The Stories of Paul Bowles

by Paul Bowles

  I think the most important characteristic you and I have in common (although you’d be within your rights in claiming that we have no points at all in common) is a conviction that the human world has entered into a terminal period of disintegration and destruction, and that this will end in a state of affairs so violent and chaotic as to make any attempts at maintaining government or order wholly ineffective. I’ve always found you excoriating the decay of civilization even more vehemently than I. This of course was when the worst we could imagine was destruction by nuclear warfare. But now we can imagine conditions under which sudden death by fire might be a welcome release from the inferno of life; we might long for a universal euthanasia. Can we hope for nuclear war—I mean ethically—or are we bound out of loyalty to wish for the continuation of the human species at no matter what costs in suffering? I used the word “ethical” because it seems to me that unethical desires are bound to engender false conclusions.

  I suppose what is at the bottom of my mind in all this is that I’m curious to know whether being totally incapacitated has altered your point of view in any way. Has it left you angrier, more resigned, or entirely indifferent? (Although that you never were, under any circumstances, so that I doubt the likelihood of such a major alteration in personality.) I have a feeling that you may consider these things a purely private matter, and as a result may resent my prurient probing.

  IV

  I CAN SEE THAT you don’t really remember the weekend you referred to earlier. There’s nothing shameful about not having total recall: still, it seems doubly unfortunate that you should have been deprived of both external and internal mobility: I mean the freedom to wander in the past, to explore the closets of memory. I know, it was forty years ago and you say you don’t remember, that all three of us were so drunk none of us could possibly recall the details of that absurd excursion. But neither you nor I was drunk when we arrived in the village (and had to get off the train because that was as far as they’d built the railroad). It was still daylight, and we crossed the river on that unfinished bridge to get to the so-called hotel. Surely you remember that there was nothing to drink but mescal; you kept saying that it smelled like furniture polish, which as I recall it did. Have you ever drunk any since? And what a night, with Bartolomé sitting there getting drunker and drunker and giggling his head off. And at one point (search well—you must remember this) the mosquito net over my bed collapsed onto my head so that I was swathed in folds of netting, and the dust made me sneeze, and Bartolomé in his chair pointed at me while I struggled, and cried: Pareces al Niño Dios! And you and he laughed interminably while I sneezed and flailed my arms, trying to find an opening in the net. By then there was nothing to do but send Bartolomé down for another bottle of Tehuacan and go on drinking our mescal. I think it was he who finally extricated me from the netting. I admit that you were more or less intoxicated, but certainly not enough so to have drawn a blank. All that was fun, and belongs on the credit side of the ledger. As usual, however, I was more conscious of the unpleasant details than of all the amusement. The next day was eternal. It was agony to be on that plunging rattletrap little train, and I looked with loathing at the miles of cactus on the parched hillsides. Each jolt of the train increased the pounding in my head. Bartolomé slept. You seemed to have no hangover, for which I felt some bitterness; but then, you were used to alcohol and I was not. But since you say you don’t remember, I’m left alone with the memory; I might as well have dreamed it all.

  Sometimes I suspect you of exaggerating your present deficiencies, not, certainly, to evoke pity, since that would be unlike you, and besides, the desire to exaggerate is probably unconscious in its origin. Nevertheless, you do emphasize your unfortunate situation, so that one can’t help feeling sorry for you. The question is: Why do you italicize your misfortune? My feeling is that it’s simply out of bitterness. I feel you thinking: Now I’m in a wheelchair. That’s that, and that’s what the world wanted. In other words, they have done it to you. If only you were religious you could blame it on God, or wouldn’t that be any more satisfactory?

  AS I REMEMBER, you’re not particularly fond of animals. I’ve always been an ailurophile myself as opposed to a dog-lover. It seemed to me there’d be time enough later to make friends with the canines. Here there’s not much likelihood of that. At night they’re out in packs, and sometimes attack passersby in the street. A sextet of them chased an American friend for a quarter of a mile one evening along the new road that goes from the foot of the Old Mountain to the new section of Dradeb. When one particular dog gets to be a continuous sleep-disturber I’ve twice resorted to drastic measures. It would be better to describe the drastic measures, I realize, than let you think that I poisoned the beasts. Naturally that was the first thing that occurred to me, but I decided against it because of the suffering it causes. Also, the symptoms of death from rat poison (the only lethal product I’d have been able to find here) are so classical that the owner of the animal would immediately suspect that his watchdog had been poisoned. My system with the first brute, which used to bark all night from the garden next door, was time-consuming but effective. It involved my staying up half the night for a week in my wait for a completely deserted street. About half past one I would go to the kitchen and prepare the half pound of raw hamburger. One night I would mix Melleril and Largactyl with the meat, the following night I would grind up several tablets of Anafranil. I continued the alternation until the dog’s owner decided it was rabid, and had it shot. There was no more barking after the first night of treatment. This seemed the most humane way of getting rid of the animal.

