The Sheltering Sky (11 page)

When they got back to Kit’s room she stood gazing out the window at the skeletal fig tree. “I wish we’d gone to Italy,” she said. Port looked up quickly. “Why do you say that? Is it because of them, because of the hotel?”

“Because of everything.” She turned toward him, smiling. “But I don’t really mean it. This is just the right hour to go out. Let’s.”

Aïn Krorfa was beginning to awaken from its daily sun-drugged stupor. Behind the fort, which stood near the mosque on a high rocky hill that rose in the very middle of the town, the streets became informal, there were vestiges of the original haphazard design of the native quarter. In the stalls, whose angry lamps had already begun to gutter and flare, in the open cafés where the hashish smoke hung in the air, even in the dust of the hidden palm-bordered lanes, men squatted, fanning little fires, bringing their tin vessels of water to a boil, making their tea, drinking it.

“Teatime! They’re really Englishmen dressed for a masquerade,” said Kit. She and Port walked very slowly, hand in hand, perfectly in tune with the soft twilight. It was an evening that suggested languor rather than mystery.

They came to the river, here merely a flat expanse of white sand stretching away in the half light, and followed it a while until the sounds of the town became faint and high in the distance. Out here the dogs barked behind the walls, but the walls themselves were far from the river. Ahead of them a fire burned; seated by it was a solitary man playing a flute, and beyond him in the shifting shadows cast by the flames, a dozen or so camels rested, chewing solemnly on their cuds. The man looked toward them as they passed, but continued his music.

“Do you think you can be happy here?” asked Port in a hushed voice.

Kit was startled. “Happy? Happy? How do you mean?”

“Do you think you’ll like it?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” she said, with an edge of annoyance in her voice. “How can I tell? It’s impossible to get into their lives, and know what they’re really thinking.”

“I didn’t ask you that,” Port remarked, nettled.

“You should have. That’s what’s important here.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Not for me. I feel that this town, this river, this sky, all belong to me as much as to them.”

She felt like saying: “Well, you’re crazy,” but she confined herself to: “How strange.”

They circled back toward the town, taking a road that led between garden walls.

“I wish you wouldn’t ask me such questions,” she said suddenly. “I can’t answer them. How could I say: yes, I’m going to be happy in Africa? I like Aïn Krorfa very much, but I can’t tell whether I want to stay a month or leave tomorrow.”

“You couldn’t leave tomorrow, for that matter, even if you did want to, unless you went back to Boussif. I found out about the buses. It’s four days before the one for Bou Noura leaves. And it’s forbidden to get rides on trucks to Messad now. They have soldiers who check along the way. There’s a heavy fine for the drivers.”

“So we’re stuck in the Grand Hotel.”

“With Tunner,” thought Port. Aloud: “With the Lyles.”

“God forbid,” Kit murmured.

“I wonder how long we’ve got to keep on running into them. I wish to hell they’d either get ahead of us once and for all, or let us get ahead of them and stay there.”

“Things like that have to be arranged,” said Kit. She, too, was thinking of Tunner. It seemed to her that if presently she were not going to have to sit opposite him over a meal, she could relax completely now, and live in the moment, which was Port’s moment. But it seemed useless even to try, if in an hour she was going to be faced with the living proof of her guilt.

It was completely dark when they got back to the hotel. They ate fairly late, and after dinner, since no one felt like going out, they went to bed. This process took longer than usual because there was only one wash basin and water pitcher—on the roof at the end of the corridor. The town was very quiet. Some café radio was playing a transcription of a record by Abd-el-Wahab: a dirge-like popular song called:
I Am Weeping Upon Your Grave
. Port listened to the melancholy notes as he washed; they were broken into by nearby outbursts of dogs barking.

He was already in bed when Eric tapped on his door. Unfortunately he had not turned off his light, and for fear that it showed under the door he did not dare pretend to be asleep. The fact that Eric tiptoed into the room, a conspiratorial look on his face, displeased him. He pulled his bathrobe on.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Nobody’s asleep.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, old man.” As always, he appeared to be talking to the corners of the room.

“No, no. But it’s lucky you came when you did. Another minute and my light would have been out.”

“Is your wife asleep?”

“I believe she’s reading. She usually does before she goes to sleep. Why?”

