In the Flower of Youth

.. This is the story "In the Flower of Youth," which we publish for a budding story-writer from Damascus. The story gives promise of a brilliant future, which we sincerely wish for its author, Mr. Adel Abu Shanab.

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She looks at him, dragging her feet along. Her father had said to her:

— Don't ride; come home on foot!

And she goes home without riding, and nothing can pluck from her mind her belief that she is wretched.. a poor thing, who has taken five liras as the wage of a night's work — and grinding work it is: smoke, drunken men, envious fellow performers.. and one sallow woman, her body the color of lemon peel.

And she turns toward him.. He came to her one night, drunk, and whispered something in her ear; perhaps he had read her resentment in the lines of her face. She said nothing, only smiled an anxious smile — though had she spoken, had she consented.. her colleague's belly would have spat forth quivering entrails, and the sallow, sharp-drawn body would have crashed to the floor, splitting open upon two lips full of black blood!

She never loved this work. She said to her father:

— I do not want to trade on my face.. on my legs!

And he did not listen.. He said:

— The boy needs "milk."

And she came to the stage.. she danced, and did not believe then that the audience would receive her with such enthusiasm; but with the days she came to understand that the customers are savages, who warm not to the dancer alone but to the singer too, if she has a soft skin and two beautiful legs.

And she glances at him over her shoulder. He said to her one night:

— Your colleague is jealous of you, and it is in my power to have her thrown out — to kill her. Shall I do it?

And she never loved him, for she would not have wished her colleague thrown out on her account.

She will fling away the five liras.. toss them into the corner of the room, where the boy lies raving.

— Has the boy eaten?

And the old father answers:

— I was waiting for you. My heart is with you.

And her heart, for its part, is with him; she loves him, and she yielded only to secure for him, and for her small brother thrown upon the bed of fever, food, and warmth, and tenderness.

And she looks once more to where the drunken fair-haired young man is. He walks.. he follows her always. She sees nothing in him to show that he shares with her, from afar, and in silence, the pain hoarded in her breast; and yet she warms to his attentions, warms to that evident elegance which fixes for him, in her mind, a large income, and standing.. and wealth.

And he smiles; she does not smile, but returns her head to its first position..

A fast car sweeps past her side, and a face goes by. Ah, the faces the eye glimpses in a flash — how they stir in the imagination many and varied memories.. How glad she was for the owner of that face, her friend, when she saw her in the long white gown, strutting in it before the women guests, awaiting the coming of the man who would never leave her all her life long.. Will she too marry, one wonders?

And the yellow face of her colleague springs upon her.. a face full of stories. She pictures how she borrowed from her, on the first night, the dancing dress.. She had wished, in truth, to have one like it, though she knew that the five liras she takes as her wage could never make her wish come true..

And she sets her head at a comfortable angle: why, she wonders, did her colleague afterward refuse to lend her the dancing dress? She never meant to do her

any harm; the whole of the matter is that men — so it seems — have a particular humor, by which they may so re-fashion the things they used to love that these suddenly appear dull and faded in their eyes.. One of them — so she understood — suddenly shouted:

— No, we don't want her.. we want the new one!

And he whistled, and the rest followed him, clapping, whistling. And the old one went in and the new one came out — came out in her plain dress.. offering them a dance she knows is sweet in their eyes, since it came upon the ruins of a tedious dance by an old dancer.. with a sallow body that moves slowly. And the light of a car's two headlamps comes, and she is lit up, and the drunken fair one is lit up, and she turns her face away from him; but she hears him say:

— Ah.. my darling!

And she smiles a curt smile, cutting it short with a cry that slips out of her breast:

— Go on.. be off with you.

And he falls back a little.. and she smiles. He is laboring hard to please her, even if it should mean his setting upon her colleague; and she loathes this cheap eagerness, but she does not at all loathe that a certain man should press eagerly after her — a man who wants her to wear for him a long white gown, on a night rich with love and with women guests.. Her father said to her one day:

— He wants you.. do you consent?

And she looked through the keyhole and saw a young man, dark of skin, tall, and she answered:

— The decision is yours, father!

And the dark young man went quickly away after that, and she understood that the two had disagreed over the dowry.. What if they had not disagreed over it?

And a high signboard lights up, adorned with several tubes of pale white "neon".. She contemplates it with a pang. Though she cannot read, she knows that this board bears the name of the most famous dressmaker in Damascus, and she knows that the dancing dress.. and the wedding dress she thinks of having made there might cost,

each of them, more than a hundred liras.. And where is she to find such a sum, when she flings the five liras every night into the corner of the room, where the sick boy is, and the father who nurses him?

And the drunken fair one draws nearer and nearer to her.. and a hot shiver runs through her body, humiliating as her shiver on the night the one with the sallow body came roaring into her face:

— No! I will not give you my dress — never!

And she never took the dress again after that.. for she had understood that what drives her colleague might one day drive her too, should the same crisis pass over her — the crisis that brings one ever closer to the hideous window of want of work; though a lump had lodged in her throat which she could not escape, so long as she still saw, every night, her colleague with the sallow, deadened body.

She thought of doing something. She said:

— I did her no wrong, father.

And her father did not answer, for there had appeared before him another boy, who might be lying stretched upon a bed, and might not.. and an old man, and want standing near; and a tear swam in his eye.. He said:

— I will save up for the dress, my daughter.

And he saved nothing, for he could not.

And courage stirs in the fair-haired man, and he comes up to her.. He says:

— Command me.. any service?

— Nothing!

And she stops, stares at him.. and says:

— You follow me always — what is it you want?

— I want you.

And she smiles a bitter smile. A man off the street can well feed the longing which a young girl always misses.. And she says to him:

— I am not what you think.

And she walks on.. and he follows her, saying:

— I want you.. I hope to marry you!

And she almost stops — the surprise is rich — but she keeps on, and in her silence her eyes speak, and the lines of her face, and her leaping veins; for she would gladly embrace all the people, smile at them, proclaim to them the warm news.

And she hears her father saying to her — she imagines what he will say to her:

— He wants you.. do you consent?

She will answer:

— The decision is yours, father!

And she knows that she will never see the flowering night again after that!

And she looks at the fair young man anew, and the smile dies out upon her lips — a smile in the flower of youth it is.. and she turns her face toward home, walking with the five liras in her hand, the wage of her work, and before her eyes an old father, and a tear, two tears.. and a sick brother; and behind her stands a fair-haired young man, dumbfounded, and a signboard adorned with several tubes of pale white "neon" cranes upward..!