  Another year a bitch whelped in the garage, which is always open. The night watchman gave her a carton to lie in with her pups. When these had been given away, she remained in the garage, encouraged by an eccentric Ethiopian woman who sent her maid at all hours with food for her. As soon as she felt thoroughly at home in the garage, she began to engage in long-distance conversations with friends in Ain Hayani and Dradeb. I complained about this to Abdelouahaïd; I thought he might have a solution. He had a very simple one. He picked up the bitch and put her into the boot of the car. We drove to the Forêt Diplomatique, to the edge of the beach, where there’s a restaurant run by a Moroccan with a crew of dogs. Before letting her out of the boot, Abdelouahaïd turned the Mustang around, to be able to start up quickly. She stood on the beach for a second, bewildered; the other dogs saw her and came to investigate. While they surrounded her Abdelouahaïd started up, and we escaped, even though I saw her running behind the car for a good distance as we drove through the woods. She wasn’t stupid: as soon as she heard the motor she pushed the other dogs aside and rushed toward the car.

  Something has happened to the Moroccans. Fifty years ago dogs were execrated. Only people living in the country owned them. Too dirty to live in the city. Somehow they noticed that practically all French women went into the street accompanied by dogs on leashes, and gradually began to imitate them. At first it was boys leading curs by ropes which they tied tightly around the animals’ necks. French ladies passing by would be indignant. Mais ce pauvre chien! Tu vas l’étrangler! Now every Moroccan child in neighborhoods such as mine has a canine pet. Most are German shepherds: fathers think they provide better protection.

  The French are unpredictable. Last month a young photographer from Paris was here taking pictures for Libération. The only thing which moved him to exclamations of surprise was the size of a peanut-butter jar full of birdseed. Is that authentic? he wanted to know. Do they really sell such large jars of peanut butter? When I said yes, I’m not sure he didn’t suspect me of pulling his leg, as he went across the room and examined it carefully. Merry Christmas.

  V

  SOMEONE SENT ME a box of American chocolate creams last week. On the cover are the words Home Fashioned. On another facet of the same cover is a list of ingredients included in the home-fashioning. Among these are: invert sugar, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, sorbitol, le
cithin, butylated hydroxytoluene, butylated hydroxyanisole, propyl gallate, potassium sorbate, sulphur dioxide and benzoate of soda. Even the most modern home isn’t likely to have all these delicacies in its kitchen. Although I haven’t been in an American kitchen in many years, I know that they’re inclined to look more and more like laboratories. Perhaps by now they have chemical cabinets stocked with everything from triethylene glycol to metoclopramide.

  The kitchens in farmhouses at the time of the First World War were not too pleasant to be in either, as I remember, in spite of all the propaganda romanticizing them. There were mingled odors of sour milk, dill and iron from the well water. Spirals of flypaper hung from every convenient hook, and the flies still buzzed on all sides. If there were dogs, they smelled. If there were children, they smelled. It was unbelievable that serious people should want to live that way. What’s the matter with them? Nothing. They just don’t know any better, that’s all. This answer never satisfied me. It implied a double standard that made it possible for my parents to overlook these people’s shortcomings. But they never forgave me for not knowing something I ought to know, and the severity was applied precisely because I was not a farm boy. Seventy years ago there existed that class difference between those brought up in the city and those brought up on the farm. Now there seems to be very little distinction made. The concept of class has been carefully destroyed. Either you have money or you don’t. The result of democracy, I suppose, when it’s misunderstood to mean similarity rather than equality.

  You couldn’t have known the typical small, medium-priced hotel of Paris in the twenties. (By the time you got to Paris, after the Second World War, things had changed somewhat.) There were only three or four rooms per floor, the staircases and corridors were heavily carpeted and the windows were hidden by two sets of curtains. Normally there were two lights in the room, one hanging from the center of the ceiling and the other above the bed’s headboard. Both were affixed to a system of pulleys, so that they could be propelled upward or downward according to the needs of the moment. The wallpaper was always dark with wide stripes in colors which might at one time have been garish, although there was no way of knowing, since the patina of age had long since darkened them. It was easy to feel encased and protected in those rooms, and I often dream about them even now. Such dreams however aren’t pleasant, since I seem always to be on the point of having to leave in order to let someone else move in. No dream without at least subliminal anxiety.

