The Stories of Paul Bowles (30 page)

THE MONTHS IN
Spain had been not at all relaxing; he was fed up with the coy promises of eyes seen above fans, furious with mantillas, crucifixes and titters. Here in Morocco, if love lacked finesse, at least it was frank. The veils over the faces did not disturb him; he had learned long ago to decipher the features beneath. Only the teeth remained a hazard. And the eyes he could read as easily as words. When they showed any interest at all, they expressed it clearly, with no hint of the prudishness he so hated.

Above a bank of thick clouds the twilight sky burned with a fierce blueness. He turned into the crowded native quarter. He had sent his luggage to the Pension Callender by taxi and had arranged to take Mr. Callender’s station wagon when it started up from the market just before dinner. That left him free to wander a half-hour or so in the Medina, nothing on his mind, nothing in his hands. He turned into the Rue Abdessadek. The hooded figures in the street moved from stall to stall, their hands making the decorative oriental gestures, their voices strident with disagreement over prices. It was all familiar to Monsieur Royer,
and very comforting. He felt he could again breathe easily. Slowly he ascended the hill, trying to recall a passage of something he once had read and loved:
“Le temps qui coule ici n’a plus d’heures, mais—”
He could not get beyond this point into the other thought. Turning into a smaller street, he was suddenly met by an overpowering odor of jasmine; it came from behind the wall beside him. He stood still a moment beneath the overhanging branch of a fig tree on the other side of the wall, and inhaled slowly, deliberately, still hoping to get beyond that part of the thought which had to do with time. The jasmine would help. It was coming to him:
“mais, tant le loisir—”
No.

A child brushed against him, and he had the impression that it had done so purposely. He glanced down: sure enough, it was begging. In a cajoling, unnatural little voice that set his nerves on edge it was asking alms, raising a tiny cupped hand toward him. He began to walk quickly, still sniffing the jasmine, feeling the elusive phrase he sought moving a little further away from him. The child hurried along beside him, continuing its odious chant. “No!” he cried explosively, without looking down at it again, and forcing his legs to take enormous strides in the hope of escaping its singsong voice.

“Le temps qui coule ici n’a plus d’heures, mais tant—”
he murmured aloud, to cover the sound beside him. It was impossible. Now his mood was irrevocably shattered. The child, growing bolder, touched his leg with a tentative finger.
“Dame una gorda,”
it whined. With a suddenness and ferocity which astonished him even as he acted, he dealt it a savage blow in the face, and a fraction of a second later heard it moan. Then he watched it duck and run to the side of the street where it stood against the wall holding its hand to its face and staring at him with an expression of reproach and shocked disbelief.

Already he was feeling a sharp pang of regret for his behavior. He stepped toward the cowering child, not aware of what he was about to say or do. The child looked up; its pinched face was pale in the light of the arc-lamp that swung above. He heard himself say in a tremulous voice:
“Porqué me molestas así?”
It did not answer, and he felt its silence making an unbridgeable abyss between them. He took hold of its thin arm. Again, without stirring, it made its absurd, animal moan. In a new access of rage he struck it again, much harder. This time it made no sound; it merely stood. Completely unnerved and miserable, Monsieur Royer turned and walked off in the direction from which he had just
come, colliding with a shrouded woman who was emptying garbage from a pan into the middle of the street. She called after him angrily, but he paid no attention. The idea that the Moroccan urchin must consider him with the same dread and contempt it felt for any other Christian interloper was intolerable to him, for he considered himself a particularly understanding friend of the Moslems. He hurried back through the town to the market, found the station wagon, and got into it. By the light of the many flares in the vegetable stands opposite, he recognized old Mr. Richmond of the Bank of British West Africa sitting on the seat facing him.

“Good evening,” said Monsieur Royer, feeling that any kind of conversation at all would help him to recover from the ill-humor induced by his walk.

Mr. Richmond grunted a reply, and after a pause said: “You’re Royer, I believe?”

“Aha, you remember me,” smiled Monsieur Royer. But Mr. Richmond said no more.

