The Stories of Paul Bowles (73 page)

A
FTER SEVERAL HUNDRED YEARS
of traveling in space Santa Rosenda conceived a desire to return to Earth. Recently she had been homesick for her native land, and she had an unreasoning belief that feeling the Spanish earth beneath her feet once more would make her happy. She did not announce her arrival. If she were recognized, the attention she would attract would make the peace she sought an impossibility.

Yet for Santa Rosenda to feel entirely in touch with the Earth, it was necessary for her to materialize; only then could she be persuaded of the reality of what was around her. This of course made her visible—a drawback, partially because of her anachronistic clothing, and even more because the slight aura around her head bore the unmistakable form of a halo.

Her arrival was sudden: she simply appeared one afternoon from behind a clump of bushes in the public garden of a provincial Spanish city. A woman who taught chemistry at the nearby college was sitting on a bench. When she saw Santa Rosenda she sprang up in a panic and ran off. This did not augur well for a restful time on Earth, and Santa Rosenda realized then that she must avoid cities.

Accordingly she made a landing in a field outside a small village on the island of Menorca. She had chosen to come down in the field because the contours of the landscape pleased her, and she believed it to be deserted. But a village girl was crouched there gathering greens, and the sudden arrival of Santa Rosenda made her spring up in amazement. At this, Santa Rosenda quickly dematerialized, but it was too late. The girl rushed back to the village crying that she had witnessed a miracle. Her story was given complete credence. Several hundred people hurried to the field hoping for a glimpse of the saintly presence. Hovering above, Santa Rosenda observed them with distaste, and determined to transfer herself to the mainland. The problem was to find a pleasant spot where she could stay without fear of being seen.

Considering the various difficulties with which she had to contend, it is surprising that she did not renounce her project and return to space. She had no means of communicating with people, even if she had desired to do so, since she was without a voice. She could neither read nor write, for in her time literacy had not been considered necessary, even for saints.

These were not ideal conditions under which to return to her homeland, but she had no choice in the matter. If she wanted to be on Earth she must accept them. Such minor disadvantages, however, were more than outweighed by her having no need either to eat or to sleep, and above all by her ability to dematerialize at any moment if necessary, much as she disliked the sensation. In any case, she had not returned in order to converse with people; on the contrary, she hoped to avoid all contact with them.

Thus when she found an inviting cave in the side of a hill, she established herself not far from its entrance where she could gaze out at the sunlit landscape, and then close her eyes and meditate upon the differences which had come about since she had last left the earth. She knew that stasis did not exist on the planet, that everything was in a state of constant flux, thus she was not astonished by the extraordinary changes which she could sense had come about during her absence. Her clothing preoccupied her principally, for she realized that more than anything else it was the garments she wore which called attention to the disparity between her appearance and that of other women. She would not find the peace she sought until somehow she had managed to make herself indistinguishable from them. With this in mind, she wrapped her head in
a rag she had found there in the cave. At least, she thought, the halo would not show.

One afternoon when she opened her eyes for a moment, she discovered two small boys playing not far from the entrance to the cave. They had seen her, she realized, but they appeared to take no particular notice of her. Reassured, she shut her eyes again. The next time she opened them, the boys were gone. They came nearly every day, always remaining at some distance from the cave.

What she did not know was that the boys had told their parents about the strange woman who was always seated there in the same spot, day after day. Since there was a military barracks with an airstrip on the other side of the hill, the public had been requested to report any suspicious-looking individuals in the vicinity.

The boys’ father spoke to a civil guard about the continued presence of a woman in the cave, with the result that Santa Rosenda was visited by a group of soldiers, who obliged her to accompany them to a jeep waiting in the road on the other side of the woods. They plied her with questions which she heard and partially understood, but could not answer. Impelled largely by curiosity, she decided to acquiesce and go along with them; perhaps she could discover what they wanted of her. Besides, it seemed to her that there would be something highly indelicate about effecting a transformation and disappearing in front of them. She preferred to do that in private.

