The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  It was Madame herself who first remarked on the poor complexion of the transplants. She called to Ahmed, who came up from the bottom of the garden.

  I don’t know, she said, shaking her head. As she pulled at a leaf of one of the plants, it fell over, a dry stick exposing its rootless base. She seized the next plant and lifted it up.

  Ahmed! she cried. These things are just stems stuck into the ground. They’re not growing plants at all!

  He examined the two plants, and gazed at her, feeling sorry for her. The wind was blowing her hair all across her face, and she seemed ready to burst into tears.

  They looked so healthy, she said.

  Together they went to examine the agapanthus, the tuberoses. The filthy swine! cried Madame. No wonder he didn’t want me around while he planted them!

  Suddenly she stared at Ahmed. He’s coming back. He said he was going to bring me some rose bushes.

  He won’t dare come back after what he’s done, Ahmed declared.

  Madame looked even more distraught. And to think—she began, checking herself as she realized that up to a few minutes ago she still had been considering the possibility of dismissing Ahmed and hiring the man. She could not admit to such disloyalty. Ahmed knew what she had stopped herself from saying, and he smiled grimly.

  If he comes back, don’t let him in. Don’t even talk to him. Call me and I’ll take care of him.

  I’d much prefer that, she said. I don’t want to see that disgusting face again.

  The wind blew, the dead plants were dumped onto the compost heap, and the brief scandal was no longer mentioned. Ahmed was certain, however, that the man would return.

  One day he did. Johara came to the toolshed to say that the bad man was at the door, and Madame was very nervous.

  Ahmed put on his djellaba and walked out to the entrance door. He opened it, and looking sternly at the fat man, intoned, as though repeating an order he had learned by rote: Madame said to tell you she knows where you got the flowers, and not to come back here unless you want to explain it to the police.

  Then he shut the door and listened while the truck drove away. Madame was waiting in the doorway of the entrance hall.

  He’s gone, he said.

  Ahmed, what would I do without you? She stared at him for a moment, shaking her head. What did you say to him?

  I told him no true Moslem would play tricks on a woman with no husband.

  Mrs. Pritchard reflected. I’m sure that was exactly the right thing to say. I’m afraid I should have insulted him and gone to bed with a headache afterward. I’m very grateful to you.

  Still uneasy because of the deception he had practised upon Madame, and more than a little guilty for having destroyed so many healthy, expensive plants, he found that it made him feel better to say: Everybody plays tricks nowadays, Madame. Everybody.

  For him it served as a comforting admission of his wrongdoing, but she took it as a hint. Oh, I shan’t do it again, I promise you, she said. He glanced at her approvingly and turned to go.

  You’re right, Madame, he told her. Don’t believe anybody.

  (1980)

  Kitty

  KITTY LIVED IN a medium-sized house with a big garden around it. She loved some things, like picnics and going to the circus, and she hated other things, like school and going to the dentist’s.

  One day she asked her mother: “Why is my name Kitty?”

  “Your name is really Catherine,” her mother said. “We just call you Kitty.”

  This reply did not satisfy Kitty, and she decided that her mother did not want to tell her the truth. This made her think even more about her name. Finally she thought she had the answer. Her name was Kitty because some day she was going to grow up into a cat. She felt proud of herself for having found this out, and she began to look into the mirror to see if perhaps she was beginning to look like a cat, or at least like a kitten.

  For a long time she could see nothing at all but her own pink face. But one day when she went up to the glass she could hardly believe what she saw, for around her mouth tiny gray whiskers were beginning to sprout. She jumped up and down with delight, and waited for her mother to say something about them. Her mother, however, had no time for such things, and so she noticed nothing.

  Each day when Kitty looked at her reflection she saw more wonderful changes. Slowly the whiskers grew longer and stood out farther from her face, and a soft gray fur started to cover her skin. Her ears grew pointed and she had soft pads on the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. All this seemed too good to be true, and Kitty was sad to find that nobody had said a word about the marvelous change in her. One day as she was playing she turned to her mother and said: “Meow. I’m Kitty. Do you like the color of my fur?”

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “What color is it?”

  “It’s gray!”

  “Oh, gray. Very pretty,” said her mother, and Kitty saw with a sinking heart that she did not care what color the fur was.

  After that she tried to make several neighbors remark on her fine whiskers, her velvety ears and her short fluffy tail, and they all agreed that these things were very nice, and then paid no more attention to them. Kitty did not care too much. If they could not see how different she had become, at least she herself could.

  One summer morning when Kitty awoke, she discovered that her fingernails and toenails had been replaced by splendid new pearly gray claws that she could stick out or pull in as she chose. She jumped out of bed and ran into the garden. It was still very early. Her mother and father were asleep, but there were some birds walking around on the lawn.

  She slipped behind some bushes and watched. After a long time she began to crawl forward. The branches caught her nightgown, so she tore it off. When one of the birds came very close to her, she sprang forward and caught it. And at that moment she knew that she was no longer a girl at all, and that she would never have to be one again.

