The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  “You speak and make music today.”

  “Yes, yes.” He had quite forgotten it was Sunday.

  The pastor was silent, walking beside Nicolás up the road to the mission. The weather had changed, and the early sun was very bright. “I have been fortified by my experience,” he was thinking. His head was clear; he felt amazingly healthy. The unaccustomed sensation of vigor gave him a strange nostalgia for the days of his youth. “I must always have felt like this then. I remember it,” he thought.

  At the mission there was a great crowd—many more people than he had ever seen attend a sermon at Tacaté. They were chatting quietly, but when he and Nicolás appeared there was an immediate hush. Mateo was standing in the pavilion waiting for him, with the phonograph open. With a pang the pastor realized he had not prepared a sermon for his flock. He went into the house for a moment, and returned to seat himself at the table in the pavilion, where he picked up his Bible. He had left his few notes in the book, so that it opened to the seventy-eighth Psalm. “I shall read them that,” he decided. He turned to Mateo. “Play the disco,” he said. Mateo put on “Crazy Rhythm.” The pastor quickly made a few pencil alterations in the text of the psalm, substituting the names of minor local deities, like Usukun and Sibanaa for such names as Jacob and Ephraim, and local place names for Israel and Egypt. And he wrote the word Hachakyum each time the word God or the Lord appeared. He had not finished when the record stopped. “Play it again,” he commanded. The audience was delighted, even though the sound was abominably scratchy. When the music was over for the second time, he stood and began to paraphrase the psalm in a clear voice. “The children of Sibanaa, carrying bows to shoot, ran into the forest to hide when the enemy came. They did not keep their promises to Hachakyum, and they would not live as He told them to live.” The audience was electrified. As he spoke, he looked down and saw the child Marta staring up at him. She had let go of her baby alligator, and it was crawling with a surprising speed toward the table where he sat. Quintina, Mateo, and the two maids were piling up the bars of salt on the ground to one side. They kept returning to the kitchen for more. He realized that what he was saying doubtless made no sense in terms of his listeners’ religion, but it was a story of the unleashing of divine displeasure upon an unholy people, and they were enjoying it vastly. The alligator, trailing its rags, had crawled to within a few inches of the pastor’s feet, where it remained quiet, content to be out of Marta’s arms.

  Presently, while he was still speaking, Mateo began to hand out the salt, and soon they all were running their tongues rhythmically over the large rough cakes, but continuing to pay strict attention to his words. When he was about to finish, he motioned to Mateo to be ready to start the record again the minute he finished; on the last word he lowered his arm as a signal, and “Crazy Rhythm” sounded once more. The alligator began to crawl hastily toward the far end of the pavilion. Pastor Dowe bent down and picked it up. As he stepped forward to hand it to Mateo, Nicolás rose from the ground, and taking Marta by the hand, walked over into the pavilion with her.

  “Señor,” he said, “Marta will live with you. I give her to you.”

  “What do you mean?” cried the pastor in a voice which cracked a little. The alligator squirmed in his hand.

  “She is your wife. She will live here.”

  Pastor Dowe’s eyes grew very wide. He was unable to say anything for a moment. He shook his hands in the air and finally he said: “No” several times.

  Nicolás’s face grew unpleasant. “You do not like Marta?”

  “Very much. She is beautiful.” The pastor sat down slowly on his chair. “But she is a little child.”

  Nicolás frowned with impatience. “She is already large.”

  “No, Nicolás. No. No.”

  Nicolás pushed his daughter forward and stepped back several paces, leaving her there by the table. “It is done,” he said sternly. “She is your wife. I have given her to you.”

  Pastor Dowe looked out over the assembly and saw the unspoken approval in all the faces. “Crazy Rhythm” ceased to play. There was silence. Under the mango tree he saw a woman toying with a small, shiny object. Suddenly he recognized his glasses case; the woman was stripping the leatheroid fabric from it. The bare aluminum with its dents flashed in the sun. For some reason even in the middle of this situation he found himself thinking: “So I was wrong. It is not dead. She will keep it, the way Nicolás has kept the quinine tablets.”

