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  «Goes fast?» Dyar repeated, not paying attention.

  «I don’t know how fast, but faster than the fishing boats down there. You know, it’s an old boat. It can’t go like a new one».

  «No. Of course».

  They passed Ramlal’s shop. It was closed. Ramlal had added six batteries for portable radios to the array of fountain pens, celluloid toys and wrist watches. They passed El Gran Paris, its show windows a chaos of raincoats. It was always difficult to navigate the Zoco Chico with its groups of stationary talkers like rocks in the sea, around which the crowd surged in all directions. Arrived at what Dyar thought was the entrance to the Crédit Foncier, at the top of some steps between two cafés, he saw that even the way into the outer courtyard was barred by high gates which were closed.

  «This isn’t it,» he said, looking uneasily up and down the plaza.

  «What do you want?» Thami asked, perhaps slightly annoyed that Dyar had not already told him exactly where he was going and on what errand. Dyar did not reply; his heart sank, because he knew now that this was the Crédit Foncier and that it was closed. He ran up the steps and shook the gate, pounded on it, wondering if the sound could be heard through the vast babble of voices that floated in from the zoco.

  Thami slowly climbed the steps, frowning. «Why do you want to get in? You want to go to the bank?»

  «It’s not even five of four yet. It shouldn’t be closed».

  Thami smiled pityingly. «Ha! You think this is America, people looking at their watches all the time until they see if it is exactly four o’clock, or exactly ten o’clock? Today they might stay open until twenty minutes past four, tomorrow they might lock the door at ten minutes before four. The way they feel. You know. Sometimes you have a lot of work. Sometimes not much».

  «God damn it, I’ve got to get in there!» Dyar pounded on the gate some more, and called out: «Hey!»

  Thami was used to this urgency on the part of foreigners. He smiled. «You can get in tomorrow morning».

  «Tomorrow morning hell. I have to get in now».

  Thami yawned and stretched. «Well, I would like to help you, but I can’t do anything».

  Pounding and calling out seemed fairly useless. Dyar continued to do both, until a very thin Arab with a broom in his hand appeared from a corner of the courtyard, and stood looking between the bars.

  «Ili firmi!» he said indignantly.

  «Mr. Benzekri! I’ve got to see him!»

  «Ili firmi, m’sio». And to Thami: «Qoullou rhadda f’s sbah». But Thami did not deign to notice the sweeper; he went back down the steps into the zoco and shouted up to Dyar: «Come on!» Seeing that the latter remained at the gate trying to argue with the man, he sat down in a chair nearby on the sidewalk to wait until he had finished. Presently Dyar came down to join him, muttering under his breath.

  «The son of a bitch wouldn’t even go and call Mr. Benzekri for me».

  Thami laughed. «Sit down. Have a drink. Be my guest». A waiter had approached. Dyar threw himself into a chair. «Give me a White Horse. No water,» he said.

  Thami ordered. Then he looked at Dyar and laughed again. He reached over and slapped Dyar’s knee. «Don’t be so serious. No one is going to die because you can’t get in the bank today instead of tomorrow. You can go tomorrow».

  «Yes,» said Dyar. Even as he said it he was thinking: Legally the money belongs to whoever has it. And I’ve got it.

  «You need money?» said Thami suddenly. «How much? I’ll give you some money. How much?»

  «No thanks, Thami. I appreciate it. You’re a good guy. Just let me think. I just want to think a minute».

  Thami was silent until the whiskey was brought. Then he began to talk again, about an Englishman he had once known. The Englishman had invited him to go to Xauen with him, but for some reason there had been difficulties at the frontier. Never very perceptive, he did not notice that Dyar was still sunk inside himself, formulating, rejecting possibilities.

  «A votre santé, monsieur,» said Thami, raising his glass expectantly.

  «Yeah,» said Dyar. «Yeah». And looking up suddenly: «Right. Prosit». He drained his glass. He was thinking: if only Ramlal had gotten the money yesterday morning instead of last night I’d be in the clear. No Legation wondering when I’m going to phone. No Madame Jouvenon. Damn Madame Jouvenon. He did not realize how illogical his reasoning was at this point, how inextricably bound up with his present decision was his involvement with that lady.

