Three Once More.. A Story

They were three — two boys and a girl — in the days when her husband would gather her and them into his arms, and she would feel that he was more impregnable than the stones of the house, and stronger than the days...

— Did he ask to see me?

She questioned her son-in-law in a weak, defeated voice, and he answered, taking her roughened hand between his own: "Yes. He wants no food or drink; he wants only you."..

— "Then tomorrow morning we shall go together"...

Her daughter kissed her and said, fighting down her tears: "Do you want anything — a cup of tea, perhaps?" She whispered absently: "No, my darling. I want to sit up a little by the window."..

Why could she find no tears to drown some part of the pain? Why could she not sob and wail, so that something of the masses of despair crouching on her heart might lift? She had wept much, more than people weep, until her eyes went dry and froze — those eyes that had seen so many of life's wonders and so little of the favor of kindly fortune... Yes, she would go to him in the morning to touch his face and see this stranger who cried out her name, calling... A stranger, because she had not seen him for years; crying her name, because he was her son.. And she would go to him, because one against whom the door of freedom has been bolted, who stands behind bars a criminal and a thief, cannot go to anyone... whoever loves him goes to him.. And she was going to see his face, and to learn whether she still loved him or not... How many times over had she gone back, remembering... her hopes in the days when they were three... two boys and a girl — when her husband shared life's due with her, strong and young; when he would gather her and them into his arms and she would feel him more impregnable than the stones of the house in his protection, steadier than the days in his constancy.. She remembered a night when she stood with him, carrying her baby girl "Basma," by the beds of the two boys, and said as one dreaming: What fortune, what future awaits them, I wonder? What kind of men will they be? Her husband laughed and took the little girl from her hands, saying:

"And this rose? Will she fill the world with fragrance and beauty? And who is the lucky man who will be blessed with the possessing of her?"

How feeble her sight had been, stretching her gaze into the future and seeing amid the dreams what is not to be seen! Had she found a truth then, she had wrapped it in dreams and let the future beguile her. And the days laughed in mockery: the truth vanished, and the wrapping fell, scattered by the wind!

She never knew how he panted his last, and she did not see him when he closed his lids and slackened, rigid and cold.. They carried him to her at noon, a silent corpse that filled her with terror and horror.. and she filled the house with wild clamor and fell to sobbing, keening hoarsely: "But how? How did he die? Take him away — this is not my husband; my husband was alive this morning. No, no — leave me to speak to him, for he is not dead.." And she went on raving, calamity moving her tongue to what she said.. and her hand kept rubbing his chest, trying to breathe life back into the heart that had stopped suddenly, choking the life within him... Then she grew still and lay down beside him, laying her cheek against his cheek, her arm around his neck, staring, silent, unable to stir...

After that she stood over her children's heads alone, trying to trust in hope anew, and she clung to its skirts to fight off her despair.. She asked for a strength to push her forward, a strength to kindle warmth in her heart, that she might warm her children's lives.

Her brother helped her a little, and her husband's brother likewise, with small sums sent at long intervals from the Mahjar. Beyond that she had to work: she took to sewing clothes for people's children at modest wages she dared not raise, not being fully skilled at sewing; and at times she washed and ironed people's clothes at home to earn what more coins she could... Often she grew weary and wished she could close her eyes and sleep for days upon days, forgetting her lot, leaving her present, turning her face from the fearful, far-off future.. How often she wished she might sit one whole day inside the house alone and give her weeping free rein! — neither washing nor ironing, only crying, to drive off the deadly, accursed fear.. No,

she never rested a single hour; she worked on always, and her children grew up around her...

A cold breath of wind came in at the window; she closed one shutter of it and rubbed her hands, then went back to sounding the depths of the dark, remembering those days of her struggle, the days when her children were small.. the days when they were three around her.

