The Canary's Return (Story of the Issue)

With one hand Randa clutched the coins, and fortified them with the fingers of the other hand... and she flung herself on the edge of the bed, panting with exhaustion as though she had just come out of a battle! Behind her eyes two great thoughts contended, and it was hard for the child to decide between them on the spot... To what fate would this precious handful go? It was a fortune! How long she had denied herself the delights of chocolate and cake, watching over every piaster lest it be wasted... And she fixed her eyes on the fistful of coins, calling back her memories: —

She does not deny that the blessing crept into the hoard on the morrow of her birthday. The day she blew out the ten candles on the white cake, amid the clapping of her companions and their singing...

What pleased her most among the presents was a colored money box brought — what taste she had! — by her companion Souad. That night she dropped into the money box the five liras — all that had come to her in cash... and she harbored in her heart a design she confided to no one. And perhaps it was this very secrecy that endeared to her the sacrifice and the waiting... Could it be that today she would go back on that weighty design? Was it conceivable she would turn from what had seemed to her, until only yesterday, the summit of all her wishes?

For months something had been gnawing at her soul... that beautiful arched cage, empty and abandoned on top of the wardrobe. In it had once frolicked "Fifi,"

her yellow canary. He used to delight the people of the quarter and stir their hearts with his lively, merry trills... For her he was more than a diversion! How quickly she and Fifi came to understand each other... Heavens! With what a glance he would tease her, with what a peck and flutter of wing he would play with her, and how he accepted her fondling; she would single him out with tender hearts of lettuce, and contrive displays of the pulp of fresh fruit to please his greedy appetite...

She will never forget how, one mid-morning, with Fifi pouring out his song, he suddenly choked upon the melody and began to flounder and tumble blindly, scattering his feathers about the cage... And what did she see, when she rushed to him, but the neighbors' black cat, its fur bristling, poised for a second, savage spring? How swiftly she fell upon it. With her hand. With her foot. With her grandfather's stick... Her one care was to save Fifi from the clutches of that little tiger... There — the marks of its scratching still run along

the length of her fingers... From that hour the cage's nail rose two spans higher on the balcony wall, and the cat lost every hope of easy spoils.
And oh, her calamity when she came once to look in on him and found the cage empty, an uncanny silence brooding over it, mocking her!
How she hated herself! How she called down death upon her own head! For she realized that it was she and no one else who had forgotten the cage door open!! Was he strong enough for flight and soaring, or did he stumble and fall? Did he find food in those gardens to stay his hunger? Or did the neighbors' black cat snatch him and work its fangs and claws upon him?! Woe to him if it did!... Woe to him!

What Randa brooded over and questioned that day, in the realm of her feeling and her fears for Fifi, was in truth only a part of her great grief for him. No wonder her brother doubted the truth of the dreams she kept recounting to him whenever she woke from sleep: all of them about Fifi!! Either she had met him in the garden, hiding behind a leaf and eyeing her slyly; or he had come fluttering about the cage, playful and affectionate; or she had come home from school and found him standing in his place, singing and caroling, or swaying and dipping his wing, luxuriant in color and shade...
How often she sighed with longing in her secret heart, wishing that dreams might one day come true... might last! — so that her happiness would not come tumbling down the moment she opened her eyes and they came to rest on top of the wardrobe...

...For a whole month Randa went on living in hope. She would hang the cage in its place and leave its door wide open, the drinking water brimming, the seed cup overflowing with canary seed, lettuce leaves dangling from his cage, fresh figs pressed onto the sticks — everything in the fashion that was Fifi's own... He would surely return, she kept assuring herself; where in the whole world would he find such comfort and plenty? He was coming back... certainly coming back.

But Fifi did not come back, and the little girl set about lulling her disappointment against her will; and when doubt got the better of her, she cleaned the cage, in despair, of the leavings of food, and set it away on the top of the wardrobe... And in the hope of "perhaps" she left its door wide open... Who knows??... Who knows when the miracle might happen?!

There must be an outcome... a solution. Every problem has its solution, however stubborn — so says her teacher... and so says her mother too. She could, for instance, save up money enough to buy another canary, and be more watchful than before in keeping him!

From that day Randa's life took on a new meaning. Her existence had a goal to strive for. It began to seem to her, as she swayed before the mirror, that she had grown less plump and round thanks to her "voluntary" abstention from eating sweets... And she took to inventing excuses for forsaking the cinema, coming back on the sly to add the half-lira to the contents of the money box, listening with relish to its ringing metallic rattle, reckoning within herself the amount that must by now have gathered inside the round box — and would it, she wondered, suffice to buy a canary?!

