The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  A little before noon he boarded up the front of his shop and set out for the market. When his eyes became accustomed to the dim inner light of the building, the first person he saw was Bouchta standing behind the counter in his stall, chopping and slicing the meat the same as any other day. Feeling immensely relieved, Mokhtar wandered over to the counter and spoke to him. Perhaps the note of excessive cordiality in his voice surprised Bouchta, for he glanced up with a startled expression in his face, and seeing Mokhtar, said shortly: “Shahalkheir.” Then he resumed hacking at a piece of meat for a customer. His rather unfriendly look was lost on Mokhtar, who was so pleased to see him there that he was momentarily unable to perceive anything but that one fact. However, when Bouchta, on completing the sale, turned to him and said abruptly: “I’m busy this morning,” Mokhtar stared at him, and again felt his fear stir within him.

  “Yes, Sidi?” he said pleasantly.

  Bouchta glared. “Twenty-two douro would be a more welcome offering than your foolish smile,” he said.

  Mokhtar looked confused. “Twenty-two douro, Sidi?”

  “Yes. The twenty-two douro you never paid me for the lamb’s head at last Aïd el Kébir.”

  Mokhtar felt the blood leap upward in him like a fire. “I paid you for that the following month.”

  “Abaden! Never!” cried Bouchta excitedly. “I have eyes and a head too! I remember what happens! You can’t take advantage of me the way you did of poor old Tahiri. I’m not that old yet!” And he began to call out unpleasant epithets, brandishing his cleaver.

  People had stopped in their tracks and were following the conversation with interest. As Mokhtar’s anger mounted, he suddenly heard, among the names that Bouchta was calling him, one which offended him more than the rest. He reached across the counter and seized Bouchta’s djellaba in his two hands, pulling on the heavy woolen fabric until it seemed that it would surely be ripped off the old man’s back.

  “Let go of me!” shouted Bouchta. The people were crowding in to see whatever violence might result. “Let go of me!” he kept screaming, his face growing steadily redder.

  At this point the scene was so much like his dream that Mokhtar, even while he was enjoying his own anger and the sight of Bouchta as he became the victim of such a senseless rage, was suddenly very much frightened. He let go of the djellaba with one hand, and turning to the onlookers said loudly: “Last night I dreamed that I came here and killed this man, who is my friend. I do not want to kill him. I am not going to kill him. Look carefully. I am not hurting him.”

  Bouchta’s fury was reaching grotesque proportions. With one hand he was trying to pry Mokhtar’s fingers from his garment, and with the other, which held the cleaver, he was making crazy gyrations in the air. All the while he jumped quickly up and down, crying: “Let go! Let go! Khlass!”

  “At any moment he is going to hit me with the cleaver,” thought Mokhtar, and so he seized the wrist that held it, pulling Bouchta against the counter. For a moment they struggled and panted, while the slabs of meat slid about under their arms and fell heavily onto the wet floor. Bouchta was strong, but he was old. Suddenly he relaxed his grasp on the cleaver and Mokhtar felt his muscles cease to push. The crowd murmured. Mokhtar let go of both the wrist and the djellaba, and looked up. Bouchta’s face was an impossible color, like the sides of meat that hung behind him. His mouth opened and his head slowly tilted upward as if he were looking at the ceiling of the market. Then, as if someone had pushed him from behind, he fell forward onto the marble counter and lay still, his nose in a shallow puddle of pinkish water. Mokhtar knew he was dead, and he was a little triumphant as he shouted to everyone: “I dreamed it! I dreamed it! I told you! Did I kill him? Did I touch him? You saw!” The crowd agreed, nodding.

  “Get the police!” cried Mokhtar. “I want everyone to be my witness.” A few people moved away quietly, not wishing to be involved. But most of them stayed, quite ready to give the authorities their version of the strange phenomenon.

  In court the Cadí proved to be unsympathetic. Mokhtar was bewildered by his lack of friendliness. The witnesses had told the story exactly as it had happened; obviously they all were convinced of Mokhtar’s innocence.

