by Paul Bowles
“Yes, but this is very special. And calls for something very special. Señorita Marchena’ll be equal to the occasion.” He looked at her carefully. “And all I can say is, the Ramirez girls had better look to their laurels.”
She felt herself blushing. The Ramirez girls were three sisters who held the reputation of having a local monopoly on beauty.
“The Ramirez girls!” cried Mrs. Callender, a note of scorn in her voice.
“What’s the matter with them?” demanded her husband. “They’re nice girls.”
“Oh, they’re pretty, yes, Bob, but they’re scarcely what one would call nice girls.” (For Mrs. Callender all Spaniards by definition were inclined to dubious morality.)
“Mother! How can you say that!” Charlotte exclaimed.
Mrs. Callender looked about uneasily; it seemed to her that Monsieur Royer was listening to their conversation. She had purposely delayed sitting down to dinner until she thought he would be finished eating, but he was still toying with his fruit. “I’ll tell you about them later,” she said sotto voce to Charlotte, and changed the subject, fervently hoping that in a moment he would leave and go down to his cottage.
In the middle of the meal the door from the terrace opened and Mr. Van Siclen burst in, fresh from El Menar, dressed in earth-stained overalls. He had a way of appearing unannounced at any hour of the day or night. Sometimes it was inconvenient for the servants, but since he paid full pension and ate few meals there, the Callenders never remarked upon his impromptu arrivals. He shut the door carefully so the wind sweeping through the room from the kitchen would not slam it. “Hello, everybody!” he said, running his hand through his hair. Mrs. Callender glanced toward the window where Monsieur Royer was slicing an apple into paper-thin sections. “Oh, how terrible! Monsieur Royer has your table! Do sit here with us. Abdallah! Trae otra silla!” She moved her own chair up a bit and indicated the space beside her. “Before you sit down, this is my daughter Charlotte.” He acknowledged the introduction dryly, with a minimum of civility, and seated himself, sighing mightily.
“What a night!” he exclaimed as his soup was placed before him. “An ocean breeze, a full moon, and big clouds. I just came in from El Menar in my jeep,” he told Charlotte. (She had decided he was pretentious, with that beard.)
“How enchanting!” cried Mrs. Callender. “Now, do tell us. Have you stumbled on something fantastic out there? Gold coins? Lapis lazuli cups?”
As he spoke, Charlotte watched his face, complacent and slightly mocking. It summed up all the things she disliked most in men: conceit, brashness, insensitivity. Still, he could not be as bad as he looked, she thought; some of it must be the beard. No one his age had a right to such a decoration.
From time to time she stole a glance at her mother, who was following his dull discourse as if it were of the greatest interest, punctuating it with little cooing sounds and exclamations of rapture. Somehow she had expected to find her less silly this time (perhaps because of her determination to resist) and instead, here she was, worse than ever. “It must be her age,” she decided. At some point she would probably change suddenly, overnight. And now, becoming aware that it was precisely this quality of superficiality to which she most objected, she no longer felt even a twinge of guilt at her own rebelliousness. Trying to manage other people’s lives was a definite thing. It had its limits. But the kind of irresponsibility she saw in her mother amounted to a denial of all values. There was no beginning and no end; anything was equal to anything else.
Two nurses on leave from the hospital in Gibraltar pushed back their chairs and walked across the room to the door. “Good nayt,” they said. Both wore glasses; both were dressed in execrable taste. Charlotte watched them and thought: “To have reached thirty and to look like that—!”
Someone laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. She twisted her head around. The French gentleman was standing behind her chair, smiling at her mother.
“I wish to compliment you, madam. A lovely girl like this could only be the daughter of so charming a mother as you.”
He bowed low, from behind her, so that for a second his head was level with hers; his hand remained on her shoulder. A short silence fell upon the table. To Mr. Van Siclen Monsieur Royer said: “Good evening, my dear fellow! How are you? Have you made any remarkable discoveries recently?”
“Hello, Royer. I was just telling the Callenders a little about the new wall I came to yesterday.”
“But it’s splendid! Only yesterday! I want to hear about it.”