  «Let’s get out of here». He rose to his feet. The suddenness of the remark and the tone in which it was said made Thami look up at him wonderingly.

  In the street, going down toward the port, he began to speak confidentially, holding his mouth close to Thami’s ear. «Can you run that boat?»

  «Well» —

  «You can’t run it. All right. Do you know anyone who can? How about the guy you bought it from? He can run it, can’t he? Where is he now?»

  «Where is he now?»

  «Yes. Right now».

  «He lives in Dradeb».

  «Where’s that?»

  «You know,» said Thami obligingly. «You go from the Zoco de Fuera into Bou Arakía. You go past the Moorish cemetery and you come to Cuatro Caminos» —

  «Can we go there in a taxi?»

  «Taxi? We don’t need a taxi. We can walk. The taxi charges fifteen pesetas».

  «We can get there in a taxi, though?»

  Thami, looking increasingly surprised, said that they could.

  «Come on!» Dyar rushed ahead, toward the cab-stand at the foot of the ramparts. Laughing and protesting, Thami followed. At last the American was behaving like an American. They got to the foot of the hill. Dyar looked at his watch. Ten after four. I’m glad I thought of that, he said to himself. «Hotel de la Playa,» he told the driver. If Wilcox just happened to be at the hotel waiting for him, he could still have an alibi. Chocron had kept him so long that the Crédit Foncier was closed when he got there, so he had come back immediately to lock up the money until tomorrow. Wilcox could either take it with him, or leave it, as he liked. But if he returned to the hotel any later than this and happened to find Wilcox, there would be no way of explaining the time that had elapsed between four and whatever time he got there. «If you just do each thing as it comes along and keep calm you can get away with this. Get rattled and you’re screwed for good,» he told himself.

  The sun had gone behind the high buildings on the hill, but it still shone on the freighters at anchor in the harbor; all their white paint was turning faintly orange in its light. Beyond them on its cliff stood the whitewashed tower of the lighthouse at Malabata.

  At the hotel he had Thami wait in the cab. With his parcel he jumped out and went into the lobby. There was no sign of Wilcox. That was all right, but the more dangerous moment would be when he came back downstairs. Even then he could still say he had thought of locking it in one of his valises, then had decided to give it to the management to put into the hotel safe. The boy gave him his key and a telephone message, which he put into his pocket without reading. He ran upstairs. The air in his room was dead, colder by several degrees than the air outdoors. He laid his brief case on the bed, quickly put into it his razor, shaving cream, blades, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and four handkerchiefs. Then he unwrapped the box and laid the bundles of bills in among the toilet articles. There was still room for a pair of shorts. The door was locked; if Wilcox rapped on it at this moment he would have time to take out the money and throw the brief case into the closet. He felt in his pocket to see if his passport, wallet and express checks were all there. He stuffed a woolen scarf and a pair of gloves into the pocket of his overcoat and slung it over his arm, closed the brief case, spun its Sesamee lock to triple zero, and looked once more around the room. Then, with a caution which he felt was absurd even as he used it, he unlocked the door and opened it. The corridor was empty. Through the window at the end he saw the distant dunes behind the beach; their shadows rea
ched out along the flat sand toward the harbor. A radio upstairs was playing Flamenco music, but there was no sound in the halls or stairway.

  «Let’s go,» he whispered, and he went quietly downstairs. Wilcox was not in the lobby. The taxi outside had not moved. He handed his key to the boy and walked out. «Good bye, Playa,» he said under his breath.

  «Now give that address to the driver».

  «The Jilali?» Thami was mystified, but knowing something was in the air he had every intention of playing along until he satisfied his curiosity, both as to what Dyar was doing and as to whether there might be some money in it for him. He leaned forward and began to give the man complicated instructions.

  «Come on! Let’s get started!» Dyar cried, glancing anxiously down the Avenida de España. «You can do that on the way».

  The cab backed and turned up the road that went over the hill. Now the setting sun shone directly into their faces; Dyar put on a pair of dark glasses, turned to Thami. «What did you pay for your boat?»

