by Paul Bowles
Perhaps a faint glimmer of guilt in his expression as he glanced up made her eyes stray along the floor toward another object lying nearby, similar to the one he held in his hand. It was one of the Wise Men, severed at the hips from his mount. The Wise Man in Slimane’s hand was intact, but the camel had lost its head and most of its neck.
“Slimane! What are you doing?” she cried with undisguised anger. “What have you done to the crèche?” She advanced around the corner and looked in its direction. There was not really much more than a row of candles and a pile of sand that had been strewn with tangerine peel and date stones; here and there a carefully folded square of lavender or pink tinfoil had been planted in the sand. All three of the Wise Men had been enlisted in Slimane’s battle on the floor, the tent ravaged in the campaign to extricate the almonds piled inside, and the treasure sacks looted of their chocolate liqueurs. There was no sign anywhere of the infant Jesus or his gold-lame garment. She felt tears come into her eyes. Then she laughed shortly, and said: “Well, it’s finished. Yes?”
“Yes, madame,” he said calmly. “Are you going to make the photograph now?” He got to his feet and laid the broken camel on the platform in the sand with the other debris.
Fräulein Windling spoke evenly. “I wanted to take a picture of the crèche.”
He waited an instant, as if he were listening to a distant sound. Then he said: “Should I put on my burnoose?”
“No.” She began to take out the flash-bulb attachment. When she had it ready, she took the picture before he had time to strike a pose. She saw his astonishment at the sudden bright light prolong itself into surprise that the thing was already done, and then become resentment at having been caught off his guard; but pretending to have seen nothing, she went on snapping covers shut. He watched her as she gathered up her things. “Is it finished?” he said, disappointed. “Yes,” she replied. “It will be a very good picture.”
“Incha’ Allah.”
She did not echo his piety. “I hope you’ve enjoyed the festival,” she told him.
Slimane smiled widely. “Ah yes, madame. Very much. Thank you.”
She let him out into the camel-square and turned the lock in the door. Quickly she went back into her room, wishing it were a clear night like other nights, when she could stand out on the terrace and look at the dunes and stars, or sit on the roof and hear the dogs, for in spite of the hour she was not sleepy. She cleared her bed of all the things that lay on top of it, and got in, certain that she was going to lie awake for a long time. For it had shaken her, the chaos Slimane had made in those few minutes of her absence. Across the seasons of their friendship she had come to think of him as being very nearly like herself, even though she knew he had not been that way when she first had met him. Now she saw the dangerous vanity at the core of that fantasy: she had assumed that somehow his association with her had automatically been for his ultimate good, that inevitably he had been undergoing a process of improvement as a result of knowing her. In her desire to see him change, she had begun to forget what Slimane was really like. “I shall never understand him,” she thought helplessly, sure that just because she felt so close to him she would never be able to observe him dispassionately.
“This is the desert,” she told herself. Here food is not an adornment; it is meant to be eaten. She had spread out food and he had eaten it. Any argument which attached blame to that could only be false. And so she lay there accusing herself. “It has been too much head and high ideals,” she reflected, “and not enought heart.” Finally she traveled on the sound of the wind into sleep.
At dawn when she awoke she saw that the day was going to be another dark one. The wind had dropped. She got up and shut the window. The early morning sky was heavy with clouds. She sank back into bed and fell asleep. It was later than usual when she rose, dressed, and went into the dining-room. Boufelja’s face was strangely expressionless as he wished her good morning. She supposed it was the memory of last night’s misunderstanding, still with him—or possibly he was annoyed at having had to clean up the remains of the crèche. Once she had sat down and spread her napkin across her lap, he unbent sufficiently to say to her: “Happy festival.”
“Thank you. Tell me, Boufelja,” she went on, changing her inflection. “When you brought Slimane back in after dinner last night, do you know where he had been? Did he tell you?”
