Travels

by Paul Bowles

  Perfect weather, but the sun sets early in November. Afternoons I sit in a café opposite the plaza. There is a sharp edge to the wind; the leaves are coming down and covering the walks around the kiosks and benches. I sit until I am too cold to sit any longer, and then I walk down toward the beach. The wind is bitter here. A large Swede is just beginning to wade out into the darkening water for his late-afternoon dip.

  It is difficult to get anything done in Marbella in the afternoon. Some shops shut at one, others at two, and still others at two-thirty; they open again approximately three hours afterward. Franco’s campaign to persuade the people to adopt an earlier living schedule seems to have had no success on the Costa del Sol. One evening there was a performance of de Falla’s La Vida Breve by the Teatro de la Zarzuela, at Málaga’s Teatro Cervantes, a gala affair at which I felt conspicuous, being in neither white tie nor black. At precisely midnight the first notes of the opera filled the hall, and at ten minutes to two we came out of the theater. Everything was just as it always has been.

  PRINCE ALFONSO HOHENLOHE, who built and owns the Marbella Club Hotel, tells of a wager he made with a visiting Swiss banker; he bet him a thousand pesetas that, given three tries, he would not be able to guess the rate of profit he had realized on a piece of land. The banker must have known he would lose, but being a guest at the hotel he accepted the wager. “I warn you it’s exceptionally high,” the prince told him.

  “Two thousand percent,” suggested the banker.

  “Much higher.”

  “Well, five thousand percent.”

  “Far, far higher. I warned you.”

  “Twenty-five thousand percent?”

  “You’ve lost,” said the Prince. “I bought the land when it was going at fifty centimos a square meter and sold it for two thousand pesetas a square meter. Four hundred thousand percent.”

  There are placards in the shop windows and bars announcing a Thanksgiving Dinner and Dance. (Three hundred tickets only, five dollars per person, including full Turkey Dinner, Champagne, Dancing, Floor Show.) But you must have your American passport with you. I am told that there are not three hundred American residents in the entire region. The directors of the tourist bureau in Málaga claim that no records are kept of the nationality of either residents or visitors; they doubt that even the police have such a list. The assumption is, however, that the Germans would top it numerically, with the Swedes coming next, and after that the Danes and the English.

  The Costa del Sol is no wider than a bit of thread dropped onto the map of Spain; behind it is the vast beautiful land of Andalusia. Any road leading from the main highway takes you directly into the mountains, where the villages, straddling their hilltops planted with pomegranates and almond trees, still look as they have looked for centuries. Three or four of these, too near the shore, have been gobbled up by foreigners. The pleasantest of the occupied villages is Churriana, up above Torremolinos, about two miles away, where Hemingway used to come and stay with Bill Davis. Down the road from the Davises live the Brenans. If there is a visiting literary or artistic celebrity in the vicinity, he is likely to be found sitting in the Brenans’ garden in the shade of the bamboo brake.

  When I first went into Gerald Brenan’s house it occurred to me that every architect, decorator and landscape gardener working in the region ought to be required to inspect the property thoroughly before being allowed to exercise his profession. I suggested to my hosts that it must be an ideal state of affairs, living like this in a fine old rambling house crammed with books, the magnificent garden outside full of fruit and flowers, and the same quiet, happy servants always there to make life pleasant. Not exactly, they said, and then they told me a strange story.

  During the Spanish Civil War the Brenans left Churriana and went to England. Not unexpectedly, the authorities requisitioned the house and placed several Spanish families in it. The gardener, being used to working for English people, found the new conditions intolerable, and when he heard of an eccentric Englishman nearby who was looking for a place to live, sought him out and suggested the Brenan house. Eventually the squatters were dispossessed and the Englishman and his French wife took over the house at a monthly rental of 135 pesetas. When the Brenans finally were able to return to Churriana, the new tenants had for some time been happily installed on the ground floor in the principal rooms of the house – so happily that they had no desire to leave.

