him now he would give them some sound advice. He would have so much to say to them.
Are you happy or sad at Tawfiq’s death? I find you neither happy nor sad. The time for happiness and sadness has passed too. But do you think that he was happier than me? It’s funny that I should never have thought about this question before. I had imagined that it required no thought. I always imagined him as being happy—merely because I was miserable. Yet I know nothing of his life. I wish I had met him, if only just once during all these years. Oh, how bound up our lives were! More than with a wife or children! Is it possible for us to love our enemies so? Strange! It seems to me now that we were never enemies. If only Tawfiq hadn’t been so hasty, if only he hadn’t put forward the time of his departure—God rest his soul, he was a pleasant fellow. Do you remember how you used to tease him with:
“Tawfiq they called you, a flop you are.
Who named you thus from truth was far”?
Had he been tawfiq—success—or a flop? When the sun sets all colors are reduced to the same level. I feel something pressing down on my chest. I am calling to them but they don’t seem to hear . . .
His wife called to him to come inside so that she could close the balcony door, but he didn’t answer. When she went out to him she found he was dead, his eyes staring out at the setting sun while the sparrows still chirruped noisily among the trees.