“I wondered if I might have that novel she promised me this afternoon.”

“When, now?” He passed Eric a cigarette and lit one himself.

“Oh, not if it will disturb her.”

“Tomorrow would be better, don’t you think?” said Port, looking at him.

“Right you are. What I actually came about was that money—” He hesitated.

“Which?”

“The three hundred francs you lent me. I want to give them back to you.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right.” Port laughed, still looking at him. Neither one spoke for a moment.

“Well, of course, if you like,” Port said finally, wondering if by any unlikely chance he had misjudged the youth and somehow feeling more convinced than ever that he had not.

“Ah, excellent,” murmured Eric, fumbling about in his coat pocket. “I don’t like to have these things on my conscience.”

“You didn’t need to have it on your conscience, because if you’ll remember, I gave it to you. But if you’d rather return it, as I say, naturally, that’s fine with me.”

Eric had finally extracted a worn thousand-franc note, and held it forth with a faint, propitiatory smile. “I hope you have change for this,” he said, finally looking into Port’s face, but as though it were costing him a great effort. Port sensed that this was the important moment, but he had no idea why. “I don’t know,” he said, not taking the proffered bill. “Do you want me to look?”

“If you could.” His voice was very low. As Port clumsily got out of bed and went to the valise where he kept his money and documents, Eric seemed to take courage.

“I do feel like a rotter, coming here in the middle of the night and bothering you this way, but first of all I want to get this off my mind, and besides, I need the change badly, and they don’t seem to have any here in the hotel, and Mother and I are leaving first thing in the morning for Messad and I was afraid I might not see you again—”

“You are? Messad?” Port turned, his wallet in his hand. “Really? Good Lord! And our friend Mr. Tunner wants so much to go!”

“Oh?” Eric stood up slowly. “Oh?” he said again. “I daresay we could take him along.” He looked at Port’s face and saw it brighten. “But we’re leaving at daybreak. You’d better go immediately and tell him to be ready downstairs at six-thirty. We’ve ordered tea for six o’clock. You’d better have him do likewise.”

“I’ll do that,” said Port, slipping his wallet into his pocket. “I’ll also ask him for the change, which I don’t seem to have.”

“Good. Good,” Eric said with a smile, sitting down again on the bed.

Port found Tunner naked, wandering distractedly around his room with a DDT bomb in his hand. “Come in,” he said. “This stuff is no good.”

“What have you got?”

“Bedbugs, for one thing.”

“Listen. Do you want to go to Messad tomorrow morning at six-thirty?”

“I want to go tonight at eleven-thirty. Why?”

“The Lyles will drive you.”

“And then what?”

Port improvised. “They’ll be coming back here in a few days and going straight on to Bou Noura. They’ll take you down and we’ll be there expecting you. Lyle’s in my room now. Do you want to talk with him?”

“No.”

There was a silence. The electric light suddenly went off, then came on, a feeble orange worm inside the bulb, so that the room looked as if it were being viewed through heavy black glasses. Tunner glanced at his disordered bed and shrugged. “What time did you say?”

“Six-thirty they’re going.”

“Tell him I’ll be down at the door.” He frowned at Port, a faint suspicion in his face. “And you. Why aren’t you going.”

“They’ll only take one,” he lied, “and besides, I like it here.”

“You won’t once you’ve gotten into your bed,” said Tunner bitterly.

“You’ll probably have them in Messad too,” Port suggested. He felt safe now.

“I’ll take my chances on any hotel after this one.”

“We’ll look for you in a few days in Bou Noura. Don’t crash any harems.”

He shut the door behind him and went back to his room. Eric was still sitting in the same position on the bed, but he had lighted another cigarette,

“Mr. Tunner is delighted, and’ll meet you at six-thirty down at the door. Oh, damn! I forgot to ask him about the change for your thousand francs.” He hesitated, about to go back out.

“Don’t bother, please. He can change it for me tomorrow on the way, in case I need it changed.”

Port opened his mouth to say: “But I thought you wanted to pay me back the three hundred.” He thought better of it. Now that the thing was settled, it would be tragic to risk a slip-up, just for a few francs. So he smiled and said: “Surely. Well, I hope we’ll see you when you come back.”

