Naguib Mahfouz - The Beginning and the End

“This is too much!” she exclaimed.

In a mixture of daring and tenderness, he replied, “Always angry! I wonder at my bad luck, always finding you angry.”

She looked annoyed. “Let me pass, please,” she said.

He stretched out his arms as if to block her way altogether. “This is an opportunity I couldn’t dream of,” he said. “So I can’t allow it to slip from my hands. After your deliberate disappearance which caused me the most painful torture, I have the right to keep you for a while. Why do you disappear? Let me ask you: How did you like my letter?”

She frowned. “You mention that paper!” she said sharply. “How brazen of you! I don’t approve of it.”

His look at her wavered between hope and fear, and he thought: Should I believe this anger? My heart tells me that it is exaggerated. Perhaps it is a symptom of shyness. Surely it is. If she had really wanted to force her way, I couldn’t have stopped her. I don’t want to believe it. But why did she insist on disappearing?

“My brazenness is the result of exhausted patience!” he said to her beseechingly.

She shook her head with annoyance. “Patience,” she muttered. “Do not play with such words, and let me go, please!”

“I have told you nothing but the truth,” he said with warmth and sincerity, “and it was my true feeling alone which urged me to write that short letter. Every word in it is true. So I am terribly offended to find that you recoil so angrily at my feelings.”

Panting, he swallowed hard, then corrected himself. “Yes,” he said with a sob. “I love you.”

She turned her head away, still frowning, her brows closely knit and her lips tight. But when she kept silent for a while, a fresh gleam of hope revived in him. Then she said in a voice that was softer than before, “Let me go. Aren’t you afraid someone may come up to the roof and find us?”

Oh God! Is she annoyed only that someone may come up to the roof?! He was filled with ecstasy; his shining brown eyes radiated with delight.

“Let me express my feelings to you,” he exclaimed. “I love you. I love you more than life itself. Not only that. The only good in life is that I love you. This is what I wrote, what I am saying, and what I will repeat. Believe me, and don’t keep silent, because I can’t bear it.”

He could read seriousness and solemnity on her pure face as she turned it to him. But he thought he could perceive in her some sort of tender feeling which, perhaps, she found it hard to suppress.

Then he heard her say in a whispering voice, “That is enough! Now, allow me to go!”

She was adamant in wearing that mask. How easily she yields to shyness. He heaved an audible sigh. “I do not want to go back to my tortures without a gleam of hope,” he said quietly. “I have opened up the secrets of my heart to you. And I do not hope to get from you more than one word to infuse life into my dead soul.”

But she seemed unable to utter that word. In her extreme confusion she said only, “Oh, God! How can I leave this place?”

He was touched. But hope rendered him more stubborn and persistent. “Don’t be so scared,” he said warmly. “I love you. Does this confession only arouse annoyance in you? I won’t go back to desperate torture. Never. Never.”

“So what?”

Observing her flushed face in the quiet and the waning light of the dusk, he was swept by an uncontrollable upsurge of loving emotion, and he felt that to perish was less painful than to retreat. He implored her from the depths of his soul.

“Say just one word! If you can’t, only give a nod. Again, if you can’t even do that, then your silence — if I can perceive contentment in it — is enough for me.”

Her lips moved without uttering a word; then they closed. Her face flushed more deeply, and she turned away from him. His desire mounting, his heart leapt ecstatically inside his breast. “Is that the silence I want? I love you. I give you my word that I shall be yours unto death.”

She inclined her face more without breaking her beloved silence. A sweeping ecstasy overcame his body until his eyes were intoxicated. Unconsciously, desire made him move toward her, but she shrank away as if she were awakened from a profound dream by a sudden shake; she almost leapt away from him. Then she fled. He remained transfixed, looking with mad love at her back until she disappeared behind the door. He sighed heartily. Looking far away into the dusk at the embroidered phantoms of the horizon, he felt that his soul was dissolving into the universe and singing in its splendor. Then he moved slowly, drunk and glowing, until he almost reached the door. As he passed the other chicken house, a magnetic power seemed to attract him to it. Looking to his left, he saw his brother Hussein standing behind the wall of the chicken house.

“Hussein,” he said with surprise.

Hassanein observed a change in the color of Hussein’s face, who, though livid with anger, was exerting his utmost effort to control himself and keep his anger in check. Hassanein wondered why his brother had come up to the roof. Probably Hussein had followed him. On his way to give his lesson, he may have seen Hassanein warily climbing up the stairs to the roof and become suspicious. This was the only rational explanation. However, it was out of character for Hussein to hide himself, to eavesdrop and spy. It did not occur to Hassanein to ask his brother why he had done it. On the contrary, he was overcome by shyness and confusion. Despite his anger, Hussein’s shyness and confusion were no less. Perhaps Hussein sought to conceal his own feelings by exaggerated anger.

“I have seen certain things that offend me very much,” he said. “How dare you chase the girl in this rude manner? Your behavior is disgraceful and is not becoming of a neighbor, who respects the obligations of neighborliness!”

Hassanein found relief in his brother’s cruel tone, as it saved him from shyness and confusion. He answered angrily, “I have not committed anything shameful. Perhaps you heard what I said.”

Ignoring this last remark, Hussein said, more angrily than before, “You think there is nothing shameful in blocking the girl’s way in that disgraceful manner?”

“I do not think she considers it so.”

“She will tell her father,” Hussein said.

“She won’t.”

Overcome by his anger, Hussein retorted sharply, “I was very much afraid you would attack her. Had you done so, I would have punished you cruelly.”

Hassanein was surprised at this belated threat. Anger was about to make him lose his head. Cruel words jumped to the tip of his tongue. But, miraculously, he managed to keep them under control. He fell into deep silence until the intensity of anger diminished.

“You shouldn’t be afraid that I would do anything of that sort,” he said.

Hussein thought a little. Then he retracted. “Anyhow, I am delighted to hear you say so. And if I have the right to give you counsel, I advise you always to maintain honor.”

Coldly, Hassanein replied, “I don’t need such advice.”

He left his place. Hussein followed him. They went down together in silence. Hussein did not go to Farid Effendi’s flat. Hassanein noticed that, but he did not comment.

“What made you come back so quickly?” Samira asked Hussein.

“Salem has not studied his last lesson, and I shall see him tomorrow,” Hussein answered.

They went to their room. Hussein sat on his chair at the desk. Hassanein went on to the window, opened it, and sat on the edge of the bed. He thought: The worst end for the best beginning. How foolish of him! How did he allow himself to spy on me. He spoiled the poetry of this happy situation. No. Nothing could ever spoil it. Everything will disappear; but she will remain shining, happy, and fascinating. Never shall I forget the moment of her silence, which said far more than words. She said everything without uttering a word.