Let It Come Down

by Paul Bowles

  They talked for an hour or so. When Dyar remarked: “You don’t seem to be doing a rushing business, do you?” Wilcox snorted disgustedly, but Dyar was unable to interpret his reaction as one of sincere discontent. The Marquesa was obviously correct; there was a slight mystery about his set-up. “I’ve got to change some money,” he said presently. Wilcox might just possibly suggest an advance.

  “What have you got?” asked Wilcox.

  “Express cheques.”

  “I’ll cash whatever you want. I can give you a better rate than most of the banks, and a good deal better one than the money stalls.”

  Dyar gave him a fifty-dollar cheque. When he had his wallet stuffed with hundred-peseta notes and felt a little less depressed about his finances, he said: “When do I start work?”

  “You’ve started,” Wilcox replied. “You’re working now. There’s a guy coming in here this afternoon, a customer of mine. He travels a lot, and always books through me. He’ll take you down to meet young Ramlal. You’d have to meet him, anyway, sooner or later. The Ramlals are great friends of mine. I do a hell of a lot of business with them.” This monologue made no sense to Dyar; moreover he had the impression that Wilcox was on the defensive while delivering it, as if he expected to be challenged. Soon enough, he thought, he would know what it was all about. “I see,” he said. Wilcox shot him a glance which he did not at all like: it was hard and unfriendly and suspicious. Then he went on. “I’ve got to be at somebody’s house for drinks around five, so I hope to God he comes soon. You can go down with him and come right back. I’ll wait till you get here. At six-thirty just go out and shut the door behind you. I’ll have a set of keys for you tomorrow.” The telephone rang. There ensued a long conversation in which Wilcox’s part consisted mainly of the word “yes” uttered at irregular intervals. The door opened and a tall, slightly stooped gentleman wearing heavy tweeds and a raincoat stepped into the antechamber. Wilcox cut his telephone conversation short, stood up, and said: “This is Mr. Dyar. This is Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. I sold him a ticket to Cairo the day after I opened this office, and he’s been coming back ever since. A satisfied client. Or at least I like to think so.”

  Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers looked impatient. “Ah, yes. Quite.” He put his hands behind his back and spun around to examine a large map of the world that hung above the filing cabinet. “I expect we’d better be going,” he said.

  Wilcox looked at Dyar significantly. He had meant to tell him a little more about Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers, above all to advise him not to ask any questions. But perhaps it was just as well that he had said nothing.

  Dyar slipped into his raincoat as they descended the stairs. “We may as well walk,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. “It’s stopped raining for the present, and the shop’s not very far.” They went down the hill and came out into the wide square which had been empty last night save for the taxis; now it was a small city of natives engaged in noisy commerce. “Chaos,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers, a note of satisfaction in his voice. As they went under the bare trees in the centre of the square the water dripped down upon their heads. The women huddled in rows along the pavement, wrapped in candy-striped woollen blankets, holding forth great bunches of drenched white lilies and calling out hoarsely for them to buy. The day was coming to a close; the sky was growing duller.

  “Shrewd people, these mountain Berbers,” remarked Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. “But no match for the Indians.”

  “The Indians?” Dyar looked confused.

  “Oh, not your redskins. Our Indians. Hindus, most of them, from India. Tangier’s full of them. Hadn’t you noticed? Young Ramlal, that we’re on our way to see, he’s one. Most shrewd. And his father, old Ramlal, in Gib. Amazing business acumen. Quite amazing. He’s a bandit, of course, but an honest bandit. Never takes a shilling above what’s been agreed upon. He doesn’t need to, of course. His commission’s enormous. He knows he has you and he piles it on because he knows he’s worth it.” Dyar listened politely; they were going between two rows of money-changers. The men sat behind their small desks directly in the street. A few of them, spotting the two foreigners speaking English, began to call out to them. “Yes! Come on! Yes! Change money!”

  “The devil of it is,” Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers was saying, “the authorities are on to it. They know damned well Gib’s one of the most important leakage points.”

