by Paul Bowles
At Canal Street I had the pleasure of actually seeing the bait snapped up. I had no sooner put the penny in, retrieved the untouched box, and placed one of mine at the back of the shelf, when a young girl (Italian, I think) pushed past me and worked the machine. There was an expression of amusement on her face as she rejoined her friends at the edge of the platform. “Gee, I’m gettin’ good,” she said. “I got two.”
I delivered the three final boxes in Brooklyn, returned to Manhattan, had a light meal at a Longchamps on Madison Avenue, and came home, feeling that the day had certainly not been wasted. I venture to say that I am embarked on the biggest comedy to be played in the subways of New York until the day Russia’s super-bombs lay them all bare to the sun. This is an infantile pastime I have devised, but at the same time it carries its own weight, and thus must have a meaning. However, I paid for my jaunt with a feeling of considerable fatigue, mostly of nervous origin, I suppose. Naturally, it was something of a strain. On an ordinary evening a cricket would not have been able to disturb me. Mrs. Crawford was indignant about the rubbers and the hat and the fact that my clothes were quite damp, of course. She is a good old soul. Today I have done nothing but sit in the garden reading the Sunday Times. The sun was out and in, all day, but it was not too hot.
This morning the Stewarts very kindly invited me on a picnic to Rye Beach. I could not entertain the thought of going, certainly. It’s bad enough to have them living next door, to have to hear their abominable radio at all hours of the day and night, and put up with the depredations wrought in the garden by that untrained brat of theirs, without going out of my way to accompany them on an outing. It was a kind thought, however, and I have decided to go downtown the first thing tomorrow morning and buy a toy of some sort for little Dorothy. Maybe a tricycle, or something that will keep her on the sidewalk. Anywhere, anywhere, out of my garden!
Monday 3rd—
I scarcely dared open the paper this morning, for fear of what I should find. Still, reading of the consequences is most assuredly a part of the procedure, and so I went ahead. But for some reason the police are keeping it quiet. There was nothing, anywhere. This silence managed to make me feel uncomfortable; in a way I feel as though I were being watched.
The Stewarts were most pleased with the velocipede, or whatever the chromium-plated contraption is called. Little Dorothy seemed quite overwhelmed by its splendor. As yet I have not seen her use it. I dare say she is too small to pull it by herself, up and down the two flights of steps between the front door and the sidewalk. I imagine for a while her parents will have to take it up and down for her.
Thursday 6th—
The newspapers continue to maintain a stubborn silence, being filled instead with asinine stories about the electoral campaign. As if it could possibly change the course of history which of the two scarecrows gets into the seat of power. It was already too late to do that a hundred and seventy-five years ago. Too late to avert the sheer, obscene horror that has been on its way ever since, and is nearly here now. Voltaire, Marx, Roosevelt, Stalin, what were they but buds along the branch, like sores that have a way of bursting through the skin where it is thinnest? Who planted the tree of poison, who infected the blood? I am not qualified to say; the complexities of the question are endless. But I believe that one of the culprits was our friend Rousseau. That unpardonable mechanism, the intellect, has several detestable aspects. Perhaps the worst is the interpenetration of minds; the influence, unconscious, even, that one mind can have over millions, is unforeseeable, immeasurable. You never know what form it will take, when it will make itself manifest.
Saturday 8th—
The police assuredly are playing some sort of game. There must have been at least fifteen deaths, and not a word about one of them has appeared. That of course is their business, but I am amused and a little mystified to see how they are conducting it. Mrs. C. has a heavy summer cold. I tried hard to make her stay in bed, but she is the soul of conscientiousness, and insists on continuing with her regular work.
