A Rendezvous!

Today she has a rendezvous; that is why she seems to take no notice of what is around her.

She looks at her room, and she feels like an intruder in it.. for nothing in this room belongs to her any longer: not the bed that has held her body for so many years, not the chair on which she so often sat facing the window, watching the road, not the wardrobe whose lock would yield to no one but her — even her beloved bookcase no longer stirs in her that old delight, and she will not trouble today to set it in order, since after today it will no longer be hers; and tomorrow, when it becomes another's, what will it matter to her?

Tomorrow?.. Where will she be tomorrow, she wonders?

Is what they tell of eternal life true? Is it a fact that there is a paradise and a fire, and that those who are tormented in this earthly life live in the hereafter in lasting bliss?

If that were true, how happy she would be — then tomorrow she would be in bliss.

She pictures the morrow with a shiver in her heart, fear mingled with joy: fear of the unknown, and joy at what is promised.

Had her yesterday been happy, she would not have gone seeking her happiness in the unknown; but it was a black yesterday, and she hates to picture it, for its memory spoils for her even the pleasure of thinking of tomorrow.

But her mind refuses to obey her in what she wishes, and carries her back to yesterday.. and the events file past before her imagination.

And she remembers..

She remembers, first of all, losing her mother when she was five. Though at the time she was not of an age to grasp the enormity of the calamity, or to weep for the departed with burning grief, she felt even then a void in her life.. a void left by a heart that had so long filled her loneliness with love. After her mother's death her life ran on at a single pace, exactly as it had before her passing.. lacking nothing but a radiant smile that used to light the sky of that life.

Then the days followed one upon another.. and the true anguish that pained her came when she looked for the first time, with full awareness, into her mirror and understood her reality; the bitterness of that reality appalled her, and from that day her struggle with time began.

She began to see, through the harsh glances, what reminded her always of her sickly body and her plain, ugly face.

God of heaven! How she suffered from those glances in the first years of her youth. But with the passing of time she came to ignore them and to try to forget them; indeed, with habit they no longer pained her as much as at first, for she had surrendered to a kind of despair in which she found rest for her sorrowful soul. She hung upon her lips a half-smile, with which she hid the gloom of her spirit and made those around her believe that she was happy with her life — for her pride would never allow her to accept pity from any human being — any human being whatsoever.

But though she could make people believe in her happiness, she could not deceive herself, or quiet her soul, when there came upon her crimson nights in which she knew no meaning of sleep.. when she would look around her and see her friends delighting in their beauty and youth, while she was the prisoner of that sickly body and that ugly face; and then she would think long.. think of the emptiness that surrounded her life.. an emptiness no man would ever fill; and her heart would fill with grief for herself, and she would weep bitterly, hoping with her tears to wash away the bitterness of her lot.

Here she is, remembering all this now — remembering all the pain and torment that surrounded her past life; then she comes back to herself and remembers tomorrow, and tries to forget yesterday; but her memory refuses to forget, and takes her back to where her thoughts had halted. And she asks herself:

Were these, then, the motives that made her turn against life? Was it the emptiness in her life that made her long for death?

Perhaps it was; she has hated her life for a long time now.. yet she never used to think of giving it up.

Then what happened in her life to make her think of leaving this life?

And she remembers..

She remembers her first meeting with him, and how he kindled in her heart a new hope in life, and gave her a taste of what it means for the heart and soul to be filled with love and tenderness.

He showed her the utmost attention from the first moment she sat talking with him, and made her feel that she was the only one, in all her uncle's house, with whom he cared to converse.

That night she did not sleep, but lay wakeful, thinking of him.

Did he love her, she wondered?.. Had she really found someone who cared for her in this world? No — she was deluding herself; it was impossible that it should be love. Perhaps he had meant only to be courteous, out of the duty of politeness; for how could a handsome young man like this, clever like this, love her — she whom even the ugly men she had seen had not loved, nor the dull ones? And yet — had he not taken a liking to her from the moment he first spoke with her, would he have spent all his time with her and for her, when politeness required him to talk with others?

Had he perhaps understood her nature, and pitied her for her loneliness, and resolved to make her feel happiness if only once? If that was his intention, then a curse upon him — an accursed devil bent on ensnaring her. A curse upon him if he meant to give her the taste of hope and then hide it away from her life; a curse upon him if he pitied her — for she hates pity.

She stayed awake that night, restless; but this time she did not weep — she was thinking; she was asking herself questions she could not answer,

so she left their answer to time.

And time did not answer her quickly; it prolonged its silence, though it kept hinting at the answer. Their meetings in her uncle's house multiplied; she came to talk with him more freely than before, and all the reserve for which she had been known in her conversation with young men fell away. Where before she could not enter upon delicate subjects such as love and marriage and the like, she came to broach them with him as easily as any other topic.

