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  The voices were no longer audible. «They’ve gone into the kitchen,» she said. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, held it up to her.

  «No, thank you. I have some. But seriously, I can’t think what you’ll do all day, you know». She felt in her bag and withdrew a small gold case.

  «I’ll probably have work to do,» he replied, getting a match to the end of her cigarette before she could lift her lighter.

  She laughed shortly, blew out the flame, and seized his hand, the match still between his fingers. «Let me see that hand,» she said, puffing on her cigarette. Dyar smiled and held his palm out stiffly for her to examine. «Relax it,» she said, drawing the hand nearer to her face.

  «Work!» she scoffed. «I see no sign of it here, my dear Mr. Dyar».

  He was incensed. «Well, it’s a liar, then. Work is all I’ve ever done».

  «Oh, standing in a bank, perhaps, but that’s so light it wouldn’t show». She looked carefully, pushing the flesh of the hand with her fingers. «No. I see no sign of work. No sign of anything, to be quite honest. I’ve never seen such an empty hand. It’s terrifying». She looked up at him.

  Again he laughed. «You’re stumped, are you?»

  «Not at all. I’ve lived in America long enough to have seen a good many American hands. All I can say is that this is the worst».

  He pretended great indignation, withdrawing his hand forcibly. «What do you mean, worst?» he cried.

  She looked at him with infinite concern in her eyes. «I mean,» she said, «that you have an empty life. No pattern. And nothing in you to give you any purpose. Most people can’t help following some kind of design. They do it automatically because it’s in their nature. It’s that that saves them, pulls them up short. They can’t help themselves. But you’re safe from being saved».

  «A unique specimen. Is that it?»

  «In a way». She searched his face questioningly for a moment. «How odd,» she murmured presently. This empty quality in him pleased her. It was rather as if he were naked, — not defenseless, exactly — merely unclothed, ready to react, and she found it attractive; men should be like that. But it struck her as strange that she should think so.

  «How odd what?» he inquired. «That I should be unique?» He could see that she believed all she was saying, and since it was flattering to have the attention being paid him, he was ready to argue with her, if necessary, just to prolong it.

  «Yes».

  «I’ve never been able to believe all this astrology and palmistry business,» he said. «It doesn’t hold water».

  She did not answer, and so he continued. «Let’s leave hands for a minute and get down to personalities». The brandy was warming him; he felt far from ill now. «You mean you think each individual man’s life is different and has its own pattern, as you call it?»

  «Yes, of course».

  «But that’s impossible!» he cried. «It stands to reason. Just look around you. There never was any mass production to compare with the one that turns out human beings — all the same model, year after year, century after century, all alike, always the same person». He felt a little exalted at the sound of his own voice. «You might say there’s only one person in the world, and we’re all it».

  She was silent for a moment; then she said: «Rubbish». What he was saying made her vaguely angry. She wondered if it were because she resented his daring to express his ideas at all, but she did not think it was that.

  «Look, my pet,» she said in a conciliatory tone, «just what do you want in life?»

  «That’s a hard question,» he said slowly. She had taken the wind out of his sails. «I suppose I want to feel I’m getting something out of it».

  She was impatient. «That doesn’t mean anything».

  «I want to feel I’m alive, I guess. That’s about all».

  «Great God in heaven. Give me some more brandy».

  They let the subject drop, turning to the storm and the climate in general. He was thinking that he should have answered anything that came to mind: money, happiness, health, rather than trying to say what he really meant. As an accompaniment to these thoughts there recurred the image of his room back at the Hotel de la Playa, with its spotted bedspread, its washstand that gurgled.

  «He has nothing, he wants nothing, he is nothing,» thought Daisy. She felt she ought to be sorry for him, but somehow he did not evoke pity in her — rather, a slight rancor which neutralized her other emotions. Finally she stood up. «We must see what has happened to Luis and Jack».

  They found them in the drawing room talking.

  «Which eucalyptus was it?» said Daisy. «I know it was one of them».