  He looked down at Marta. The child was staring at him quite without expression. Like a cat, he reflected.

  Again he began to protest. “Nicolás,” he cried, his voice very high, “this is impossible!” He felt a hand grip his arm, and turned to receive a warning glance from Mateo.

  Nicolás had already advanced toward the pavilion, his face like a thundercloud. As he seemed about to speak, the pastor interrupted him quickly. He had decided to temporize. “She may stay at the mission today,” he said weakly.

  “She is your wife,” said Nicolás with great feeling. “You cannot send her away. You must keep her.”

  “Diga que sí,” Mateo was whispering. “Say yes, señor.”

  “Yes,” the pastor heard himself saying. “Yes. Good.” He got up and walked slowly into the house, holding the alligator with one hand and pushing Marta in front of him with the other. Mateo followed and closed the door after them.

  “Take her into the kitchen, Mateo,” said the pastor dully, handing the little reptile to Marta. As Mateo went across the patio leading the child by the hand, he called after him. “Leave her with Quintina and come to my room.”

  He sat down on the edge of his bed, staring ahead of him with unseeing eyes. At each moment his predicament seemed to him more terrible. With relief he heard Mateo knock. The people outdoors were slowly leaving. It cost him an effort to call out, “Adelante.” When Mateo had come in, the pastor said, “Close the door.”

  “Mateo, did you know they were going to do this? That they were going to bring that child here?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  “You knew it! But why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Mateo shrugged his shoulders, looking at the floor. “I didn’t know it would matter to you,” he said. “Anyway, it would have been useless.”

  “Useless? Why? You could have stopped Nicolás,” said the pastor, although he did not believe it himself.

  Mateo laughed shortly. “You think so?”

  “Mateo, you must help me. We must oblige Nicolás to take her back.”

  Mateo shook his head. “It can’t be done. These people are very severe. They never change their laws.”

  “Perhaps a letter to the administrator at Ocosingo…”

  “No, señor. That would make still more trouble. You are not a Catholic.” Mateo shifted on his feet and suddenly smiled thinly. “Why not let her stay? She doesn’t eat much. She can work in the kitchen. In two years she will be very pretty.”

  The pastor jumped, and made such a wide and vehement gesture with his hands that the mosquito netting, looped above his head, fell down about his face. Mateo helped him disentangle himself. The air smelled of dust from the netting.

  “You don’t understand anything!” shouted Pastor Dowe, beside himself. “I can’t talk to you! I don’t want to talk to you! Go out and leave me alone.” Mateo obediently left the room.

  Pounding his left palm with his right fist, over and over again, the pastor stood in his window before the landscape that shone in the strong sun. A few women were still eating under the mango tree; the rest had gone back down the hill.

  He lay on his bed throughout the long afternoon. When twilight came he had made his decision. Locking his door, he proceeded to pack what personal effects he could into his smallest suitcase. His Bible and notebooks went on top with his toothbrush and atabrine tablets. When Quintina came to announce supper he asked to have it brought to his bed, taking care to slip the packed valise into the closet before he unl
ocked the door for her to enter. He waited until the talking had ceased all over the house, until he knew everyone was asleep. With the small bag not too heavy in one hand he tiptoed into the patio, out through the door into the fragrant night, across the open space in front of the pavilion, under the mango tree and down the path leading to Tacaté. Then he began to walk fast, because he wanted to get through the village before the moon rose.

  There was a chorus of dogs barking as he entered the village street. He began to run, straight through to the other end. And he kept running even then, until he had reached the point where the path, wider here, dipped beneath the hill and curved into the forest. His heart was beating rapidly from the exertion. To rest, and to try to be fairly certain he was not being followed, he sat down on his little valise in the center of the path. There he remained a long time, thinking of nothing, while the night went on and the moon came up. He heard only the light wind among the leaves and vines. Overhead a few bats reeled soundlessly back and forth. At last he took a deep breath, got up, and went on.

