The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  Bewildered and frightened, Amar turned and ran back to the ramp. In the blackness he stumbled upward. Part of the wall scraped his bare thigh. The voices behind him grew louder and more excited.

  He reached the room where he had left his clothing. Nothing had changed. The men still sat by the brazier talking. Quickly he snatched the pile of garments, and struggling into his burnous, he ran to the door that led into the street, the rest of his clothes tucked under his arm. The man in the doorway with the oud looked at him with a startled face and called after him. Amar ran up the street barelegged toward the center of the town. He wanted to be where there were some bright lights. The few people walking in the street paid him no attention. When he got to the bus station it was closed. He went into a small park opposite, where the iron bandstand stood deep in snow. There on a cold stone bench he sat and dressed himself as unostentatiously as possible, using his burnous as a screen. He was shivering, reflecting bitterly upon his poor luck, and wishing he had not left his own town, when a small figure approached him in the half-light.

  “Sidi,” it said, “come with me. Lazrag is hunting for you.”

  “Where to?” said Amar, recognizing the urchin from the bath.

  “My grandfather’s.”

  The boy began to run, motioning to him to follow. They went through alleys and tunnels, into the most congested part of the town. The boy did not bother to look back, but Amar did. They finally paused before a small door at the side of a narrow passageway. The boy knocked vigorously. From within came a cracked voice calling: “Chkoun?”

  “Annah! Brahim!” cried the boy.

  With great deliberation the old man swung the door open and stood looking at Amar.

  “Come in,” he finally said; and shutting the door behind them he led them through the courtyard filled with goats into an inner room where a feeble light was flickering. He peered sternly into Amar’s face.

  “He wants to stay here tonight,” explained the boy.

  “Does he think this is a fondouk?”

  “He has money,” said Brahim hopefully.

  “Money!” the old man cried with scorn. “That’s what you learn in the hammam! How to steal money! How to take money from men’s purses! Now you bring them here! What do you want me to do? Kill him and get his purse for you? Is he too clever for you? You can’t get it by yourself? Is that it?” The old man’s voice had risen to a scream and he gestured in his mounting excitement. He sat down on a cushion with difficulty and was silent a moment.

  “Money,” he said again, finally. “Let him go to a fondouk or a bath. Why aren’t you at the hammam?” He looked suspiciously at his grandson.

  The boy clutched at his friend’s sleeve. “Come,” he said, pulling him out into the courtyard.

  “Take him to the hammam!” yelled the old man. “Let him spend his money there!”

  Together they went back into the dark streets.

  “Lazrag is looking for you,” said the boy. “Twenty men will be going through the town to catch you and take you back to him. He is very angry and he will change you into a bird.”

  “Where are we going now?” asked Amar gruffly. He was cold and very tired, and although he did not really believe the boy’s story, he wished he were out of the unfriendly town.

  “We must walk as far as we can from here. All night. In the morning we’ll be far away in the mountains, and they won’t find us. We can go to your city.”

  Amar did not answer. He was pleased that the boy wanted to stay with him, but he did not think it fitting to say so. They followed one crooked street downhill until all the houses had been left behind and they were in the open country. The path led down a narrow valley presently, and joined the highway at one end of a small bridge. Here the snow was packed down by the passage of vehicles, and they found it much easier to walk along.

  When they had been going down the road for perhaps an hour in the increasing cold, a great truck came rolling by. It stopped just ahead and the driver, an Arab, offered them a ride on top. They climbed up and made a nest of some empty sacks. The boy was very happy to be rushing through the air in the dark night. Mountains and stars whirled by above his head and the truck made a powerful roaring noise as it traveled along the empty highway.

  “Lazrag has found us and changed us both into birds,” he cried when he could no longer keep his delight to himself. “No one will ever know us again.”

  Amar grunted and went to sleep. But the boy watched the sky and the trees and the cliffs for a long time before he closed his eyes.

  Some time before morning the truck stopped by a spring for water.

  In the stillness the boy awoke. A cock crowed in the distance, and then he heard the driver pouring water. The cock crowed again, a sad, thin arc of sound away in the cold murk of the plain. It was not yet dawn. He buried himself deeper in the pile of sacks and rags, and felt the warmth of Amar as he slept.

  When daylight came they were in another part of the land. There was no snow. Instead, the almond trees were in flower on the hillsides as they sped past. The road went on unwinding as it dropped lower and lower, until suddenly it came out of the hills upon a spot below which lay a great glittering emptiness. Amar and the boy watched it and said to each other that it must be the sea, shining in the morning light.

  The spring wind pushed the foam from the waves along the beach; it rippled Amar’s and the boy’s garments landward as they walked by the edge of the water. Finally they found a sheltered spot between rocks, and undressed, leaving the clothes on the sand. The boy was afraid to go into the water, and found enough excitement in letting the waves break about his legs, but Amar tried to drag him out further.

  “No, no!”

  “Come,” Amar urged him.