  Dyar said tentatively: “Leakage?”

  “Sterling leakage. They know there’s probably twenty thousand pounds slipping out every day. And they’re catching up with some of the chaps. It’s only a question of time before they’ll be able to put a stop to it altogether. Time is of the essence. Naturally it makes a man a bit nervous.” He laughed apologetically. “It’s a chance one must take. I like Morocco and my wife likes it. We’re building a little villa here and we must have some capital, risk or no risk.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Dyar. He was beginning to understand.

  Ramlal’s window was piled with cheap wrist-watches, fountain-pens and toys. The shop was tiny and dark; it smelled of patchouli. Once Dyar’s eyes had got used to the lack of light inside, he realized that all the stock was in the window. The shop was completely empty. A swarthy young man sat at a bare desk smoking. As they entered he rose and bowed obsequiously.

  “Good evening, Ramlal,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers in the tone of a doctor making his rounds through a ward of incurables.

  “About to get under way?” Ramlal spoke surprisingly good English.

  “Yes. Tomorrow. This is Mr. Dyar, my secretary.” Dyar held out his hand to Ramlal, looking at Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. “What the hell goes on?” he said to himself. He acknowledged the introduction.

  “He’ll arrange everything,” went on Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. “You’ll give him the packet.” Ramlal was looking carefully at Dyar all the while. Showing his very white teeth he smiled and said: “Yes, sir.”

  “Got him?” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers.

  “Yes, indeed, sir.”

  “Well, we must be going. Your father’s well, I hope?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Very well, thank you.”

  “Not too many worries, I hope?”

  Ramlal smiled even more widely. “Oh, no, sir.”

  “That’s good,” grunted Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. “Well, look after yourself, Ramlal. See you when I get back.” Ramlal and Dyar shook hands again and they went out.

  “Now if you’ll come along with me to the Café España I’ll present you to Benzekri.”

  Dyar looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get back to the office.” It was twilight, and raining lightly. The narrow street was packed with people wearing djellabas, raincoats, turkish towels, overalls, blankets and rags.

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers sharply. “You’ve got to meet Benzekri. Come along. It’s essential.”

  “Well, since I’m your secretary,” Dyar smiled.

  “In this matter you are.” Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers walked as close to Dyar as he could, speaking directly into his ear. “Benzekri is with the Crédit Foncier here. I’ll show you the entrance as we go by it in a moment.” They had come out into the Zoco Chico, filled with the drone of a thousand male voices. This evening there was electricity and the cafés were resplendent.

  Working their way among the clusters of men standing engaged in conversation, they crossed slowly to the lower end of the square. “There’s the entrance,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers, pointing at a high portal of iron grillwork that stood at the top of a few steps in a niche. “That’s the Crédit Foncier and that’s where you’ll take the packet. You’ll just ask for Mr. Benzekri and go upstairs to his office. And here’s the Café España.”

  Mr. Benzekri was there, sitting alone at one end of the terrace. He had a head like an egg—quite bald—and a face like a worried hawk. He did not smile when he shook hands with Dyar; the lines in his forehead merely deepened. “You will have a beer?” he inquired. His accent was thick.

  “We’ll sit for a moment.
I’ll not take anything,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. They sat down. “None for me, either,” Dyar said. He was not feeling too well, and he wanted a whisky.

  “Mr. Dyar will be bringing you a little present one of these days,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers. “He understands that he’s to give it to no one but you.”

  Mr. Benzekri nodded gravely, staring down into his glass of beer. Then he lifted his head and looked sadly at Dyar for a moment. “Good,” he said, as if there the matter ended.

  “I know you are in a hurry,” said Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers to Dyar. “So if you’d like to go on about your affairs go along. And many thanks. I shall be back in a few weeks.”

