by Paul Bowles
They stood in the doorway being spattered by the blowing rain.
“Well, thank you for a very good lunch,” Dyar said. He wished he were never going to have to see her again.
“You see that high building there?” She pointed to the end of the short street in front of them. He saw a large white modern apartment house. “Next door to that on the r-r-right, a small building, gr-r-rey, four floors high. This is my home. Top floor, number for-r-rty-five. We wait for you tomorrow night, eight. Now I r-r-run, not to get wet too much. Goodbye.”
They shook hands and she hurried across the street. He watched her for a moment as she walked quickly between the row of unfinished buildings and the line of small transplanted palm trees that never would grow larger. Then he sighed, and turned down the hill to the Boulevard; it led to the Hotel de la Playa. There was practically no one in the rainy streets, and the shops were closed because it was not yet four. But on the way he passed the Banco Salvador Hassan e Hijos. It was open. He went in. In the vestibule a bearded Arab sitting on a leather pouf saluted him as he passed. The place was new, shining with marble and chromium. It was also very empty and looked quite unused. One young man stood behind a counter writing. Dyar walked over to him and handed him the cheque, saying: “I want to open an account.” The young man glanced at the cheque and without looking at him handed him a fountain-pen.
“Sign, please,” he said. Dyar endorsed it and said he would like to withdraw a hundred dollars in cash.
“Sit down, please,” said the young man. He pushed a button and a second later an enormous fluorescent lighting fixture in the centre of the ceiling flickered on. It took about five minutes to make out the necessary papers. Then the young man called him over to the counter and handed him a cheque-book and five thousand two hundred pesetas, and showed him a white card with his balance written on it. Dyar read it aloud, his voice echoing in the large, bare room. “Three hundred and ninety-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. What’s the twenty-five cents taken off for?”
“Cheque-book,” said the young man imperturbably, still not looking at him.
“Thanks.” He went to the door and asked the Arab to get him a taxi. Sitting inside it, watching the empty wet streets go past, he thought he felt a little better, but he was not sure. At least he was out of the rain.
When he got to the hotel he asked at the desk to have a drink sent up to his room, but was told that the barman did not come in until six in the evening. He went up to the damp room and stood a while at the window, fingering the dirty curtain, staring out at the cold deserted beach so wet that it mirrored the sky. He took out the money and looked at it; it seemed like a lot, and five thousand two hundred pesetas could certainly buy a good deal more than a hundred dollars. Still, it did not give him the pleasure he wanted from it. The feeling of unreality was too strong in him, all around him. Sharp as a toothache, definite as the smell of ammonia, yet impalpable, unlocatable, a great smear across the lens of his consciousness. And the blurred perceptions that resulted from it produced a sensation of vertigo. He sat down in the armchair and lit a cigarette. The taste of it sickened him; he threw it into the corner and watched the smoke rise slowly along the wall until it came opposite the windowpane, when it rushed inward with the draught.
He was not thinking, but words came into his mind; they all formed questions: “What am I doing here? Where am I getting? What’s it all about? Why am I doing this? What good is it? What’s going to happen?” The last question stopped him, and he began unthinkingly to light another cigarette, laying it a moment later, however, unlighted on the arm of the chair. “What’s going to happen?” Something was surely going to happen. It was impossible for everything just to continue as it was. All this was too unlikely, it was weighted down with the senseless, indefinable weight of things in a dream, the kind of dream where each simple object, each motion, even the light in the sky, is heavy with silent meaning. There had to be a break; some air had to come in. But things don’t happen, he told himself. You have to make them happen. That was where he was stuck. It was not in him to make things happen; it never had been. Yet when he got to this point he realized that for the moment at any rate it was the bottom; from there the way went imperceptibly up. A tiny, distant pinprick of hope was there. He had to probe to find where it came from. Triumphantly he dragged it out and examined it: it was simply that he had a blind, completely unreasonable conviction that when the moment came if nothing happened some part of him would take it upon itself to make something happen. It seemed quite senseless when he thought about it; it merely faded, grew weaker, and so to save it he put it away again into the dark. He could not believe it, but he liked to have it there. He rose and began to walk restlessly about the room. Presently he threw himself on the bed, and, lying still, tried to sleep. A minute later he struggled out of his shoes and trousers and pulled the bedspread up over him. But his thoughts turned to Hadija with her perfect little face and her pliant body like a young cat’s.
