The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  A cloud seemed to spread across Monsieur Royer’s sunburned face. Slowly he said: “Ah. I see that people have been talking to you about me.”

  “No! No!” she cried, startled and then horrified.

  “Naturally they have,” he said calmly. “We have never even been presented one to the other. Do you realize that? Yes. Of course they have. Why not? They are quite right.” He paused. “Luncheon will be ready soon, and I must first prepare. But I want to answer your question. Yes. I think such a thing is despicable. You used the words: ‘against her will.’ But there are a great many girls who have no will, like the natives here, or even the Spanish girls of the lower class. It is all the same to them, as long as they receive a gift. They have no wish one way or the other. And if they have no will, one can scarcely go against it, can one?”

  She was silent. “I wasn’t talking about you,” she finally said.

  He looked at her very seriously; he seemed not to have heard her. “Do you see what I mean to say?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, letting the sand run between her fingers. “But I really didn’t mean—”

  He had risen.

  “Good morning, madame.”

  She looked around: her mother stood there. She greeted Monsieur Royer crisply. Then she looked down.

  “Charlotte, it’s lunchtime. Come up and dress.” There was an edge of fury in her voice that recalled long-forgotten days of childhood misbehavior and recrimination.

  The upward climb was steep. Charlotte went first, with her mother panting behind her. “Charlotte, I’m extremely angry with you. You’re not a child any more, you know—” Between each sentence she ceased speaking and took a breath. “Your father and I as much as told you to have nothing to do with Monsieur Royer. How explicit must one be? I was going to tell you all about him this morning. But of course you disappeared. I don’t know why—I couldn’t be more annoyed with you. You’re thoroughly thoughtless and egotistical—”

  Charlotte listened with apathy to the diatribe, walking quickly so that her mother, in attempting to keep up with her, would have the maximum difficulty in delivering it. At one point she had been about to protest that Monsieur Royer had only happened by a short while ago, and that she had been sitting with him only a few minutes, but she felt that this would seem to put her in the wrong; it would sound like an excuse, and she was determined to admit to no fault. Since she did not answer at all, her mother’s voice softened tentatively as she continued: “Don’t you think it’s time you changed, and thought of others?”

  “I expect so,” she said vaguely, adding in a louder voice, “But I can’t see what you have against poor Monsieur Royer to say such horrid things about him.”

  Mrs. Callender snorted impatiently.

  “Oh, good heavens, Charlotte! I know all about the man. Please believe me, he has a most unsavory reputation. If only for that, he’s no one for you to see. But I happen to know as well that his reputation is completely justified. He’s a confirmed roué and a scoundrel. In any case, I don’t intend to argue the point with you. It’s an established fact. But what I do intend to have is your promise—your promise that you won’t speak to him again unless either your father or I, one of us is present.”

  They were at the top of the cliff. Mrs. Callender would have liked to stop a moment and catch her breath, but Charlotte hurried on. The path was less steep here, and her mother quickly caught up with her, breathing heavily. She sounded angrier now.

  “I refuse to stand by and watch an old libertine like that try to ruin your life—I won’t have you seeing him. Do you understand me?”

  Charlotte spoke without looking around. “Yes, of course I understand. But I don’t agree.”

  “It’s of no interest to me whether you agree or not!” cried Mrs. Callender shrilly. “I expect you think it’s brilliant and becoming to show spirit—”

  They had reached the vegetable garden. One of the nurses from Gibraltar was sitting on the porch of her cottage sunning herself. Mrs. Callender lowered her voice and became cajoling. “Darling, please don’t ruin my pleasure in your stay by being stubborn and belligerent about this.”

  “Do you want me to be rude to him?”

  “It’s not necessary. But if you disobey me I shall be the one to be rude. I shall simply ask him to leave. And I’ve never done that to anyone.”

  “Then the only thing for me to do is to tell him in front of you that you’ve forbidden me to speak to him.”

  They stood in the garden between their respective cottages.