  Dyar said good evening. He had to fight his way across the Zoco Chico and up the narrow street; everyone was moving against him. “My new station in life: messenger-boy,” he thought with a wry inner smile. He did not particularly like Mr. Ashcombe-Danvers: he had behaved exactly as though he had been paying him for his services. Not that he had expected payment, but still, the principal reason a man does not want to be paid for such things is to avoid being put into the position of an inferior. And he was in it, anyway.

  Wilcox was impatient when he got back to the office. “Took you long enough,” he said.

  “I know. He made me go on with him and meet some other guy from the bank.”

  “Benzekri.”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t have to meet him. Ashcombe-Danvers is a fussy old buzzard. Be sure the window’s shut, the door’s locked and the lights are off. Stick around until six-thirty.” Wilcox put on his coat. “Come by the Atlantide in the morning about nine and I’ll give you the address where they’re making the keys. If anyone calls tell ’em I had to go out and to call back tomorrow. See you.”

  VII

  The door closed. Dyar sat looking around the room. He stood up and studied the maps a while, searched in the waiting-room for magazines, and, finding none, went and sat down again at the desk. A wild impatience kept him from feeling really alone in the room, an impatience merely to be out of it. “This isn’t it,” he told himself mechanically; he was not really sitting alone in the room because he did not believe he would ever work there. He was unable to visualize himself sitting day after day in this unventilated little box pretending to look after a non-existent business. In New York he had imagined something so different that now he had quite forgotten how he had thought it would be. He asked himself whether, knowing ahead of time what it would be like, he would have wanted to come, and he decided he would have, anyway, in spite of the profound apathy the idea of the job induced in him. Besides, the job was too chimerical and absurd to last. When it stopped, he would be free. He snorted faintly. Free, with probably a hundred dollars between him and starvation. It was not a pleasant thought; it made him feel tense all over. He listened. Above the noise made by the automobile horns outside was the soft sound of rain falling.

  He looked in the top drawer for a sheet of stationery, found it, and began to type a letter. The paper was headed EUROPE-AFRICA TOURIST SERVICE. “Dear Mother: Just a note. Arrived safely last night.” He felt like adding: “it seems like a month,” but she would misunderstand, would think he was not happy. “The trip over was fine. We had fairly smooth weather all the way and I was not sick at all in spite of all you said. The Italians were not too bad.” His parents had come to see him off, and had been upset to discover that he was to share a cabin with two Italians. “As you can see, I am writing this from the office. Jack Wilcox has gone for the day and I am in charge.” He pondered a moment, wondering if the expression “in charge” looked silly, and decided to leave it. “I hope you’re not going to worry about me, because there is no reason to. The climate is not tropical at all. In fact, it is quite chilly. The town seems to be clean, although not very modern.” He ceased typing and gazed at a map of Africa in front of him, thinking of the crazy climb up through the dark alleys with the Arab, on the way to the bar. Then he saw Hadija’s face, and frowned. He could not allow himself to think of her while he was writing to his mother; there was a terrible disloyalty in that. But the memory, along with others more vivid, persisted. He leaned back in his chair and smoked a cigarette, wondering whether or not he would be able to find the bar by himself, in case he wanted to go back. Even if he were able, he felt it would be a bad idea. He had a date to meet Hadija in the Parque Espinel Sunday morning and it would be best to leave it at that; she might resent his trying to see her before then. He abandoned the attempt to write his letter, removed the paper from the machine, folded it and put it into his pocket to be continued the next day. The telephone rang. An English woman was not interested in whether Mr. Wilcox was in or out, wanted a reservation made, single with bath, at the Hotel Balima in Rabat for the fourteenth to the seventeenth. She also wanted a round-trip plane passage, but she dared say that could be had later. The room, however, must be reserved immediately and she was counting on it. When she had hung up he wrote it all down and began studying a sheaf of papers marked Hotels—French Zone. At six-ten the telephone rang again. It was Wilcox. “Checking up on me,” Dyar thought with resentment as he heard his voice. He wanted to know if anyone had stopped in. “No,” said Dyar. “Well, that’s all I wanted.” He sounded relieved. Dyar told him about the English woman. “I’ll take care of that tomorrow. You might as well close up now. It’s ten after six.” He hesitated. “In fact, I wish you would. As soon as you can. Just be sure the catch is on the door.”