  Incidentally, you have no reason to upbraid me for not giving my specific reactions to your most recent tale of woe. Such reactions can only be emotional in content, and there’s never any point in expressing emotions in words, it seems to me. I assure you, nevertheless, that I experienced a feeling of profound chagrin when I read your letter and realized that you were undergoing further torments, and I thought I’d conveyed that impression earlier.

  You may remember (although probably not, since you never crack a book written in our century) a phrase used by the Castor in La Nausée: “Je me survis.” (Ineptly translated in the American edition as “I outlive myself.”) I understand the Castor’s feeling of being her own survivor; it’s not unlike my feeling, save that I’d express mine as: “Ma vie est posthume.” Do you make sense of that?

  I’ve often wished that someone would rewrite the end of Huckleberry Finn, delivering it from the farcical closing scenes which Twain, probably embarrassed by the lyrical sweep of the nearly completed book, decided were necessary if the work were to be appreciated by American readers. It’s the great American novel, damaged beyond repair by its author’s senseless sabotage. I’d be interested to have your opinion, or do you feel that the book isn’t worth having an opinion about, since a botched masterpiece isn’t a masterpiece at all? Yet to counterfeit the style successfully, so that the break would be seamless and the prose following it a convincing continuation of what came before—that seems an impossible task. So I shan’t try it, myself.

  I think a warning sign of creeping senility is the shortening of the attention span, which strikes me as a form of regression to childhood. We’ll see.

  V

  I HAVEN’T MENTIONED the mounting hostility I’ve noted in your letters because I’ve assumed that it was directed at the world in general, and not at me. Now I see how mistaken I was. First you tell me that my letters are self-indulgent. I let that pass: it was merely a criticism of my method. But I can’t overlook the word “gloating.” On seeing that, I realize that I’d have done better to limit my correspondence to one necessarily cruel Get Well card, and let it go at that.

  It seems to me that for this final period of your life it might be profitable to stop encouraging your masochistic tendencies. I can see that you don’t feel that way at all, and that on the contrary you intend to go on giving free rein to them. Too bad. There’s obviously nothing I can do from here to help you, so I may as well let it rest. But as you sink into your self-imposed non-being, I hope you’ll remember (you won’t) that I made this small and futile attempt to help you remain human.

  Hasta el otro mundo, as Rosa Lopez used to say.