  Amar looked down. Approaching him sideways was an enormous crab which had crawled out from a dark place in the rocks. He leapt back in terror, lost his balance, and fell heavily, striking his head against one of the great boulders. The boy stood perfectly still watching the animal make its cautious way toward Amar through the tips of the breaking waves. Amar lay without moving, rivulets of water and sand running down his face. As the crab reached his feet, the boy bounded into the air, and in a voice made hoarse by desperation, screamed: “Lazrag!”

  The crab scuttled swiftly behind the rock and disappeared. The boy’s face became radiant. He rushed to Amar, lifted his head above a newly breaking wave, and slapped his cheeks excitedly.

  “Amar! I made him go away!” he shouted. “I saved you!”

  If he did not move, the pain was not too great. So Amar lay still, feeling the warm sunlight, the soft water washing over him, and the cool, sweet wind that came in from the sea. He also felt the boy trembling in his effort to hold his head above the waves, and he heard him saying many times over: “I saved you, Amar.”

  After a long time he answered: “Yes.”

  (1946)

  The Echo

  AILEEN PULLED OUT her mirror; the vibration of the plane shook it so rapidly that she was unable to see whether her nose needed powder or not. There were only two other passengers and they were asleep. It was noon; the tropical sun shone violently down upon the wide silver wings and cast sharp reflections on the ceiling. Far below, the uniform green carpet of the jungle moved slowly by. She was sleepy, but she was also excited to be going to a new home. From her handbag she pulled a folded letter which she read again intently, as if to decipher a meaning that did not lie in the sequence of the words. It was in her mother’s script:

  “Aileen, Sweet—

  “I must begin (and finish) this before supper. Prue has gone out for her shower, and that means that by the time she has Luz (the cook) heat the water and can find José (the gardener) to carry it up on the roof to the tank, it will be about an hour. Add to that the time it takes her to do her actual bathing and to dress, and you can see I’ll have just about time for a nice chat.

  “Perhaps I should begin by saying that Prue and I are sublimely happy here
. It is absolute heaven after Washington, as you can pretty well imagine. Prue, of course, never could stand the States, and I felt, after the trouble with your father, that I couldn’t face anyone for a while. You know how much importance I have always attached to relaxation. And this is the ideal spot for that.

  “Of course I did feel a little guilty about running off down here without seeing you. But I think the trip to Northampton would have sealed my doom. I honestly don’t believe I could have stood it. And Prue was nervous about the State Department’s passing some new law that would prevent citizens from leaving the U.S. because of the disturbed conditions, and so on. I also felt that the sooner we got down here to Jamonocal the more of a home we could make out of the old place, for you to spend your vacation in. And it is going to be beautiful. I won’t drag out my reasons for not letting you know beforehand or it will sound apologetic, and I know I never have to apologize to you for anything. So I’ll leave that and get on. I’m sure anyway that the eight months passed very quickly up there for you.

  “We have had swarms of men working on the house ever since last October. Mr. Forbes happened to be in Barranquilla for a new American project in the interior, and I wanted to be sure of having him supervise the construction of the cantilever in the foundation. That man is really a prince. They don’t come much finer. He was up again and again, and gave orders down to the last detail. I felt guilty about making him work so hard, but I honestly think he enjoyed himself with us girls. In any case it seemed silly, when one of the best architects in the U.S. was right here in Colombia and happened to be an old friend, not to use him when I needed him. Anyway, the old house is now the old wing and the new part, which is so exciting I can’t wait for you to see it, is built right out over the gorge. I think there’s not likely to be another house like it in the world, if I do say it myself. The terrace makes me think of an old cartoon in the New Yorker showing two men looking over the edge of the Grand Canyon, and one is saying to the other: ‘Did you ever want to spit a mile, Bill? Now’s your chance.’

  “We are all installed. The weather has been wonderful, and if Luz could only learn a little more about what white people like to eat and how they like it served, the setup would really be perfect. I know you will enjoy being here with Prue. She and you have many things in common, even if you do claim to ‘remember not liking her much.’ That was in Washington and you were, to put it mildly, at a difficult age. Now, as an adult (because you really are one by now), you’ll be more understanding, I’m sure. She loves books, especially on philosophy and psychology and other things your poor mother just doesn’t try to follow her in. She has rigged up a kiln and studio in the old guest house which you probably don’t remember. She works at her ceramics out there all day, and I have all I can do keeping the house tidy and seeing that the marketing is done. We have a system by which Luz takes the list to her brother every afternoon, and he brings the things from town the following day. It just about keeps him fully busy getting up and down the mountain on his horse. The horse is a lazy old nag that has done nothing but plod back and forth between house and the valley all its life, so it doesn’t know the meaning of the word speed. But after all, why hurry, down here?

  “I think you will find everything to your liking, and I’m sure you won’t require more than five minutes to see that Prue is a dear, and not at all ‘peculiar,’ as you wrote in your letter. Wire me as soon as you receive this, and let me know just what week you’ll be finishing classes. Prue and I will meet you in Barranquilla. I have a list of things I want you to get me in New York. Will wire it to you as soon as I hear. Prue’s bath finished. Must close.

  Love,

  Mother.”

