The Sheltering Sky (27 page)

When everything had been put back, she took up a lipstick and a small hand mirror, and turning toward a light, ostentatiously made up. There were cries of admiration. She passed the objects to one of them and invited her to do the same. When all three had brilliant red lips and were looking enraptured at themselves and at each other, she showed them that she would leave the lipstick as a gift for them, but that in return they must let her out into the street. Their faces reflected eagerness and consternation: they were eager to have her out of the house but fearful of Belqassim. During the consultation that followed, Kit sat beside her valise on the floor. She watched them, not feeling that their discussion had anything to do with her. The decision was being made far beyond them, far beyond this unlikely little room where they stood chattering. She ceased looking at them and stared impassively in front of her, convinced that because of the drums she would get out. Now she was merely waiting for the moment. After a long time they sent the servant girl away; she returned accompanied by a little black man so old that his back bent far forward as he shuffled along. In his shaking hand he held a huge key. He was muttering protestations, but it was clear that he had already been persuaded. Kit sprang up and took her bag. Each of the wives came to her as she stood there, and implanted a solemn kiss in the middle of her forehead. She stepped to the door where the old man stood, and together they crossed the courtyard. As they went along he said a few words to her, but she could not answer. He took her to another part of the house and opened a small door. She stood alone in the silence of the street.

The blinding sea was there below, and it glistened in the silver morning light. She lay on the narrow shelf of rock, face down, head hanging over, watching the slow waves moving inward from far out there where the curving horizon rose toward the sky. Her fingernails grated on the rock; she was certain she would fall unless she hung on with every muscle. But how long could she stay there like that, suspended between sky and sea? The ledge had been growing constantly narrower; now it cut across her chest and hindered her breathing. Or was she slowly edging forward, raising herself ever so slightly on her elbows now and then to push her body a fraction of an inch nearer the edge? She was leaning out far enough now to see the sheer cliffs beneath at the sides, split into towering prisms that sprouted fat gray cacti. Directly below her, the waves broke soundlessly against the wall of rock. Night had been here in the wet air, but now it had retreated beneath the surface of the water. At the moment her balance was perfect; stiff as a plank she lay poised on the brink. She fixed her eye on one distant advancing wave. By the time it arrived at the rock her head would have begun to descend, the balance would be broken. But the wave did not move.

“Wake up! Wake up!” she screamed.

She let go.

Her eyes were already open. Dawn was breaking. The rock she leaned against hurt her back. She sighed, and shifted her position a bit. Among the rocks out there beyond the town it was very quiet at this time of the day. She looked into the sky, saw space growing ever clearer. The first slight sounds moving through that space seemed no more than variations on the basic silence of which they were made. The nearby rock forms and the more distant city walls came up slowly from the realm of the invisible, but still only as emanations of the shadowy depths beneath. The pure sky, the bushes beside her, the pebbles at her feet, all had been drawn up from the well of absolute night. And in the same fashion the strange languor in the center of her consciousness, those vaporous ideas which kept appearing as though independently of her will, were mere tentative fragments of her own presence, looming against the nothingness of a sleep not yet cold—a sleep still powerful enough to return and take her in its arms. But she remained awake, the nascent light invading her eyes, and still no corresponding aliveness awoke within her; she had no feeling of being anywhere, of being anyone.

When she was hungry, she rose, picked up her bag, and walked among the rocks along a path of sorts, probably made by goats, which ran parallel to the walls of the town. The sun had risen; already she felt its heat on the back of her neck. She raised the hood of her haik. In the distance were the sounds of the town: voices crying out and dogs barking. Presently she passed beneath one of the flat-arched gates and was again in the city. No one noticed her. The market was full of black women in white robes. She went up to one of the women and took a jar of buttermilk out of her hand. When she had drunk it, the woman stood waiting to be paid. Kit frowned and stooped to open her bag. A few other women, some carrying babies at their backs, stopped to watch. She pulled a thousand-franc note out of the pile and offered it. But the woman stared at the paper and made a gesture of refusal. Kit still held it forth. Once the other had understood that no different money was to be given her, she set up a great cry and began to call for the police. The laughing women crowded in eagerly, and some of them took the proffered note, examining it with curiosity, and finally handing it back to Kit. Their language was soft and unfamiliar. A white horse trotted past; astride it sat a tall Negro in a khaki uniform, his face decorated with deep cicatrizations like a carved wooden mask. Kit broke away from the women and raised her arms toward him, expecting him to lift her up, but he looked at her askance and rode off. Several men joined the group of onlookers, and stood somewhat apart from the women, grinning. One of them, spotting the bill in her hand, stepped nearer and began to examine her and the valise with increasing interest. Like the others, he was tall, thin and very black, and he wore a ragged burnous slung across his shoulders, but his costume included a pair of dirty white European trousers instead of the long native undergarment. Approaching her, he tapped her on the arm and said something to her in Arabic; she did not understand. Then he said:
“Toi parles français?”
She did not move; she did not know what to do.
“Oui,”
she replied at length.