“He’s a stupid boy,” said Boufelja. “I told him to go home and eat and come back later. You think he did that? Never. He walked the whole time up and down in the courtyard here, outside the kitchen door, in the dark.”
“I understand!” exclaimed Fräulein Windling triumphantly. “So he had no dinner at all.”
“I had nothing to give him,” he began, on the defensive.
“Of course not,” she said sternly. “He should have gone home and eaten.”
“Ah, you see?” grinned Boufleja. “That’s what I told him to do.”
In her mind she watched the whole story being enacted: Slimane aloofly informing his father that he would be eating at the hotel with the Swiss lady, the old man doubtless making some scornful reference to her, and Slimane going out. Unthinkable, once he had been refused admittance to the dining-room, for him to go back and face the family’s ridicule. “Poor boy,” she murmured.
“The commandant wants to see you,” said Boufelja, making one of his abrupt conversational changes. She was surprised, since from one year to the next the captain never gave any sign of being aware of her existence; the hotel and the fort were like two separate countries. “Perhaps for the festival,” Boufelja suggested, his face a mask. “Perhaps,” she said uneasily.
When she had finished her breakfast, she walked across to the gates of the fort. The sentry seemed to be expecting her. One of the two young French soldiers was in the compound painting a chair. He greeted her, saying that the captain was in his office. She went up the long flight of stairs and paused an instant at the top, looking down at the valley in the unaccustomed gray light, noting how totally different it looked from its usual self, on this dim day.
A voice from inside called out: “Entrez, s’il vous plaît!” She opened the door and stepped in. The captain sat behind his desk; she had the unwelcome sensation of having played this same scene on another occasion, in another place. And she was suddenly convinced that she knew what he was going to say. She seized the back of the empty chair facing his desk. “Sit down, Mademoiselle Windling,” he said, rising halfway out of his seat, waving his arm, and sitting again quickly.
There were several topographical maps on the wall behind him, marked with lavender and green chalk. The captain looked at his desk and then at her, and said in a clear voice: “It is an unfortunate stroke of chance that I should have to call you here on this holiday.” Fräulein Windling sat down in the chair; leaning forward, she seemed about to rest her elbow on his desk, but instead crossed her legs and folded her arms tight. “Yes?” she said, tense, waiting for the message. It came immediately, for which she was conscious, even then, of being grateful to him. He told her simply that the entire area had been closed to civilians; this order applied to French nationals as well as to foreigners, so she must not feel discriminated against. The last was said with a wry attempt at a smile. “This means that you will have to take tomorrow morning’s truck,” he continued. “The driver has already been advised of your journey. Perhaps another year, when the disturbances are over…” (“Why does he say that,” she thought, “when he knows it’s the end, and the time of friendship is finished?”) He rose and extended his hand.
She could not remember going out of the room and down the long stairway into the compound, but now she was standing outside the sentry gate beside the wall of the fort, with her hand on her forehead. “Already,” she thought. “It came so soon.” And it occurred to her that she was not going to be given the time to make amends to Slimane, so that it was really true she was never going to understand him. She walked up to the parapet to look down
at the edge of the oasis for a moment, and then went back to her room to start packing. All day long she worked in her room, pulling out boxes, forcing herself to be aware only of the decisions she was making as to what was to be taken and what was to be left behind once and for all.
At lunchtime Boufelja hovered near her chair. “Ah, mademoiselle, how many years we have been together, and now it is finished!” “Yes,” she thought, but there was nothing to do about it. His lamentations made her nervous and she was short with him. Then she felt guilt-stricken and said slowly, looking directly at him: “I am very sad, Boufelja.” He sighed. “Ay, mademoiselle, I know!”