“Sit down,” said Mr. Van Siclen. Mrs. Callender flashed him a furious glance.
“I’m afraid it’ll be rather crowded,” she said, scraping her chair back and forth on the tiles as noisily as possible, and failing to move it an inch.
“Oh, no. There’s room,” objected Charlotte. “Here beside me.”
But Monsieur Royer laughed.
“No, no! You are very kind and I want very much to hear about the latest developments of this prodigious excavating. Perhaps tomorrow, Mr. Van Siclen?” Ceremoniously he kissed the hands of Mrs. Callender and Charlotte and went out.
Mrs. Callender rolled her eyes at her husband. “One needs the patience of Job,” she said. “What an insufferable fool!”
Charlotte hesitated an instant before saying: “Why? I think he’s rather sweet.”
Her mother gave a little shriek, part giggle, and looked at Mr. Callender as if seeking support. Then she said very seriously: “I’m sorry to hear it, darling, because it only shows what faulty judgment you have. The man’s an utter cad, a complete bounder. They don’t come lower.”
Charlotte in turn looked at her father. “Is that really true?” she asked.
“He’s a bad egg, all right,” he said.
They sat a while over coffee exchanging news. The dining-room was empty now save for their table. Abdallah leaned by the fireplace more asleep than awake. Mr. Van Siclen had ceased taking part in the talk, and tilted his chair back, puffing on a pipe. From time to time the wind shook the house. Slowly the conversation had centered itself upon Charlotte. She was telling her parents about school, about her classes and friends; she had almost forgotten Mr. Van Siclen was present. Suddenly she stopped short.
“This must all be the most frightful bore for Mr. Van Siclen,” she said apologetically.
“Nonsense; go on,” said her father. “If he doesn’t like it he can leave.”
Mr. Van Siclen smiled sleepily through the smoke. “I’m not bored at all,” he assured her. “It’s very instructive.”
She was convinced he was making fun of her, and she grew hot with anger.
“I’m dreadfully tired. I think I should go to sleep.” It was the only way to avoid going on with it; now that she was conscious of his amused eyes she could not possibly continue talking.
Her mother jumped up. “Of course she’s tired, poor baby. Come along. You must get to bed immediately.” She tried to take her arm, to pull her toward the door, but Charlotte could not allow that. Gently she disengaged herself and went over to kiss her father good night; she took leave of Mr. Van Siclen with more civility than she felt; then, back at the door, she seized her mother’s arm and led her down the steps through the garden to the cottages below. Mrs. Callender went in and sat on the bed while she unpacked, gossiping about the servants. Hassan’s eleven-year-old brother had been put in prison for reaching in through the open window into Mr. Burton’s room and taking a hundred-peseta note which lay on the table.
“But, mother! that’s terribly young to be in prison.”
“Darling, I’ve said for years that the child was a thief. I’ve told Hassan to watch him, or we should have trouble. Isn’t that the bathrobe Mrs. Grey gave you? It’s rather pretty, but it seems a bit long.” Eventually she went out, leaving Charlotte wide awake in the dark, listening to the rhythmical roar of the waves. They were not very loud tonight; she could remember many nights when they had seemed right in the room. But tonight the wind was fro
m the west.
5
IT WAS NOT LONG before she realized how foolish of her it had been to drink coffee after dinner; she would not be sleepy for hours. And since her mother generally read for an hour or so before going to sleep, and could see across to her cottage, she could not very well get up. Directly she turned on her light, her mother would be over to see what was wrong. She wanted to take a walk—perhaps down on the beach. But it would mean getting dressed in the dark and stealing out quietly at the risk of meeting her father. She had not yet heard him go into his own cottage. If she waited, it would be safer, but she did not feel like waiting. As she groped about cautiously for her skirt she heard him shut his door. She sighed with relief. Now that everyone was in, it would be much easier.