  The Marques frowned. «The great one by the gate. It’s not the whole tree. Only one branch, but a big one, the one overhanging the road. The road is blocked».

  «Why do they always manage to fall into the road?» demanded Daisy.

  «I don’t know,» said Wilcox. «But it screws me up fine. How am I going to get out of here?»

  She laughed merrily. «You and Mr. Dyar,» she said, with very clear enunciation, «will spend the night, and in the morning you’ll call for a taxi. It’s that simple».

  «Out of the question,» said Wilcox irritably.

  «I assure you no taxi will come now, in this weather. That goes without saying. And it’s eight kilometers to walk».

  He had no answer to this.

  «There are plenty of rooms for just such emergencies. Now, stop fretting and make me a whiskey and soda». She turned to Dyar and beamed.

  When she had been served, Wilcox said shortly: «What about it, Dyar? Same for you?» Dyar looked quickly at him, saw that he seemed annoyed. «Please». Wilcox handed him his drink without turning to face him. «That’s easy,» Dyar thought. «He’s afraid I’m getting on too well with her».

  They talked about the house. «You must come back sometime during the daylight and see the rose garden,» said Daisy. «We have the most divine rose garden».

  «But what you’ve really got to see is that glass bedroom,» said Wilcox, leaning back in his chair and yawning toward the ceiling. «Have you seen that?»

  The Marques laughed uncomfortably.

  «No, he hasn’t,» Daisy said. She rose, took Dyar’s arm. «Come along and see it. It’s a perfect opportunity. Jack and Luis will discuss the week’s bankruptcies».

  The bedroom reminded Dyar of a vast round greenhouse. He scuffed at the zebra skins scattered about on the shining black marble floor. The bed was very wide and low, its heavy white satin spread had been partially pulled back and the sheets were turned down. The place was a gesture of defiance against the elements that clamored outside the glass walls; he felt distinctly uncomfortable. «Anybody could see in, I should think,» he ventured.

  «If they can see all the way from Spain». She stood staring down toward the invisible waves that broke on the rocks below. «This is my favorite room in the world,» she declared. «I’ve never been able to abide being away from the sea. I’m like a sailor, really. I take it for granted that salt water is the earth’s natural covering. I must be able to see it. Always». She breathed deeply.

  «What’s this act all about?» he thought.

  «It’s a wonderful room,» he said.

  «There are orange trees down in the garden. I call the place Hesperides because it’s here to this mountain that Hercules is supposed to have come to steal the golden apples».

  «Is that right?» He tried to sound interested and impressed. Since he had started on the whiskey he had been sleepy. He had the impression that Wilcox and the Marques would be coming upstairs any minute; when they came he felt that Daisy and he ought not to be found standing here in her bedroom in this tentative, absurd attitude. He saw her stifle a yawn; she had no desire to be showing him the room anyway. It was merely to irk Wilcox, a game they were in together. It occurred to him then that it might be fun to play around a little with her, to see which way the wind was blowing. But he was not sure how to begin; she wa
s a little overwhelming. Something like: That’s a big bed for one small person. She would probably reply: But Luis and I sleep here, my dear. Whatever he said or did she would probably laugh.

  «I know what you’re thinking,» she said. He started a bit. «You’re sleepy, poor man. You’d like to go to bed».

  «Oh,» he said. «Well» —

  A youngish woman hurried into the room, calling: «On peut entrer?» Her clothes were very wet, her face glistened with rain. She and Daisy began a lively conversation in French, scraps of which were thrown to Dyar now and then. She was Daisy’s secretary, she was just returning from a dance, the taxi had been obliged to stop below the fallen tree, but the driver had been kind enough to walk with her to the house and was downstairs now having a cognac, she was soaked through, and did anyone want the cab?

  «Do we!» cried Dyar, with rather more animation than was altogether civil. Immediately he felt apologetic and began to stammer his thanks and excuses.

  «Rush downstairs, darling. Don’t stop to say good night. Hurry! I’ll call you tomorrow at the office. I have something to talk to you about».

  He said good night, ran down the stairs, meeting the Marques on the way.

