The Spider's House (10 page)

“Why don’t we go to Aïn Malqa and swim?” said Amar. Although they had been friendly in the past, it was several months since he had seen Mohammed, and he was curious to talk with him and see what was in his head.

“Ayayay!” said Mohammed. “And how do we get there?”

“We can get bicycles in the Ville Nouvelle.”

“Hah! They’re giving them away now?”

“Ana n’khalleslik
,” Amar said promptly. “It’s on me. I’ve got some money.”

Mohammed, showing mock embarrassment, accepted by not refusing, and they started out. When the city bus came by, on its way from Bab Fteuh to the Ville Nouvelle, they boarded it and stood on the back platform bracing themselves against the curves, and joking with a one-legged man in a military jacket who claimed to be a veteran of the war.

“What war?” Amar demanded, belligerently, because he was with Mohammed.

“The
war
,” said the man. “Didn’t you ever hear of the war?”

“I’ve heard of a lot of wars. The war of the Germans, the war of the Spanish and the
rojos
, the war of Indochine, the war of Abd-el-Krim.”

“I don’t know anything about all that,” the man said impatiently. “I was in the war.”

Mohammed laughed. “I think he means the war of Moulay Abdallah. He got into the wrong bordel and somebody caught him with the wrong girl. Is that all he cut off, just your leg? You’re lucky, that’s all I can tell you.” The man joined the two boys in their laughter.

In the Ville Nouvelle the Frenchman who rented bicycles inspected their
cartes d’identité
with prolonged care before he let them ride off.

“The son of a whore,” muttered Mohammed as they pedaled down the Avenue de France under the plane trees, “he didn’t want to let us have them. The Frenchman who came in while we were waiting, you noticed he let him take the bicycle and didn’t even ask to see his card.”

“He was a friend of his,” said Amar. It would have been a good opportunity to start a conversation about what was on his mind, but he did not feel like it yet; it was too early and he felt too happy.

Once they had left the town and there was no more shade, they realized how painfully hot the sun was. But it only made them more eager to get to Aïn Malqa. They were on the plain now; the fields of cracked earth and parched stubble rolled slowly by. There was a narrow channel on each side of the long straight road, filled with water that ran toward them. Twice they stopped and drank, bathing their faces in the cold water and letting it run down their chests. “A piece of bread?” asked Amar; he was dizzy with hunger. But Mohammed had already breakfasted and did not want anything, so he decided to wait until they got to where they were going.

About a kilometer before Aïn Malqa the road led into a eucalyptus grove and began to curve round and round, going downward toward the lake. Mohammed coasted ahead, and Amar, looking at the back of his neck and legs, found himself wondering whether he would be able to hold his own, should he ever get into a fight with him. As he was watching, he saw that Mohammed had gone a bit to the side of the road and was expecting him to come abreast of him, but he pressed a little more on the handbrake to remain behind. He decided that although Mohammed
was taller, he himself was stronger and lither, and could probably even come out the winner. He had once seen a film about judo, and he liked to imagine that when the moment came he would know how to use some of its tricks successfully against his adversary. You moved your wrist suddenly, and the man fell powerless at your feet. Now he released the brake, allowing the bicycle to spurt ahead and catch up with the other. “It’s cooler here,” he said.

It was as if they were making a slow descent down one side of a gigantic funnel. The sloping ground beneath the trees was brown with a deep mass of the dried long leaves from other years; the light, a constantly shifting mixture of filtered sun and shade, had become gray. The grove was completely silent, save for the sound of the wheels on the fine gravel.

When they arrived at the bottom, they got down and walked, for the ground was soft. Through the willows ahead they could see the still surface of the tiny lake.

“Ah,” said Mohammed with satisfaction. “This is paradise.”

There was no one in sight. He propped his bicycle against a tree and before Amar had even arrived at the spot, he had stripped off his shirt and
serrouelle
. He had no underwear.

“You’re going to swim like that?” said Amar, surprised. Since he had been working with the potter he had bought himself two pairs of cotton shorts, one of which he was now wearing under his trousers.

