Naguib Mahfouz - The Time and the Place - And Other Stories

The funeral had been lacking generation upon generation of his students. Did nobody remember him anymore?

This had not been so with the friends who had departed long ago. But though they were gone, it seemed he saw every one of them as on the day they had been brought together at Mustafa Kamil’s funeral.

While the old man had never known any serious illness, his poor wife had been afflicted by dengue fever, typhoid, and bouts of influenza, and she had finally died from a heart condition, leaving him as attached to life as he had always been. He went to a window and saw a large garden in the middle of a rectangle of buildings, instead of the large mosque he used to be able to see from the window of his room in Munira’s house. A warm dry breeze blew against him. He enjoyed the restful silence, though it accentuated his loneliness. The day the British had occupied Cairo, he had got hold of a stray horse, but his father, fearing the consequences, had beaten him and had taken the horse by night to the Cairo Canal, where he had let it loose. The city had been shaking with fear and sorrow.

Returning to where he had been sitting, he saw a small cat by the foot of the chair. It was pure white, with a thick coat and a black patch on its forehead. In the look in its gray eyes he saw a willingness to make friends. Zahia had always had a fondness for cats. Liking the look of it, he followed it with his eyes as it moved around the chair leg. He stroked its back, and it rubbed itself against his foot, making him smile. He passed his hand along its back, and it answered the palm of his hand. Its back throbbed, rising and falling. He took this as a sign of affection and once again smiled, revealing teeth with moss-colored roots, while the cat arched with pleasure. He shifted to his left slightly to give it room, but Tutu’s voice, tremulous with the effort of running, blared out as he rushed into the room. “My cat!”

Resigned, the old man said, “Here’s your cat,” and asked him affectionately about its name.

“Nargis,” answered the boy gruffly, as he seized hold of it roughly by the scruff of the neck and ran off outside with it, while the old man pleaded, “Gently…gently….”

Suddenly he jumped. What in heaven’s name had happened? It seemed that something had struck him on the forehead. He frowned with annoyance, and Tutu’s laughter rang out from the doorway as he picked up the small ball that had bounced back to him. The old man put his hand up to feel his glasses and make sure they were all right, then he called Mubarka, who hurried along and carried off the child before he could throw the ball again.

“This dear child is tiresome and cruel. That poor unfortunate cat!”

Five years ago his daughter Samira had lost a child of Tutu’s age, and he had consoled her with tears. “It is I who should have died….” It had seemed to him, as he sat at the funeral, that all eyes were contemplating his old age in amazement, pointing out the glaring contradiction between his own survival and the passing away of his grandson at the age of three. That night he had said to Zahia, “A long life is a curse.” But how gentle she was as she said to him, “We’d all do anything for you — you’re a bringer of good luck and fortune.”

Late in the afternoon, on his return from work, Sabir said to his father, “Seeing that you don’t want to go with us to the club, choose yourself some café in Heliopolis. We have fine cafés quite near the house.”

While choosing a café nearby was perhaps the sensible thing to do, he liked the Mattatia. It had been his favorite place for a very long time. He made his way to the bus stop, walking at his own slow pace but with his body held erect. He used a stick but did not support his weight on it. Many people looked at him in astonishment, an astonishment mingled with admiration.

He took his place in the café under the arcades, as he said to himself half-jokingly, “Why’s the café so empty?” The café was not in fact empty, and very few tables were unoccupied. It was, though, empty of any friends or acquaintances. It was his habit to gaze at the chairs that had been used by dear departed friends of old, and to bring to mind their faces and movements, and the discussions: of the news carried in al-Muqattam ; of the hotly contested games of backgammon; and of politics. God had decreed that he should walk in their funeral processions, one after the other, and should mourn them all. The time came when one sole companion remained, Ali Pasha Mahran. This was the chair where he used to sit. Short, thin, and hunched over his stick, with the brim of his tarboosh touching his bushy white eyebrows, staring out at his friend with a fragile, half-tearful look from behind dark blue-tinted glasses, he would ask, “I wonder which of us will outlive the other?” Then he would guffaw with laughter. At that time his hands had the permanent shaking of old age although he was two years the old man’s junior.

When Ali Pasha Mahran had died at the age of eighty-five, the old man had grieved a long time. Afterward the world had become empty, the café too.

Here was Ataba Square, gyrating as usual before his dulled eyes, but it was a new square. As for Mattatia, there was not a sign of its original self but the site. Where too was its friendly Greek owner? And the waiter with the handlebar mustache? And the solidly built chairs, the sparkling white marble tables, the polished mirrors, and the buffet with its soft drinks and narghiles — where were all these?

On the night of the Shamm al-Nesim holiday in 1930, the old man had retired. He had spent the evening at the Ezbekiyya Theater with a group of friends, in an atmosphere of merriment and music. And he had spent the following day at the Barrages, celebrating the end of work, and Sheikh Ibrahim Zanati, the Arabic language inspector, had delivered a poem composed for the occasion. That night the old man had had so much brandy he had become drunk as he sat listening enraptured to the voice singing, “O friendship of the beautiful past.” When at the end of the night he had gone to sleep, he had dreamed that he was playing in Paradise. Ibrahim Zanati had expressed the wish in his poem that his colleague might enjoy a long life of a hundred years. It seemed that the wish was going to be granted, though the café was empty now, and Sheikh Zanati had passed on while still in his post. The waiter came to take away the tray, but retreated apologetically, reminding the old man of the forgotten and untouched cup of coffee.

When he returned to the house he found it quietly sleeping, its owner not yet back from the club. He found his supper of yogurt on the dining room table. Without assistance he changed out of his clothes with slow laboriousness. Then, sitting down to his supper, he remembered Nargis. If only the kitten would share his supper with him! How lovely it would be to make friends with it and have it for a real companion in this house so preoccupied with itself! Perhaps it was somewhere in the house. He leaned slightly toward the door and called, “Puss…Puss.” Then he went out and called, “Nargis…Puss…Puss.” A meowing came from behind the door of the room next to his own, where Tutu and his nurse slept. After some thought he approached the door and gently opened it, and the cat passed through, its plump tail held erect like a flag.

Pleased, the old man went back to his room with the cat following him, but an angry shout rang out from Tutu. So, he thought, smiling, the little boy had not been soundly asleep. Tutu came running in and pounced on the cat, grabbing it violently by the neck. His grandfather patted him on the head and said pleasantly, “Hold her gently, Tutu.”

But the small boy tightened his grip until it seemed to the old man that Nargis would be throttled. “You go, and I’ll bring her to you in bed,” he pleaded.