  “If that’s the pleasantest way you can devise, do so by all means,” said her mother acidly. “I’m sure I don’t mind.” She went into her room and shut the door. Charlotte stood a moment looking after her.

  In her mirror she examined her lip; the salt water had brought the swelling down. She dressed quickly and went up to the dining-room, noting to her immense relief that Mr. Van Siclen was not there. During lunch she glanced out of the window and saw Monsieur Royer being served on the terrace in the sun; she wondered if he were eating outside because he liked it, or out of consideration for her. While her parents were still finishing their dessert she excused herself and went out. She paused an instant on the steps, and then walked casually toward the table where Monsieur Royer sat sipping his coffee. He rose and seized a chair from the next table for her. Knowing she was being watched through the window, she sat down with him. Hassan brought her a cup of coffee and they talked brightly for a quarter of an hour or so. She fully expected her mother to appear and precipitate a scene, but nothing happened. When she got up and went down to her cottage she thought, “Now she’ll come,” but she lay awake a long time listening for her mother’s footsteps, and they did not arrive. At last she sank into a heavy slumber.

  7

  IN THE ROSE GARDEN behind the bar Mr. and Mrs. Callender walked back and forth, conversing in low tones.

  “You saw it!” exclaimed Mrs. Callender in an intense whisper. “Pure infatuation, nothing else. It’s not like Charlotte to behave this way. She’d never defy me like this. I admit it was only a provocation, the whole little act, yes. But she’s never been this way before. The man has bewitched her, it’s perfectly clear. We must do something. Immediately.”

  Back and forth along the short, bordered path they walked. “We’ve got to send him away,” she said.

  “Impossible,” said Mr. Callender.

  “Then I shall take Charlotte and go to a hotel until he leaves,” she declared.

  Mr. Callender grunted.

  “All she needs,” he said at length, “is to meet some boys her own age. The ones she used to know here are mostly gone. Too bad the dance at the Club isn’t tonight or tomorrow night. She’d forget about Royer in short order.”

  Mrs. Callender sighed. “If he could only be put on ice until the dance,” she mused. Then she straightened and tried once more. “Oh, Bob, we must get rid of him.”

  Her husband stood still. “The time to get rid of Monsieur Royer was before he came. You had your chance. I asked you if you wanted me to wire him there was no room, and you said no. It’s one thing to tell someone the place is full up. And another to send a man away for no reason at all. You can’t do it.”

  “No reason at all, indeed!” she snorted.

  Now she sat in her room on the edge of the bed and fidgeted. The long windswept afternoon depressed her. There was too intimate and mysterious a connection between what she felt, and the aspect of the countryside, now brilliant under the ardent sun, now somber in shadow as the endless procession of separate clouds raced past. It was easy to say, “This is a sad day,” and attribute it to the unfortunate coincidence which had brought Charlotte and Monsieur Royer here at the same time. But that did not really explain anything. The aching nostalgia for her own youth remained—the bright Andalusian days when each hour was filled to bursting with the promise of magic, when her life lay ahead of her, inexhaustible, as yet untouched. It was true that she had not always bee
n happy then, but there had been the imminent possibility of it, at every moment. And the people around her had not had the faculty they now had of becoming suddenly sinister. Even her husband, when she looked at him quickly, sometimes seemed to be coming hurriedly back from somewhere not in the light. It disconcerted her, and if she ever had dwelt on it for very long at a time, it would have terrified her.

  A rhaïta was being played fairly far away on the mountain, announcing a wedding. It would probably go on for several days and nights. She put her hands over her ears. As if that could help! Whenever she took them away, the slippery little sound would be there, twisting thinly around itself like a tree-snake. She pressed her palms more tightly against her head, until the vacuum hurt her eardrums. But the images had been awakened: the donkeys laden with blankets and painted wooden chests, the procession of lanterns, the native women in white with their drums… She jumped up, looked at her watch, stepped to the mirror and powdered her face. Then she went down to Mr. Van Siclen’s cottage. He had had lunch in town with the American Vice-Consul, saying that he would be back early as he was returning to El Menar before dark. She knocked; there was no answer. She went up to the bar where he often sat thumping out old tunes with one finger on the piano. He was talking with the barman.