There came back to her memory the day her eldest son was ten years old, the day he climbed the low wall and dropped into the garden of their neighbor, the well-to-do doctor. She paid the matter no great heed, but when she heard shouting she ran to the garden through the main gate to see what had happened, and found her son standing red-faced, bright-eyed, before the doctor and his weeping boy, and at their feet, on the soft grass, a toy train with its cars scattered.. She looked at the doctor and his boy, then at her own son, questioning, and the doctor shouted in anger: "He wanted to steal my son's train from him. Don't you know how to teach him honesty and truthfulness? Take him out of here before I strike him!" She swallowed hard and looked at her son in helpless confusion; he clenched his fists violently, his face redder still, and screamed through his tears: "I didn't steal his train — I only wanted to help him run it. I never want to come into this ugly garden again, or see either of you — I hate you both, and I hate your toys and your house!"... Then he tore away running, and she ran after him, afraid; and at home she shook him and struck him, teaching him not to raise his voice before those older than himself. He fled to a corner of the room and looked at her with bewildered, unbelieving eyes and cried in a hoarse voice: "Do you too think I wanted to steal his train, Mother? I only wanted to touch it and play with it! I wish he would die, he and his son. I don't care for her or for her car or for the things and toys he buys his son! I will work, and I will buy for you and me and my brother and sister clothes and toys enough to fill this house. I hate him, and I hate his father and his mother and everything!!" She knelt before him, taking his head in her arms, and wept; and he wrapped his arms about her, whispering tenderly: "Don't cry, Mama. I'll work to help you. I'll buy you dresses prettier than his mother's, and when I'm big I won't let you work, and I'll buy us a beautiful house bigger than theirs."..

No warning voice rang in her ear then, nor after he began coming home to her with coins and things — here a shirt from the clothes-seller whose small boy he walked with him to school, a cluster of grapes or apples from the fruit-seller for whom he worked half an hour after school. She kept silent, wondering; and one day the thing appalled her, and she found herself refusing that her son be given food and clothes like some poor waif on whom kindly shopkeepers take pity, even if he worked for them. So she asked him to take her to those two sellers so she might speak to them about him; he grew confused and stammered, and said he would speak to them himself and ask them to give him a fixed wage. She agreed; and after that he would bring her coins, and she would give him a portion of them and hide the rest away for him in a little box.

O God, how she walked in those days with her eyes open and her inner sight shut! She worked and gathered her children under her wings, gazing into their faces to divine from them the intentions of the future! "Bassam" nearing young manhood and helping her; "Habib" nearing ten, reviving hope in her; "Basma" at eight, opening out and growing, filling her with assurance! How far she was from the truth, how blind, as she hid those forbidden coins in the box and wept over them for joy and pride!... How was she to know that her son's hand, which circled her neck at night trembling with tenderness, joined the hands of ruffians by day and reached out to forbidden things and stole them, steady and unshaking! Yes, they were three, and the eldest was an angel until that day — that day of green, glorious spring! It was a Sunday; she was hanging out the wash in the morning with her children playing around her, when suddenly Bassam sprang up saying he wanted to buy them some ice cream. Habib stood up asking to go with him; his brother refused and ran out; Habib ran after him calling on him to stop, and she shouted at him not to follow his brother — and then she heard Bassam's screaming. She dropped what was in her hands and ran back to the street, and found Habib flung on the ground before a gleaming automobile, his head split open, his face dyed... Only three hours she waited at the hospital, and then they let her put her arms around him and lay her cheek against his cheek, rigid, staring, unable to stir.. They thrust into her hand money paid by the rich owner of the car. She took it without feeling that she was taking anything; she saw nothing but her boy's split head and his hair dyed a red the color of roses... And when she came a little to her senses and remembered her son and her daughter, she cried out in anguish:

"Come to me, my darlings, come to my arms.".. Her daughter threw herself upon her breast, and Bassam stood before her with a face frozen of glance and strange of feature, and said:

"I saw him, Mother — I saw him kill my brother! He was lighting his cigarette, and he didn't stop the car until after he had killed him! I will kill him one day with this hand of mine; I will kill him and split his head open. He is a rich tyrant who kills an innocent and goes free, as though he had taken no one's life! I hate him, and I hate all these rich people who eat and laugh and buy whatever they want — even their crimes! I will bring harm on every one of them; in every one of them I will see my brother's killer! I feel no shame when I steal their money — taking their money is lawful! I will go on stealing from their pockets and spitting in their faces — a curse on them!"

She reeled and gripped the chair, feeling herself plunging into a deep black pit; her tongue knotted, and she stared at him, then at the door after he had vanished through it running! "My son!" her soul screamed, and she felt her whole being rising to follow him into the street, to clasp him to her and speak to him, reminding him of good and evil, of wrong and right! But she stayed where she was, biting her lips and wiping the tears of her frightened, weeping daughter.. How had her son become like this? Why did he speak like this? she asked herself in burning grief! Had she been blind, not seeing whom he kept company with and how he lived? She remembered a companion of his he once brought home; she took alarm at him and asked him never to go with him or his like at all, and he promised; she never saw that companion again, and she was reassured.. She had been reassured by many flimsy things — his explanations of the clothes and the fruit, for instance; or the dog he once brought with him, saying it was a stray, when she ought to have known from its clean white wool that it was a dog of comfort and pampering that her son had stolen from its well-to-do owners!

