Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky

Light-hearted now, he moved about the room whistling at the prospect of being alone with Kit; he had decided she needed him. He was not at all sure of being able to convince her that the need lay precisely in the field where he liked to think it did. Indeed, of all the women with whom he hoped some day to have intimate relations he considered Kit the most unlikely, the most difficult. He caught a glimpse of himself as he stood bent over a suitcase, and smiled inscrutably at his image; it was the same smile that Kit thought so false.

At one o’clock he went to Port’s room to find the door open and the luggage gone. Two maids were making the bed up with fresh linen. “Se ha marchao,” said one. At two he met Kit in the dining room; she was looking exceptionally well groomed and pretty.

He ordered champagne.

“At a thousand francs a bottle!” she remonstrated. “Port would have a fit!”

“Port isn’t here,” said Tunner.

A few minutes before twelve Port stood outside the entrance of the hotel with all his luggage. Three Arab porters, acting under the direction of young Lyle, were piling bags into the back of the car. The slow moving clouds above were interspersed now with great holes of deep blue sky; when the sun came through its heat was unexpectedly powerful. In the direction of the mountains the sky was still black and frowning. Port was impatient; he hoped they would get off before Kit or Tunner happened by.

Precisely at twelve Mrs. Lyle was in the lobby complaining about her bill. The pitch of her voice rose and fell in sharp scallops of sound. Coming to the doorway she cried: “Eric, will you come in here and tell this man I did not have biscuits yesterday at tea? Immediately!”

“Tell him yourself,” said Eric absently. “Celle-là on va mettre ici en bas,” he went on to one of the Arabs, indicating a heavy pigskin case.

“You idiot!” She went back in; a moment later Port heard her squealing: “Non! Non! Thé seulement! Pas gâteau!”

Eventually she appeared again, red in the face, her handbag swinging on her arm. Seeing Port she stood still and called: “Eric!” He looked up from the car, came over and presented Port to his mother.

“I’m very glad you can come with us. It’s an added protection. They say in the mountains here it’s better to carry a gun. Although I must say I’ve never seen an Arab I couldn’t handle. It’s the beastly French one really needs protection from. Filthy lot! Fancy their telling me what I had yesterday for tea. But the insolence! Eric, you coward! You let me do all the fighting at the desk. You probably ate the biscuits they were charging me for!”

“It’s all one, isn’t it?” Eric smiled.

“I should think you’d be ashamed to admit it. Mr. Moresby, look at that hulking boy. He’s never done a day’s work in his life. I have to pay all his bills.”

“Come on, Mother! Get in.” This was said despairingly

“What do you mean, get in?” Her voice went very high. “Fancy talking to me like that! You need a good slap in the face. That might help you.” She climbed into the front of the car. “I’ve never had such talk from anyone.”

“We shall all three sit in front,” said Eric. “Do you mind, Mr. Moresby?”

“I’m delighted. I prefer the front,” said Port. He was determined to remain wholly on the periphery of this family pattern; the best way of assuring that, he thought, would be to have no visible personality whatever, merely to be civil, to listen. It was likely that this ludicrous wrangling was the only form of conversation these two had ever managed to devise for themselves.

They started up, Eric at the wheel, racing the motor first. The porters shouted: “Bon voyage!”

“I noticed several people staring at me when I left,” said Mrs. Lyle, settling back. “Those filthy Arabs have done their work here, the same as everywhere else.”

“Work? What do you mean?” said Port.

“Why, their spying. They spy on you all the time here, you know. That’s the way they make their living. You think you can do anything without their knowing it?” She laughed unpleasantly. “Within an hour all the miserable little touts and undersecretaries at the consulates know everything.”

“You mean the British Consulate?”

“All the consulates, the police, the banks, everyone,” she said firmly.

Port looked at Eric expectantly. “But—”

“Oh, yes,” said Eric, apparently happy to reinforce his mother’s statement. “It’s a frightful mess. We never have a moment’s peace. Wherever we go, they hold back our letters, they try to keep us out of hotels by saying they have no rooms, and when we do get rooms they search them while we’re out and steal our things, they get the porters and chambermaids to eavesdrop—”

“But who? Who does all this? And why?”

“The Arabs!” cried Mrs. Lyle. “They’re a stinking, low race of people with nothing to do in life but spy on others. How else do you think they live?”

“It seems incredible,” Port ventured timidly, hoping in this way to call forth more of the same, for it amused him.

“Hah!” she said in a tone of triumph. “It may seem incredible to you because you don’t know them, but look out for them. They hate us all. And so do the French. Oh, they loathe us!”

“I’ve always found the Arabs very sympathetic,” said Port.

“Of course. That’s because they’re servile, they flatter you and fawn on you. And the moment your back is turned, off they rush to the consulate.”

Said Eric: “Once in Mogador—” His mother cut him short.

“Oh, shut up! Let someone else talk. Do you think anyone wants to hear about your blundering stupidities? If you’d had a little sense you’d not have got into that business. What right did you have to go to Mogador, when I was dying in Fez? Mr. Moresby, I was dying! In the hospital, on my back, with a terrible Arab nurse who couldn’t even give a proper injection—”

“She could!” said Eric stoutly. “She gave me at least twenty. You just happened to get infected because your resistance was low.”

“Resistance!” shrieked Mrs. Lyle. “I refuse to talk any more. Look, Mr. Moresby, at the colors of the hills. Have you ever tried infra-red on landscapes? I took some exceptionally fine ones in Rhodesia, but they were stolen from me by an editor in Johannesburg.”

“Mr. Moresby’s not a photographer, Mother.”

“Oh, be quiet. Would that keep him from knowing about infra-red photography?”

“I’ve seen samples of it,” said Port.

“Well, of course you have. You see, Eric, you simply don’t know what you’re saying, ever. It all comes from lack of discipline. I only wish you had to earn your living for one day. It would teach you to think before you speak. At this point you’re no better than an imbecile.”

A particularly arid argument ensued, in which Eric, apparently for Port’s benefit, enumerated a list of unlikely sounding jobs he claimed to have held during the past four years, while the mother systematically challenged each item with what seemed convincing proof of its falsity. At each new claim she cried: “What lies! What a liar! You don’t even know what the truth is!” Finally Eric replied in an aggrieved tone, as if capitulating: “You’d never let me stick at any work, anyway. You’re terrified that I might become independent.”

Mrs. Lyle cried: “Look, look! Mr. Moresby! That sweet burro! It reminds me of Spain. We just spent two months there. It’s a horrible country,” (she pronounced it hawibble) “all soldiers and priests and Jews.”

“Jews?” echoed Port incredulously.

“Of course. Didn’t you know? The hotels are full of them. They run the country. From behind the scenes, of course. The same as everywhere else. Only in Spain they’re very clever about it. They will not admit to being Jewish. In Cordoba—this will show you how wily and deceitful they are. In Cordoba I went through a street called Juderia. It’s where the synagogue is. Naturally it’s positively teeming with Jews—a typical ghetto. But do you think one of them would admit it? Certainly not! They all shook their fingers back and forth in front of my face, and shouted: ‘Catolico! Catolico!’ at me. But fancy that, Mr. Moresby, their claiming to be Roman Catholics. And when I went through the synagogue the guide kept insisting that no services had been held in it since the fifteenth century! I’m afraid I was dreadfully rude to him. I burst out laughing in his face.”