“Yes, indeed,” smiled Eric, looking at the floor. He got up suddenly and went to the door. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Port locked the door after him and stood by it, musing. Eric’s behavior had impressed him as being unusually eccentric, yet he still suspected that it was explainable. Being sleepy, he turned off what remained of the light and got into bed. The dogs barked in chorus, far and nearby, but he was not molested by vermin.

That night he awoke sobbing. His being was a well a thousand miles deep; he rose from the lower regions with a sense of infinite sadness and repose, but with no memory of any dream save the faceless voice that had whispered: “The soul is the weariest part of the body.” The night was silent, save for a small wind that blew through the fig tree and moved the loops of wire hanging there. Back and forth they rubbed, creaking ever so slightly. After he had listened a while, he fell asleep.

Kit sat up in bed, her breakfast tray on her knees. The room was lighted by the reflection of the sun on the blue wall outside. Port had brought her her breakfast, having decided after observing their behavior that the servants were incapable of carrying out any orders whatever. She had eaten, and now was thinking of what he had told her (with ill-concealed relish) about having got rid of Tunner. Because she, too, had secretly wished him gone, it seemed to her a doubly ignoble thing to have done. But why? He had gone of his own free will. Then she realized that intuitively she already was aware of Port’s next move: he would contrive to miss connections with Tunner at Bou Noura. She could tell by his behavior, in spite of whatever he said, that he had no intention of meeting him there. That was why it seemed unkind. The deceit of the maneuver, if she were correct, was too bald; she determined not to be a party to it. “Even if Port runs out on him, I’ll stay and meet him.” She reached over and set the tray on the jackal skin; badly cured, the pelt gave off a sour odor. “Or am I only trying to go on punishing myself by seeing Tunner in front of me every day?” she wondered. “Would it be better really to get rid of him?” If only it were possible to dig behind the coming weeks and know! The clouds above the mountains had been a bad sign, but not in the way she had imagined. Instead of the wreck there had been another experience which perhaps would prove more disastrous in its results. As usual she was being saved up for something worse than she expected. But she did not believe it was to be Tunner, so that it really was not important how she behaved now with regard to him. The other omens indicated a horror more vast, and surely ineluctable. Each escape merely made it possible for her to advance into a region of heightened danger. “In that case,” she thought, “why not give in? And if I should give in, how would I behave? Exactly the same as now.” So that giving in or not giving in had nothing to do with her problem. She was pushing against her own existence. All she could hope to do was eat, sleep and cringe before her omens.

She spent most of the day in bed reading, getting dressed only to have lunch with Port down in the stinking patio under the arcade. Immediately on returning to her room she pulled her clothes off. The room had not been made up. She straightened the bed sheet and lay down again. The air was dry, hot, breathless. During the morning Port had been out in the town. She wondered how he could support the sun, even with his helmet; it made her ill to be in it even for five minutes. His was not a rugged body, yet he had wandered for hours in the oven-like streets and returned to eat heartily of the execrable food. And he had unearthed some Arab who expected them both to tea at six. He had impressed it upon her that on no account must they be late. It was typical of him to insist upon punctuality in the case of an anonymous shopkeeper in Aïn Krorfa, when with his friends and with her he behaved in a most cavalier fashion, arriving at his appointments indifferently anywhere from a half-hour to two hours after the specified time.

The Arab’s name was Abdeslam ben Hadj Chaoui; they called for him at his leather shop and waited for him to close and lock the front of it, He led them slowly through the twisting streets as the muezzin called, talking all the while in flowery French, and addressing himself principally to Kit.

“How happy I am! This is the first time I have the honor to invite a lady, and a gentleman, from New York. How I should like to go and see New York! What riches! Gold and silver everywhere!
Le grand luxe pour tout le monde,
ah! Not like Aïn Krorfa—sand in the streets, a few palms, hot sun, sadness always. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to invite a lady from New York. And a gentleman. New York! What a beautiful word!” They let him talk on.

The garden, like all the gardens in Aïn Krorfa, was really an orchard. Under the orange trees were small channels running with water fed from the well, which was built up on an artificial plateau at one end. The highest palms stood at the opposite end, near the wall that bordered the river-bed, and underneath one of these a great red and white wool rug was spread out. There they sat while a servant brought fire and the apparatus for making tea. The air was heavy with the odor of the spearmint that grew beside the water channels.

