Return of the Spirit

by Tawfiq al-Hakim

  * * *

  • • •

  At about two p.m., the group observed that Abduh was acting strangely. He was going from room to room with a towel around his neck, soap on his chin, and a razor in his hand. He was looking for Mabruk, or anyone who would clean his jacket for him and get the spots out of it with benzene.

  Mabruk shouted, “If we can’t find food, how should we be able to find benzene?” Abduh, however, scolded him. Scowling and screaming, he ordered Mabruk to help him get dressed, because the time had come.

  They were all watching him and most of them were neither amused nor pleased by his concern and fastidiousness. Salim sat silently, as though he had a pain in the chest. He began to twist his mustache and stealthily watched Abduh, who, after shaving, was in front of the mirror sprinkling his face with Zanuba’s powder, which she had brought him from her room at his request.

  Salim’s patience gave way, and he looked at Hanafi, who despite his nonchalant appearance was also following Abduh’s actions through his thick glasses. Salim winked at President Hanafi and pointed toward Abduh. With weak sarcasm he said, “Wouldn’t you say he’s going to a rendezvous?”

  Hanafi pretended not to hear and continued watching Abduh as he finished dressing and placed the fez on his head with careful deliberation. He settled its tassel over his right ear. Then he shouted at Mabruk to wrap the hammer and pincers in an old newspaper with the utmost speed. He walked a few steps toward the door.

  At that point the honorary president asked Abduh in a halfway serious jest, although gently, “Don’t you need a boy?”

  Abduh answered with decisive brevity, “No!”

  Hanafi insisted, “To carry your equipment, boss.”

  “No.” Abduh uttered this second “no” in a dry, definitive tone that revealed his displeasure. Hanafi turned to Salim and said, “No, no—God will provide.”

  Abduh went to Dr. Hilmi’s residence, where he found Zanuba waiting for him at the door of the living room, ready to accompany him to the spot where the wire was cut. He had barely set foot inside when he started looking discreetly right and left, not turning toward Zanuba, who was pointing out the place that needed repair. All the doors leading into the hall were closed except for one that was half-open. This was the door leading to the piano salon. But Abduh could not see so much as a shadow or ghost inside it. Finally he said in a voice that filled the whole hallway, “Where’s the ladder? Isn’t there a wooden ladder here?”

  His voice resounded with command and self-confidence. Zanuba hastened toward the half-open door and called, “Fatima! O Fatima!”

  She did not wait for the maid to come and went quickly through the door into the salon, leaving Abduh alone in the hall gazing at the gazelle heads hung on the wall and the stuffed crocodile over the main door. Then Abduh’s heart suddenly fluttered because he heard the sound of a piano giving forth beautiful melodies. He listened, smiling joyfully, almost tipsy, until Fatima, the maid, appeared all at once carrying the wooden ladder. He turned toward her, took it, and propped it against the wall. Then he began to climb its rungs while alternately listening and wondering, Why is she playing the piano now? Did she perhaps do that when she learned he was in the house? Or was it a coincidence? Did she practice at this time every day? He, however, proceeded to discount the two last hypotheses with various arguments. He favored the first possibility: that she had started playing when she learned he was present, that he had come. Yes, all signs pointed to that!

  Zanuba returned to ask Abduh whether he needed anything else and to see if the work was proceeding without a hitch. At this moment the sound of the piano ceased. Fully alert, Abduh soon heard the rustling of a dress behind the half-closed door and a soft voice whispering, “Abla! Abla!”

  Zanuba turned in the direction of the voice and headed toward it. Just before she reached the door, however, the voice asked, in a clearly audible way this time, “Shall we offer Abduh Bey coffee or fruit punch?”

  Zanuba stopped, turned to Abduh, and said, “Miss Saniya asks if you would like coffee or fruit punch.”

  Abduh had heard the first time. There was no need to repeat the question, but she did that to flatter Abduh. As soon as Saniya heard Zanuba mention her name to Abduh, though, she laughed or pretended to laugh on the other side of the door. She murmured with affected modesty, “Is that the way, abla? Shame on you.”

