by Paul Bowles
But there were other days when he felt less nervous, sat watching the calm old men walk slowly through the market, and said to himself that if he could muster that much dignity when he got to be their age he would consider that his life had been well spent. For their mien was merely a natural concomitant of inner well-being and satisfaction. Without thinking too much about it, eventually he came to the conclusion that their lives must have been worth living.
In the evenings he sat in the salon playing chess with Abdelkader, a slow-moving but by no means negligible adversary. The two had become firm friends as a result of these nightly sessions, When the boys had put out all the lamps and lanterns of the establishment except the one in the corner where they sat at the chessboard, and they were the only two left awake, they would sometimes have a Pernod together, Abdelkader smiling like a conspirator afterward as he got up to wash the glasses himself and put them away; it would never do for anyone to know he had taken a drink of something alcoholic. Tunner would go off up to bed and sleep heavily. He would awaken at sunrise thinking: “Perhaps today—” and by eight he would be on the roof in shorts taking a sunbath; he had his breakfast brought up there each day and drank his coffee while studying French verbs. Then the itch for news would grow too strong; he would have to go and make his morning inquiry.
The inevitable happened: after having made innumerable sidetrips from Messad the Lyles came to Bou Noura. Earlier in the same day a party of Frenchmen had arrived in an old command car and taken rooms at the pension. Tunner was at lunch when he heard the familiar roar of the Mercedes. He grimaced: it would be a bore to have those two around the place. He was not in a mood to force himself to politeness. With the Lyles he had never established any more than a passing acquaintanceship, partly because they had left Messad only two days after taking him there, and partly because he had no desire to push the relationship any further than it had gone. Mrs. Lyle was a sour, fat, gabby female, and Eric her spoiled sissy brat grown up; those were his sentiments, and he did not think he would change them. He had not connected Eric with the episode of the passports; he supposed they had been stolen simultaneously in the Aïn Krorfa hotel by some native who had connections with the shady elements that pandered to the Legionnaires in Messad.
Now in the hall he heard Eric say in a hushed voice: “Oh, I say, Mother, what next? That Tunner person is still mucking about here.” Evidently he was looking at the room slate over the desk. And in a stage whisper she admonished him: “Eric! You fool! Shut up!” He drank his coffee and went out the side door into the stifling sunlight, hoping to avoid them and get up to his rooms while they were having lunch. This he accomplished. In the middle of his siesta there was a knock on the door. It took him a while to get awake. When he opened, Abdelkader stood outside, an apologetic smile on his face.
“Would it disturb you very much to change your room?” he asked.
Tunner wanted to know why.
“The only rooms free now are the two on each side of you. An English lady has arrived with her son, and she wants him in the room next to her. She’s afraid to be alone.”
This picture of Mrs. Lyle, drawn by Abdelkader, did not coincide with his own conception of her. “All right,” he grumbled. “One room’s like another. Send the boys up to move me.” Abdelkader patted him on the shoulder with an affectionate gesture. The boys arrived, opened the door between his room and the next, and began to effect the change. In the middle of the moving Eric stepped into the room that was being vacated. He stopped short on catching sight of Tunner.
“Aha!” he exclaimed. “Fancy bumping into you, old man! I expected you’d be down in Timbuctoo by now.”
Tunner said: “Hello, Lyle.” Now that he was face to face with Eric, he could hardly bring himself to look at him or touch his hand. He had not realized the boy disgusted him so deeply.
“Do forgive this silly whim of Mother’s. She’s just exhausted from the trip. It’s a ghastly lap from Messad here, and she’s in a fearful state of nerves.”
“That’s too bad.”
“You understand our putting you out.”
“Yes, yes,” said Tunner, angry to hear it phrased this way. “When you leave I’ll move back in.”
“Oh, quite. Have you heard from the Moresbys recently?”
Eric, when he looked at all into the face of the person with whom he was speaking, had a habit of peering closely, as if he placed very little importance on the words that were said, and was trying instead to read between the lines of the conversation, to discover what the other really meant. It seemed to Tunner now that he was observing him with more than a usual degree of attention.
“Yes,” said Tunner forcefully. “They’re fine. Excuse me. I think I’ll go and finish the nap I was taking.” Stepping through the connecting door he went into the next room. When the boys had carried everything in there he locked the door and lay on the bed, but he could not sleep.
“God, what a slob!” he said aloud, and then, feeling angry with himself for having capitulated: “Who the hell do they think they are?” He hoped the Lyles would not press him for news of Kit and Port; he would be forced to tell them, and he did not want to, As far as they were concerned, he hoped to keep the tragedy private; their kind of commiseration would be unbearable.
Later in the afternoon he passed by the salon. The Lyles sat in the dim subterranean light clinking their teacups. Mrs. Lyle had spread out some of her old photographs, which were propped against the stiff leather cushions along the back of the divan; she was offering one to Abdelkader to hang beside the ancient gun that adorned the wall. She caught sight of Tunner poised hesitantly in the doorway, and rose in the gloom to greet him.
