Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky

“Oh, but my dear Mr. Moresby! This is positively luxurious. This is the best hotel you’ll find between here and the Congo. There’s nothing after this with running water you know. Well, we shall see you before we go, in any case. I’m being baked by this horrible sun. Please say good morning to your wife for me.” She rose and went downstairs.

Port hung his coat on the back of the chair and sat a while, pondering the unusual behavior of this eccentric woman. He could not bring himself to attribute it to mere irresponsibility or craziness; it seemed much more likely that her deportment was a roundabout means of communicating an idea she dared not express directly. In her own confused mind the procedure was apparently logical. All he could be certain of was that her basic motivation was fear. And Eric’s was greed; of that also he was sure. But the compound made by the two together continued to mystify him. He had the impression that the merest indication of a design was beginning to take shape; what the design was, what it might end by meaning, all that was still wholly problematical. He guessed however that at the moment mother and son were working at cross-purposes. Each had a reason for being interested in his presence, but the reasons were not identical, nor even complementary, he thought.

He consulted his watch: it was ten-thirty. Kit would probably not be awake yet. When he saw her he intended to discuss the matter with her, if she were not still angry with him. Her ability to decipher motivations was considerable. He decided to take a walk around the town. Stopping off in his room, he left his jacket there and picked up his sun glasses. He had reserved the room across the hall for Kit. As he went out he put his ear against the door of her room and listened; there was no sound within.

Boussif was a completely modern town, laid out in large square blocks, with the market in the middle. The unpaved streets, lined for the most part with box-shaped one-story buildings, were filled with a rich red mud. A steady procession of men and sheep moved through the principal thoroughfare toward the market, the men walking with the hoods of their burnouses drawn up over their heads against the sun’s fierce attack. There was not a tree to be seen anywhere. At the ends of the transversal streets the bare wasteland sloped slowly upward to the base of the mountains, which were raw, savage rock without vegetation. Except for the faces he found little of interest in the enormous market. At one end there was a tiny café with one table set outside under a cane trellis. He sat down and clapped his hands twice. “Ouahad atai,” he called; that much Arabic he remembered. While he sipped the tea, which he noticed was made with dried mint leaves instead of fresh, he observed that the same ancient bus kept passing the café, sounding its horn insistently. He watched it as it went by. Filled with native passengers, it made the tour of the market again and again, the boy on the back platform pounding its resonant tin body rhythmically, and shouting: “Arfa! Arfa! Arfa! Arfa!” without stopping.

He sat there until lunchtime.

The first thing Kit knew when she awoke was that she had a bad hangover. Then she noticed the bright sun shining into the room. What room? It was too much effort for her to think back. Something moved at her side on the pillow. She rolled her eyes to the left, and saw a shapeless dark mass beside her head. She cried out and sprang up, but even as she did so she knew it was only Tunner’s black hair, In his sleep he stirred, and stretched out his arm to embrace her. Her head pounding, painfully, she jumped out of bed and stood staring at him. “My God!” she said aloud. With difficulty she aroused him, made him get up and dress, forced him out into the hall with all his luggage, and quickly locked the door after him. Then, before he had thought of finding a boy to help him with the bags, while he was still standing there stupidly, she opened the door and made a whispered demand for a bottle of champagne. He got one out, passed it in to her, and she shut the door again. She sat down on the bed and drank the whole bottle. Her need for the drink was partly physical, but particularly she felt she could not face Port until she had engaged in an inner dialogue from which she might emerge in some measure absolved for last night. She also hoped the champagne would make her ill, so that she could have a legitimate reason for staying in bed all day. It had quite the opposite effect: no sooner had she finished it than her hangover was gone, and she felt slightly tipsy, but very well. She went to the window and looked out onto the glaring courtyard where two Arab women were washing clothes in a large stone basin, spreading them out over the bushes to dry in the sun. She turned quickly and unpacked her overnight case, scattering the objects about the room. Then she began a careful search for any trace of Tunner that might be left in the room. A black hair on the pillow caused her heart to skip a beat; she dropped it out the window. Meticulously she made the bed, spread the woolen cover over it. Next she called the maid and asked her to have the fathma come and wash the floor. That way, if Port should arrive soon, it would look as though the maid had already finished the room. She dressed and went downstairs. The fathma’s heavy bracelets jangled as she scrubbed the tiles.

When he got back to the hotel Port knocked on the door of the room opposite his. A male voice said: “Entrez,” and he walked in. Tunner had partially undressed and was unpacking his valises. He had not thought to unmake the bed, but Port did not notice this.

“What the hell!” said Port. “Don’t tell me they’ve given Kit the lousy back room I reserved for you.”

“I guess they must have. But thanks anyway.” Tunner laughed.

“You don’t mind changing, do you?”

“Why? Is the other room so bad? No, I don’t mind. It just seems like a lot of damned nonsense for just a day. No?”

“Maybe it’ll be more than a day. Anyway, I’d like Kit to be here across from me.”

“Of course. Of course. Better let her know too, though. She’s probably in the other room there in all innocence, thinking it’s the best in the hotel.”

“It’s not a bad room. It’s just on the back, that’s all. It was all they had yesterday when I reserved them.”

“Righto. We’ll get one of these monkeys to make the shift for us.”

At lunch the three were reunited. Kit was nervous; she talked steadily, mainly about post-war European politics. The food was bad, so that none of them was in a very pleasant humor.

“Europe has destroyed the whole world,” said Port.

“Should I be thankful to it and sorry for it? I hope the whole place gets wiped off the map.” He wanted to cut short the discussion, to get Kit aside and talk with her privately. Their long, rambling, supremely personal conversations always made him feel better. But she hoped particularly to avoid just such a tête-à-tête.

“Why don’t you extend your good wishes to all humanity, while you’re at it?” she demanded.

“Humanity?” cried Port. “What’s that? Who is humanity? I’ll tell you. Humanity is everyone but one’s self. So of what interest can it possibly be to anybody?”

Tunner said slowly: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I’d like to take issue with you on that. I’d say humanity is you, and that’s just what makes it interesting.”

“Good, Tunner!” cried Kit.

Port was annoyed. “What rot!” he snapped, “You’re never humanity; you’re only your own poor hopelessly isolated self.” Kit tried to interrupt. He raised his voice and went on. “I don’t have to justify my existence by any such primitive means. The fact that I breathe is my Justification. If humanity doesn’t consider that a justification, it can do what it likes to me. I’m not going to carry a passport to existence around with me, to prove I have the right to be here! I’m here! I’m in the world! But my world’s not humanity’s world. It’s the world as I see it.”