It all went very smoothly; she did not make a sound. Under the grape-arbor, through the vegetable garden, down across the open field toward the promontory where the cypresses and rocks overlooked the water beneath. The low clouds scudding overhead made waves of shadow that moved slowly across the moonlit country. She hummed happily as she walked along. To the right, under the big bent cypress, through the little ravine, up again; she knew the way perfectly. What she had not counted on was meeting Mr. Van Siclen sitting on a rock directly in the path, as she reached the edge of the cliff. He sat there looking out to sea; at her involuntary “Oh!” he turned and smiled at her in the moonlight.
The sight of him there had so thoroughly disrupted her state of mind that she merely stood still and looked at him.
“I thought you’d be out,” he said with satisfaction.
She could only say, stupidly: “Why?”
“I didn’t think you were sleepy.”
She said nothing. Her impulse was to be unfriendly, but she decided it would be childish. “I thought I’d go for a walk down on the beach for a bit.”
He laughed. “I saw you come sneaking out.” (Why did he have to be so objectionable?) “Care to go for a little ride?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, thank you,” she said politely, conscious at the same time that her voice lacked forcefulness.
“Sure you would. Come on!”
He sprang up, seized her hand, and began to pull her along, back up the path. “No, really! No! Listen to me!” She wanted to resist physically, but she was afraid of seeming a whining creature—a poor sport. Presently she was obliged to stop for a moment. “Please!” she gasped. “Not so fast!” This he appeared to construe as a tacit acceptance of his suggestion; he laughed, loosened his grip, and said: “The jeep’s in the upper driveway.”
And once she was in the car, going up the mountain with the night wind in her face, she thought that perhaps she had meant to accept from the moment he had invited her. There was a sharp, spicy odor in the air: they were in the eucalyptus forest. It was like going through a high dark tunnel. The sound of the motor reverberated overhead. A minute later the walls of Sultan Moulay Hafid’s palace loomed, growing higher as they approached the entrance. In another moment there were no walls at all; the car was on the high, flat section of road leading through the olivegrove to Bou Amar. The rolling hills stretched away to the south in a vast misty panorama whitened by the moonlight. Here and there the uncertain shadow of a cloud moved up a slope, assuming a new form as it reached the summit and spread over the valley beyond. The clouds were low and moved swiftly. She wanted to say: “It’s lovely.” But he had turned the windshield horizontal, and her breath was cut by the onrushing blast of air. The little white native houses of Bou Amar flitted past, and again they were in the country, among the pines now. The road did not deviate from its straight line, but it rose and dipped like a roller-coaster over the hills. He closed the windshield.
“Shall I open her up?” he called.
“Don’t go any faster, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“No!”
“This thing can’t go, anyway!” he yelled.
But it seemed to her he had increased the speed.
Now there were no more trees; it was a high, open, rocky region dotted with clumps of holly and heather that glistened under the moon. Far ahead the lighthouse on the cape sent out its recurrent message. All at once he brought the jeep to a stop. It was absolutely silent up here save for the wind: there were no insects and the sea was too far away to be heard. He lit a cigarette without offering her one, and looked at her sideways.
“Are you what’s laughingly called a virtuous young lady?” Her heart sank.
“What?” (And it was so idiotic, in any case.) She waited, then said: “I expect so. Why?”
“Very virtuous?”
“Did you bring me out here to inquire after my morals?”
“They don’t mean a damn thing to me, if you want to know. I’m just asking to be polite. You know—how’s your lumbago? How’s your abscessed tooth?”
In spite of herself she said: “You know, I think you’re quite disgusting.”
He blew some smoke in her face. “All disgust, my dear young lady, is nothing but lack of appetite—desire not to touch with the mouth.”
“What?”
“Eating an object. Kissing somebody. Same thing.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She began to be alarmed: it was like conversing with a madman.
“I’m just trying to tell you that I don’t really disgust you.”
The lighthouse was flashing. “How can I get him to go back?” she thought.
“I should think I’d be the best judge of that,” she said a bit shakily.
“And yet you want me to kiss you.”
“What?” she cried shrilly. After a moment she said in a low voice: “Why should I want you to kiss me?”
“I’m damned if I know. But you do.”
“It’s not true. I don’t.”
