Toward the Alley of My Path! (A Story)

The mannequin "Randa" had grown used to the company of the rising young artist "Ragheb" on her way home from the salon where she worked on the shore of the Mediterranean to the humble room she shared with her crippled mother in the quarter that remains of old Beirut — the Emir Munzir road. And in this nightly stroll, repeated through the evenings of spring and summer these four or five months past, the artist's feelings had moved from a mutual answering of hearts to a blazing infatuation. He had first come upon her on her late returns, taking the same road she took. Then he began to frequent the salon, keeping to a solitary table, tucked away in a corner, watching her as she appeared now and again, swaying with her supple figure among the tables.

He would observe her every night from behind a glass of drink, sipping at it the whole evening through, a pen in his hand that he trailed along however it fell as Randa swayed. Naturally, all his pictures came out on a single model: his beloved, the beautiful "mannequin," with her thick chestnut hair, her languid eyes and velvet lashes fluttering haughtily above an aquiline nose, a full mouth, and a delicate chin; then a neck, a turn of the head, and a waist bound that day with a striped sash from which flowed a loose golden robe, recalling what the women once wore in this beautiful corner of the old East.

But events did not run as Ragheb was accustomed, and matters did not grant him the walking of Randa home to her humble room as on every other night. A young man of wealth and ease, whose admiration for her Ragheb had scented for some time, had put himself in her way; yet no open sign of it had appeared until the surprise he sprang upon him this night, as she came sailing in her sheer yellow sabiri among the tables; and when she reached his table he leapt from his chair and greeted her by kissing her hand, and pressed her sweetly to share his table, if only for a little. The pen stopped its running, and the blood rose to the artist's cheek; but he kept his calm and his concealment, watching from his far corner Randa's confusion — all coquetry and charm — after her new cavalier had drawn back the chair for her and seated her at his side.

Before Ragheb knew it, a violent dizziness had come over him, and a flood of cold sweat. Despite his straying mind he managed to hold to his coolness — the passivity of a man with no power to defend his sweeping love, which began to give ground to the beats of the dance music and the resolve of the wanton youth, his arm about Randa's waist, feeding her green eyes with gazing and enticement.

An insistent question pressed itself on him: "Why did I not declare my love to Randa before?" He felt at it a violent wrath against his own short reach, which nearly made him burst in this crisis. For one thing forced the truth of his case upon him: that he was poor and destitute like Randa, and that neither of them, in the creed of money, was fit for the other; and so he had preferred sanctifying to profaning until fortune should smile upon him.

It had never occurred to him that his girl was of the clay of women: enamored of admiration, avid for flattery. Instead, a blind idea had taken hold of him, born of pride, by which — and by it alone — he would physic his sorry position;

whether it meant deliverance from his cowardice, or revolt and the defense of his dignity. Was not Randa his friend, if not his beloved or his betrothed? And in his heart of hearts — nay, in the ambush of his conscience — she was his wife and his lawful spouse.

After a time he thought an age, he came to himself at the young man's withdrawal from the salon, and was somewhat eased. But where was Randa? He slipped out to the turning beyond the salon, and there she was, trying to slip away from him at the last minute by inventing excuses; and he cried out in a voice that split the veil of the fearful gloom like a whip:

— Randa! I must walk you home tonight!

She gave him a quick glance, murmuring an apology through it and pleading a hurried word of thanks. Her tact came between the two young men; then she directed her steps to his side while the roar of the rich young man's motorcar died away into the darkness.

A stubborn silence took hold of her. How weariness had taken its toll of Randa! So strongly did she feel it today, and by force, as though her limbs had given way, her soul had shrunk in upon itself, and she had been made to loathe, in her own eyes, herself, and those about her, and her work, and life altogether. And when they entered the alley leading to her room he made her the target of a volley of biting sarcasm — how small he was, a simple artist, before the queen of the salons and the goddess of fashion — and he went on...

— And of course, how will you be content with little from a young man, now that you have tasted the costliness of dress and the elegance of fine attire.

A rattle caught in her throat and stopped up the passages of speech. Was her silence, then, the sign that she returned him love for love? Truly, it was a question beyond doubting: how was she to produce the proofs — of which he himself had never been unaware — so as to blunt his sharpness and quiet the storm of his anger?

Her faltering steps drew her beneath the light streaming from the little window of the shop of old Masoud — her guardian angel — from which he would look out each night to watch for Randa's return with her artist cavalier, the two of them gurgling with laughter. No wonder, then, that the gloom of the two hesitant lovers caught the shopkeeper's eye. He rose nimbly from his floor cushion and whispered from the window:

— Randa! Come up, and bring Ragheb.

And had they not answered her angel's invitation, he would have come down to the street and brought her in himself. In his little shop the old man set about diverting her, curbing his own curiosity, with the telling of tales and anecdotes. Seated on the floor rug they sipped his bitter Arab coffee among the shelves, where were ranged flasks of unguents and perfumes, and kohl stones, and gum; here was set a piece of old tincar such as the goldsmiths once used in the casting of gold, and there a bellows for kindling the fire of old Masoud's narghile. And what deepened the charm of this Oriental setting was the scent of cyclamen incense

rising from a small censer hung down among the brass chandeliers, whose light was drunk up by the Persian hangings draped about the painted ceiling.

Masoud took up a backgammon set from beside him and called on Ragheb to play with him, heedless of his protest that he knew nothing of the game. As for Randa, she amused herself with discovering the identity of certain silken stuffs and Damascene garments heaped one upon another in a corner. And there she came upon a complete set of Lebanese costume going back to the eighteenth century. An insistent desire seized her to try on this dress; she darted behind one of the curtains and slipped her legs into trousers tied above the ankle, put on over them a flowing, richly bordered chemise whose edges were brushed by silken braids ending in coins, their upper ends fastened about her head; then she crowned it with a wine-colored tarboush and a sheer veil of silken green that she let fall over the tarboush and the plaits. And she drew back the curtain.

Masoud turned to the heroine of his shop, astounded, and made his way to a jewel box inlaid with stones; from it he brought out a pair of emerald earrings and set to fastening them in the lobes of her ears, and slipped upon her wrist great bracelets, and anklets that rang to the fall of a pointed-toed babouche.

As for Ragheb, his abstraction turned into a whetted mind — nay, into a creative power which the inspiration of this apparition raced along! He drew out his pen on the instant to set down the likeness of her with whose love he was madly smitten, as she stood riveted before him as though hewn from a statue.

And when the time came for the dawn to send the heralds of its rays from behind the mountains, their violet mingling with the lapis blue of the sea, the artist had finished his picture of Randa in the beautiful dress of Lebanon. He looked up for one last scrutiny into her eyes, and their waters seemed to run limpid and trembling; and he rose to her and caught her in his arms, while the murmuring of the angel asleep on his cushion accompanied them like a warbling melody.

And on the following evening, they came in to old Masoud to bring him the glad news of their marriage — following the triumph of the painting of the old Lebanese costume, and Ragheb's engagement as art director for more than one newspaper and magazine.