  «Jack is waiting for you outside. Good night, old boy,» said the Marques, continuing to climb. When he reached the top of the stairs, Daisy was blowing out the candles along the wall. «Estamos salvados,» she said, without looking up. «Qué gentuza más aburrida,» sighed the Marques.

  She continued methodically, holding her hand carefully behind each flame as she blew on it. She had the feeling her evening had somehow gone all wrong, but at what point it had begun to do that she could not tell.

  The malevolent wind struck out at them as they fought their way to the taxi. They crawled under one end of the great branch that lay diagonally across the road. The driver had some difficulty turning the car; at one point he backed into a wall and cursed. When they were on their way, going slowly down the dark mountain road, Wilcox said: «Well, did you see the bedroom?»

  «Yes».

  «You’ve seen everything. You can go back to New York. Tangier holds no secrets for you now».

  Dyar laughed uneasily. After a pause he said: «What’s up tomorrow? Do I come around to the agency?»

  Wilcox was lighting a cigarette. «You might drop in sometime during the late afternoon, yes».

  His heart sank. Then he was angry. «He knows damned well I want to start work. Playing cat and mouse». He said nothing.

  When they arrived in the town, Wilcox called: «Atlantide». The cab turned right, climbed a crooked street, and stopped before a large doorway. «Here’s fifty pesetas,» said Wilcox, pressing some notes into his hand. «My share».

  «Fine,» said Dyar. «Thanks».

  «Good night».

  «Good night».

  The driver looked expectantly back. «Just wait a minute,» said Dyar, gesturing. He could still see Wilcox in the lobby. When he had gone out of sight, Dyar paid the man, got out, and started to walk downhill, the rain at his back. The street was deserted. He felt pleasantly drunk, and not at all sleepy. As he walked along he muttered: «Late afternoon. Drop in, do. Charmed, I’m sure. Lovely weather». He came to a square where a line of cabs waited. Even in the storm, at this hour, the men spied him. «Hey, come! Taxi, Johnny?» He disregarded them and cut into a narrow passageway. It was like walking down the bed of a swiftly running brook; the water came almost to the tops of his shoes, sometimes above. He bent down and rolled up his trousers, continued to walk. His thoughts took another course. Soon he was chuckling to himself, and once he said aloud: «Golden apples, my ass!»

  III

  Thami was furious with his wife: She had a nose bleed and was letting it drip all over the patio. He had told her to get a wet rag and try to stanch it with that, but she was frightened and seemed not to hear him; she merely kept walking back and forth in the patio with her head bent over. There was an oil lamp flickering just inside the door, and from where he lay on his mattress he could see her hennaed feet with their heavy anklets shuffle by every so often in front of him. Rain fell intermittently, but she did not seem to notice it.

  That was the worst part of being married, unless one had money — a man could never be alone in his own house; there was always female flesh in front of him, and when he had had enough of it he did not want to be continually reminded of it. «Yah latif!» he yelled. «At least shut the door!» In the next room the baby started to cry. Thami waited a moment to see what Kinza was going to do. She neither closed the door nor went to comfort her son. «Go and see what he wants!» he roared. Then he groaned: «Al-lah!» and put a cushion over his abdomen, locking his hands on top of it, in the hope of having an after-dinner nap. If it were not for his son, he reflected, he would send her back where she belonged to her family in the Rif. That might pave the way, at least, to his being taken back by his brothers and permitted to live with them again.