  The bird tasted good, but she decided not to eat it. Instead, she rolled on her back in the sun and licked her paws. Then she sat up and washed her face. After a while she thought she would go over to Mrs. Tinsley’s house and see if she could get some breakfast. She climbed up to the top of the wall and ran quickly along it to the roof of the garage. From there she scrambled down the trellis into Mrs. Tinsley’s backyard. She heard sounds in the kitchen, so she went up to the screen door and looked in. The she said: “Meow.” She had to keep saying it for quite a while before Mrs. Tinsley came and saw her.

  “Well, if that isn’t the cutest kitten!” Mrs. Tinsley said, and she called to her husband and her sister. They came and saw the small gray kitten with one paw raised, scratching at the screen. Of course they let her in, and soon Kitty was lapping up a saucer full of milk. She spent the day sleeping, curled up on a cushion, and in the evening she was given a bowl of delicious raw liver.

  After dinner she decided to go back home. Mr. Tinsley saw her at the kitchen door, but instead of opening the door for her, he picked her up and locked her into the cellar. This was not at all what Kitty wanted, and she cried all night.

  In the morning they let her go upstairs, and gave her a big bowl of milk. When she had drunk it she waited in the kitchen until Mrs. Tinsley opened the door to go out into the yard. Then she ran as fast as she could between Mrs. Tinsley’s feet, and climbed up onto the roof of the garage. She looked down at Mrs. Tinsley, who was calling: “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.” Then she turned and ran the other way. Soon she was in her own garden. She went up to all the doors and looked in. There were policemen inside the house with her mother and father. They were holding Kitty’s torn nightgown in their hands, and her mother was crying and sobbing. No one paid the slightest attention to Kitty.

  She went sadly back to Mrs. Tinsley’s house, and there she stayed for many weeks. Sometimes she would go over to her own house and peek again through the doors, and often she saw her mother or her father. But they looked very different from the way they had looked before
, and even if they noticed her, they never came to the door to let her in.

  It was nice not having to go to school, and Mr. and Mrs. Tinsley were very good to her, but Kitty loved her mother and father more than she could love anyone else, and she wanted to be with them.

  Mr. and Mrs. Tinsley let her go out whenever she pleased now, because she always came back. She would go to her house at night and look in through the window to see her father sitting alone reading the paper. This was how she knew that her mother had gone away. Even if she cried and pushed her claws against the window, her father paid no attention to her, and she knew that he would never let her in. Only her mother would do that. She would come and open the door and take her in her arms and rub the fur on her forehead and kiss her.

  One day several months later when Kitty climbed over the wall into her own garden, she saw her mother sitting in a chair outside. She looked much better, almost the way she had used to look. Kitty walked slowly toward her mother over the grass, holding her tail in the air. Her mother sat up straighter, watching as she came nearer. Then she put out her hand and wriggled her fingers at Kitty. “Well, the pretty pussycat,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

  Kitty went near enough so that her mother could rub her head and scratch her cheeks. She waved her tail and purred with delight as she felt her mother’s fingers stroking her fur. Then she jumped up into her mother’s lap and lay curled up there, working her claws joyously in and out. After a long time her mother lifted her up and held her against her face, and then she carried her into the house.

  That evening Kitty lay happily in her mother’s lap. She did not want to try her father’s lap because she was afraid he might push her off. Besides, she could see that it would not be very comfortable.

  Kitty knew that her mother already loved her, and that her father would learn to love her. At last she was living exactly the life she always had wished for. Sometimes she thought it would be nice if she could make them understand that she was really Kitty, but she knew there was no way of doing that. She never heard them say the word Kitty again. Instead, because her fur was so long and fine that when she moved she seemed to be floating, they named her Feather. She had no lessons to worry about, she never had to go to the dentist’s, and she no longer had to wonder whether her mother was telling her the truth or not, because she knew the truth. She was Kitty, and she was happy.

  (1980)

  The Husband

  ABDALLAH LIVED WITH his wife in a two-room house on a hillside several miles from the center of town. They had two children. The girl was in school and the boy lived at the house of an Englishman for whom he did gardening.

  Long ago the woman had set the pattern of their life by going out to work as a maid in Nazarene houses. She was strong and jolly, and the Nazarenes liked her. They recommended her to their friends, so that she was never without employment, and was able to work at several houses each day. Since she turned over all her wages to Abdallah, there was no need for him to work. Sometimes he suspected that the Nazarenes were paying her more than she claimed, but he said nothing.

  The woman was also expert at carrying things out of the houses of the Nazarenes without their being aware of it. In earlier days she had handed over these bits of plunder to him along with the money; what they brought at the joteya was a welcome bonus. Working so long for the Nazarenes, however, had given her a taste for the way the Nazarenes lived. She began to complain when Abdallah tried to carry off a bath towel or a sheet or a fancy serving dish, for she wanted these things in the house with her. When he took away a small traveling alarm clock which she particularly prized, she stopped speaking to him and would have nothing to do with him. He was angry and mortified, and he began to sleep in the other room, sending the girl to sleep with her mother.

  The silent war between them had not gone on for very long before Abdallah took a great interest in Zohra, a young woman living up the road, whose husband only recently had left her. Because she needed money, she encouraged Abdallah’s attentions, and soon he was eating and sleeping in her house with her, not caring that his behavior was causing unfavorable comment throughout the neighborhood.

