Let it come down Page 18

  Dyar broke in on his reflections, saying: «D’you think she might be at that place we saw her in that night?» He thought he might as well admit that he would like to see her.

  «Of course not» — began Thami, stopping when it occurred to him that if Dyar did not know she was living with Eunice Goode, he was not going to be the one to tell him. «It’s too early,» he said.

  «So much the better,» Dyar thought. «Well, let’s go up there anyway and have a drink».

  Thami was delighted. «Fine!»

  This time Dyar was determined to keep track of the turns and steps, so that he could find his way up alone after dinner. Through a short crowded lane, to the left up a steep little street lined with grocery stalls, out into the triangular plaza with the big green and white arch opposite, continue up, turn right down the dark level street, first turn left again into the very narrow alley which becomes a tunnel and goes up steeply, out at top, turn right again, follow straight through paying no attention to juts and twists because there are no streets leading off, downhill to large plaza with fat hydrant in center and cafés all the way around (only they might be closed later, and with their fronts boarded up they look like any other shops), cross plaza, take alley with no streetlight overhead, at end turn left into pitch black street. He began to be confused. There were too many details to remember, and now they were climbing an endless flight of stone steps in the dark.

  At the Bar Lucifer Mme. Papaconstante leaned her weight on the bar, picking her teeth voluptuously. «Hello, boys,» she said. She had had her hair hennaed. The place reeked of fresh paint. It was an off night. Of course it was very early. They had two drinks and Dyar paid, saying he wanted to go to his hotel. Thami had been talking about his brothers’ stinginess, how they would not let him have any money — even his own. «But tomorrow I’ll buy that boat!» he ended triumphantly. Dyar did not ask him where he had got the money. He was mildly surprised to hear that the other had been born and brought up in the Beidaoui Palace; he did not know whether he thought more or less of him now that he knew his origins. As they left, Thami reached across the bar and seizing Mme. Papaconstante’s brilliant head, kissed her violently on each flaming cheek. «Ay, hombre!» she cried, laughing delightedly, pretending to rearrange her undisturbed coiffure.

  In the street Dyar attempted to piece together the broken thread of the itinerary, but it seemed they were going back down by another route, as he recognized no landmark whatever until they were suddenly within sight of the smoke-filled Zoco de Fuera.

  «You know, Dare» — (Dyar corrected him) «—some night I’ll take you to my home and give you a real Moorish dinner. Couscous, bastila, everything. How’s that?»

  «That would be fine, Thami».

  «Don’t forget,» Thami cautioned him, as if they had already arranged the occasion.

  «I won’t».

  Just by the main gateway leading into the square, Thami stopped and indicated a native café, rather larger and more pretentious than most, inside which a very loud radio was roaring.

  «I’m going here,» he said. «Any time you want to see me you can always find me inside here. In a few days we’ll go for a ride in my boat. So long».

  Dyar stood alone in the bustling square. From the far end, through the trees, came the sound of drums, beating out a complicated, limping Berber rhythm from up in the mountains. He found a small Italian restaurant in a street off the Zoco, and had an indifferent meal. In spite of his impatience to get back into the streets and look for the Bar Lucifer, he relaxed over a caffé espresso and had two cigarettes before rising to leave. There was no point in getting there too early.

  He wandered vaguely downhill until he came to a street he thought might lead in the right direction. Girls walked by slowly in clusters, hanging together as if for protection, staring at him but pretending not to. It was easy to tell the Jewish girls from the Spanish, although the two looked and dressed alike: the former loped, straggled, hobbled, practically fell along the street, as if they had no control, and without a semblance of grace. And the Arab women pushed by like great white bundles of laundry, an eye peering out near the top. Ahead of him, under a streetlight, a crowd of men and boys was gathering around two angry youths, each of whom held the other at arm’s length by the lapels. The pose was as formal as a bit of frozen choreography. They glared, uttered insults, growled, and made menacing gestures with their free left hands. He watched a while; no blow was struck. Suddenly one jerked away. The other shot out of sight, and while the brief general conversation that followed was still in progress, returned from nowhere with a policeman — the classical procedure. The officer of the law separated the crowd and stepped in front of Dyar, tapping arms and shoulders very gently with his white billy. Dyar studied him — he wore an American GI uniform and a metal helmet painted white. In a white leather holster he carried a revolver wrapped carefully in tissue paper, like a Christmas present. As if he were a farmer urging his plow-horses, he murmured to the crowd softly: «Eh. Eh. Eh. Eh». And the crowd slowly dispersed, the two antagonists already having lost themselves in its midst.