“Mr. Tunner! How delightfull And what a surprise to see you! How fortunate you were, to leave Messad when you did. Or wise—I don’t know which. When we got back from all our touring about, the climate there was positively beastly! Oh, horrible! And of course I got my malaria and had to take to bed. I thought we should never get away. And Eric of course made things more difficult with his silly behavior.”
“It’s nice to see you again,” said Tunner. He thought he had made his final adieux back in Messad, and now discovered he had very little civility left to draw upon.
“We’re motoring out to some very old Garamantic ruins tomorrow. You must come along. It’ll be quite thrilling.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Lyle—”
“Come and have tea!” she cried, seizing his sleeve.
But he begged off, and went out to the palmeraie and walked for miles between the walls under the trees, feeling that he never would get out of Bou Noura. For no reason, the likelihood of Kit’s turning up seemed further removed than ever, now that the Lyles were around. He started back at sunset, and it was dark by the time he arrived at the pension. Under his door a telegram had been pushed; the message was written in lavender ink in an almost illegible hand. It was from the American Consul at Dakar, in answer to one of his many wires: NO INFORMATION REGARDING KATHERINE MORESBY WILL ADVISE IF ANY RECEIVED. He threw it into the wastebasket and sat down on a pile of Kit’s luggage. Some of the bags had been Port’s; now they belonged to Kit, but they were all in his room, waiting.
“How much longer can all this go on?” he asked himself. He was out of his element here; the general inaction was telling on his nerves. It was all very well to do the right thing and wait for Kit to appear somewhere out of the Sahara, but suppose she never did appear? Suppose—the possibility had to be faced—she were already dead? There would have to be a limit to his waiting, a final day after which he would no longer be there. Then he saw himself walking into Hubert David’s apartment on East Fifty-fifth Street, where he had first met Port and Kit. All their friends would be there: some would be noisily sympathetic; some would be indignant; some just a little knowing and supercilious, saying nothing but thinking a lot; some would consider the whole thing a gloriously romantic episode, tragic only in passing. But he did not want to see any of t
hem. The longer he stayed here the more remote the incident would become, and the less precise the blame that might attach to him—that much was certain.
That evening he enjoyed his chess game less than usual. Abdelkader saw that he was preoccupied and suddenly suggested they stop playing. He was glad of the opportunity to get to sleep early, and he found himself hoping that the bed in his new room would not prove to have something wrong with it. He told Abdelkader he would see him in the morning, and slowly mounted the stairs, feeling certain now that he would be staying in Bou Noura all winter. Living was cheap; his money would hold out.
The first thing he noticed on stepping into his room was the open communicating door. The lamps were lighted in both rooms, and there was a smaller, more intense light moving beside his bed. Eric Lyle stood there on the far side of the bed, a flashlight in his hand. For a second neither one moved. Then Eric said, in a voice trying to sound sure of itself: “Yes? Who is it?”
Tunner shut the door behind him and walked toward the bed; Eric backed against the wall. He turned the flashlight in Tunner’s face.
“Who—Don’t tell me I’m in the wrong room!” Eric laughed feebly; nevertheless the sound of it seemed to give him courage. “By the look of your face I expect I am! How awful! I just came in from outside. I thought everything looked a bit odd.” Tunner said nothing. “I must have come automatically to this room because my things had been in it this noon. Good God! I’m so fagged I’m scarcely conscious.”
It was natural for Tunner to believe what people told him; his sense of suspicion was not well developed, and even though it had been aroused a moment ago he had been allowing himself to be convinced by this pitiful monologue. He was about to say: “That’s all right,” when he glanced down at the bed. One of Port’s small overnight cases lay there open; half of its contents had been piled beside it on the blanket.
Slowly Tunner looked up. At the same time he thrust his neck forward in a way that sent a thrill of fear through Eric, who said apprehensively: “Oh!” Taking four long steps around the foot of the bed he reached the corner where Eric stood transfixed.
“You God-damned little son of a bitch!” He grabbed the front of Eric’s shirt with his left hand and rocked him back and forth. Still holding it, he took a step sideways to a comfortable distance and swung at him, not too hard. Eric fell back against the wall and remained leaning there as if he were completely paralyzed, his bright eyes on Tunner’s face. When it became apparent that the youth was not going to react in any other way, Tunner stepped toward him to pull him upright, perhaps to take another swing at him, depending on how he felt the next second. As he seized his clothing, a sob came in the middle of Eric’s heavy breathing, and never shifting his piercing gaze, he said in a low voice, but distinctly: “Hit me.”
The words enraged Tunner. “With pleasure,” he replied, and did so, harder than before—a good deal harder, it seemed, since Eric slumped to the floor and did not move. He looked down at the full, white face with loathing. Then he put the things back into the valise, shut it, and stood still, trying to collect his thoughts. After a moment Eric stirred, groaned. He pulled him up and propelled him toward the door, where he gave him a vicious shove into the next room. He slammed the door, and locked it, feeling slightly sick. Anyone’s violence upset him—his own most of all.