  Aileen put the letter away, smiling a little, and watched the wings diving in and out of the small thick clouds that lay in the plane’s way. There was a slight shock each time they hit one, and the world outside became a blinding whiteness. She fancied jumping out and walking on such solid softness, like a character in an animated cartoon.

  Her mother’s letter had put her in mind of a much earlier period in her life: the winter she had been taken to visit Jamonocal. All she could recall in the way of incidents was that she had been placed on a mule by one of the natives, and had felt a painful horror that the animal would walk in the wrong direction, away from the house toward the edge of the gorge. She had no memory of the gorge. Probably she had never seen it, although it was only a few paces from the house, through a short but thick stretch of canebrake. However, she had a clear memory of its presence, of the sensation of enormous void beyond and below that side of the house. And she recalled the distant, hollow sound of water falling from a great height, a constant, soft backdrop of sound that slipped into every moment of the day—between the conversations at mealtimes, in the intervals of play in the garden, and at night between dreams. She wondered if really it were possible to remember all that from the time when she had been only five.

  In Panama there was a plane change to be made. It was a clear green twilight, and she took a short walk beyond the airport. Parakeets were fighting in the upper branches of the trees; suddenly they became quiet. She turned back and went inside, where she sat reading until it was time to go aboard.

  There was no one there to meet her when she arrived at Barranquilla in the early hours of the morning. She decided to go into town and take a room in the hotel. With her two valises she stepped outside and looked about for a cab. They had all gone to the town with passengers, but a man sitting on a packing case informed her that they would soon be coming back. Then suddenly he said, “You want two ladies?”

  “What? No. What do you mean?”

  “You want two ladies look for you this night?”

  “Where are they?” said Aileen, understanding.

  “They want a drink,” he answered with an intimate grin.

  “Where? Barranquilla?”

  “No. Here.” He pointed down the dark road.

  “Where? Can I walk?”

  “Sure. I go you.”

  “No! No thanks. You stay here. Thank you. I can go all right. Where is it? How far?”

  “O.K.”

  “What is it? A bar? What’s the name?”

  “They got music. La Gloria. You go. You hear music. You look for two ladies. They drinking.”

  She went inside again and checked the bags with an airline employee who insisted on accompanying her. They strode in silence along the back road. The walls of vegetation on each side sheltered insects that made an occasional violent, dry noise like a wooden ratchet being whirled. Soon there was the sound of drums and trumpets playing Cuban dance music.

  “La Gloria,” said her escort triumphantly.

  La Gloria was a brilliantly lighted mud hut with a thatch-covered veranda giving onto the road. The juke box was outside, where a few drunken Negroes sprawled.

  “Are they here?” she said out loud, but to herself.

  “La Gloria,” he answered, pointing.

  As they came opposite the front of the building, she caught a glimpse of a woman in blue jeans, and although instantaneously she knew it was Prue, her mind for some reason failed to accept the fact, and she continued to ask herself, “Are they here or not?”

  She turned to go toward the veranda. The record had finished playing. The ditch lay in the dark between the road and the porch. She fell forward into it and heard herself cry out. The man behind her said, “Cuidado!” She lay there panting with fury and pain, and said, “Oh! My ankle!” There was an exclamation inside the bar. Her mother’s voice cried, “That’s Aileen!” Then the juke box began to scratch and roar again. The Negroes remained stationary. Someone helped her up. She was inside the bar in the raw electric glare.

  “I’m all right,” she said, when she had been eased into a chair.

  “But darling, where’ve you been? We’ve been waiting for you since eight, and we’d just about given up. Poor Prue’s ill.”

  “Nonsense, I’ll recover,” said Prue, still seate
d at the bar. “Been having a touch of the trots, that’s all.”

  “But darling, are you all right? This is absurd, landing here this way.”

  She looked down at Aileen’s ankle.

  “Is it all right?”

  Prue came over from the bar to shake her hand.

  “A dramatic entrance, gal,” she said.

  Aileen sat there and smiled. She had a curious mental habit. As a child she had convinced herself that her head was transparent, that the thoughts there could be perceived immediately by others. Accordingly, when she found herself in uncomfortable situations, rather than risk the danger of being suspected of harboring uncomplimentary or rebellious thoughts, she had developed a system of refraining from thinking at all. For a while during her childhood this fear of having no mental privacy had been extended to anyone; even persons existing at a distance could have access to her mind. Now she felt open only to those present. And so it was that, finding herself face to face with Prue, she was conscious of no particular emotion save the familiar vague sense of boredom. There was not a thought in her head, and her face made the fact apparent.

  MORNINGS WERE HARD to believe. The primeval freshness, spilled down out of the jungle above the house, was held close to the earth by the mist. Outside and in, it was damp and smelled like a florist’s shop, but the dampness was dispelled each day when the stinging sun burned through the thin cape of moisture that clung to the mountain’s back. Living there was like living sideways, with the land stretching up on one side and down on the other at the same angle. Only the gorge gave a feeling of perpendicularity; the vertical walls of rock on the opposite side of the great amphitheatre were a reminder that the center of gravity lay below and not obliquely to one side. Constant vapor rose from the invisible pool at the bottom, and the distant, indeterminate calling of water was like the sound of sleep itself.