The Sheltering Sky (6 page)

“And your mother? Does she feel the same way?”

“Oh, she’s in love with it. She wouldn’t know what to do if you put her down in a civilized country.”

“She writes all the time?”

“All the time. Every day. Mostly about out-of-the-way places. We’re about to go down to Fort Charlet. Do you know it?”

He seemed reasonably sure that Port would not know Fort Charlet. “No, I don’t,” said Port. “But I know where it is. How’re you going to get there? There’s no service of any kind, is there?”

“Oh, we’ll get there. The Touareg will be just Mother’s meat. I have a great collection of maps, military and otherwise, which I study carefully each morning before we set out. Then I simply follow them. We have a car,” he added, seeing Port’s look of bewilderment. “An ancient Mercedes. Powerful old thing.”

“Ah, yes, I saw it outside,” murmured Port.

“Yes,” said the young man smugly. “We always get there.”

“Your mother must be a very interesting woman,” said Port.

The young man was enthusiastic. “Absolutely amazing. You must meet her tomorrow.”

“I should like very much to.”

“I’ve packed her off to bed, but she won’t sleep until I get in. We always have communicating rooms, of course, so that unfortunately she knows just when I go to bed. Isn’t married life wonderful?”

Port glanced at him quickly, a little shocked at the crudity of his remark, but he was laughing in an open and unaware fashion.

“Yes, you’ll enjoy talking with her. Unluckily we have an itinerary which we try to follow exactly. We’re leaving tomorrow noon. When are you pulling out of this bellhole?”

“Oh, we’ve been planning to get the train tomorrow for Bousif, but we’re not in any hurry. So we may wait until Thursday. The only way to travel, at least for us, is to go when you feel like going and stay where you feel like staying.”

“I quite agree. But surely you don’t feel like staying here?”

“Oh God, no!” laughed Port. “We hate it. But there are three of us, and we just haven’t all managed to get up the necessary energy at one time.”

“Three of you? I see.” The young man appeared to be considering this unexpected news. “I see.” He rose and reached in his pocket, pulling out a card which he handed to Port. “I might give you this. My name is Lyle. Well, cheer-o, and I hope you work up the initiative. May see you in the morning.” He spun around as if in embarrassment, and walked stiffly out of the room.

Port slipped the card into his pocket. The barman was asleep, his head on the bar. Deciding to have a last drink, he went over and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. The man raised his head with a groan.

“Where have you been?” said Kit. She was sitting up in bed reading, having dragged the little lamp to the very edge of the night-table. Port moved the table against the bed and pushed the lamp back to a safe distance from the edge. “Guzzling down in the bar. I have a feeling we’re going to be invited to drive to Boussif.”

Kit looked up, delighted. She hated trains. “Oh, no! Really? How marvelous!”

“But wait’ll you hear by whom!”

“Oh God! Not those monsters!”

“They haven’t said anything. I just have a feeling they will.”

“Oh well, that’s absolutely out, of course.”

Port went into his room. “I wouldn’t worry about it either way. Nobody’s said anything. I got a long story from the son. He’s a mental case.”

“You know I’ll worry about it. You know how I hate train rides. And you come in calmly and say we may have an invitation to go in a car! You might at least have waited till morning and let me have a decent night’s sleep before having to make up my mind which of the two tortures I want.”

“Why don’t you begin your worrying once we’ve been asked?”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” she cried, jumping out of bed. She stood in the doorway, watching him undress. “Good night,” she said suddenly, and shut the door.

Things came about somewhat as Port had imagined they would. In the morning, as he was standing in the window wondering at the first clouds he had seen since mid-Atlantic, a knock came at the door; it was Eric Lyle, his face suffused and puffy from having just awakened.

“Good morning. I say, do forgive me if I’ve awakened you, but I’ve something rather important to talk about. May I come in?” He glanced about the room in a strangely surreptitious manner, his pale eyes darting swiftly from object to object. Port had the uncomfortable feeling that he should have put things away and closed all his luggage before letting him in.