  “I have heard from the witnesses what happened in the market,” said the Cadi impatiently. “And from those same witnesses I know you are an evil man. It is impossible for the mind of an upright man to bring forth an evil dream. Bouchta died as a result of your dream.” And as Mokhtar attempted to interrupt: “I know what you are going to say, but you are a fool, Mokhtar. You blame the wind, the night, your long solitude. Good. For a thousand days in our prison here you will not hear the wind, you will not know whether it is night or day, and you will never lack the companionship of your fellow-prisoners.”

  The Cadi’s sentence shocked the inhabitants of the town, who found it of an unprecedented severity. But Mokhtar, once he had been locked up, was persuaded of its wisdom. For one thing, he was not unhappy to be in prison, where each night, when he had begun to dream that he was back in his lonely room, he could awaken to hear on all sides of him the comforting snores of the other prisoners. His mind no longer dwelled upon the earlier happy hours of his life, because the present hours were happy ones as well. And then, the very first day there, he had suddenly remembered with perfect clarity that, although he had intended to do so, he never had paid Bouchta the twenty-two douro for the lamb’s head, after all.

  (1959)

  The Story of Lahcen and Idir

  TWO FRIENDS, Lahcen and Idir, were walking on the beach at Merkala. By the rocks stood a girl, and her djellaba blew in the wind. Lahcen and Idir stopped walking when they saw her. They stood still, looking at her. Lahcen said: “Do you know that one?” “No. I never saw her.” “Let’s go over,” said Lahcen. They looked up and down the beach for a man who might be with the girl, but there was no one. “A whore,” said Lahcen. When they got closer to the girl, they saw that she was very young. Lahcen laughed. “This is easy.” “How much have you got?” Idir asked him. “You think I’m going to pay her?” cried Lahcen.

  Idir understood that Lahcen meant to beat her. (“If you don’t pay a whore you have to beat her.”) And he did not like the idea, because they had done it before together, and it nearly always meant trouble later. Her sister or someone in her family went to the police and complained, and in the end everybody was in jail. Being shut into prison made Idir nervous. He tried to keep out of it, and he was usually able to. The difference between Lahcen and Idir was that Lahcen liked to drink and Idir smoked kif. Kif smokers want to stay quiet in their heads, and drinkers are not like that. They want to break things.

  Lahcen rubbed his groin and spat onto the sand. Idir knew he was going over the moves in the game he was going to play with the girl, planning when and where he would knock her down. He was worried. The girl looked the other way. She held down the skirt of her djellaba so the wind would not blow it. Lahcen said: “Wait here.” He went on to her and Idir saw her lips moving as she spoke to him, for she wore no veil. All her teeth were gold. Idir hated women with gold teeth because at fourteen he had been in love with a gold-toothed whore named Zohra, who never had paid him any attention. He said to himself: “He can have her.” Besides, he did not want to be with them when the trouble began. He stood still until Lahcen whistled to him. Then he went over to where they stood. “Ready?” Lahcen asked. He took the girl’s arm and started to walk along beside the rocks. “It’s late. I’ve got to go,” Idir told him. Lahcen looked surprised, but he said nothing. “Some other day,” Idir told Lahcen, looking at him and trying to warn him. The girl laughed spitefully, as if she thought that might shame him into coming along.

  He was glad he had decided to go home. When he went by the Mendoub’s fig orchard a dog barked at him. He threw a rock at it and hit it.

  The next morning Lahcen came to Idir’s room. His eyes were red from the wine he had been drinking. He sat down on the floor and pulled out a handkerchief that had
a knot tied in one corner. He untied the knot and let a gold ring fall out into his lap. Picking up the ring, he handed it to Idir. “For you. I got it cheap.” Idir saw that Lahcen wanted him to take the ring, and he put it on his finger, saying: “May Allah give you health.” Lahcen rubbed his hand across his chin and yawned. Then he said: “I saw you look at me, and afterward when we got to the quarry I thought that would be the best place. And then I remembered the night the police took us at Bou Khach Khach, and I remembered you looking at me. I turned around and left her there. Garbage!”

  “So you’re not in jail and you’re drunk,” said Idir, and he laughed.

  “That’s true,” said Lahcen. “And that’s why I give you the ring.”

  Idir knew the ring was worth at least fifty dirhams, and he could sell it if he needed money badly. That would end his friendship with Lahcen, but there would be no help for it.

