The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  Ali knew all about his brother’s life and about Kinza, since, in spite of the fact that such subjects cannot be discussed between brothers, it is perfectly proper to talk about them with anyone and everyone else. He knew all about Kinza and he hoped his brother would have no luck with her.

  The rain was falling more heavily now. He closed the windows so it would not come in. Then, out of boredom and because he was curious to know who had arrived at the café, he went across the open space between the two establishments, taking long strides, and re-entered the back room. Behind the partition the fire was being fanned again, this time by his brother.

  “I’M VERY FOND of your tea here in Morocco,” a man’s voice was saying; they were speaking French.

  His brother said: “Me, I like beer best.”

  “Have another bottle,” said the stranger magnanimously. “Drink to the end of this damned rain. If it keeps up I won’t get back to town before dark.”

  Ali tried to look through the cracks to see what sort of person it was who would walk all the way up to the café, but the man was seated in the doorway looking out at the rain and he could see nothing but his back.

  “We are glad to have the rain,” said his brother. “Each drop is money. The fellahin give thanks.”

  “Oui, bien sûr,” said the stranger without interest.

  The thunder had passed over, but the rain was roaring; soon a stream of water burst through the ceiling in a corner of the room and spattered onto the earthen floor. The added noise made it more difficult to hear their talk. He put his ear close to the reeds.

  “Isn’t Belgium near France?” his brother asked.

  “Next door.”

  “It’s a good country?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  His brother handed the stranger a glass of tea.

  “Have another bottle of beer,” the stranger suggested.

  Ali heard the bottle being opened and the cap fall on to the stone door-sill.

  “What’s that?” said his brother, his voice bright with interest.

  “Just a pill. If I’m nervous I take one. It makes me feel better. If I can’t sleep I take two.”

  “And then you sleep?”

  “Like a child.”

  There was a pause. Then his brother asked: “And would they do that to anyone?”

  The stranger laughed. “Of course,” he said. “Some people might have to take three, some only one.”

  “And how long does it make you sleep?”

  “All night.”

  “If someone touched you, you’d wake up?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “But if you took four or five?”

  “Oh, là, là! You could ride a horse over me then, and I wouldn’t know it. That’s too many.”

  This time there was a long silence, and Ali heard only the noise of the rain all around. The water leaking through the roof had made a channel in the mud to the back door. Now and then a distant growl of thunder came from the hills on the north. The air that moved in through the door was cold and smelled of earth.

  Presently his brother said: “It’s getting dark.”

  “I suppose you want to close.”

  “Oh, ne t’en fais pas!” said his brother cordially. “Stay until it stops raining.”

  The stranger laughed. “It’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid I’m going to get wet anyway, because it’s not going to stop.”

  “No, no!” his brother cried, an anxious note creeping into his voice. “Wait a few minutes. Soon it will stop. Besides, I enjoy talking with you. You aren’t like a Frenchman.”

  The man laughed again; he sounded pleased and flattered.

  Then Ali heard his brother saying timidly: “Those pills. Where could I buy a bottle?”

  “My doctor in Belgium gave them to me, but I imagine you could get a doctor here to prescribe some.”

  “No,” said his brother hopelessly.

  “Why do you want them? You don’t look as though you had trouble sleeping.”

  His brother squatted down beside the stranger. “It’s not that,” he said, almost whispering.

  Ali peered intently between the reeds, making an effort to follow the movements of his brother’s lips. “C’est une fille. I give her everything. She always says no. I was thinking, if just once I could—”

  The man interrupted him. “You give her enough of these and she won’t be able to say anything.” He chuckled maliciously. “Here. Hold out your hand.”

  With a few inarticulate phrases of thanks, his brother rose to his feet, probably to get a box or an envelope for the pills.

  Quickly Ali went out of the door through the rain to the house, where he changed his shirt and spread the wet one over the pillows, and lighted the lamp. Then he sat reading, with some difficulty, a newspaper that a customer had left behind the day before. A few minutes later his brother came in, looking pleased and a little mysterious.