“Have you had tea?” said Lyle.

“Yes, only it was coffee.”

“Aha!” He edged nearer to a valise, toyed with the straps. “You have some nice labels on your bags.” He lifted the leather tag with Port’s name and address on it. “Now I see your name. Mr. Porter Moresby.” He crossed the room. “You must forgive me if I snoop. Luggage always fascinates me. May I sit down? Now, look, Mr. Moresby. That is you, isn’t it? I’ve been talking at some length with Mother and she agrees with me that it would be much pleasanter for you and Mrs. Moresby—I suppose that’s the lady you were with last night—” he paused.

“Yes,” said Port.

“—if you both came along with us to Boussif. It’s only five hours by car, and the train ride takes ages; something like eleven hours, if I remember. And eleven hours of utter hell. Since the war the trains are completely impossible, you know. We think—”

Port interrupted him. “No, no. We couldn’t put you out to that extent. No, no.”

“Yes, yes,” said Lyle archly.

“Besides, we’re three, you know.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Lyle in a vague voice. “Your friend couldn’t come along on the train, I suppose?”

“I don’t think he’d be very happy with the arrangement. Anyway, we couldn’t very well go off and leave him.”

“I see. That’s a shame. We can scarcely take him along, with all the luggage there’d be, you know.” He rose, looked at Port with his head on one side like a bird listening for a worm, and said: “Come along with us; do. You can manage it, I know.” He went to the door, opened it, and leaned through toward Port, standing on tiptoe. “I’ll tell you what. You come by and let me know in an hour. Fifty-three. And I do hope your decision is favorable.” Smiling, and letting his gaze wander once more around the room, he shut the door.

Kit literally had not slept at all during the night; at daybreak she had dozed off, but her sleep was troubled. She was not in a receptive mood when Port rapped loudly on the communicating door and opened it immediately afterward. Straightway she sat up, holding the sheet high around her neck with her hand, and staring wildly. She relaxed and fell back.

“What is it?”

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“I’m so sleepy.”

“We have the invitation to drive to Boussif.”

Again she bobbed up, this time rubbing her eyes. He sat on the bed and kissed her shoulder absently. She drew back and looked at him. “From the monsters? Have you accepted?”

He wanted to say “Yes,” because that would have avoided a long discussion; the matter would have been settled for her as well as for him.

“Not yet.”

“Oh, you’ll have to refuse.”

“Why? It’ll be much more comfortable. And quicker. And certainly safer.”

“Are you trying to terrify me so I won’t budge out of the hotel?” She looked toward the window. “Why is it so dark out still? What time is it?”

“It’s cloudy today for some strange reason.”

She was silent; the haunted look came into her eyes.

“They won’t take Tunner,” said Port.

“Are you stark, raving mad?” she cried. “I wouldn’t dream of going without him. Not for a second!”

“Why not?” said Port, nettled. “He could get there all right on the train. I don’t know why we should lose a good ride just because he happens to be along. We don’t have to stick with him every damned minute, do we?”

“You don’t have to; no.”

“You mean you do?”

“I mean I wouldn’t consider leaving Tunner here and going off in a car with those two. She’s an hysterical old hag, and the boy—he’s a real criminal degenerate if I ever saw one. He gives me the creeps.”

“Oh, come on!” scoffed Port. “You dare use the word hysterical. My God! I wish you could see yourself this minute.”

“You do exactly what you like,” said Kit, lying back. “I’ll go on the train with Tunner.”

Port’s eyes narrowed. “Well, by God, you can go on the train with him, then. And I hope there’s a wreck!” He went into his room and dressed.

Kit rapped on the door.
“Entrez,”
said Tunner with his American accent. “Well, well, this is a surprise! What’s up? To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

“Oh, nothing in particular,” she said, surveying him with a vague distaste which she hoped she managed to conceal. “You and I’ve got to go alone to Boussif on the train. Port has an invitation to drive there with some friends.” She tried to keep her voice wholly inexpressive.

