by Paul Bowles
“Five-pound notes? We cannot accept these.”
“What?” The loudness of his own voice surprised Dyar. “Can’t accept them?” He saw himself embarking on an endless series of trips between an irascible Wilcox and a smiling Ramlal. However, Mr. Benzekri was very calm.
“Five-pound notes are illegal here, as you know.” Dyar was about to interrupt, to protest his ignorance, but Mr. Benzekri, already wrapping the blue and white paper around the box, went on: “Chocron will change this for you. He will give you pesetas, and we will buy them for pounds. Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers of course wants pounds for his accounts. He will lose twice on the exchange, but I am sorry. These notes are illegal in Tangier.”
Dyar was still confused. “But what makes you think this man——” he hesitated.
“Chocron?”
“—What makes you think he’s going to buy illegal tender?”
A faint, brief smile touched Mr. Benzekri’s melancholy lips. “He will take it,” he said quietly. And he sat back, staring ahead of him as if Dyar had already gone out. But then, as Dyar gathered up the neatly tied parcel once again, he said: “Wait,” bent forward and scribbled some words on a pad, tearing off the sheet and handing it to him. “Give this to Chocron. Come back before four. We close at four. The address is at the top of the paper.” “A lot of good that’s going to do me,” Dyar thought. He thanked Mr. Benzekri and went downstairs, out into the Zoco Chico where the striped awning over the terrasse of the Café Central was being let down to shield the customers from the hot afternoon sun. There he approached a native policeman who stood grandly in the centre of the plaza and inquired of him how to get to the Calle Sinagoga. It was nearby: up the main street and to the left, by what he could gather from the man’s gestures. All hope of getting to the beach was gone. The next sunny day like this might come in another two weeks; there was no telling. Silently he cursed Ramlal, Wilcox, Ashcombe-Danvers.
Chocron’s office was at the top of a flight of stairs, in a cluttered little room that jutted out over the narrow street below, and the grey-bearded Chocron, who looked distinguished in the long black tunic and skullcap worn by the older Jews of the community, beamed when he read Benzekri’s note. His English, however, was virtually non-existent. “Show,” he said, pointing to the box, which Dyar opened. “Sit,” suggested Chocron, and he removed the packets from the box and began to count the bills rapidly, moistening his finger on the tip of his tongue from time to time. “This one and Benzekri are probably crooks,” Dyar thought uneasily. Still, the value of the pound in pesetas was posted on blackboards every few feet along the street; the rate could not go too far astray. Or perhaps it could, if the pounds were illegal. Even if the notes themselves had been valid, their very presence here was due to an infringement of the law; there was no possibility of recourse to any authority, whatever rates Chocron and Benzekri took it into their heads to charge. Below in the street the long cries of a candy-vendor passing slowly by sounded like religious chanting. Mr. Chocron’s expert fingers continued to manipulate the corners of the notes. Occasionally he held one up to the light that came through the window and squinted at it. When he had finished with a bundle he tied it up again meticulously, never looking toward Dyar. Finally he placed all the bundles back in the box and, taking the slip of paper Mr. Benzekri had sent him, turned it over and wrote on the other side: 138 pesetas. He pushed the paper toward Dyar and stared at him. This was a little higher than the street quotation, which varied between 133 and 136 to the pound. Still suspicious, making grimaces and gestures, Dyar said: “What do you do with money like this?” It seemed that Chocron understood more English than he spoke. “Palestina,” he answered laconically, pointing out of the window. Dyar began to multiply 138 by 9,000, just to amuse himself. Then he wrote the figures I 4 2, and passed the paper back to the other, to see what the reaction would be. Chocron became voluble in Spanish, and it was easy to see that he had no intention of going that high. Somewhere along the flow of words Dyar heard the name of Benzekri; that, and the idea that one hundred and forty-two was too many pesetas to pay for a pound, was all he grasped of the monologue. However, he was warming to the game. If he sat quietly, he thought, Chocron would raise his offer. It took a while. Chocron pulled a notebook out of a drawer and began to do a series of involved arithmetical exercises. At one point