Sunday 9th—
It is an odd thing, that part of the mind which invents dreams and retains them, sometimes making a certain dream a colored lens, as it were, which comes between one’s consciousness and one’s vision of what passes for reality. That is, the feeling of the dream can remain when every detail has been lost. For several days now a particular atmosphere, taste, sensation, or whatever it may be called, has been haunting me. It can only be a dreamvestige, yet in spite of the fact that I have forgotten the dream it is very strong. And since it is gone it is unlocatable in time. It may have been this week or many years ago that the dream itself took place. The feeling, if it can be put into words at all, is one connected with languor, forgetfulness, lostness, emptiness, endlessness—one thing which would be all those things. Living my life and thinking my thoughts through that lens makes for a certain melancholy. I have tried desperately to find a door into the dream; perhaps if I could recall it, get back there, I could destroy its power. It is often a way. But it is almost as if it were an entity in itself, aware of my efforts to find it, and determined to remain hidden. As I feel I am approaching it I seem to sense a springing away, a definite recoil into some airless, unreachable region within. I don’t like it; it worries me.
Monday 10th—
When things become wholly unbelievable, all one can do is laugh. There is nothing to fall back upon but the bare fact of one’s existence; one must forsake logic for magic. Because it was raining this morning (a morning rather like the day of my excursion to the city) and I wanted to take a short stroll, I went to the clothes closet and took out my gray flannel suit. I was entirely dressed when I suddenly recalled that there was a large hole in the right trouser-pocket. A strange feeling of confusion came over me, even before I started to think. But then the mental process commenced. How had the pennies stayed in my pocket that day? It was quite simple. I had changed my suit; now I remembered clearly taking off the gray flannel and putting on the herring-bone tweed. Perhaps if I had been able to live completely in the mind at that moment, I should have given it no further thought, and the unacceptable discovery would not have been made—at least, not then. But evidently I could not be satisfied with anything so simple. Another reflex sent my left hand to the pocket of the jacket, and that was the instant of my undoing. Later I took them all out and counted them sitting on the bed, but then I merely stood still, my hand inside the pocket feeling the jumble of small cardboard boxes, my mouth hanging open like an idiot’s. It was inescapable—they were there. A second later I said aloud: “Oh.” And I rushed over to the bureau drawer and opened it, because I wanted to be sure that these were not the untouched boxes I had collected. But they too were there, scattered among the piles of clean handkerchiefs. Then the others—? There is nothing to think. I know I delivered them.
At least, I believe I know. If I am to doubt my own eyes and ears, then it is time I gave up entirely. But in connection with that idea a ghastly little thought occurs to me: am I doubting my eyes and ears? Obviously not; only my memory. Memory is a cleverer trickster by far. In that case, however, I am stark, raving mad, because I remember every detail of those hours spent in the subway. But here are the boxes piled in front of me on the desk, all twenty. I know them intimately. I glued down each little flap with the maximum of care. There is no mistaking them. It is a shattering experience, and I feel ill, ill in every part of my being. A voice in me says: “Accept the impossible. Leave off trying to make this fit in with your preconceived ideas of logic and probability. Life would be a sad affair if it reserved no surprises at all.” “But not this sort!” I reply. “Nothing quite so basically destructive of my understanding of the world!” I am going to bed. Everything is all wrong.
3:15 AM—
The dream has emerged from its wrappings of fog. Not all of it, but that does not matter. I recognized it immediately when only a piece of it appeared, as I was lying here in the dark, half asleep. I relaxed and let more of it c
ome. A senseless dream, it would seem, and yet powerful enough to have colored all these past few days with its sadness. It is almost impossible to put down, since nothing happens in it: I am left only with vague impressions of being solitary in the park of some vast city. Solitary in the sense that although life is going on all around me, the cords that could connect me in any way with the life have been severed, so that I am as alone as if I were a spirit returned from the dead. Traffic moves past at some distance from where I am reclining on the ground under the trees. The time—timeless. I know there are streets full of people behind the trees, but I will never be able to touch them. If I should open my mouth to cry out, no sound would come forth. Or if I should stretch my arms toward one of the figures that occasionally wanders along the path nearby, that would have no effect, because I am invisible. It is the terrible contradiction that is unbearable: being there and yet knowing that I am not there, for in order to be, one must not only be to one’s self: it is absolutely imperative that one be for others. One must have a way of basing one’s being on the certainly that others know one is there. I am telling myself that somewhere in this city Mrs. Crawford is thinking of me. If I could find her, she would be able to see me, and could give me a sign that would mean everything was all right. But she will never come by this place. I am hidden. I cannot move, I was born here, have always been here under these trees on this wet grass. And if I was born, perhaps I can die, and the city making its roar out beyond this park will stop being. That is my only hope. But it will take almost forever. That is about all there is to the dream. Just the static picture of sadness and lostness.