She was taken first to a police station, where she understood nothing of what was going on around her. From there they took her to a hospital, explaining to the nurse at the entrance that their charge was a deafmute. Another nurse led her to a small room and left her there by herself, locking the door. The doctor who was to examine her had caught a glimpse of her as she was brought into the building, and because of the outlandish clothing and the rag wrapped around her head, immediately suspected her of being a man in disguise. Hearing from the nurse that she could not speak merely strengthened his suspicion.

Vamos a ver,
he said to himself as he opened the door of the room where she had been left. A moment earlier, Santa Rosenda, incensed at being shut into so tiny a room and wearied by the entire senseless procedure, had dematerialized. The room was empty. The doctor, in a fury, called the nurse and told her that her carelessness had allowed what was
probably a dangerous criminal to escape. The nurse replied that the door had been locked, and that in any case, her opinion was that the woman was mentally deficient, nothing more. Nevertheless, the police were alerted and a search was inaugurated, beginning inside the hospital.

As the nurses and interns went through the building, looking in all the rooms, Santa Rosenda watched them, thinking that they were behaving like idiots. She could not imagine what they wanted of her, but she mistrusted their intentions. As she floated around the building, observing the turmoil she had caused, she came upon a cloakroom where the nurses left their street clothes before donning their uniforms. This was the stroke of good luck she had been hoping for. Dresses, sweaters and coats hung on hooks along the wall, and many of the lockers were open, disclosing more garments for her examination. It took her only about ten minutes to choose the pieces of clothing she wanted. There were shoes in which her feet were comfortable, and she discovered a large Italian silk kerchief to wind around her head in place of the rag. Now, it seemed to her, she could move through any street without attracting attention. To test her anonymity she walked out of the main entrance gate of the hospital, and passed unnoticed.

The city resembled no city she had ever seen. Its streets were thronged with people, and although they did not appear to be in a festive mood, she assumed they were celebrating a holiday of some sort. The automobiles (which she thought of as wagons) all emitted an unpleasant smoke as they passed. A few minutes of contact with the crowd to persuade her that she was truly anonymous, and then she would leave for a quiet spot in the country, and would not set foot again in a city.

All at once, mixed with the smells of the street, she recognized the faint odor of resin burning in a censer. To her left a doorway opened into a church. Santa Rosenda turned and entered.

Immediately she knew that everything was wrong. The illumination within was almost like sunlight, and it did not come from candles. The music was not what it should have been. She listened until the priest began to speak. She could not understand the words. Suddenly she realized with horror that he was speaking, not in Latin, but in the language of the street.

Without a thought in her head save that of reaching the man and stemming the flow of sacrilege, Santa Rosenda began to run toward the
altar. The few who noticed her did not try to stop her. Even when she was in front of the priest and he was staring into her face, he continued mechanically to intone the hateful words.

With both hands she pushed him in the chest, and for an instant they grappled, as people hurried in their direction. In the momentary struggle the silk kerchief was pulled from Santa Rosenda’s head, and before the eyes of everyone the circle of light shone above her hair. She did not wait to see the reaction of the priest or the congregation, but resumed her normal state of invisibility. The degradation of the Mass was one metamorphosis she was not prepared to accept, and she no longer had any desire to be on Earth. In a few more centuries she might return; she hoped that by then matters would have been set straight.

(1987)

(sent to Pamela Loeffler)

I
’LL TRY TO KEEP
this short so it won’t take you too much time to read it. I know how women worry when they have to settle into a new house, with new servants to take charge of, and when they’re faced with all those terrible decisions about how to place the furniture and where to store things.

This is a beautiful sunny day for a change. It’s been raining on and off this past week, so that the sudden appearance of bright sunlight is a tonic. And the sun made me think of you, who have always loved it as much as I. Do you still sunbathe, out there where you are, or is it too hot? I gave up the practice years ago. Too many of my friends developed skin cancer from it.

