The Sheltering Sky / Let It Come Down / the Spider's House

by Paul Bowles

  “But I do hope to get eventually to El Ga’a,” he went on, in spite of himself.

  “Ah, El Ga’a. You will find it very impressive, very picturesque, and very hot. It was my first Saharan post. I know every alley. It’s a vast city, perfectly flat, not too dirty, but rather dark because the streets are built through the houses, like tunnels. Quite safe. You and your wife can wander wherever you please. It’s the last town of any size this side of the Soudan. And that’s a great distance away, the Soudan. Oh, là, là!”

  “I suppose there’s a hotel in El Ga’a?”

  “Hotel? A kind of hotel,” laughed the lieutenant. “You will find rooms with beds in them, and it may be clean. It is not so dirty in the Sahara as people say. The sun is a great purifier. With even a minimum of hygiene the people could be healthy here. But of course there is not that minimum. Unfortunately for us, d’ailleurs.”

  “No. Yes, unfortunately,” said Port. He could not bring himself back to the room and the conversation. He had just realized that the bus left that very night, and there would not be another for a week. Tunner would be there by then. With that realization, his decision seemed to have come automatically. Certainly he was not conscious of having made it, but a moment later he relaxed and began to question the lieutenant on the details of his daily life and work in Bou Noura. The lieutenant looked pleased; one by one the inevitable anecdotes of the colonist came out, all having to do with the juxtaposition, sometimes tragic, but usually ludicrous, of the two incongruous and incompatible cultures. Finally Port rose. “It’s too bad,” he said with a note of sincerity in his voice, “that I shan’t be staying here longer.”

  “But you will be here several days more. I count absolutely on seeing you and Madame before your departure. In another two or three days I shall be completely well. Ahmed will let you know when and call for you. So, I shall notify Messad to give your passport to Monsieur Tunner.” He rose, extended his hand; Port went out.

  He walked through the little garden planted with stunted palms, and out the gate into the dusty road. The sun had set, and the sky was rapidly cooling. He stood still a moment looking upward, almost expecting to hear the sky crack as the nocturnal chill pressed against it from outside. Behind him in the nomad encampment the dogs barked in chorus. He began to walk quickly, to be out of their hearing as soon as he could. The coffee had accelerated his pulse to an unusual degree, or else it was his nervousness at the thought of missing the bus to El Ga’a. Entering the town gate, he turned immediately to the left and went down the empty street to the offices of the Transports Généraux.

  The office was stuffy, without light. In the dimness behind the counter on a pile of burlap sacks sat an Arab, half asleep. Immediately Port said: “What time does the bus leave for El Ga’a?”

  “Eight o’clock, monsieur.”

  “Are there seats still?”

  “Oh, no. Three days ago they were all sold.”

  “Ah, mon dieu!” cried Port; his entrails seemed to grow heavier. He gripped the counter.

  “Are you sick?” said the Arab, looking at him, and his face showed a little interest.

  “Sick,” thought Port. And he said: “No, but my wife is very sick. She must get to El Ga’a by tomorrow.” He watched the Arab’s face closely, to see if he were capable of believing such an obvious lie. Apparently here it was as logical for an ailing person to go away from civilization and medical care as to go in the direction of it, for the Arab’s expression slowly changed to one of understanding and sympathy. Still, he raised his hands in a gesture that denoted his inability to help.

  But already Port had pulled out a thousand-franc note and spread it on the counter with determination.

  “You will have to give us two seats tonight,” he said firmly. “This is for you. You persuade someone to go next week.” Out of courtesy he did not suggest that the persuasion be used on two natives, although he knew that would be the case. “How much is the passage to El Ga’a?” He drew out more money.

  The Arab rose to his feet and stood scratching his turban deliberately. “Four hundred and fifty francs each,” he answered, “but I don’t know—”

  Port laid another twelve hundred francs before him and said: “That’s nine hundred. And twelve hundred and fifty for you, after you take out for the tickets.” He saw that the man’s decision had been made. “I shall bring the lady at eight o’clock.”