he produced a small silver case and inhaled a bit of snuff through each nostril. Deliberately he put it away and continued his work. Dyar tapped his right toe against the red-tile floor in a march rhythm, waiting. You could change the price of anything here, Wilcox had insisted, if you knew how, and the prime virtues in the affair were patience and an appearance of indifference. (He remembered Wilcox’s anecdote of the country Arab in the post office who had tried for five minutes to get a seventy-five-centimo stamp for sixty centimos and finally had turned away insulted when the clerk refused to bargain with him.) In this case the indifference was more than feigned; he had no interest in saving Ashcombe-Danvers a few thousand pesetas. It was a game, nothing more. He tried to imagine how he would feel at the moment if the money were his own. Probably he would not have had the courage to attempt bargaining at all. There was a difference between playing with money that was not real and money that was. But at this point nothing was real. The little room crowded with old furniture, the bearded man in black opposite him, making figures mechanically in the notebook, the golden light of the waning afternoon, the intimate street sounds outside the window—all these things were suffused with an inexplicable quality of tentativeness which robbed them of the familiar feeling of reassurance contained in the idea of reality. Above all, he was aware of the absurdity of his own situation. There was no doubt now in his mind that the call from the American Legation had to do with a proposed questioning on the matter of Madame Jouvenon. If he disregarded both the call and the dinner engagement, by tomorrow they would be pulling on him from both sides.
With each day as it passed Dyar had been feeling a little further from the world; it was inevitable that at some point he should make a voluntary effort to put himself back in the middle of it again. To be able to believe fully in the reality of the circumstances in which a man finds himself, he must feel that they bear some relation, however distant, to other situations he has known. If he cannot find this connection, he is cut off from the outside. But since his inner sense of orientation depends for its accuracy on the proper functioning, at least in his eyes, of the outside world, he will make any readjustment, consciously or otherwise, to restore the sense of balance. He is an instrument that strives to adapt itself to the new exterior; he must get those unfamiliar contours more or less into focus once again. And now the outside was very far away—so far that the leg of Chocron’s desk could have been something seen through a telescope from an observatory. He had the feeling that if he made a terrible effort he could bring about a change: either the leg of the desk would disappear, or, if it stayed, he would be able to understand what its presence meant. He held his breath. Through the dizziness that resulted he heard Chocron’s voice saying something that made no sense. “Cientocuarenta Mire.” He was holding up a piece of paper for him to look at. With the sense of lifting a tremendous weight, Dyar raised his eyes and saw figures written on it, conscious at the same time that inside himself a vast and irresistible upheaval was taking place. “Huh?” he said. Chocron had written “140”.
“All right.”
“One minute,” said Chocron; he rose, took the box of money, and went into another room, closing the door behind him.
Dyar did not move. He stared out the window at the wall of the building opposite. The quake was quieting down; the principal strata had shifted positions, and their new places seemed more comfortable. It was as if something which had been in his line of vision had now been removed, something that had been an obstacle to discovering how to change the external scene. But he distrusted this whole series of private experiences that had forced themselves upon him since he had come here. He was used to long st
retches of intolerable boredom with small crises of disgust; these violent disturbances inside himself seemed no part of his life. They were much more a part of this senseless place he was in. Still, if that were the way the place was going to affect him, he had better get used to the effects and learn how to deal with them.
When Chocron returned he carried the box with him, but this time the bills in it were smaller, brownish-green, violet, and there were fewer of them. He set the box on the desk and, still standing, wrote in his notebook for Dyar to see: 1260 @ 1000p. “Count,” he said.
It took him a long time, even though most of the bills were new and crisp.
