Let It Come Down

by Paul Bowles

  She emptied the glass at one gulp, and, leaving the girl staring after her in dismay, walked through the beaded curtain, feeling ahead of her with the tip of her cane, for the hallway was dark.

  “Madame!” cried the girl loudly from behind her. “Madame!”

  On the right a door opened. Madame Papaconstante, in an embroidered Chinese kimono, stepped into the hall. When she saw Eunice Goode she gave an involuntary start. Recovering, she smiled feebly and walked toward her uttering a series of voluble salutations which, as she was delivering them, did not prevent the visitor from noticing that her hostess was not only blocking the way to further progress down the hall, but was actually pushing her firmly back toward the bar. And standing in the bar she talked on.

  “What weather! What rain! I was caught in it at dinnertime. All my clothes soaking! You see.” She glanced downward at her attire. “I had to change. My dress is drying before the heater. Maria will iron it for me. Come and have a drink with me. I did not expect you tonight. C’est un plaisir inattendu. Ah, yes, madame.” She frowned furiously at the girl. “Sit down here,” said Madame Papaconstante, “and I shall serve you myself. Now, what are we having tonight?”

  When she saw Eunice finally seated at the little table she heaved a sigh of relief and rubbed her enormous flabby arms nervously, so that her bracelets clinked together. Eunice watched her discomfiture with grim enjoyment.

  “Listen to the rain,” said Madame Papaconstante, tilting her head toward the street. Still Eunice did not answer. “The fool,” she was thinking. “The poor old goddam fool.”

  “What are you having?” she said suddenly, with such violence that Madame Papaconstante looked into her eyes terrified, not quite sure she had not said something else. “Oh, me!” she laughed. “I shall take a machaquito as always.”

  “Sit down,” said Eunice. The girl brought the drinks, and Madame Papaconstante, after casting a brief worried glance toward the street, sank onto a chair opposite Eunice Goode.

  They had two drinks apiece while they talked vaguely about the weather. A beggar crawled through the door, moving forward by lifting himself on his hands, leaned against the wall, and with expressive gestures indicated his footless lower limbs, twisted like the stumps of a mangrove root. He was drenched with rain.

  “Make him go away!” cried Eunice. “I can’t bear to see deformed people. Give him something and get rid of him. I hate the sight of suffering.” Since Madame Papaconstante did not move, she felt in her handbag and tossed a note to the man, who thrust his body forward with a reptilian movement and seized it. She knew perfectly well that one did not give such large sums to beggars, but the Bar Lucifer was a place where the feeling of power that money gave her was augmented to an extent which made the getting rid of it an act of irresistible voluptuousness. Madame Papaconstante shuddered inwardly as she watched the price of ten drinks being snatched up by the clawlike hand. Vaguely she recognized Eunice’s gesture as one of hostility toward her; she cast a resentful glance at the strange woman sprawled out opposite her, thinking that God had made an error in allowing a person like that to have so much money.

  Up to her arrival Eunice had fully intended to ask in a straightforward fashion whether or not Hadija was there, but now such a course seemed inadvisable. If she were in the establishment, eventually she would have to come out through the front room, since the back of the building lay against the lower part of the Casbah ramparts and thus had no other exit.

  Without turning her head, Madame Papaconstante called casually in Spanish to the girl behind the bar. “Lolita! Do you mind bringing me my jersey? It’s in the pink room on the big chair.” And to Eunice in French: “With this rain and wind I feel cold.”

  “It’s a signal,” thought Eunice as the girl went beneath the looped-up beaded curtain. “She wants to warn Hadija so she won’t come out or talk loud.” “Do you have many rooms?” she said.

  “Four.” Madame Papaconstante shivered slightly. “Pink, blue, green and yellow.”

  “I adore yellow,” said Eunice unexpectedly. “They say it’s the colour of madness, but that doesn’t prevent me. It’s so brilliant and full of sunshine as a colour. Vous ne trouvez pas?”

  “I like all colours,” Madame Papaconstante said vaguely, looking toward the street with apprehension.

