Longing — A Story

For long years I have feared this drawer of mine; years have passed since I closed it for the last time; for long years I have avoided opening it and seeing what is inside.

Yesterday — only yesterday — I felt a strong, insistent desire to open it, to rid myself of what is inside it, for time has effaced what is past! I have forgotten at last; I have been healed; I have recovered from you and from the memories.

I no longer strain my ears if someone mentions your name; I no longer keep away from the places we used to frequent together; my heart no longer leaps in my breast at hearing a voice that resembles yours. Everything is over; time has pardoned the past, and what was between us has ended.

And I felt a kind of ease! I felt a kind of delicious emptiness, a kind of slackening after long tension, a kind of dozing off after long wakefulness! I felt freed from the bondage of memories.

With a confident hand I approached the drawer today and opened it, and with an unmoved eye I saw what was inside, and I began turning over its contents until I came to the box... the box of memories. Yet my hand did not tremble, and my breathing did not quicken or grow troubled! I was cured.

I shall clean my drawer of what remains of you, as I cleaned my heart before.

Here are your first letters! How silly of me to have kept them! They are nothing but a few words: "How boring tonight's lecturer is!" Do you remember? We were listening to a lecture on Hegel, and you were sitting near me; you caught me yawning, and then you wrote me that sentence. How stupid I was to have kept it!

And here is a handkerchief of yours! I was weeping as I watched the life of Marie Antoinette on the screen, and my handkerchief got soaked, so you handed me yours! By heaven, how innocent our friendship was!

And this is a button! From you, certainly! Perhaps from your shirt — but how did it stay with me? And why did I keep it? It was from you, and that was enough for me.

And here is the volume "You and I" by Paul Géraldy! You gave it to me, saying it was to make me love reading in French! You rogue! Was that really what you meant?

What possessed me to keep the wrapper of a "Baked" chocolate finger? Did you like them? Where did we eat that finger, that I should have kept this faded wrapper?

And this is a penknife of Jezzine make... few were those who bought them in those days. You left it for me on the day you went off to spend the holiday outside Beirut, with a little note on which you had written: "To make it easier to open my many letters during my absence! Beware of using your fingers, lest the envelope scratch them." How many letters of withered blue I opened with it! Time has done to them what it did to my memory — they have become pale and lifeless.

Do you remember this fountain pen? I received it from you with a bundle of yellow sheets, on the first of which you had written: "You no longer have any excuse for not answering my letters!" Do you know? I never used this pen except to write to you!

And here is a bottle of the perfume "I Shall Return," nearly empty! It was the only perfume I used in those days! And this bottle was a gift from you the day you came back from your holiday! How I felt the longing for you, and how I turned around to look for you, whenever I caught that scent! It was our own air together!

And these are two tickets to a concert at West Hall at the American University! I remember your fury because I had bought them, and how you refused to go, so we sat silent in the anger of a quarrel! Oh, the pride of man and his vanity in you! At last you laughed at yourself for this power of yours, and we rose to go! I kept telling you that I too wished to contribute to our happiness in being together! I do not know what came over me then, but when we reached the University I no longer felt that desire to attend the concert! Do you remember how we laughed as we sat on a wooden bench under an old tree, watching the people hurrying so as not to miss the concert?

And this is a dried flower! I was walking with you in the garden and you picked it for me, and my fingers kept toying with it as you confessed your love to me! And when I returned to my room I put it inside the book "You and I" until it dried! Here are its petals dropping now as the years dropped away that parted me from the memory! What is the matter with my hand, that it trembles? Good Lord! What is coming over me now? Time has effaced what is past! Everything is over!

Is everything really over? Here is a photograph of us, taken by a friend by stealth! We had gone up to the Swiss café on the outskirts of Beirut and gone out before tea into the pine woods! How we played, and how we ran and climbed the hills; then we sat down when weariness had worn us out, and our glances met just as your friend's lens surprised us! Each of us wished to carry the other's weariness!

And this is a note from you, sent to me after we saw the film "Lady Hamilton," on which you had written: "How happy we are to have met at the right time, so that each of us belongs to the other with no one to share!"

And this is a crude sketch of Bab Idriss which you drew to show me the way to the "Régence" café, so that we could meet there! Do you remember how we used to meet? For a long time I remained afraid to enter it. In my walks I kept away from that sidewalk, for I would turn, without knowing it, to go in. Its management changed and it came to be called "the Marquise," and even so I still hesitated to enter! The first time I went in with a girl friend of mine, I was struggling with myself not to turn toward the door! I felt as though you would come toward me as of old, and what was between us would return! But of course you did not come! And little by little my feeling of longing for what had been grew fainter, as I went to the café again and again.

And this is a photograph of us in the box at

the "Colorado." We were keeping New Year's Eve there! And after the lights of the new year went up, you raised your glass toward me, so I raised my glass of lemonade (for I had not yet grown used to spirits), and you said to me: "To the end of our lives!" — just as the photographer took a picture of the three of us, in which we appeared drinking a toast to the end of our life together!... We are still in the springtime of life, and we have parted!

And this is the song "If You Return," which you sent me translated from the French! That was after our first quarrel! You had asked me that day to stop mixing with my brother's friends when they visited us! And I felt a kind of affront to my dignity; I felt a kind of unease at your want of trust in me and in my love for you! I told you that I was free in my conduct! I told you that I would accept no one's rule over my movements, and then I left you in anger! A week passed without our meeting, and then you sent me the words of this translated song, and I came back to you, and I never again joined my brother's friends, despite his anger and their bewilderment at my strange behavior.

Then here is a copy of the words of "I Shall Wait"! I can hear the tune now! We were dancing to it as you told me of your resolve to travel! I knew that I would wait for you all my life.

And this is the right hand of an old glove of mine. We were watching the film "Lydia," and toward the end of the picture you took my hand and began drawing off the glove little by little. The story was about a girl whom four men loved. They met her again when age had overtaken them all: three of them knew her... but the fourth — the one she had loved, and had spent her whole life waiting for — did not know her. And at the end of the film you raised my hand to your lips, whispering:

"I shall not forget! I shall know you, for I shall never part from you!"... And yet the long years have parted us.

And here is a green necktie I bought months before your birthday! How proud I was as I bought it! How careful I was as I chose it! I wanted you to admire it! I paid for it out of what I had saved from my own allowance, and to me it was like a piece of myself, woven of threads of sacrifices in which I denied myself what I wanted in order to offer it to you!... And... your birthday passed with you far away from me, so it stayed with me among my memories! I could not bring myself to give it to my brother, for I saw it as though it were around your neck, and I could not bear the sight of it worn by anyone else!

Why did we quarrel then? What happened? Oh, how stupid we were! How stupid I was — and how stupid I am now, for opening this drawer and raising the past from the dead!

I wonder — do you go back to your memories? Have you a box of them? Have you kept anything of mine?

No! I shall not go back to the past! I shall rid myself of these memories! I shall burn them, every one! Rid myself of them? Years have gone by and I thought I had forgotten — time has effaced what is past... and yet I still... remember... I still feel the longing for what was, in the old days!