He looked mystified. “What’s all this? Say it again slowly. Friends?”

“That’s right. Some English woman and her son. They’ve asked him.”

Little by little his face began to beam. This was not false now, she noted. He was just incredibly slow in reacting.

“Well, well!” he said again, grinning.

“What a dolt he is,” she thought, observing the utter lack of inhibition in his behavior. (The blatantly normal always infuriated her.) “His emotional maneuvers all take place out in the open. Not a tree or a rock to hide behind.”

Aloud she said: “The train leaves at six and gets there at some God-forsaken hour of the morning. But they say it’s always late, and that’s good, for once.”

“So we’ll just go together, the two of us.”

“Port’ll be there long before, so he can get rooms for us. I’ve got to go now and find a beauty parlor, God forbid.”

“What do you need of that?” protested Tunner. “Let well enough alone. You can’t improve on nature.”

She had no patience with gallantry; nevertheless she smiled at him as she went out. “Because I’m a coward,” she thought. She was quite conscious of a desire to pit Tunner’s magic against Port’s, since Port had put a curse on the trip. And as she smiled she said, as if to nobody: “I think we can avoid the wreck.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing, I’ll see you for lunch in the dining room at two.”

Tunner was the sort of person to whom it would occur only with difficulty that he might be being used. Because he was accustomed to imposing his will without meeting opposition, he had a highly developed and very male vanity which endeared him, strangely enough, to almost everyone. Doubtless the principal reason why he had been so eager to accompany Port and Kit on this trip was that with them as with no one else he felt a definite resistance to his unceasing attempts at moral domination, at which he was forced, when with them, to work much harder; thus unconsciously he was giving his personality the exercise it required. Kit and Port, on the other hand, both resented even the reduced degree to which they responded to his somewhat obvious charm, which was why neither one would admit to having encouraged him to come along with them. There was no small amount of shame involved where they were concerned, since both of them were conscious of all the acting and formula-following in his behavior, and yet to a certain degree both were willingly ensnared by it. Tunner himself was an essentially simple individual irresistibly attracted by whatever remained just beyond his intellectual grasp. Contenting himself with not quite being able to seize an idea was a habit he had acquired in adolescence, and it operated in him now with still greater force. If he could get on all sides of a thought, he concluded that it was an inferior one; there had to be an inaccessible part of it for his interest to be aroused. His attention, however, did not spur him to additional thought. On the contrary, it merely provided him with an emotional satisfaction vis-a-vis the idea, making it possible for him to relax and admire it at a distance. At the beginning of his friendship with Port and Kit he had been inclined to treat them with the careful deference he felt was due them, not as individuals, but as beings who dealt almost exclusively with ideas, sacred things. Their discouraging of this tactic had been so categorical that he had been obliged to adopt a new one, in using which he felt even less sure of himself. This consisted of gentle prods, ridicule so faint and unfocused that it always could be given a flattering turn if necessary, and the adoption of an attitude of amused, if slightly pained resignation, that made him feel like the father of a pair of impossibly spoiled prodigies.

Light-hearted now, he moved about the room whistling at the prospect of being alone with Kit; he had decided she needed him. He was not at all sure of being able to convince her that the need lay precisely in the field where he liked to think it did. Indeed, of all the women with whom he hoped some day to have intimate relations he considered Kit the most unlikely, the most difficult. He caught a glimpse of himself as he stood bent over a suitcase, and smiled inscrutably at his image; it was the same smile that Kit thought so false.

At one o’clock he went to Port’s room to find the door open and the luggage gone. Two maids were making the bed up with fresh linen.
“Se ha marchao,”
said one. At two he met Kit in the dining room; she was looking exceptionally well groomed and pretty.

He ordered champagne.

“At a thousand francs a bottle!” she remonstrated. “Port would have a fit!”

