Let It Come Down

by Paul Bowles

  “Well, here we are,” he said with false heartiness, turning to Hadija.

  She smiled as usual and carefully walked to the corner where the leaves covered the stone floor.

  “Good here,” she said, motioning to Dyar. She sat down, her legs akimbo, leaning against the wall of the cave. He had been about to light a cigarette to hide his confusion. Instead, he reached her in three strides, threw himself full length on the crackling leaves and twigs, and reached up to pull her face down to his. She cried out in surprise, lost her balance. Shrieking with laughter, she fell across him heavily. Even as she was still laughing she was deftly unbuttoning his shirt, unfastening the buckle of his belt. He rolled over and held her in a long embrace, expecting to feel her body hold itself rigid for a moment, and then slowly soften in the pleasure of surrender. But things did not happen like that. There was no surrender because there was no resistance. She accepted his embrace, returning his pressure with one arm, while the other went on loosening his garments, attempting to slip them off. He pulled away, sat up.

  “I’ll fix that,” he said, a little grimly, and straightway pulled off the remainder of his clothing.

  “There. How’s that?” His voice sounded unnatural; he was thinking: “If she’s going to act like a whore I’ll damned well treat her like one.”

  “Now, you too,” he said. And using both hands he began to pull her dress off over her head. She uttered a cry and struggled to a sitting position.

  “No! No!”

  He looked at her. It was disconcerting to be sitting there naked in front of this wild-eyed Arab girl pretending to defend her honour.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded.

  Her face softened; she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

  “You lie down,” she said smiling. “Leave dress alone.”

  As he obeyed, perplexed, she added: “You one bad boy, but I fix you up good.” And indeed, in another minute she made it clear that she was by no means attempting to protect her virtue; she merely had no intention of removing her dress. At the same time she appeared to find it perfectly natural that Dyar should be unclothed; furthermore she took obvious pleasure in running her hands over his body, patting and pinching his flesh. Yet he had the conviction that notwithstanding her occasional murmurs of endearment, for her it was all a game. She was unattainable even in the profoundest intimacy. “Still, here it is. I’ve got her,” he thought. “What more did I expect?” Outside the cave beneath the cliffs, the sea pounded against the rocks; the air, even up here, was full of fine salt mist.

  “The Garden of Hesperides. The golden apple,” he thought, running his tongue over her smooth, fine teeth. Soon it was as if he were floating slightly above the water, out there in the strait, the wind caressing his face. The sound of the waves receded further and further. They slept.

  Dyar’s first thought on waking was that twilight had come. He raised himself a bit and surveyed Hadija: she was sleeping quietly, one hand under her cheek and the other resting on his arm. Like this she looked incredibly young—not more than twelve. Overcome with a great tenderness, he reached out, smoothed her forehead, and let his hand run softly over her hair. She opened her eyes. The bland, sweet smile appeared; was it an expression of friendship or a meaningless grimace? Reaching around among the branches and leaves, he assembled his clothing, leapt up and went outside the cave to dress. The sky was more heavily covered, the sun had completely disappeared, the light was muffled. A gull balanced itself in the wind before him, turning its head from time to time to look at the rocks below. Hadija called to him. When he went in she had moved to the centre of the cave where she sat taking the parcels of food out of the basket.

  “No radio?” she said. “Little radio?”

  “No.”

  “One American lady I know she got one little radio. Little. Take it in beach. Take it in room. Take it on café in Zoco Chico. You hear music every time.”

  “I hate ’em. I wouldn’t like it here. I like the waves better. Hear them?” He pointed outside and listened a moment. She listened, too, and appeared to be considering the sound she heard. Presently she nodded her head and said: “Good music.”

  “Couldn’t be better,” he answered, pleased that she understood so well.

  “That’s the beautiful. Come from God.” She pointed casually upward. He was a little embarrassed, as he always was when a serious reference to God was made. Now he was not sure whether she had really understood him or not.

  “Well, let’s eat.” He bit into a sandwich.

  “Bismil’lah,” said Hadija, doing likewise.

  “What’s that mean? Good appetite?”

  “It mean we eat for God.”

  “Oh.”

  “You say.”

  She repeated it several times and made him say it until he had pronounced it to her satisfaction. Then they ate.

  After lunch he went out and climbed among the rocks for a few minutes. It pleased him to see that there was not a soul in sight in either direction along the shore; he had half expected the gang of youths to follow them and perhaps continue their antics below on the rocks. But there was no one. When he returned to the cave he sat down outside it and called to Hadija.

  “Come on out and sit here. It’s too dark inside.”

  She obeyed. In a moment they were lying locked in each other’s arms. When she complained of the cold rock beneath her, he got his jacket from inside the cave, put it under her, and lay down again.

  “D’you know what I want?” he said, looking at the tiny black knob his head made against the sky in her eyes.

  “You want?”

  “Yes. D’you know what I want? I want to live with you. All the time. So we can be like this every night, every morning. You know? You understand?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I’ll get you a little room, a good room. You live in it and I’ll come and see you every day. Would you like that?”

  “I come every day?”