F
“It was only yesterday,” he thought incredulously. “God, not till Sunday?” Six days to wait. There was only one way to find her, and even that might not be possible. He would go to see the fat woman, Miss Goode, at the Metropole, and see if she knew her address. After a while he grew more calm. Waves, Hadija, seagulls. When he awoke it was dark.
XIV
It was an obsession of Eunice Goode’s that there was very little time left in the world, that whatever one wanted to do, one had better get it done quickly or it would be too late. Her conception of that segment of eternity which was hers to know was expressed somewhat bafflingly in a phrase she had written in her notebook shortly after arriving in Tangier: “Between the crackling that rends the air and the actual flash of lightning that strikes you there is a split second which seems endless, and during which you are conscious that the end has come. That split second is now.” Yet the fact that her mind was constantly recalled to this fixed idea (as a bit of wood floating in the basin of a waterfall returns again and again to be plunged beneath the surface by the falling water), rather than inciting her to any sort of action, ordinarily served only to paralyse her faculties. Perhaps some of the trouble was due merely to her size; like most bulky things, she was set in motion with difficulty. But when she began to move, she gathered impetus. Her association with Hadija had started her off in a certain direction, which was complete ownership of the girl, and until she had the illusion of having achieved that, she would push ahead without looking right or left.
When she had finished telephoning Madame Jouvenon, she scribbled a note to Hadija: Espérame aquí. Vuelvo antes de las cinco, and left it hanging crookedly from the edge of the centre table, weighted down by a bowl of chrysanthemums. Hadija could get Lola, the chambermaid, to read it to her.
Eunice had not wept when she had awakened and found herself alone in the room. The thing was too serious, she felt, for that sort of self-indulgent behaviour. It was horrible enough to find herself alone in the bed, with no sign that Hadija had been in the room at all during the night, but the real suffering had begun only when she went ahead to form her conjectures, one after the other, as to what might have happened. Even though Dyar had appeared at the Empire to lunch with Madame Jouvenon, it was still perfectly possible that the girl had spent the night with him. She almost hoped that was the case; it would mean that the danger was all at one point—a point she felt she had at least partially under control.
“The big idiot’s in love with her,” she said to herself, and it was some little solace to think that Hadija was unlikely to fall in love with him. But one could never count on how a girl was going to react to a man. Men had an extra and mysterious magnetism which all too often worked. She slammed her clothing around in a rage as she dressed. She had taken no breakfast—only a few small glasses of gin. Now she went to the high armoire and took down from the shelf half a dry sponge-cake that had been up there several days. She ate it all, fiercely crumpled the paper that had been aroun
d it, and threw the wad across the room, aiming at the waste-basket. It went in; her fleshy lips moved ever so slightly in the shadow of a grim little smile of passing satisfaction.
It was hard to know how to dress this afternoon. She felt well wearing only two kinds of uniform: slacks and shirt, or evening dress, both of which were out of the question. Finally she decided on a black suit with a cape that looked vaguely military under a good deal of gold frogging. Hoping to look as bourgeoise and proper as possible, she pulled out a choker of gold beads which she fastened around her neck. She even bothered to find a pair of stockings, and eventually squeezed into some shoes with almost two inches of heel. Looking in the mirror with extreme distaste, she powdered her face clumsily, not being able to avoid sprinkling the stuff liberally over the front of her suit, and applied a minimum of neutral-toned lipstick. The sight of her face thus disguised sickened her; she turned away from the mirror and began to brush the powder off the black-flannel cape. The whole business was a ghastly bore, and she loathed going out alone into the wet streets and through the centre of town. But there was no sense in doing a thing half-way. One had to see it through. She liked to remind herself that she came of pioneer stock; her grandmother had had an expression she had always loved to hear her use, “Marching orders have come,” which to her meant that if a thing had to be done, it was better to do it without question, without thinking whether one liked the idea or not. Fortunately her life was such that it was very seldom anything really did have to be done, so that when such an occasion arose she played her part to the full and got the most out of it.