  Before Abduh could reply, Saniya leapt away to conceal herself. In the distance, the fleeting pistachio green color of her dress was visible and filled Abduh’s eyes. He no longer saw anything except the color green passing before his distracted mind.

  Abduh did not awake from his surprise and his dream until he heard Muhsin’s voice. The boy had popped out of the salon door and was asking Zanuba languidly whether this story of the wire had ended yet or not.

  Abduh looked at him in astonishment and scowled. He asked coldly and sternly, “God! You’re here? What are you doing?”

  Muhsin answered tersely and noncommittally, “The lesson.”

  “What lesson?”

  “The piano lesson!”

  A cloud passed through Abduh’s heart with the speed of lightning and spoiled the delicious moment that had just preceded: the music and the voice whispering his name, begging him to drink coffee or fruit juice. He wanted to respond to Muhsin. He had started to frown, but the rustling of the gown returned and the eye-dazzling green color was visible beyond the door. A voice was calling gently, sweetly, and coquettishly, “Muhsin! Where have you gone, leaving the lesson?”

  Muhsin started toward her, saying, “Here I am, Abla Saniya. Coming at once!” He did, however, turn to look at Abduh and told him with a voice laced with chilly, vengeful sarcasm, “Fix the wire well. Be careful not to electrocute yourself.”

  Abduh cast him a fiery glance from the top of the ladder, but Muhsin quickly disappeared from sight. Abduh, who was filled with rage, soon heard a pretty tune being played on the piano by an excellent and accomplished performer. He listened but some of his anger lingered on. He heard that beautiful melody cease suddenly. Its place was taken by the sound of someone who was clearly a bumbling beginner. Only a moment later he sensed the rustling of the dress and spotted its fleeting green color passing the half-closed door. Abduh’s eyes froze in the direction of that door. Suddenly, he did not know if his hand had touched a live wire, for he felt his heart throb with the speed of lightning in one powerful pulsation. His eyes had encountered two other eyes—black eyes more beautiful than any he had ever seen. They had a magical impact. Then the rustling dress flashed past again. The green color crossed before his earnest eyes and vanished.

  When Abduh had calmed himself, he started asking himself again happily and with the intoxication of conquest, why had she shown herself to him so frequently? Was she doing that deliberately?

  His eyes and face came alive, and his heart filled to bursting with vitality in an unprecedented fashion. He grasped the wooden ladder in his hands and moved it to another place on the wall. He sprang up it vigorously and enthusiastically, as though his heart was climbing the rungs of love.

  CHAPTER 13

  Abduh returned home shortly before sunset after prolonging the work next door as long as possible. He was filled with a gentleness, lightness of spirit, and happiness the folks had never seen in him before. He began to move from room to room, jesting gently with Hanafi Effendi, trying to get him to put aside for a moment the copybooks, which he was busy correcting, and to talk. He did not, however, get a particularly favorable reception from him.

  Then he sought out the servant Mabruk, wanting to kid around with him and remind him of the new glasses he had purchased with their food money. Even Salim with his forced smile, who pretended to be engrossed in reading a newspaper, wasn’t overlooked by Abduh, who grabbed the paper away from him suddenly, as though wanting to start a conversation. Salim, though, gave him a cold look, picked the pape
r up off the floor, and began reading it again. He said, as though to himself, “What’s happened? What’s the reason for this nonsense?”

  Abduh heard him and asked jokingly but grumpily, “Yes, Mr. Salim?”

  “Nothing, it just seems to me you’re being uncommonly jolly, for no reason.”

  “Because you’re here, because you haven’t gone down to the coffee shop the way you usually do.”

  Salim did not respond. He started reading, moving his lips like a person caught up in his reading to the exclusion of everything else. So Abduh left him, vexed, and turned to Hanafi. He found he had gone back to correcting the notebooks. The fever of work seemed to have rendered him oblivious to his surroundings. Abduh felt a distressing chill encompass him. He was left with no one but Mabruk. He spoke a couple of words to him and then got fed up. He hesitated, not knowing what to do.

