The Sheltering Sky / Let It Come Down / the Spider's House

by Paul Bowles

  THE MOON HAD reached the center of the sky when they arrived at the fort and found the gate locked. Holding Tunner’s hand, Kit looked up at him. “What’ll we do?”

  He hesitated, and pointed to the mountain of sand above the fort. They climbed slowly upward along the dunes. The cold sand filled their shoes: they took them off and continued. Up here the brightness was intense; each grain of sand sent out a fragment of the polar light shed from above. They could not walk side by side—the ridge of the highest dune was too steep. Tunner draped his burnous around Kit’s shoulders and went ahead. The crest was infinitely higher and further away than they had imagined. When finally they climbed atop it, the ereg with its sea of motionless waves lay all about them. They did not stop to look: absolute silence is too powerful once one has trusted oneself to it for an instant, its spell too difficult to break.

  “Down here!” said Tunner.

  They let themselves slide forward into a great moonlit cup. Kit rolled over and the burnous slipped off; he had to dig into the sand and climb back after it. He tried to fold it and throw it down at her playfully, but it fell halfway. She let herself roll to the bottom and lay there waiting. When he came down he spread the wide white garment out on the sand. They stretched out on it side by side and pulled the edges up around them. What conversation had eventually taken place down in the garden had centered about Port. Now Tunner looked at the moon. He took her hand.

  “Do you remember our night on the train?” he said. As she did not reply, he feared he had made a tactical error, and went on quickly: “I don’t think a drop of rain has fallen since that night, anywhere on the whole damned continent.”

  Still Kit made no answer. His mention of the night ride to Boussif had evoked the wrong memories. She saw the dim lamps swinging, smelled the coal gas, and heard the rain on the windows. She remembered the confused horror of the freight car full of natives; her mind refused to continue further.

  “Kit. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. You know how I am. Really, nothing’s wrong.” She pressed his hand.

  His voice became faintly paternal. “He’s going to be all right, Kit. Only some of it’s up to you, you know. You’ve got to keep in good shape to take care of him. Can’t you see that? And how can you take care of him if you get sick?”

  “I know, I know,” she said.

  “Then I’d have two patients on my hands—”

  She sat up. “What hypocrites we are, both of us!” she cried. “You know damned well I haven’t been near him for hours. How do we know he’s not already dead? He could die there all alone! We’d never know. Who could stop him?”

  He caught her arm, held it firmly. “Now, wait a minute, will you? Just for the record, I want to ask you: who could stop him even if we were both there beside him? Who?” He paused. “If you’re going to take the worst possible view of everything, you might as well follow it through with a little logic at least, girl. But he’s not going to die. You shouldn’t even think of it. It’s crazy.” He shook her arm slowly, as one does to awaken a person from a deep sleep. “Just be sensible. You can’t get in to him until morning. So relax. Try and get a little rest. Come on.”

  As he coaxed, she suddenly burst into tears once again, throwing both arms around him desperately. “Oh, Tunner! I love him so much!” she sobbed, clinging ever more tightly. “I love him! I love him!”

  In the moonlight he smiled.

  HIS CRY WENT ON through the final image: the spots of raw bright blood on the earth. Blood on excrement. The supreme moment, high above the desert, when the two elements, blood and excrement, long kept apart, merge. A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky’s clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.

  Chapter XXIV

  SHE OPENED THE DOOR. Port lay in a strange position, his legs wound tightly in the bedcovers. That corner of the room was like a still photograph suddenly flashed on the screen in the middle of the stream of moving images. She shut the door softly, locked it, turned again toward the corner, and walked slowly over to the mattress. She held her breath, bent over, and looked into the meaningless eyes. But already she knew, even to the convulsive lowering of her hand to the bare chest, even without the violent push she gave the inert torso immediately afterward. As her hands went to her own face, she cried: “No!” once—no more. She stood perfectly still for a long, long time, her head raised, facing the wall. Nothing moved inside her; she was conscious of nothing outside or in. If Zina had come to the door it is doubtful whether she would have heard the knock. But no one came. Below in the town a caravan setting out for Atar left the market place, swayed through the oasis, the camels grumbling, the bearded black men silent as they walked along thinking of the twenty days and nights that lay ahead, before the walls of Atar would rise above the rocks. A few hundred feet away in his bedroom Captain Broussard read an entire short story in a magazine that had arrived that morning in his mail, brought by last night’s truck. In the room, however, nothing happened.