  It rained most of the night. At dawn, however, when they got up, the sky was clear. His brother drank his coffee hurriedly and went out, saying he would be back about noon.

  Two couples came to the café during the morning, but since they took beer the boy did not have to light the fire.

  Somewhat later than twelve his brother returned. Ali looked up at his face as he came in the door, and said to himself: “Something has happened.” But he pretended to have noticed nothing and turned away unconcernedly after greeting him. Whatever it might be, he knew his brother would never tell him anything.

  The afternoon was exceptionally fine. A good many visitors came, as they always did when the weather was clear and the view good. His brother’s face did not change. He carried the trays of tea glasses out to the tables like a man walking in his sleep, and he kept his eyes averted from the customers’ faces. Each time someone arrived and walked under the arbor onto the terrace, Ali’s brother looked as though he were about to run and jump off the edge of the parapet. Once when Ali saw him smoking, he noticed his hand trembling so violently that he had difficulty in getting the cigarette to his lips, and he looked away quickly so his brother would not see him watching.

  When the evening call to prayer was over and the last carriage had rattled away down the road, the boy brought the tables and chairs in and swept the floor of the terrace. Ali stood in the doorway. His brother sat on the parapet, looking down over the olive trees in the dimming light, while the town below sank deeper into the gulf of shadow between the hills. An automobile came along the road, stopped. Against the sky Ali saw his brother’s head jerk upward. There were the two sounds of a car’s doors being shut. His brother rose, took two hesitant steps, and sat down again.

  Ali moved backward into the room, away from the door. It was not yet too dark for him to see that the two men walking across the terrace were policemen. Without slipping into his babouches he ran barefoot through the inner room of the café, across the open space to the house. He lay down on his mattress, breathing rapidly. The boy was in the kitchen preparing the evening meal.

  For a long time Ali lay there, thinking of nothing, watching the cobwebs that dangled from the ceiling move slowly in the breeze. It seemed so long to him that he thought the two men must have gone away without his having heard them. He tiptoed to the door. The boy was still in the kitchen. Ali stepped outside. The crickets were singing all around and the moonlight looked blue. He heard voices on the terrace. Without making a sound he crept into the café’s back room and lay down on the mat.

  The policemen were making fun of his brother, but not pleasantly. Their voices were harsh and they laughed too loud.

  “A Belgian, no less!” cried one with mock surprise. “He fell out of the sky like an angel, bien sûr, with the Veronal in one hand. But nobody saw him. Only you.”

  Ali caught his breath, sprang up. Then very slowly he lay down again, scarcely breathing now, still listening. “Nobody,” said his brother, his voice very low. It sounded as though he had his hands over his face. “He said she’d
just go to sleep.”

  They thought this very funny. “She did that, all right,” said one at length. Then their speech became abrupt, the tone brutal: “Allez, assez! On se débine!” They rose, yanking him up with them.

  As they pushed him into the car, his brother was still saying: “I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  The motor started up; they turned the car around and drove down the road. Soon the distant sound of its motor was covered by the song of the crickets.

  For a while Ali lay very still. Then, being hungry, he went to the house and had his dinner.

  (1951)

  If I Should Open My Mouth

  Monday 26th—

  AT LAST SUCCEEDED in finding the correct mixture of gum-arabic, sugar and essence of peppermint. Had the most complicated time getting Mrs. Crawford out of the house and keeping her out for a sufficiently long time so that I could clean up the kitchen properly before she returned. I find this plan most exhilarating, however, and I intend to carry it through to its conclusion in the face of all obstacles. The subway station details are clear in my mind, and I have worked out the entire plan of action. In fact, the project is so extremely simple that it seems at times almost suspect. It is as if I were constantly being reassured by an invisible person whose face, if only I could see it, might easily prove to be wearing a falsely benign expression. However, it is only in the evenings that I begin to think of such things. A Seconal or two ought to arrange matters, at least for tonight, so that I can knit up some of that raveled sleeve of care. Curious how disturbing the sound of a motorcycle can be out here in the still night air. There has been one idling somewhere up the road for the past ten minutes, popping and sputtering in a way calculated to drive a listener crazy. When it finally purred off into the distance it was like a relief from a constant pain. Why were machines ever invented? And what is this strange calm confidence that mankind has placed in these senseless toys it has managed to put together? That question I don’t expect ever to be able to answer. I can only say that I know it is wrong.