“Toi pas Arobe,”
he pronounced, scrutinizing her. He turned triumphantly to the crowd and announced that the lady was French. They all backed away a few steps, leaving him and Kit in the center. Then the woman renewed her demands for money. Still Kit remained motionless, the thousand-franc note in her hand.

The man drew some coins from his pocket and tossed them to the expostulating woman, who counted them and walked off slowly. The other people seemed disinclined to move; the sight of a French lady dressed in Arab clothes delighted them. But he was displeased, and indignantly tried to get them to go on about their business. He took Kit’s arm and gently tugged at it.

“It’s not good here,” he said. “Come.” He picked up the valise. She let him pull her along through the market, past the piles of vegetables and salt, past the noisy buyers and vendors. 

As they came to a well where the women were filling their water jars, he tried to break away from him. In another minute life would be painful. The words were coming back, and inside the wrappings of the words there would be thoughts lying there. The hot sun would shrivel them; they must be kept inside in the dark.

“Non!”
she cried, jerking her arm away.

“Madame,” said the man reprovingly. “Come and sit down.”

Again she allowed him to lead her through the throng. At the end of the market they went under an arcade, and in the shadows there was a door. It was cool inside in the corridor. A fat woman wearing a checked dress stood at the end, her arms akimbo. Before they reached her, she cried shrilly: “Amar! What’s that
saloperie
you’re bringing in here? You know very well I don’t allow native women in my hotel. Are you drunk?
Allez! Fous-moi le camp!”
She advanced upon them frowning.

Momentarily taken aback, the man let go of his charge. Kit wheeled about automatically and started to walk toward the door, but he turned and seized her arm again. She tried to shake him off.

“She understands French!” exclaimed the woman, surprised. “So much the better.” Then she saw the valise. “What’s that?” she said,

“But it’s hers. She’s a French lady,” Amar explained, a note of indignation in his voice.

“Pas Possible,”
murmured the woman. She came nearer and looked at her. Finally she said:
“Ah, pardon, madame.
But with those clothes—” She broke off, and suspicion entered her voice again. “You know, this is a decent hotel.” She was undecided, but she shrugged her shoulders, adding with bad grace:
“Enfin, entrez si vous voulez.”
And she stepped aside for Kit to pass.

Kit, however, was making frantic efforts to disengage herself from the man’s grasp.

“Non, non, non! A ne veux pas!”
she cried hysterically, clawing at his hand. Then she put her free arm around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder, sobbing.

The woman stared at her, then at Amar. Her face grew hard. “Take that creature out of here!” she said furiously. “Take her back to the bordel where you found her!
Et ne viens plus m’emmerder avec tes sales putains! Va! Salaud!”

Outside the sun seemed more dazzling than before. The mud walls and the shining black faces went past. There was no end to the world’s intense monotony.

“I’m tired,” she said to Amar.

They were in a gloomy room sitting side by side on a long cushion. A Negro wearing a fez stood before them handing them each a glass of coffee.

“I want it all to stop,” she said to them both, very seriously.

“Oui, madame,”
said Amar, patting her shoulder.

She drank her coffee and lay back against the wall, looking at them through half-closed eyes. They were talking together, they talked interminably. She did not wonder what it was about. When Amar got up and went outside with the other, she waited a moment, until their voices were no longer audible, and then she too jumped up and walked through a door on the other side of the room. There was a tiny stairway. On the roof it was so hot she gasped. The confused babble from the market was almost covered by the buzzing of the flies around her. She sat down. In another moment she would begin to melt. She shut her eyes and the flies crawled quickly over her face, alighting, leaving, re-alighting with frantic intensity. She opened her eyes and saw the city out there on all sides of her. Cascades of crackling light poured over the terraced roofs.