•••••
Eunice left the American Legation about four o’clock. They had been most civil, she reflected. (She was always expecting to intercept looks of derision.) They had listened to her, made a few notes, and thanked her gravely. She on her side thought she had done rather well: she had not told them too much—just enough to whet their interest. “Of course, I’m passing on this information to you for what it may be worth,” she had said modestly. “I have no idea how much truth there is in it. But I have a distinct feeling that you’ll find it worth your while to follow it up.” (When she had gone Mr. Doan, the Vice-Consul, had heaved an exaggerated sigh, remarked in a flat voice: “Oh, Death, where is thy sting?” and his secretary had smirked at him appreciatively.)
At the Metropole desk the manager handed Eunice an envelope which she opened on her way upstairs. It was a very short note written in French on the hotel stationery, suggesting that she meet the sender alone in the reading-room of the hotel at seven o’clock that evening. It added the hope that she would agree to receive the most distinguished sentiments of the signer, whose name when she saw it gave her an agreeable start. “Thami Beidaoui,” she read aloud, with satisfaction. At the moment she recalled only the two brothers who lived in the palace; the entrance of the third brother had been effected too late in her evening to make any lasting impression on her. Indeed, at the moment she did not so much as suspect his existence. If she had not been so completely preoccupied with worry about Hadija she would have been delighted with the message.
When she opened the door of her room the first thing she noticed was that the note she had left was gone and the bowl of chrysanthemums had been moved back to the centre of the table. Then she heard splashing in the bathtub, and the familiar wabbling vocal line of the chant that habitually accompanied Hadija’s ablutions. “Thank God,” she breathed. That stage of the ordeal was over, at least. There remained the extraction of the admission of guilt, and the scene. Because there was going to be a scene, of course—Eunice would see to that. Only it was rather difficult to make a scene with Hadija; she was inclined to sit back like a spectator and watch it, rather than participate in it.
Eunice sat down to wait, to calm herself, and to try to prepare a method of operations. But when Hadija emerged in a small cloud of steam, clad in the satin and mink negligée, it was she who led the attack. Shrilling in Spanish, she accused Eunice of thinking only of herself, of taking her to the Beidaoui palace and embarrassing her in front of a score of people by passing out, leaving her not only to extricate herself from the unbelievably humiliating situation, but to see to the removal of Eunice’s prostrate body as best she could. Eunice did not attempt to reply. It was all perfectly true, only she had not thought of it until now. However, to admit such a thing would be adding grist to Hadija’s mill. She was curious to know how Hadija had managed to get her out of the place and home, but she did not ask her.
“What a disgrace for us!” cried Hadija. “What shame you have brought on us! How can we face the Beidaoui señores after this?”
In spite of the balm brought to her soul by this use of the plural pronoun, Eunice was suddenly visited by the terrible thought that perhaps the note she had just received had something to do with her behaviour at the Beidaoui palace; one of the brothers was coming to inform her discreetly that the hospitality of his home would henceforth not be extended to her and her friend Miss Kumari.
In a very thin voice she finally said: “Where did you spend the night?”
“I am lucky enough to have a few friends left,” said Hadija. “I went and slept with a friend. I would not have anything to do with that mess.” She called it ese lio with supreme disgust. So it had not been she who had seen to getting her back to the hotel. But Eunice was too upset to go into that; she was having a vision of herself in the act of misbehaving in some spectacular manner—breaking the furniture, throwing up in the middle of the dance floor, insulting the guests with obscenities ….