She remembers well coming home one day from school, when a companion showed her a shop at the bend of a nearby street, from whose walls craned dozens of cane cages in which birds flitted about, of every color and wing. How she would have loved to stay there, rapt and dazzled, letting her gaze wander among the goldfinches and the bulbuls in the flood of their crying and chirping... She saw among them only a single canary! How her heart leapt at first, taking him for Fifi himself — but for a row of white feathers circling his neck, such as Fifi never had... How she craved to hug that yellow bird with the lifted breast... to wet his feathers with kisses... But nothing of the kind happened. There she is, turning back and feigning indifference, resolved to redouble her efforts, while the seller's voice challenged her hearing: "This canary is unique, a rarity. I will not sell him for less than twenty-five liras!"

In this manner Randa lived through the months, her soul greeted by a certain contentment over a diligence she had persisted in, carrying out a plan for which she alone was responsible, working toward its fulfillment with all the deep gladness that attends sacrifice and self-denial... Until yesterday came — the hour her mother woke her, suddenly, out of deepest sleep, and hastened to put her coat on her and lead her with her brother to the open square outside the house, where the neighbors had gathered in their nightclothes, crying out in loud voices, all of them in a state of violent terror.

...In her daze she paid no heed. She grasped no meaning in it until she had recovered some of her senses and pieced the ends of the story together from here and there... It was an earthquake... nay, three successive shocks, the like of which the town had never known.

She had not witnessed the "engagement" that drove the people — all the people — fleeing from their beds into the open, nor had she felt the tall building swaying to the right and to the left; but her brother's description, and the descriptions of all the neighbors, were enough to spread horror through her limbs... How dreadful, what the papers and the radio passed on yesterday morning about the catastrophe... Whole villages, down to the last house, collapsed and ruined... Thousands of people in the roads... Hundreds of children under the rubble... Hundreds more driven out, with neither shelter nor food!

Here Randa recalled her prayer of that night, and she lowered her eyes and her cheeks were dyed with shame. She had thanked God for turning death and homelessness away from her... A thousand shames upon her, that in the moment of fear she should forget all people, near and far, and confine her concern to her own person... How was the little one now to atone for a sin committed against humanity? The feeling of guilt came back upon her whenever she happened to listen to the news of the catastrophe and its details — and how many details came her way that day!! The specter swelled in her head and weighed upon her tender conscience; perplexity took hold of her, and with it remorse. How was she to atone for her sin? How to wipe out this offense against her own humanity?

In this crushed state of soul Randa met her second day, feeling herself weak and worthless. How to slip free of this feeling — how to flee from it? How to return to her former contented life at home and at school?

In vain she turned her eyes from the pages of the newspapers, filled with pictures and heartrending stories from the stricken villages, now numbering close upon two hundred... In vain she stopped her ears and her other senses against the tales that were being passed around, at which hearts are torn... and against the broadcasts trying to calm the people and failing, leaving them in the flood of their imaginings, between anxiety and fear... far from any calm of nerves.

And today her headmistress stood urging on the pupils, rousing their generosity, drawing forth their giving for the sake of little ones left destitute, and perhaps sick!... And she ran to her mother in distress, a heap of sorrow and misery. And it satisfied her pride that her gift exceeded the gifts of her companions. But the ten liras were her mother's, not hers; and so the teacher's praise came without healing the wound in her heart, without quieting the storm in her conscience. And she called back to mind a story the teacher had told in class, of a wealthy lady who took off her precious pearl necklace for the victims... If she had jewels she would give them all... or half of them at the very least!

And Randa started up, remembering! She remembered that she owned a money box with a ringing metallic rattle, for whose sake how often she had denied herself the tastiest morsels! Without hesitation she sprang up, driven — her conscience with her — to the hiding place... where the money box was. She took it in her hands and fell to turning it about and working at it with trembling fingers, using force upon it by turns until its seam gave way for her into two halves... and the yellow and white coins scattered over the carpet between her feet. First she feasted her eyes on the sight of them; then she clutched them with one hand and fortified them with the fingers of the other, and flung herself on the edge of the bed, panting with exhaustion as though she had just come out of a battle! And with her panting broke forth burning sighs. Were her murmurings a questioning... or a prayer? She must decide. She must decide... the final destiny of what lay in her hand! And she stayed thus in a flood of confusion and perplexity... her chilled gaze nailed to the open cage on top of the wardrobe, and her wounded conscience pumping into her veins blood that was red... and aching!

There — she has decided!... At once she threw the handful into her lap, damp with sweat from the heat of her two trembling hands, and bent over the coins, counting them for the first time, and tying them into a little bundle which she tucked into her pocket, a trust for the Red Cross — and her eyes flashed with sparks from the breezes of Paradise! And she stood upright on her feet. She mounted a chair that brought her up to the cage, and carried it joyfully to its old faithful nail on the balcony wall! What radiance passed over her glowing face, and what a victorious smile was traced on the sweet mouth as she shut the cage door — with all the rapture there is in victory... and all the strength.

And from her heart... rose the song of Fifi, in lively volley upon volley, filling the quarter and the whole world with song... none sweeter, none more tender!!!