  Sometimes Lahcen came by in the evening with a bottle of wine. He would drink the whole bottle while Idir smoked his kif pipe, and they would listen to the radio until the end of the program at twelve o’clock. Afterward, very late, they would walk through the streets of Dradeb to a garage where a friend of Lahcen was night watchman. When the moon was full, it was brighter than the street lights. With no moon, there was nobody in the streets, and in a few late cafés the men told one another about what thieves had done, and how there were more of them than ever before. This was because there was almost no work to be had anywhere, and the country people were selling their cows and sheep to be able to pay their taxes, and then coming to the city. Lahcen and Idir worked now and then, whenever they found something to do. They had a little money, they always ate, and Lahcen sometimes was able to afford his bottle of Spanish wine. Idir’s kif was more of a problem, because each time the police decided to enforce the law they had made against it, it grew very scarce and the price went up. Then when there was plenty to be had, because the police were busy looking for guns and rebels instead, the price stayed high. He did not smoke any less, but he smoked by himself in his room. If you smoke in a café, there is always soneone who has left his kif at home and wants to use yours. He told his friends at the Café Nadjah that he had given up kif, and he never accepted a pipe when it was offered to him.

  Back in his room in the early evening, with the window open and the sleepy sounds of the town coming up, for it was summer and the voices of people filled the streets, Idir sat in the chair he had bought and put his feet on the windowsill. That way he could see the sky as he smoked. Lahcen would come in and talk. Now and then they went together to Emsallah to a barraca there near the slaughter house where two sisters lived with their feeble-minded mother. They would get the mother drunk and put her to bed in the inner room. Then they would get the girls drunk and spend the night with them, without paying. The cognac was expensive, but it did not cost as much as whores would have.

  In midsummer, at the time of Sidi Kacem, it suddenly grew very hot. People set up tents made of sheets on the roofs of their houses and cooked and slept there. At night in the moonlight Idir could see all the roofs, each one with its box of sheets flapping in the wind, and inside the sheets the red light made by the fire in the pot. Daytimes, the sun shining on the sea of white sheets hurt his eyes, and he remembered not to look out when he passed the window as he moved about his room. He would have liked to live in a more expensive room, one with a blind to keep out the light. There was no way of being protected from the bright summer day that filled the sky outside, and he waited with longing for dusk. His custom was not to smoke kif before the sun went down. He did not like it in the daytime, above all in summer when the air is hot and the light is powerful. When each day came up hotter than the one before it, he decided to buy enough food and kif to last several days, and to shut himself into his room until it got cooler. He had worked two days at the port that week and had some money. He put the food on the table and locked the door. Then he took the key out of the lock and threw it into the drawer of the table. Lying with the packages and cans in his market basket was a large bundle of kif wrapped in a newspaper. He unfolded it, took out a sheaf and sniffed of it. For the next two hours he sat on the floor picking off the leaves and cutting them on a breadboard, sifting, and cutting, again and again. Once, as the sun reached him, he had to move to get out of its heat. By the time the sun went down he had enough ready for three or four days. He got up off the floor and sat in his chair with his pouch and his pipe in his lap, and smoked, while the radio played the Chleuh music that was always broadcast at this hour for the Soussi shopkeepers. In cafés men often got up and turned it off. Idir enjoyed it. Kif smokers usually like it, because of the naqous that always pounds the same design.

  The music played a long time, and Idir thought of the market at Tiznit and the mosque with the tree trunks sticking out of its mud walls. He looked down at the floor. The room still had daylight in it. He opened his eyes wide. A small bird was walking slowly along the floor. He jumped up. The kif pipe fell, but its bowl did not break. Before the bird had time to move, he had put his hand over it. Even when he held it between his two hands it did not struggle. He looked at it, and thought it was the smallest bird he had ever seen. Its head was gray, and its wings were black and white. It looked at him, and it did not seem afraid. He sat down in the chair with the bird in his lap. When he lifted his hand it stayed still. “It’s a young bird and can’t fly,” he thought. He smoked several pipes of kif. The bird did not move. The sun had gone down and the houses were growing blue in the evening light. He stroked the bird’s head with his thumb. Then he took the ring from his little finger and slipped it over the smooth feathers of its head. The bird paid no attention. “A gold collar for the sultan of birds,” he said. He smoked some more kif and looked at the sky. Then he began to be hungry, and he thought the bird might like some breadcrumbs. He put his pipe down on the table and tried to take the ring from the bird’s head. It would not come off over the feathers. He pulled at it, and the bird fluttered its wings and struggled. For a second he let go of it, and in that instant it flew straight from his lap into the sky. Idir jumped up and stood watching it. When it was gone, he began to smile. “The son of a whore!” he whispered.