  He had never considered it just of Abdelmalek and Hassan to have taken it upon themselves to put him out of the house. Being younger than they, he had of course to accept their dictum. But certainly he had not accepted it with good grace. It was typical of him to consider that they had acted out of sheer spite, and he behaved accordingly. He committed the unpardonable offense of speaking against them to others, dwelling upon their miserliness and their lecherousness; this trait had gradually estranged him from practically all his childhood friends. Everyone knew he drank and had done so since the age of fifteen, and although that was generally considered in the upper-class Moslem world of Tangier sufficient grounds for his having been asked to leave the Beidaoui residence, still, in itself it would not have turned his friends against him. The trouble was that Thami had a genius for doing the wrong thing; it was as if he took a perverse and bitter delight in cutting himself off from all he had ever known, in making himself utterly miserable. His senseless marriage with an illiterate mountain girl — surely he had done that only in a spirit of revenge against his brothers. He must certainly have been mocking them when he rented the squalid little house in Emsallah, where only laborers and servants lived. Not only did he take alcohol, but he had recently begun to do it publicly, on the terraces of the cafés in the Zoco Chico. His brothers had even heard, although how much truth lay in the report they did not know, that he had been seen going on numerous trips by train to Casablanca, an activity which usually meant only one thing: smuggling of one sort or another.

  Thami’s friends now were of recent cultivation, and the relationships between him and them not particularly profound ones. Two were professors at the Lycée Français, ardent nationalists who never missed an opportunity during a conversation to excoriate the French, and threw about terms like «imperialist domination,» «Pan-Islamic culture» and «autonomy». Their violence and resentment against the abuses of an unjust authority struck a sympathetic chord in him; he felt like one of them without really understanding what they were talking about. It was they who had given him the idea of making the frequent trips to the French Zone and (—for it was perfectly true: he had been engaging in petty smuggling —) carrying through with him fountain pens and wrist watches to sell there at a good profit. Every franc out of which the French customs could be cheated, they argued, was another nail in the French economic coffin; in the end the followers of Lyautey would be forced to abandon Morocco. There were also the extra thousands of francs which it was agreeable to have in his wallet at the end of such a journey.

  Another friend was a functionary in the Municipalité. He too approved of smuggling, but on moral grounds, because it was important to insist on the oneness of Morocco, to refuse to accept the three zones into which the Europeans had arbitrarily divided it. The important point with regard to Europeans, he claimed, was to sow chaos within their institutions and confuse them with seemingly irrational behavior. As to the Moslems, they must be made conscious of their shame and suffering. He frequently visited his family in Rabat, always carrying with him a large
bunch of bananas, which were a good deal cheaper in Tangier. When the train arrived at Souk el Arba the customs officers would pounce on the fruit, whereupon he would begin to shout in as loud a voice as possible that he was taking the bananas to his sick child. The officers, taking note of the growing interest in the scene on the part of the other native passengers, would lower their voices and try to keep the altercation as private and friendly as they could. He, speaking excellent French, would be polite in his language but noisy in his protest, and if it looked at any point as though the inspectors might be going to placate him and let the bananas by, he would slip into his speech some tiny expression of defiant insult, imperceptible to the other passengers but certain to throw the Frenchmen into a fury. They would demand that he give up the bananas then and there. At this point he would appear to be making a sudden decision; he would pick up the bunch by the stem and break the fruit off one by one, calling to the fourth-class passengers, mostly simple Berbers, to come and eat, saying sadly that since his sick son was not to have the bananas he wanted to give them to his countrymen. Thus forty or fifty white-robed men would be crouching along the platform munching on bananas, shaking their heads with pity for the father of the sick boy, and turning their wide accusing eyes toward the Frenchmen. The only trouble was that the number of customs inspectors was rather limited. They all had fallen into the trap again and again, but now they remembered the functionary only too well, and the last time he had gone through they had steadfasdy refused to notice the bananas at all. When Thami heard this he said: «So you went through to Rabat with them?» «Yes,» said the other a little dejectedly. «That’s wonderful,» said Thami with enthusiasm. The functionary looked at him. «Of course!» Thami cried. «You broke the law. They knew it. They didn’t dare do anything. You’ve won». «I suppose that’s true,» said the other after a moment, but he was not sure Thami understood what it was all about.

  Thami opened his eyes. It was five minutes later, although he thought it was an hour or more. She had taken the lamp; the room was in darkness. The patio door was open, and through it he could hear the splatter of rain on the tiles. Then he realized that the baby was still crying, wearily, pitifully. «Inaal din» — he said savagely under his breath. He jumped up in the dark, slid his feet into his slippers, and stumbled out into the wet.