  Much later in the morning, probably out of sheer fatigue, she began to walk in a small orbit in the middle of the room, a few steps one way and a few the other. A loud knock on the door interrupted this. She stood still, staring toward the door. The knock was repeated. Tunner’s voice, carefully lowered, said: “Kit?” Again her hands rose to cover her face, and she remained standing that way during the rest of the time he stayed outside the door, now rapping softly, now faster and nervously, now pounding violently. When there was no more sound, she sat down on her pallet for a while, presently lying out flat with her head on the pillow as if to sleep. But her eyes remained open, staring upward almost as fixedly as those beside her. These were the first moments of a new existence, a strange one in which she already glimpsed the element of timelessness that would surround her. The person who frantically has been counting the seconds on his way to catch a train, and arrives panting just as it disappears, knowing the next one is not due for many hours, feels something of the same sudden surfeit of time, the momentary sensation of drowning in an element become too rich and too plentiful to be consumed, and thereby made meaningless, non-existent. As the minutes went by, she felt no impulse to move; no thought wandered near her. Now she did not remember their many conversations built around the idea of death, perhaps because no idea about death has anything in common with the presence of death. She did not recall how they had agreed that one can be anything but dead, that the two words together created an antinomy. Nor did it occur to her how she once had thought that if Port should die before she did, she would not really believe he was dead, but rather that he had in some way gone back inside himself to stay there, and that he never would be conscious of her again; so that in reality it would be she who would have ceased to exist, at least to a great degree. She would be the one who had entered partially into the realm of death, while he would go on, an anguish inside her, a door left unopened, a chance irretrievably lost. She had quite forgotten the August afternoon only a little more than a year ago, when they had sat alone out on the grass beneath the maples, watching the thunderstorm sweep up the river valley toward them, and death had become the topic. And Port had said: “Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” She had not listened at the time because the idea had depressed her; now if she had called it to mind it would have seemed beside the point. She was i
ncapable now of thinking about death, and since death was there beside her, she thought of nothing at all.

  And yet, deeper than the empty region which was her consciousness, in an obscure and innermost part of her mind, an idea must already have been in gestation, since when in the late afternoon Tunner came again and hammered on the door, she got up, and standing with her hand on the knob, spoke: “Is that you, Tunner?”

  “For God’s sake, where were you this morning?” he cried.

  “I’ll see you tonight about eight in the garden,” she said, speaking as low as possible.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Yes. He’s the same.”

  “Good. See you at eight.” He went away.

  She glanced at her watch: it was quarter of five. Going to her overnight bag, she set to work removing all the fittings; one by one, brushes, bottles and manicuring implements were laid on the floor. With an air of extreme preoccupation she emptied her other valises, choosing here and there a garment or object which she carefully packed into the small bag. Occasionally she stopped moving and listened: the only sound she could hear was her own measured breathing. Each time she listened she seemed reassured, straightway resuming her deliberate movements. In the flaps at the sides of the bag she put her passport, her express checks and what money she had. Soon she went to Port’s luggage and searched awhile among the clothing there, returning to her little case with a good many more thousand-franc notes which she stuffed in wherever she could.

  The packing of the bag took nearly an hour. When she had finished, she closed it, spun the combination lock, and went to the door. She hesitated a second before turning the key. The door open, the key in her hand, she stepped out into the courtyard with the bag and locked the door after her. She went to the kitchen, where she found the boy who tended the lamps sitting in a corner smoking.

  “Can you do an errand for me?” she said.

  He jumped to his feet smiling. She handed him the bag and told him to take it to Daoud Zozeph’s shop and leave it, saying it was from the American lady.

  Back in the room she again locked the door behind her and went over to the little window. With a single motion she ripped away the sheet that covered it. The wall outside was turning pink as the sun dropped lower in the sky; the pinkness filled the room. During all the time she had been moving about packing she had not once glanced downward at the corner. Now she knelt and looked closely at Port’s face as if she had never seen it before. Scarcely touching the skin, she moved her hand along the forehead with infinite delicacy. She bent over further and placed her lips on the smooth brow. For a while she remained thus. The room grew red. Softly she laid her cheek on the pillow and stroked his hair. No tears flowed; it was a silent leave-taking. A strangely intense buzzing in front of her made her open her eyes. She watched fascinated while two flies made their brief, frantic love on his lower lip.

  Then she rose, put on her coat, took the burnous which Tunner had left with her, and without looking back went out the door. She locked it behind her and put the key into her handbag. At the big gate the guard made as if to stop her. She said good evening to him and pushed by. Immediately afterward she heard him call to another in an inner room nearby. She breathed deeply and walked ahead, down toward the town. The sun had set; the earth was like a single ember alone on the hearth, rapidly cooling and growing black. A drum beat in the oasis. There would probably be dancing in the gardens later. The season of feasts had begun. Quickly she descended the hill and went straight to Daoud Zozeph’s shop without once looking around.

  She went in. Daoud Zozeph stood behind the counter in the fading light. He reached across and shook her hand.

  “Good evening, madame.”

  “Good evening.”

  “Your valise is here. Shall I call a boy to carry it for you?”

  “No, no,” she said. “At least, not now. I came to talk to you.” She glanced around at the doorway behind her; he did not notice.

  “I am delighted,” he said. “One moment. I shall get you a chair, madame.” He brought a small folding chair around from behind the counter and placed it beside her.

  “Thank you,” she said, but she remained standing. “I wanted to ask you about trucks leaving Sbâ.”

  “Ah, for El Ga’a. We have no regular service. One came last night and left again this afternoon. We never know when the next will come. But Captain Broussard is always notified at least a day in advance. He could tell you better than anyone else.”