  “No!” He moved one arm out from under her and gestured, pointing. “I pay for the room. You live in it. I come and see you every night. Yes.”

  She smiled. “All right.” It was as if he had said: “What do you say to starting back in about an hour?” As this occurred to him, he did say: “Want to start back pretty soon?”

  “O.K.”

  His heart sank a little. He was right: it was the same voice, the same smile. He sighed. Still, she had agreed.

  “But you promise?”

  “What?”

  “You’ll live in the room?”

  “Oh, yes.” She took his head between her hands and kissed him on each cheek. “You come today?”

  “Come where? The room?” He was about to begin again, to explain that he had not yet rented the room for her.

  “No. No, my room. Miss Goode. You come. I take you. She very good friend. She got room Hotel Metropole.”

  “No. I don’t want to go there. What would I want to do that for? You go if you want.”

  “She tell me you bring you drink whisky.”

  Dyar laughed. “I don’t think she said that, Hadija.”

  “Sure she say that.”

  “She’s never heard of me and I’ve never heard of her. Who is she, anyway?”

  “She got one little radio. I said you before. You know. Miss Goode. She got room Hotel Metropole. You come. I take you.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  Hadija tried to sit up. She looked very much upset. “I crazy? You crazy! You think I’m lie?” She pushed him in the chest with all her might, struggling to rise.

  He was a little alarmed. To placate her he said: “I’ll come! I’ll come! Don’t get so excited, for God’s sake! What’s the matter with you? If you want me to stop by and see her, I’ll stop by and see her. I don’t care.”

  Hadija relaxed somewhat, but she still did not look pleased.

  “I no care. She tell me you bring you drink whisky. You like whisky?”

  “Yes, yes
. Sure. Now you lie back down there. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “What?” she asked ingenuously, settling back, her great eyes wide.

  “This.” He kissed her. “I love you.” His open lips touched hers all the way around as he said the words.

  Hadija did not seem surprised to hear it. “Again?” she said, smiling.

  IX

  On Saturday Hadija had told Eunice Goode that she would be out all the next day with a friend. After a certain amount of questioning Eunice had got an admission that it was the American gentleman and that they were going on a picnic. She did not think it wise to express any objections. For one thing, Hadija had already made it clear that she did not by any means consider this sojourn at the Hotel Metropole a permanent arrangement, and that she would leave any time she felt like it. (What she hoped to be given eventually was an apartment of her own on the Boulevard.) And then, Eunice realized that in such a situation she was incapable herself of offering a quiet argument; she would straightway be precipitated into a violent scene. With her sometimes painfully acute objective sense she knew she would be the loser in any such quarrel; she was supremely conscious of being a comic figure. She knew which of her attributes operated against her, and they were several. Her voice, while pleasant and easily modulated when used with low dynamics, became a thin screech as soon as it was called upon to be more than mildly expressive. Her torso bulged in rather the same fashion as that of a portly old gentleman, her arms and legs were gigantic and her hypersensitive skin was always irritated and purplish so that her face often looked as though she had just finished climbing to the summit of a mountain. She told herself she did not mind being a comic character; she accepted the fact and used it to insulate herself from the too-near, ever-threatening world. Dressed in a manner which accentuated the deficiencies of her body, wherever she went she was a thing, rather than a person; she was determined to enjoy to the full the benefits of that exemption.

  From the first she had been an object of interest in the streets of Tangier; now, appearing regularly in public with Hadija, whom a great number of the lower-class native inhabitants knew and the rest swiftly learned about, she became a full-fledged legendary figure in the Zoco Chico. The Arabs in the cafés there were delighted: it was a new variation on human behaviour.

  In these four days Hadija had forced her to lead a much more active life than was her wont, dragging her to all the bars and nightclubs the girl had always wanted to see. Eunice had met several people she knew at these places. To them she had presented Hadija as Miss Kumari from Nicosia. She thought it unlikely that they would come across anyone who spoke modern Greek, and even if they did, she planned to explain that the dialect of Cyprus was altogether a different language.

  Notwithstanding her outward coolness, Eunice was greatly disturbed when Hadija announced her projected outing. She lay back against the pillows watching the harbour as usual, saying to herself very firmly that action must be taken. It could not be against Hadija, so it must be against the American. (Since she loathed travel, and Madame Papaconstante had so far given no sign that she was going to try and get Hadija back, she had renounced the idea of spiriting the girl away to Europe.) Going on from there, it was clear that one had to know what one was fighting. She thought of dwelling on the idea that the man had no money, but then she decided that there was no line of reasoning which would carry any weight with Hadija, and she had best keep still. And for all she knew, perhaps he did have money, although she had reconsidered the overheard conversation at the Bar Lucifer and decided that the man’s reluctance to part with his money had not been due to viciousness. And he had had to borrow the extra sum from his friend. It seemed reasonable to think that he was not too well off. She hoped that was the case; it could be strongly in her favour. Poverty in other people generally was.

  “I know your friend,” she said casually.

  “You know?” Hadija was surprised.

  “Oh, yes. I’ve met him.”

  “Where?” asked Hadija sceptically.