  His entire body felt so unusually alive that he wanted to speak, to move, and to be energetic, but today when he searched for life all he found was stillness. If Abduh naturally hated being still one carat, today he hated it twenty-four. He couldn’t imagine listening quietly to his soul, giving it free rein over his imagination, or retreating into solitude like Muhsin in similar circumstances. For this reason Abduh walked around the house not knowing what to do. He wished he could find someone who would listen to him and shoot the breeze.

  Finally he headed for the communal sleeping room. Finding it empty, he quickly turned around to leave. It felt oppressive to him and wrapped his hot, eager, raging heart with a cloak of stillness and solitude. In his imagination he pictured these beds, lined up one beside the other, in the bedroom. Visualizing that for the first time, he felt odd about it.

  He sensed exactly what Muhsin had when he too returned from the neighbors’ house the first time. He felt a revulsion against five people living in one room. Muhsin had sensed that and had sought seclusion and solitude in order to give free rein to his imagination. Abduh, however, felt an aversion to it because he grasped suddenly that this strong bond between five people sharing a room was bogus. Here he was experiencing solitude and boredom, unable to find anyone to speak to, anyone who would understand his language.

  Abduh’s distress increased. A nervous person like him could not bear to be patient very long. Thus the peaceful, gentle, happy look with which he had returned quickly deserted him and his typical frowning scowl returned to his face. The slightest provocation would cause nervous Abduh to explode in a screaming rage, as was his wont.

  * * *

  • • •

  Abduh spent several anxious days not knowing what to do to stay in touch with the neighbors. He was afraid that what he had achieved so far was the most he could hope for. Despite his virility and vitality Abduh lacked the daring and brashness to undertake some bold, proactive deed without regard for what people would say.

  Therefore the most he could do was ask Zanuba—repeating the question every day—whether the electric wires were functioning properly at the neighbors’ house or whether there was any problem that needed repair. When Zanuba replied that everything was fine, Abduh would insist with nervous harshness, “How do you know? Have you asked them?”

  His mates noted how insistent he was, and Muhsin remarked in a cold, dry tone, “The electricity is working great!”

  But Salim, who was infuriated, would not let the opportunity pass without a scornful word or two. “Mister, the electricity is working fantastically well. Maybe you should sabotage it? Mister, find yourself some other employment besides this.”

  Abduh finally could not take any more and screamed in his face, “And you, what’s it to you, stupid?”

  Calmly but incredulously, Salim asked, “Am I stupid?”

  “Sixty times over.”

  “Group, are you witnesses?”

  “What right do you have to pry into my affairs?”

  “God forgive you! I’m to blame!” So he fell silent.

  Muhsin began scrutinizing both of them. Zanuba wasn’t there, for she had gone up on the roof to attend to the laundry with Mabruk’s help. The only other person present was Hanafi, but the honorary president was in bed and did not care to interject a word to heal the rift, by God, although as he laughed under the covers he asked, “What’s this charming conversation? Why are you angry, Mr. Abduh? If the electricity won’t do the trick, look for some other task. Don’t you know, for example, how to repair a Primus stove, lamps, or a window blind?”

  Abduh turned toward him and said scornfully, “Yes? You too, blanket-face? Sleep—sleeping’s what suits you best. Won’t you let me speak?”

  Pulling the covers over himself, Hanafi Effendi answered immediately, “I sleep? Do I sleep a lot? At school, when I enter the classroom, the class is rowdy. At home, when I get in bed a ruckus breaks out. I’m beaten and so is my ass.”

  Then he straightened the covers, closed his eyes, and turned his back on all of them, his face to the wall. He began to snore audibly as he gradually fell asleep. It wasn’t long before his braying became even noisier. Muhsin turned to Salim as though affectionately taking him into his confidence and, pointing to the sleeping Hanafi, said almost in a whisper, after he had given Abduh, who was moving away, a look of aversion and loathing, “This Uncle Hanafi! What a shame! All he’s got is sleep.”