Presently Pedro arrived, his arms full of bundles which he piled on the floor between them. He greeted Monsieur Royer ceremoniously, and explained that they would not be going directly to the pension because they had to stop by the airport to call for Miss Charlotte, who was coming down from London. As they drove slowly through the crowded market, several times Monsieur Royer saw Mr. Richmond glance across at him with a surreptitiousness which bordered on the theatrical.
“Pauvre vieux,”
he thought. “He’s losing his grip.”

IT HAD BEEN
a nerve-racking flight down, through clouds most of the way, with sudden terrifying exits into regions of pitiless burning sunlight against which the softness of the clouds seemed a protection. She was not afraid of flying; the uneasiness had begun long before she had left school. Each morning on waking she had smelled the freshly cut grass, heard the birds’ familiar chirping in the bushes, and said to herself that she did not want to leave.

Of course there was no question of her not going home to visit her family; although her mother had come to England the year before to spend the vacation months with her, she had not seen her father for two
years, and she really cared more for him than she did for her mother. He was quiet, he looked at her in a strange, appraising manner that enormously flattered her and, above all, he let her alone, refrained from making suggestions for the betterment of her appearance or character, which ostensibly meant that he considered her a fully formed individual. And while she had to admit that her mother was sweet, at the same time she could not help thinking her silly and something of a nuisance: she was so laden with advice and so eternally ready to bestow it. And the more one took, the more of it she attempted to unload upon one. There was no end to the chain of suggestions and admonitions. She told herself that this constant watching was a very common misapplication of maternal love, but that did not make it any easier to bear.

Her last two days at school she had spent packing slowly, automatically; they had been filled with a particular anguish which she finally brought herself to diagnose. It was sheer apprehensiveness at the prospect of being again with her mother. Other years she had prepared to go home without feeling this tremulous dread. It was as they left London Airport and she was bracing herself against the plane’s banking that the reason came to her; without realizing it she already had determined to resist. The discovery was a shock. For a moment she felt like a monster. “I can’t go home feeling like this,” she thought. But as the plane righted itself, and, soaring higher, broke through the pall of fog into the clarity above, she sighed and sat back to read, reflecting that after all the decision was purely private and could scarcely be read in her face. However, throughout the flight, as the plane moved onward from sunlight into shadow and out again, she continued from time to time to be plagued by the feeling that she had become disloyal; and with this suspicion went the fear that in some way she might hurt her mother.

It was a small airport. Before the plane had landed Charlotte had sighted the station wagon, standing in the glare of the floodlights near the shack which served as waiting-room and customs office. She was not surprised to find that her father had not come to meet her; he left the pension only when he was forced to. Pedro piled her luggage on top and helped her into the back of the car.

“Pleasant journey?” Mr. Richmond asked when they had greeted each other and she was seated beside him.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, waiting to be presented to the other gentleman sitting opposite them. He was obviously from the Continent and
of a rather distinguished appearance, she thought. But Mr. Richmond looked unconcernedly out at the lights of the airport, and so she spoke with the gentleman anyway.

They chatted about the weather and the natives. The car climbed the steep road; at each turn its headlights swept the white walls along the sides, crowned with masses of trailing flowers and vines. High in the dark trees a few cicadas continued to rasp their daytime song. She and the gentleman were still talking when the station wagon pulled into the garage. Mr. Richmond, however, had not said another word.

AT THE PENSION
nothing had changed since her last visit. Her mother looked younger and prettier than ever, and seemed, if possible, still more scatterbrained and distraught—so much so that she too forgot to introduce her to the French gentleman. However, since he was seated in the farthest corner of the dining-room by the window, and was already finishing when the family sat down to eat, it did not matter much.

Her father looked at her across the table and smiled.

“So there you are,” he said with satisfaction. He paused and turned to his wife: “Better get Señorita Marchena busy on a dress.” And to Charlotte: “There’s a big shindig Saturday night at the Country Club.”

“Oh, but I have plenty of things to wear!” she objected.