  (1949)

  Tea on the Mountain

  THE MAIL THAT MORNING had brought her a large advance from her publishers. At least, it looked large to her there in the International Zone where life was cheap. She had opened the letter at a table of the sidewalk café opposite the Spanish post office. The emotion she felt at seeing the figures on the check had made her unexpectedly generous to the beggars that constantly filed past. Then the excitement had worn off, and she felt momentarily depressed. The streets and the sky seemed brighter and stronger than she. She had of necessity made very few friends in the town, and although she worked steadily every day at her novel, she had to admit that sometimes she was lonely. Driss came by, wearing a spotless mauve djellaba over his shoulders and a new fez on his head.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” he said, making an exaggerated bow. He had been paying her assiduous attention for several months, but so far she had been successful in putting him off without losing his friendship; he made a good escort in the evenings. This morning she greeted him warmly, let him pay her check, and moved off up the street with him, conscious of the comment her action had caused among the other Arabs sitting in the café.

  They turned into the rue du Télégraphe Anglais, and walked slowly down the hill. She decided she was trying to work up an appetite for lunch; in the noonday heat it was often difficult to be hungry. Driss had been Europeanized to the point of insisting on apéritifs before his meals; however, instead of having two Dubonnets, for instance, he would take a Gentiane, a Byrrh, a Pernod and an Amer Picon. Then he usually went to sleep and put off eating until later. They stopped at the café facing the Marshan Road, and sat down next to a table occupied by several students from the Lycée Français, who were drinking limonades and glancing over their notebooks. Driss wheeled around suddenly and began a casual conversation. Soon they both moved over to the students’ table.

  She was presented to each student in turn; they solemnly acknowledged her “Enchantée,” but remained seated while doing so. Only one, named Mjid, rose from his chair and quickly sat down again, looking worried. He was the one she immediately wanted to get to know, perhaps because he was more serious and soft-eyed, yet at the same time seemed more eager and violent than any of the others. He spoke his stilted theatre-French swiftly, with less accent than his schoolmates, and he punctuated his sentences with precise, tender smiles instead of the correct or expected inflections. Beside him sat Ghazi, plump and Negroid.

  She saw right away that Mjid and Ghazi were close friends. They replied to her questions and flattery as one man, Ghazi preferring, however, to leave the important phrases to Mjid. He had an impediment in his speech, and he appeared to think more slowly. Within a few minutes she had learned that they had been going to school together for twelve years, and had always been in the same form. This seemed strange to her, inasmuch as Ghazi’s lack of precocity became more and more noticeable as she watched him. Mjid noticed the surprise in her face, and he added:

  “Ghazi is very intelligent, you know. His father is the high judge of the native court of the International Zone. You will go to his home one day and see for yourself.”

  “Oh, but of course I believe you,” she cried, understanding now why Ghazi had experienced no difficulty in life so far, in spite of his obvious slow-wittedness.

  “I have a very beautiful house indeed,” added Ghazi. “Would you like to come and live in it? You are always welcome. That’s the way we Tanjaoui are.”

  “Thank you. Perhaps some day I shall. At any rate, I thank you a thousand times. You are too kind.”

  “And my father,” interposed Mjid suavely but firmly, “the poor man, he is dead. Now it’s my brother who commands.”

  “But, alas, Mjid, your brother is tubercular,” sighed Ghazi.

  Mjid was scandalized. He began a vehement conversation with Ghazi in Arabic, in the course of which he upset his empty limonade bottle. It rolled onto the sidewalk and into the gutter, where an urchin tried to make off with it, but was stopped by the waiter. He brought the bottle to the table, carefully wiped it with his apron, and set it down.

  “Dirty Jew dog!” screamed the little boy from the middle of the street.

  Mjid heard this epithet even in the middle of his tirade. Turning in his chair, he called to the child: “Go home. You’ll be beaten this evening.”

  “Is it your brother?” she asked with interest.

  Since Mjid did not answer her, but seemed not even to have heard her, she looked at the urchin again and saw his ragged clothing. She was apologetic.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she began. “I hadn’t looked at him. I see now…”

  Mjid said, without looking at her: “You would not need to look at that child to know he was not of my family. You heard him speak…”

  “A neighbor’s child. A poor little thing,” interrupted Ghazi.