“We shall talk a little, while the water boils,” said their host, smiling beneficently from one to the other. “We plant the male palm here because it is more beautiful. In Bou Noura they think only of money. They plant the female. You know how they look? They are short and fat, they give many dates, but the dates are not even good, not in Bou Noura!” He laughed with quiet satisfaction. “Now you see how stupid the people are in Bou Noura!”

The wind blew and the palm trunks slowly moved with it, their lofty tops swaying slightly in a circular motion. A young man in a yellow turban approached, greeted them gravely, and seated himself a little in the background, at the edge of the rug. From under his burnous he brought forth an oud, whose strings he began to pluck casually, looking off under the trees all the while. Kit drank her tea in silence, smiling from time to time at M. Chaoui’s remarks. At one point she asked Port in English for a cigarette, but he frowned, and she understood that it would shock the others to see a lady smoke. And so she sat drinking the tea, feeling that what she saw and heard around her was not really happening, or if it were, she was not really there herself. The light was fading; little by little the pots of coals became the eyes’ natural focusing point. Still the lute music went on, a patterned background for the aimless talk; listening to its notes was like watching the smoke of a cigarette curl and fold in untroubled air. She had no desire to move, speak, or even think. But suddenly she was cold. She interrupted the conversation to say so. M. Chaoui was not pleased to hear it; he considered it a piece of incredible rudeness. He smiled, and said: “Ah, yes. Madame is blonde. The blondes are like the seguia when it has no water in it. The Arabs are like the seguias of Aïn Krorfa. The seguias of Aïn Krorfa are always full. We have flowers, fruit, trees.”

“Yet you say Aïn Krorfa is sad,” said Port.

“Sad?” repeated M. Chaoui with astonishment. “Aïn Krorfa is never sad. It is peaceful and full of joy. If one offered me twenty million francs and a palace, I would not leave my native land.”

“Of course,” Port agreed, and seeing that his host no longer desired to sustain the conversation, he said: “Since Madame is cold, we must go, but we thank you a thousand times. It has been a great privilege for us to be allowed to come to this exquisite garden.”

M. Chaoui did not rise. He nodded his head, extended his hand, said: “Yes, yes. Go, since it is cold.”

Both guests offered florid apologies for their departure: it could not be said that they were accepted with very good grace. “Yes, yes, yes,” said M. Chaoui. “Another time perhaps it will be warmer.”

Port restrained his mounting anger, which, even as he was feeling it, made him annoyed with himself.

“Au ’voir, cher monsieur,”
Kit suddenly said in a childish treble. Port pinched her arm. M. Chaoui had noticed nothing extraordinary; indeed, he unbent sufficiently to smile once more. The musician, still strumming on his lute, accompanied them to the gate, and solemnly said:
“B’slemah”
as he closed it after them.

The road was almost dark. They began to walk quickly.

“I hope you’re not going to blame me for that,” began Kit defensively.

Port slipped his arm around her waist. “Blame you! Why? How could I? And what difference does it make, anyway?”

“Of course it makes a difference,” she said. “If it doesn’t, what was the point of seeing the man in the first place?”

“Oh, point! I don’t suppose there was any particular point. I thought it would be fun. And I still think it was; I’m glad we went.”

“So am I, in a way. It gave me a first-hand opportunity of seeing what the conversations are going to be like here—just how unbelievably superficial they can be.”

He let go of her waist. “I disagree. You don’t say a frieze is superficial just because it has only two dimensions.”

“You do if you’re accustomed to having conversation that’s something more than decoration. I don’t think of conversation as a frieze, myself.”

“Oh, nonsense! It’s just another way of living they have, a completely different philosophy.”

“I know that,” she said, stopping to shake sand from her shoe. “I’m just saying I could never live with it.”

He sighed: the tea-party had accomplished exactly the contrary to what he had hoped it might. She sensed what was in his mind, and presently she said: “Don’t think about me. Whatever happens, I’ll be all right if I’m with you. I enjoyed it tonight. Really.” She pressed his hand. But this was not quite what he wanted; resignation was not enough. He returned her pressure halfheartedly.

“And what was that little performance of yours at the end?” he asked a moment later.

“I couldn’t help it. He was being so ridiculous.”

“It’s not a good idea generally to make fun of your host,” he said coldly.