  New York 1965

  ADAZZLING ACCOMPLISHMENT Kathleen Andrews has succeeded in forging a language capable of bearing her to the highest reaches of lyrical expressivity the poems soar above the stratosphere what idiotic reviews they write you know her mother has a certain amount of influence she’s also very rich so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’d been a bit of quid pro quo under the table publishers and critics are human too no I’m afraid I’m unconvinced I’ve read her poetry you see we were classmates at Sarah Lawrence I knew her well she’s not someone you’d forget easily either she was always impossible writing poetry even back then and publishing it right and left a lot of people were impressed she probably did have some talent but what a waste it was she could be held up as the classical example of the person who systematically ruins her own life purely self-destructive in college she would always go out of her way to say things nobody could possibly have agreed with she’d explain I’m for giving the world shock treatment that’s what it needs people enjoy being scandalized more than anything else yes that may be Kathleen I’d tell her but don’t you see that every time you shock them they put a little more distance between you and them can’t you see that in the end they’re not going to take anything you say seriously you’re going to be some sort of freak as far as they’re concerned have you thought about it I used to argue with her almost plead with her you know the way you do when you see a friend doing everything wrong I took her seriously I thought I could help her but her reaction was oh if they want to think I’m a freak what difference does it make well this childish attitude was all right then I suppose but later on it wasn’t so amusing anyway as far as I could see she had no interest in men she was far too busy thinking about herself she did say she wanted the experience of having a child but wouldn’t dream of marrying I told her she’d better think twice before doing anything so scatterbrained actually she was pregnant the first year after graduation but she didn’t tell me I was about the only one of her old friends who kept on seeing her she simply shut herself off anyway as soon as she knew she was pregnant it seems she began holding long conversations with the baby she had this strange idea that she could influence it by talking to it all the time Kathleen I’d tell her come back to reality you can’t go on this way you’ve got to be serious a baby’s not an idea or a poem it’s real and you’re going to have to take care of it oh that’s all right she said I’ve got my trust fund it ought to be enough that’s not what I’m talking about I told her you’re going to be a mother a flesh-and-blood mother do you know what that means what it involves oh of course I’ll find out what it means all right when the time comes and I thought but will you and that poor child but she was stubborn she had an idea she liked and she was going to hold on to it come hell or high water she wouldn’t listen she’d just smile her superior smile and say my life is my own to do with as I please yes I said but
not the life of your child that isn’t to do as you please with think about it and for God’s sake try to make sense it’s not a game Kathleen you know she was ashamed of being pregnant she didn’t want anyone to see her she wouldn’t go out at all she simply hid herself away in that little apartment in the Village month after month every two weeks or so I’d drop in to see her because we were really close friends practically everybody else was fed up with her nonsense but I guess I imagined I might be able to appeal to her common sense we always think we can help even when we ought to know better it would be sad if it hadn’t been so funny I remember that winter there was a blizzard and I walked all the way from Gramercy Park to Bank Street one day so that by the time I got to her place I was half frozen and my feet were soaked Little Missy had all the lights out she was lying in bed with one candle burning on the table beside her and a book in her hand but she jumped up and turned on the lights she had only about a month to go I sat by the fireplace warming my feet while she brewed tea well she seemed to be making perfectly good sense but then she suddenly got back into bed and said excuse me I want to finish it’ll only take a minute I’m reading the Analects of Confucius to Alaric isn’t the name perfect isn’t it precisely what you’d expect her to choose no one’s been named Alaric for the past fifteen hundred years oh I love it and then my dear she began to read out loud looking down at herself the Master said this and the Master said that well it was grotesque it made my flesh crawl but I couldn’t very well interrupt her her voice was so sepulchral so I sat twiddling my toes by the fire after a while she shut the book and spoke up in a normal voice you see while he’s still with me I want to be as close to him as I can because once he’s born there’s no more I can do she said all this in such a reasonable tone of voice that I was suddenly furious Kathleen I said you ought to know you’re concerned tell me what are you trying to prove but she simply opened her eyes wide and said I don’t know what you mean well I said in the first place what makes you so sure it’s going to be a boy oh of course it’s a boy I decided that at the beginning the thing is I want to give him a good pre-natal education so when he’s born he won’t be so much at the mercy of outside negative influences it’s the most important part of a child’s upbringing but most mothers don’t feel close to their babies until they can actually see them human stupidity as always and she began to tell me what was wrong with everybody look I said I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that you might as well be reading to that table you know damned well it can’t even hear much less understand what you’re saying why do you insist on playing games with yourself can’t you just relax and be natural for a while oh she said of course he understands how can he help it we’re the same person I know once he’s born he won’t understand anything after all I’m not living in Fantasy Land so you see that’s why I have to spend all my time with him until then because once he’s left me he’s on his own and I can’t do anything more for him I must have had a strange expression on my face because she suddenly straightened up and said I’m sorry you feel so strongly about it I know most people think it’s their duty to press their own ideas on others but I’d always imagined you were more tolerant and she looked at me as if I’d been a great disappointment to her well Kathleen all I can say is I hope the baby’s healthy I have the feeling that when you’ve taken care of it for a while you’ll see things differently