The boxes are still there on my desk. They at least are no dream!
That little Dorothy is a horror. This evening at dusk I was returning from a short walk. It was nearly dark, and for some reason the street lights had not yet been put on. I turned into the front walk, climbed up the steps, and had almost reached the house, when I banged full-force into her damned tricycle. I am afraid my anger ran away with me, for I deliberately gave it such a push that it bumped all the way down both flights of steps and ran out into the middle of the street. A truck coming down the hill finished it off in a somewhat spectacular fashion. When I got inside I found the child in the kitchen talking with Mrs. C. I did not mention the incident, but came directly upstairs.
It is a lovely evening. After dinner I am going to take all forty boxes to the woods behind the school and throw them on to the rubbish heap there. It’s too childish a game to go on playing at my age. Let the kids have them.
(1954)
The Hours After Noon
“If one could awaken all the echoes of one’s memory simultaneously, they would make a music, delightful or sad as the case might be, but logical and without dissonances. No matter how incoherent the existence, the human unity is not affected.”
—Baudelaire
1
OH, YOU’RE A MAN! What does a man know about such things? I can tell you how much: absolutely nothing!” When she argued with her husband at mealtimes, Mrs. Callender often sought the support of the other diners in the room. In this instance, however, her appeal was purely formal, since at the moment she was the only woman present, and thus assumed she had their attention anyway. Her bright eyes flashed indignantly from one male diner to the next, and she even turned around in her chair to include old Mr. Richmond, the teller in the Bank of British West Africa. He looked up from his food and said: “Eh? Oh, yes. I dare say.”
The Pension Callender was surprisingly empty these days—empty even for the hot season. Besides old Mr. Richmond, who had been with them since they had started eleven years ago, there was Mr. Burton down from London to write a book; he had come last autumn and as yet had given no indication of being ready to leave. Mr. Richmond and Mr. Burton were the only true residents of the pension. The others either came and went irregularly, like Mr. Van Siclen the archeologist and Clyde Brown who was in business in Casablanca, or were merely there for a few days waiting for money or visas before they continued southward or northward, like the two young Belgians who had left that morning.
“A young girl—any young girl—is unbelievably sensitive. Like a thermometer or a barometer. She catches hold of whatever’s in the air. It’s true, I tell you.” Mrs. Callender looked around at each one defiantly; her black eyes flashed.
Mr. Callender was in a good humor. “That may be,” he said indulgently. “But I wouldn’t worry about Charlotte. And anyway, we don’t even know for sure whether Monsieur Royer’s coming or not. You know how he is, always changing his mind. He’s probably on his way to Marrakesh right now.”
“Oh, he will come. You know he will! You simply don’t want to face facts.” (Sometimes this was true of Mr. Callender. When it was obvious that one of the Moslem servants was systematically stealing foodstuffs from his pantry, he would make no effort to discover who the culprit was, preferring to wait until he might possibly catch him red-handed.) “You hope that somehow he won’t get here. But he will, and he’s a filthy, horrible man, and he’s going to be sitting opposite your own daughter at every meal. I should think that might mean something to you.”
Her husband looked around at the other diners, an expression of amusement on his face. “I don’t think sitting opposite to him at mealtimes’ll bring about her downfall, do you?”
