The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

  When she had finished eating she went to the room and lighted the lamp. Port’s body squirmed and his face protested against the sudden light. She put the lamp in a corner behind some valises and stood a while in the middle of the room thinking of nothing. A few minutes later she took up her coat and went out into the courtyard.

  The roof of the fort was a great, flat, irregularly shaped mud terrace whose varying heights were a projection, as it were, of the uneven ground below. The ramps and staircases between the different wings were hard to see in the dark. And although there was a low wall around the outer edge, the innumerable courtyards were merely open wells to be skirted with caution. The stars gave enough light to protect her against mishaps. She breathed deeply, feeling rather as if she were on shipboard. The town below was invisible—not a light showed—but to the north glimmered the white ereg, the vast ocean of sand with its frozen swirling crests, its unmoving silence. She turned slowly about, scanning the horizon. The air, doubly still now after the departure of the wind, was like something paralyzed. Whichever way she looked, the night’s landscape suggested only one thing to her: negation of movement, suspension of continuity. But as she stood there, momentarily a part of the void she had created, little by little a doubt slipped into her mind, the sensation came to her, first faint, then sure, that some part of this landscape was moving even as she looked at it. She glanced up and grimaced. The whole, monstrous star-filled sky was turning sideways before her eyes. It looked still as death, yet it moved. Every second an invisible star edged above the earth’s line on that side, and another fell below on the opposite side. She coughed self-consciously, and started to walk again, trying to remember how much she disliked Captain Broussard. He had not even offered her a pack of cigarettes, in spite of her overt remark. “Oh, God,” she said aloud, wishing she had not finished her last Players in Bou Noura.

  He opened his eyes. The room was malignant. It was empty. “Now, at last, I must fight against this room.” But later he had a moment of vertiginous clarity. He was at the edge of a realm where each thought, each image, had an arbitrary existence, where the connection between each thing and the next had been cut. As he labored to seize the essence of that kind of consciousness, he began to slip back into its precinct without suspecting that he was no longer wholly outside in the open, no longer able to consider the idea at a distance. It seemed to him that here was an untried variety of thinking, in which there was no necessity for a relationship with life. “The thought in itself,” he said—a gratuitous fact, like a painting of pure design. They were coming again, they began to flash by. He tried to hold one, believed he had it. “But a thought of what? What is it?” Even then it was pushed out of the way by the others crowding behind it. While he succumbed, struggling, he opened his eyes for help. “The room! The room! Still here!” It was in the silence of the room that he now located all those hostile forces; the very fact that the room’s inert watchfulness was on all sides made him distrust it. Outside himself, it was all there was. He looked at the line made by the joining of the wall and the floor, endeavored to fix it in his mind, that he might have something to hang on to when his eyes should shut. There was a terrible disparity between the speed at which he was moving and the quiet immobility of that line, but he insisted. So as not to go. To stay behind. To overflow, take root in what would stay here. A centipede can, cut into pieces. Each part can walk by itself. Still more, each leg flexes, lying alone on the floor.

  There was a screaming sound in each ear, and the difference between the two pitches was so narrow that the vibration was like running his fingernail along the edge of a new dime. In front of his eyes clusters of round spots were being born; they were the little spots that result when a photographic cut in a newspaper is enlarged many times. Lighter agglomerations, darker masses, small regions of uninhabited space here and there. Each spot slowly took on a third dimension. He tried to recoil from the expanding globules of matter. Did he cry out? Could he move?

  The thin distance between the two high screams became narrower, they were almost one; now the difference was the edge of a razor blade, poised against the tips of each finger. The fingers were to be sliced longitudinally.

  A servant traced the cries to the room where the American lay. Captain Broussard was summoned. He walked quickly to the door, pounded on it, and hearing nothing but the continued yelling within, stepped into the room. With the aid of the servant, he succeeded in holding Port still enough to give him an injection of morphine. When he had finished, he glared about the room in an access of rage. “And that woman!” he shouted. “Where in the name of God is she?”

  “I don’t know, my Captain,” said the servant, who thought the question had been addressed to him.

  “Stay here. Stand by the door,” growled the captain. He was determined to find Kit, and when he found her he was going to tell her what he thought of her. If necessary, he would place a guard outside the door, and force her to stay inside to watch the patient. He went first to the main gate, which was locked at night so that no guard was necessary. It stood open. “Ah, ça, par exemple!” he cried, beside himself. He stepped outside, and saw nothing but the night. Going within, he slammed the high portal shut and bolted it savagely. Then he went back to the room and waited while the servant fetched a blanket, and instructed him to stay there until morning. He returned to his quarters and had a glass of cognac to calm his fury before trying to sleep.

  As she paced back and forth on the roof, two things happened at once. On one side the large moon swiftly rose above the edge of the plateau, and on the other, in the distant air, an almost imperceptible humming sound became audible, was lost, became audible again. She listened: now it was gone, now it was a little stronger. And so it continued for a long time, disappearing, and coming back always a bit nearer. Now, even though it was still far away, the sound was quite recognizable as that of a motor. She could hear the shifts of speed as it climbed a slope and reached level ground again. Twenty kilometers down the trail, they had told her, you can hear a truck coming. She waited. Finally, when it seemed that the vehicle must already be in the town, she saw a tiny portion of rock far out on the hammada being swept by the headlights as the truck made a curve in its descent toward the oasis. A moment later she saw the two points of light. Then they were lost for a while behind the rocks, but the motor grew ever louder. With the moon casting more light each minute, and the truck bringing people to town, even if the people were anonymous figures in white robes, the world moved back into the realm of the possible. Suddenly she wanted to be present at the arrival down in the market. She hurried below, tiptoed through the courtyards, managed to open the heavy gate, and began to run down the side of the hill toward the town. The truck was making a great racket as it went along between the high walls in the oasis; as she came opposite the mosque it nosed above the last rise on its way up into the town. There were a few ragged men standing at the entrance of the market place. When the big vehicle roared in and stopped, the silence that followed lasted only a second before the excited voices began, all at once.

