Paul Bowles - The Sheltering Sky

“I want to go tonight at eleven-thirty. Why?”

“The Lyles will drive you.”

“And then what?”

Port improvised. “They’ll be coming back here in a few days and going straight on to Bou Noura. They’ll take you down and we’ll be there expecting you. Lyle’s in my room now. Do you want to talk with him?”

“No.”

There was a silence. The electric light suddenly went off, then came on, a feeble orange worm inside the bulb, so that the room looked as if it were being viewed through heavy black glasses. Tunner glanced at his disordered bed and shrugged. “What time did you say?”

“Six-thirty they’re going.”

“Tell him I’ll be down at the door.” He frowned at Port, a faint suspicion in his face. “And you. Why aren’t you going.”

“They’ll only take one,” he lied, “and besides, I like it here.”

“You won’t once you’ve gotten into your bed,” said Tunner bitterly.

“You’ll probably have them in Messad too,” Port suggested. He felt safe now.

“I’ll take my chances on any hotel after this one.”

“We’ll look for you in a few days in Bou Noura. Don’t crash any harems.”

He shut the door behind him and went back to his room. Eric was still sitting in the same position on the bed, but he had lighted another cigarette,

“Mr. Tunner is delighted, and’ll meet you at six-thirty down at the door. Oh, damn! I forgot to ask him about the change for your thousand francs.” He hesitated, about to go back out.

“Don’t bother, please. He can change it for me tomorrow on the way, in case I need it changed.”

Port opened his mouth to say: “But I thought you wanted to pay me back the three hundred.” He thought better of it. Now that the thing was settled, it would be tragic to risk a slip-up, just for a few francs. So he smiled and said: “Surely. Well, I hope we’ll see you when you come back.”

“Yes, indeed,” smiled Eric, looking at the floor. He got up suddenly and went to the door. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Port locked the door after him and stood by it, musing. Eric’s behavior had impressed him as being unusually eccentric, yet he still suspected that it was explainable. Being sleepy, he turned off what remained of the light and got into bed. The dogs barked in chorus, far and nearby, but he was not molested by vermin.

That night he awoke sobbing. His being was a well a thousand miles deep; he rose from the lower regions with a sense of infinite sadness and repose, but with no memory of any dream save the faceless voice that had whispered: “The soul is the weariest part of the body.” The night was silent, save for a small wind that blew through the fig tree and moved the loops of wire hanging there. Back and forth they rubbed, creaking ever so slightly. After he had listened a while, he fell asleep.

Kit sat up in bed, her breakfast tray on her knees. The room was lighted by the reflection of the sun on the blue wall outside. Port had brought her her breakfast, having decided after observing their behavior that the servants were incapable of carrying out any orders whatever. She had eaten, and now was thinking of what he had told her (with ill-concealed relish) about having got rid of Tunner. Because she, too, had secretly wished him gone, it seemed to her a doubly ignoble thing to have done. But why? He had gone of his own free will. Then she realized that intuitively she already was aware of Port’s next move: he would contrive to miss connections with Tunner at Bou Noura. She could tell by his behavior, in spite of whatever he said, that he had no intention of meeting him there. That was why it seemed unkind. The deceit of the maneuver, if she were correct, was too bald; she determined not to be a party to it. “Even if Port runs out on him, I’ll stay and meet him.” She reached over and set the tray on the jackal skin; badly cured, the pelt gave off a sour odor. “Or am I only trying to go on punishing myself by seeing Tunner in front of me every day?” she wondered. “Would it be better really to get rid of him?” If only it were possible to dig behind the coming weeks and know! The clouds above the mountains had been a bad sign, but not in the way she had imagined. Instead of the wreck there had been another experience which perhaps would prove more disastrous in its results. As usual she was being saved up for something worse than she expected. But she did not believe it was to be Tunner, so that it really was not important how she behaved now with regard to him. The other omens indicated a horror more vast, and surely ineluctable. Each escape merely made it possible for her to advance into a region of heightened danger. “In that case,” she thought, “why not give in? And if I should give in, how would I behave? Exactly the same as now.” So that giving in or not giving in had nothing to do with her problem. She was pushing against her own existence. All she could hope to do was eat, sleep and cringe before her omens.

She spent most of the day in bed reading, getting dressed only to have lunch with Port down in the stinking patio under the arcade. Immediately on returning to her room she pulled her clothes off. The room had not been made up. She straightened the bed sheet and lay down again. The air was dry, hot, breathless. During the morning Port had been out in the town. She wondered how he could support the sun, even with his helmet; it made her ill to be in it even for five minutes. His was not a rugged body, yet he had wandered for hours in the oven-like streets and returned to eat heartily of the execrable food. And he had unearthed some Arab who expected them both to tea at six. He had impressed it upon her that on no account must they be late. It was typical of him to insist upon punctuality in the case of an anonymous shopkeeper in Aïn Krorfa, when with his friends and with her he behaved in a most cavalier fashion, arriving at his appointments indifferently anywhere from a half-hour to two hours after the specified time.

The Arab’s name was Abdeslam ben Hadj Chaoui; they called for him at his leather shop and waited for him to close and lock the front of it, He led them slowly through the twisting streets as the muezzin called, talking all the while in flowery French, and addressing himself principally to Kit.

“How happy I am! This is the first time I have the honor to invite a lady, and a gentleman, from New York. How I should like to go and see New York! What riches! Gold and silver everywhere! Le grand luxe pour tout le monde, ah! Not like Aïn Krorfa—sand in the streets, a few palms, hot sun, sadness always. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to invite a lady from New York. And a gentleman. New York! What a beautiful word!” They let him talk on.

The garden, like all the gardens in Aïn Krorfa, was really an orchard. Under the orange trees were small channels running with water fed from the well, which was built up on an artificial plateau at one end. The highest palms stood at the opposite end, near the wall that bordered the river-bed, and underneath one of these a great red and white wool rug was spread out. There they sat while a servant brought fire and the apparatus for making tea. The air was heavy with the odor of the spearmint that grew beside the water channels.

“We shall talk a little, while the water boils,” said their host, smiling beneficently from one to the other. “We plant the male palm here because it is more beautiful. In Bou Noura they think only of money. They plant the female. You know how they look? They are short and fat, they give many dates, but the dates are not even good, not in Bou Noura!” He laughed with quiet satisfaction. “Now you see how stupid the people are in Bou Noura!”

The wind blew and the palm trunks slowly moved with it, their lofty tops swaying slightly in a circular motion. A young man in a yellow turban approached, greeted them gravely, and seated himself a little in the background, at the edge of the rug. From under his burnous he brought forth an oud, whose strings he began to pluck casually, looking off under the trees all the while. Kit drank her tea in silence, smiling from time to time at M. Chaoui’s remarks. At one point she asked Port in English for a cigarette, but he frowned, and she understood that it would shock the others to see a lady smoke. And so she sat drinking the tea, feeling that what she saw and heard around her was not really happening, or if it were, she was not really there herself. The light was fading; little by little the pots of coals became the eyes’ natural focusing point. Still the lute music went on, a patterned background for the aimless talk; listening to its notes was like watching the smoke of a cigarette curl and fold in untroubled air. She had no desire to move, speak, or even think. But suddenly she was cold. She interrupted the conversation to say so. M. Chaoui was not pleased to hear it; he considered it a piece of incredible rudeness. He smiled, and said: “Ah, yes. Madame is blonde. The blondes are like the seguia when it has no water in it. The Arabs are like the seguias of Aïn Krorfa. The seguias of Aïn Krorfa are always full. We have flowers, fruit, trees.”