The next morning the Lyles were gone. The photograph, a study in sepia of a Peulh water carrier with the famous Red Mosque of Djenne in the background, remained tacked on the salon wall above the divan all winter.
BOOK THREE
The Sky
“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
Kafka
XXVI
When she opened her eyes she knew immediately where she was. The moon was low in the sky. She pulled her coat around her legs and shivered slightly, thinking of nothing. There was a part of her mind that ached, that needed rest. It was good merely to lie there, to exist and ask no questions. She was sure that if she wanted to, she could begin remembering all that had happened. It required only a small effort. But she was comfortable there as she was, with that opaque curtain falling between. She would not be the one to lift it, to gaze down into the abyss of yesterday and suffer again its grief and remorse. At present, what had gone before was indistinct, unidentifiable. Resolutely she turned her mind away, refusing to examine it, bending all her efforts to putting a sure barrier between herself and it. Like an insect spinning its cocoon thicker and more resistant, her mind would go on strengthening the thin partition, the danger spot of her being.
She lay quietly, her feet drawn up under her. The sand was soft, but its coldness penetrated her garments. When she felt she could no longer bear to go on shivering, she crawled out from under her protecting tree and set to striding back and forth in front of it in the hope of warming herself. The air was dead; not a breath stirred, and the cold grew by the minute. She began to walk farther afield, munching bread as she went. Each time she returned to the tamarisk tree she was tempted to slide back down under its branches and sleep. However, by the time the first light of dawn appeared, she was wide awake and warm.
The desert landscape is always at its best in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The sense of distance lacks: a ridge nearby can be a far-off mountain range, each small detail can take on the importance of a major variant on the countryside’s repetitious theme. The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day has fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again—the same day he has been living for a long time, over and over, still blindingly bright and untarnished by time. Kit breathed deeply, looked around at the soft line of the little dunes, at the vast pure light rising up from behind the hammada’s mineral rim, at the forest of palms behind her still immersed in night, and knew that it was not the same day. Even when it grew entirely light, even when the huge sun shot up, and the sand, trees and sky gradually resumed their familiar daytime aspect, she had no doubts whatever about its being a new and wholly separate day.
A caravan comprising two dozen or more camels laden with bulging woolen sacks appeared coming down the oued toward her. There were several men walking beside the beasts. At the rear of the procession were two riders mounted on their high mehara, whose nose rings and reins gave them an even more disdainful expression than that of the ordinary camels ahead. Even as she saw these two men she knew that she would accompany them, and the certainty gave her an unexpected sense of power: instead of feeling the omens, she now would make them, be them herself. But she was only faintly astonished at her discovery of this further possibility in existence. She stepped out into the path of the oncoming procession and called to it, waving her arms in the air. And before the animals had stopped walking, she rushed back to the tree and dragged out her valise. The two riders looked at her and at each other in astonishment. They drew up their respective mehara and leaned forward, staring down at her in fascinated curiosity.
Because each of her gestures was authoritative, an outward expression of utter conviction, betraying no slightest sign of hesitation, it did not occur to the masters of the caravan to interfere as she passed the valise to one of the men on foot and motioned to him to tie it atop the sacks on the nearest pack camel. The man glanced back at his masters, saw no expression on their faces indicating opposition to her command, and made the complaining animal kneel and receive the extra burden. The other camel drivers looked on in silence as she walked back to the riders and stretching her arms up toward the younger of the two, said to him in English: “Is there room for me?”
The rider smiled. Grumbling mightily, his mehari was brought to its knees; she seated herself sideways. a few inches in front of the man. When the animal rose, he was obliged to hold her on by passing one arm around her waist, or she would have fallen off. The two riders laughed a bit, and exchanged a few brief remarks as they started on their way along the oued.
After a certain
length of time they left the valley and turned across a wide plantless region strewn with stones. The yellow dunes lay ahead. There was the heat of the sun, the slow climbing to the crests and the gentle going down into the hollows, over and over—and the lively, insistent pressure of his arm about her. She raised no problem for herself; she was content to be relaxed and to see the soft unvaried landscape going by. To be sure, several times it occurred to her that they were not really moving at all, that the dune along whose sharp rim they were now traveling was the same dune they had left behind much earlier, that there was no question of going anywhere since they were nowhere. And when these sensations came to her they started an ever so slight stirring of thought. “Am I dead?” she said to herself, but without anguish, for she knew she was not. As long as she could ask herself the question: “Is there anything?” and answer: “Yes,” she could not be dead. And there were the sky, the sun, the sand, the slow monotonous motion of the mehari’s pace. Even if the moment came, she reflected at last, when she no longer could reply, the unanswered question would still be there before her, and she would know that she lived. The idea comforted her. Then she felt exhilarated; she leaned back against the man and became conscious of her extreme discomfort. Her legs must have been asleep for a long time. Now the rising pain made her embark on a ceaseless series of shiftings. She hitched and wriggled. The rider increased the pressure of his enfolding arm and said a few words to his companion; they both chuckled.