and we talked a little and I told her Jack and I were off to Rio and I’d see her when I got back and not to worry worry she said what would I worry about I’m happy so I went out into the blizzard again and got a cab home thinking it would have been a lot better if I hadn’t gone my God not living in Fantasy Land indeed and I thought then I’m not going to go on seeing her when I get back it’s a lost cause and I really meant it but you know me curiosity killed a cat oh yes I looked her up again the next summer the baby must have been about five months old perfectly healthy as far as I could see although I noticed it didn’t smile once what got me was her offhand attitude toward it when she first showed it to me she said there he is the little horror and I thought here comes more of the same but for once I’m not going to react he’s lovely I said do you breastfeed him yes she said but once he’s weaned I’m going to take him to my mother’s in Lake Forest she’ll find a good nanny for him she said she didn’t ever want to have to correct or discipline him because it would destroy their relationship and it was so important for him to have confidence in her and she went on the whole thing getting more outrageous by the minute I should have realized long before that she was never going to change but somehow I’d thought having the baby might have done something of course I couldn’t have been more wrong as the twig is bent baby or no baby that’s it I thought well better for him to have a good nanny at least than to be left to the tender mercies of Kathleen seeing all this made me rather thankful that Jack and I had never had any children so she went off to her mother’s but the most incredible episode of all came several years later by then I’d more or less stopped thinking about her once in a while I did wonder what had become of her well one fine day I got a letter covered with Moroccan stamps from Kathleen she’d left her mother’s and gone to Europe with Alaric her mother paid for the trip probably to get rid of her she’d been living here and there and had ended up in Tangier being Kathleen she was in the native quarter of course and Alaric was learning about life with his peers playing with the Moroccan boys in the neighborhood and she thought it was wonderful and wanted to stay forever and hoped sometime I’d pass through Tangier it all sounded suspiciously like a continuation of the pattern anyway a year or so later when Jack and I were in Europe I decided to fly down to Tangier for a weekend and look in on Kathleen I was intrigued American girl living alone in the native quarter well Jack didn’t want to go so he stayed in London and I went flying off down to Morocco I can’t tell you it was incredible the whole thing it took me hours to find her house I finally had to go back to the hotel and get a guide and we went through all the dark alleys eventually we came to the door it was wide open to the street I told the guide to wait outside I’d never have found my way back to the hotel well she was there dressed in some sort of flashy native costume the place had no furniture in it just mats and cushions and a big table in the middle of the room and here’s the payoff on the table was an enormous pile a mountain of marijuana I saw it from the street before I went in without knowing what it was Kathleen I said that stuff is forbidden you know that how can you leave it out in plain sight like that anyone going past can see it my guide must have seen it I was feeling damned nervous sitting there can’t you shut the door please she shrugged and went to shut it I asked her where Alaric was I was curious to see how he’d turned out she looked vague oh outside he has lots of friends this made me think of the awful kids I’d just seen playing in the street each time we saw a crowd of them the guide would say hold on to your handbag madame it’s nice he has friends I said and you how are you I was thinking how can she possibly live like this it smelled exactly like a stable she began to walk back and forth looking preoccupied and once she stood and stared down at the table this stuff’s not mine she said it’s Todd’s Todd’s staying with me he’s gone to the store he’ll be back in a minute oh I see I said and pretty soon Todd came in about six foot three and jet black this was interesting I thought it showed a new side of Kathleen not a very original one I admit but still something different from before anyway I was sitting there trying to make conversation with the two of them and suddenly there was this terrible gurgling animal sound in the next room it echoed my God what’s that I asked her she was perfectly matter-of-fact about it it’s just our sheep we’ve had it now a month fattening it up for the festival next week Alaric is all excited about it he lives for that sheep it’s hard to get him away from it but in the house I said how can you stand it well the boy finally came in and he had a whole crew of other kids with him all jabbering in Arabic it must have been but at least he looked healthy through the dirt he was as filthy as the rest of them and hadn’t had his h
air cut in a year incredible they trooped in and all rushed to the room where the sheep was tied up and it began to make its awful bleat I decided this was a good moment to disappear I said I had to go because my guide was waiting but I’d come back the next day Kathleen looked at me as if it were the end of the world but you just got here she kept saying then the kids all went out all except Alaric and he climbed onto Todd’s lap and began to hug him that kid was starved for affection I said to him Alaric it’s nice you have the sheep he can be your friend and follow you around wherever you go and that kid looked straight at me and said oh no we’re going to cut his throat next Tuesday I thought he was making it up but Kathleen said yes Tuesday’s the day of the sacrifice as I went out she said she’d been writing lots of poetry and I thought I’ll bet you have and what a blessing I don’t have to read it I said good-bye see you tomorrow and I really meant to go back and try to talk with her just the two of us but it was all so abject and sordid and she was so childish it was really depressing I couldn’t face looking for that alley again the next morning I got a plane out to London I’ve never heard from her since what a waste I don’t think she has any idea of what she’s done to herself I suppose I’m getting less tolerant but I have no patience with people who refuse to abide by the rules of the game and that boy of hers I’d be willing to bet he ends up behind bars it’s inevitable but she has no one to blame she’s brought it all on herself the sad part is that she’ll never realize how much harm she’s caused it’ll never cross her mind that her life has been one great mistake from the beginning pretty ridiculous isn’t it