So this morning I woke up thinking: I shall write to Pamela today. I know it’s been a long time since we saw each other or communicated, but I’ve followed your activities from afar via what are admittedly unreliable sources:
Time
and the
International Herald Tribune.
And I can now congratulate you. (Nothing is sacred; everyone knows how much you got. But even that amount won’t ruin old Loeffler, so don’t ever feel guilt.) I can only remark that occasionally the scale tips in favor of justice, and I’m happy that you’ve been able to experience the phenomenon concretely.

I now have a vague concept of where you are: on the north shore of
Maui. I’ve even found Kahului and Paukókalo. As I studied the map I couldn’t help noticing that the entire west coast of the island of Hawaii is decorated with lava flows, as you no doubt know. What amuses me is that each one is named after the year the stuff slid down the mountainside, so that you get
Lava Flow of 1801, Lava Flow of 1859, Lava Flow of 1950.
It puts me in mind of the streets in Latin American countries, named after important dates. “He lives on the corner of the Fourth of April and the Nineteenth of October.”

I remember, when people used to ask me what Pamela was doing, I’d reply: Oh, she’s busy being beautiful. I remember, also, being taken to task for my flippant answer. But what’s wrong with it? Isn’t it true? You
are
beautiful (as we know) and you’ve remained beautiful thanks to your determination to do so. That requires concentration and effort. How otherwise would there have been a Loeffler?

Now I’m trying to imagine you in the un-American decor of our fiftieth state. Do you wear jodhpurs, like Karen Blixen in Kenya? When you have a moment, send a snapshot. I’ll be waiting for it.

(sent to Pamela Loeffler)

No, a three-month silence is quite forgivable. I wonder you were able to find the time even when you did. Most of the matters I felt like asking you about in my last, but refrained from mentioning out of tact, seem to have been arranged more or less happily: plumbing, staff, provisions, neighbors. The last named would be rather important, I should think. Great that you should have discovered the Hollywood people only six miles up the road. I don’t remember ever having seen his name. But then, he could have been the most famous director in the U.S. and I still wouldn’t have heard of him. As you know, I was never a film enthusiast. Anyway, it’s nice that they’re there, and companionable to boot. They sound
echt
Beverly Hills, but that may be only because I’m relying on your description.

Above all I was happy to hear that a few old friends will be visiting you soon. If Florence actually arrives (does she ever know what she’s doing?) give her my love. I can see her getting to San Francisco and deciding to go to Carmel. instead of Honolulu, and then two months later suddenly arriving at your place without a word of warning, just when the house is
archicomplet.
I remember one winter when she kept
the house in Turtle Bay open, with the housekeeper in residence, to take care of her cat while she was away (but for six months or more) because she believed that cats grow fond of places rather than people, and the cat would have been too unhappy if it had been taken away from the house. Then as soon as she got back home she gave the cat to somebody who lived in Connecticut.

Tell me—you ought to know this by now, being surrounded by exotic flora—is frangipani the same tree which is known in the Philippines as ylang-ylang, and in India as champak? I’m not trying to test you; I don’t know myself, and there’s no reason why I should expect you to. And yet it’s just the sort of thing you might know. If you don’t, perhaps one of your friends from Boston will. Bostonians often know the most unlikely things. At least, they used to. Or are there no true Bostonians left?

I see you understand the pleasure that can be got from writing letters. In other centuries this was taken for granted. Not any longer. Only a few people carry on true correspondences. No time, the rest tell you. Quicker to telephone. Like saying a photograph is more satisfying than a painting. There wasn’t all that much time for writing letters in the past, either, but time was found, as it generally can be for whatever gives pleasure.