  Salim answered with scorn and pity, “Do I know what he teaches? Someone like this—his pupils must run circles around him!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Muhsin felt uneasy about his relations with the neighboring household despite his frequent visits there, because he still did not understand Saniya’s soul. She seemed to have some mysterious secret, and he had sensed something different about her and Abduh the day Abduh went to fix the electricity.

  Muhsin had noticed something about Saniya’s behavior that hadn’t pleased him, although Saniya’s treatment of him had not changed to corroborate his strange feeling. So this cloud soon left his heart, although he remained concerned and uncomfortable about Abduh. Base feelings toward Abduh had been awakened in him, making him shudder. Saniya’s simple acts that day had granted him a distressing revelation that women value men above all else for having a powerful body. Men should be brawny, tall, and broad, and have a deep voice. Women are motivated by unconscious desires, possibly motivated by some sexual instinct. Perhaps compared to Abduh he seemed a child or boy who would not inspire that emotion in a woman. Muhsin began to remember Abduh’s voice as it rang out in the neighbors’ hall and his powerful forearms propping the wooden ladder forcefully against the wall.

  This memory tormented him, and he didn’t know nor could he express the reason for this vague feeling that made him smart and prompted him to hate Abduh.

  Abduh’s attitude toward him, after he returned from the neighbors’ house, contributed to this feeling. Instead of quarreling with Muhsin or getting angry and enraged at him as he had on previous occasions, now Abduh paid no attention to Muhsin or his existence. Indeed, the arrogance of all his gestures suggested that he was a person who felt he had scored a total victory. Muhsin played no part in his reckonings. Even if there had been someone in his thoughts he considered a potential rival, it wasn’t little Muhsin. It was rather someone worthy to compete with him in this field—a man like Salim.

  Little Muhsin sensed all this with his perceptive, discerning heart. He was pervaded by self-doubt; the idea that he was too young to be considered an adversary or rival pained and troubled him.

  CHAPTER 14

  No one knows whether it was a jest of fate or of some human being, but one day Zanuba brought back the news that the neighbors’ piano was on the blink and that she had promised Saniya she would ask Salim about a shop that repaired pianos because Salim owned a musical instrument resembling it, namely his accordion.

  Salim listened to her with intense interest, and she had barely finished speaking when he rose. Zanuba assured
him straightaway that there was no need to wear himself out. All he had to do was write the name of a repair shop he trusted—along with its address—on a slip of paper; Saniya would take care of the rest.

  But Salim was not satisfied with this; he was not about to let this opportunity escape him. If Abduh, that rash and thoughtless youngster—born yesterday, Salim thought—had gone to fix the wiring in the neighbors’ house, shouldn’t he, a versatile and experienced specialist, visit the loved ones’ house on some pretext?

  Salim, therefore, wasn’t slow to display his knowledge of the piano and of musical instruments in general. He mentioned the names of various shops. He concluded his case by saying these shops charged exorbitant rates. One shouldn’t have recourse to them except in cases of urgent and dire necessity. Who could say—perhaps what was wrong with the neighbors’ piano was something quite simple that an expert like Salim could diagnose. He could advise what it needed without their having to resort to one of those swindling shops. “Right, then! The piano must be examined. I need to examine it first thing in any case. So I can investigate what it . . .”

  The servant Mabruk was listening. Smiling, he said, “Yes. So Mr. Salim can investigate.” He winked at Muhsin, but Muhsin didn’t smile back. He was pale-faced, and finally he asked, “Who said the piano’s on the blink?”

  Zanuba replied, “Saniya told me when you weren’t there.”

  His face darkened a little, and he said, “I just played it yesterday! She must have said it needs cleaning . . . not that it’s on the blink.”

  Salim intervened somewhat angrily. “No, sir. She said ‘on the blink.’ Have some respect.”

  “Impossible! Just yesterday I . . .” Muhsin was speaking with despair; his face was flushed.

  The argument might have gone on longer if Hanafi Effendi had not come in from the street carrying a bundle of copybooks, which he placed on the table. “What’s up?” he asked.