The Spider's House (48 page)

Now he had to go back and face Lee. If I know her at all, he thought, she’ll still be angry. She was not the sort to wake up in the morning having decided to forget the night before.
“Yallah!”
he said roughly, and the two boys followed him. On the way back to the café he turned to see if they were in his wake, and again he found Mohammed engaged in surreptitious conversation with Amar; its conspiratorial nature was confirmed when they saw Stenham looking back at them and quickly drew apart. He stopped walking, to wait for them to catch up with him. Mohammed immediately slowed his pace, obviously in the hope he would go on, but he stood still and waited. Amar came first; his face wore a determined expression. Before Stenham had an opportunity to speak, he said: “M’sieu! Mohammed and I want to go back to Fez.”

Stenham was both relieved that Amar should have spoken out, and troubled by his request. “Oh,” he said. “That’s what you’ve been whispering about together all night.”

“Sa’a, sa’a
. Once in a while. Mohammed says the French let everyone come here so it would be easier for them to kill the ones who stayed behind.”

Mohammed, guessing the subject of their dialogue, loitered even more shamelessly.

“I thought you had some brains,” Stenham told Amar disgustedly. “How many people do you think have come here from Fez? Probably about fifty. How are the others going to get out of the Medina and come here when it’s all closed and the soldiers are at every gate? Tell me that.”

Amar did not reply. At last Mohammed had arrived within speaking distance.

“What’s this about going to Fez? Why do you want to go?”

Assuming an aggrieved air, Mohammed enumerated a list of utterly unconvincing arguments for their being in Fez that day, rather than here in the mountains. At first Stenham had intended to reply to each point, demolishing them one by one,
but as the number and absurdity of Mohammed’s reasons increased, he despaired, and then grew angry. “Just tell me one thing,” he finally demanded. “Why did you come?”

This question presented no difficulties to Mohammed. “My friend asked me.” He pointed at Amar.

“You can go back again if you want to. It has nothing to do with me.”

“The bus ticket.” He looked reproachfully at Amar.

“None of it has anything to do with me. I’m not going to buy your bus ticket. I invited you both here, and you’re here. I haven’t invited you back to Fez yet. When I do, I’ll buy your bus tickets. But it won’t be today. You’re lucky to be here out of trouble. If you had any heads, you’d both know that.” As he spoke he watched Amar, whose changing countenance convinced him that he was voicing what were more or less Amar’s opinions, and that it was only Mohammed who was bored and wanted to get back to the city. Mohammed was a troublemaker; there was no doubt of it. But it was out of the question that he should be sent back alone: he would not have gone without Amar, nor would Amar have allowed him to go by himself. The shame attached to such behavior would be overwhelming. If Amar had invited Mohammed to Sidi Bou Chta, Mohammed was Amar’s guest, and Amar was responsible for his well-being and contentment while he was there. Now Mohammed wanted to go to Fez, therefore Amar must take him to Fez.

“If Amar wants to buy your bus ticket, that’s all right.” But Amar looked woebegone upon hearing this. Now I’m in the act of becoming the wicked Nazarene, Stenham thought. They always have to have one around, and I might as well be it. He began to walk again.

In the café Lee was sitting up, smoking, and looking even more dour than he had expected. “Good morning,” he said jovially. “Good morning,” she said quickly, like a machine, and without glancing at him.

A wave of rage swept over him; he wanted to say, with the same pleasant heartiness: “How’s the martyr this morning?” but of course he said nothing. The two boys came in, removed their
sandals, and sat down, still muttering to each other. Then Amar remembered Lee and looked toward her, saying:
“Bon jour, madame
,” and Mohammed followed suit. Her acknowledgment of their greeting was slightly more cordial.

Most of the men in the café were the same ones who had been there the night before, but there were also two or three new faces among them, noticeable because they were obviously from the city. Having nothing else to do, he watched them, comparing their city gestures and postures with the noble bearing of the country folk. Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They’ve lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years.

Now, that foxy-looking one there in seedy European clothes, he thought, with the thick lips and the heavy fuzz on his cheeks and the boil on his neck, talking so secretively to the enormous mountain man with his silver-handled dagger stuck in its scabbard at his hip—what could a miserable young purveyor of the
souks
like that have of interest to tell a man who looked like a benevolent king? Something of vital concern, to judge from the way in which the man presently reacted, for his eyes gradually opened very wide, as an expression of consternation spread across his face. The younger one sat with narrowed eyes, rubbing his hand over his unshaven chin, and leaned even closer, whispering urgently.