  He prepared his food and ate it. After that he sat in the chair smoking and thinking about the bird. When Lahcen came he told him the story. “He was waiting all the time for a chance to steal something,” he said. Lahcen was a little drunk, and he was angry. “So he stole my ring!” he cried. “Ah,” said Idir. “Yours? I thought you gave it to me.”

  “I’m not crazy yet,” Lahcen told him. He went away still angry, and did not return for more than a week. The morning he came into the room Idir was certain that he was going to begin to talk again about the ring, and he quickly handed him a pair of shoes he had bought from a friend the day before. “Do these fit you?” he asked him. Lahcen sat down in the chair, put them on, and found they did fit. “They need new bottoms, but the tops are like new,” Idir told him. “The tops are good,” said Lahcen. He felt of the leather and squeezed it between his thumb and fingers. “Take them,” said Idir. Lahcen was pleased, and he said nothing about the ring that day. When he got the shoes to his room he looked carefully at them and decided to spend the money that it would cost to have new soles made.

  The next day he went to a Spanish cobbler, who agreed to repair the shoes for fifteen dirhams. “Ten,” said Lahcen. After a long discussion the cobbler lowered his price to thirteen, and he left the shoes there, saying that he would call for them in a week. The same afternoon he was walking through Sidi Bouknadel, and he saw a girl. They talked together for two hours or more, standing not very near to each other beside the wall, and looking down at the ground so that no one could see they were talking. The girl was from Meknes, and that was why he had never seen her before. She was visiting her aunt, who lived there in the quarter, and soon her sister was coming from Meknes. She looked to him the best thing he had seen that year, but of course he could not be sure of her
nose and mouth because her veil hid them. He got her to agree to meet him at the same place the next day. This time they took a walk along the Hafa, and he could see that she would be willing. But she would not tell him where her aunt’s house was.

  Only two days later he got her to his room. As he had expected, she was beautiful. That night he was very happy, but in the morning when she had gone, he understood that he wanted to be with her all the time. He wanted to know what her aunt’s house was like and how she was going to pass her day. In this way a bad time began for Lahcen. He was happy only when she was with him and he could get into bed and see her lying on one side of him and a bottle of cognac on the other, upright on the floor beside his pillow, where he could reach it easily. Each day when she had gone he lay thinking about all the men she might be going to see before she came back to him. When he talked about it to her she laughed and said she spent all her time with her aunt and sister, who now had arrived from Meknes. But he could not stop worrying about it.

  Two weeks went by before he remembered to go and get his shoes. On his way to the cobbler’s he thought about how he would solve his problem. He had an idea that Idir could help him. If he brought Idir and the girl together and left them alone, Idir would tell him afterward everything that had happened. If she let Idir take her to bed, then she was a whore and could be treated like a whore. He would give her a good beating and then make it up with her, because she was too good to throw away. But he had to know whether she was really his, or whether she would go with others.

  When the cobbler handed him his shoes, he saw that they looked almost like new, and he was pleased. He paid the thirteen dirhams and took the shoes home. That night when he was going to put them on to wear to the café, he found that his feet would not go into them. They were much too small. The cobbler had cut down the last in order to stitch on the new soles. He put his old shoes back on, went out, and slammed the door. That night he had a quarrel with the girl. It took him until almost dawn to stop her crying. When the sun came up and she was asleep, he lay with his arms folded behind his head looking at the ceiling, thinking that the shoes had cost him thirteen dirhams and now he was going to have to spend the day trying to sell them. He got rid of the girl early and went in to Bou Araqia with the shoes. No one would give him more than eight dirhams for them. In the afternoon he went to the Joteya and sat in the shade of a grapevine, waiting for the buyers and sellers to arrive. A man from the mountains finally offered him ten dirhams, and he sold the shoes. “Three dirhams gone for nothing,” he thought when he put the money into his pocket. He was angry, but instead of blaming the cobbler, he felt that the fault was Idir’s.