And when
you
find the time, send me a few recent snapshots of yourself and the place. I imagine they’ll have to be Polaroids, since from what you write you haven’t easy access to what we like to call the amenities of civilization. It sounds to me as though most of your supplies had to be flown over from Honolulu. That’s all too reminiscent of the situation here. “We’re waiting for a new shipment. Maybe in three or four months.” Those are the honest
baqals;
the others say: “Next week,
incha’ Allah,”
knowing it’s untrue. You may, or you may never, get your saucepan or your powdered milk or your trowel or your broom or your Gruyère or your spatula. More likely you never will, for such things are not allowed entry into the country these days.
Tant pis et à bientôt.

(sent to Pamela Loeffler)

Thank you for the year-old photo of the house-in-progress. Even without its finishing touches I can see how handsome it must be now. It’s really very sumptuous, very grand. You must have room for a dozen visitors, in case you ever should feel afraid of succumbing to melancholia.
But I see no sign of
you,
nor of anyone else. Incredibly fine vegetation.

What makes you think I should be able to interpret your dream? In the first place, I don’t believe X can explain to Y what Y dreamed. How do I know what the act of running along a pier represents to you, or what your usual reaction to seaweed is? I don’t understand my own dreams, much less those of others. I do notice that people have a tendency to recount dreams in which there is action, to such an extent that I often wonder if they don’t unconsciously supply the action in the telling. Because I can’t ever recall any narrative content in my own dreams. They’re more like a succession of unrelated still photographs, rather than a film. But dream tellers go right on saying: “And then. And then.” I’d like to know if it’s really that way with them, or if they only feel that it should be that way.

And besides, why interpret a dream? If it’s a warning from your unconscious mind, you’ll get the message eventually in any case. Tell me, can you force a dream to recur? I can’t. Anyway, good dreaming.

(sent to Pamela Loeffler)

Still at me about dreams? Why do you say that I “of all people” should know about them? I don’t think about them in the way you do. For me they’re a psychic barometer, useful only to the person who does the dreaming, in the way a clinical thermometer is useful to the one running a fever. It seems a mistake to attach particular importance to one image rather than another (no matter how significant it may seem at the time of dreaming) since the images themselves are only delegates for other, unformulated images. How can you expect anyone to give you the “meaning” of masses of red seaweed floating in the water? Seaweed means seaweed. You also claim that there was a total lack of affect connected with the sight of it. Then why in God’s name are you interested in discovering its “meaning”? If it meant nothing to you in the dream, how can it mean anything in retrospect?

You ask if the Moslems here have a system for explaining dreams. They have, of course, as they have (theoretically) a system for everything, but it’s divination using approved religious symbology. I can’t see that it’s in any sort of agreement with Freudian theory. (How could it be?) It all might have come out of a little book called
Ali Baba’s Dream Almanac.
But they believe it, just as the Hindus believe in that idiotic zodiac with its twelve signs. (And not only the Hindus, alas.)

Dear Pamela, the value of a letter can’t be measured quantitatively. If you haven’t time to write what you call a “real” letter, then write a few lines. I don’t expect anyone to compose long-winded epistles, as I sometimes do. I write letters because I enjoy doing it. It doesn’t even matter too much whether the recipient takes pleasure in reading what I write; I’ve had my pleasure.

So don’t decide not to write merely because you know it can be only a few lines. You could send me a note that read: “A muggy day and I’m depressed. I had baked ham and fruit salad for lunch.” And I’d be delighted. But if you send nothing at all, you leave the field to the imagination, which is always ready with its angst. I want to hear how you feel about the house, as well as about the guests who are staying with you. You wouldn’t need much time to tell me that, would you?

(sent to Pamela Loeffler)

I think Tangier is getting less and less livable. One of the principal reasons why I’ve continued to stay here has been the good air that we breathe. But the traffic has increased tenfold in the past five years, and with practically all the recent cars equipped with diesel engines, the streets are full of smoke. The buses and trucks constantly whoof out fat black columns of it. At home it doesn’t bother me, because I live high up. It’s walking in the street that’s troublesome. Apart from the pollution, the sidewalks are crowded with obstacles: cars parked in the middle, groups of students sitting along the curb, and beggars installed against the walls. If you mention the beggars to a Moroccan, he’ll tell you: Not one of them is from Tangier. They’re all down from the mountains. Don’t give them anything.