  Wednesday 28th—

  More complications, getting rid of Mrs. C. while I dipped the tablets. The rest, gluing the ends of the boxes and so on, can be done up here in my room. A ridiculous facet of my feeling about all this is that while I am quite aware of the reprehensible aspects of my silly little project, for some unfathomable reason I feel hugely righteous about it all—more satisfyingly virtuous than I have in years. A quirk of human nature, I suppose.

  Saturday 1st—

  I don’t know why it is that ideas never occur to me except when I lack the time to put them down or when it is literally impossible to do so, as for instance when I am seated in a dentist’s chair or surrounded by talking people at a dinner party, or even sound asleep, when often the best things come to light and are recognized as such by a critical part of my mind which is there watching, quite capable of judging but utterly unable to command an awakening and a recording. Sick-bed and fever often bring up astonishing things, but again, to what avail? A less ingenuous man than I might ask just why it should be of any importance to me that what goes on inside my mind should be put down. I am not a literary person and I never expect to be one, nor have I any intention of showing my notebooks to my friends. But that is a point not even to be discussed; long ago I determined to extract from my mind whatever by-products it could furnish. I have done it, I am still doing it, and I expect to continue to do it. The only difficulty is that whatever I am able to catch hold of is captured only after engaging in the most elaborate intrigues with my mind, playing hide-and-seek with various parts of it, exhausting myself in inventing disguises with which to surprise it, and in general having a most unpleasant time. Such as this very moment, this very page. A typical example of an occasion when there is not a single idea in view on the vast inner horizon. I am using up pages of my notebook, minutes when I might be strolling on the beach smelling the sea, in scribbling these absurd excuses, inventing alibis for not living, trying to find one more reason why I should feel justified in keeping these nonsensical journals year after year. Year after year, and life does not last forever, not even an unsatisfactory one like mine. Perhaps this is the very thing which is keeping my life so unsatisfactory. If I could argue myself into stopping it all, even into destroying the notebooks, would it be better? Yes. Each minute would be complete in itself, like a room with four walls in which one can stand, sit, move about. Each day would be like a complete city shining in the sun, with its streets, parks and crowds. And the years would be whole countries to roam in. That much is certain. But the whole? That is to say, the interstices in time, the tiny chinks in consciousness when the total is there, enveloping one, and one knows that life is not made of time any more than the world is made of space. They would still occur, and they would be illicit because there would have been no arrangements made for them. What a man can distil and excrete will necessarily have some value for him (if only for him, as in my case) because its essence is of the interstices in time. One more justification, as idiotic as all the others, of the need for living an unsatisfactory life.

  It seems to me that if one could accept existence as it is, partake of it fully, the world could be magical. The cricket on my balcony at the moment piercing the night repeatedly with its hurried needle of sound, would be welcome merely because it is there, rather than an annoyance because it distracts me from what I am trying to do. Here I am, a man of fifty-five, who enjoys a certain respect on the part of his friends, cursing a small black insect outside the window. But I dare say all this is merely procrastination. I am probably trying to put off writing down what is really on my mind. It must go down, of course, because everything must go down, and truthfully. (I thought the cricket had stopped just then, but it has started again, quite the same as before.) I delivered the first twenty boxes today.

  Sunday 2nd—

  The cricket got to be too much for me last night. It seemed to keep increasing its tempo, although I don’t know how it could have managed to chirp any faster than it had been doing at the beginning. In any case, when I put down the great fact, I waited a while trying to decide how to go about describing the distribution. Nothing untoward happened, it is quite true, while I was making the deliveries, but still, it seemed to me last night in my overwrought condition that a special effort was required for me to be able to go into the details. And while I waited, the cricket went on and on and on; faster and faster, or so it seemed to me, until it would have been impossible to set down another word. This morning, however, I am in fine shape.

