The Spider's House (37 page)

“Sit down,” said Stenham. Then he stepped out into the sunlight, looked up at the walls around the patio, sighed, and went back in. “No way out there,” he said. “We’ll just have to sit here.”

Lee did not reply; she sat looking down at the table, her chin cupped in her hands. He observed her: he could not be certain, but it seemed to him that she was shivering. He put his hand on her shoulder, felt it tremble.

“Wouldn’t you like some hot tea, without the sugar?” he asked her.

“It’s all right,” she said after a pause, without glancing up. “I’m all right.”

He stood there helplessly, looking down at her. “Maybe—”

“Please sit down.”

Automatically he obeyed. Then he lighted a cigarette. Presently she raised her head. “Give me one,” she said. Her teeth were chattering. “I might as well smoke. I can’t do anything else.”

Someone was standing in the doorway. Swiftly Stenham turned his head. It was the boy, staring at them. Stenham rose and went over, pulling him with him out into the next room. The old man still sprawled in the corner in a cloud of kif smoke.

“Try and get a glass of tea for the
mra,”
he told the boy, who did not appear to understand. “The lady wants some tea.” He’s looking at me as though I were a talking tree, thought Stenham. He took the boy’s arm and squeezed it, but there was no reaction. The eyes were wide, and there was nothing in them. He looked back into the room and saw Lee hunched over the table, sobbing. Pulling the boy by the arm, he led him to the chair beside her and made him sit down. Then he went out to the main room to the alcove where the fire was, and ordered three teas from the
qaouaji;
he too seemed to be in a state bordering on catalepsy. “Three teas, three teas,” Stenham repeated. “One
with only a little sugar.” It’ll give him something to do, he thought.

The feeble chaos outside was now almost covered by the voices of the onlookers within the café. They were not talking loud, but they spoke with frantic intensity, and all together, so that no one was listening to anyone else. Happily, this occupied them; they paid him no attention. He felt that if he left the
qaouaji
to prepare the tea and bring it by himself, he would be likely to fall back into his lethargy; he determined to remain with him until it was ready. From where he stood, through the small window in front of him, he could see only a part of the center of the square. Usually it was empty, but when a figure appeared, moving across the space made by the window’s frame, it was always a policeman or a
mokhazni
. What had happened was fairly clear: the crowd had attempted to pass out of the Medina through Bab Bou Jeloud, and had been stopped at the gate itself. Now there were small skirmishes taking place well within the gate as the marchers retreated. When he heard a cavalcade of trucks begin to arrive, he knew it would be safe to go and look out the window, and so he squeezed himself into the narrow corridor between the piles of cases of empty bottles and the wall, and went to peer out. There were four big army trucks and they had drawn up in a line behind the two abandoned buses. Berber soldiers in uniform, their rifles in their hands, were still leaping out of the backs of the trucks, running toward the gate. There must be about two hundred of them, he calculated.

Now a slow massacre would begin, inside the walls, in the streets and alleys, until every city-dweller who was able had reached some sort of shelter and no one was left outside but the soldiers. Even as he was thinking this, the pattern of the shooting changed from single, desultory shots to whole volleys of them, like strings of fire-crackers exploding. He stood there watching tensely, although there was nothing to see; it was like seeing a newsreel of the event, where what is presented is the cast of characters and the situation before and afterward, but never the action itself. Even the gunfire might as well have been a
sound-track; it was hard to believe that the rifles he had seen two minutes before were at this moment being used to kill people; were firing the shots that he was hearing. If you had had no previous contact with this sort of violence, he reflected, even when it was happening where you were, it remained unreal.

He went back to the alcove where the fire was, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the
qaouaji
had nearly finished making the tea. When it was done, he followed the man as unobtrusively as he could to the back room. When he looked at the table he did not know whether he was annoyed or delighted to find Lee and the boy engaged in a mysterious bilingual dialogue.

“Have some hot tea,” he told her.

