by Paul Bowles
It was not yet light enough to see the contours of Thami’s face, but Dyar had the feeling he was genuinely surprised. “Stay with you?” he repeated slowly. “But how long? Stay up there?” Then, with more assurance: “I can’t do that. I have to work. I’ll lose money. You’re paying me for the boat and to go with you and show you the house, that’s all.”
“He knows I’ve got money here,” Dyar thought savagely. “Damn his soul.”
“You don’t think I’m giving you enough?” He heard his own voice tremble.
Thami was stubborn. “You said only the boat. If I don’t work I lose money.” Then he added brightly: “Why you think I bought this boat? Not to make money? If I stay with you at Agla I make nothing. He takes the boat to Tangier, everything is in Tangier. My boat, my house, my family. I sit in Agla and talk to you. It’s very good, but I make no money.”
Dyar thought. “Why doesn’t he ask me why I want to stay up there? Because he knows. Plain ordinary blackmail. A war of nerves. I’m goddam if I give in to him.” But even as he formed the words in his mind, he knew that what Thami was saying had logic.
“So what d’you expect me to do?” he said slowly, proceeding with caution. “Pay you so much a day to stay up there?”
Thami shrugged his shoulders. “It’s no use to stay at Agla, anyway. It’s no good there. What do you want to do there? It’s cold and with mud all over. I have to go back.”
“So I have to make you an offer,” he thought grimly. “Why don’t you ask me how much I’ve got here in the briefcase?” Aloud he said: “Well, you can stay a few days at least. I’ll see you don’t lose anything by it.” Thami seemed satisfied. But Dyar was ill at ease. It was impossible to tell how much he knew, even how much he was interested in knowing, or to form any idea of what he thought about the whole enterprise. If he would only ask an explicit question, the way he phrased it might help determine how much he knew, and the reply could be formed accordingly. Since he said nothing, he remained a mystery. At one point, when they had been silent for some minutes, Dyar said to him suddenly: “What are you thinking about?” and in the white light of dawn his smooth face looked childishly innocent as he answered: “Me? Thinking? Why should I think? I’m happy. I don’t need to think.” All the same, to Dyar the reply seemed devious and false, and he said to himself: “The bastard’s planning something or other.”
With the arrival of daylight, the air and water had become calmer. On the Spanish side of the strait they saw a large freighter moving slowly westward, statuelike, imperturbable. The progress of the launch was so noisy and agitated in its motion that it seemed to Dyar the freighter must be gliding forward in absolute silence. He looked in all directions uneasily, scanning the African coast with particular attention. The mountains tumbled precipitately down into the frothedged sea, but in a few spots he thought he could see a small stretch of sand in a cove.
“What’s this Spanish Zone like?” he asked presently.
Thami yawned. “Like every place. Like America.”
Dyar was impatient. “What d’you mean, like America? Do the houses have electric lights? Do they have telephones?”
“Some.” “They do?” said Dyar incredulously. In Tangier he had heard vaguely that the Spanish Zone was a primitive place, and he pictured it as a wilderness whose few inhabitants lived in caves and talked in grunts or sign language. “But in the country,” he pursued. “They don’t have telephones out there, do they?”
Thami looked at him, as if mildly surprised at his insistence upon continuing so childish a conversation. “Sure they do. What do you think? How they going to run the government without telephones? You think it’s like the Senegal?” The Senegal was Thami’s idea of a really uncivilized country.