  “Mr. Van Siclen, I must speak with you.”

  “Sure.” He followed her outside.

  “I know all this won’t interest you in the least, but it’s the only favor I shall ever ask of you. Monsieur Royer has his eye on Charlotte. No, don’t laugh. It’s most serious. I’m counting on you. You must help me.”

  “Well, well!” he said. And after a bit: “O.K. What do you want me to do?”

  “I thought if you could invite him out to El Menar…Just for a few days…” she hastily added as he frowned. “…Just for two or three days. At least until I’ve had the opportunity of talking with her. You see, for some mad reason she seems quite taken with him as well. There’s no explaining these things. But one must act. I shall be eternally grateful to you.”

  “Well,” he said slowly, smoothing his hair, “I’m willing to extend the invitation, but how do I know he’ll accept?”

  “I think you can make it attractive to him if you really try,” she said, smiling significantly. “Playing up the native life a bit…You know him, after all. You know what amuses him.”

  “Damn it!” he cried, suddenly annoyed. “I don’t want him out there trailing me around all day while I work.”

  And seeing her face, he added resignedly: “But I’ll ask him, I’ll ask him.”

  “You are a darling,” she said.

  It was done. For some reason she felt no doubt that Monsieur Royer would accept. Fittingly, the sun was shining as she went through the garden to her cottage. It was almost an anticlimax when at tea-time Monsieur Royer came to announce his departure.

  “We shall miss you,” she smiled. “I expect you’ll want to keep your cottage.” And when he said that he did, she generously suggested: “We’ll put you on demi-pension for those days. That way you’ll only be paying a little more than the price of the room.”

  “No, no,” he protested politely but she saw that he was pleased.

  A little while later she watched her two guests drive off in the open jeep into the twilight.

  At dinner Mr. Callender looked around the room. “Where’s everybody?” he said.

  “Oh, Mr. Van Siclen’s gone back to El Menar and taken Monsieur Royer along with him.”

  “What?” He was incredulous.

  Charlotte said nothing. Several times during the meal Mrs. Callender glanced across at her, but if she was feeling any emotion she did not betray it.

  “She’s rather a little sneak,” said Mrs. Callender to herself, disappointed; she had expected a little more reaction than this.

  Charlotte was thinking: “He’s gone, thank Heavens.” But she meant Mr. Van Siclen. She went to bed immediately after dinner, slept soundly, and awoke early with a desire to see Gloria Gallegos, a friend from her lycée days. She breakfasted, dressed, and in the fresh of the morning set out on foot for town. It was not a great walk; she could make it in an hour. The moving air was a tonic. The sun had not yet begun to weigh it down with its heat, nor the flowers with their noonday scent, nor the insects with their droning. When she arrived in the market she was startled to see Mr. Van Siclen’s jeep parked by the Ciné Régis. She kept her face averted as she passed, lest he should be in it. But she came face to face with him at the corner.

  “Hi, there!” he said, grasping her arm, quite, she thought, as if nothing had ever occurred between them.

  She was not effusive in her greeting. The crowd of Berbers passing pushed them this way and that.

  “Where are you off to so early?” he demanded.

  “Just up to the Boulevard,” she said coldly.

  “It’s quite a walk. Let me take you up.”

  “I enjoy walking.”

  “Come on, be a good sport. Don’t go on having hard feelings. You’ll get old before your time.”

  He did not let go of her arm: the easiest way out was to accept. She let him lead her back to the jeep and help her in. As they went around the north end of the market they met the pension’s station wagon which had just deposited Mr. Richmond at the bank. She waved to Pedro, who waved back.

  “Am I forgiven?” asked Mr. Van Siclen.

  “Only if you don’t go on talking about it,” she replied.