  “Oh, various places. At the Taylor’s on the Marshan, at the Sphinx Club once, and I think at the Estrada’s house on the mountain. He’s very nice.”

  Hadija was noncommittal. “O.K.”

  “If you want, you can ask him back here when you’ve finished your picnic.”

  “He no like come here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Eunice meditatively. “He might easily. I imagine he’d like a drink. Americans do, you know. I thought you might like to invite him, that’s all.”

  Hadija thought about it. The idea appealed to her because she considered the Hotel Metropole magnificent and luxurious, and she was tempted to let him see in what style she was living. She had set out for the Parque Espinel with that intention, but on the walk back with him it occurred to her (for the first time) that since the American seemed to be fully as possessive about her as Eunice Goode, he might not relish the discovery that he was sharing her with someone else. So she hastened to explain that Miss Goode was ill most of the time and that she often visited her. The possessiveness he manifested toward her had already prompted her to make the attempt to get him to buy her a certain wrist-watch she greatly admired. Eunice had definitely refused to get it for her because it was a man’s watch—an oversize gold chronograph with calendar and phases of the moon thrown in. Eunice was eminently careful to see that the girl looked respectable and properly feminine. Hadija mentioned the watch twice on the way to the Metropole; the American merely smiled and said: “We’ll see. Keep your shirt on, will you?” She did not completely understand, but at least he had not said no.

  When Dyar came into the room Eunice Goode looked at him and said to herself that even as a girl she would not have found him attractive. She had liked imposing men, such as her father had been. This one was not at all distinguished in appearance. He did not look like an actor or a statesman or an artist, nor yet like a workman, a businessman or an athlete. For some reason she thought he looked rather like a wire-haired terrier—alert, eager, suggestible. The sort of male, she reflected with a stab of anger, who can lead girls around by the nose, without even being domineering, the sort whose maleness is unnoticeable and yet so thick it becomes cloying as honey, the sort that makes no effort and is thereby doubly dangerous. Except that being accustomed to an ambiance of feminine adulation makes them as vulnerable, as easily crushed, as spoiled children are. You let them think that you too are taken in by their charm, you entice them further and further out on that rotten limb. Then you jerk out the support and let them fall.

  Yet in her mad inner scramble to be exceptionally gracious, Eunice got off to rather a poor start. She had been away from most people for so long that she forgot there are many who actually listen to the words spoken, and for whom even mere polite conversation is a means of conveying specific ideas. She had planned the opening sentences with the purpose of keeping Hadija from discovering that this was her first meeting with the American gentleman. Wearing an old yellow satin négligée trimmed with mink (which Hadija had never seen before and which she immediately determined to have for herself); and being well covered by the bedclothes she looked like any other stout lady sitting up in bed.

  “This is a belated but welcome meeting!” she cried.

  “How do you do, Miss Goode.” Dyar stood in the doorway. Hadija pulled him gently forward and shut the door. He stepped to the bed and took the proffered hand.

  “I knew your mother in Taormina,” said Eunice. “She was a delightful woman. Hadija, would you call downstairs and ask for a large bowl of ice and half a dozen bottles of Perrier? The whisky’s in the bathroom on the shelf. There are cigarettes in that big box there. Draw that chair a little nearer.”

  Dyar looked puzzled. “Where?”

  “What?” she said pleasantly.

  “Where did you say you knew my mother?” It had not yet occurred to him that Eunice Goode did not know his name.

  “In Taormina,” she said, looking at him
blandly. “Or was it Juan-les-Pins?”

  “It couldn’t have been,” Dyar said, sitting down. “My mother’s never been in Europe at all.”

  “Really?” She meant it to sound casual, but it sounded acid. To her such stubborn insistence on exactitude was sheer boorishness. But there was no time for showing him she disapproved of his behaviour, even if she had wanted to. Hadija was telephoning. Quickly she said: “Wasn’t your mother Mrs. Hambleton Mills? I thought that was what Hadija said.”

  “What?” cried Dyar, making a face indicating that he was all at sea. “Somebody’s all mixed up. My name is Dyar. D,Y,A,R. It doesn’t sound much like Mills to me.” Then he laughed good-naturedly, and she joined in, just enough, she thought, to show that she bore him no ill-will for his rudeness.

  “Well, now we have that settled,” she said. She had his name; Hadija believed they had known each other before. She pressed on, to get as many essentials as possible while Hadija was still chattering in Spanish to the barman.

  “Passing through on a winter holiday, or are you staying a while?”

  “Holiday? Nothing like it. I’m staying a while. I’m working here.”

  She had expected that. “Oh, really? Where?”

  He told her. “I can’t quite place it,” she said, shutting her eyes as if she were trying.

  Hadija put the receiver on the hook and brought a bottle of whisky from the bathroom. Suddenly Dyar became conscious of the fact that preparations were being made for the serving of drinks. He half rose from his chair, and sat down again on its edge.

  “Look, I can’t stay. I didn’t realize—I’m sorry——”

  “Can’t stay?” echoed Eunice, faintly dismayed.

  “I have an appointment at my hotel. I’ve got to get back. Hadija told me you were sick, so I just thought I’d stop by. She said you wanted me to come.”