  “Half-past seven,” said the Arab, “for the luggage.”

  Back at the pension, in his excitement, he rushed into Kit’s room without knocking. She was dressing, and cried with indignation: “Really, have you lost your mind?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “Only I hope you can travel in that dress.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have seats on the bus tonight at eight.”

  “Oh, no! Oh, my God! For where? El Ga’a?” He nodded and there was a silence. “Oh, well,” she said finally. “It’s all the same to me. You know what you want. But it’s six now. All these grips—”

  “I’ll help you.” There was a febrile eagerness in his manner now that she could not help observing. She watched him pulling her clothes out of the wardrobe and sliding them off the hangers with staccato gestures; his behavior struck her as curious, but she said nothing. When he had done all he could in her room he went into his own, where he packed his valises in ten minutes and dragged them out into the corridor himself. Then he ran downstairs and she heard him talking excitedly to the boys. At quarter of seven they sat down to their dinner. In no time he had finished his soup.

  “Don’t eat so fast. You’ll have indigestion,” Kit warned him.

  “We’ve got to be at the bus office at seven-thirty,” he said, clapping his hands for the next course.

  “We’ll make it, or they’ll wait for us.”

  “No, no. There’ll be trouble about the seats.”

  While they were still eating their cornes de gazelle he demanded the hotel bill and paid it.

  “Did you see Lieutenant d’Armagnac?” she asked, as he was waiting for his change.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “But no passport?”

  “Not yet,” he said, adding: “Oh, I don’t think they’ll ever find it. How could you expect them to? It’s probably been sent off up to Algiers or Tunis by now.”

  “I still think you should have wired the consul from here.”

  “I can send a letter from El Ga’a by the same bus we go down in, when it makes the return trip. It’ll only be two or three days later.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Kit.

  “Why?” he asked innocently.

  “I don’t understand anything. Your sudden indifference. Even this morning you were in the most awful state about not having any passport. Anyone would have thought you couldn’t live another day without it. And now another few days make no difference. You will admit there’s no connection?”

  “You will admit they don’t make much difference?”

  “I will not. They might easily. And that’s not my point. Not at all,” she said, “and you know it.”

  “The main point right now is that we catch the bus.” He jumped up and ran out to where Abdelkader was still trying to make change for him. Kit followed a moment later. By the flare of the tiny carbide lamps that swung on long wires from the ceiling the boys were bringing down the bags. It was a procession down the staircase; there were six boys, all laden with luggage. A small army of village gamins had gathered outside the door in the dark, with the tacit hope of being allowed to carry something along to the bus terminal.

  Abdelkader was saying: “I hope you will like El Ga’a.”

  “Yes, yes,” Port answered, putting his change into various pockets. “I hope I did not upset you too much with my troubles.”

  Abdelkader looked away. “Ah, that,” he said. “It is better not to speak of it.” The apology was too offhand; he could not accept it.

  The night wind had risen. Windows and shu
tters were banging upstairs. The lamps rocked back and forth, sputtering.

  “Perhaps we shall see you on our return trip,” insisted Port.

  Abdelkader should have answered: “Incha’allah.” He merely looked at Port, sadly but with understanding. For a moment it seemed that he was about to say something; then he turned his head away. “Perhaps,” he said finally, and when he turned back his lips were fixed in a smile—a smile that Port felt was not directed at him, did not even show consciousness of him. They shook hands and he hurried over to Kit, standing in the doorway carefully making up under the moving light of the lamp, while the curious young faces outside were upturned, following each movement of her fingers as she applied the lipstick.

  “Come on!” he cried. “There’s no time for that.”

  “I’m all done,” she said, swinging around so he should not jostle her as she completed her handiwork. She dropped her lipstick into her bag and snapped it shut.

