The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  “I was there, and I heard him going away for a long time, so long that he had to be gone, and yet he was still there, and his footsteps were still going away. He went away and there was nobody. There was the fire and I moved away from it. I wanted to hear a sound like a muezzin crying Allah akbar! or a French plane from the Pilot Base flying over the Medina, or news on the radio. It wasn’t there. And when the wind came in the door it was made of dust high as a man. A night to be chased by dogs in the Mellah. I looked in the fire and I saw an eye in there, like the eye that’s left when you burn chibb and you know there was a djinn in the house. I got up and stood. The fire was making a noise like a voice. I think it was talking. I went out and walked along the street. I walked a long time and I came to Bab el Khemiss. It was dark there and the wind was cold. I went to the wall where the camels were lying and stood there. Sometimes the men have fires and play songs on their aouadas. But they were asleep. All snoring. I walked again and went to the gate and looked out. The big trucks went by full of vegetables and I thought I would like to be on a truck and ride all night. Then in another city I would be a soldier and go to Algeria. Everything would be good if we had a war. I thought a long time. Then I was so cold I turned around and walked again. It was as cold as the belly of the oldest goat of Ijoukak. I thought I heard a muezzin and I stopped and listened. The only thing I heard was the water running in the seguia that carries the water out to the gardens. It was near the mçid of Moulay Boujemaa. I heard the water running by and I felt cold. Then I knew I was cold because I was afraid. In my head I was thinking: ‘If something should happen that never happened before, what would I do?’ You want to laugh? Hashish in your heart and wind in your head. You think it’s like your grandmother’s prayer-mat. This is the truth. This isn’t a dream brought back from another world past the customs like a teapot from Mecca. I heard the water and I was afraid. There were some trees by the path ahead of me. You know at night sometimes it’s good to pull out the sebsi and smoke. I smoked and I started to walk. And then I heard something. Not a muezzin. Something that sounded like my name. But it came up from below, from the seguia, Allah istir! And I walked with my head down. I heard it again saying my name, a voice like water, like the wind moving the leaves in the trees, a woman. It was a woman calling me. The wind was in the trees and the water was running, but there was a woman too. You think it’s kif. No, she was calling my name. Now and then, not very loud. When I was under the trees it was louder, and I heard that the voice was my mother’s. I heard that the way I can hear you. Then I knew the cat was not a cat, and I knew that Aïcha Qandicha wanted me. I thought of other nights when perhaps she had been watching me from the eyes of a cat or a donkey. I knew she was not going to catch me. Nothing in the seven skies could make me turn around. But I was cold and afraid and when I licked my lips my tongue had no spit on it. I was under the safsaf trees and I thought: ‘She’s going to reach down and try to touch me. But she can’t touch me from the front and I won’t turn around, not even if I hear a pistol.’ I remembered how the policeman had fired at me and how I’d found only one door open. I began to yell: ‘You threw me the ladder and told me to climb down. You brought me here! The filthiest whore in the Mellah, with the pus coming out of her, is a thousand times cleaner than you, daughter of all the padronas and dogs in seven worlds.’ I got past the trees and I began to run. I called up to the sky so she could hear my voice behind: ‘I hope the police put a hose in your mouth and pump you full of salt water until you crack open!’ I thought: ‘Tomorrow I’m going to buy fasoukh and tib and nidd and hasalouba and mska and all the bakhour in the Djemaa, and put them in the mijmah and burn them, and walk back and forth over the mijmah ten times slowly, so the smoke can clean out all my clothes. Then I’ll see if there’s an eye in the ashes afterwards. If there is, I’ll do it all over again right away. And every Thursday I’ll buy the bakhour and every Friday I’ll burn it. That will be strong enough to keep her away.’ If I could find a window and look through and see what they’re doing to the old woman! If only they could kill her! I kept running. There were a few people in the streets. I didn’t look to see where I was going, but I went to the street near Mustapha’s oven where the commissariat was. I stopped running before I got to the door. The one standing there saw me before that. He stepped out and raised his arm. He said to me: ‘Come here.’”

