Let it come down Page 16

  He was aware, she said, that practically every Englishman in the Zone, even with a title, was constrained by his government to furnish whatever information he could gather, and that far from being a shameful pursuit, on the contrary this was considered to be a completely honorable activity.

  «More than most others you could find here, I guess,» Dyar laughed.

  She did not know about the English, she said, but many people she knew managed to make the thing lucrative by supplying data to two or more offices simultaneously. At the moment her government (she did not specify which it was) had no representation on the Board of Administrators, which made adequate reports an even greater necessity. Inasmuch as it was common knowledge that the unseen power behind the Administration was the United States, it was particularly with regard to American activities that her government wished to be documented. The difficulty was that the American milieu in Tangier was peculiarly hermetic, not inclined to mix with the other diplomatic groups. And then of course Americans were especially unsusceptible to financial offers, simply because it was difficult to put the price high enough to make it worth the trouble to most of them.

  «— But she makes the proposition to me,» he thought grimly, «because I’m not a big shot».

  And the proposition came out. She was empowered to offer him five hundred dollars a month, beginning with a month’s advance immediately, in return for small bits of information which he might glean from conversations with his American friends, plus one or two specific facts about the Voice of America’s set-up at Sidi Kacem, — things which Dyar need not even understand himself, she hastened to assure him, since her husband was a very good electrical engineer and would have no difficulty in interpreting them.

  «But I don’t know anything or anybody in Tangier!»

  They would even provide introductions — indirectly, of course — to the necessary people, she explained. As an American he had entree to certain places (such as the Voice of America, for instance) from which other nationals were excluded.

  «R-r-really we ask very little,» she smiled. «You must not have r-r-romantic idea this is spying. There is nothing to spy in Tangier. Tangier has no interest for anyone. Diplomatic, perhaps, yes. Military, no».

  «How many months would you want me for?»

  «Ah! How are we to know how good you are to us?» She looked archly across the table at him. «Maybe infor-r-rma-tion you give us is not accur-r-rate. We should not continue with you».

  «Or if I couldn’t get any dope for you at all?»

  «Oh, I am not wor-r-ried about that».

  From her handbag she pulled a folded check and handed it to him. It was a check on the Banco Salvador Hassan e Hijos, and was already carefully made out to the order of Nelson Dyar, and signed in a neat handwriting by Nadia Jouvenon. It shocked him to see his name spelled correctly there on that slip of paper, the work of this intense little woman with blue hair; it was ridiculous that she should have known his name, but he was not really surprised, nor did he dare ask her how she had discovered it.

  They ordered coffee. «Tomorrow evening you will take dinner at our home,» she said. «My husband will be delighted to meet you».

  A waiter came and asked for Mme. Jouvenon, saying she was wanted on the telephone. She excused herself and went through a small door behind the bar. Dyar sat alone, toying with his coffee spoon, smothered by an oppressive feeling of unreality. He had put the check into his pocket, nevertheless at the moment he had a strong impulse to pull it out and set a match to it in the ash tray in front of him, so that when she reappeared it would no longer exist. They would go out into the street and he would be free of her. Distractedly he took a sip of coffee and glanced around the room. At the next table sat four people chattering in Spanish: a young couple, an older woman who was obviously the mother of the girl, and a small boy who slouched low in his chair pouting, refusing to eat. The girl, heavily made-up and decked with what seemed like several pounds of costume jewelry, kept glancing surreptitiously in his direction, always looking rapidly at her mother and husband first to be sure they were occupied. This must have been going on since the family group had sat down, but now was the first he had noticed it. He watched her, not taking his gaze from her face; there was no doubt about it — she was giving him the eye. He tried to see what the husband looked like, but he was facing the other way. He was fat; that was all he could tell.

  When Mme. Jouvenon returned to the table she seemed out of sorts about something. She called for the check, and occupied herself with pulling on her kid gloves, which were skin-tight.

  The call had been from Eunice Goode, who, although she had not mentioned this fact to Mme. Jouvenon, had waked up early, and finding Hadija missing, had immediately suspected she was with Dyar. Thus she had first wanted to know if Dyar had kept the appointment, to which Mme. Jouvenon had replied shortly that he had, and made as if to draw the conversation to a close. But Eunice had not been satisfied; she wanted further to know if they had come to terms. Mme. Jouvenon had remarked that she appreciated her interest, but that she did not feel under any obligation to tender Mademoiselle Goode a report on the results of the luncheon interview. Eunice’s voice had risen dangerously. «Ecoutez, madame! I advise you to tell me!» she had squealed. «Je dois absolument savoir!» Mme. Jouvenon had informed her that she did not intend to be intimidated by anyone, but then it had occurred to her that since after all it was Eunice who had supplied the introduction to Mr. Dyar, it might be just as well to retain her goodwill, at least for a little while. So she had laughed lamely and told her that yes, an understanding had been reached. «But has he accepted money?» insisted Eunice. «Mais enfin!» cried the exasperated Mme. Jouvenon. «You are incredible! Yes! He has taken money! Yes! Yes! I shall see you in a few days. Oui! C’est ça! Au revoir!» And she had added a few words in Russian under her breath as she had put the receiver back on the hook.