  “Right.”

  “Good night.”

  “What gives? What gives?” he murmured aloud as he slipped into his raincoat. He turned off the lights and stepped out into the corridor, shut the door and tried it vigorously.

  At the pastry shop downstairs he stopped to inquire the way to the Faro Bar. When the proprietress saw him approaching the counter she greeted him pleasantly. “Guten abend,” she said, and was a bit taken aback when he spoke to her in English. She understood, however, and directed him in detail, adding that it was only one minute’s walk.

  He found it easily. It was a very small bar, crowded with people most of whom seemed to know each other; there was a certain amount of calling from table to table. Since there was not room at the bar itself, even for those who were already there, and all the tables were occupied, he sat down on a bench in the window and waited for a table to be vacated. Two Spanish girls, self-conscious in their Paris models, and wearing long earrings which removed all trace of chic from their clothes, came in and sat next to him on the bench. At the table in front of him was a French couple drinking Bacardis. To his left sat two somewhat severe-looking middle-aged English ladies, and on his right, a little further away, was a table full of American men who kept rising and going back to the bar to talk with those installed there. In a far corner a small, bespectacled woman was seated at a tiny piano, singing in German. No one was listening to her. He rather liked the place; it seemed to him definitely high-class without being stuffy, and he wondered why the Marquesa had said that Wilcox would refuse to be caught dead in it.

  “Y pensábamos irnos a Sevilla para la Semana Santa …” “Ay, qué hermoso!”

  “Jesus, Harry, you sure put that one down quick!”

  “Alors, tu ne te décides pas? Mais tu es marrante, toi!”

  “I expect she’s most frightfully unhappy to be returning to London at this time of year.”

  The woman at the piano sang: “Wunderschön muss dein’ Liebe sein.”

  “Y por fin nos quedamos aqui.” “Ay, que lástima!”

  “Ne t’en fais pas pour moi.”

  “Hey there, waiter! Make it the same, all the way around.”

  He waited, ordered a whisky, drank it, and waited. The woman sang several old Dietrich songs. No one heard them. It was a quarter-past seven; he wished she would come. The Americans were getting drunk. Someone yelled: “Look out, you dumb bastard!” and a glass crashed on the tile floor. The English ladies got up, paid, and left. He decided they had timed their exit to
show their disapproval. The two Spanish girls saw the empty table and, gathering their things, made for it, but by the time they got there Dyar was already sitting in one of the chairs. “I’m waiting for a lady,” he explained, without adding that he had arrived at the bar before they had, in any case. They did not bother to look at him, reserving all their energy for the registering of intense disgust. Presently another glass was broken. The woman in the corner played God Bless America, doubtless with satirical intent. One of the Americans heard it and began to sing along with the music in a very loud voice. Dyar looked up: the Marquesa de Valverde was standing by the table in faded blue slacks and a chamois jacket.

  “Don’t get up,” she commanded, as he hastily rose. “Ça va?” she called to someone at another table. He looked at her: she seemed less formidable than she had the preceding night. He thought it was because she was not made-up, but he was mistaken. Her outdoor make-up was even more painstaking than the one she used for the evening. It merely did not show. Now she was all warmth and charm.

  “I can’t tell you how kind I think you are,” she said when she had a whisky and soda in her hand. “So few men have any true kindness left these days. I remember my father—what a magnificent man he was! I wish you could have known him—he used to say that the concept of nobility was fast disappearing from the face of the earth. I didn’t know what he meant then, of course, but I do now, and, God, how heartily I agree with him! And nobility and kindness go together. You may not be noble—who knows?—but you certainly can’t deny that it was damned kind of you to go out of your way to meet me when I had told you beforehand that I expected a favour of you.”