“Oh, bah! If you noticed, he loved it. He thought I was being deferential.”

They ate quietly in the nearly-dark patio. Most of the garbage had been cleared away, but the stench of the latrines was as strong as ever. After dinner they went to their rooms and read.

The next morning, when he took breakfast to her, he said: “I nearly paid you a visit last night. I couldn’t seem to sleep. But I was afraid of waking you.”

“You should have rapped on the wall,” she said. “I’d have heard you. I was probably awake.”

All that day he was unaccountably nervous; he attributed it to the seven glasses of strong tea he had drunk in the garden. Kit, however, had drunk as much as he, and she seemed not in the least nervous. In the afternoon he walked by the river, watched the Spahis training on their perfect white horses, their blue capes flying behind in the wind. Since his agitation appeared to be growing rather than diminishing with the passage of time, he set himself the task of tracing it to its source. He walked along with his head bent over, seeing nothing but the sand and glistening pebbles. Tunner was gone, Kit and he were alone. Everything now depended on him. He could make the right gesture, or the wrong one, but he could not know beforehand which was which. Experience had taught him that reason could not be counted on in such situations. There was always an extra element, mysterious and not quite within reach, that one had not reckoned with. One had to know, not deduce. And he did not have the knowledge. He glanced up; the river-bed had become enormously wide, the walls and gardens had receded into the distance. Out here there was no sound but the wind blowing around his head on its way from one part of the earth to another. Whenever the thread of his consciousness had unwound too far and got tangled, a little solitude could wind it quickly back. His state of nervousness was remediable in that it had to do only with himself: he was afraid of his own ignorance. If he desired to cease being nervous he must conceive a situation for himself in which that ignorance had no importance. He must behave as if there was no question of his having Kit, ever again. Then, perhaps, out of sheer inattention, automatically, it could happen. But should his principal concern at the moment be the purely egocentric one of ridding himself of his agitation, or the accomplishment of his original purpose in spite of it? “I wonder if after all I’m a coward?” he thought. Fear spoke; he listened and let it persuade—the classical procedure. The idea saddened him.

Not far away, on a slight elevation at a point where the river’s course turned sharply, was a small ruined building, without a roof, so old that a twisted tree had grown up inside it, covering the area within the walls with its shade. As he passed nearer to it and could see inside, he realized that the lower branches were hung with hundreds of rags, regularly torn strips of cloth that had once been white, all moving in the same direction with the wind. Faintly curious, he climbed the bank and went to investigate, but on approaching he saw that the ruin was occupied: an old, old man sat beneath the tree, his thin brown arms and legs bound with ancient bandages. Around the base of the trunk he had built a shelter; it was clear to see that he lived there. Port stood looking at him a long time, but he did not lift his head.

Going more slowly, he continued. He had brought with him some figs, which he now pulled out and devoured. When he had followed the river’s complete turning, he found himself facing the sun in the west, looking up a small valley that lay between two gently graded, bare hills. At the end was a steeper hill, reddish in color, and in the side of the hill was a dark aperture. He liked caves, and was tempted to set out for it. But distances here were deceptive, and there might not be time before dark; besides, he did not feel the necessary energy inside him. “Tomorrow I’ll come earlier and go up,” he said to himself. He stood looking up the valley a little wistfully, his tongue seeking the fig seeds between his teeth, with the small tenacious flies forever returning to crawl along his face. And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time.

Under his sun helmet his head was perspiring. He removed the helmet with its wet leather band, and let the sun dry his hair for a moment. Soon the day would be finished, it would be dark, he would be back at the foul-smelling hotel with Kit, but first he must decide what course to take. He turned and walked back toward the town. When he came opposite the ruin, he peered inside. The old man had moved; he was seated just inside what had once been the doorway. The sudden thought struck him that the man must have a disease. He hastened his step and, absurdly enough, held his breath until he was well past the spot. As he allowed the fresh wind to enter his lungs again, he knew what he would do: he would temporarily abandon the idea of getting back together with Kit. In his present state of disquiet he would be certain to take all the wrong turnings, and would perhaps lose her for good. Later, when he least expected it, the thing might come to pass of its own accord. The rest of his walking was done at a brisk pace, and by the time he was back in the streets of Aïn Krorfa he was whistling.