by Paul Bowles
“Pregúnteles,” she whispered to Pedro, indicating a group of dark figures at the right. The barnyard odors were overwhelming. As Pedro left her side to approach the men, she glanced up and saw the sky, uniformly black. Not a star showed through the huge curtain of cloud. Yes, far out over the invisible sea she thought she saw one shining, but it could have been a boat. She had neglected to bring a wrap, and she was shivering.
The house was up ahead, at the top of the village. She could see the lamp through the open door, the brightest light in the landscape. Several dogs went slinking away into the dark as they approached the house. Pedro called out, “Señor!” and Mr. Van Siclen appeared.
“Good God!” he cried when he saw them standing in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
She pushed past him into the tiny room. There was a chair, a table littered with papers, and a mattress on the floor in the corner. And there were large native baskets everywhere, full of pieces of stone. The light hurt her eyes.
“Where’s my daughter?” she said, going to the door of the adjoining room and peering in.
“What?”
She looked at him; for the first time since she had known him he seemed really perturbed—even frightened.
“Charlotte. Where is she?”
The expression on his face did not change. Her question seemed not to have reached it. “I have no idea. I let her off early this morning on the Boulevard by the French Consulate.”
Mrs. Callender hesitated, not completely sure he was telling the truth. He took the initiative. “It’d be more to the point to ask where Monsieur Royer is. You haven’t seen him by any chance? I don’t mind telling you I’m worried.”
“Monsieur Royer? Certainly not! Isn’t he here with you?”
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I’m afraid not. I don’t know what’s up. But it doesn’t look good to me.”
She sat down sideways on the straight-backed chair. For a second she heard the sea much closer than it should have been.
“He went out last night right after supper. There were some drums beating.”
She had her hand to her head. And as so often happens in moments of great fatigue, she felt that the scene was one whose outcome she knew by heart, that although she was in it, it would go on and play itself through to the end without her participation. Mr. Van Siclen would reach into his hip-pocket, pull out a packet of cigarettes, extract one, light it, and hold the match a moment before blowing it out, just as he did do each of these things a fraction of a second after she had known he would. And he would go on speaking.
“—but I don’t quite know what the hell to do. The worst thing about it is that the natives all claim not to have seen him, ever. They don’t know there is such a person. I know damned well they’re lying. It’s too unanimous. I don’t think he ever came back at all. The blankets on his mattress in there”—he indicated the next room—“haven’t been touched. I didn’t notice that until I got back from town this morning. I thought he was asleep.”
She said nothing because she felt she was getting much too far ahead of him now. At the moment this bare room with the wind outside was the less strong of two realities. The other was a spoken sentence, a dreadful image, but she could recall neither the sentence nor the image it had evoked—only the brief horror she had felt at the time.
She was standing up, walking toward the door.
“I feel a bit ill.” To say the words demanded a monstrous effort.
Outside, the sea-wind battered her face. She breathed deeply several times. Mr. Van Siclen’s voice came from the door, solicitous. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Be careful out there. There’s barbed wire strung along the edge where you are.”
Now it was complete. Everything had been said. All she had to do was go on breathing deeply, facing the sea. Of course. A coil of wire around his neck. Behind a rock. A minute or two later she went back in.
“Better?”
“If I could have a drink,” she said wanly. (She could not say to him: “It’s not my fault. You yourself put the idea into my head,” because to admit that much would establish her guilt firmly, for all time.)
“Whisky, you mean? Or water?”
“I think whisky.”
As she drank it he said: “We’ll have a searching party out looking for him the first thing in the morning. That is, if he doesn’t turn up tonight. I’ll drive you back now so you won’t have to walk down the hill. And I think it might be a good idea to call the comisaría tonight, anyway.”
She smiled ruefully. “The police won’t be of much use, will they?”
“Never know,” he said, slipping into his jacket. “He may be lying only a half mile from here with a broken leg.”
Again she smiled: she was so sure it was not that. And so was he, she thought, but now that she was upset too he could afford to pretend.
“Well, shall we get going?” he asked her.
The wind blew, the great black cloud from the sea had covered everything. He put his arm about her waist as they stumbled downward. She thought of nothing, let herself bump against him as they avoided rocks.
They were in the jeep. At the foot of the hill Pedro got out. “Do you want to go in your own car?” said Mr. Van Siclen. “It’d be more comfortable, I guess.”
“No. This air is just what I need.”
Swiftly they left El Menar behind in the darkness.
From the spot where he lay, he could have heard the two motors grow fainter and be drowned by the vaster sound of the sea; he could have seen the two little red tail-lights moving away across the empty countryside. Could have, if all that had not been decided for him twenty-one hours earlier. In the bright moonlight he had sat with the child on his knee (for she was really no more than a child) letting her examine his watch. For some reason—probably the sight of this innocent animal holding the thin gold toy in her tattooed hands—he was put in mind of the phrase he had not been able to recall the evening of his arrival. He began to murmur it to himself, even at the moment her expression changed to one of terror as, looking up over his shoulder, she saw what was about to happen.