  The girl returned without the sweater. “It’s not there,” she announced. Madame Papaconstante looked at her meaningfully, but the girl’s face was blank. She returned to her position behind the bar. Two Spaniards in overalls ducked in from the street and ordered beer; evidently they had come from somewhere nearby, as their clothes were only slightly sprinkled with raindrops. Madame Papaconstante rose. “I’m going to look for it myself,” she announced. “One moment. Je reviens à l’instant.” As she waddled down the hallway, running her hand along the wall, she murmured aloud: “Qué mujer! Qué mujer!”

  More customers entered. When she came out, wearing over the kimono a huge purple sweater which had been stretched into utter formlessness, she looked a little happier. Without speaking to Eunice she went to the bar and joked with the men. It was going to be a fairly good night for business, after all. Perhaps if she ignored the foreign lady she would go away. The men, none of whom happened to have seen Eunice before, asked her in undertones who the strange woman was, what she was doing, sitting there alone in the bar. The question embarrassed Madame Papaconstante. “A tourist,” she said nonchalantly. “Here?” they exclaimed, astonished. “She’s a little crazy,” she said, by way of explanation. But she was unhappy about Eunice’s presence; she wished she would go away. Naïvely she decided to try and get her drunk, and not wishing to be re-engaged in conversation with her, sent the drink, a double straight gin, over to her table by Lolita.

  “Ahí tiene,” said Lolita, setting the glass down. Eunice leered at her, and lifting it, drained it in two swallows. Madame Papaconstante’s ingenuousness amused her greatly.

  A few minutes later Lolita appeared at the table with another drink. “I didn’t order this,” said Eunice, just to see what would happen.

  “A gift from Madame.”

  “Ah, de veras!” said Eunice. “Wait!” she cried sharply as the girl started away. “Tell Madame Papaconstante I want to speak to her.”

  Presently Madame Papaconstante was leaning over her table. “You wanted to see me, madame?”

  “Yes,” said Eunice, making an ostensible effort to focus her eyes on the fleshy countenance. “I’m not feeling well. I think I’ve had too much to drink.” Madame Papaconstante showed solicitude, but not very convincingly. “I think,” Eunice went on, “that you’ll have to take me to a room and let me lie down.”

  Madame Papaconstante started, “Oh, impossible, madame! It’s not allowed for ladies to be in the rooms.”

  “And what about the girls?”

  “Ah, oui, mais ça c’est naturel! They are my employees, madame.”

  C

  “As you like,” said Eunice carelessly, and she began to sing, softly at first, but with rapidly increasing stridency. Madame Papaconstante returned to the bar with misgivings.

  Eunice Goode sang on, always louder. She sang: “I Have To Pass Your House to Get to My House” and “Get Out of Town”. By the time she got to “I Have Always Been a Kind of Woman Hater” and “The Last Round-Up” the sound that came from her ample lungs was nothing short of a prolonged shriek.

  Noticing Madame Papaconstante’s expression of increasing apprehension, she said to herself with satisfaction: “I’ll fix the old bitch, once and for all.” She struggled to her feet, managing as she did so to upset not only her chair, but the table as well. Pieces of glass flew toward the feet of the men who stood at one end of the bar.

  “Aaah, madame, quand-même!” cried Madame Papaconstante in consternation. “Please! You are making a scandal. One does not make scandals in my bar. This is a respectable establishment. I can’t have the police coming to complain.”

  Eunice moved crookedly toward th
e bar and, smiling apologetically, leaned her arm on Madame Papaconstante’s cushion-like shoulder. “Je suis navrée,” she began hesitantly. “Je ne me sens pas bien. Ça ne va pas du tout. You must forgive me. I don’t know. Perhaps a good large glass of gin——”

  Madame Papaconstante looked around helplessly. The others had not understood. Then she thought: “Perhaps now she will leave,” and went behind the bar to pour it out herself. Eunice turned to the man beside her and with great dignity explained that she was not at all drunk, that she merely felt a little sick. The man did not reply.

  At the first sip of her drink she raised her head, looked at Madame Papaconstante with startled eyes, and put her hand to her forehead.

  “Quick! I’m ill! Where’s the toilet?”