  “But of course we must have our house back – the whole house,” the Brenans told them.

  “Try and get it,” the Englishman replied.

  Lawyers were retained by both parties, the tenant having either the luck or the astuteness to hire a very young man just about to hang out his shingle. There is a Spanish precedent which specifies that a lawyer trying his first case has the right to approach the judge before the hearing and present a personal appeal for his client; it is usual for the judge to rule in his favor. All this happened, and the tenants stayed on. Then Brenan sent them an offer of £1,000 to clear out. They were not interested.

  “Look!” He pointed over the banisters to the bottom of a staircase, where a barricade of old screens and furniture had been piled up against the doors.

  I was incredulous. “You mean they’re still in there?”

  “Still in our best rooms, still using our best furniture.” (And, I learned, still paying 135 pesetas a month, which is equal to about $2.25.)

  “What sort of man is he, anyway?” I asked indignantly.

  “Oh, I’ve never spoken to him since the first day. I’ve only caught sight of him twice,” he said.

  “You mean ever? In all these years? In twenty-seven years?”

  “Yes, it must be about twenty seven years,” he agreed.

  SPANISH HOTEL ROOMS often leave a good deal to be desired regarding temperature and lighting. In the summer your bedroom, when you got back to it at night, was on occasion so incredibly hot that you elected to lie out flat on the tile floor rather than go near the bed; in the winter it was better to wear an overcoat during your waking hours. Today, for a hotel to be listed officially in the luxury category, it must be air-conditioned, so that hazard has been got around. The lighting, however, is still strictly for the owls. I have been informed that night is not the time, nor bed the place, for reading and writing.

  The Andalusians, like their Moroccan forebears, are an excessively gregarious people, and they look upon the desire for solitude and privacy as an abnormality, if not downright suspect. For them, to be aware of being alone is to be lonely. It is almost impossible to find a single room on the Costa del Sol, and usu- ally no reduction is made in the price if there is to be only one occupant. The lone traveler is penalized.

  In discussing what constitutes a good hotel there is, of course, ample room for disagreement. Since to me a hotel means primarily sleep, my own criterion is comfort pure and simple, which I translate as meaning maximum quiet and a good bed. Heating, plumbing and service come afterward. The public rooms, shops, grounds, pools, tennis courts and golf courses don’t come into my consideration at all. Hotel food the world over being notoriously negative, an edible meal is a delightful if unexpected bonus, and by no means a sine qua non.

  Service in Spanish hotels has always been more a matter of good will than anything else. I suppose this is because the Spanish do not really demand or expect service; what they like is a good show. If there is at their disposition a standing army of men and small boys in smartly tailored uniforms, perfectly trained in the art of bowing, smiling and saying, “Si, señor,” they seem well satisfied.

  There is a lot of talk along the Costa del Sol about the newest big hotel, the Don Pepe. (Why anyone should want to build a vast luxury establishment and call it the Mister Joe Hotel is a matter for conjecture, although around here they find it perfectly natural; they say it is the owner’s name.) The hotel stands in the middle of the country at the edge of the sea, a mile west of Marbella, and boasts “three lighted swimming pools and sauna.” It is th
e most expensive place on the coast, but alas, not the best. Contemporary building techniques may be acceptable for urban living, where the myriad sounds in the air help to disguise those being made in the rooms above, below and beside yours, but in silent surroundings they are clearly counter-indicated.

  I was in the bathroom shaving for dinner. Suddently there was a man’s voice in my bedroom, calling “Hey, Anna!” It called again, louder. I hurried out, razor in hand. It was a surprise, but not a consolation, to find that the voice came from the other side of the wall in the adjoining room. “I’m gonna wear a sports shirt,” it declared.

  There was a wait. “What’s the matter with a sports shirt?” the voice then wanted to know.

  Unintelligible mutterings issued from the bathroom.

  “Oh.” The voice was dead now, all hope gone.

