Let It Come Down

by Paul Bowles

  “Ah, Hugo,” she said when he appeared. “If the telephone rings this evening while Mr. Dyar is here, I’ve gone out to dinner and you don’t know where, or what time I’ll be back.” After he had closed the door she got out of bed, wincing a little, more in anticipation of pain than because she felt it, and walked across the room to the window. It was a little before six and almost dark, the water down there was black and choppy, and the fading colourless sky made it look cold. Spain had disappeared, there were only the rocks and the sea, and soon there would be less than that: only the roar of the waves in the darkness. She pulled the curtains across all the windows carefully and turned on an electric heater by her dressing-table. The little spotlights came on. She seated herself in front of the mirror and set to work on her face. It would be quicker than usual tonight because she knew exactly what light she would be in all during the evening. As she worked she found herself wondering exactly what this rather strange Mr. Dyar thought of her. “An ageing nymphomaniac, most likely,” she suggested, determining to be as realistic and ruthless with herself as she could. But then she asked herself why she was being so violent; it could only be in order to kill whatever hope might be lurking within—hope that somehow he might find her attractive. “But that’s nonsense,” she objected. “What do I want of a callow, dull man like that? He’s a definite bore.” However, she could not convince herself. He did not bore her; he was like an unanswered riddle, a painting seen in semi-darkness, its subject only guessed at, which could prove to be of something quite different once one looked at it in the light. When she reminded herself that he could not possibly turn out to be anything worthwhile or interesting, even if she did manage to understand him, the fact that he was mysterious remained, and that, for her, was the important thing about him. But why should she find any mystery in a person like that? Again she experienced a feeling of misgiving, a pleasurable little shudder of fear. “I can manage him,” she said to the half-finished face in the blinding mirror, “but can I manage you?”

  The distant, multiple sounds of domestic activity came through the thick walls of the house, a series of muted, scarcely audible thuds rather than as noises actually distinguishable from one another: she, nevertheless, had learned through the years to interpret them. The pantry door swinging to, Mario’s evening tour of the lower floor, closing the shutters and drawing the curtains, Inez climbing the staircase, Paco going out to the kennels with the dogs’ dinner, she knew without question when each was happening, as the usher in a theatre knows from the dialogue exactly how the stage looks at any given moment, without needing to glance at it. Above these muffled sounds now emerged another, heard through the window: an automobile coming up the main road, turning into the driveway, stopping somewhere between the gate and the front door. Unconsciously she waited to hear it continue, to hear the car doors slam shut, the faint buzz of the bell in the kitchen, and the business of Hugo’s getting to the front entrance. But nothing happened. The silence outside went on for so long that she began to doubt she had really heard any car come into the driveway; it must have continued up the mountain.

  When she had finished she turned off the spots, slipped into a new black and white négligée that Balenciaga had made for her in Madrid, rearranged the pillows, and got back into bed, thinking that perhaps it had been a very bad idea, after all, to invite Mr. Dyar alone for dinner. He might easily be made shy by the absence of other guests, and particularly by the fact that Luis was not there. “If he’s tongue-tied, what in God’s name shall I talk to him about?” she thought. With drinks enough he might be more at ease, but there was the worse danger of his having too many. Spurred on by her nervousness to speculations of disaster, she began to wish she had not acted so quickly on her impulse to invite him. But he would arrive at any moment now. She shut her eyes and tried to relax in the way a Yogi at Benares had taught her to do. It was only partially successful; nevertheless, the effort made time pass.

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Hugo entered, announcing Mr. Dyar.

  XVIII

  Daisy struggled to a sitting position, a little resentful at having been caught unawares. Dyar held a briefcase in his hand; he looked more wide-awake than she remembered him. She wondered in passing why Hugo had not taken the briefcase from him along with his coat, and even more fleetingly she wondered why she had not heard the taxi arrive, but he was advancing toward the bed, and Hugo was going out and closing the door.

  “Hi!” he said, shaking her hand vigorously. “I hope you’re sicker than you look, because you look fine.” He bent over and pushed the briefcase under the table beside the bed.

  “I’m not really sick at all. It’s just a twinge of sciatica that comes now and then. Nothing at all, darling. But I’m such a goddam cry-baby and I loathe pain so, that I simply pamper myself. And here I am. Sit down.” She indicated the foot of the bed.

  He obeyed, and she looked at him attentively. It seemed to her that his eyes were unusually bright, that his whole face shone with an unaccustomed physical glow. At the same time he struck her as being nervous and preoccupied. None of these things tallied with what she remembered about him; he had been restless at the Beidaoui party, but it was a restlessness that came from boredom or apathy, whereas at the moment he looked uneasy, intense, almost apprehensive. They talked a bit; his remarks were not the sort she would have expected from him; neither more intelligent nor more stupid, they nevertheless seemed to come from a different person. “But then, how do I know what he’s like? I scarcely know him at all,” she reflected.

  “It feels good to get inside where it’s warm,” he said. “It’s chilly out.”