  The men moved a little away from her. Madame Papaconstante seized her arm and pulled her through the doorway down the hall. At the far end she opened a door and pushed her into a foul-smelling closet, totally dark. Eunice groaned. “I shall bring a light,” said Madame Papaconstante, hurrying away. Eunice lit a match, flushed the toilet, made some more groaning sounds, and peered out into the corridor. It was empty. She stepped out swiftly and went into the next room, which was also dark. She lit another match, saw a couch against the wall. She lay down and waited. A minute or two later there were voices in the hallway. Presently someone opened the door. She lay still, breathing slowly, deeply. A flashlight was turned into her face. Hands touched her, tugged at her. She did not move.

  “No hay remedio,” said one of the girls.

  A few more half-hearted attempts were made to rouse her, and then the group withdrew and closed the door.

  •••••

  As he climbed behind Thami through the streets that were half stairways, Dyar felt his enthusiasm for their project rapidly diminishing. The wet wind circled down upon them from above, smelling of the sea. Occasionally it splashed them with rain, but mostly it merely blew. By the time they had turned into the little street that ran level, he was thinking of his room back at the Hotel de la Playa almost with longing. “Here,” said Thami.

  They walked into the bar. The first thing Dyar saw was Hadija standing in the back doorway. She was wearing a simple flannel dress that Eunice had bought her on the Boulevard Pasteur, and it fitted her. She had also learned not to make up so heavily, and even to do her hair up into a knot at the back of her neck, rather than let it stand out wildly in hopeless imitation of the American film stars. She looked intently at Dyar, who felt a slight shiver run down his spine.

  “By God, look at that!” he murmured to Thami.

  “You like her?”

  “I could use a little of it, all right.”

  A Spaniard had placed a portable radio on the bar; two of the girls bent over listening to faint guitar music behind a heavy curtain of static. Three men were having a serious drunken discussion at a table in the corner. Madame Papaconstante sat at the end of the bar, smoking listlessly. “Muy buenas,” she said to them, beaming widely, mistaking them in her sleepiness for Spaniards.

  Thami replied quietly without looking at her. Dyar went to the bar and ordered drinks, keeping his eye on Hadija, who when she saw his attention, looked beyond him to the street. Hearing English being spoken, Madame Papaconstante rose and approached the two, swaying a little more than usual.

  “Hello, boys,” she said, patting her hair with one hand while she pulled her sweater down over her abdomen with the other. Apart from figures and a few insulting epithets, these words were her entire English vocabulary.

  “Hello,” Dyar answered without enthusiasm. Then he went over to the door and, holding up his glass, said to Hadija: “Care for a drink?” But Hadija had learned several things during her short acquaintance with Eunice Goode, perhaps the most important of which was that the more difficult everything was made, the more money would be forthcoming when payment came due. If she had been the daughter of the English Consul and had been accosted by a Spanish fisherman in the middle of the Place de France she could not have stared more coldly. She moved across the room and stood near the door facing the street.

  Dyar made a wry grimace. “My mistake,” he called after her ruefully; his chagrin, however, was nothing compared to Madame Papaconstante’s indignation with Hadija. Her hands on her hips, she walked over to her and began to deliver a low-pitched but furious scolding.

  “She works here, doesn’t she?” he said to Thami. Thami nodded.

  “Watch,” Dyar went on, “the old madam’s giving her hell for being so snotty with the customers.” Thami did not understand entirely, but he smiled. They saw Hadija’s expression grow more sullen. Presently she ambled over to the bar and stood sulking near Dyar. He decided to try again.

  “No hard feelings?”

  She looked up at him insolently. “Hello, Jack,” she said, and turned her face away.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like strange men?”

  “Wan Coca-Cola.” She did not look at him again.

  “You don’t have to drink with me if you don’t want to, you know,” he said, trying to make his voice sound sympathetic. “If you’re tired, or something——”

  “How you feel?” she said. Madame Papaconstante was watching her from the end of the bar.

  She lifted her glass of Coca-Cola. “Down the hotch,” she said, and took a sip. She smiled faintly at him. He stood closer to her, so he could just feel her body alongside his. Then he turned slightly toward her, and moved in a bit more. She did not stir.

  “You always as crazy as this?” he asked her.

  “I not crazy,” she said evenly.

  They talked a while. Slowly he backed her against the bar; when he put his arm around her he thought she might push him away, but she did nothing. From her vantage-point Madame Papaconstante judged that the right moment for intervention had arrived; she lumbered down from her stool and went over to them. Thami was chatting with the Spaniard who owned the radio; when he saw Madame Papaconstante trying to talk to Dyar he turned toward them and became interpreter.