  Thami gulped and floundered, saying: «Who, me?» which is what any Arab would have said under similar circumstances; then, remembering that such an answer was calculated to infuriate any American, he quickly told him the only price he could think of, which was the true one.

  «How’s this?» said Dyar. «You rent the boat to me tonight for twenty-five hundred pesetas, and I’ll give you another twenty-five hundred to come along and see that I get where I want to go. You’ll have your boat and your five thousand».

  The emotions engendered in Thami by the unfamiliar situation caused him further to abandon his European habits of thought. Good luck, like bad luck, comes directly from Allah to the recipient; the intermediary is of little importance save as a lever to help assure the extraction of the maximum blessing. «I have no money for gasolina». objected Thami.

  By the time they got to the crowded main street of the suburb that was Dradeb, they had reached an agreement on all the main points of finance; the Jilali remained an uncertain factor, but Thami was optimistic. «I’ll tell him seven hundred fifty and then we can go up to one thousand if we have to,» he said, figuring on a fifty percent split (which might not be so easy to get, he reflected, considering that with his five thousand pesetas the Jilali was not immediately in need of money.)

  The cab drew up to the curb and stopped in front of a grocery store. Thami leaped out, disappeared down one of the twilit alleys, was back to make inquiries at the shop, and hurried ahead up the main street. The driver got out and walked in the other direction.

  Left alone in the taxi, oblivious of the inquisitive stares of passers-by, Dyar relaxed voluptuously, savoring the first small delights of triumph. It was already a very pleasant thing to have Thami rushing around out there, intent on helping him.

  Then he remembered the message the boy at the hotel had given him. He took it out of his pocket and snapped on the overhead light. «Llame Vd. Al 28–01,» it said, and he knew that was Daisy de Valverde’s number. The brief case in his hand, he got out and stepped into the grocery store. By now it was fairly dark in the street, and there was only one candle in here to add to the failing blue daylight that still came through the door. A placid Soussi sat behind the counter, his eyes almost closed. Dyar saw the telephone on a crate behind the broken Coca-Cola cooler. It was a dial phone: he was thankful for that. He had to strike a match to see the numbers.

  Surprisingly, Daisy herself answered. «You villain,» she said. «You just got my message? I called hours ago. Can you come to dinner? All very informal, all very private, I might even add. Luis is in Casa. I’m in bed. Not really ill. Only sciatica. Just you and I, and I should love it if you could come. About seven? So we can talk? It’ll be wonderful to see you, darling».

  He laid the money for the call on the counter; the Soussi nodded his head once. When he got to the taxi, the driver was back at the wheel, opening a pack of cigarettes. He got in, slammed the door, and sat waiting. It seemed a perfect solution to the problem of dinner; it would keep him completely out of the streets, out of the town.

  Presently he saw Thami coming along toward the cab. He had someone with him. He came up, opened the door and leaned in. «I found him,» he announced, pleased with the financial arrangements he had just completed, on the way from the Jilali’s house.

  «Fine. Now we go to your house,» said Dyar. «Stick him in front and let’s go».

  The Jilali’s name was Zaki; he was a man of thirty-five (which meant that he looked fifty), unkempt in his attire and very much in need of a shave, so that to Dyar his appearance suggested an extra in a pirate film.

  «Does he understand any English?» he asked Thami.

  «That man? Ha! He doesn’t even understand Spanish!» Thami sounded triumphant. «Verdad, amigo?» he called to the one in front.

  «Chnou?» said the Jilali, not turning around.

  The street where Thami lived became increasingly bumpy and full of puddles whose depth it was impossible to judge; the driver suddenly stopped the car and announced that he would proceed no further. There ensued an argument which promised to be lengthy. Dyar got out and surveyed the street with distaste. The houses were ramshackle, some with second stories still in construction, and their front doors gave directly on to the muddy lane, no room having been left for a future laying of sidewalks. Impatiently he called to Thami. «Have him wait here, then. Hurry up!» The driver however, after locking the car, insisted on accompanying them. «He says we owe him sixty-five pesetas already,» confided Thami. Dyar grunted.

  Thami entered first, to get his wife out of the way, while the others waited outside in the dark.