  Zohra was not long in discovering that Abdallah could not pay for anything. Having moved out of his house, he could scarcely go back at the end of the month and ask his wife for money. Once she saw how matters stood, Zohra thought only of getting rid of him, and she did her utmost to make his life unbearable.

  Early one afternoon he paid a visit to his house, knowing that his wife would be away at work. It was a Friday, so that his daughter was not at school. She was in the patio, washing out some clothes. He greeted her, but she scarcely looked up. Her mother has filled her head with lies about me, he thought. Then he went inside and called his wife’s name. At the same time his eye alighted on a transparent plastic bag, stuffed into a niche in the wall. He stepped nearer and saw something shining inside the bag. Without looking further, he hid it inside his djellaba, called his wife’s name once more, and returned to the patio.

  Tell your mother I was here, he said to the girl. She did not reply, and he added: Don’t listen to the neighbors.

  She fixed him for a second with a resentful stare before she bent again to scrub the clothes.

  He climbed up the hillside and sat down in the woods so he could examine the contents of the bag in private. There were twelve big spoons there, all of them exactly alike. After admiring them for a while, he wrapped them up and set out for the town to show them to a friend in Emsallah who knew about such things.

  The man assured him that the soup spoons were of the purest silver, and offered to give him seventy thousand francs for them. Abdallah said he needed time to consider it, and that he would return. From Emsallah he went directly to the joteya and put the silver in the hands of a dillal, who began to make the rounds of the market with it. The bids finally reached a hundred thousand francs, and the spoons were sold.

  That night at Zohra’s he lay awake, fully dressed, with the banknotes clutched in his hand. Early in the morning he went out and bought ten goats, all of them black. Then he rented a shack with a shed beside it where he could keep them at night. He was careful to choose a quarter that lay at some distance from his own, one that was reached by a different road, reasoning that this would reduce the likelihood of an unexpected encounter with Zohra or his wife.

  He found his new life agreeably restful. Each morning at daybreak he went out with the goats, driving them along the back road to Boubana and then through the valley toward Rehreh. Here he would sit in the shade of a ruined farmhouse and look down at the goats as they wandered over the hillside.

  Sometimes he fell asleep for a while as he sat watching them. This was dangerous: they could get into a patch of cultivated ground and he would have trouble with the farmer. Even more important was a recently passed law stipulating that henceforth no motorist would be held responsible for any livestock he happened to hit on the highway. Worse than that, it was the owner of the animals who had to pay a stiff fine for each one killed. The country people were unable to fathom the reasons for an order that seemed so perverse, but they understood that it was wiser to keep their animals far from the roads.

  Often when the weather was hot Abdallah did not take the trouble to drive the goats up the valley, but sat under a pine tree in a field not far from the road to Rmilat. Here he was obliged to force himself to stay awake and keep his eye on them, for they could easily stray onto the road. One breathless afternoon, however, he felt a powerful need for sleep overtaking him, and even though he fought against it, he was unable to keep from dropping into a deep slumber.

  He awoke to a squealing of brakes, looked down at the road, and saw what had happened. Two of his goats had wandered in front of a truck, and lay dead on the asphalt.

  He jumped up, drove the others away from the road, and then hurried back to drag the two dead animals over to the ditch. If the police were to pass by now, they would immediately identify them as part
of his flock, and take him with them.

  A youth whom he recognized as the son of the man who lived next door to his shack came along, pushing an empty wheelbarrow. He called to him, and pointed to the bodies in the ditch.

  Get rid of these for me, will you? I don’t care where you hide them, but don’t go along the road with them. When you come back here with the empty wheelbarrow you get the money.

  He did not explain to the boy why he was so eager to remove the carcasses instead of simply leaving them there in the ditch for the dogs. If the boy realized the importance of his task, he would be dissatisfied with the small amount Abdallah intended to give him.

  The lad heaved the two goats into the wheelbarrow and set off along a path that led through the scrub down toward the river. It was a Sunday, and scores of women were doing their washing along the banks of the stream; the bushes were tents of drying sheets. He pushed the wheelbarrow along until he came to the bridge over the sluice. On the upper side the water was deep and black; on the other side a rivulet trickled at the bottom of a twisting gulley. He decided to dump the goats into the deep water, and rolled up his sleeves.

  At that moment a woman standing on the bank at the foot of the bridge began to shout at him. It was her land he was standing on, she cried, and he could take his carrion somewhere else. He let her shout and watched her wave her arms for a long time, saying nothing. Then, seeing that a crowd was gathering, he spat contemptuously, tipped the wheelbarrow and let the animals splash into the water. The woman’s voice rose to a scream as she announced that she was going to the police.

  I know you! she shrieked. I know where your father lives! You’ll sleep in jail!

  The boy did not even look at her as he pushed his wheelbarrow ahead of him. To get to where Abdallah was waiting for him, he went along the highway.

  When Abdallah saw him coming, he walked to meet him, noted the empty wheelbarrow, and paid him, assuming that the goats were hidden somewhere among the bushes and brambles near the bend in the river.