“Port isn’t here,” said Tunner.

A few minutes before twelve Port stood outside the entrance of the hotel with all his luggage. Three Arab porters, acting under the direction of young Lyle, were piling bags into the back of the car. The slow moving clouds above were interspersed now with great holes of deep blue sky; when the sun came through its heat was unexpectedly powerful. In the direction of the mountains the sky was still black and frowning. Port was impatient; he hoped they would get off before Kit or Tunner happened by.

Precisely at twelve Mrs. Lyle was in the lobby complaining about her bill. The pitch of her voice rose and fell in sharp scallops of sound. Coming to the doorway she cried: “Eric, will you come in here and tell this man I did
not
have biscuits yesterday at tea? Immediately!”

“Tell him yourself,” said Eric absently.
“Celle-là on va mettre ici en bas,”
he went on to one of the Arabs, indicating a heavy pigskin case.

“You idiot!” She went back in; a moment later Port heard her squealing:
“Non! Non! Thé seulement! Pas gâteau!”

Eventually she appeared again, red in the face, her handbag swinging on her arm. Seeing Port she stood still and called: “Eric!” He looked up from the car, came over and presented Port to his mother.

“I’m very glad you can come with us. It’s an added protection. They say in the mountains here it’s better to carry a gun. Although I must say I’ve never seen an Arab I couldn’t handle. It’s the beastly French one really needs protection from. Filthy lot! Fancy their telling me what I had yesterday for tea. But the insolence! Eric, you coward! You let me do all the fighting at the desk. You probably ate the biscuits they were charging me for!”

“It’s all one, isn’t it?” Eric smiled.

“I should think you’d be ashamed to admit it. Mr. Moresby, look at that hulking boy. He’s never done a day’s work in his life. I have to pay all his bills.”

“Come on, Mother! Get in.” This was said despairingly

“What do you mean, get in?” Her voice went very high. “Fancy talking to me like that! You need a good slap in the face. That might help you.” She climbed into the front of the car. “I’ve never had such talk from anyone.”

“We shall all three sit in front,” said Eric. “Do you mind, Mr. Moresby?”

“I’m delighted. I prefer the front,” said Port. He was determined to remain wholly on the periphery of this family pattern; the best way of assuring that, he thought, would be to have no visible personality whatever, merely to be civil, to listen. It was likely that this ludicrous wrangling was the only form of conversation these two had ever managed to devise for themselves.

They started up, Eric at the wheel, racing the motor first. The porters shouted:
“Bon voyage!”

“I noticed several people staring at me when I left,” said Mrs. Lyle, settling back. “Those filthy Arabs have done their work here, the same as everywhere else.”

“Work? What do you mean?” said Port.

“Why, their spying. They spy on you all the time here, you know. That’s the way they make their living. You think you can do anything without their knowing it?” She laughed unpleasantly. “Within an hour all the miserable little touts and undersecretaries at the consulates know everything.”

“You mean the British Consulate?”

“All the consulates, the police, the banks, everyone,” she said firmly.

Port looked at Eric expectantly. “But—”

“Oh, yes,” said Eric, apparently happy to reinforce his mother’s statement. “It’s a frightful mess. We never have a moment’s peace. Wherever we go, they hold back our letters, they try to keep us out of hotels by saying they have no rooms, and when we do get rooms they search them while we’re out and steal our things, they get the porters and chambermaids to eavesdrop—”

“But who? Who does all this? And why?”

“The Arabs!” cried Mrs. Lyle. “They’re a stinking, low race of people with nothing to do in life but spy on others. How else do you think they live?”

“It seems incredible,” Port ventured timidly, hoping in this way to call forth more of the same, for it amused him.

“Hah!” she said in a tone of triumph. “It may seem incredible to you because you don’t know them, but look out for them. They hate us all. And so do the French. Oh, they loathe us!”

“I’ve always found the Arabs very sympathetic,” said Port.