She looked up; there was no sign on her face that she had been crying. “Oh, that’s sweet of you,” she said, lifting the glass, finding it too hot, and putting it down again. “These people are really amazing. It took this child about two minutes to get me over feeling sorry for myself. The first thing I knew he was tugging at my sleeve and turning on the most irresistible smile and saying things in his funny language, but with such gentleness and sweetness that there I was, feeling better, that’s all.”

“That
is
strange,” Stenham said, thinking of the state the boy himself had been in when he had left him. He turned to him and said: “O
deba labès enta?
You feel better? You were a little sick.”

“No, I wasn’t sick,” the boy said firmly, but his face showed three consecutive expressions: shame, resentment, and finally a certain trusting humility, as if by the last he meant that he threw himself upon Stenham’s mercy not to tell Lee of his weakness.

“When can we get out of here? We want to go home,” Stenham said to him.

The boy shook his head. “This isn’t the time to go into the street.”

“But the lady wants to go to the hotel.”

“Of course.” The boy laughed, as though Lee’s desires were those of an unreasoning animal, and were to be taken no more
seriously. “This café is a very good place for her. The soldiers won’t know she’s in here.”

“The soldiers won’t know?” echoed Stenham sharply, his intuition warning him that there was more import to the words than his mind had yet grasped. “What do you mean?
Chnou bghitsi ts’qoulli?”

“Didn’t you see the soldiers? I heard them come when you were getting the tea. If they know she’s in here they’ll break the door and come in.”

“But why?” demanded Stenham idiotically.

The boy replied succinctly and in unequivocal terms.

“No, no.” Stenham was incredulous. “They couldn’t. The French.”

“What French?” said the boy bitterly. “The French aren’t with them. They send them out alone, so they can break the houses and kill the men and take the girls and steal what they want. The Berbers don’t fight for the French just for those few francs a day they give them. You didn’t know that? This way the French don’t have to spend any money, and the city people are kept poor, and the Berbers are happy in their heads, and the people hate the Berbers more than they hate the French. Because if everybody hated the French they couldn’t stay here. They’d have to go back to France.”

“I see. And how do you know all that?” Stenham asked, impressed by the clarity of the boy’s simple analysis.

“I know it because everybody knows it. Even the donkeys and mules know that. And the birds,” he added with complete seriousness.

“If you know all that, maybe you know what’s going to happen next,” Stenham suggested, half in earnest.

“There will be more and more poison in the hearts of the Moslems, and more and more and more”—his face screwed itself up into a painful grimace—“until they all burst, just from hating. They’ll set everything on fire and kill each other.”

“I mean today. What’s going to happen now? Because we want to go home.”

“You must look out the window and wait until the only men
there are French and
mokhaznia
—no partisans at all. Then you make the man open the door and let you out, and go to a policeman, and he’ll take you home.”

“But we don’t like the French,” objected Stenham, thinking this was as good a moment as any to reassure the boy as to where their sympathies lay; he did not want him to regret his candor when the excitement of the instant had passed.

A cynical smile appeared on the young face. “
Binatzkoum.
That’s between you and them,” he said impassively. “How did you get to Fez?”

“On the train.”

“And where do you live?”

“At the Mérinides Palace.”

“Binatzkoum, binatzkoum.
You came with the French and you live with the French. What difference does it make whether you like them or not? If they weren’t here you couldn’t be here. Go to a French policeman. But don’t tell him you don’t like him.”

“Look!” said Lee suddenly. “I don’t feel like sitting here while you take an Arab lesson. I want to get out of here. Has he given you any information at all?”

“If you’ll just have a little patience,” said Stenham, nettled, “I’ll get all the details. You can’t hurry these people; I’ve told you that.”

“I’m sorry. But it
is
going to be dark soon and we
have
got to get all the way back to the hotel. What I meant was, I hope you’re not just having an ordinary conversation.”

“We’re not,” Stenham assured her. He looked at his watch. “It’s only four-twenty,” he said. “It won’t be dark for a long time. The boy doesn’t think we ought to go outside quite yet. I’m inclined to think he’s right.”

“He probably doesn’t know as much about it as you do, if you come down to that,” she said. “But go ahead and talk.”