  “You want to go back with her?” he asked him.

  Dyar said he did.

  “Tell him fifty pesetas for the room,” said Madame Papaconstante hurriedly. The Spaniards were listening. They usually paid twenty-five. “And he gives the girl what he likes, afterwards.”

  Hadija was looking at the floor.

  •••••

  The room smelled of mildew. Eunice had been asleep, but now she was awake, and she noticed the smell. Certain rooms in the cellar of her grandmother’s house had smelled like that. She remembered the coolness and mystery of the enormous cellar on a quiet summer afternoon, the trunks, the shelves of empty mason jars and the stacks of old magazines. Her grandmother had been an orderly person. Each publication had been piled separately: Judge, The Smart Set, The Red Book, Everybody’s, Hearst’s International …. She sat up in the dark, tense, without knowing why. Then she did know why. She had heard Hadija’s voice outside the door. Now it said: “This room O.K.”; she heard a man grunt a reply. The door into the adjacent room was opened, and then closed.

  She stood up and began to walk back and forth in front of the couch, three steps one way and three steps the other. “I can’t bear it,” she thought. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her.” But it was just the sound of the words in her head; no violent images came to accompany the refrain. Crouching on the floor with her neck twisted at a painful angle, she managed to place her ear flush against the wall. And she listened. At first she heard nothing, and she thought the wall must be too thick to let the sound through. But then she heard a loud sigh. They were not saying anything, and she realized that when something was said, she would hear every word.

  A long time went by before this happened. Then Hadija said: “No.” Immediately the man complained: “What’s the matter with you?” In his voice Eunice recognized a fellow American; it was even worse than she had expected. There were sounds of movement on the couch, and again Hadija sa
id very firmly: “No.”

  “But, baby——” the man pleaded.

  After more shifting about, “No,” said the man halfheartedly, as if in faint protest. Eunice’s neck ached; she strained harder, pushing against the wall with all her strength. For a while she heard nothing. Then there was a long, shuddering groan of pleasure from the man. “As if he were dying,” thought Eunice, gritting her teeth. Now she told herself: “I’ll kill him,” and this time she had a satisfactory bloody vision, although her imaginary attack upon the man fell somewhat short of murder.

  Suddenly she had drawn her head back and was pounding on the wall with her fist. And she was calling out to Hadija in Spanish: “Go on! Haz lo que quieres! Sigue! Have a good time!” Her own knocking had startled her, and the sound of her voice astonished her even more; she would never have known it was hers. But now she had spoken; she caught her breath and listened. There was silence in the next room for a moment. The man said lazily: “What’s all that?” Hadija answered by whispering. “Quick! Give money!” She sounded agitated. “One other time I fix you up good. No like tonight. No here. Here no good. Listen, boy——” And here apparently she whispered directly into his ear, as if she knew from experience just how thin the walls were and how easily the sound carried. The man, who seemed to be in a state of profound lassitude, began nevertheless to grunt: “Huh? When? Where’s that?” between the lengthy inaudible explanations.

  “Okay?” said Hadija finally. “You come?”

  “But Sunday, right? Not Friday——” The last word was partially muffled, she supposed by Hadija’s hand.

  Painfully Eunice got to her feet. She sighed deeply and sat down on the edge of the couch in the dark. Everything she had suspected was perfectly true: Hadija had been working regularly at the Bar Lucifer; probably she had often come to her fresh from the embrace of a Spanish labourer or shopkeeper. The arrangement with Madame Papaconstante was clearly a farce. Everyone had been lying to her. Yet instead of resentment she felt only a dimly satisfying pain—perhaps because she had found it all out at first-hand and through her own efforts. It was an old story to her and she did not mind. All she wanted now was to be alone with Hadija. She would not even discuss the evening with her. “The poor girl,” she thought. “I don’t give her enough to live on. She’s forced to come here.” She began to consider places where she might take her to get her away from the harmful environment, places where they could be alone, unmolested by prying servants and disapproving or amused acquaintances. Sospel, perhaps, or Caparica; somewhere away from Arabs and Spaniards, where she would have the pleasure of feeling that Hadija was wholly dependent upon her.