  He of the Assembly ran. He felt as though he were on horseback. He did not feel his legs moving. He saw the road coming toward him and the doors going by. The policeman had not shot at him yet, but it was worse than the other time because he was very close behind and he was blowing his whistle. “The policeman is old. At least thirty-five. I can run faster.” But from any street others could come. It was dangerous and he did not want to think about danger. He of the Assembly let songs come into his head. When it rains in the valley of Zerekten the amethysts are darker in Aguelmous. The eye wants to sleep but the head is no mattress. It was a song. Ah, my brother, the ink on the paper is like smoke in the air. What words are there to tell how long a night can be? Drunk with love, I wander in the dark. He was running through the dye-souk, and he splashed into a puddle. The whistle blew again behind him, like a crazy bird screaming. The sound made him feel like laughing, but that did not mean he was not afraid. He thought: “If I’m seventeen I can run faster. That has to be true.” It was very dark ahead. He had to slow his running. There was no time for his eyes to get used to the dark. He nearly ran into the wall of the shop at the end of the street. He turned to the right and saw the narrow alley ahead of him. The police had tied the old woman naked to a table with her thin legs wide apart and were sliding electrodes up inside her. He ran ahead. He could see the course of the alley now even in the dark. Then he stopped dead, moved to the wall, and stood still. He heard the footsteps slowing down. “He’s going to turn to the left.” And he whispered aloud: “It ends that way.” The footsteps stopped and there was silence. The policeman was looking into the silence and listening into the dark to the left and to the right. He of the Assembly could not see him or hear him, but he knew that was what he was doing. He did not move. When its rains in the valley of Zerekten. A hand seized his shoulder. He opened his mouth and swiftly turned, but the man had moved and was pushing him from the side. He felt the wool of the man’s djellaba against the back of his hand. He had gone through a door and the man had shut it without making any noise. Now they both stood still in the dark, listening to the policeman walking quickly by outside the door. Then the man struck a match. He was facing the other way, and there was a flight of stairs ahead. The man did not turn around, but he said, “Come up,” and they both climbed the stairs. At the top the man took out a key and opened a door. He of the Assembly stood in the doorway while the man lit a candle. He liked the room because it had many mattresses and cushions and a white sheepskin under the tea-tray in the corner of the floor. The man turned around and said: “Sit down.” His face looked serious and kind and unhappy. He of the Assembly had never seen it before, but he knew it was not the face of a policeman. He of the Assembly pulled out his sebsi.

  Ben Tajah looked at the boy and asked him: “What did you mean when you said down there: ‘It ends that way?’ I heard you say it.” The boy was embarrassed. He smiled and looked at the floor. Ben Tajah felt happy to have him there. He had been standing outside the door downstairs in the dark for a long time, trying to make himself go to the Café of the Two Bridges and talk to the qahouaji. In his mind it was almost as though he had already been there and spoken with him. He had heard the qahouaji telling him that he had seen no letter, and he had felt his own dismay. He had not wanted to believe that, but he would be willing to say yes, I made a mistake and there was no letter, if only he could find out where the words had come from. For the words were certainly in his head: “…and the two eyes are not brothers.” That was like a footprint found in the garden the morning after a bad dream, the proof that there had been a reason for the dream, that something had been there aft
er all. Ben Tajah had not been able to go or to stay. He had started and stopped so many times that now, although he did not know it, he was very tired. When a man is tired he mistakes the hopes of children for the knowledge of men. It seemed to him that He of the Assembly’s words had a meaning all for him. Even though the boy might not know it, he could have been sent by Allah to help him at that minute. In a nearby street a police whistle blew. The boy looked at him. Ben Tajah did not care very much what the answer would be, but he said: “Why are they looking for you?” The boy held out his lighted sebsi and his mottoui fat with kif. He did not want to talk because he was listening. Ben Tajah smoked kif only when a friend offered it to him, but he understood that the police had begun once more to try to enforce their law against kif. Each year they arrested people for a few weeks, and then stopped arresting them. He looked at the boy, and decided that probably he smoked too much. With the sebsi in his hand he was sitting very still listening to the voices of some passers-by in the street below. “I know who he is,” one said. “I’ve got his name from Mustapha.” “The baker?” “That’s the one.” They walked on. The boy’s expression was so intense that Ben Tajah said to him: “It’s nobody. Just people.” He was feeling happy because he was certain that Satan would not appear before him as long as the boy was with him. He said quietly: “Still you haven’t told me why you said: ‘It ends that way.’” The boy filled his sebsi slowly and smoked all the kif in it. “I meant,” he said, “thanks to Allah. Praise the sky and the earth where it is bright. What else can you mean when something ends?” Ben Tajah nodded his head. Pious thoughts can be of as much use for keeping Satan at a distance as camphor or bakhour dropped onto hot coals. Each holy word is worth a high column of smoke, and the eyelids do not smart afterward. “He has a good heart,” thought Ben Tajah, “even though he is probably a guide for the Nazarenes.” And he asked himself why it would not be possible for the boy to have been sent to protect him from Satan. “Probably not. But it could be.” The boy offered him the sebsi. He took it and smoked it. After that Ben Tajah began to think that he would like to go to the Café of the Two Bridges and speak to the qahouaji about the letter. He felt that if the boy went with him the qahouaji might say there had been a letter, and that even if the man could not remember, he would not mind so much because he would be less afraid. He waited until he thought the boy was not nervous about going into the street, and then he said: “Let’s go out and get some tea.” “Good,” said the boy. He was not afraid of the police if he was with Ben Tajah. They went through the empty streets, crossed the Djemaa el Fna and the garden beyond. When they were near the café, Ben Tajah said to the boy: “Do you know the Café of the Two Bridges?” The boy said he always sat there, and Ben Tajah was not surprised. It seemed to him that perhaps he had even seen him there. He seized the boy’s arm. “Were you there today?” he asked him. The boy said, “Yes,” and turned to look at him. He let go of the arm. “Nothing,” he said. “Did you ever see me there?” They came to the gate of the café and Ben Tajah stopped walking. “No,” the boy said. They went across the first bridge and then the second bridge, and sat down in a corner. Not many people were left outside. Those inside were making a great noise. The qahouaji brought the tea and went away again. Ben Tajah did not say anything to him about the letter. He wanted to drink the tea quietly and leave trouble until later.

