The Sheltering Sky (16 page)

“Oh, my God, I forgot!” Port cried. “You’re a very sick woman.” And he explained how he had got the seats.

“We’re almost there. Let me put my arm around your waist. You walk as though you had a pain. Shuffle a little.”

“This is ridiculous,” she said crossly. “What’ll our boys think?”

“They’re too busy. You’ve turned your ankle. Come on. Drag a bit. Nothing simpler.” He pulled her against him as they walked along.

“And what about the people whose seats we’re usurping?”

“What’s a week to them? Time doesn’t exist for them.”

The bus was there, surrounded by shouting men and boys. The two went into the office, Kit walking with a certain real difficulty caused by the force with which Port was pressing her toward him. “You’re hurting me. Let up a little,” she whispered. But he continued to constrict her waist tightly, and they arrived at the counter. The Arab who had sold him the tickets said: “You have numbers twenty-two and twenty-three. Get in and take your seats quickly. The others don’t want to give them up.”

The seats were near the back of the bus. They looked at each other in dismay; it was the first time they had not sat in front with the driver.

“Do you think you can stand it?” he asked her.

“If you can,” she said.

And as he saw an elderly man with a gray beard and a high yellow turban looking in through the window with what seemed to him a reproachful expression, he said: “Please lie back and be fatigued, will you? You’ve got to carry this off to the end.”

“I hate deceit,” she said with great feeling. Then suddenly she shut her eyes and looked quite ill. She was thinking of Tunner. In spite of the firm resolution she had made in Aïn Krorfa to stay behind and meet him according to their agreement, she was letting Port spirit her off to El Ga’a without even leaving a note of explanation. Now that it was too late to change the pattern of her behavior, suddenly it seemed incredible to her that she had allowed herself to do such a thing. But a second later she said to herself that if this was an unpardonable act of deceit toward Tunner, how much graver was the deception she still practiced with Port in not telling him of her infidelity. Immediately she felt fully justified in leaving; nothing Port asked of her could be refused at this point. She let her head fall forward contritely.

“That’s right,” said Port encouragingly, pinching her arm. He scrambled over the bundles that had just been piled into the aisle and got out to see that all the luggage was on top. When he got back in, Kit was still in the same attitude.

There were no difficulties. As the motor started up, Port glanced out and saw the old man standing beside a younger one. They were both close to the windows, looking wistfully in. “Like two children,” he thought, “who aren’t being allowed to go on a picnic with the family.”

When they started to move, Kit sat up straight and began to whistle. Port nudged her uneasily.

“It’s all over,” she said. “You don’t think I’m going to go on playing sick all the way, I hope? Besides, you’re mad. No one’s paying the slightest attention to us.” This was true. The bus was full of lively conversation; their presence seemed quite unnoticed.

The road was bad almost immediately. At each bump Port slid down lower in his seat. Noticing that he made no effort to avoid slipping more, Kit said at length: “Where are you going? On to the floor?” When he answered, he said only: “What?” and his voice sounded so strange that she turned sharply and tried to see his face. The light was too dim. She could not tell what expression was there.

“Are you asleep?” she asked him.

“No.”

“Is anything wrong? Are you cold? Why don’t you spread your coat over you?”

This time he did not answer.

“Freeze, then,” she said, looking out at the thin moon, low in the sky.

Some time later the bus began a slow, laborious ascent. The fumes from the exhaust grew heavy and acrid; this, combined with the intense noise of the grinding motor and the constantly increasing cold, served to jar Kit from the stupor into which she had sunk. Wide awake, she looked around the indistinct interior of the bus. The occupants all appeared to be asleep; they were resting at unlikely angles, completely rolled in their burnouses, so that not even a finger or a nose was visible. A slight movement beside her made her look down at Port, who had slid so low in his seat that he now was resting on the middle of his spine. She decided to make him sit up, and tapped him vigorously on the shoulder. His only reply was a slight moan.

“Sit up,” she said, tapping again. “You’ll ruin your back.”

This time he groaned: “Oh-h-h!”

“Port, for heaven’s sake, sit up,” she said nervously. She began to tug at his head, hoping to rouse him enough to start him into making some effort himself.

“Oh, God!” he said, and he slowly wormed his way backward up onto the seat. “Oh, God!” he repeated when he was sitting up finally. Now that his head was near her, she realized that his teeth were chattering.

“You’ve got a chill!” she said furiously, although she was furious with herself rather than with him. “I told you to cover up, and you just sat there like an idiot!”