By nightfall the pall of clouds had been blown away across the desert, and the western sky was partly clear. Fräulein Windling had finished all her packing. She went out onto the terrace, saw the dunes pink and glowing, and climbed the steps to the roof to look at the sunset. Great skeins of fiery storm-cloud streaked the sky. Mechanically she let her gaze follow the meanders of the river valley as it lost itself in the darkening hammada to the south. “It is in the past,” she reminded herself; this was already the new era. The desert out there looked the same as it always had looked. But the sky, ragged, red and black, was like a handbill that had just been posted above it, announcing the arrival of war.
It was a betrayal, she was thinking, going back down the steep stairs, running her hand along the familiar rough mud wall to steady herself, and the French of course were the culprits. But beyond that she had the irrational and disagreeable conviction that the countryside itself had connived in the betrayal, that it was waiting to be transformed by the struggle. She went into her room and lit the small oil lamp; sitting down, she held her hands over it to warm them. At some point there had been a change: the people no longer wanted to go on living in the world they knew. The pressure of the past had become too great, and its shell had broken.
In the afternoon she had sent Boufelja to tell Slimane the news, and to ask him to be at the hotel at daybreak. During dinner she discussed only the details of departure and travel; when Boufelja tried to pull the talk in emotional directions, she did not reply. His commiseration was intolerable; she was not used to giving voice to her despair. When she got to her room she went directly to bed. The dogs barked half the night.
It was cold in the morning. Her hands ached as she gathered up the wet objects from around the washbowl on the table, and somehow she drove a sliver deep under the nail of her thumb. She picked some of it out with a needle, but the greater part remained. Before breakfast she stepped outside.
Standing in the waste-land between the hotel and the fort, she looked down at the countryside’s innocent face. The padlocked gasoline pump, triumphant in fresh red and orange paint, caught the pure early sunlight. For a moment it seemed the only living thing in the landscape. She turned around. Above the dark irregular mass of palm trees rose the terraced village, calm under its morning veil of woodsmoke. She shut her eyes for an instant, and then went into the hotel.
She could feel herself sitting stiffly in her chair while she drank her coffee, and she knew she was being distant and formal with Boufelja, but it was the only way she could be certain of being able to keep going. Once he came to tell her that Slimane had arrived bringing the donkey and its master for her luggage. She thanked him and set down her coffee cup. “More?” said Boufelja. “No,” she answered. “Drink another, mademoiselle,” he urged her. “It’s good on a cold morning.” He poured it out and she drank part of it. There was a knocking at the gate. One of the young soldiers had been sent with a jeep to carry her out to the truck-stop on the trail.
“I can’t!” she cried, thinking of Slimane and the donkey. The young soldier made it clear that he was not making an offer, but giving an order. Slimane stood beside the donkey outside the gate. While she began to speak with him the soldier shouted: “Does he want to come, the gosse? He can come too, if he likes.” Slimane ran to get the luggage and Fräulein Windling rushed inside to settle her bill. “Don’t hurry,” the soldier called after her. “There’s plenty of time.”
Boufelja stood in the kitchen doorway. Now for the first time it occurred to her to wonder what was going to become of him. With the hotel shut he would have no work. When she had settled her account and given him a tip which was much larger than she could afford, she took both his hands in hers and said: “Mon cher Boufelja, we shall see one another very soon.”
“Ah, yes,” he cried, trying to smile. “Very soon, mademoiselle.”
She gave the donkey-driver some money, and got into the jeep beside the soldier. Slimane had finished bringing out the luggage and stood behind the jeep, kicking the tires. “Have you got everything?” she called to him. “Everything?” She would have liked to see for herself, but she was loath to go back into the room. Boufelja had disappeared; now he came hurrying out, breathless, carrying a pile of old magazines. “It’s all right,” she said. “No, no! I don’t want them.” The jeep was already moving ahead down the hill. In what seemed to her an unreasonably short time they had reached the boulders. When Fräulein Windling tried to lift out her briefcase the pain of the sliver under her nail made the tears start to her eyes, and she let go with a cry. Slimane glanced at her, surprised. “I hurt my hand,” she explained. “It’s nothing.”