  The Spanish family straggled to its feet, making a great scraping of chairs on the tile floor. As she fumbled for her coat and furpiece the young wife managed to throw a final desperate glance in Dyar’s direction. «She’s not only nympho but nuts,» he said to himself, annoyed because he would not have minded being with her for an hour in a hotel room, and it was so manifestly impossible. He watched them as they went out the door, the girl pushing her small son impatiently ahead of her. «Typical Spanish nouveaux-riches,» said Mme. Jouvenon disgustedly. «The sort Fr-r-ranco has put to r-r-run the nation».

  They stood in the doorway being spattered by the blowing rain.

  «Well, thank you for a very good lunch,» Dyar said. He wished he were never going to have to see her again.

  «You see that high building there?» She pointed to the end of the short street in front of them. He saw a large white modern apartment house. «Next door to that on the r-r-right, a small building, gr-r-ray, four floors high. This is my home. Top floor, number for-r-rty five. We wait for you tomorrow night, eight. Now I r-r-run, not to get wet too much. Good-bye».

  They shook hands and she hurried across the street. He watched her for a moment as she walked quickly between the row of unfinished buildings and the line of small transplanted palm trees that never would grow larger. Then he sighed, and turned down the hill to the Boulevard; it led down to the Hotel de la Playa. There was practically no one in the rainy streets, and the shops were closed because it was not yet four. But on the way he passed the Banco Salvador Hassan e Hijos. It was open. He went in. In the vestibule a bearded Arab sitting on a leather pouf saluted him as he passed. The place was new, shining with marble and chromium. It was also very empty and looked quite unused. One young man stood behind a counter writing. Dyar walked over to him and handed him the check, saying: «I want to open an account». The young man glanced at the check and without looking at him handed him a fountain pen.

  «Sign, please,» he said. Dyar endorsed it and said he would like to withdraw a hundred dollars in cash.

  «Sit down, please,» said the young man
. He pushed a button and a second later an enormous fluorescent lighting fixture in the center of the ceiling flickered on. It took about five minutes to make out the necessary papers. Then the young man called him over to the counter, handed him a checkbook and five thousand two hundred pesetas, and showed him a white card with his balance written on it. Dyar read it aloud, his voice echoing in the large, bare room. «Three hundred and ninety nine dollars and seventy five cents. What’s the twenty five cents taken off for?»

  «Checkbook,» said the young man imperturbably, still not looking at him.

  «Thanks». He went to the door and asked the Arab to get him a taxi. Sitting inside it, watching the empty wet streets go past, he thought he felt a little better, but he was not sure. At least he was out of the rain.

  When he got to the hotel he asked at the desk to have a drink sent up to his room, but was told that the barman did not come in until six in the evening. He went up to the damp room and stood a while at the window, fingering the dirty curtain, staring out at the cold deserted beach so wet that it mirrored the sky. He took out the money and looked at it; it seemed like a lot, and five thousand two hundred pesetas could certainly buy a good deal more than a hundred dollars. Still, it did not give him the pleasure he wanted from it. The feeling of unreality was too strong in him, all around him. Sharp as a toothache, definite as the smell of ammonia, yet impalpable, unlocatable, a great smear across the lens of his consciousness. And the blurred perceptions that resulted from it produced a sensation of vertigo. He sat down in the armchair and lit a cigarette. The taste of it sickened him; he threw it into the corner and watched the smoke rise slowly along the wall until it came opposite the windowpane, when it rushed inward with the draught.

  He was not thinking, but words came into his mind; they all formed questions: «What am I doing here? Where am I getting? What’s it all about? Why am I doing this? What good is it? What’s going to happen?» The last question stopped him, and he began unthinkingly to light another cigarette, laying it a moment later, however, unlighted on the arm of the chair. «What’s going to happen?» Something was surely going to happen. It was impossible for everything just to continue as it was. All this was too unlikely, it was weighted down with the senseless, indefinable weight of things in a dream, the kind of dream where each simple object, each motion, even the light in the sky, is heavy with silent meaning. There had to be a break; some air had to come in. But things don’t happen, he told himself. You have to make them happen. That was where he was stuck. It was not in him to make things happen; it never had been. Yet when he got to this point he realized that for the moment at any rate it was the bottom; from there the way went imperceptibly up. A tiny, distant pin-prick of hope was there. He had to probe to find where it came from. Triumphantly he dragged it out and examined it: it was simply that he had a blind, completely unreasonable conviction that when the moment came if nothing happened, some part of him would take it upon itself to make something happen. It seemed quite senseless when he thought about it; it merely faded, grew weaker, and so to save it he put it away again into the dark. He could not believe it, but he liked to have it there. He rose and began to walk restlessly about the room. Presently he threw himself on the bed, and lying still, tried to sleep. A minute later he struggled out of his shoes and trousers and pulled the bedspread up over him. But his thoughts turned to Hadija with her perfect little face and her pliant body like a young cat’s.