“Of course. That’s because they’re servile, they flatter you and fawn on you. And the moment your back is turned, off they rush to the consulate.”

Said Eric: “Once in Mogador—” His mother cut him short.

“Oh, shut up! Let someone else talk. Do you think anyone wants to hear about your blundering stupidities? If you’d had a little sense you’d not have got into that business. What right did you have to go to Mogador, when I was dying in Fez? Mr. Moresby, I was dying! In the hospital, on my back, with a terrible Arab nurse who couldn’t even give a proper injection—”

“She could!” said Eric stoutly. “She gave me at least twenty. You just happened to get infected because your resistance was low.”

“Resistance!” shrieked Mrs. Lyle. “I refuse to talk any more. Look, Mr. Moresby, at the colors of the hills. Have you ever tried infra-red on landscapes? I took some exceptionally fine ones in Rhodesia, but they were stolen from me by an editor in Johannesburg.”

“Mr. Moresby’s not a photographer, Mother.”

“Oh, be quiet. Would that keep him from knowing about infra-red photography?”

“I’ve seen samples of it,” said Port.

“Well, of course you have. You see, Eric, you simply don’t know what you’re saying, ever. It all comes from lack of discipline. I only wish you had to earn your living for one day. It would teach you to think before you speak. At this point you’re no better than an imbecile.”

A particularly arid argument ensued, in which Eric, apparently for Port’s benefit, enumerated a list of unlikely sounding jobs he claimed to have held during the past four years, while the mother systematically challenged each item with what seemed convincing proof of its falsity. At each new claim she cried: “What lies! What a liar! You don’t even know what the truth is!” Finally Eric replied in an aggrieved tone, as if capitulating: “You’d never let me stick at any work, anyway. You’re terrified that I might become independent.”

Mrs. Lyle cried: “Look, look! Mr. Moresby! That sweet burro! It reminds me of Spain. We just spent two months there. It’s a horrible country,” (she pronounced it hawibble) “all soldiers and priests and Jews.”

“Jews?” echoed Port incredulously.

“Of course. Didn’t you know? The hotels are full of them. They run the country. From behind the scenes, of course. The same as everywhere else. Only in Spain they’re very clever about it. They will not admit to being Jewish. In Cordoba—this will show you how wily and deceitful they are. In Cordoba I went through a street called Juderia. It’s where the synagogue is. Naturally it’s positively teeming with Jews—a typical ghetto. But do you think one of them would admit it? Certainly not! They all shook their fingers back and forth in front of my face, and shouted:
‘Catolico! Catolico!’
at me. But fancy that, Mr. Moresby, their claiming to be Roman Catholics. And when I went through the synagogue the guide kept insisting that no services had been held in it since the fifteenth century! I’m afraid I was dreadfully rude to him. I burst out laughing in his face.”

“What did he say?” Port inquired.

“Oh, he merely went on with his lecture. He’d learned it by rote, of course. He did stare. They all do. But I think he respected me for not being afraid. The ruder you are to them the more they admire you. I showed him I knew he was telling me the most fearful lot of lies. Catholics! I daresay they think that makes them superior. It was too funny, when they were all most Jewy; one had only to look at them. Oh, I know Jews. I’ve had too many vile experiences with them not to know them.”

The novelty of the caricature was wearing off. Port was beginning to feel smothered sitting there between them; their obsessions depressed him. Mrs. Lyle was even more objectionable than her son. Unlike him, she had no exploits, imaginary or real, to recount; her entire conversation consisted of descriptions in detail of the persecutions to which she believed she had been subjected, and of word-by-word accounts of the bitter quarrels in which she had been engaged with those who harassed her. As she spoke, her character took shape before him, although already he was far less inclined to be interested in it. Her life had been devoid of personal contacts, and she needed them. Thus she manufactured them as best she could; each fight was an abortive attempt at establishing some kind of human relationship. Even with Eric, she had come to accept the dispute as the natural mode of talking. He decided that she was the loneliest woman he had ever seen, but he could not care very much.