“You’re full of crap,” said Dyar shortly. He would not believe it. Nevertheless he examined the nearby coastline more anxiously, telling himself even as he did so that he was foolish to worry. The telephoning might begin during the day; it certainly had not already begun. Who was there to give the alarm? Wilcox could not—at least, not through the police. As for the American Legation, it would be likely to wait several days before instigating a search for him, if it did anything at all. Once it was thought he had left the International Zone, the Legation would in all probability shelve the entire Jouvenon affair, to await a possible return, even assuming that was why they had telephoned him. Then who was there to worry about? Obviously only Wilcox, but a Wilcox hampered by his inability to enlist official aid. Relieved in his mind for the moment, he stole a glance at Thami, who was looking at him fixedly like a man watching a film, as if he had been following the whole panorama of thoughts as they filed past in Dyar’s mind. “I can’t even think in front of him,” he told himself. He was the one to look out for, not Wilcox or anybody Wilcox might hire. Dyar looked back at him defiantly. “You’re the one,” he made his eyes say, like a challenge. “I’m on to you,” he thought they were saying. “I just want you to know it.” But Thami returned his gaze blandly, blinked like a cat, looked up at the grey sky, and said with satisfaction: “No rain today.”
He was wrong; within less than half an hour a wind came whipping around the corner of the coast out of the Mediterranean, past the rocky flanks of Djebel Musa, bringing with it a fine cold rain.
Dyar put on his overcoat, holding the briefcase in his lap so that it was shielded from the rain. Thami huddled in the bow beside the Jilali, who covered his head with the hood of his djellaba. The launch began to make a wide curve over the waves, soon turning back almost in the direction from which it had come. They were on the windward side of a long point which stretched into the sea from the base of a rocky mountain. The sheer cliffs rose upward and were lost in the low-hanging cloudbank. There was no sign of other craft, but it was impossible to see very far through the curtain of rain. Dyar sat up straight. The motor’s sound seemed louder than ever; anyone within two miles could surely hear it. He wished there were some way of turning it off and rowing in to shore. Thami and the Jilali were talking with animation at the wheel. The rain came down harder, and now and then the wind shook the air, petulantly. Dyar sat for a while looking downward at his coat, watching rivulets of water form in valleys of gabardine. Soon the boat rested on water that was smoother. He supposed they had entered an inlet of some sort, but when he raised his head, still only the rocks on the right were visible. Now that these were nearer and he could see the dark water washing and swirling around them, he was disagreeably conscious of their great size and sharpness. “The quicker we get past, the better,” he thought, glad he had not called to the Jilali and made a scene about shutting off the motor. As he glanced backward he had the impression that at any moment another boat would emerge from the greyness there and silently overtake them. What might happen as a result did not preoccupy him; it was merely the idea of being followed and caught while in flight which was disturbing. He sat there, straining to see farther than it was possible to see, and he felt that the motor’s monotonous racket was the one thin rope which might haul him to safety. But at any instant it could break, and there would be only the soft sound of the waves touching the boat. When he felt a cold drop of water moving down his neck he was not sure whether it was rain or sweat. “What’s all the excitement about?” he asked himself in disgust.
The Jilali stepped swiftly to the motor and turned it off; it died with a choked sneeze, as if it could never be started again. He returned to the wheel, which Thami held. The launch still slid forward. Dyar stood up. “Are we there?” Neither one answered. Then the Jilali moved again to the centre of the boat and began desperately to force downward the heavy black disc which was the flywheel. With each tug there was another sneeze, but the motor did not start. Raging inwardly, Dyar sat down again. For a full five minutes the Jilali continued his efforts, as the boat drifted indolently toward the rocks. In the end the motor responded, the Jilali cut it down to half speed, and they moved slowly ahead through the rain.
XXI
There was a small sloping beach in the cove, ringed by great half-destroyed rocks. The walls of the mountain started directly behind, rose and disappeared in the rain-filled sky. They leapt from the rowboat and stood a moment on the deserted strip of sand without speaking. The launch danced nearby on the deep water.
“Let’s go,” Dyar said. This also was a dangerous moment. “Tell him you’ll write him when you want him to come and get you.”
Thami and the Jilali entered into a long conversation which soon degenerated from discussion into argument. As Dyar stood waiting he saw that the two were reaching no understanding, and he became impatient. “Get him out of here, will you?” he cried. “Have you got his address?”