The bags had been piled in the shade. Sitting on a rock near the jeep, the soldier faced Fräulein Windling; from time to time he scanned the horizon behind her for a sign of the truck. Slimane examined the jeep from all sides; eventually he came to sit nearby. They did not say very much to one another. She was not sure whether it was because of the soldier with them, or because her thumb ached so constantly, but she sat quietly waiting, not wanting to talk.
It was a long time before the far-off motor made itself heard. When the truck was still no more than a puff of dust between sky and earth, the soldier was on his feet watching; an instant later Slimane jumped up. “It is coming, madame,” he said. Then he bent over, putting his face very close to hers. “I want to go with you to Colomb-Bechar,” he whispered. When she did not respond, because she was seeing the whole story of their friendship unrolled before her, from its end back to its beginning, he said louder, with great urgency: “Please, madame.”
Fräulein Windling hesitated only an instant. She raised her head and looked carefully at the smooth brown face that was so near. “Of course, Slimane,” she said. It was clear that he had not expected to hear this; his delight was infectious, and she smiled as she watched him run to the pile of bags and begin carrying them out into the sunlight to align them in the dust beside the edge of the trail.
Later, when they were rattling along the hammada, she in front beside the driver and Slimane squatting in the back with a dozen men and a sheep, she considered her irresponsible action in allowing him to make this absurd trip with her all the way to Colomb-Bechar. Still, she knew she wanted to give this ending to their story. A few times she turned partially around in her seat to glance at him through the dirty glass. He sat there in the smoke and dust, laughing like the others, with the hood of his burnoose hiding most of his face.
It had been raining in Colomb-Bechar; the streets were great puddles to reflect the clouded sky. At the garage they found a surly Negro boy to help them carry the luggage to the railway station. Her thumb hurt a little less.
“It’s a cold town,” Slimane said to her as they went down the main street. At the station they checked the bags and then went outside to stand and watch a car being unloaded from an open freight train: the roof of the automobile was still white with snow from the high steppes. The day was dark, and the wind rippled the surface of the water in the flooded empty lots. Fräulein Windling’s train would not be leaving until late in the afternoon. They went to a restaurant and ate a long lunch.
“You really will go back home tomorrow?” she asked him anxiously at one point, while they were having fruit. “You know we have done a very wicked thing to your father and mother. They will never forgive me.” A
curtain seemed to draw across Slimane’s face. “It doesn’t matter,” he said shortly.
After lunch they walked in the public garden and looked at the eagles in their cages. A fine rain had begun to be carried on the wind. The mud of the paths grew deeper. They went back to the center of the town and sat down on the terrace of a large, shabby modern café. The table at the end was partly sheltered from the wet wind; they faced an empty lot strewn with refuse. Nearby, spread out like the bones of a camel fallen on the trail, were the rusted remains of an ancient bus. A long, newly felled date palm lay diagonally across the greater part of the lot. Fräulein Windling turned to look at the wet orange fiber of the stump, and felt an idle pity for the tree. “I’m going to have a Coca-Cola,” she declared. Slimane said he, too, would like one.
They sat there a long time. The fine rain slanted through the air outside the arcades and hit the ground silently. She had expected to be approached by beggars, but none arrived, and now that the time had come to leave the café and go to the station she was thankful to see that the day had passed so easily. She opened her pocket-book, took out three thousand francs, and handed them to Slimane, saying: “This will be enough for everything. But you must buy your ticket back home today. When you leave the railway station. Be very careful of it.”
Slimane put the money inside his garments, rearranged his burnoose, and thanked her. “You understand, Slimane,” she said, detaining him with her hand, for he seemed about to rise from the table. “I’m not giving you any money now, because I need what I have for my journey. But when I get to Switzerland I shall send you a little, now and then. Not much. A little.”
His face was swept by panic; she was perplexed.
“You haven’t got my address,” he told her.