  She stood back and watched the laborious getting-down of the natives and the leisurely unloading of their possessions: camel saddles that shone in the moonlight, great formless bundles done up in striped blankets, coffers and sacks, and two gigantic women so fat they could barely walk, their bosoms, arms and legs weighted down with pounds of massive silver ornaments. And all these possessions, with their owners, presently disappeared behind the dark arcades and went out of hearing. She moved around so she could see the front end of the truck, where the chauffeur and mechanic and a few other men stood in the glare of the headlights talking. She heard French being spoken—bad French—as well as Arabic. The chauffeur reached in and switched off the lights; the men began to walk slowly up into the market place. No one seemed to have noticed her. She stood still a moment, listening.

  She cried: “Tunner!”

  One of the figures in a burnous stopped, came running back. On
its way, it called: “Kit!” She ran a few steps, saw the other man turning to look, and was being smothered in Tunner’s burnous as he hugged her. She thought he would never let go, but he did, and said: “So you’re really here!” Two of the men had come over. “Is this the lady you were looking for?” said one. “Oui, oui!” Tunner cried, and they said good night.

  They stood alone in the market place. “But this is wonderful, Kit!” he said. She wanted to speak, but she felt that if she tried, her words would turn to sobs, so she nodded her head and automatically began to pull him along toward the little public garden by the mosque. She felt weak; she wanted to sit down.

  “My stuff is locked in the truck for the night. I didn’t know where I’d be sleeping. God, what a trip from Bou Noura! Three blowouts on the way, and these monkeys think changing a tire should always take a couple of hours at least.” He went into details. They had reached the entrance to the garden. The moon shone like a cold white sun; the spear-like shadows of the palm branches were black on the sand, a sharp unvaried pattern along the garden walk.

  “But let’s see you!” he cried, spinning her around so the moon’s light struck her face. “Ah, poor Kit! It must have been hell!” he murmured, as she squinted up into the brightness, her features distorted by the imminent outbreaking of tears.

  They sat on a concrete bench and she wept for a long time, her face buried in his lap, rubbing the rough wool of the burnous. From time to time he uttered consoling words, and as he found her shivering, he enveloped her in one great wing of the robe. She hated the salt sting of the tears, and even more she hated the ignominy of her being there, demanding comfort of Tunner. But she could not, could not stop; the longer she continued to sob, the more clearly she sensed that this was a situation beyond her control. She was unable to sit up, dry her tears, and make an attempt to extricate herself from the net of involvement she felt being drawn around her. She did not want to be involved again: the taste of guilt was still strong in her memory. Yet she saw nothing ahead of her but Tunner’s will awaiting her signal to take command. And she would give the signal. Even as she knew this she was aware of a pervading sense of relief, to struggle against which would have been unthinkable. What a delight, not to be responsible—not to have to decide anything of what was to happen! To know, even if there was no hope, that no action one might take or fail to take could change the outcome in the slightest degree—that it was impossible to be at fault in any way, and thus impossible to feel regret, or, above all, guilt. She realized the absurdity of still hoping to attain such a state permanently, but the hope would not leave her.

  The street led up a steep hill where the hot sun was shining, the sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians looking in the shop windows. He had the feeling there was traffic in the side streets, but the shadows there were dark. An attitude of expectancy was growing in the crowd; they were waiting for something. For what, he did not know. The entire afternoon was tense, poised, ready to fall. At the top of the street a huge automobile suddenly appeared, glistening in the sunlight. It came careening over the crest and down the hill, swerving savagely from one curb to the other. A great yell rose up from the crowd. He turned and frantically sought a doorway. At the corner there was a pastry shop, its windows full of cakes and meringues. He fumbled along the wall. If he could reach the door. . . . He wheeled, stood transfixed. In the tremendous flash of sunlight reflected from the glass as it splintered he saw the metal pinning him to the stone. He heard his own ridiculous cry, and felt his bowels pierced through. As he tried to topple over, to lose consciousness, he found his face a few inches from a row of pastries, still intact on their paper-covered shelf.

  They were a row of mud wells in the desert. But how near were they? He could not tell: the debris had pinned him to the earth. The pain was all of existence at that moment. All the energy he could exert would not budge him from the spot where he lay impaled, his bleeding entrails open to the sky. He imagined an enemy arriving to step into his open belly. He imagined himself rising, running through the twisting alleys between the walls. For hours in all directions in the alleys, with never a door, never the final opening. It would get dark, they would be coming nearer, his breath would be failing. And when he willed it hard enough, the gate would appear, but even as he rushed panting through it, he would realize his terrible mistake.

  Too late! There was only the endless black wall rising ahead of him, the rickety iron staircase he was obliged to take, knowing that above, at the top, they were waiting with the boulder poised, ready to hurl it when he came near enough. And as he got close to the top it would come hurtling down at him, striking him with the weight of the entire world. He cried out again as it hit, holding his hands over his abdomen to protect the gaping hole there. He ceased imagining and lay still beneath the rubble. The pain could not go on. He opened his eyes, shut his eyes, saw only the thin sky stretched across to protect him. Slowly the split would occur, the sky draw back, and he would see what he never had doubted lay behind advance upon him with the speed of a million winds. His cry was a separate thing beside him in the desert. It went on and on.

  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 sat 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 everyt
hing, 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.

  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.