“Just a minute,” Thami said, and he resumed the altercation. But remembering what he considered Dyar’s outstanding eccentricity—his peculiar inability to wait while things took their natural course—he turned presently and said: “He wants money,” which, while it was true, was by no means the principal topic of the conversation. Thami was loath to see his boat, already paid for, go back to Tangier in the hands of its former owner, and he was feverishly trying to devise some protective measure whereby he could be reasonably sure that both the Jilali and the boat would not disappear.
“How much?” said Dyar, reaching under his overcoat into his pocket, holding his briefcase between his knees meanwhile. His collar was soaked; the rain ran down his back.
Thami had arranged a price of four hundred pesetas with the Jilali for his services; he had intended to tell Dyar it was eight hundred, and pay the Jilali out of that. Now, feeling that things were turning against him from all sides, he exclaimed: “He wants too much! In Dradeb he said seven fifty. Now he says a thousand.” Then, as Dyar pulled a note from his pocket, he realized he had made a grievous error. “Don’t give it to him!” he cried in entreaty, stretching out a hand as if to cover the sight of the bill. “He’s a thief! Don’t give it to him!”
Dyar pushed him aside roughly. “Just keep out of this,” he said. He handed the thousand peseta note to the expectant Jilali. “D’you think I want to stand around here all day?” Turning to the Jilali, who stood holding the note in his hand, looking confused, he demanded: “Are you satisfied?”
Thami, determined not to let any opportunity slip by, immediately translated this last sentence into Arabic as a request for change. The Jilali shook his head slowly, announced that he had none, and held the bill out for Dyar to take back. “He says it’s not enough,” said Thami. But Dyar did not react as he had hoped. “He knows goddam well it’s enough,” he muttered, turning away. “Have you got his address?” Thami stood unmoving, tortured by indecision. And he did the wrong thing. He reached out and tried to snatch the note from the Jilali’s hand. The latter, having decided that the Christian gentleman was being exceptionally generous, behaved in a natural fashion, spinning around to make a running dash for the boat, pushing it afloat as he jumped in. Thami hopped with rage at the water’s edge as the other rowed himself out of reach, laughing.
“My boat!” he screamed, turning an imploring face to Dyar. “You see what a robber he is! He’s taking my boat!”
Dyar looked at him with antipathy. “I’ve got to put up with this for how many days?” he thought. “The guy’s not even a half-wit.” The Jilali kept rowing away, toward the launch. Now he shouted various reassurances and waved. Thami shook his fist and yelled back threats and curses in a sobbing voice, watching the departing Jilali get aboard the launch, tie the rowboat to the stern, and finally manage to start the motor. Then, inconsolable, he turned to Dyar. “He’s gone. My boat’s gone. Everything.”
“Shut up,” Dyar said, not looking at him. He felt physically disgusted, and he wanted to get away from the beach as quickly as possible, particularly now that the motor had started up again.
Listlessly Thami led the way along the beach to its western end, where they walked among the tall rocks that stood upright. Skirting the base of the mountain, they followed an almost invisible path upward across a great bank of red mud dotted with occasional boulders. It was a climb that became increasingly steeper. The rain fell more intensely, in larger drops. There were no trees, no bushes, not even any small plants. Now cliffs rose on both sides, and the path turned into a gully with a stream of rust-coloured water running against them. At one point Dyar slipped and fell on his back into the mud. It made a sucking sound as Thami helped him up out of it; he did not thank him. They were both panting, and in too disagreeable a humour to speak. But neither one expected the other to say anything, in any case. It was a question of watching where you put each foot as you climbed, nothing more. The walls of rock on either side were like blinders, keeping the eye from straying, and ahead there were more stones, more mud, and more pools and trickles of red-brown water. With the advance of the morning the sky grew darker. Dyar looked occasionally at his watch. “At half-past nine I’m going to sit down, no matter where we are,” he thought. When the moment came, however, he waited a while until he found a comfortable boulder before seating himself and lighting a cigarette which in spite of his precautions the rain managed to extinguish after a few puffs. Thami pretended not to have noticed him, and continued to plod ahead. Dyar let him walk on, did not call to him to wait. He had only a half pack of cigarettes, and he had forgotten to buy any. “No more cigarettes, for how long?” The landscape did not surprise him; it was exactly what he had expected, but for some reason he had failed to imagine that it might be raining, seeing it always in his mind’s eyes as windswept, desolate and baking in a brilliant sunlight.