Mohammed was hopping up and down, first on one foot and then on the other, in his eagerness to get into the water. He laughed. “Just like this,” he said.

“But suppose someone comes? Suppose women come, or some French?”

Mohammed was not concerned. “You can come and get my trousers for me.”

It did not seem like a very practical arrangement to Amar, but there was nothing else to do; if Mohammed were going to swim at all he would have to swim naked. Together they ran out into the sheet of icy water, splashing ahead until it was up to their shoulders. Then they swam back and forth violently, exaggerating
each gesture because öf the cold. When they had used up their first spurt of energy they climbed onto a small concrete dam that had been built at one end of the lake, and rested in the sun on the dry part of the construction that was above the spillway. Here they told jokes and chuckled until the sun became so hot on their bodies that the dark world beneath the surface of the water again began to seem a desirable place to be. However, it appeared to have been tacitly agreed that they would wrestle to keep from being the first one to go in. They soon stopped, because they had both realized simultaneously that the drop from the dam’s far side down onto the dry rocks below was a good deal too high to risk in case one of them slipped. Standing up, they caught their breath, and as if at a signal, dove into the water. By this time Amar had only one thing in his mind, and that was his breakfast. In the middle of a series of gasps, bubbles and flying water-drops he announced the fact to Mohammed; the shoreward trip became a race.

Amar arrived at the muddy bank first, loped under the willows to where his bicycle was, and unstrapped the parcel tied to the back of it. They took the food to a rock up the shore a bit and sat there in the sun eating. It was while they were sitting here that they became aware of the presence, among the rocks on the opposite shore, of another boy, who was carefully washing his clothes and spreading them on the rocks to dry. Shading his eyes with his hand, Mohammed watched for a while.
“Djibli,”
he announced presently. It was of no interest to Amar whether the boy was from the mountains or the city, and he continued to munch on his dates and bread, looking out over the water, around at the small cactus-studded hills that ringed the lake basin, and occasionally up at the sky, where at one point a hawk came sailing into the range of his vision, plunged, glided, and moved off behind the high curved horizon.

“Where are you working now?” asked Mohammed. Amar told him. “How much?” Amar cut the true figure in half. “How is it? Good
maallem?”
Amar shrugged. The shrug and the grimace that went with it meant: Is anything good now? and the other understood and agreed. Mohammed, Amar knew, worked on
and off in one or another of his father’s shops. He settled back; his position on the rock was comfortable, and all he wanted was to recline there for a few minutes in the sun and enjoy the feeling of having eaten. But Mohammed was fidgety and kept shifting around and talking; Amar found himself wishing that he had come alone.

“Another big fire near Ras el Ma last night,” said Mohammed. “Eighteen hectares.”

“When the summer’s over, there won’t be any wheat left in Morocco,” Amar remarked.

“Hope not.”

“What’ll we do for bread next winter?”

“There won’t be any,” said Mohammed flatly.

“And what’ll we eat?”

“Leave that to the French. They’ll send wheat from France.”

Amar was not so sure. “Maybe,” he said.

“Better if they don’t. The trouble will start sooner if people are hungry.”

It was easy for Mohammed to talk that way, because he was reasonably certain that he himself would not ever be in need of food. His father was a merchant, and probably had enough flour and oil and chickpeas stored in the house to last for two years if the need should arise. The middle-class and wealthy Fassi always had enormous private provisions to draw on in the event of emergency. To be able to weather a siege was part of the city’s tradition; there had been several such situations even since the French occupation.

“Is that what the Istiqlal says?” Amar asked.

“What?” Mohammed was staring across at the country boy, who had finished his laundering and now was squatting naked atop a large rock, waiting for the garments to dry.

“That people should be hungry?”

“You can see that yourself, can’t you? If people are living the same as always, with their bellies full of food, they’ll just go on the same way. If they get hungry and unhappy enough, something happens.”

“But who wants to be hungry and unhappy?” said Amar.