  When the muezzin called from the minaret of the Koutoubia, He of the Assembly thought of being in the Agdal. The great mountains were ahead of him and the olive trees stood in rows on each side of him. Then he heard the trickle of water and he remembered the seguia that is there in the Agdal, and he swiftly came back to the Café of the Two Bridges. Aïcha Qandicha can be only where there are trees by running water. “She comes only for single men by trees and fresh moving water. Her arms are gold and she calls in the voice of the most cherished one.” Ben Tajah gave him the sebsi. He filled it and smoked it. “When a man sees her face he will never see another woman’s face. He will make love with her all the night, and every night, and in the sunlight by the walls, before the eyes of children. Soon he will be an empty pod and he will leave this world for his home in Jehennem.” The last carriage went by, taking the last tourists down the road beside the ramparts to their rooms in the Mamounia. He of the Assembly thought: “The eye wants to sleep. But this man is alone in the world. He wants to talk all night. He wants to tell me about his wife and how he beat her and how she broke everything. Why do I want to know all those things? He is a good man but he has no head.” Ben Tajah was sad. He said: “What have I done? Why does Satan choose me?” Then at last he told the boy about the letter, about how he wondered if it had had his name on the envelope and how he was not even sure there had been a letter. When he finished he looked sadly at the boy. “And you didn’t see me.” He of the Assembly shut his eyes and kept them shut for a while. When he opened them again he said: “Are you alone in the world?” Ben Tajah stared at him and did not speak. The boy laughed. “I did see you,” he said, “but you had no letter. I saw you when you were getting up and I thought you were old. Then I saw you were not old. That’s all I saw.” “No, it isn’t,” Ben Tajah said. “You saw I was alone.” He of the Assembly shrugged. “Who knows?” He filled the sebsi and handed it to Ben Tajah. The kif was in Ben Tajah’s head. His eyes were small. He of the Assembly listened to the wind in the telephone wires, took back the sebsi and filled it again. Then he said: “You think Satan is coming to make trouble for you because you’re alone in the world. I see that. Get a wife or somebody to be with you always, and you won’t think about it any more. That’s true. Because Satan doesn’t come to men like you.” He of the Assembly did not believe this himself. He knew that Father Satan can come for anyone in the world, but he hoped to live with Ben Tajah, so he would not have to borrow money in the souks to buy food. Ben Tajah drank some tea. He did not want the boy to see that his face was happy. He felt that the boy was right, and that there never had been a letter. “Two days on a bus is a long time. A man can get very tired,” he said. Then he called the qahouaji and told him to bring two more glasses of tea. He of the Assembly gave him the sebsi. He knew that Ben Tajah wanted to stay as long as possible in the Café of the Two Bridges. He put his finger into the mottoui. The kif was almost gone. “We can talk,” he said. “Not much kif is in the mottoui.” The qahouaji brought the tea. They talked for an hour or more. The qahouaji slept and snored. They talked about Satan and the bad thing it is to live alone, to wake up in the dark and know that there is no one else nearby. Many times He of the Assembly told Ben Tajah that he must not worry. The kif was all gone. He held his empty mottoui in his hand. He did not understand how he had got back to the town without climbing up out of the soup-kettle. Once he said to Ben Tajah: “I never climbed back up.” Ben Tajah looked at him and said he did not understand. He of the Assembly told him the story. Ben Tajah laughed. He said: “You smoke too much kif, brother.” He of the Assembly put his sebsi into his pocket. “And you don’t smoke and you’re afraid of Satan,” he told Ben Tajah. “No!” Ben Tajah shouted. “By Allah! No more! But one thing is in my head, and I can’t put it out. The sky trembles and the earth is afraid, and the two eyes are not brothers. Did you ever hear those words? Where did they come from?” Ben Tajah looked hard at the boy. He of the Assembly understood that these had been the words on the paper, and he felt cold in the middle of his back because he had never heard them before and they sounded evil. He knew, too, that he must not let Ben Tajah know this. He began to laugh. Ben Tajah took hold of his knee and shook it. His face was troubled. “Did you ever hear them?” He of the Assembly went on laughing. Ben Tajah shook his leg so hard that he stopped and said: “Yes!” When Ben Tajah waited and he said nothing more, he saw the man’s face growing angry, and so he said: “Yes, I’ve heard them. But will you tell me what happened to me and how I got out of the soup-kettle if I tell you about those words?” Ben Tajah understood that the kif was going away from the boy’s head. But he s