He ceased listening. They had left the town, traversed the valley, and were climbing a large, bare hill on the other side. As they swung around one of the many S-curves, he realized with a start that he was looking straight at the Turkish fortress, small and perfect as a toy at this distance, on the opposite side of the valley. Under the wall, scattered about on the yellow earth, were several tiny black tents; which one he had been in, which one was Marhnia’s, he could not say, for the staircase was not visible from here.

And there she was, doubtless, somewhere below in the valley, having her noonday sleep in the airless heat of a tent, alone or with a lucky Arab friend—not Smaïl, he thought. They turned again, mounting ever higher; there were cliffs above them. By the road sometimes were high clumps of dead thistle plants, coated with white dust, and from the plants the locusts called, a high, unceasing scream like the sound of heat itself. Again and again the valley came into view, always a little smaller, a little farther away, a little less real. The Mercedes roared like a plane; there was no muffler on the exhaust pipe. The mountains were there ahead, the sebkha was spread out below. He turned to get a last look at the valley; the shape of each tent was still discernible, and he realized that the tents looked like the mountain peaks behind them on the horizon.

As he watched the heat-covered landscape unfold, his thoughts took an inward turn, dwelt briefly on the dream that still preoccupied him. At the end of a moment, he smiled; now he had it. The train that went always faster was merely an epitome of life itself. The unsureness about the no and the yes was the inevitable attitude one had if one tried to consider the value of that life, and the hesitation was automatically resolved by one’s involuntary decision to refuse participation in it. He wondered why it had upset him; it was a simple, classic dream. The connections were all clear in his head. Their particular meaning with regard to his own life scarcely mattered. For in order to avoid having to deal with relative values, he had long since come to deny all purpose to the phenomenon of existence—it was more expedient and comforting.

He was pleased to have solved his little problem. He looked around the countryside; they were still climbing, but they had gone over the first crest. About them now were barren, rounded hills, without details to give them scale. And on every side was the same uneven, hard line of the horizon, with the blinding white sky behind. Mrs. Lyle was saying: “Oh, they’re a foul tribe. A rotten lot, I can tell you.” “I’ll kill this woman yet,” he thought savagely. As the gradient lessened and the car added speed, the fleeting illusion of a breeze was created, but when the road curved upward again and they resumed the slow ascent, he realized that the air was motionless.

“There’s a sort of belvedere up ahead, according to the map,” said Eric. “We ought to have a superb view.”

“Do you think we should stop?” Mrs. Lyle inquired anxiously. “We must be at Boussif for tea.”

The vantage point proved to be a slightly perceptible widening of the road at a spot where the latter made a hairpin curve. Some boulders which had rolled down from the cliff on the inner side made the passage even more hazardous. The drop from the edge was sheer, and the view inland was spectacular and hostile.

Eric stopped the car for a moment, but no one got out. The rest of the drive was through stony territory, too parched to shelter even the locusts, yet now and then Port caught a glimpse in the distance of a mud-walled hamlet, the color of the hills, fenced round about with cactus and thorny shrubs. A silence fell upon the three, and there was nothing to hear but the steady roaring of the motor.

When they came in sight of Boussif with its modern white concrete minaret, Mrs. Lyle said: “Eric, I want you to attend to the rooms. I shall go directly to the kitchen and set about showing them how to make tea.” To Port she said, holding up her handbag: “I always carry the tea here in my bag with me when we’re on a voyage. Otherwise I should have to wait forever while that wretched boy attended to the automobile and the luggage. I believe there’s nothing at all to see in Boussif, so we shall be spared going into the streets.”

“Derb Ech Chergui,” said Port. And as she turned to look at him in astonishment, “I was just reading a sign,” he said reassuringly. The long main street was empty, cooking in the afternoon sun, whose strength seemed doubled by the fact that over the mountains ahead to the south still hung the massive dark clouds that had been there since the early morning.