“Abdallah! Otra taza de café!” The boy who had been standing by the fireplace trying to follow the conversation stepped forward and filled her cup. “Silly boy!” she cried, sipping the coffee. “It’s quite cold.” He understood, and lifted the cup to carry it out. “No, no,” she said sighing, reaching out for it. “Déjalo, déjalo.” And without pausing: “He has a sinister personality. It has an effect on one. Women feel those things. I’ve felt it myself.”
Her husband raised his eyebrows. “Aha! So now we come to the meat of the conversation. Gentlemen! Wouldn’t you say that my wife is the one to watch? Don’t you think she should be kept from Monsieur Royer?”
Mrs. Callender simpered. “Bob! You’re positively appalling!” At the same time Mr. Richmond raised his head in a startled fashion and said: “Monsieur Royer? Oh?”
Clyde Brown was the only one of the four guests who had been following the conversation from the beginning. His watery blue eyes stared with interest. “Who is this Monsieur Royer? A Latin Quarter Don Juan?”
There was a slight silence. The wind was blowing a blind outside the dining-room window back and forth; the distant sound of heavy waves pounding against the cliffs came up from below. “Don Juan?” echoed Mrs. Callender, laughing thinly. “My dear, I wish you could see him! He looks like a furious lobster, one that’s just been cooked. Absolutely hideous! And he’s at least fifty.”
“You’re treading on delicate ground,” said Mr. Callender into his plate.
“I know, darling, but you don’t go about annoying girls and getting into messes. He gets into the most frightful messes. You haven’t forgotten Señora Coelho’s niece last year, when he…”
Mr. Callender pushed back his chair; the scraping sound it made on the tile floor was very loud in the room. “Probably does, and probably richly deserves whatever trouble he gets into,” he announced. Then impatiently, quickly, to his wife: “I know all about him. What do you want me to do—wire him we’re full up?” He knew she would say no, and she did. There was always something in one of the stores in town which she coveted at the time: a silk scarf, a pair of shoes or gloves, and the only money which came in was that paid by the guests who stayed at the pension. “But I should think you’d show more interest where your own daughter is concerned,” she added.
Mr. Burton, who had just become aware that a discussion was in progress, raised his head from the book he had been reading and smiled affably at Mrs. Callender. Old Mr. Richmond folded his napkin, stuffed it into its aluminum ring, and said: “I expect it’s time to be getting back into town.” Mr. Callender announced that he was going to his cottage to take his afternoon siesta. Soon only M
r. Van Siclen remained at his table by the window, sipping his coffee and looking distractedly out at the windblown landscape. He was a young man who had let his beard grow during the war when he had been stationed on some distant island in the Pacific; now finding that he looked more impressive with it (he was very young to be an archeologist, people told him), he still wore it. Mrs. Callender found herself watching him, wondering whether or not he would be better-looking without its black decoration: he would be less romantic, she decided, perhaps even a little frail of face. As he turned to look at her she felt a tiny thrill of excitement, but his expression swiftly effaced it. He always seemed pleasantly preoccupied; the cynical smile that flickered about his lips made him more remote than if there had been no smile at all. His way of being friendly was to look up from his book and say: “Good morning. How are you today?” in a very firm voice; then by the time you had replied he would be buried again in the book. She considered his behavior insufferably rude, but then, she never had met an American who did not impress her as wanting in courtesy. It was more their attitude than it was anything they did or failed to do. She herself had been born in Gibraltar of an English father and a Spanish mother, her school days had been passed in Kent, and, although Mr. Callender was an American, she considered herself English through and through. And Charlotte was going to be a typical English girl, a wholesome, simple lass without the ridiculous attitudes and featherbrained preoccupations of most American girls. Nor would she be granted the freedom so many American mothers allowed their daughters. Mrs. Callender had enough of the Mediterranean in her to believe that while a boy should have complete liberty, a girl should have none at all. The wind continued to bang the shutter.