aw that it had not all gone, or he would not have been asking that question. And he said: “Wait a while for the answer to that question.” He of the Assembly woke the qahouaji and Ben Tajah paid him, and they went out of the café. They did not talk while they walked. When they got to the Mouassine mosque, Ben Tajah held out his hand to say goodnight, but He of the Assembly said: “I’m looking in my head for the place I heard your words. I’ll walk to your door with you. Maybe I’ll remember.” Ben Tajah said: “May Allah help you find it.” And he took his arm and they walked to Ben Tajah’s door while He of the Assembly said nothing. They stood outside the door in the dark. “Have you found it?” said Ben Tajah. “Almost,” said He of the Assembly. Ben Tajah thought that perhaps when the kif had gone out of the boy’s head he might be able to tell him about the words. He wanted to know how the boy’s head was, and so he said: “Do you still want to know how you got out of the soup-kettle?” He of the Assembly laughed. “You said you would tell me later,” he told Ben Tajah. “I will,” said Ben Tajah. “Come upstairs. Since we have to wait, we can sit down.” Ben Tajah opened the door and they went upstairs. This time He of the Assembly sat down on Ben Tajah’s bed. He yawned and stretched. It was a good bed. He was glad it was not the mat by the bamboo fence at the Café of the Two Bridges. “And so, tell me how I got out of the soup-kettle,” he said laughing. Ben Tajah said: “You’re still asking me that? Have you thought of the words?” “I know the words,” the boy said. “The sky trembles…” Ben Tajah did not want him to say them again. “Where did you hear them? What are they? That’s what I want to know.” The boy shook his head. Then he sat up very straight and looked beyond Ben Tajah, beyond the wall of the room, beyond the streets of the Medina, beyond the gardens, toward the mountains where the people speak Tachelhait. He remembered being a little boy. “This night is a jewel in my crown,” he thought. “It went this way.” And he began to sing, making up a melody for the words Ben Tajah had told him. When he had finished “…and the two eyes are not brothers,” he added a few more words of his own and stopped singing. “That’s all I remember of the song,” he said. Ben Tajah clapped his hands together hard. “A song!” he cried. “I must have heard it on the radio.” He of the Assembly shrugged. “They play it sometimes,” he said. “I’ve made him happy,” he thought. “But I won’t ever tell him another lie. That’s the only one. What I’m going to do now is not the same as lying.” He got up off the bed and went to the window. The muezzins were calling the fjer. “It’s almost morning,” he said to Ben Tajah. “I still have kif in my head.” “Sit down,” said Ben Tajah. He was sure now there had been no letter. He of the Assembly took off his djellaba and got into bed. Ben Tajah looked at him in surprise. Then he undressed and got into bed beside him. He left the candle burning on the floor beside the bed. He meant to stay awake, but he went to sleep because he was not used to smoking kif and the kif was in his head. He of the Assembly did not believe he was asleep. He lay for a long time without moving. He listened to the voices of the muezzins, and he thought that the man beside him would speak or move. When he saw that Ben Tajah was surely asleep, he was angry. “This is how he treats a friend who has made him happy. He forgets his trouble and his friend too.” He thought about it more and he was angrier. The muezzins were still calling the fjer. “Before they stop, or he will hear.” Very slowly he got out of the bed. He put on his djellaba and opened the door. Then he went back and took all the money out of Ben Tajah’s pockets. In with the banknotes was an envelope that was folded. It had Ben Tajah’s name written across it. He pulled out the piece of paper inside and held it near the candle, and then he looked at it as he would have looked at a snake. The words were written there. Ben Tajah’s face was turned toward the wall and he was snoring. He of the Assembly held the paper above the flame and burned it, and then he burned the envelope. He blew the black paper-ashes across the floor. Without making any noise he ran downstairs and let himself out into the street. He shut the door. The money was in his pocket and he walked fast to his aunt’s house. His aunt awoke and was angry for a while. Finally he said: “It was raining. How could I come home? Let me sleep.” He had a little kif hidden under his pillow. He smoked a pipe. Then he looked across his sleep to the morning and thought: “A pipe of kif before breakfast gives a man the strength of a hundred camels in the courtyard.”