Seized with a sudden suspicion, Stenham rose and left the tent. At random he chose another café a little further down the hill, went in, and ordered a glass of tea, disregarding the glances of suspicion that were leveled at him. Such glances were an old
story and he was used to them. This café differed very little from the other, save that it was somewhat larger, and had a second room, more symbolic than actual, the division being marked by a length of matting tacked onto some upright poles. In the larger space where he had seated himself very little seemed to be going on: the men smoked their kif pipes and sipped their tea. Soon he rose and entered the second room, where he chose a corner and sat down to wait for his tea. Here again were the same peculiar and unexpected circumstances, only more strikingly presented than in the other café, in that here the city youth, this one wearing glasses, was speaking to six important-looking rustics, instead of only one. It was difficult for him to feign nonchalance in the face of the sudden silence and the frankly hostile glares that followed his entry into this little chamber. He decided to play the innocent tourist, in search of atmosphere; not that they would recognize the part he was playing, but it was the only way he could be sure of being able to carry it off. He smiled fatuously at them all, and said: “Good morning.
Bong jour.
A
vez-vous kif? Kif foumer bong
.” I hope I haven’t overdone it, he thought. Two of the men had begun to smile; the others looked confused. The city man sneered, said contemptuously: “Non,
monsieur, on n’a pas de kif
.” Then he turned and said to the mountain men: “How did that foreign pig find his way to Sidi Bou Chta? Even here, and on the Aid, we have to look at these sons of dogs.” One of the men smiled philosophically, remarking that last year there had been three Frenchmen at the Moussem of Moulay Idriss, and they had taken photographs. “This one’s not even French,” the young man told him disgustedly. “He’s some other kind of filth from England or Switzerland.” Again he let his gaze of hatred play over Stenham’s face for a moment; then he turned away with an air of finality and resumed his monologue, but now in a very low voice which kept Stenham from hearing all but an occasional isolated word or phrase. However, the young man, forgetting, soon raised his voice a shade, and this difference made it possible for Stenham to hear most of the words. When the tea came he drank it as quickly as he could without the risk of
attracting attention to himself, then, bidding a clumsy good-bye to the men in the room, he went outside once more. There was no possible way of believing that one or two stray young men from Fez had come up and happened to be telling friends of the recent turn of events there, but he wanted the pleasure of knowing, instead of merely entertaining a suspicion. He determined to try a half dozen more cafés, to see on how large a scale the campaign was being waged. In the event anyone asked him what he was doing, he would pretend to be looking for Amar. And so, one after the other, he stopped and went in, glancing about in a preoccupied manner, and retiring after scanning the faces of the occupants.

Only in one did the
qaouaji
ask him what he wanted. The man’s voice was unpleasant, and he did not give himself the time to look with care. In one other he could not be sure: the type he had singled out was not well enough defined. But in the other four there was not the least doubt. The Istiqlal had sent an entire committee up here to make contact with the
cheikhs, caïds
and other notables, and attempt to dissuade them from carrying out the sacrifice. Furthermore, they were spreading the story, very likely true in its general outlines, that the girls and women of the Medina in Fez were being systematically raped by the tens of thousands of native soldiers the French had turned loose inside the city. Houses and shops were being looted, great numbers of men and boys had been shot, and fires had started all over the city. That much he had heard in the second café while he waited for his tea, and the expressions on the faces of the listeners in the other places had been identical in each case.

He stood in the hot morning sun, hearing the chorus of bleating sheep all around him, and because he was tired and hungry, had a little imaginary conversation inside himself. Well, now are you satisfied, or do you have to see another ten cafés? No, there’s no need. And now that you know, what are you going to do about it? Nothing. I just wanted to know. You thought there was a place that might still be pure. Are you satisfied?

But he did not want to go back to the café and see the two
boys, and be forced to feel that he was standing in judgment before them. For, absurd as it might sound, it was inevitable that he should feel a certain guilt when he thought of the disparity between their childish hopes and his own, which were scarcely to be formulated because they were purely negative. He did not want the French to keep Morocco, nor did he want to see the Nationalists take it. He could not choose sides because the part of his consciousness which dealt with the choosing of sides had long ago been paralyzed by having chosen that which was designed to suspend all possibility of choice. And that was perhaps fortunate, he told himself, because it enabled him to remain at a distance from both evils, and thus to keep in mind the fact of the evil.

He stopped at the food stalls and got himself half a disk of bread and some skewers of lamb. Then, eating as he went, he set out for the hill that lay behind the eminence where the sanctuary was built. There was a constant coming and going of people on their way down from and up to the shrine, but the route they used was to his left, and his path, made by goats most likely, was unfrequented. For the only permanent building in the region was the little
marabout
which had been constructed around the tomb of Sidi Bou Chta himself. When there was no pilgrimage, no one happened by but individuals who had come to fulfill their vows, plus whatever shepherd chanced to stray within the precinct with his goats.

From the very top he looked down upon the whole bright panorama, the barren ochre earth to the south, the rows of mountain ranges to the north, and in front of him to the west the wooded gray-green slopes with the open spaces, where the thousands of tiny white figures were. Whatever movement these last made was so dwarfed from this height that they seemed frozen and stationary objects in the landscape; it was only if he watched carefully for a while that he could convince himself that they were actually moving about. Here in the joyous morning sun he felt very remote, and he wondered vaguely if it might not be better to witness the sacrifice from here—see it while not seeing it. The Istiqlal agents could never succeed in preventing
all the people from killing their sheep; that was not their purpose, in any case. They would manage just well enoueh to see that the elements of confusion, uncertainty and suspicion were injected into the proceedings, in such a way as to divide the people among themselves and ruin any sense of satisfaction which could have resulted from a well-performed ritual. This sort of destruction had to be carefully planned, and then allowed to work by itself. If the young men were clever, the people would go away from Sidi Bou Chta this year in a disgruntled mood, and many of them would fail to come back next year. One break, one year without the ritual, and the chain was sundered; the young men knew that. Any kind of change in their rhythm disorientated the people, because their lives were entirely a matter of rhythmic repetition, and failure to observe a prescribed ritual brought its own terrible psychological consequences, for then the people felt they were no longer in Allah’s grace, and if they felt that, very little mattered to them—they would do whatever was suggested to them. He wondered if all the young Istiqlal agents had come up in one bus. If they had, he thought, what a blessing it would have been for it to have plunged off the road over a cliff on its way up! The people would have carried out the directions of Allah with rejoicing, and happiness during the coming year would have been assured for the countryside roundabout. A little sentence he had once read came into his head:
Happy is the man who believes he is happy.
Yes, he thought, and more accursed than the murderer is the man who works to destroy that belief. It was the unhappy little busybodies who were the scourge of mankind, the pestilence on the face of the earth. “You dare sit there and tell me they’re happy,” Lee had said to him, the self-righteous glow in her eyes. Surely the intellectuals who had made the French Revolution had had the same expression, like the hideous young men of the Istiqlal, like the inhuman functionaries of the Communist Party the world over.