“Le temps qui coule ici n’a plus d’heures, mais, tant l’inoccupation de chacun est parfaite—”
This time he might have completed it.
(1956)
The Frozen Fields
THE TRAIN WAS LATE because the hot-box under one of the coaches had caught fire in the middle of a great flat field covered with snow. They had stayed there about an hour. After the noise and rushing of the train, the sudden silence and the embarrassed stirring of people in their seats induced a general restlessness. At one point another train had shot by on the next track with a roar worse than thunder; in the wake of that, the nervousness of the passengers increased, and they began to talk fretfully in low voices.
Donald had started to scratch pictures with his fingernail in the ice that covered the lower part of the windowpane by his seat. His father had said: “Stop that.” He knew better than to ask “Why?” but he thought it; he could not see what harm it would do, and he felt a little resentful toward his mother for not intervening. He could have arranged for her to object to the senseless prohibition, but experience had taught him that she could be counted on to come to his defense only a limited number of times during any given day, and it was imprudent to squander her reserve of good will.
The snow had been cleared from the station platform when they got out. It was bitter cold; a fat plume of steam trailed downward from the locomotive, partially enveloping the first coach. Donald’s feet ached with the cold.
“There’s Uncle Greg and Uncle Willis!” he cried, and he jumped up and down several times.
“You don’t have to shout,” said his father. “We see them. And stand still. Pick up your bag.”
Uncle Willis wore a black bearskin coat that almost touched the ground. He put his hands under Donald’s arms and lifted him up so that his he
ad was at a level with his own, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then he swung him over into Uncle Greg’s arms, and Uncle Greg did the same thing. “How’s the man, hey?” cried Uncle Greg, as he set him down.
“Fine,” said Donald, conscious of a feeling of triumph, because his father did not like to see boys being kissed. “Men shake hands,” he had told him. “They don’t kiss each other.”
The sky was crystal clear, and although it was already turning lavender with the passing of afternoon, it still shone with an intense light, like the sky in one scene at the Russian Ballet. His mother had taken him a few weeks earlier because she wanted to see Pavlova; it was not the dancing that had excited him, but the sudden direct contact with the world of magic. This was a magic sky above him now, nothing like the one he was used to seeing above the streets of New York. Everything connected with the farm was imbued with magic. The house was the nucleus of an enchanted world more real than the world that other people knew about. During the long green summers he had spent there with his mother and the members of her family he had discovered that world and explored it, and none of them had ever noticed that he was living in it. But his father’s presence here would constitute a grave danger, because it was next to impossible to conceal anything from him, and once aware of the existence of the other world he would spare no pains to destroy it. Donald was not yet sure whether all the entrances were safely guarded or effectively camouflaged.
They sat in the back of the sleigh with a brown buffalo robe tucked around them. The two big gray horses were breathing out steam through their wide nostrils. Silently the white countryside moved past, its frozen trees pink in the late light. Uncle Greg held the reins, and Uncle Willis, sitting beside him, was turned sideways in his seat, talking to Donald’s mother.
“My feet hurt,” said Donald.
“Well, God Almighty, boy!” cried Uncle Willis. “Haven’t you got ‘em on the bricks? There are five hot bricks down there. That’s what they’re there for.” He bent over and lifted up part of the heavy lap-robe. The bricks were wrapped in newspaper.
“My feet are like blocks of ice, too,” said Donald’s mother. “Here, take your shoes off and put your feet on these.” She pushed two of the bricks toward Donald.
“He just wants attention,” said Donald’s father. But he did not forbid him to have the bricks.
“Is that better?” Uncle Willis asked a moment later.
“It feels good. How many miles is it to the farm?”
“Seven miles to The Corner, and a mile and a half from there.”
“Oh, I know it’s a mile and a half from The Corner,” said Donald. He had walked it many times in the summer, and he knew the names of the farms along the road. “First you come to the Elders, then the Landons, then the Madisons—”
His father pushed him hard in the ribs with his elbow. “Just keep quiet for a while.”
Uncle Willis pretended not to have heard this. “Well, well. You certainly have a good memory. How old are you now?”
Donald’s throat had constricted; it was a familiar occurrence which did not at all mean that he was going to cry—merely that he felt like crying. He coughed and said in a stifled voice: “Six.” Then he coughed again; ashamed, and fearful that Uncle Willis might have noticed something amiss, he added: “But I’ll be seven the day after New Year’s.”
They were all silent after that; there were only the muffled rhythm of the horses’ trot and the soft, sliding sound of the runners on the packed snow. The sky was now a little darker than the white meadows, and the woods on the hillside beyond, with their millions of bare branches, began to look frightening. Donald was glad to be sitting in the middle. He knew there were no wolves out there, and yet, could anybody be really certain? There had been wolves at one time—and bears as well—and simply because nobody had seen one in many years, they now said there weren’t any. But that was no proof.