“Yes, but this is very special. And calls for something very special. Señorita Marchena’ll be equal to the occasion.” He looked at her carefully. “And all I can say is, the Ramirez girls had better look to their laurels.”

She felt herself blushing. The Ramirez girls were three sisters who held the reputation of having a local monopoly on beauty.

“The Ramirez girls!” cried Mrs. Callender, a note of scorn in her voice.

“What’s the matter with them?” demanded her husband. “They’re nice girls.”

“Oh, they’re pretty, yes, Bob, but they’re scarcely what one would call nice girls.” (For Mrs. Callender all Spaniards by definition were inclined to dubious morality.)

“Mother! How can you say that!” Charlotte exclaimed.

Mrs. Callender looked about uneasily; it seemed to her that Monsieur Royer was listening to their conversation. She had purposely delayed sit
ting down to dinner until she thought he would be finished eating, but he was still toying with his fruit. “I’ll tell you about them later,” she said
sotto voce
to Charlotte, and changed the subject, fervently hoping that in a moment he would leave and go down to his cottage.

In the middle of the meal the door from the terrace opened and Mr. Van Siclen burst in, fresh from El Menar, dressed in earth-stained overalls. He had a way of appearing unannounced at any hour of the day or night. Sometimes it was inconvenient for the servants, but since he paid full pension and ate few meals there, the Callenders never remarked upon his impromptu arrivals. He shut the door carefully so the wind sweeping through the room from the kitchen would not slam it. “Hello, everybody!” he said, running his hand through his hair. Mrs. Callender glanced toward the window where Monsieur Royer was slicing an apple into paper-thin sections. “Oh, how terrible! Monsieur Royer has your table! Do sit here with us. Abdallah!
Trae otra silla!
” She moved her own chair up a bit and indicated the space beside her. “Before you sit down, this is my daughter Charlotte.” He acknowledged the introduction dryly, with a minimum of civility, and seated himself, sighing mightily.

“What a night!” he exclaimed as his soup was placed before him. “An ocean breeze, a full moon, and big clouds. I just came in from El Menar in my jeep,” he told Charlotte. (She had decided he was pretentious, with that beard.)

“How enchanting!” cried Mrs. Callender. “Now, do tell us. Have you stumbled on something fantastic out there? Gold coins? Lapis lazuli cups?”

As he spoke, Charlotte watched his face, complacent and slightly mocking. It summed up all the things she disliked most in men: conceit, brashness, insensitivity. Still, he could not be as bad as he looked, she thought; some of it must be the beard. No one his age had a right to such a decoration.

From time to time she stole a glance at her mother, who was following his dull discourse as if it were of the greatest interest, punctuating it with little cooing sounds and exclamations of rapture. Somehow she had expected to find her less silly this time (perhaps because of her determination to resist) and instead, here she was, worse than ever. “It must be her age,” she decided. At some point she would probably change suddenly, overnight. And now, becoming aware that it was precisely this quality of superficiality to which she most objected, she no longer felt
even a twinge of guilt at her own rebelliousness. Trying to manage other people’s lives was a definite thing. It had its limits. But the kind of irresponsibility she saw in her mother amounted to a denial of all values. There was no beginning and no end; anything was equal to anything else.

Two nurses on leave from the hospital in Gibraltar pushed back their chairs and walked across the room to the door. “Good nayt,” they said. Both wore glasses; both were dressed in execrable taste. Charlotte watched them and thought: “To have reached thirty and to look like that—!”

Someone laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. She twisted her head around. The French gentleman was standing behind her chair, smiling at her mother.

“I wish to compliment you, madam. A lovely girl like this could only be the daughter of so charming a mother as you.”

He bowed low, from behind her, so that for a second his head was level with hers; his hand remained on her shoulder. A short silence fell upon the table. To Mr. Van Siclen Monsieur Royer said: “Good evening, my dear fellow! How are you? Have you made any remarkable discoveries recently?”

“Hello, Royer. I was just telling the Callenders a little about the new wall I came to yesterday.”