“Well, this is fine,” he thought, when he had finished. “Twenty-five thousand and two hundred bucks or thereabouts and no one to stop you. You just walk out.” He looked up at Chocron’s face, curiously, for a second. No one but Wilcox. It was true. And Wilcox alone—not Wilcox with the police. By God, what a situation, he thought. It’s almost worth playing, just for the hell of it.
He did not pay much attention to Chocron’s handshake and to the steep stairs that led down into the street. Walking along slowly, being jostled by water carriers and elderly Jewish women in fringed shawls, he kept his eyes on the pavement, not thinking. But he felt the glossy paper around the box, and knew that Chocron had wrapped it carefully, that it was once again a parcel from the Galeries Lafayette. He went beneath a high arch where Arabs hawked bananas and thick glassware; to the left he recognized Thami’s café.
When he looked inside the door the radio was not playing. It was dark inside the café, and he had the impression that the place was practically empty.
“Quiere algo?” said the qaouaji.
“No, no.” The air was aromatic with kif smoke. A hand grasped his arm, squeezed it gently. He turned.
“Hello,” said Thami.
“Hi!” It was almost like seeing an old friend; he did not know why, except that he had been alone all during a day that had seemed endless. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
“I told you I’m always here.”
“What d’you have a home for?”
Thami made a face and spat. “To sleep when I have no other place.”
“And a wife? What d’you have a wife for?”
“Same thing. Sit down. Take a glass of good tea.”
“I can’t. I have to go.” He looked at his watch: it was a quarter to four. “I have to go fast.” The walk down to the Crédit Foncier was only a three-minute one, but he wanted to be sure and get there before they shut that iron grill.
“Are you going up or down?”
“To the Zoco Chico.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“Okay.” He did not want Thami along, but there was no way out of it, and, anyway, he thought they might have a drink afterward.
As they walked, Thami looked disparagingly down at his own trousers, which were very much out of press and smeared with grease.
“My old clothes,” he remarked, pointing. “Very old. For working on my boat.”
“Oh, you bought that boat?”
“Of course I bought it. I told you I was going to.” He grinned. “Now I have it. Mister Thami Beidaoui, propietario of one old boat. One very old boat, but it goes fast.”
“Goes fast?” Dyar repeated, not paying attention.
“I don’t know how fast, but faster than the fishing boats down there. You know, it’s an old boat. It can’t go like a new one.”
“No. Of course.”
They passed Ramlal’s shop. It was closed. Ramlal had added six batteries for portable radios to the array of fountain-pens, celluloid toys and wrist-watches. They passed El Gran Paris, its show-windows a chaos of raincoats. It was always difficult to navigate the Zoco Chico with its groups of stationary talkers like rocks in the sea, around which the crowd surged in all directions. Arrived at what Dyar thought was the entrance to the Crédit Foncier, at the top of some steps between two cafés, he saw that even the way into the outer courtyard was barred by high gates which were closed.
“This isn’t it,” he said, looking uneasily up and down the plaza.
“What do you want?” Thami asked, perhaps slightly annoyed that Dyar had not already told him exactly where he was going and on what errand. Dyar did not reply; his heart sank, because he knew now that this was the Crédit Foncier and that it was closed. He ran up the steps and shook the gate, pounded on it, wondering if the sound could be heard through the vast babble of voices that floated in from the Zoco.
Thami slowly climbed the steps, frowning. “Why do you want to get in? You want to go to the bank?”
“It’s not even five to four yet. It shouldn’t be closed.”
Thami smiled pityingly. “Ha! You think this is America, people looking at their watches all the time until they see if it is exactly four o’clock, or exactly ten o’clock? Today they might stay open until twenty minutes past four, tomorrow they might lock the door at ten minutes before four. The way they feel. You know. Sometimes you have a lot of work. Sometimes not much.”
“Goddam it, I’ve got to get in there!” Dyar pounded on the gate some more, and called out: “Hey!”
Thami was used to this urgency on the part of foreigners. He smiled. “You can get in tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning hell. I have to get in now.”
Thami yawned and stretched. “Well, I would like to help you, but I can’t do anything.”