  Slowly he moved ahead in what seemed to him the right direction. All he needed was one landmark and he would be set. Sweet temple-incense poured out of the Hindu silk shops, a whole Berber family crouched in the shadow of a small mountain of oranges, mechanically calling out the price of a kilo. And then all at once the dark streets began, and the few stalls that remained open were tiny and lighted by carbide lamps or candles. At one point he stopped a man in European clothes and said: «Bar Lucifer?» It was a long chance, and he did not really expect a useful answer. The man grunted and pointed back the way Dyar had just come. He thanked him and continued. It was rather fun, being lost like this; it gave him a strange sensation of security, — the feeling that at this particular instant no one in the world could possibly find him. Not his family, not Wilcox, not Daisy de Valverde, not Thami, not Eunice Goode, not Mme. Jouvenon, and not, he reflected finally, the American Legation. The thought of these last two somewhat lowered his spirits. At the moment he was further from being free than he had been yesterday at this time. The idea horrified him; it was unacceptable. Yesterday at this time he had been leaving the Beidaoui Palace in a good humor. There had been the episode of the kittens, which now that he considered it, seemed to have had something to do with that good humor. It was crazy, but it was true. As he walked on, noticing less and less where he was, he pursued his memory of yesterday evening further, like a film being run backwards. When he got to the cold garden with the stone bench where he had sat in the wind, he knew he had found the setting. It had happened while he sat there. What Holland had said had started him off, feeling rather than thinking, but Holland had not said enough, had not followed through. «Here I am and something’s going to happen». No connection. He said to Holland: «You’re going to die too, but in the meantime you eat». No connection whatever, and yet it was all connected. It was all part of the same thing.

  The fine rain came down, cold and smelling fresh. Then it became heavier and more determined. He had his raincoat. If it rained too hard he would get soaked anyway, but it made no difference. For quite a while now the streets had been almost empty. «The slums,» he thought. «Poor people go to bed early». The places through which he was passing were like the tortuous corridors in dreams. It was impossible to think of them as streets, or even as alleys. There were spaces here and there among the buildings, that was all, and some of them opened into other spaces and some did not. If he found the right series of connections he could get from one place to the next, but only by going through the buildings themselves. And the buildings seemed to have come into existence like plants, chaotic, facing no way, topheavy, one growing out of the other. Sometimes he heard footsteps echoing when someone passed through one of the vault-like tunnels, and often the sound died away without the person’s ever coming into view. There were the mounds of garbage and refuse everywhere, the cats whose raging cries racked the air, and that
ever-present acid smell of urine: the walls and pavements were encrusted with a brine of urine. He stood still a moment. From the distance, through the falling rain, floated the sound of chimes. It was the clock in the belfry of the Catholic Church in the Siaghines striking the quarter of the hour. Ahead there was the faint roar of the sea breaking against the cliffs below the ramparts. And as he stood there, again he found himself asking the same questions he had asked earlier in the day: «What am I doing here? What’s going to happen?» He was not even trying to find the Bar Lucifer; he had given that up. He was trying to lose himself. Which meant, he realized, that his great problem right now was to escape from his cage, to discover the way out of the fly-trap, to strike the chord inside himself which would liberate those qualities capable of transforming him from a victim into a winner.

  «It’s a bad business,» he whispered to himself. If he was so far gone that when he came out to find Hadija, instead of making every effort to locate the place, he allowed himself to stumble along for an hour or so in the dark through stinking hallways like the one where he stood at the moment, then it was time he took himself in hand. And just how? It was a comforting idea, to say you were going to take yourself in hand. It assumed the possibility of forcing a change. But between the saying and the doing there was an abyss into which all the knowledge, strength and courage you had could not keep you from plunging. For instance, tomorrow night at this time he would be still more tightly fettered, sitting in the Jou-venons’ flat after dinner, having some petty little plan of action prepared for him. At each moment his situation struck him as more absurd and untenable. He had no desire to do that kind of work, and he had no interest in helping Mme. Jouvenon or her cause.

  However, it was nice to have the money; it was comfortable to be able to take a cab when it was raining and he was tired and wanted to get home; it was pleasant to go into a restaurant and look at the left hand side of the menu first; it was fun to enter a shop and buy a present for Hadija. (The box with the bracelet in it bulged in his raincoat pocket.) You had to make a choice. But the choice was already made, and he felt that it was not he who had made it. Because of that, it was hard for him to believe that he was morally involved. Of course, he could fail to put in an appearance tomorrow night, but that would do no good. They would find him, demand explanations, threaten him probably. He could even return the money by cashing express checks, depositing the hundred dollars back into the account and writing a check to Mme. Jouvenon for five hundred. It was still not too late for that. Or probably it was — all she had to do was to refuse. Her check had been cashed; that remained a fact, part of the bank’s records.

  It suddenly seemed to him that he could to some extent neutralize the harm he had done himself by reporting his action to the American Legation. He laughed softly. Then he Would be in trouble, and also there would be no more money. He knew that was the action of a victim. It was typical: a victim always gave himself up if he had dared to dream of changing his status. Yet at the moment the prospect was attractive.

  Right now he wanted to get out of this rubbish-heap and home to bed. By going toward the sound of the sea, he suspected, he could arrive at some sort of definite thoroughfare which would follow along inside the ramparts. That would lead him down to the port. The thing turned out to be more complicated than he had thought, but he did manage eventually to get down into the wider streets. Here there were men walking; they were always eager to point the way out of the Arab quarter, even in the pouring rain, and often even without being asked. Their fundamental hostility to non-Moslems showed itself clearly in this respect. «This way out,» the children would call, in whatever language they knew. It was a refrain. Or if you were pushing your way in, «You can’t get through that way,» they would say.