  They went out. The road to the bus station was dark; the new moon gave no light. Behind them a few of the village urchins still straggled hopefully, most of them having given up when they saw the entire staff of the pension’s boys accompanying the travelers.

  “Too bad it’s windy,” said Port. “That means dust.”

  Kit was indifferent to the dust. She did not answer. But she noticed the unusual inflection in his speaking: he was unaccountably exhilarated.

  “I only hope there are no mountains to cross,” she said to herself, wishing again, but more fervently now, that they had gone to Italy, or any small country with boundaries, where the villages had churches and one went to the station in a taxi or a carriage, and could travel by daylight. And where one was not inevitably on display every time one stirred out of the hotel.

  “Oh, my God, I forgot!” Port cried. “You’re a very sick woman.” And he explained how he had got the seats. “We’re almost there. Let me put my arm around your waist. You walk as though you had a pain. Shuffle a little.”

  “This is ridiculous,” she said crossly. “What’ll our boys think?”

  “They’re too busy. You’ve turned your ankle. Come on. Drag a bit. Nothing simpler.” He pulled her against him as they walked along.

  “And what about the people whose seats we’re usurping?”

  “What’s a week to them? Time doesn’t exist for them.”

  The bus was there, surrounded by shouting men and boys. The two went into the office, Kit walking with a certain real difficulty caused by the force with which Port was pressing her toward him. “You’re hurting me. Let up a little,” she whispered. But he continued to constrict her waist tightly, and they arrived at the counter. The Arab who had sold him the tickets said: “You have numbers twenty-two and twenty-three. Get in and take your seats quickly. The others don’t want to give them up.”

  The seats were near the back of the bus. They looked at each other in dismay; it was the first time they had not sat in front with the driver.

  “Do you think you can stand it?” he asked her.

  “If you can,” she said.

  And as he saw an elderly man with a gray beard and a high yellow turban looking in through the window with what seemed to him a reproachful expression, he said: “Please lie back and be fatigued, will you? You’ve got to carry this off to the end.”

  “I hate deceit,” she said with great feeling. Then suddenly she shut her eyes and looked quite ill. She was thinking of Tunner. In spite of the firm resolution she had made in Aïn Krorfa to stay behind and meet him according to their agreement, she was letting Port spirit her off to El Ga’a without even leaving a note of explanation. Now that it was too late to change the pattern of her behavior, suddenly it seemed incredible to her that she had allowed herself to do such a thing. But a second later she said to herself that if this was an unpardonable act of deceit toward Tunner, how much graver was the deception she still practiced with Port in not telling him of her infidelity. Immediately she felt fully justified in leaving; nothing Port asked of her could be refused at this point. She let her head fall forward contritely.

  “That’s right,” said Port encouragingly, pinching her arm. He scrambled over the bundles that had just been piled into the aisle and got out to see that all the luggage was on top. When he got back in, Kit was still in the same attitude.

  There were no difficulties. As the motor started up, Port glanced out and saw the old man standing beside a younger one. They were both close to the windows, looking wistfully in. “Like two children,” he thought, “who aren’t being allowed to go on a picnic with the family.”

  When they started to move, Kit sat up straight and began to whistle. Port nudged her uneasily.

  “It’s all over,” she said. “You don’t think I’m going to go on playing sick all the way, I hope? Besides, you’re mad. No one’s paying the slightest attention to us.” This was true. The bus was full of lively conversation; their presence seemed quite unnoticed.

  The road was bad almost immediately. At each bump Port slid down lower in his seat. Noticing that he made no effort to avoid slipping more, Kit said at length: “Where are you going? On to the floor?” When he answered, he said only: “What?” and his voice sounded so strange that she turned sharply and tried to see his face. The light was too dim. She could not tell what expression was there.

  “Are you asleep?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “Is anything wrong? Are you cold? Why don’t you spread your coat over you?”

  This time he did not answer.

  “Freeze, then,” she said, looking out at the thin moon, low in the sky.