She remembers a day when he said to her, in the course of a conversation on the effect of beauty upon love — speaking as though to himself: "I no longer quite believe in beauty; I mean the beauty of face and body. That beauty no longer draws me as it did in years past, when I was eighteen and nineteen. In these last two years I have come to seek my pleasure in beauty; but my true love I will not squander on those empty idols I tried in my early youth. If I seek true love, I shall seek it only in an untouched heart and a soul full of tenderness. Take yourself, for example: what I want in my love is a girl of complete personality and ripened feeling, full of the spirit of life — like you."

At the beginning of his talk she had been watching him eagerly, to see where his words would lead; when he reached the end, she lowered her gaze, and her heart almost leapt from between her ribs.

Time had answered her: he loved her. And she divined the truth of her own feeling toward him: she loved him.

From that day she began to be careful of appearing with him too often, for she feared someone might notice; so she took to meeting him in secret, because she wanted no one to know of her love. She feared the mockery of her friends. They would say of him: he is blind. Of course — what could he be but blind, that handsome young man for whom every girl wished, if he loved her?

She remembers the days she spent with him, and the happiness that flooded her when she was with him, and she trembles with delight, and wishes those days had lasted until she could drink her fill of them.. Ah, if only those days had lasted..

And yet even now she feels a surpassing happiness in their memory, and there is no sorrow in her heart..

She feels as though she were living those days again.. and she remembers now the loveliest and sweetest of them.. she remembers last week, when he came to her full of joy and said, "I have a word for you." At that she began to feel a violent beating in her heart, and her eyes lit with a strange light; and when he asked whether she would permit him to speak, she answered in a trembling voice, "Speak." He said: "Samia, I intend to ask your father for your hand, and I do not think you will object." Her heart almost leapt for joy. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She would soon be his; she would spend her life with him without reserve or shyness; she would not care what her friends thought — they would not say she had been deceived, as they would have said had they known of her love for him, for she would be able to make them understand that had he not loved her, he would not have married her.

Tomorrow, when he asked her father for her hand, she would be able to declare her feeling as she pleased. He had promised her that he would speak to her father the next day on this matter, and her father would not refuse his request, for he was well-to-do and would take up work in his father's office the moment he obtained his law degree.

Tomorrow he would ask her father, and tomorrow she would become

his before all the world. And she flew with joy, awaiting the morrow.

But he did not come, and he did not ask for her hand; he did not keep his promise — he who had never been known to break a promise. What was the news? What did his absence mean?

For four days she remained like a wounded bird that can neither flee nor cry out its pain. Why had he not come? Why had he not kept his promise?

Then the answer came to her — an answer she had expected anything but. He had died in a collision.

When her cousin told her the news, he spoke in a sorrowful tone, but not from the depths. He said to her: "Poor Sami — he collided, driving his car, with a big truck, and died on the spot.. I loved him with all my heart."

And he went on chattering and mourning him, but she no longer took anything in. Her cousin was a liar; he was not grieved for him as he claimed. Why did he pretend to be grieved! She felt as if she wanted to kill her cousin — as though it were he who had killed him.

She felt an overwhelming urge to weep, but she could not weep; she only looked at her cousin with a look of hatred and reproach, and did not utter a single word. The shock was past bearing; she could no longer hold herself together, so she went to her room and shut the door behind her.

Ah! No.. this had not happened.. it was impossible that he should die after he had brought her to life! And then, what was her life after him — what was she without him? Her life had been in his life; once he died, her life turned to dust.

She felt a faintness, and lost consciousness of herself; and here memory carries nothing more, for all that happened passed swiftly. She spoke to no one after that.. and saw no one. From the moment she heard the news she stayed in her room and never left it.

And today.. here she is, still alive, not yet gone after him — how faithless she is! Why remain alive? What is life to her after him? Every hope in her heart has died, and nothing in this world remains for her to need.

She remembers now the day her mother died! But she did not grieve for her mother that day, because she did not then feel the void her mother had filled with her presence.

Now she understands everything, and knows exactly what her life after him will be:.. a vast emptiness that nothing can fill; a life all of one piece, dreary, with nothing in it to refresh the heart or quench the thirst.

So let her depart from it — leave it without return, and seek her happiness in the unknown.

She tasted happiness for a brief span that will never return; and having once tasted it, she will never again find life palatable without it; she cannot endure it.

Let her go to the one who gave her the taste of happiness and brought her heart to life after it had died.

Let her go to him in his world, and leave this world behind.

She was deprived all her life before him, and they say that the deprived of this world have bliss in the next.

Will that bliss, then, be her lot?

Today she has a rendezvous; that is why her heart fills with gladness, and her soul surges with hope.