Those of his garments which had not already been wet by the rain were soaked with sweat, for the steady climbing was arduous and he was hot. But he would not take off his overcoat, because under his arm, covered by the coat, was the briefcase, and he determined to keep it there, as much out of the rain as possible.
He kept thinking that Thami, when he had got to a distance he considered dignified, would stop and wait for him, but he had mistaken the cause of his companion’s depression, imagining that it was largely pique connected with his defeat at the hands of the Jilali, whereas it was a genuine belief that all was lost, that for the time being his soul lay in darkness, without the blessing of Allah. This meant that everything having to do with the trip was doomed beforehand to turn out badly for him. He was not angry with Dyar, whom he considered a mere envoy of ill-luck; his emotion was the more general one of despondency.
Thami did not stop; he went on his way until a slight change in the direction of the gully took him out of Dyar’s view. “The son of a bitch!” Dyar cried, jumping up suddenly and starting to run up the canyon, still holding his sodden cigarette in his hand. When he came to the place where the passage turned, Thami was still far ahead, trudging along mechanically, his head down. “He wants me to yell to him to wait,” Dyar thought. “I’ll see him in Hell first.”
I
It was another half-hour before he arrived within speaking distance of Thami’s back, but he did not speak, being content to walk at the other’s pace behind him. As far he could tell, Thami had never noticed his short disappearance. Thami climbed and that was all.
And so they continued. By midday they were inland, no longer within reach of the sea’s sound or smell. Still Dyar felt that had it not been for the miles of rainy air behind them the sea would be somewhere there spread out below them, visible even now. The sky continued grey and thick, the rain went on falling, the wind still came from the east, and they kept climbing slowly, through a vast world of rocks, water and mud.
A ham sandwich, Dyar found himself thinking. He could have bought all he wanted the day before while he waited to get into Ramlal’s. Instead he had gone and lain on the beach. The sunbaked hour or so seemed impossibly distant now, a fleeting vista from a dream, or the memory of a time when he had been another person. It was only when he considered that he could not conceivably have bought food then for this excursion since had he not in any way suspected he was going to make it
, that he understood how truly remote yesterday was, how greatly the world had changed since he had gone into Chocron’s stuffy little office and begun to watch the counting of the money.
Looming suddenly out of the rain, coming toward them down the ravine, a figure appeared. It was a small grey donkey moving along slowly, his panniers empty, drops of rain hanging to the fuzz along his legs and ears. Thami stood aside to let the animal pass, his face showing no expression of surprise. “We must be getting near,” said Dyar. He had meant to keep quiet, let Thami break the silence between them, but he spoke without thinking.
“A little more,” said Thami impassively. An old man dressed in a tattered woollen garment came into view around a bend, carrying a stick and making occasional guttural sounds at the donkey ahead. “A little more,” Dyar thought, beginning to feel light-headed. “How much more?” he demanded. But Thami, with the imprecise notions of his kind about space and time, could not say. The question meant nothing to him. “Not much,” he replied.
The way became noticeably steeper; it required all their attention and effort to continue, to keep from sliding back on loose stones. The wind had increased, and was blowing what looked like an endless thick coil of cloud from the crags above downward into their path. Presently they were in its midst. The world was darker. “This isn’t funny,” Dyar found himself thinking, and then he laughed because it was absurd that a mere sudden change in lighting should affect his mood so deeply. “Lack of food,” he said to himself. He bumped against Thami purposely now and then as he climbed. If they should get too far apart they would not be able to see each other. “I hope you’ve got something to eat up in this cabin of yours,” he said.
“Don’t worry.” Thami’s voice was a little unpleasant. “You’ll eat tonight. I’ll get you food. I’ll bring it to you. Don’t worry.”
“You mean there’s no food in the house? Where the hell are you going to get it?”