Paul Bowles - The Delicate Prey - And Other Stories

His guest stepped to the window. “Can you ever hear the sea here?”

“Certainly not. It’s about six kilometers away.”

“But it looks as though you could drop a stone into it,” she objected, hearing the false inflection of her voice; she was not interested in the conversation, she had the feeling that everything had somehow gone wrong.

“What am I doing here? I have no business here. I said I wouldn’t come.” The idea of such a picnic had so completely coincided with some unconscious desire she had harbored for many years. To be free, out-of-doors, with some young man she did not know— could not know—that was probably the important part of the dream. For if she could not know him, he could not know her. She swung the little blind shut and hooked it. A second later she opened it again and looked out at the vast expanse of water growing dim in the twilight.

Mjid was watching her. “You are crazy,” he said at last despairingly. “You find yourself here in this beautiful room. You are my guest. You should be happy. Ghazi has already left to go to town. A friend came by with a horse and he got a ride in. You could lie down, sing, drink tea, you could be happy with me . . .” He stopped, and she saw that he was deeply upset.

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” she said very quickly.

He sighed dramatically; perhaps it was a genuine sigh. She thought: “There is nothing wrong. It should have been a man, not a boy, that’s all.” It did not occur to her to ask herself: “But would I have come if it had been a man?” She looked at him tenderly, and decided that his face was probably the most intense and beautiful she had ever seen. She murmured a word without quite knowing what it was.

“What?” he said.

She repeated it: “Incredible.”

He smiled inscrutably.

They were interrupted by the sound of the woman’s bare feet slapping the floor. She had a tremendous tray bearing the teapot and its accessories.

While he made the tea, Mjid kept glancing at her as if to assure himself that she was still there. She sat perfectly still on one of the mattresses, waiting.

“You know,” he said slowly, “If I could earn money I’d go away tomorrow to wherever I could earn it. I finish school this year anyway, and my brother hasn’t the money to send me to a Medersa at Fez. But even if he had it, I wouldn’t go. I always stay away from school. Only my brother gets very angry.”

“What do you do instead? Go bathing?”

He laughed scornfully, sampled the tea, poured it back into the pot, and sat up on his haunches. “In another minute it will be ready. Bathing? Ah, my friend, it has to be something important for me to risk my brother’s anger. I make love those days, all day long!”

“Really? You mean all day?” She was thoughtful.

“All day and most of the night. Oh, I can tell you it’s marvelous, magnificent. I have a little room,” he crawled over to her and put his hand on her knee, looking up into her face with an eagerness born of faith. “A room my family knows nothing about, in the Casbah. And my little friend is twelve. She is like the sun, soft, beautiful, lovely. Here, take your tea.” He sipped from his glass noisily, smacking his lips.

“All day long,” she reflected aloud, settling back against the cushions.

“Oh, yes. But I’ll tell you a secret. You have to eat as much as you can. But that’s not so hard. You’re that much hungrier.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. A little gust of wind blew along the floor and the candles flickered.

“How good it is to have tea and then lie down to rest!” he exclaimed, pouring her more tea and stretching out beside her on the mattress. She made a move as if to spring up, then lay still.

He went on. “It’s curious that I never met you last year.”

“I wasn’t in town very much. Only evenings. And then I was at the beach. I lived on the mountain.”

He sat up. “On this mountain here? And I never saw you! Oh, what bad luck!”

She described the house, and since he insisted, told him the rent she had paid. He was ferociously indignant. “For that miserable house that hasn’t even a good well? You had to send your Mohammed down the road for water! I know all about that house. My poor friend, you were robbed! If I ever see that dirty bandit I’ll smash his face. I’ll demand the money you paid him, and we’ll make a trip together.” He paused. “I mean, I’ll give it to you of course, and you can decide what you want to do with it.”

As he finished speaking he held up her handbag, opened it, and took out her fountain pen. “It’s a beautiful one,” he murmured. “Do you have many?”

“It’s the only one.”

“Magnificent!” He tossed it back in and laid the bag on the floor.

Settling against the pillows he ruminated. “Perhaps some day I shall go to America, and then you can invite me to your house for tea. Each year we’ll come back to Morocco and see our friends and bring back cinema stars and presents from New York.”

What he was saying seemed so ridiculous to her that she did not bother to answer. She wanted to ask him about the twelve-year-old girl, but she could find no excuse for introducing the subject again.

“You’re not happy?” He squeezed her arm.

She raised herself to listen. With the passing of the day the countryside had attained complete silence. From the distance she could hear a faint but clear voice singing. She looked at Mjid.

“The muezzin? You can hear it from here?”

“Of course. It’s not so far to the Marshan. What good is a country house where you can’t hear the muezzin? You might as well live in the Sahara.”

“Sh. I want to listen.”

“It’s a good voice, isn’t it? They have the strongest voices in the world.”

“It always makes me sad.”

“Because you’re not of the faith.”

She reflected a minute and said: “I think that’s true.” She was about to add: “But your faith says women have no souls.” Instead she rose from the mattress and smoothed her hair. The muezzin had ceased. She felt quite chilled. “This is over,” she said to herself. They stumbled down the dark road into town, saying very little on the way.

He took her to her small hotel. The cable she had vaguely expected for weeks was there. They climbed the stairs to her room, the concierge looking suspiciously after them. Once in the room, she opened the envelope. Mjid had thrown himself onto the bed.

“I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.”

His face darkened, and he shut his eyes for an instant. “You must go away? All right. Let me give you my address.” He pulled out his wallet, searched for a piece of paper, and finding none, took a calling card someone had given him, and carefully wrote.

“Fuente Nueva,” he said slowly as he formed the letters. “It’s my little room. I’ll look every day to see if there’s a letter.”

She had a swift vision of him, reading a letter in a window flooded with sunshine, above the city’s terraced roofs, and behind him, in the darkness of the room, with a face wise beyond its years, a complacent child waiting.

He gave her the card. Underneath the address he had written the word “Incredible,” enclosed in quotation marks and underlined twice. She glanced quickly to see his face, but it betrayed nothing.

Below them the town was blue, the bay almost black.

“The lighthouse,” said Mjid.

“It’s flashing,” she observed.

He turned and walked to the door. “Good-bye,” he said. “You will come back.” He left the door open and went down the stairs. She stood perfectly still and finally moved her head up and down a few times, as if thoughtfully answering a question. Through the open window in the hallway she heard his rapid footsteps on the gravel in the garden. They grew fainter.