O God! How grief cut her heart that day as she cried "My son!" — how she felt it almost stop beating under the press of despair! She wept for Habib, and she wept more for Bassam when she learned that, without knowing it, she had killed in him nobility and truthfulness and honesty, and that he would become a living dead man whose ruin she would weep every day!

God's hand took hers, and the years rolled on again, her son growing ever more stubborn and hardened. He drew away from her, little by little, into a world of his own, sacred in his eyes, whose borders he would not let her cross to try to draw him out of it! Once she fell ill, and he hurried to call the doctor and buy the medicine. She seized his hand hard and said with finality: "Death is better to me than drinking medicine bought with your stolen money! Take from this money of mine, for it is honest money.".. He bit his lip and turned his face away as he took the coins from her.. After that he began to stay away from the house for days, sometimes for weeks, and when he returned he would stand at the door like a sick beggar, and she would stare at him and see not his face but the face of

a child who had once circled her neck with his arm and whispered to her, weeping: "I will buy you dresses, and a beautiful house for us" — and the tears would swim in her eyes and she would say: "Come in, my son; your food is waiting for you." And he would come in panting, and kneel before her kissing her hand, and she would pass her hand over his hair, wanting to reach him, to touch the stirrings of his soul; but he would stiffen, then rise to his food and eat it in silence.

And one night, past midnight, there was a knocking at the door. She rose to open it, afraid; and when she saw him standing before her, his hair wild, his face yellow, she cleared his way, and he came in and went straight to the water to wash his hands. Then she saw the hateful red stains on his hands and his shirt, and she reeled, lifting her hand in the air as if to push away some fearful specter; then she ran at him, shaking him and screaming:

"Get out of here — get out! Never let me see your face again! You have become a killer — get out of my house!"..

And when he had fled she threw herself down, moaning and crying out to her Lord:

"Forgive me, O God, and take his hand Yourself; do not let them find him, and guide him to the right"..

She did not see him after that, nor hear anything of him. She prayed for him always and wept his ruin — that living dead man — every day! She would stretch her hands out to him, pleading, in the folds of the night, crying, asking:

"Why, my son? Why have you become a vagabond with no mother and no father? Why did you sell your soul to the devil?"

After that the days passed, one like another, treading on each other's heels, and before she knew it her daughter had become a beautiful young woman — her beloved daughter, third of the three, and all that was left her of her children!

She was content with life beside her under a safe roof, sufficing herself with sewing, her daughter helping her..

Then kindly fortune singled out her daughter for its favor: she married a gentle, well-mannered young man who cherished and honored her and insisted that she live with them to keep them company and to look after her grandchildren in time to come. So she lived with them, content with the safe roof over their heads — until this evening, when she learned that her son was a prisoner and was asking for her..

★

She stood behind the bars looking at him — at this poor stranger! She loved him, and wished the bars would vanish so she could rest his tired body on her breast and in her lap and let him lay his head on her shoulder! This criminal, this thief, at whose bedside she had once stood with his father, picturing him a great and famous man...

He searched her face and pressed her hands, whispering chokingly:

"Mother, I am tired, and all I want is your blessing.."

She raised his hands to her lips and wept: "You have it, my son — now seek the blessing of God!"

The light danced in his eyes, and he drew himself up straight and said:

I will bear my punishment, Mother — but on condition that you let me come back to you, to work and bring you money.. honest money... I stole to give to you, and to satisfy my own soul, thirsty and hungry for everything I had been denied. I hated them, those rich people, Mother, and I hated them more after one of them killed my brother.. Forgive me, Mother..."

She looked at him long, and said quietly: "I shall wait for your return, my son, safe and sound; and I shall be wherever you are, eating of your honest money"!!..

He laughed, and went on smiling until she was out of sight...

She felt no weariness from the walk, and wished she could embrace the whole world!

And she said to her son-in-law, as though speaking to herself:

"They were three.. then they became one! And now they are three.. once more!