  “I take it your taxi wasn’t heated. Unless the car was delivered last week the heater would be broken by now. The Arabs have an absolute genius for smashing things. If you want to get rid of anything, just let an Arab touch it, and it’ll fall to pieces as he hands it back to you. They’re fantastic! What destructive people! God! Drinks will be along any minute. Tell me about yourself in the meantime.” She pushed herself further back into the mound of pillows behind her and peered out at him with the expression of one about to be told a long story.

  Dyar glanced at her sharply. “About myself,” he said, looking away again. “Nothing much to tell. More of the same. I think you know most of it.” Now that everything was arranged, with Thami waiting in the mimosa scrub below the garden, and the Jilali dispatched to fetch the boat and bring it to the beach at Oued el Ihud at the foot of the cliffs, he was eager to be off, anxious lest some unforeseen event occur which could be a snag in his plans. The arrival of Wilcox, for instance, to pay an unexpected after-dinner call—that was one idea whose infinite possibilities of calamity paralysed him; he forced himself to think of something else.

  “Have you seen our silly Jack since the night before last?” asked Daisy suddenly, as if she were inside Dyar’s mind. He felt such acute alarm that he made a great effort to turn his head slowly and look at her with a carefully feigned expression of preoccupation turning to casual interest. “I’m worried about him,” she was saying. “And I was certainly not reassured by your little description of his behaviour.”

  But he thought: “Night before last? Why night before last? What happened then?” In his mind the party at the Beidaoui palace had been weeks ago; it did not occur to him that she was referring to that. “No, I haven’t seen him,” he said, forgetting even that he had had breakfast with him that very morning. Hugo entered, wheeling a table covered with bottles and glasses. “I’ve learned one thing in my life, if nothing else,” Daisy said. “And that is, that it’s utterly useless to give anyone advice. Otherwise I’d ask Luis to talk with him. He might be able to worm something out of him. Because I have a distinct feeling he’s up to something, and, whatever it is, he won’t get away with it. I’ll wager you ten pounds he doesn’t. Ten pounds! Why have you brought just these few pieces of ice? Bring a whole bowl of it,” she called after Hugo as he closed the door behind him.

 
; “I don’t know,” Dyar said. “Don’t know what?” he thought, suppressing a tickling desire to laugh aloud. “Jack’s pretty careful. He’s nobody’s fool, you know. I can’t see him getting into any serious trouble, somehow.” He felt that he must put a stop to this conversation or it would bring him bad luck. The mere fact that he was in a position for the moment to be offhand about the subject, even though his nonchalance was being forced upon him, seemed to indicate likely disaster. “Pride before a fall,” he thought. It was a moment for humility, a moment to touch wood. The expression get away with it bothered him. “I don’t know,” he said again.

  “Ten pounds!” Daisy reiterated, handing him a whisky and soda. He sipped it slowly, telling himself that above all things he must not get drunk. At the end of ten minutes or so she noticed that he was not drinking.

  “Something’s wrong with your drink!” she exclaimed. “What have I done? Give it to me. What does it need?” She reached out for the glass.

  “No, no, no!” he objected, hanging on to it. “It’s fine. I just don’t feel like drinking, somehow. I don’t know why.”

  “Aha!” she cried, as though she had made a great discovery. “I see! Your system’s hyperacid, darling. It’s just the moment for a little majoun. I don’t feel much like whisky myself tonight.” She made a place for her glass among the bottles and tubes on the night-table, opened the drawer and took out a small silver box which she handed him.

  “Have a piece,” she said. “Just don’t tell anyone about it. All the little people in Tangier’d be scandalized, all but the Arabs, of course. They eat it all the time. It’s the only thing allowed the poor darlings, with alcohol forbidden. But a European, a Nazarene? Shocking! Unforgivable! Depths of depravity! Tangier, sink-hole of iniquity, as your American journalists say. ‘Your correspondent has it on reliable authority that certain members of the English colony begin their evening meal with a dish of majoun, otherwise known as hashish.’ Good God!”

  He was looking with interest at the six cubes of greenish black candy which exactly filled the box. “What is it?” he said.

  “Majoun, darling. Majoun.” She reached out, took a square and bit it in half. “Have a piece. It’s not very good, but it’s the best in Tangier. My sweet old Ali gets it for me.” She rang the bell.

  The candy was gritty, its flavour a combination of figs, ginger, cinnamon and liquorice; there was also a pungent herbal taste which he could not identify. “What’s it supposed to do?” he asked with curiosity.

  She put the box back on to its shelf. “The servants would be horrified. Isn’t it ghastly, living in fear of one’s own domestics? But I’ve never known a place like Tangier for wagging tongues. God! The place is incredible.” She paused and looked at him. “What does it do?” she said. “It’s miraculous. It’s what we’ve all been waiting for all these years. If you’ve never had it, you can’t possibly understand. But I call it the key to a forbidden way of thought.” She leaned down and patted his arm. “I’m not going mystical on you, darling, although I easily could if I let myself go. J’ai de quoi, God knows. There’s nothing mystical about majoun. It’s all very down to earth and real.” A maid knocked. Daisy spoke to her briefly in Spanish. “I’ve ordered tea,” she explained, as the girl wheeled the table of drinks away.