He made no reply, merely sat quite still, his head bent forward and bouncing up and down against his chest with the pitching of the bus. She reached over and pulled at his coat, managing little by little to extricate it from under him where he had thrown it on the seat. Then she spread it over him, tucking it down at the sides with a few petulant gestures. On the surface of her mind, in words, she was thinking: “Typical of him, to be dead to the world, when I’m wide awake and bored.” But the formation of the words was a screen to hide the fear beneath—the fear that he might be really ill. She looked out at the windswept emptiness. The new moon had slipped behind the earth’s sharp edge. Here in the desert, even more than at sea, she had the impression that she was on the top of a great table, that the horizon was the brink of space. She imagined a cubeshaped planet somewhere above the earth, between it and the moon, to which somehow they had been transported. The light would be hard and unreal as it was here, the air would be of the same taut dryness, the contours of the landscape would lack the comforting terrestrial curves, just as they did all through this vast region. And the silence would be of the ultimate degree, leaving room only for the sound of the air as it moved past. She touched the windowpane; it was ice cold. The bus bumped and swayed as it continued upward across the plateau.

It was a long night. They came to a bordj built into the side of a cliff. The overhead light was turned on. The young Arab just in front of Kit, turning around and smiling at her as he lowered the hood of his burnous, pointed at the earth several times and said:
“Hassi Inifel!”

“Merci,”
she said, and smiled back. She felt like getting out, and turned to Port. He was doubled up under his coat; his face looked flushed.

“Port,” she began, and was surprised to hear him answer immediately. “Yes?” His voice sounded wide awake.

“Let’s get out and have something hot. You’ve slept for hours.”

Slowly he sat up. “I haven’t slept at all, if you want to know.”

She did not believe him. “I see,” she said. “Well, do you want to go inside? I’m going.”

“If I can. I feel terrible. I think I have grippe or something.”

“Oh, nonsense! How could you? You probably have indigestion from eating dinner so fast.”

“You go on in. I’ll feel better not moving.”

She climbed out and stood a moment on the rocks in the wind, taking deep breaths. Dawn was nowhere in sight.

In one of the rooms near the entrance of the bordj there were men singing together and clapping their hands quickly in complex rhythm. She found coffee in a smaller room nearby, and sat down on the floor, warming her hands over the clay vessel of coals. “He can’t get sick here,” she thought. “Neither of us can.” There was nothing to do but refuse to be sick, once one was this far away from the world. She went back out and looked through the windows of the bus. Most of the passengers had remained asleep, wrapped in their burnouses. She found Port, and tapped on the glass. “Port!” she called. “Hot coffee!” He did not stir.

“Damn him!” she thought. “He’s trying to get attention. He wants to be sick!” She climbed aboard and worked her way back to his seat, where he lay inert.

“Port! Please come and have some coffee. As a favor to me.” She cocked her head and looked at his face. Smoothing his hair she asked: “Do you feel sick?”

He spoke into his coat. “I don’t want anything. Please. I don’t want to move.”

She disliked to humor him; perhaps by waiting on him she would be playing right into his hands. But in the event he had been chilled he should drink something hot. She determined to get the coffee into him somehow. So she said: “Will you drink it if I bring it to you?”

His reply was a long time in coming, but he finally said: “Yes.”

The driver, an Arab who wore a visored cap instead of a turban, was already on his way out of the bordj as she rushed in. “Wait!” she said to him. He stood still and turned around, looking her up and down speculatively. He had no one to whom he could make any remarks about her, since there were no Europeans present, and the other Arabs were not from the city, and would have failed completely to understand his obscene comments.

Port sat up and drank the coffee, sighing between swallows.

“Finished? I’ve got to give the glass back.”

“Yes.” The glass was relayed through the bus to the front, where a child waited for it, peering anxiously back lest the bus start up before he had it in his hands.

They moved off slowly across the plateau. Now that the doors had been open, it was colder inside.

“I think that helped,” Port said. “Thanks an awful lot. Only I have got something wrong with me. God knows I never felt quite like this before. If I could only be in bed and lie out flat, I’d be all right, I think.”

“But what do you think it is?” she said, suddenly feeling them all there in full force, the fears she had been holding at bay for so many days.

“You tell me. We don’t get in till noon, do we? What a mess, what a mess!”