You underestimate the intelligence of the Moroccans at your peril. They know when you’re lying and when you’re only exaggerating, they know when you mean what you say and when you’re only talking, and these things they know directly and not as a result of deduction. It’s true that they sometimes scent deceit where there is none. I’ve argued with Moroccans who refuse to believe that anyone has been to the moon. “Just America advertising.” Others, admitting the moonwalk, think the money should have been spent feeding hungry people. “What good did
it do?” They’re not fascinated or excited by the idea of exploring space, because they have no concept of historic movement or growth; for them time is an eternal stasis. Everything is as it always has been, and will remain thus forever. A comforting philosophy, if you can subscribe.

(sent to Pamela Loeffler)

Your letter about the Palmers very amusing, I thought. Surely you’re not encouraging Dick to look for property in your vicinity? That would be catastrophic, wouldn’t it? I agree that it’s nice to have acquaintances living only fifteen or twenty miles away, if your first reaction each time you see them doesn’t express itself as a sudden sinking sensation. It takes such a lot of energy to fight that. I’ve got to the point of preferring solitude to being under that sort of stress.

Of course Ruth was always a negative quantity, even before she married Dick. Collecting potsherds, pieces of quartz and crinoids, when I knew her. So the butterfly business is quite in line. It must be marvelous to see her bounding around as she wields the net! Hyperthyroid and graceless. Dick is merely obstinate and dictatorial; that’s how I remember him. (I haven’t seen him in fifteen years, more or less, but I feel pretty certain that he hasn’t changed much. Perhaps extra years have decreased his energy, but it doesn’t take much energy to be egotistical if that’s one’s nature.) When he had a flat here he was completely wrapped up in the Rolling Stones, who were friends he’d known in London. The name meant nothing to me, but Dick insisted they were the greatest rock group in existence. He got me out of bed one night at one o’clock, came pounding on my door, very excited. I must go with him to his flat because he had the Stones there. I, sleepy: “What stones?” He explained, and I went. A man named Jagger, dressed for a costume party, reclined on the bed, gnawing on a leg of lamb. A girl lay face down at his feet, and there were other people spread out asleep on the floor. It wasn’t bright enough in the room for me to see their costumes in detail. Mr. Jagger said nothing. His muzzle was shiny with lamb fat. Dick saw my surprise at the sight of the inert bodies on the floor, and confided that everyone had taken a new drug which apparently induced a comatose state. It’s strange: Dick has this air of breathless enthusiasm. It’s a physical attribute which ought to be contagious, but isn’t. Instead, it comes across as a sales talk, and creates next to no empathy.

After about an hour I thanked him and said I was off to bed. This didn’t go down at all well. He took it as an offense, assuming, quite correctly, that I hadn’t appreciated my great opportunity of meeting the Stones. I considered that I had been patient, but as I went out and turned to thank Dick again, he drew himself up and, pretending to be a very proper English governess, said: “Oh, urfty turfty wiffy bibben bibben, oh yes!” and slammed the door.

If the moment seems right, you may mention this episode to Dick, and see if he remembers it. What he’s sure to remember is that they all went to Marrakech the next morning at seven o’clock, Dick included. That was in the pre-Ruth days.

I’m not surprised that Florence postponed her visit; in fact, I predicted it. What does strike me as strange is that you should have Dick and Ruth Palmer there, because I know they’re not the ones you’d most like to have staying with you. But of course that’s what happens when one has a large house in a remote place. Still, it’s certainly better for you to have guests than to be alone. This next guest of yours, Fronda Farquhar, who is she and what is she? And that name, at the far end of credibility! You speak of her as if I should know who she is, but I don’t. What does she do? Or is she another Ruth, searching for arrowheads and shells?