  “Tea!”

  She laughed merrily. “It’s absolutely essential.”

  To Dyar, who had pulled his left cuff up so he could glance surreptitiously now and then at his watch, the time was creeping by with incredible slowness. Daisy talked about black magic, about exhibitions of hatta-yoga she had seen in Travancore, about the impossibility of understanding Islamic legal procedure in Morocco unless one took for granted the every-day use of spells and incantations. At length the tea came, and they each had three cups. Dyar listened apathetically; it all sounded to him like decoration, like the Pekineses, incense-burners and Spanish shawls with which certain idle women filled their apartments, back in New York. He let her talk for a while. Then he said: “But what’s the story about that candy? What is it? Some kind of dope, isn’t it? I think you were cheated. I don’t feel anything.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I know. Everyone says that. But it’s very subtle. One must know which direction to look in for the effect. If you expect to feel drunk, you’re looking the wrong way, it takes twice as long, and you miss half the pleasure.”

  H

  “But what is the pleasure? Do you feel anything, right now?”

  She closed her eyes and remained silent a moment, a slightly beatific expression coming to rest on her upturned face. “Yes,” she answered at length. “Definitely.”

  “You do?” The incredulity in his voice made her open her eyes and look at him an instant reproachfully. “You don’t believe me? I’m not just imagining things. But I’ve had it before and I know exactly what to expect. Darling, you’re not comfortable there on the edge of the bed. Draw up that big chair and relax.”

  When he was sprawled in the chair facing the bed, he said to her: “Well, then, suppose you try and tell me what it feels like. I might as well get some benefit out of the stuff, even if it comes second-hand.”

  “Oh, at the moment it’s nothing very exciting. Just a slight buzzing in my ears and an accelerated pulse.”

  “Sounds like fun,” he scoffed. For a few minutes he had forgotten that this evening he was waiting above all for time to pass. Now he turned his arm a bit, to see the face of his watch; it was eight twenty. He had set the meeting with Thami for no definite hour, not knowing exactly when he would be able to get away, but he had assured him it would not be after midnight. The understanding was that the Jilali would go back to town to the port, and would bring the boat to a small beach just west of Oued el Ihud, also not later than twelve o’clock. In the meantime Thami was to sit and wait, a little below the far end of the garden, so that when Dyar left the house he could lead him down across the face of the mountain, directly to the beach. Thami had insisted he would not be bored by waiting so long: he had his supper and his kif pipe with him.

  “Yes,” Daisy was saying. “If I let too much time go by, I shan’t be able to tell you anything at all. One becomes fantastically inarticulate at a certain point. Not always, but it can happen. One thinks one’s making sense, and so one is, I daresay, but in a completely different world of thought.”

  It seemed to him that the wind outside was rising a little, or else a window had opened a minute ago to let the sound in. He turned his head; the drawn curtains did not move. “What are you looking at?” she asked. He did not answer. At the same time he had a senseless desire to turn his head in the other direction and look at the other wall, because he thought he had seen a slight movement on that side of the room. Instead, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one.

  “No thanks, darling. I couldn’t. You have a house. You see?”

  “What?” He stared at her.

  “I’m explaining, darling, or at least trying to. You have a house. In the middle of some modest grounds, where you’re used to walking about.” She waited, apparently to be certain he was following her argument. Since he said nothing, she went on. “You can always see the house. At least, from most parts of the property, but in any case, you know it’s there. It’s the centre of your domain. Call it your objective idea about yourself.”

  He toyed with the pack of cigarettes, extracted one and lighted it, frowning.

  “Say it’s the idea of yourself by which you measure what’s real. You have to keep it straight in your mind, kéep it in working order. Like a compass.”

  He was making an effort to go along with the sense of what she was saying, but all he could follow was the words. “Like a compass,” he repeated, as if he thought that might help.

  “And so. You know every path, every plant, every stone on the grounds. But one day while you’re out walking you suddenly catch sight of what looks like a path in a spot where you’ve never noticed, nor even suspected one before.” Slowly her voic
e was taking on dramatic fervour. “The entrance is perhaps half hidden by a bush. You go over and look, and find there actually is a path there. You pull the bush aside, take a few steps down the path, and see ahead of you a grove of trees you never before knew existed. You’re dumbfounded! You go through the grove touching the tree trunks to be sure they’re really there, because you can’t believe it ….”

  This time he jerked his head quickly to the left, to catch whatever was over there by the windows, staring at the blank expanse of unmoving white curtain with disbelief. “Just relax,” he said to himself, as he turned back to see if she had noticed him; she seemed not to have. “Relax, and be careful. Be careful.” Why he was adding the second admonition he did not know, save that he was conscious of an overwhelming sense of uneasiness, as if a gigantic hostile figure towered above him, leaning over his shoulder, and he believed the only way to combat, the feeling was to remain quite calm so that he could control his movements.