“Try and sleep, darling.” She had not called him that in at least a year. “Lean over, way over, this way, put your head here. Are you warm enough?” For a few minutes she tried to break the jolts of the bus for him by posting with her body against the back of the seat, but her muscles soon tired; she leaned back and relaxed, letting his head bounce up and down on her breast. His hand in her lap sought hers, found it, held it tightly at first, then loosely. She decided he was asleep, and shut her eyes, thinking: “Of course, there’s no escape now. I’m here.”

At dawn they reached another bordj standing on a perfectly flat expanse of land. The bus drove through the entrance into a court, where several tents stood. A camel peered haughtily through the window beside Kit’s face. This time everyone got out. She woke Port. “Want some breakfast?” she said.

“Believe it or not, I’m a little hungry.”

“Why shouldn’t you be?” she said brightly. “It’s nearly six o’clock.”

They had more of the sweet black coffee, some hard-boiled eggs, and dates. The young Arab who had told her the name of the other bordj walked by as they sat on the floor eating. Kit could not help noticing how unusually tall he was, what an admirable figure he cut when he stood erect in his flowing white garment. To efface her feeling of guilt at having thought anything at all about him, she felt impelled to bring him to Port’s attention.

“Isn’t that one striking!” she heard herself saying, as the Arab moved from the room. The phrase was not at all hers, and it sounded completely ridiculous coming out of her mouth; she waited uneasily for Port’s reaction. But Port was holding his hand over his abdomen; his face was white.

“What is it?” she cried.

“Don’t let the bus go,” he said. He rose unsteadily to his feet and left the room precipitately. Accompanied by a boy he stumbled across the wide court, past the tents where fires burned and babies cried. He walked doubled over, holding his head with one hand and his belly with the other.

In the far corner was a little stone enclosure like a gun-turret, and the boy pointed to it.
“Daoua,”
he said. Port went up the steps and in, slamming the wooden door after him. It stank inside, and it was dark. He leaned back against the cold stone wall and heard the spider-webs snap as his head touched them. The pain was ambiguous: it was a violent cramp and a mounting nausea, both at once. He stood still for some time, swallowing hard and breathing heavily. What faint light there was in the chamber came up through the square hole in the floor. Something ran swiftly across the back of his neck. He moved away from the wall and leaned over the hole, pushing with his hands against the other wall in front of him. Below were the fouled earth and spattered stones, moving with flies. He shut his eyes and remained in that expectant position for some minutes, groaning from time to time. The bus driver began to blow his horn; for some reason the sound increased his anguish. “Oh, God, shut up!” he cried aloud, groaning immediately afterward. But the horn continued, mixing short blasts with long ones. Finally came the moment when the pain suddenly seemed to have lessened. He opened his eyes, and made an involuntary movement upward with his head, because for an instant he thought he saw flames. It was the red rising sun shining on the rocks and filth beneath. When he opened the door Kit and the young Arab stood outside; between them they helped him out to the waiting bus.

As the morning passed, the landscape took on a gaiety and softness that were not quite like anything Kit had ever seen. Suddenly she realized that it was because in good part sand had replaced rock. And lacy trees grew here and there, especially in the spots where there were agglomerations of huts, and these spots became more frequent. Several times they came upon groups of dark men mounted on mehara. These held the reins proudly, their kohl-farded eyes were fierce above the draped indigo veils that hid their faces.

For the first time she felt a faint thrill of excitement. “It is rather wonderful,” she thought, “to be riding past such people in the Atomic Age.”

Port reclined in his seat, his eyes shut. “Just forget I’m here,” he had said when they left the bordj, “and I’ll be better able to do the same thing. It’s only a few hours more—then bed, thank God.”

The young Arab spoke just enough French to be undaunted by the patent impossibility of his engaging in an actual conversation with Kit. It appeared that in his eyes a noun alone or a verb uttered with feeling was sufficient, and she seemed to be of the same mind. He told her, with the usual Arab talent for making a legend out of a mere recounting of facts, about El Ga’a and its high walls with their gates that shut at sunset, its quiet dark streets and its great market where men sold many things that came from the Soudan and from even farther away: salt bars, ostrich plumes, gold dust, leopard skins—he enumerated them in a long list, unconcernedly using the Arabic term for a thing when he did not know the French. She listened with complete attention, hypnotized by the extraordinary charm of his face and his voice, and fascinated as well by the strangeness of what he was talking about, the odd way he was saying it.