  The voice did not pass a restful night. I shouldn’t think Anna could have, either, but very likely she was used to the fully orchestrated snoring. I put some wax plugs in my ears, and what with the whir of the air-conditioning got through the night fairly well. The first thing I heard in the morning was Anna saying, “You’re wrong, Harry, and I’ll tell you why.” At that moment someone dropped a coin into the nickelodeon that stood in the bar at the end of the garden under the balcony, and it began to gurgle and tinkle. (Apparently they had tested jukeboxes and found their volume insufficient for outdoor use.)

  I ordered breakfast. On the balcony sometime later, above the cries of the sea gulls and the swish of the water on the sand (the nickelodeon having stopped for the moment), I drank my tepid coffee. “Hello, dear,” said Anna to a woman on a balcony farther along the deck. (They both must have been leaning over the railing in order to see each other.) “You know what Harry did last night? He went right to bed and slept like a baby for ten hours.”

  It is a mark of distinction in Spanish hotels to have a chain by the bathtub, to be pulled to summon help in case the ordeal proves too much for the bather. The Don Pepe supplements the chain with a telephone. One evening before dinner I was in the bathtub; the phone began to ring furiously beside my ear. I hesitated, reflected that electrocution is at least a rapid death, and seized the apparatus.

  “Hola!” said a musical female voice.

  “Manolo?”

  “No. No soy Manolo.” I imagined that would be sufficient. But she went right on.

  “Ah, Manolo’s gone out?”

  “What room do you want?” The soap was getting into my eyes.

  “Six-fifteen.”

  “This is room six-fifteen all right, but there’s no Manolo here. There’s some mistake.”

  She just laughed. “We’re down in the lobby. Paco and Antonio are with us. We’re coming up.”

  It seemed imperative to switch to English; I did so, and in a somewhat louder voice. She apologized.

  Notwithstanding minor contretemps like the Don Pepe, coming to the Costa del Sol could seem almost like a rest cure to the person who has been moving around other parts of Europe, where palms are permanently upturned and the service charge is not to be confused with the gratuity. When you ask for your bill at the desk, it turns out to be exactly right; there is no list of charges at the bottom to bring it up an extra 20 or 30 percent. The classical dissatisfied expression that goes with pocketing a tip is not to be found. It is almost like the years of the Republic, when there was a sign on every café table announcing that it was forbidden to tip, and when, if you made a misstep, your coins were courteously but firmly returned to you.

  The swiftly rising standard of living has already transformed the inhabitants of the coast; the younger generation is taller, and not even recognizably “Spanish” in appearance. One begins to understand that much of what was originally considered the character of the country was due only to excessive poverty. The hunched shoulders, bowed head and dusty black garments which were the mark of Andalusia are gone. Prosperity has made the old French wisecrack, about Europe being bounded on the south by the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, no longer apposite. Unending change is the essence of life, and whether things go right or wrong, the people in these parts have a stoical but succinct little phrase that says it all:

  Arriba la vida!

  Casablanca

  Holiday, September 1966

  WHEN THE AMERICAN visitor arrives in Morocco for the first time, often the one city of whose name he is absolutely sure, and which he is determined to see, is Casablanca. For a resident of the country such a desire demands an explanation. He says: “Why Casablanca?” It appears that the very name suggests a mysterious and exciting place. Continuing the inquisition, the resident can usually trace the other’s interest back to the fact that there was once a film bearing that title, and that since then the city has enjoyed the reputation of being a glamorously sinister Oriental labyrinth. (Casablanca, made in the United States during World War II, might just as well have been called Cairo or Damascus, for all the resemblance its scenes had to the Atlantic port in question. But that is irrelevant; the glamor is embedded in the place name.) So the visitor comes, finds no twisting alleys, no turbaned sheiks conducting international intrigues. Instead, he is confronted with a modern metropolis that looks like a somewhat newer Havana, whose wide boulevards go on for miles, and it is only by chance that he will come upon either an alley or a turban. The place has its share of intrigue and crime, but none of all this is particularly mysterious or Eastern. Casablanca is not Morocco; it is a foreign enclave, an alien nail piercing Morocco’s flank, If the resident can’t dissuade the visitor from his project altogether, he can at least advise him to visit other parts of the country first.