  “Captain Broussard. Ah, I see.”

  “And your husband. Is he better? Did he enjoy the milk?”

  “The milk. Yes, he enjoyed it,” she said slowly, wondering a little that the words could sound so natural.

  “I hope he will soon be well.”

  “He is already well.”

  “Ah, hamdoul’lah!”

  “Yes.” And starting afresh, she said: “Monsieur Daoud Zozeph, I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “Your favor is granted, madame,” he said gallantly. She felt that he had bowed in the darkness.

  “A great favor,” she warned.

  Daoud Zozeph, thinking that perhaps she wanted to borrow money, began to rattle objects on the counter, saying: “But we are talking in the dark. Wait. I shall light a lamp.”

  “No! Please!” exclaimed Kit. “But we don’t see each other!” he protested.

  She put her hand on his arm. “I know, but don’t light the lamp, please. I want to ask you this favor immediately. May I spend the night with you and your wife?”

  Daoud Zozeph was completely taken aback—both astonished and relieved. “Tonight?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  There was a short silence.

  “You understand, madame, we should be honored to have you in our house. But you would not be comfortable. You know, a house of poor people is not like a hotel or a poste militaire....”

  “But since I ask you,” she said reproachfully, “that means I don’t care. You think that matters to me? I have been sleeping on the floor here in Sbâ.”

  “Ah, that you would not have to do in my house,” said Daoud Zozeph energetically.

  “But I should be delighted to sleep on the floor. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Ah, no! No, madame! Not on the floor! Quand-même!” he objected. And as he struck a match to light the lamp, she touched his arm again.

  “Ecoutez, monsieur,” she said, her voice sinking to a conspiratorial whisper, “my husband is looking for me, and I don’t want him to find me. We have had a misunderstanding. I don’t want to see him tonight. It’s very simple. I think your wife would understand.”

  Daoud Zozeph laughed. “Of course! Of course!” Still laughing, he closed the door into the street, bolted it, and struck a match, holding it high in the air. Lighting matches all the way, he led her through a dark inner room and across a small court. The stars were above. He paused in front of a door. “You can sleep here.” He opened the door and stepped inside. Again a match flared: she saw a tiny room in disorder, its sagging iron bed covered with a mattress that vomited excelsior.

  “This is not your room, I hope?” she ventured, as the match went out.

  “Ah, no! We have another bed in our room, my wife and I,” he answered, a note of pride in his voice. “This is where my brother sleeps when he comes from Colomb-Béchar. Once a year he visits me for a month, sometimes longer. Wait. I shall bring a lamp.” He went off, and she heard him talking in another room. Presently he returned with an oil lamp and a small tin pail of water.

  With the arrival of the light, the room took on an even more piteous aspect. She had the feeling that the floor had never yet been swept since the day the mason had finished piling the mud on the walls, the ubiquitous mud that dried, crumbled, and fell in a fine powder day and night.... She glanced up at him and smiled.

  “My wife wants to know if you like noodles,” said Daoud Zozeph.

  “Yes, of course,” she answered, trying to look into the
peeling mirror over the washstand. She could see nothing at all.

  “Bien. You know, my wife speaks no French.”

  “Really. You will have to be my interpreter.”

  There was a dull knocking, out in the shop. Daoud Zozeph excused himself and crossed the court. She shut the door, found there was no key, stood there waiting. It would have been so easy for one of the guards at the fort to follow her. But she doubted that they had thought of it in time. She sat down on the outrageous bed and stared at the wall opposite. The lamp sent up a column of acrid smoke.

  The evening meal at Daoud Zozeph’s was unbelievably bad. She forced down the amorphous lumps of dough fried in deep fat and served cold, the pieces of cartilaginous meat, and the soggy bread, murmuring vague compliments which were warmly received, but which led her hosts to press more of the food upon her. Several times during the meal she glanced at her watch. Tunner would be waiting in the public garden now, and when he left there he would go up to the fort. At that moment the trouble would begin; Daoud Zozeph could not help hearing of it tomorrow from his customers.

  Madame Daoud Zozeph gestured vigorously for Kit to continue eating; her bright eyes were fixed on her guest’s plate. Kit looked across at her and smiled.

  “Tell madame that because I am a little upset now I am not very hungry,” she said to Daoud Zozeph, “but that I should like to have something in my room to eat later. Some bread would be perfect.”

  “But of course. Of course,” he said.

  When she had gone to her room, Madame Daoud Zozeph brought her a plate piled high with pieces of bread. She thanked her and said good night, but her hostess was not inclined to leave, making it clear that she was interested in seeing the interior of the traveling case. Kit was determined not to open it in front of her; the thousand-franc notes would quickly become a legend in Sbâ. She pretended not to understand, patted the case, nodded and laughed. Then she turned again toward the plate of bread and repeated her thanks. But Madame Daoud Zozeph’s eyes did not leave the valise. There was a screeching and fluttering of wings outside in the court. Daoud Zozeph appeared carrying a fat hen, which he set down in the middle of the floor.