The terrain now was a sandy wasteland, strewn with occasional tortured bush-like trees that crouched low in the virulent sunlight. Ahead, the blue of the firmament was turning white with a more fierce glare than she had thought possible: it was the air over the city. Before she knew it, they were riding along beside the gray mud walls. The children cried out as the bus went past, their voices like bright needles. Port’s eyes were still shut; she decided not to disturb him until they had arrived. They turned sharply to the left, making a cloud of dust, and went through a big gate into an enormous open square—a sort of antechamber to the city, at the end of which was another gate, even larger.

Beyond that the people and animals disappeared into darkness. The bus stopped with a jolt and the driver got out abruptly and walked away with the air of wishing to have nothing further to do with it. Passengers still slept, or yawned and began looking about for their belongings, most of which were no longer in the places where they had put them the night before.

Kit indicated by word and gesture that she and Port would stay where they were until everyone else had left the vehicle. The young Arab said that in that event he would, too, because she would need him to help take Port to the hotel. As they sat there waiting for the leisurely travelers to get down, he explained that the hotel was across the town on the side by the fort, since it was operated exclusively for the few officers who did not have homes, it being very rare that anyone arriving by bus had need of a hotel.

“You are very kind,” she said, sitting back in her seat.

“Yes, madame.” His face expressed nothing but friendly solicitousness, and she trusted him implicitly.

When at last the bus was empty save for the debris of pomegranate peel and date pits on the floor and seats, he got out and called a group of men to carry the bags.

“We’re here,” said Kit in a loud voice. Port stirred, opened his eyes, and said: “I finally slept. What a hellish trip. Where’s the hotel?”

“It’s somewhere around,” she said vaguely; she did not like to tell him that it was on the other side of the city.

He sat up slowly. “God, I hope it’s near. I don’t think I can make it if it isn’t. I feel like hell. I really feel like hell.”

“There’s an Arab here who’s helping us. He’s taking us there. It seems it isn’t right here by the terminal.” She felt better letting him discover the truth about the hotel from the Arab; that way she would remain uninvolved in the matter, and whatever resentment Port might feel would not be directed against her.

Outside in the dust was the disorder of Africa, but for the first time without any visible sign of European influence, so that the scene had a purity which had been lacking in the other towns, an unexpected quality of being complete which dissipated the feeling of chaos. Even Port, as they helped him out, noticed the unified aspect of the place. “It’s wonderful here,” he said, “what I can see of it, anyway.”

“What you can see of it!” echoed Kit. “Is something wrong with your eyes?”

“I’m dizzy. It’s a fever, I know that much.”

She felt his forehead, and said nothing but: “Well, let’s get out of this sun.”

The young Arab walked on his left and Kit on his right; each had a supporting arm about him. The porters had gone on ahead.

“The first decent place,” said Port bitterly, “and I have to feel like this.”

“You’re going to stay in bed until you’re absolutely well. We’ll have plenty of time to explore later.”

He did not answer. They went through the inner gate and straightway plunged into a long, crooked tunnel. Passersby brushed against them in the dark. People were sitting along the walls at the sides, from where muffled voices rose, chanting long repetitious phrases. Soon they were in the sunlight once more, then there was another stretch of darkness where the street burrowed through the thick-walled houses.

“Didn’t he tell you where it was? I can’t take much more of this,” Port said. He had not once addressed the Arab directly.

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” said the young Arab.

He still disregarded him. “It’s out of the question,” he told Kit, gasping a little.

“My dear boy, you’ve got to go. You can’t just sit down in the street here.”

“What is it?” said the Arab, who was watching their faces. And on being told, he hailed a passing stranger and spoke with him briefly. “There is a fondouk that way.” He pointed. “He can—” He made a gesture of sleeping, his hand against his cheek. “Then we go hotel and get men and
rfed, très bien!”
He made as if to sweep Port off his feet and carry him in his arms.

“No, no!” cried Kit, thinking he really was about to pick him up.

He laughed and said to Port: “You want to go there?”

“Yes.”

They turned around and made their way back through a part of the interior labyrinth. Again the young Arab spoke with someone in the street. He turned back to them smiling. “The end. The next dark place.”

The fondouk was a small, crowded and dirty version of any one of the bordjes they had passed through during the recent weeks, save that the center was covered with a latticework of reeds as a protection from the sun. It was filled with country folk and camels, all of them reclining together on the ground. They went in and the Arab spoke with one of the guardians, who cleared the occupants from a stall at one side and piled fresh straw in its corner for Port to lie down on. The porters sat on the luggage in the courtyard.