A Short Story: Christmas

"Here you are, my dear... I'll be back in two hours," said Adel as he opened the car door; and I hurried into the office without answering his words with a single word. I was in a state of great agitation, my head in a whirl of doubt and obscurity; nothing before me was clear, and my thoughts were confused, paralyzed...

I sat down before the typewriter, the last echo of the roar of Adel's car in my ears, and paid no attention to the bundles of letters, all waiting to be copied or typed anew; and I fell to contemplating a letter I had begun before lunch. I tried to finish it, but I could not, and the confusion grew, and the letters blurred away into a distant horizon; I had two hours before me in which to decide my fate... And I went back in my thoughts to the beginning; for I like to begin from the first in all my affairs. But where was the beginning of my subject? Was it my coming into this world? That is a long tale, beginning on the evening of a certain day, when I set foot upon the threshold of existence, furnished with my mother's screams and the cries of alarm from those around her. I was the messenger of death to my mother, who died before she could set eyes on me; and my father lost his reason and never came back to the house, and to this day I know nothing of what became of him... And so there was no one to take me in but my mother's parents, and with them I lived a life of loneliness and hardship, for they had no abundance of money, and all they left me was the intermediate certificate, which I struggled, with the help of a little money, to obtain; and not long afterward my grandparents passed on to the other world, and I remained, wrestling with loneliness and its pains...

Was I right, do you think, to go back to the beginning of my story with life? Or shall I leave it, and tell the tale that caused my bewilderment and daze?..

My certificate was the means to a simple livelihood. I found a position with a company that imported electrical machines, and I worked as a secretary for five years, and still do. Life is ever the same... I work six hours a day, and return in the evening to a room I had rented in a modest flat; I prepare my supper myself, read a few papers or books, and then sleep, awaiting the next day..

I had no friends, and I did not look for friendship, for it was, to me, a silly thing; I would think so when I heard the girls at the office talking of their friends and recounting their adventures with them; and I would ask myself how anyone could think of wasting time for nothing in the company of a passing friend instead of the company of a book?.. It seems to me now that books are not all the pleasures in this world that the human soul requires — nor food and drink and outings... There are important things that we ignore, and they return our disregard: our feelings; yet often they rise in revolt, and with their revolts they shake our very being. My revolts were of the quiet, silent kind, though many a time their storm grew so fierce that I was powerless to bridle it; yet they remained among the things dearest to my heart, my companion in my solitude and my consolation in my distress...

And my revolts would grow stronger after I came back from my walks along the seashore, for I love the sea; I love it in the clearness of summer, in the smiles of spring, in the frowns of autumn, and in the storms of winter; I love it in all its changing moods, and how many times I ran out under the downpour so as to feel the revolt of its waves within my own soul, and to live through its struggle with the tempest; and those walks did me much good, for I would come back with my soul washed and my eyes made pure, and throw myself upon my bed to rest, contemplating the furniture of the room around me, and the worn-out body upon the covers; the body of a female, which I ignored entirely, never adorning it with pretty dresses as my colleagues at the office did; and if it happened that I noticed the womanliness of my body, I would pluck out the thought with caution and fear, and my fear would turn into a vague feeling when I felt the vigor of youth in my veins, and I would struggle to escape the battle, leaping from my bed and opening the window, then giving myself over to watching the passersby... And the revolt would reach a pitch of danger that terrified me, when I thought that this body was on its way to withering; that in a few years it would become a wrinkled rag whose existence no one notices...; and I, even now, in the very flower of my youth, draw no one's attention — and this made me shrink still further into myself, and cling the harder to my isolation...

And Adel — I do not know what drew Adel to me. My thin body? Or my ordinary face?.. For my face, too, is unattractive: my eyes lose the sparkle of womanliness behind a thick layer of glass, the color of my face does not draw men, nor is there in it any feature I could point to and say: here lies the beauty...

I am a very ordinary girl; and yet I won a friend, and in a strange way.

I was taking one of my walks along the seashore, and it occurred to me to lie down for a moment upon the sand; and suddenly there appeared before me a young man, tall of stature, attractive of feature, and possessed of a large share of boldness and self-assurance; and his boldness drove him to sit down beside me and begin to talk...

I still remember the silly things we talked about, but at that moment they were very important to us both; and I could read in Adel's talk my own story — the story of my loneliness and my strangeness in this world, and the tale of my struggle with life; and now I ask myself why I listened to him, and talked with him so eagerly, as though I stood before some strange magician?..

That happened a few months ago, and Adel never ceased speaking with me; sometimes he would take me to a café or a restaurant, and we would sit eating and talking of everything — discussing kinds of food and kinds of people, and the philosophy of life. He drew me out of my isolation in a gentle way, never forcing it upon me; rather he would ask me to come out with him, usually attaching to his request his customary phrase: That is, if going out does not trouble you.

And I tried to draw back; and every time I opened my mouth to refuse, the words of my consent got there before me... Where was I heading? I did not know; only I remained at ease, oblivious of all existence..

And this evening he said he would come back, and I have only a short time to finish all these letters, and to decide whether I can go with him to one of the clubs to spend Christmas Eve... For I stand before two courses: either to return to my desolate room and its dreadful silence, or to go out with him, and surrender to whatever surprises tomorrow may hold.. And he — did he not say that he would not go out without me?.. He said it without concern: "If you do not go with me, I shall go back and spend the night of the feast alone.."

I lost my way once, on a day when I had no companion to hold my right hand; the letters can wait until the day after tomorrow, and I shall not go astray again; I shall not deprive two souls of a happiness they deserve — the happiness of meeting.. I shall not be alone, for I can no longer endure that word.. The roar of his car is wiping it from my ears.. He has come back — and with him, Christmas has come back...