“Are you crazy?” Mohammed demanded. “Or don’t you want to see the French get out?”

Amar had not intended to get caught this way on the wrong side of the conversation. “May the dogs burn in Hell,” he said. That was one of the troubles with the Istiqlal, with all politics: you talked about people as though they were not really people, as though they were only things, numbers, animals, perhaps, but not really people.

“Have you been in the Zekak er Roumane this week?” Mohammed asked.

“No.”

“When you go through, look up at the roofs. Some of the houses there have tons of rocks. A
yayay
! You can see them. They have them piled so they look like walls, but they’re all loose, ready to throw.”

Amar felt his heart beat faster. ‘
Ouallah?”

“Go and look,” said Mohammed.

Amar was silent a moment. Then he said: “Something big’s going to happen, right?”

“
B’d draa.
It’s got to,” Mohammed said casually.

Suddenly Amar remembered something he had been told about the Lalami family. Mohammed’s father, having discovered that Mohammed’s elder brother was a member of the Istiqlal, had put him out of the house, and the brother had gone off to Casablanca and been caught by the police. He was now in prison, awaiting trial along with some twenty other youths who had been apprehended at the same time for their activity in terrorist work, particularly in smuggling crates of hand grenades over the frontier from Spanish Morocco. He was something of a hero, because people said that he and another Fassi had been singled out by the French press as being particularly dastardly and brutal in certain of the murders they had committed. Then probably Mohammed knew a good deal more than he would say, and he could not even be asked whether the story about the brother were true or false; etiquette forbade it.

“What are you going to do when the day comes?” he finally said.

“What are
you
going to do?” countered Mohammed.

“And,?
I don’t know.”

Mohammed smiled pityingly. Amar looked at the shape of his mouth and felt a wave of dislike for him.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” Mohammed said firmly. “I’m going to do what I’m told.”

Amar was impressed in spite of himself. “Then; you’re a—”

Mohammed interrupted. “I’m not a member of anything. When the day comes everybody will take orders.
Majabekfina.”

Amar tried not to think of the scene that would ensue were he to say what was on the tip of his tongue at the moment. This was: “Including rich men, like your father?” It was too much of an insult to utter, even in fun. Then for a moment, like a true Moslem, he contemplated the beauties of military discipline. There could be nothing, he reflected, to equal a government which was simply the honest enforcement, by means of the sword, of the laws of Islam. Perhaps the Istiqlal, if it were successful, could bring back that glorious era. But if the party wanted that, why had it never mentioned it in its propaganda? While the true Sultan had been in power the party had talked about the rich and the poor, and complained about not being able to print its newspaper the way it wanted to, and indirectly criticized the monarch for little things he had done and other little things he ought to have done. But ever since the French had taken the Sultan away, the party had spoken of nothing but bringing him back. If he returned, everything would be the same as it had been before, and the Istiqlal had certainly not been pleased with the state of affairs then.

“Yah,
Mohammed,” said Amar presently. “Why does the party want to see Sidi Mohammed Khamis back on the throne?”

Mohammed looked at him incredulously, and spat over the edge of the rock into the water.
“Enta rrìdouagh,”
he said with disgust. “The Sultan will never come back, and the party doesn’t want to see him back.”

“But—”

“It’s not the party’s fault, is it, if all the people in Morocco
are
hemir,
donkeys? If you can’t understand that, then you’d better begin eating a different kind of hay yourself.”

Mohammed’s head was tilted far back, his eyes were closed; he looked very pleased with himself. Amar felt his own heart suddenly become pointed in his chest. It was fortunate, he thought, that Mohammed could not see his expression at that moment, as he looked at him, for he surely would not have liked it. Some of his anger was personal, but most of it was resentment at having been allowed a sudden unexpected glimpse of what was wrong with his native land, of what had made it possible for a few Nazarene swine to come in and rule over his countrymen. In a situation where there was everything to be gained by agreement and friendliness there could be nothing but suspicion, hostility and bickering. It was always that way; it would go on being that way. He sighed, and got to his feet.