The Time and the Place: And Other Stories

The Lawsuit

I found myself suddenly the subject of a lawsuit. My father’s widow was demanding maintenance. Awakened from the depths of time, the past with its memories had invaded me. After reading the petition I exclaimed, “When did she go broke? Has she in her turn been robbed?”

“This woman robbed us and deprived us of our legal rights,” I said to my lawyer.

I felt a strong desire to see her, not through any temptation to gloat over her but in order to see what effects time had had upon her. Today, like me, she was in her forties. Had her beauty withstood the passage of time? Was it holding out against poverty? If the lawsuit was not genuine, would she have stretched out a demanding hand to one of her enemies? On the other hand, if it was specious, why had she not stretched out her hand before? What a ravishing beauty she had been!

“My father married her,” I told the lawyer, “when he was in his middle fifties and she a girl of twenty.” A semiliterate, old-fashioned contractor, he did not deal with banks but stored his profits away in a large cupboard in his bedroom. We were happy about this so long as we were a single family. The announcement of the new marriage was like a bomb exploding among us — my mother, my elder brother, and myself, as well as my sisters in their various homes. The top floor was given over to my father, the bride, and the cupboard. We were struck dumb by her youth and beauty. My mother said in a quavering voice choked with weeping, “What a catastrophe! We’ll end up without a bean.”

My elder brother was illiterate and mentally retarded. He was without work, but considered himself a landowner. He flared up in a rage, declaring, “I’ll defend myself to the very death.”

Some of our relatives advised us to consult a lawyer, but my father threatened my mother with divorce if we were to entertain any such move. “I’m not gullible or an idiot, and no one’s rights will be lost.”

I was the one least affected by the disaster, partly because of my youth and partly because I was the only one in the family who wanted to study, hoping to enter the engineering college. Yet even so, I did not miss the significance of the facts — my father’s age and that of his beautiful bride, and the fortune under threat. By way of smoothing things over, I would say, “I have confidence in my father.”

“If we say nothing,” my brother would say, “we’ll find the cupboard empty.”

I shared his fears but affected outwardly what I did not feel inwardly. All the time I felt that our oasis, which had appeared so tranquil, was being subjected to a wild wind and that on the horizon black clouds were gathering. My mother took refuge in silent anxiety, with each new day giving her warning of a bad outcome. As for my elder brother, he would brave the lion in his lair, pleading with his father. “I am the firstborn, uneducated as you can see, and without means of support, so give me my share.”

“Do you want to inherit from me while I’m still alive? It’s a disgrace for you to doubt me — no one’s rights will be lost.” But my brother would not calm down and would pester my father whenever they met. He would hurl threats at him from behind his back, and my mother would say that she was more worried about my brother than she was about the fortune.

For my part, I wondered whether my father, that capable master of his trade, the man who was such a meticulous accountant despite his illiteracy, would meet defeat at the hands of a pretty girl. Yet, without doubt, he was changing, slipping down little by little each day. He would take himself off to the Turkish baths twice a month, would clip his beard and trim his mustache every week, and would strut about in new clothes. Finally he took to dyeing his hair. Precious gifts embellished the bride’s neck, bosom, and arms. Now there was a Chevrolet and a chauffeur waiting in front of our house.

My brother became more and more angry. “Where did he get her from?” he would say to me. Was it so impossible that she might get hold of the key and find her way to opening the cupboard? Would she not take from him something to secure her future? Did she not have the power to make him happy or to turn his life into one of misery and turmoil as she wished?

Arguments would develop between my brother and my father that would go beyond the bounds of propriety. My father would grow angry and spit in my brother’s face. In an explosive outburst, my brother seized hold of a table lamp and hurled it at his father, drawing blood. Seeing the blood, my brother was scared, but even so persevered in his attempts to do Father in, with the cook and the chauffeur intervening. My father insisted on informing the police, and my brother was taken off to court and from there to prison, where he died after a year.