  «You stay here,» Dyar said to the driver, who appeared satisfied once he had seen which house they were going to enter.

  Soon Thami came to the door and motioned them in, leading the way through the unlit patio into a narrow room where a radio was playing. The mattress along the wall was covered with cheap green and yellow brocade; above it hung a group of large gilt-framed photographs of men wearing gandouras and fezzes. Three alarm clocks, all ticking, sat atop a hanging cupboard at the end of the room, but each one showed a different hour. Ranging along a lower shelf beneath them was a succession of dusty but unused paper cups which had been placed with care so as to alternate with as many small red figurines of plaster, representing Santa Claus; below and to both sides, the wall was papered with several dozen colored brochures, all identical, each bearing the photograph of an enormous toothbrush with a brilliant blue plastic handle. «DENTOLINE, LA BROSSE A DENTS PAR EXCELLENCE,» they said, over and over. The radio on the floor in the corner was turned up to its full volume; Om Kalsoum sang a tortured lament, and behind her voice an orchestra sputtered and wailed.

  «Sit down!» shouted Thami to Dyar. He knelt and reduced the force of the music a little. As Dyar stepped over to the mattress, the electric light bulb which swung at the end of a long cord from the center of the ceiling struck him on the forehead. «Sorry,» he said, as the light waved crazily back and forth. The Jilali had removed his shoes at the door and was already seated at one end of the mattress, his legs tucked under him, swaying a bit from side to side with the music.

  Dyar called across to Thami: «Hey! Cut off the funeral! Would you mind? We’ve got a lot to talk about, and not much time».

  Out of the silence that followed came the sound of the baby screaming in the next room. Dyar began to talk.

  XVII

  What did it mean, reflected Daisy, to be what your friends called a forceful woman? Although they intended to mean it as such, they did not manage to make it a flattering epithet; she knew that. It was adverse criticism. If you said a woman was forceful, you meant that she got what she wanted in too direct a manner, that she was not enough of a woman, that she was unsubtle, pushing. It was almost as much of an insult as to say that a man had a weak character. Yet her closest friends were in the habit of using the word openly to describe her; «even to my face,» she thought, with mingled resentment and satisfacti
on. It was as if, in accepting the contemporary fallacy that women should have the same aims and capacities as men, they assumed that any quality which was a virtue in a man was equally desirable in a woman. But when she heard the word «forceful» being used in connection with herself, even though she knew it was perfectly true and not intended as derogation, she immediately felt like some rather ungraceful predatory animal, and the sensation did not please her. There were very concrete disadvantages attached to being classified that way: in any situation where it would be natural to expect an expression of concern for her well-being on the part of the males in the group, it was always the other women about whom they fretted. The general opinion, often uttered aloud, was that Daisy could take care of herself. And how many other husbands went off and left their wives for five or six days, alone in the house with the servants? It was not that she minded being alone — on the contrary, it was rather a rest for her, since she never entertained when Luis was away. But the fact that he took it so much as a matter of course that she would not mind — for some reason this nettled her, although she could not have found a logical explanation for her annoyance. «I suppose one can’t have one’s cake and eat it too,» she would say to herself at least once during each of his absences. If you had spent your childhood astride a horse, riding with your four brothers around the fifty thousand acres of an estancia, it was natural that you should become the sort of woman she had become, and you could hardly expect men to feel protective toward you. As a matter of fact, it was often quite the reverse: she sometimes found her male friends looking to her for moral support, and she always gave it unhesitatingly even though she was aware as she did so that at each moment she was moving farther from the privileged position modern woman is expected to occupy vis-a-vis her male acquaintances.

  The majority of Daisy’s friends were men: men liked her and she prided herself on knowing how to handle them. Yet her first two husbands had died, the one leaving her with a child and the other with a considerable fortune. The little girl she had more or less abandoned to the care of her father’s family in Buenos Aires; the fortune however she had kept. At loose ends in London, and for want of anything better to do, she had decided to set out in leisurely fashion around the world. The trip took three years; she ended up in the south of France during the autumn of 1938, where she took a small house at Saint Paul du Var, intensely conscious of her solitude and with the feeling that somehow her life had not yet begun.