Slowly her eyes grew accustomed to the terrible brightness. She fixed the objects beside her on the dirt floor: the bits of rags; the dried carcass of a strange gray lizard; the faded, broken matchboxes; and the piles of white chicken feathers stuck together with dark blood. There was somewhere she had to go; someone was expecting her. How could she let the people know she would be late? Because there was no question about it—she was going to arrive far behind schedule. Then she remembered that she had not sent her telegram. At that moment Amar came through the little doorway and walked toward her. She struggled to her feet. “Wait here,” she said, pushing past him, and she went in because the sun made her feel ill. The man looked at the paper and then at her. “Where do you want to send it?” he repeated. She shook her head dumbly. He handed her the paper and she saw, written on it in her own hand, the words: “CANNOT GET BACK.” The man was staring at her. “That’s not right!” she cried, in French. “I want to add something.” But the man went on staring at her—not angrily, but expectantly. He had a small moustache and blue eyes.
“Le destinataire, s’il vous plait,”
he said again. She thrust the paper at him because she could not think of the words she needed to add, and she wanted the message to leave immediately. But already she saw that he was not going to send it. She reached out and touched his face, stroked his cheek briefly.
“Je vous en prié, monsieur,”
she said imploringly. There was a counter between them; he stepped back and she could not reach him. Then she ran out into the street and Amar, the black man, was standing there. “Quick!” she cried, not stopping. He ran after her, calling to her. Wherever she ran, he was beside her, trying to make her stop.
“Madame!”
he kept saying. But he did not understand the danger, and she could not stop to explain anything. There was no time for that. Now that she had betrayed herself, established contact with the other side, every minute counted. They would spare no effort in seeking her out, they would pry open the wall she had built and force her to look at what she had buried there. She knew by the blue-eyed man’s expression that she had set in motion the mechanism which would destroy her. And now it was too late to stop it.
“Vite! Vite!”
she panted to Amar, perspiring and protesting beside her. They were in an open space by the road that led down to the river. A few nearly naked beggars squatted here and there, each one murmuring his own short sacred formula for them as they rushed by. No one else was in sight.

He finally caught up with her and took hold of her shoulder, but she redoubled her efforts. Soon, however, she slowed down, and then he seized her firmly and brought her to a stop. She sank to her knees and wiped her wet face with the back of her hand. The expression of terror was still strong in her eyes. He crouched down beside her in the dust and tried to comfort her with clumsy pats on the arm.

“Where are you going like this?” he demanded presently. “What’s the matter?”

She did not answer. The hot wind blew past. In the distance on the flat road to the river, a man and two oxen passed along slowly. Amar was saying: “That was Monsieur Geoffroy. He’s a good man. You should not be afraid of him. For five years he has worked at the
Postes et Télégraphes
.”

The sound of the last word was like a needle piercing her flesh. She jumped. “No, I won’t! No, no, no!” she wailed.

“And you know,” Amar went on, “that money you wanted to give him is not good here. It’s Algerian money. Even in Tessalit you have to have A.O.F. francs. Algerian money is contraband.”

“Contraband,” she repeated; the word meant absolutely nothing.

“Défendu!”
he said laughing, and be attempted to get her up onto her feet. The sun was painful; he, too, was sweating. She would not move at present—she was exhausted. He waited a while, made her cover her head with her haik, and lay back wrapped in his burnous. The wind increased. The sand raced along the flat black earth like white water streaming sideways.

Suddenly she said: “Take me to your house. They won’t find me there.”

But he refused, saying that there was no room, that his family was large. instead he would take her to the place where they had had coffee earlier in the day.

“It’s a café,” she protested.

“But Atallah has many rooms. You can pay him. Even your Algerian money. He can change it. You have more?”

“Yes, yes. In my bag.” She looked around. “Where is it?” she said vacantly.

“You left it at Atallah’s. He’ll give it to you.” He grinned and spat. “Now, shall we walk a little?”

Atallah was in his café. A few turbaned merchants from the north sat in a corner talking. Amar and Atallah stood a moment conversing in the doorway. Then they led her into the living quarters behind the café. It was very dark and cool in the rooms, and particularly in the last one, where Atallah set her valise down and indicated a blanket in the corner on the floor for her to lie on. Even as he went out, letting the curtain fall across the doorway, she turned to Amar and pulled his face down to hers.

“You must save me,” she said between kisses.

“Yes,” he answered solemnly.

He was as comforting as Belqassim had been disturbing.