Naguib Mahfouz - The Beginning and the End

“Come with me,” Hassan heard him whisper in his ear. “I want to offer you a glass of cognac.”

He went with him in silence to the dais. He sat on a chair, and Ali Sabri brought him a full glass of cognac; Hassan drank it down and when he asked for another, Ali Sabri brought him one, and said, “You must be very tired.”

“The fight was inevitable,” Hassan murmured with confidence.

The waiter came. “They are calling you the Head* because you knocked him down with your head,” he said, laughing.

Hoping to avoid people’s glances, Hassan said to Ali Sabri, “Let’s wipe out all traces of the fight. Start the second singing performance!”

*In colloquial Arabic, this is a play on words, associating the expression which means “Russian” (a complimentary reference to a strong man) with “russiat,” which means “butting with the head.”

His strength, vitality, and fighting experience had enabled Hassan to regain his composure. It was an hour or more past midnight when the last intoxicated customer staggered out of Ali Sabri’s café. The darb was almost completely dark once the lights outside were turned off. Houses were closing their doors so that the parties inside could begin, usually to last until dawn. Two policemen were passing by, and the street resounded with their heavy footsteps. Hassan was sitting with Ali Sabri at the back of the café discussing the night’s take when a boy who worked as a waiter in the house of Zeinab the Twanger walked up and greeted them.

“Someone wants you,” he whispered in Hassan’s ear.

When Ali Sabri overheard the boy’s whisper, an interested look appeared on his face. “A woman?” he murmured.

“I think so,” Hassan answered indifferently.

“Don’t you prefer transitory love, as I do?”

Hassan gave a meaningful smile. “But this kind of love doesn’t amount to much,” he replied.

“Wait and see.”

Hassan bade his companion goodbye and followed the boy to the house opposite the café. The boy knocked on the door; it opened warily to a narrow slit. The boy slipped inside; Hassan followed. The door closed. Just at the front entrance, a blind man sat in a chair playing a flute, while Mistress Zeinab the Twanger, wearing a black cloak and a veil with a big gold clasp in the center to hide her decaying nose, sat on a raised divan. Casting a scrutinizing look around him, Hassan saw that all the girls were engaged. Leaning toward the drawn curtain at the threshold of the stairs, the boy pulled it aside and entered. Hassan followed. They climbed the stairs together in silence.

“Who is it?” Hassan asked, breaking the silence.

“Lady Sana’a.”

Hassan remembered her. She was a woman of dark complexion, curly hair, fleshy body, coarse lips, and large black eyes. She spent most of the day sitting at the entrance to the house, her crossed legs exposing her thigh all the way up to her white silk panties. They climbed to the second floor and passed through a long corridor leading to a small hall with three doors. The boy went to the middle door and knocked three times. A brassy, resonant voice shouted, “Come in!”

The boy pushed the door open slightly and stepped aside. Hassan entered the room. Before closing the door behind him, he felt the boy’s hand stroking his back. As he turned, the boy laughed.

“Recite the Exordium of the Koran for us,” he said as he departed.

Hassan closed the door. The room was pitch-dark. It occurred to him to grope for the switch to turn on the light, but he soon changed his mind. He stood leaning against the door, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the surrounding darkness. For a while, the silence seemed complete. Then he became aware of someone breathing, and he listened, smiling. He expected something to be said or done, but nothing happened. He walked slowly to his left, toward the sound of breathing, until his knee bumped against something solid. Groping with his hands, he recognized it as the edge of a wooden bed. He stood looking down with glistening eyes until he could distinguish in the darkness an obscure, featureless mass stretched out on the bed. He lowered his thumb little by little until it pressed into the soft flesh of a body that quivered at the touch. A suppressed laugh emerged from the dark.

Afterward, turning on the light, he started to put on his clothes. He took ten piasters from his pocket and put the money on the bed while the woman watched him with laughing eyes. She jumped to the floor and walked naked to the table. She opened a drawer and returned with a fifty-piaster note, which she silently placed on top of his ten piasters.

“Are you bringing me the change?” he asked with a laugh.

“This is your fee,” she said calmly.

Pretending indifference, he casually finished dressing, controlling his features lest they betray his delight. He picked up the money and put it in his pocket.

She cast a deep glance at him. “Would you be my lover?” she asked.

“I have a mistress,” he lied.

Her glistening eyes betrayed her. “In this darb? ”

“No, in another.”

“Is she a foreigner?”

“No, an Arab.”

Silence prevailed for a moment.

“Do you still desire her?” she asked.

He decided to keep silent and replied only with a smile.

“Where do you live?” she inquired, laughing.

“In Shubra.”

“It’s too far from your work. Do you have to sleep there?”

“No.”

“I live nearby, in Gandab alley in Clot Bey. Do you know where it is?”

“From now on I shall know where it is.”

At about sunset Nefisa left the house of one of her customers on Al Walid Street. She looked annoyed. She always felt miserable when she was alone. The fact that her meager earnings from her work were swallowed up by the family’s urgent needs increased her misery, for she was unable to keep any of her earnings. Besides, a serious change had come over her. Now she paid close attention to her appearance. Her orange dress, decorated with violets, revealed her tall, slim body. She applied makeup flamboyantly. She continued walking along Al Walid Street until she reached Shubra Street. At the corner she turned, casting a distant look toward the garage, which infused her heart with vitality and watchfulness. The sight of the garage and its proprietor, Mohammed al-Ful, brought back to her memory a violent conflict that had torn her heart throughout the past weeks. She neither stepped forward nor backward, but came to a complete stop. Fear paralyzed her legs. Although her tortured wavering had been resolved, yet, as she took the last step, she was stricken by fear.

Isn’t it better for me to think the matter over? she thought. No, no. Thinking will only cause me headaches. He’ll block my way as he does every evening. I can’t deny that I smiled at his pleasantries. What will happen next? Now it is too late to retreat. He doesn’t conceal his motives or intentions. Nor am I ignorant of them. I understand everything. I understand why he invites me to ride in his car. He doesn’t try to deceive me as someone else did. What he wants is perfectly clear. Shall I do it? Why is he interested in me? I’m not pretty, and it’s impossible that this makeup will make me so. But in the market of lechery even ugliness itself is a salable commodity, and pleasure seekers, at least some of them, are not fastidious in their demands. This is the truth. Marriage is a different matter. But where seeking pleasure is concerned, people are all the same. Should I allow myself to fall? Why not? I wouldn’t be losing anything I haven’t already lost. But isn’t it better to think this over carefully?