  Mjid seemed lost in wonder for a moment. Then he turned and explained slowly to her: “One word we can’t hear is tuberculosis. Any other word, syphilis, leprosy, even pneumonia, we can listen to, but not that word. And Ghazi knows that. He wants you to think we have Paris morals here. There I know everyone says that word everywhere, on the boulevards, in the cafés, in Montparnasse, in the Dôme—” he grew excited as he listed these points of interest—“in the Moulin Rouge, in Sacré Coeur, in the Louvre. Some day I shall go myself. My brother has been. That’s where he got sick.”

  During this time Driss, whose feeling of ownership of the American lady was so complete that he was not worried by any conversation she might have with what he considered schoolboys, was talking haughtily to the other students. They were all pimply and bespectacled. He was telling them about the football games he had seen in Málaga. They had never been across to Spain, and they listened, gravely sipped their limonade, and spat on the floor like Spaniards.

  “Since I can’t invite you to my home, because we have sickness there, I want you to make a picnic with me tomorrow,” announced Mjid. Ghazi made some inaudible objection which his friend silenced with a glance, whereupon Ghazi decided to beam, and followed the plans with interest.

  “We shall hire a carriage, and take some ham to my country villa,” continued Mjid, his eyes shining with excitement. Ghazi started to look about apprehensively at the other men seated on the terrace; then he got up and went inside.

  When he returned he objected: “You have no sense, Mjid. You say ‘ham’ right out loud when you know some friends of my father might be here. It would be very bad for me. Not everyone is free as you are.”

  Mjid was penitent for an instant. He stretched out his leg, pulling aside his silk gandoura. “Do you like my garters?” he asked her suddenly.

  She was startled. “They’re quite good ones,” she began.

  “Let me see yours,” he demanded.

  She glanced down at her slacks. She had espadrilles on her feet, and wore no socks. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t any.”


  Mjid looked uncomfortable, and she guessed that it was more for having discovered, in front of the others, a flaw in her apparel, than for having caused her possible embarrassment. He cast a contrite glance at Ghazi, as if to excuse himself for having encouraged a foreign lady who was obviously not of the right sort. She felt that some gesture on her part was called for. Pulling out several hundred francs, which was all the money in her purse, she laid it on the table, and went on searching in her handbag for her mirror. Mjid’s eyes softened. He turned with a certain triumph to Ghazi, and permitting himself a slight display of exaltation, patted his friend’s cheek three times.

  “So it’s set!” he exclaimed. “Tomorrow at noon we meet here at the Café du Télégraphe Anglais. I shall have hired a carriage at eleven-thirty at the market. You, dear mademoiselle,” turning to her, “will have gone at ten-thirty to the English grocery and bought the food. Be sure to get Jambon Olida, because it’s the best.”

  “The best ham,” murmured Ghazi, looking up and down the street a bit uneasily.

  “And buy one bottle of wine.”

  “Mjid, you know this can get back to my father,” Ghazi began.

  Mjid had had enough interference. He turned to her. “If you like, mademoiselle, we can go alone.”

  She glanced at Ghazi; his cowlike eyes had veiled with actual tears.

  Mjid continued. “It’ll be very beautiful up there on the mountain with just us two. We’ll take a walk along the top of the mountain to the rose gardens. There’s a breeze from the sea all afternoon. At dusk we’ll be back at the farm. We’ll have tea and rest.” He stopped at this point, which he considered crucial.

  Ghazi was pretending to read his social correspondence textbook, with his chechia tilted over his eyebrows so as to hide his hopelessly troubled face. Mjid smiled tenderly.

  “We’ll go all three,” he said softly.

  Ghazi simply said: “Mjid is bad.”

  Driss was now roaring drunk. The other students were impressed and awed. Some of the bearded men in the café looked over at the table with open disapproval in their faces. She saw that they regarded her as a symbol of corruption. Consulting her fancy little enamel watch, which everyone at the table had to examine and study closely before she could put it back into its case, she announced that she was hungry.