  It was raining a little when I started out, a warm, fine summer drizzle. One of the things I have noticed about myself since Anna and I split up is the fact that I have a sneaking fondness for walking in the rain without rubbers or a hat. Doubtless this is a predilection I have always had without realizing it, since first it was Mother and then Anna who always seemed somehow to prevent me from indulging in it. Quite rightly, too; I should probably have caught pneumonia and died long before this if it had not been for them. But since Anna left me and I have been here in Manor Heights alone, I occasionally slip out bareheaded and without rubbers, if the rain is not too heavy. Mrs. Crawford, like a good housekeeper, has sometimes caught me at it, and brought it to my attention, hurrying to supply the needed accessories and thus obliging me to wear them. Yesterday morning, however, I managed to get out of the front door while she was in the kitchen talking to the delivery man from Macy’s. I knew he would be coming, and I had everything ready, the twenty little boxes in the left-hand pocket of my jacket, the pennies in the right-hand trouser-pocket. The only way to do anything is to have it so well rehearsed in one’s imagination that when the moment comes one does it automatically, as though for the hundredth time. Then it is all natural, and there is little likelihood of a slip-up. And there was no slip-up anywhere along the way. It was a heavy day, but not too hot because of the rain, which fell quietly as I walked down the road to the station. On the train I was not in th
e slightest degree perturbed: I knew there was no chance of any trouble. I kept marveling at the peculiar pleasure afforded by the knowledge that one has planned a thing so perfectly there can be no room for the possibility of failure, all the while being conscious that both the pleasure and the idea itself were completely childish, and that my conviction of success was, at the very least, ill-founded. But certain situations call forth certain emotions, and the mind is a thing entirely apart. I have cakes of soap that I bought twenty-five years ago, still in their wrappers, and I am saving them in the perfect confidence that the right day will come to unwrap each one and use it. And there are probably a hundred books downstairs in the library that I am eager to read, have been eager to read for years, yet refuse to read until the day comes, the day that says to me: This is the morning to start Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, or George Borrow, or Psichari, or someone else. Now, in my logical mind, I know quite well that these promised days are not likely ever to arrive: I shall never use those old cakes of soap that are stored in the linen closet, and I am reasonably sure of never reading Romany Rye, because it doesn’t interest me. But there is that other person, the ideal one that I ought to be, whom it does interest, and it comforts me to think that those things are there waiting for him. Certainly, the mind is a thing absolutely apart.

  From Grand Central I took the shuttle across to Times Square, then walked underground to the Eighth Avenue Subway. I chose the Independent as my territory, because of the great length of the stations. The air in that tunnel was almost steamy, and smelled of wet cement, hot metal and sewage. I took an express all the way up to FortTryon, worked slowly down through Harlem and then all the way to Canal Street. There was no hitch, no real difficulty, anywhere. The only place where there was even a meeting of any sort was at Twenty-third Street, where a colored woman who was standing near the machine came up behind me as I was reaching in to take out the real package, which of course made it impossible for me to put in the one I held in my left hand. I did not hesitate for a fraction of a second. It was my determination that everything be carried off perfectly. I turned aside, put my left hand back into my coat pocket, and proceeded to open the little box, shake out its two white candy-coated pellets into my hand and pop them into my mouth. If I were to suggest to anyone that this was an excellent piece of strategy, it would sound laughable, and yet it required quick thinking and a certain courage. In the first place, I have never chewed gum, and the idea of it disgusts me. (It occurs to me now that this distaste may easily have had some bearing on my choice of method for carrying out my project.) But much more than that secondary consideration was the fact that my co-ordination is not always of the best. On occasion it takes terrific concentration for me to distinguish right from left. And a second before, I had held in my left hand the other box, one of my boxes. What if, I said to myself, through some dark perversity of the subconscious, I should somehow have opened the wrong box? And as I crunched through the enamel walls of mint-sugar I found myself wondering if what I was tasting was the normal flavor, or whether it might be my flavor, my special mixture. I did not wait to get at that machine again, but continued downtown, skipping the West Fourth Street station because of the central platforms and the undesirable placing of the machines.