“How did she find the courage to bring her case?” I asked the lawyer.

“Necessity has its own rules.”

In the midst of our alarm and our mourning for my brother, my mother and I heard the noise of something striking the floor above us. We hurried upstairs and found ourselves standing aghast over my father’s body. As is usual in such circumstances, we asked ourselves again and again what could have happened, but no amount of questioning can bring back the dead. It seems that he had had a paralyzing stroke a whole day before his death without our knowing.

We waited till he had been buried and the rites of mourning were over, and then the family gathered together. My sisters, their husbands, and their husbands’ parents were there, and the lawyer was present as well. We asked about the key to the cupboard, and the young widow answered quite simply that she knew nothing about it. Sometimes the mind boggles at the sheer brazenness of lying. But what could be done? We then came across the key, and the cupboard finally divulged its secrets, exhibiting to us with profound mockery a bundle of notes that did not exceed five thousand pounds. “Then where is the man’s fortune?” everyone called out.

All eyes were fixed on the beautiful widow, who answered defiantly. We had recourse to the police, and there were investigations and searches. As my mother had predicted, we came out of it all “without a bean.” The beautiful widow went off to her parents’ house, and the curtain was brought down upon her and the inheritance. My mother died. I got a job, married, and achieved a notable success. I became oblivious of the past until the lawsuit brought me back to it.

“It’s really the height of irony,” I said to the lawyer, “that I should be required to pay maintenance to that woman.”

His voice came to me from between the files on his desk. “The old story does on the face of it appear worthy of being put forward, but what’s the point of unearthing it when we have no evidence against her?”

“Even if the old story may not be open for discussion, it’s a good starting point, whose effect should not be underrated.”

“On the contrary, we would be providing the woman’s lawyer with the chance to take the offensive and to attract sympathy for her.”

“Sympathy?”

“Steady now. Let’s think about it a bit objectively. An old man hoards his wealth in a cupboard in his bedroom. He then buys himself a beautiful girl of twenty when he’s a man of fifty-five. Such and such happens to his family and such and such to his beautiful wife. Fine, who was to blame?” He was silent for a while, scowling, then continued. “Let’s look at it from your side. You’re a man who’s earning and has a family, and the cost of living is unbearably high, and so on and so forth…. Let’s content ourselves by settling on a reasonable sum for maintenance.”

“Too bad!” I muttered. “She robbed us; then there was the death of my brother and my mother’s distress.”

“I’m sorry about that, but she’s as much a victim as you are. Even the fortune she made off with brought her to disaster. And now here she is begging.”

Prompted by casual curiosity, I said, “It’s as though you know something about her.”

He shook his head with diplomatic vagueness. “A woman who couldn’t have children, she was married and divorced several times when she was in her prime. In middle age she fell in love with a student, who, in his turn, robbed her and went off.”

He did not divulge the sources of his information, but I surmised the logical progression of events. I experienced a feeling of gratification, which a sense of decency prevented me from showing.

On the day of the court session, I was again seized by a mysterious desire to set eyes on her. I recognized her as she waited in front of the lawyers’ room. I knew her by conjecture before actually recognizing her, for the beauty that had made away with our fortune and ruined us had completely vanished. She was fat, excessively and unacceptably so, and the charming freshness had leaked away from her face. What little beauty was left seemed insipid. A veneer of perpetual dejection acted like a screen between her and other people. Without giving the matter any thought, I went up to her, inclined my head in greeting, and said, “I remember you…perhaps you remember me?”

At first she gazed at me in surprise, then in confusion. She returned the greeting with a gesture of her covered head. “I’m sorry to cause you trouble,” she said, as though apologizing, “but I am forced to do so.”

I forgot what I wanted to say. In fact words failed me, and I felt an inner peace. “Don’t worry — let the Lord do as He wills.” I quietly moved away as I said to myself, “Why not? Even a farce must continue right to the final act.”