He tossed the cigarette away. “I think we’ve argued enough about this little thing,” he said, turning toward her.
She had never been treated this way before. When he seized her, she could do nothing. When with all her might she tried to pull her head away, he caught hold of her lip with his teeth, so that she cried out with pain. After a prolonged struggle he let go and sat grinning at her. She tried to speak, but sobbed and choked.
“Have a handkerchief,” he said. Automatically she accepted it and blew her nose. Then she dabbed at her lip and saw the dark blood on the white linen. For some reason this gave her courage to raise her head and look at him.
“I—”
“Don’t try to talk,” he said shortly.
She stared at him, overcome by her hatred of him, opened her mouth to speak, and choked afresh. When she had calmed herself sufficiently to be able to think: “That was beastly,” rather than “This is beastly,” she handed him his handkerchief and said quietly: “My mother was wrong. She said they don’t come lower than Monsieur Royer.”
He laughed delightedly. “Oh, he’s much worse! Mu-u-uch worse!”
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer not to talk about it any more.”
“Ah, it wasn’t as bad as all that,” he said.
She did not answer.
“As a matter of fact,” he pursued, “this ride was good for you.”
“I don’t think my father would agree,” she said somewhat primly.
“Probably not. But he’ll never be asked his opinion, will he?”
Remembering her sigh of relief when she had heard her father shut the door to his cottage, she was silent. He started up the engine, turned the jeep around, and they went back over the road as quickly as they had come. When they arrived at the garage, she jumped out without speaking again, and hurried to her cottage. All the lights in the other cottages were out. She undressed in the dark, turning on the light over the washbasin just long enough to put a drop of iodine on her lip. As she got into bed she noticed that she was trembling. Even so, it was not long before the sound of the waves had lulled her to sleep.
6
IN THE MORNING she
awoke in rather a bad humor. Perhaps the trip was just having its effect, or perhaps the unpleasantness of last night had upset her nerves. Halima, the younger of Mustapha the cook’s two wives, brought her breakfast. When she had finished eating, she got out of bed and looked in the mirror. Her lower lip was still swollen. “Maybe by lunchtime it will be gone,” she thought hopefully, and she put on her bathing suit and rushed down to the beach where she spent the whole morning swimming and sunbathing. About noon she caught sight of Monsieur Royer coming around the point at the base of the cliffs. He was in white flannels and flourished a cane. She watched him approach, glad he was not Mr. Van Siclen.
“Aha! A mermaid today!” he cried. “Is the sea comfortable?”
“Oh, yes. It’s lovely.”
He stood above her, making designs in the sand with the tip of his cane, and they talked. Finally he said: “May I be seated?”
“Oh, please! Of course!” She felt rude for not having suggested it.
When he was beside her he continued to chat and plough up the sand with his cane. After a few minutes he turned and looked into her face, smiling in such a way that his eyes seemed to shine more brightly, and said: “It is not too many times in his life that a man has the privilege of sitting with a real mermaid, you know. So you must forgive me if I enjoy this privilege.”
She did not know what she ought to say, but his manner amused her, and so she laughed and said: “Thank you.”
He did not seem entirely satisfied. “I don’t want to embarrass you, my dear. You must realize that what I say is said quite sincerely. It is not meant to be flattery. If it seems comic, that is merely my English vocabulary.”
“But it’s not comic at all,” she protested. “It’s very charming, really. And you speak English beautifully.”
His conversation consisted of very little else besides these elaborate compliments, but she found them inoffensive, a little touching, and on the whole enjoyable. As they talked, her sympathy for him increased, and she found herself wishing she could confide in him—not about anything in particular or anything serious, she thought—just about whatever came into her head at the moment. He was friendly, detached, sincere, and, she was sure, very wise. As a little fishing-boat rounded the point, bobbing up and down in the rough water, she suddenly said: “Monsieur Royer, tell me your honest opinion. Do you think it’s despicable for a man to kiss a girl against her will?” She was shocked to hear the words coming out; she had not known they would be exactly those words, but apparently she needed to say them, and there was no one else to say them to.