  «It was only yesterday,» he thought incredulously. «God, not till Sunday?» Six days to wait. There was only one way to find her, and even that might not be possible. He would go to see the fat woman, Miss Goode, at the Metropole, and see if she knew her address. After a while he grew more calm. Waves, Hadija, seagulls. When he awoke it was dark.

  XIV

  It was an obsession of Eunice Goode’s that there was very little time left in the world, that whatever one wanted to do, one had better get it done quickly or it would be too late. Her conception of that segment of eternity which was hers to know was expressed somewhat bafflingly in a phrase she had written in her notebook shortly after arriving in Tangier: «Between the crackling that rends the air and the actual flash of lightning that strikes you, there is a split second which seems endless, and during which you are conscious that the end has come. That split second is now». Yet the fact that her mind was constantly recalled to this fixed idea (as a bit of wood floating in the basin of a waterfall returns again and again to be plunged beneath the surface by the falling water), rather than inciting her to any sort of action, ordinarily served only to paralyze her faculties. Perhaps some of the trouble was due merely to her size; like most bulky things she was set in motion with difficulty. But when she began to move, she gathered impetus. Her association with Hadija had started her off in a certain direction, which was complete ownership of the girl, and until she had the illusion of having achieved that, she would push ahead without looking right or left.

  When she had finished telephoning Mme. Jouvenon, she scribbled a note to Hadija: Espérame aquí. Vuelvo antes de las cinco, and left it hanging crookedly from the edge of the center table, weighted down by a bowl of chrysanthemums. Hadija could get Lola the chambermaid to read it to her.

  Eunice had not wept when she had awakened and found herself alone in the room. The thing was too serious, she felt, for that sort of self-indulgent behavior. It was horrible enough to find herself alone in the bed, with no sign that Hadija had been in the room at all during the night, but the real suffering had begun only when she went ahead to form her conjectures, one after the other, as to what might have happened. Even though Dyar had appeared at the Empire to lunch with Mme. Jouvenon, it was still perfectly possible that the girl had spent the night with him. She almost hoped that was the case; it would mean that the danger was all at one point — a point she felt she had at least partially under control. «The big idiot’s in love with her,» she said to herself, and it was some little solace to think that Hadija was unlikely to fall in love with him. But one could never count on how a girl was going to react to a man. Men had an extra and mysterious magnetism which all too often worked. She slammed her clothing around in a rage as she dressed. She had taken no breakfast — only a few small glasses of gin. Now she went to the high armoire and took down from the shelf half a dry spongecake that had been up there several days. She ate it all, fiercely crumpled the paper that had been around it, and threw the wad across the room, aiming at the wastebasket. It went in; her fleshy lips moved ever so slightly in the shadow of a grim little smile of passing satisfaction.

  It was hard to know how to dress this afternoon. She felt well wearing only two kinds of uniform: slacks and shirt, or evening dress, both of which were out of the question. Finally she decided on a black suit with a cape that looked vaguely military under a good deal of gold frogging. Hoping to look as bourgeoise and proper as possible, she pulled out a choker of gold beads which she fastened around her neck. She even bothered to find a pair of stockings, and eventually squeezed into some shoes with almost two inches of heel. Looking in the mirror with extreme distaste, she powdered her face clumsily, not being able to avoid sprinkling the stuff liberally over the front of her suit, and applied a minimum of neutral-toned lipstick. The sight of her face thus disguised sickened her; she turned away from the mirror and began to brush the powder off the black flannel cape. The whole business was a ghastly bore, and she loathed going out alone into the wet streets and through the center of town. But there was no sense in doing a thing halfway. One had to see it through. She liked to remind herself that she came of pioneer stock; her grandmother had had an expression she had always loved to hear her use: «Marching orders have come,» which to her meant that if a thing had to be done, it was better to do it without question, without thinking whether one liked the idea or not. Fortunately her life was such that it was very seldom anything really did have to be done, so that when such an occasion arose she played her part to the full and got the most out of it.

&n
bsp; Eunice left the American Legation about four o’clock. They had been most civil, she reflected. (She was always expecting to intercept looks of derision.) They had listened to her, made a few notes, and thanked her gravely. She on her side thought she had done rather well: she had not told them too much, — just enough to whet their interest. «Of course, I’m passing on this information to you for what it may be worth,» she had said modestly. «I have no idea how much truth there is in it. But I have a distinct feeling that you’ll find it worth your while to follow it up». (When she had gone Mr. Doan, the Vice-Consul, had heaved an exaggerated sigh, remarked in a flat voice: «Oh, Death, where is thy sting?» and his secretary had smirked at him appreciatively.)

  At the Metropole desk the manager handed Eunice an envelope which she opened on her way upstairs. It was a very short note written in French on the hotel stationery, suggesting that she meet the sender alone in the reading-room of the hotel at seven o’clock that evening. It added the hope that she would agree to receive the most distinguished sentiments of the signer, whose name when she saw it gave her an agreeable start. «Thami Beidaoui,» she read aloud, with satisfaction. At the moment she recalled only the two brothers who lived in the palace; the entrance of the third brother had been effected too late in her evening to make any lasting impression on her. Indeed, at the moment she did not so much as suspect his existence. If she had not been so completely preoccupied with worry about Hadija she would have been delighted with the message.