  He came out into the principal street opposite the great mosque. A little beyond, atop the ramparts, perched the Castle Club (Open All Night. Best Wines and Liquors Served. Famous Attractions. Ernesto’s Hawaiian Swing Band) through whose open windows spilled the sound of a high tenor wailing into a microphone.

  From here on, the way was straight, and open to the sea wind. Twenty minutes later he was cursing in front of the entrance to the Hotel de la Playa, ringing the bell and pounding on the plate glass of the locked door in an attempt to waken the Arab who was asleep in a deck chair on the other side. When the man finally let him in he looked at him reproachfully, saying: «Sí, sí, sí». In his mailbox with the key was a note. He went to his room, stripped off his wet clothes, and stepped into the corner to take a hot shower. There was no hot water. He rubbed himself down with the turkish towel and got into his bathrobe. Sitting on the bed, he opened the note. Where the hell are you? it said. Will be by at nine tomorrow morning. Jack.

  He laid the piece of paper on the night table and got into bed, leaving the window closed. He could tell by the sound that it was raining too hard to have it open.

  3

  The Age of Monsters

  XV

  In the night the wind veered and the weather changed, bringing a luminous sky and a bright moon. In his bed at the Atlantide, Wilcox blamed his insomnia on indigestion. His dreams were turbulent and broken; he had to step out of a doorway into the street that was thronged with people who pretended to be paying him no attention, but he knew that among the passers-by were hidden the men who were waiting for him. They would seize him from behind and push him into a dark alley, and there would be no one to help him. Each time he awoke he found himself lying on his back, breathing with difficulty, his heart pounding irregularly. Finally he turned on the light and smoked. As he sat partially up in bed, looking around the room which seemed too fully lighted, he reassured himself, arguing that no one had seen Dyar in his office, and that thus no one would be able to know when he left Ramlal’s shop that he was carrying the money. To look at the situation clearly, he forced himself to admit that the Larbi gang did have ways of finding things out. Ever since he had discovered that the dreaded El Kebir was back from his short term in jail at Port Lyautey (he had caught sight of him in the street the very afternoon he had left Dyar alone in the office), the fear that one of them might somehow learn of Dyar’s connection with him had been uppermost in his mind. But this time he had been really circumspect; he did not think they knew anything. Only, it must be done immediately. With each hour that passed, they were more likely to get wind of the project. He wondered if it had been wise to go to the Hotel de la Playa and leave the note, if it might not have been better simply to keep telephoning all night until he had found Dyar in. He wondered if by any chance the British had had their suspicions aroused. He began to wonder all sorts of things, feeling at every moment less and less like sleeping. «That damned zabaglione,» he thought. «Too rich». And he got up to take a soda-mint. While he was at the medicine cabinet he shook a gardenal tablet out of its tube as well, but then he reflected that it might make him oversleep, and he did not trust the desk downstairs to call him. They occasionally missed up, and it was imperative that he rise at eight. He got back into bed and began to read the editorial page of the Paris Herald.

  It was about this time when Daisy de Valverde awoke feeling unaccountably nervous. Luis had gone to Casablanca for a few days on business, and although the house was full of servants she never slept well when she was alone. She listened, wondering if it had been a sudden noise which had brought her back from sleep: she heard only the endless sound of the sea against the rocks, so far below that it was like a shell being held to the ear. She opened her eyes. The room was bathed in brilliant moonlight. It came in from the west, but on all sides she could see the glow of the clear night sky out over the water. Slipping out of bed, she went and tried the door into the corridor, just to be positive it was locked. It was, and she got back into bed and pulled an extra blanket up over her, torturing herself with the fantasy that it might have been unlocked, so that it would have opened just a bit when she tried it, and she would have seen, standing just outside, a great ragged Moor with a beard, look
ing at her evilly through slits of eyes. She would have slammed the door, only to find that he had put one huge foot through the opening. She would have pushed against it with all her might, but.

  «Shall I never grow up?» she thought. Did one never reach a stage when one had complete control of oneself, so that one could think what one wanted to think, feel the way one wanted to feel?

  Thami had gone home late. The considerable number of pipes of kif he had shared with his friends in the café throughout the evening had made him a little careless, so that he had made a good deal of noise in the process of getting his clothes off. The baby had awakened and begun to wail, and the kif, instead of projecting him through a brief region of visions into sleep, had made him wakeful and short of breath. During the small hours he heard each call to prayer from the minaret of the nearby Emsallah mosque, as well as the half-hourly chants of reassurance that all was well with the faithful; each time the arrowlike voice came out through the still air there was a sporadic outburst of cockcrows roundabout. Finally the fowls refused to go back to sleep, and their racket became continuous, up there on the roofs of the houses. Instinctively, when he had lain down, Thami had put Eunice’s check under his pillow. At dawn he slept for an hour. When he opened his eyes, his wife was shuffling about barefoot and the baby was screaming again. He looked at his watch and called out: «Coffee!» He wanted to be at the bank before it opened.