Пол Боулз - Let it come down

At the pastry shop downstairs he stopped to inquire the way to the Faro Bar. When the proprietress saw him approaching the counter she greeted him pleasantly. « Guten Abend ,» she said, and was a bit taken aback when he spoke to her in English. She understood, however, and directed him in detail, adding that it was only one minute’s walk.

He found it easily. It was a very small bar, crowded with people most of whom seemed to know each other; there was a certain amount of calling from table to table. Since there was not room at the bar itself, even for those who were already there, and all the tables were occupied, he sat down on a bench in the window and waited for a table to be vacated. Two Spanish girls, self-conscious in their Paris models, and wearing long earrings which removed all trace of chic from their clothes, came in and sat next to him in the bench. At the table in front of him was a French couple drinking Bacardis. To his left sat two somewhat severe-looking middle-aged English ladies, and on his right, a little further away, was a table full of American men who kept rising and going back to the bar to talk with those installed there. In a far corner a small, bespectacled woman was seated at a tiny piano, singing in German. No one was listening to her. He rather liked the place; it seemed to him definitely high-class without being stuffy, and he wondered why the Marquesa had said that Wilcox would refuse to be caught dead in it.

« Y pensábamos irnos a Sevilla para la Semana Santa ». « Ay, qué hermoso !»

«Jesus, Harry, you sure put that one down quick!»

« Alors, tu ne te décides pas? Mais tu es marrante, toi !»

«I expect she’s most frightfully unhappy to be returning to London at this time of year».

The woman at the piano sang: « Wunderschön muss deine Liebe sein ».

« Y por fin nos quedamos aqúi ». « Ay, que lástima !»

« Ne t’en fais pas pour moi ».

«Hey there, waiter! Make it the same, all the way around».

He waited, ordered a whiskey, drank it, and waited. The woman sang several old Dietrich songs. No one heard them. It was quarter past seven; he wished she would come. The Americans were getting drunk. Someone yelled: «Look out, you dumb bastard!» and a glass crashed on the tile floor. The English ladies got up, paid, and left. He decided they had timed their exit to show their disapproval. The two Spanish girls saw the empty table and gathering their things, made for it, but by the time they got there Dyar was already sitting in one of the chairs. «I’m waiting for a lady,» he explained, without adding that he had arrived at the bar before they had, in any case. They did not bother to look at him, reserving all their energy for the registering of intense disgust. Presently another glass was broken. The woman in the corner played «God Bless America,» doubtless with satirical intent. One of the Americans heard it and began to sing along with the music in a very loud voice. Dyar looked up: the Marquesa de Valverde was standing by the table in faded blue slacks and a chamois jacket.

«Don’t get up,» she commanded, as he hastily rose. « Ça va ?» she called to someone at another table. He looked at her: she seemed less formidable than she had the preceding night. He thought it was because she was not made up, but he was mistaken. Her outdoor make-up was even more painstaking than the one she used for the evening. It merely did not show. Now she was all warmth and charm.

«I can’t tell you how kind I think you are,» she said when she had a whiskey-soda in her hand. «So few men have any true kindness left these days. I remember my father — what a magnificent man he was! I wish you could have known him — he used to say that the concept of nobility was fast disappearing from the face of the earth. I didn’t know what he meant then, of course, but I do now, and, God, how heartily I agree with him! And nobility and kindness go together. You may not be noble — who knows? — but you certainly can’t deny that it was damned kind of you to go out of your way to meet me when I had told you beforehand that I expected a favor of you».

He kept looking at her. She was too old, that was all. Every now and then, in the midst of the constantly changing series of expressions assumed by the volatile features, there was a dead instant when he saw the still, fixed disappointment of age beneath. It chilled him. He thought of the consistency of Hadija’s flesh and skin, telling himself that to do so was scarcely just; the girl was not more than sixteen. Still, there were the facts. He considered the compensations of character and worldly refinement, but did they really count for much? He was inclined to think not, in such cases. «Nothing doing there,» he thought. Or perhaps yes, if he had a lot of liquor in him. But why bother? He wondered why the idea had ever come to him, at all. There was no reason to think it had occurred to her, for that matter, save that he was sure it had.

The favor proved to be absurdly simple, he thought. He was merely to fill out a certain form in her name; he would find plenty of such forms in the office. This he was to send, along with a letter written on paper with the agency’s letterhead, to the receptionist at the Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, saying that a Mme. Werth’s reservation for the twentieth of January had been canceled and that the room was to be reserved instead for the Marquise de Valverde. He was then to send her the duplicate of the filled-out form.

«Can you remember all that?» she said, leaning over the table toward him. «I think you’re quite the most angelic man I know». He was making notes on a tiny pad. «During the season the Mamounia is just a little harder to get into than Heaven».

When he had it all written down he drained his glass and leaned over toward her, so that their foreheads were only a few inches apart. «I’ll be delighted to do this for you» — he hesitated and felt himself growing red in the face. «I don’t know what to call you. You know — the title. It’s not Mrs . de Valverde. But I don’t know» —

«If you’re wise you’ll call me Daisy».

He felt she was amusing herself at his expense. «Well, fine,» he said. «What I was going to say is, I’m only too glad to do this for you. But wouldn’t Jack be the man to do it? I’m just an ignoramus in the office so far».

She put her hand on his arm. «Oh, my God! Don’t breathe a word of it to Jack, you silly boy! Why do you think I came to you in the first place? Oh, good God, no! He’s not to know about it, naturally. I thought you understood that».

Dyar was disturbed. He said very slowly: «Oh, hell,» emphasizing the second word. «I don’t know about that».

«Jack’s such an old maid about such things. It’s fantastic, the way he runs that office. No, no. I’ll give you the check for the deposit and you simply send it along with the letter and the form». She felt in her bag and brought forth a folded check. «It’s all made out to the hotel. They’ll understand that that’s because the agency has already made its commission at the time the original reservation was made for Mme. Werth. Don’t you see?»

What she was saying seemed logical, but none of it made any sense to him. If it had to be kept secret from Wilcox, then there was more to it than she admitted. She saw him running it over in his mind. «As I told you today,» she said «you’re not to feel under the least pressure about it. It’s terribly unimportant, really, and I’m a beast even to have mentioned it to you. If someone else gets the reservation I can easily go to Agadir for my fortnight’s rest. Please don’t feel that I’m relying on your gallantry to do it for me».