The sounds of shooting had retreated into the distance. “Why don’t you go and look out the window?” Stenham suggested to the boy, “and see what’s happening.”

Obediently the boy rose and went out.

“He’s a good kid,” said Stenham. “Bright as they come.”

“Oh, he’s a darling. I think we should each give him something when we go.”

It was a long while before he returned, and when he came in they saw immediately that he was in a completely different state of mind. He walked slowly to his chair and sat down, looking ready to burst into tears.

“Chnou?
What is it?” Stenham demanded impatiently.

The boy looked straight ahead of him, a picture of despair.

“Now
you
be patient,” Lee said.

“You can go,” the boy said finally in a toneless voice. “The man will open the door for you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Stenham waited a moment for the boy to say more, but he merely sat there, his hands in his lap, his head bent forward, looking at the air. “What is it?” he finally asked him, conscious that both his experience and his Arabic were inadequate for dealing with a situation which demanded tact and delicacy. The boy shook his head very slowly without moving his eyes. “Did you see something bad?”

The boy heaved a deep sigh. “The city is closed,” he said. “All the gates are closed. No one can go in. No one can come out.”

Stenham relayed the information to Lee, adding: “I suppose that means going through hell to get into the hotel. Officially it’s inside the walls.”

She clicked her tongue with annoyance. “We’ll get in. But what about him? Where does he live?”

Stenham talked with the boy for a bit, drawing only the briefest answers from him. At the end of a minute or so, he said to Lee: “He doesn’t know where he’s going to eat or sleep. That’s the trouble. His family lives way down in the Medina. It’s a mess, isn’t it? And of course he has no money. They never have any. I think I’ll give him a thousand. That ought to help some.”

Lee shook her head. “Money’s not what the poor kid needs. What good’s money going to be to him?”

“What good is it!” exclaimed Stenham. “What else can you give him?”

Lee reached over and tapped the boy’s shoulder. “Look!” she said, pointing at him. “You. Come.” She waggled her fingers like two legs. “Him.” She indicated Stenham. “Me.” She pointed her thumb at herself. “Hotel.” She described a wide arc with her hand. “Yes? Oui?”

“You’re crazy,” Stenham told her. A flicker of hope had appeared in the boy’s eyes. Warming to her game, Lee bent forward and went on with her dumb-show. Stenham rose, saying: “Why get him all worked up? It’s cruel.” She paid him no attention.

“I’m going to take a look into the other room,” he said, and he left them there, leaning toward each other intently, Lee gesticulating and uttering single words with exaggeratedly clear enunciation—like a schoolteacher, he thought again.

“What does she want? Gratitude?” He knew how it would end: the boy would disappear, and afterward it would be discovered that something was missing—a camera, a watch, a fountain pen. She would be indignant, and he would patiently explain that it had been inevitable from the start, that such behavior was merely an integral part of “their” ethical code.

The other room was quiet. Only a few men stood in the windows looking out. Of the rest, some talked and the others merely sat. He went to the little window where he had gone before, and peered out. In the square there was activity: the soldiers were piling sandbags in a curved line across the lower end, just outside the gate. A large calendar hung on the wall beside the window; its text written in Arabic characters, it showed an unmistakably American girl lifting a bottle of Coca-Cola to her lips. As he went back across the room two or three men turned angry faces toward him, and he heard the word
mericani
, as well as a few unflattering epithets. He was relieved: at least they all knew he was not French. It was unlikely that there would be any trouble.

In the middle room the old man had slumped to one side and closed his eyes: so many pipes of kif in one afternoon had proven more than he could manage. When Stenham stepped through the further doorway Lee stood up, smoothed her skirt, and said:

“Well, it’s all settled. Amar’s coming with us. They can find somewhere for him to sleep, and if they won’t, I’ll simply take a room for him tonight.”

Stenham smiled pityingly. “Well, your intentions are good, anyway. Is that his name? Amar?”

“Ask him. That’s what he told me. He can say my name, but he pronounces it Bali. It’s rather nice—certainly prettier than Polly.”