“But what did I do?” she cried piteously.
“Bastante!” said the other, glancing at her significantly.
The conversation dragged on through the waning light, until Hadija, feeling that she now definitely had the upper hand, lit the candles on the mantel and went to stand in front of the mirror where she remained a while, admiring herself in the negligée.
“I look beautiful in this?” she hazarded.
“Yes, yes,” Eunice answered wearily; adding: “Hand me that bottle and the little glass beside it.”
But before Hadija complied she was determined to pursue further the subject which preoccupied her. “Then I keep it?”
“Hadija! I couldn’t care less what you do with it. Why do you bother asking me? You know what I told you about my things.”
Hadija did, indeed, but she had wanted to hear it repeated with reference to this particular garment, just in case of a possible misunderstanding later.
“Aha!” She pulled it tighter around her, and, still watching her reflection over her shoulder, took Eunice the bottle of Gordon’s Dry and the tumbler.
“I very happy,” Hadija confided, going into English because it was the language of their intimacy.
“Yes, I daresay,” said Eunice dryly. She decided to remain as she was, to receive Monsieur Beidaoui. Seven o’clock was early; there was no need to dress more formally.
In order to obviate any possibility of Hadija’s seeing him at the Metropole, Thami had made her promise to meet him at seven o’clock in the lobby of the Cine Mauretania, which was a good half-hour’s walk from the hotel. She had demurred at first, but he still held the whip hand.
“She will want to come too,” she complained. “She won’t let me come alone.”
“It’s very important,” he warned her. “If you try hard you’ll find a way.”
Now she had to break the news to Eunice, and she dreaded it. But strangely enough, when she announced that she was going out for a walk before dinner and would return about eight, Eunice merely looked surprised for an instant and said: “I’ll expect you at eight, then. Don’t be late.” Eunice’s acquiescence at this point had a twofold origin: she felt chastened by the idea of her behaviour the preceding night, and she already had been vaguely wondering how she could keep Hadija away from the impending interview with Monsieur Beidaoui. It seemed unwise to give him an opportunity to scrutinize her too closely.
Hidden among the kif-smokers, tea-drinkers and card-players in a small Arab café opposite the Metropole’s entrance, Thami watched Hadija step out of the door and pass along the street in the direction of the Zoco Chico. A quarter of an hour later Eunice’s telephone rang. A Monsieur Beidaoui wished to see Mademoiselle Goode; he would wait in the reading-room.
“Je déscends tout de suite,” said Eunice nervously. She gulped one more small glass of gin and with misgiving went down to meet Monsieur Beidaoui.
When she went into the dim room with its bastard Moorish decorations she saw no one but a young Spaniard sitting in a far corner smoking a cigarette. She was about to turn and go out to the desk, when he rose and came toward her, saying in English: “Good evening.”
Before anything else crossed her mind she had a fleeting but unsavoury intuition that she knew the young man and that she did not want to speak with him. However, here he was, taking her hand, saying: “How are you?” And because she was looking increasingly confused, he said: “I am Thami Beidaoui. You know——”
Without actually remembering him, she knew in a flash, not only that this was the ne’er-do-well brother of the Beidaouis, but that she had had an unpleasant scene with him at the cocktail party. There were certain details in the face that seemed familiar: the strange eyebrows that slanted wildly upward, and the amused, mocking expression of the eyes beneath. Obviously, now that she saw him closely, she realized that no Spaniard could have a face like that. But it was not the grave figure clothed in white robes that she had expected to find. She was relieved, perplexed and apprehensive. “How do you do?” she said coldly. “Sit down.”
Thami was not one to beat about the bush; besides, he took it for granted that it was only the dim light which had prevented her from recognizing him at once, that by now she remembered all the details of their exchange of insults, and had even more or less guessed the reason for his visit.