  The city is like a vast shell, above all at night, when under their fluorescent arc lamps the long thoroughfares are absolutely empty, and one gets the impression of a town just evacuated by retreating forces. In the daytime the place is still haunted by a shadowy présence francaise, a ghost that refuses to be exorcised. Indeed, we shall be increasingly aware of it as time passes, until there ceases to be any appreciable difference between French and Moroccan culture. The Moroccans were understandably eager to get rid of the colonizing French, but it was not immediately apparent that one of their principal objectives was to usurp their place here by becoming more French than the French.

  It is a bit frightening, this European city peopled by Moslems. For the foreign residents of other cities in the land, Casablanca is a kind of scapegoat. Things are always worse there; one enjoys reminding oneself that all the elements he dislikes in Morocco are to be found there in greater concentration. So often it has been the place one has been the most thankful to be away from. Beginning with the first morning in 1931 when I awoke in a hotel there and heard the racket outside in the street, I have felt a strong antipathy toward it. I know Morocco, but not Casablanca, and this is because I have consistently avoided it when it was possible to do so; often I have taken an extra day or two and driven through the mountains rather than have even a brief contact with the big city. During the years of the French Protectorate it was a common saying that Casablanca offered the worst of both worlds: its French were the most arrogant and disagreeable, and its Moroccans the most decadent, which is to say the most Europeanized.

  Of course, the day eventually came when I had to go there for one reason or another; I went more often, and in the course of my visits found that it was not without what the French call agréments. The implicit hybridization of the town still bothers me; the Japanese and even the Indians have managed viable patterns of cultural amalgamation, and perhaps in time there will emerge here some sort of selectivity with regard to which facets of European life are to be accepted and which rejected as hazards to the existing culture.

  You go out of your hotel in the morning and hail one of the toy-sized taxis that race along the boulevards, and likely as not, you are straightway projected into Lewis Carroll Land. Practically any conversation with a taxi driver can accomplish it. Precise antilogic, studied non sequiturs, shameless self-contradiction, the sl
y introduction of wholly unexpected subject matter, plus an implicit air of general disapproval – the elements are all there to give you the sudden illusion of having fallen down the rabbit hole or slipped through the mirror. At first you work to convince yourself that it is merely a well-rehearsed spiel the driver is giving you, under the mistaken impression that it will help squeeze a few extra francs from you at the end of the ride, but after a few more such experiments you reluctantly set aside the theory, for it does not explain the general air of belligerency mixed with condescension that the drivers show you, nor the apparently uniformly insane course of their thoughts.

  One day I took a cab out to the Aquarium. As soon as I had given the address, the driver turned and remarked: “I know why you want to go there.”

  “Do you?” I said, not paying much attention.

  “Yes. I’ve been there. I’ve seen what they’ve got there, and it’s a fake. I’ve seen that cat there that wants everybody to think he’s a dog. But I’ve seen him eat, too, and he eats nothing but fish. Did you ever see a dog do that?” At this I began to suspect that he was drunk, and I watched the traffic coming in from the side streets. However, we arrived without mishap. I bought my ticket and went in. Immediately I saw his cat: in the tank just inside the entrance, barking and playing the clown, was a brown seal.

  Another driver, as he waited for a red light to change to green, turned to face me and, as though continuing a conversation, said: “The gloves you’re wearing. How much did they cost?” I was taken unawares. It was clear that he was set on having the gloves – preferably as a gift, but failing that, as a purchase. They were several years old, and I had no idea of their price. Nothing marks one for a fool so immediately in the mind of a Moroccan as not to know how much one has paid for something.