They came to The Corner, where the road to the farm turned off from the main road. Seven rusty mail-boxes stood there in a crooked row, one for each house on the road.
“R.F.D. Number One,” said Uncle Willis facetiously. This had always been a kind of joke among them, ever since they had bought the farm, because they were townspeople and thought the real farmers were very funny.
Now Donald felt he was on home ground, and it gave him the confidence to say: “Rural Free Delivery.” He said the words carefully, since the first one sometimes gave him difficulty. But he pronounced it all right, and Uncle Greg, without turning round, shouted: “That’s right! You go to school now?”
“Yes.” He did not feel like saying more, because he was following the curves in the road, which he knew by heart. But everything looked so different from the way he remembered it that he found it hard to believe it was the same place. The land had lost its intimacy, become bare and unprotected. Even in the oncoming night he could see right through the leafless bushes that should have hidden the empty fields beyond. His feet were all right now, but his hands in their woolen mittens under the buffalo skin were numb with cold.
The farm came into view; in each downstairs window there was a lighted candle and a holly wreath. He bent over and put his shoes on. It was hard because his fingers ached. When he sat up again the sleigh had stopped. The kitchen door had opened; someone was coming out. Everyone was shouting “Hello!” and “Merry Christmas!” Between the sleigh and the kitchen he was aware only of being kissed and patted, lifted up and set down, and told that he had grown. His grandfather helped him take off his shoes again and removed a lid from the top of the stove so he could warm his hands over the flames. The kitchen smelled, as in summer, of woodsmoke, sour milk and kerosene.
It was always very exciting to be in the midst of many people. Each one was an added protection against the constant watchfulness of his mother and father. At home there were only he and they, so that mealtimes were periods of torture. Tonight there were eight at the supper table. They put an enormous old leather-bound dictionary in a chair so he would be high enough, and he sat between his grandmother and Aunt Emilie. She had dark brown eyes and was very pretty. Uncle Greg had married her a year ago, and Donald knew from many overheard conversations that none of the others really liked her.
Gramma was saying: “Louisa and Ivor couldn’t get down till tomorrow. Mr. Gordon’s driving them down as far as Portersville in his car. They’ll all stay in the hotel tonight, and we’ve got to go in first thing in the morning and bring them out.”
“Mr. Gordon, too, I suppose,” said his mother.
“Oh, probably,” Uncle Greg said. “He won’t want to stay alone Christmas Day.”
His mother looked annoyed. “It seems sort of unnecessary,” she said. “Christmas is a family day, after all.”
“Well, he’s part of the family now,” said Uncle Willis with a crooked smile.
His mother replied with great feeling: “I think it’s terrible.”
“He’s pretty bad these days,” put in Grampa, shaking his head.
“Still on the old fire-water?” asked his father.
Uncle Greg raised his eyebrows. “That and worse. You know… And Ivor too.”
Donald knew they were being mysterious because of him. He pretended not to be listening, and busied himself making marks on the tablecloth with his napkin ring.
His father’s mouth had fallen open with astonishment. “Where do they get it?” he demanded.
“Prescription,” said Uncle Willis lightly. “Some crooked Polack doctor up there.”
“Oh, honestly,” cried his mother. “I don’t see how Louisa stands it.”
Aunt Emilie, who had been quiet until now, suddenly spoke. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said speculatively. “They’re both very good to her. I think Mr. Gordon’s very generous. He pays the rent on her apartment, you know, and gives her the use of the car and chauffeur most afternoons.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” said Uncle Greg in a gruff, unpleasant voice which was meant to stop h
er from talking. But she went on, a bit shrilly, and even Donald could hear that they were in the habit of arguing.
“I do happen to know that Ivor’s perfectly willing to give her a divorce any time she wants it, because she told me so herself.”
There was silence at the table; Donald was certain that if he had not been there they would all have begun to talk at that point. Aunt Emilie had said something he was not supposed to hear.
“Well,” said Uncle Willis heartily, “how about another piece of cake, Donald, old man?”
“How about bed, you mean,” said his father. “It’s time he went to bed.”
His mother said nothing, helped him from his chair and took him upstairs.
The little panes of his bedroom window were completely covered with ice. Opening his mouth, he breathed on one pane until a round hole had been melted through and he could see blackness outside. “Don’t do that, dear,” said his mother. “Gramma’ll have to clean the window. Now come on; into bed with you. There’s a nice hot brick under the covers so your feet won’t get cold.” She tucked the blankets around him, kissed him, and took the lamp from the table. His father’s voice, annoyed, came up from the foot of the stairs. “Hey, Laura! What’s going on up there? Come on.”
“Won’t there be any light in my room at all?” Donald asked her.
“I’m coming,” she called. She looked down at Donald. “You never have a light at home.”
“I know, but home I can turn it on if I need it.”
“Well, you’re not going to need it tonight. Your father would have a fit if I left the lamp. You know that. Now just go to sleep.”
“But I won’t be able to sleep,” he said miserably.
“Laura!” shouted his father.
“Just a minute!” she cried, vexed.