  “That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly. “I had to come in for kerosene. There wasn’t even enough for the lamps last night. Poor old Royer had to go to bed by moonlight, I guess. I didn’t hear him come in.”

  He let her out at the Boulevard. At lunchtime she tried to telephone her mother to tell her that she was eating at the Gallegos’, but the line was having one of its frequent bad days, and she was unable to reach the pension.

  “Bob, I am worried about Charlotte,” Mrs. Callendar was saying at lunch. (If the telephone had not been out of order it would have rung at that instant.) “She was already gone at eight when I went in to see her. It’s not like her to go out so early. Where can she be?”

  “Don’t get so wrought up,” said Mr. Callender gently. “Quit thinking she’s a kid. She’s in town somewhere and she can’t get through on the phone, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Callender pouted. “She’s been intolerable since the moment she arrived. Inconsiderate and perverse. I’ve done nothing all morning but worry about her.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’ve a fearful migraine as a result. It’s that beastly Monsieur Royer,” she added with vehemence.

  At the next table Mr. Burton laid aside his book and feebly inquired: “I expect your daughter is pleased to be back home?”

  Mrs. Callender turned to face him. “Oh, yes! She adores it here. Of course it’s ideal for young people.”

  “Oh, quite! Yes, indeed.”

  After lunch she took more aspirin. Now she felt a slight nausea as well. She lay on her bed, the curtains drawn, reflecting with a dim satisfaction that at least Charlotte would know she had made her mother ill. The wind still blew, the trees still swayed and roared, and through their sound from time to time crept the shrill, tiny notes of the distant rhaïta. She dozed, woke, dozed. At tea-time Halima knocked to ask if she wanted tea in her room. She inquired if Señorita Charlotte had returned. Halima had not seen her.

  Although she wanted Charlotte to find her ill in bed when she returned, she disliked having tea in her cottage alone and, deciding to run the risk of rising, went up to the salon in the main house for her tea. Only the nurses were there, but she sat down anyway. Soon she heard Pedro’s voice in the hall and excused herself.

  “Oiga, Pedro,” she called, running out. “You haven’t seen Señorita Charlotte this afternoon, have you?”

  “Esta tarde? No, señora. Not since this morning in the market, riding with Señor Van Siclen in his car.”

  “Cómo!” she cried; the word
was like an explosion. Her eyes had become very large. Pedro looked at her and thought that perhaps Señora Callender was about to faint.

  “Get the camioneta,” she said weakly. “Vamos a El Menar.”

  “Now?” he asked, surprised.

  “Immediately.”

  8

  SHE SAT IN FRONT with Pedro, her head pounding so hard that it was merely an enormous and imprecise pain she carried with her. The familiar landmarks as they passed made no sense. She could not have identified one. Nor did she know which of the three enraged her most: Charlotte, for her effrontery and disobedience, Mr. Van Siclen for his perfidy, or Monseiur Royer, for existing at all.

  As long as she was sitting in the moving car her anger remained at fever pitch. But when Pedro stopped in the wilderness, pointing to a road strewn with large stones, and remarking that they would have to walk up to get to the village, her annoyance at this unexpected obstacle somewhat calmed her. It was quite dark by this time, and the faint light from Pedro’s torch wavered uncertainly. Out here the wind came directly off the Atlantic; it was violent and damp.

  The road led upward, zigzagging among huge boulders. Each minute the sound of the sea became more audible. She had never been here before; the idea of this absurd village perched on the crags above the ocean filled her with terror. They met a Berber on his way down, and by the flashlight’s feeble glimmer she saw him, stocky and dark-skinned, and carrying a shepherd’s crook. “Msalkheir,” he said as he passed. He was in the darkness back of them before they could ask him how far the village was. Suddenly they came to a hut. There was a flickering light inside, and the sound of many goats and sheep. A little farther on Pedro spied the jeep. She caught herself thinking, “How does he ever drive up that trail?” and quickly remembered the seriousness of her errand.