Pounding and calling out seemed fairly useless, but Dyar continued to do both, until a very thin Arab with a broom in his hand appeared from a corner of the courtyard, and stood looking between the bars.
“Ili firmi!” he said indignantly.
“Mr. Benzekri! I’ve got to see him!”
“Ili firmi, m’sio.” And to Thami: “Qoullou rhadda f’s sbah.” But Thami did not deign to notice the sweeper; he went back down the steps into the Zoco and shouted up to Dyar: “Come on!” Seeing that the latter remained at the gate trying to argue with the man, he sat down in a chair nearby on the sidewalk to wait until he had finished. Presently Dyar came down to join him, muttering under his breath.
“The son of a bitch wouldn’t even go and call Mr. Benzekri for me.”
Thami laughed. “Sit down. Have a drink. Be my guest.” A waiter had approached. Dyar threw himself into a chair. “Give me a White Horse. No water,” he said.
Thami ordered. Then he looked at Dyar and laughed again. He reached over and slapped Dyar’s knee. “Don’t be so serious. No one is going to die because you can’t get in the bank today instead of tomorrow. You can go tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Dyar. Even as he said it he was thinking: Legally the money belongs to whoever has it. And I’ve got it.
“You need money?” said Thami suddenly. “How much? I’ll give you some money. How much?”
“No thanks, Thami. I appreciate it. You’re a good guy. Just let me think. I just want to think a minute.”
Thami was silent until the whisky was brought. Then he began to talk again, about an Englishman he had once known. The Englishman had invited him to go to Xauen with him, but for some reason there had been difficulties at the frontier. Never very perceptive, he did not notice that Dyar was still sunk inside himself, formulating, rejecting possibilities.
“A votre santé, monsieur,” said Thami, raising his glass expectantly.
“Yeah,” said Dyar. “Yeah.” And looking up suddenly: “Right. Prosit.” He drained his glass. He was thinking: if only Ramlal had gotten the money yesterday morning instead of last night I’d be in the clear. No Legation wondering when I’m going to phone. No Madame Jouvenon. Damn Madame Jouvenon. He did not realize how illogical his reasoning was at this point, how inextricably bound up with his present decision was his involvement with that lady.
“Let’s get out of here.” He rose to his feet. The suddenness of the remark and the tone in which it was said made Thami look up at him wonderingly.
In the street, going down towar
d the port, he began to speak confidentially, holding his mouth close to Thami’s ear. “Can you run that boat?”
“Well——”
“You can’t run it. All right. Do you know anyone who can? How about the guy you bought it from? He can run it, can’t he? Where is he now?”
“Where is he now?”
“Yes. Right now.”
“He lives in Dradeb.”
“Where’s that?”
“You know,” said Thami obligingly. “You go from the Zoco de Fruera into Bou Arakia. You go past the Moorish cemetery and you come to Cuatro Caminos——”
“Can we go there in a taxi?”
“Taxi? We don’t need a taxi. We can walk. The taxi charges fifteen pesetas.”
“We can get there in a taxi, though?”
Thami, looking increasingly surprised, said that they could.
“Come on!” Dyar rushed ahead, toward the cab stand at the floor of the ramparts. Laughing and protesting, Thami followed. At last the American was behaving like an American. They got to the foot of the hill. Dyar looked at his watch. Ten after four. I’m glad I thought of that, he said to himself. “Hotel de la Playa,” he told the driver. If Wilcox just happened to be at the hotel waiting for him, he could still have an alibi. Chocron had kept him so long that the Crédit Foncier was closed when he got there, so he had come back immediately to lock up the money until tomorrow. Wilcox could either take it with him, or leave it, as he liked. But if he returned to the hotel any later than this and happened to find Wilcox, there would be no way of explaining the time that had elapsed between four and whatever time he got there. “If you just do each thing as it comes along and keep calm you can get away with this. Get rattled and you’re screwed for good,” he told himself.