  Some time later the bus began a slow, laborious ascent. The fumes from the exhaust grew heavy and acrid; this, combined with the intense noise of the grinding motor and the constantly increasing cold, served to jar Kit from the stupor into which she had sunk. Wide awake, she looked around the indistinct interior of the bus. The occupants all appeared to be asleep; they were resting at unlikely angles, completely rolled in their burnouses, so that not even a finger or a nose was visible. A slight movement beside her made her look down at Port, who had slid so low in his seat that he now was resting on the middle of his spine. She decided to make him sit up, and tapped him vigorously on the shoulder. His only reply was a slight moan.

  “Sit up,” she said, tapping again. “You’ll ruin your back.”

  This time he groaned: “Oh-h-h!”

  “Port, for heaven’s sake, sit up,” she said nervously. She began to tug at his head, hoping to rouse him enough to start him into making some effort himself.

  “Oh, God!” he said, and he slowly wormed his way backward up onto the seat. “Oh, God!” he repeated when he was sitting up finally. Now that his head was near her, she realized that his teeth were chattering.

  “You’ve got a chill!” she said furiously, although she was furious with herself rather than with him. “I told you to cover up, and you just sat there like an idiot!”

  He made no reply, merely sat quite still, his head bent forward and bouncing up and down against his chest with the pitching of the bus. She reached over and pulled at his coat, managing little by little to extricate it from under him where he had thrown it on the seat. Then she spread it over him, tucking it down at the sides with a few petulant gestures. On the surface of her mind, in words, she was thinking: “Typical of him, to be dead to the world, when I’m wide awake and bored.” But the formation of the words was a screen to hide the fear beneath—the fear that he might be really ill. She looked out at the windswept emptiness. The new moon had slipped behind the earth’s sharp edge. Here in the desert, even more than at sea, she had the impression that she was on the top of a great table, that the horizon was the brink of space. She imagined a cube-shaped planet somewhere above the earth, between it and the moon, to which somehow they had been transported. The light would be hard and unreal as it was here, the air would be of the same taut dryness, the contours of the landscape would lack the comforting terre
strial curves, just as they did all through this vast region. And the silence would be of the ultimate degree, leaving room only for the sound of the air as it moved past. She touched the windowpane; it was ice cold. The bus bumped and swayed as it continued upward across the plateau.

  Chapter XXI

  IT WAS A LONG NIGHT. They came to a bordj built into the side of a cliff. The overhead light was turned on. The young Arab just in front of Kit, turning around and smiling at her as he lowered the hood of his burnous, pointed at the earth several times and said: “Hassi Inifel!”

  “Merci,” she said, and smiled back. She felt like getting out, and turned to Port. He was doubled up under his coat; his face looked flushed.

  “Port,” she began, and was surprised to hear him answer immediately. “Yes?” His voice sounded wide awake.

  “Let’s get out and have something hot. You’ve slept for hours.”

  Slowly he sat up. “I haven’t slept at all, if you want to know.”

  She did not believe him. “I see,” she said. “Well, do you want to go inside? I’m going.”

  “If I can. I feel terrible. I think I have grippe or something.”

  “Oh, nonsense! How could you? You probably have indigestion from eating dinner so fast.”

  “You go on in. I’ll feel better not moving.”

  She climbed out and stood a moment on the rocks in the wind, taking deep breaths. Dawn was nowhere in sight.

  In one of the rooms near the entrance of the bordj there were men singing together and clapping their hands quickly in complex rhythm. She found coffee in a smaller room nearby, and sat down on the floor, warming her hands over the clay vessel of coals. “He can’t get sick here,” she thought. “Neither of us can.” There was nothing to do but refuse to be sick, once one was this far away from the world. She went back out and looked through the windows of the bus. Most of the passengers had remained asleep, wrapped in their burnouses. She found Port, and tapped on the glass. “Port!” she called. “Hot coffee!” He did not stir.