The Spider's House (2 page)

Though it would be a reductive oversimplification, a gross injustice to the depth, inventiveness, and psychological complexity
of this novel, it could conceivably be read as a sort of textbook, a monitory analysis of the sources of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world. “The arms used against the Moroccan people were largely supplied by your government,” a nationalist tells Stenham. “They do not consider America a nation friendly to their cause.” Yet another agitator speculates on the most efficient means of getting American attention. “Once we’ve had a few incidents directly involving American lives and property, maybe the Americans will know there’s such a country as Morocco in the world … Now they don’t know the difference between Morocco and the Sénégal.” To make matters even more complicated, Bowles takes a dim view of the opportunism, the cynicism, the manipulative dishonesty, and the gross irresponsibility of the insurgent nationalist movement, the people’s so-called liberators; this is a coolly reasoned perspective which effectively prevents the reader from forming a simplistic view of the region’s problems, or of their solutions.

What makes this all the more intriguing, all the more persuasive, is that Bowles never thought of himself as a political writer—and, perhaps as a result, few readers see him that way. In the preface to
The Spider’s House
, he wrote, “Fiction should always stay clear of political considerations. Even when I saw that the book that I had begun was taking a direction which would inevitably lead it into a region where politics could not be avoided, I still imagined that with sufficient dexterity I should be able to avert contact with the subject. But in situations where everyone is under great emotional stress, indifference is unthinkable; at such times all opinions are construed as political ones. To be apolitical is tantamount to having assumed a political stance, but one which pleases no one. Thus, whether I liked it or not, when I had finished, I found that I had written a ‘political’ book which deplored the attitudes of both the French and the Moroccans.”

The last sentence is particularly telling. To be a political writer (as the term is generally understood) suggests strongly held opinions, a polemical agenda, a taking of sides—something that would have been not merely esthetic anathema but a characterological
impossibility for the exquisitely detached Bowles. The novel’s characters (both Moroccan and American) repeatedly express their contempt for those fanatics who would willingly sacrifice individual lives to gain political objectives. Moreover, what Bowles tells us at the start (and what subsequently emerges) is that his initial impulse for writing the book derived from his fear that the city of Fez (and by extension, the rest of Morocco) would be changed and modernized beyond recognition—an anxiety that he wisely mistrusts as stemming from the most self-indulgent species of romanticism. In a startling flash of self-awareness, Stenham realizes, “It did not really matter whether they worshipped Allah or carburetors. In the end, it was his own preferences which concerned him. He would have liked to preserve the status quo because the decor that went with it suited his personal taste.” Throughout Bowles’s work, you can watch him battling against his own estheticism and cynicism (one of the characters in
The Spider’s House
calls Stenham “a hopeless romantic without a shred of confidence in the human race”), and straining to see the world and its denizens as they really are—without sentimentality, without illusions, without blinders.

However unintentional, the political subtext of his fiction provides us with yet another opportunity to note that when one writes accurately and comprehensively about human beings, politics inevitably comes into the story, since—it hardly needs to be said—politics exerts such an enormous influence on every aspect of our lives. Even Chekhov, whom we also tend to think of as a largely apolitical writer (in contrast, say, to Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy) frequently established or clarified the nature of his characters by informing the reader about their political sympathies.

How peculiar it suddenly seems to mention Chekhov and Bowles in the same paragraph, or even the same essay. Were there ever two more dissimilar literary sensibilities? With his sangfroid, his lack of empathy, his chilly refusal to demonstrate an even passing interest in the process of spiritual transformation or individual redemption, Bowles strikes us as the anti-Chekhov. Which may be why he seems, right now, as necessary as
Chekhov, equally valuable in his contribution to the chorus of voices that comprise our literary heritage, and no less essential in his ability to remind us of who we are, of how we live, and of what we can—and inevitably will—do, in accordance with our nature.

In an era in which circumstances much like those that inspired
The Spider’s House
force us to enter into a highly partisan and passionate political engagement, we would do well to be aware, and wary, of the dangers and pitfalls of such an engagement: dogmatism, intolerance, the unshakeable conviction of one’s own righteousness and innocence, the inability or refusal to admit that other people, in other nations, have hearts and souls, loves and hatreds, that their lives are not so different from ours, that they suffer and die just as we do. What Paul Bowles reminds us of, what he won’t let us forget, is that all of us, regardless of nationality or religion, are capable of acting from highly suspect, compromised, “primitive” motives—and of behaving in ways that, we would like to think, we could never even imagine.

—Francine Prose

PREFACE

I wanted to write a novel using as backdrop the traditional daily life of Fez, because it was a medieval city functioning in the twentieth century. If I had started it only a year sooner, it would have been an entirely different book. I intended to describe Fez as it existed at the moment of writing about it, but even as I started to write, events that could not be ignored had begun to occur there. I soon saw that I was going to have to write, not about the traditional pattern of life in Fez, but about its dissolution.

For more than two decades I had been waiting to see the end of French rule in Morocco. Ingenuously I had imagined that after Independence the old manner of life would be resumed and the country would return to being more or less what it had
been before the French presence. The detestation on the part of the populace of all that was European seemed to guarantee such a result. What I failed to understand was that if Morocco was still a largely medieval land, it was because the French themselves, and not the Moroccans, wanted it that way.

The Nationalists were not interested in ridding Morocco of all traces of European civilization and restoring it to its pre-colonial state; on the contrary, their aim was to make it even more “European” than the French had made it. When France was no longer able to keep the governmental vehicle on the road, she abandoned it, leaving the motor running. The Moroccans climbed in and drove off in the same direction, but with even greater speed.

I was embroiled in the controversy, at the same time finding it impossible to adopt either side’s point of view. My subject was decomposing before my eyes, hour by hour; there was no alternative to recording the process of violent transformation.

Fiction should always stay clear of political considerations. Even when I saw that the book that I had begun was taking a direction which would inevitably lead it into a region where politics could not be avoided, I still imagined that with sufficient dexterity I should be able to avert contact with the subject. But in situations where everyone is under great emotional stress, indifference is unthinkable; at such times all opinions are construed as political ones. To be apolitical is tantamount to having assumed a political stance, but one which pleases no one.

Thus, whether I liked it or not, when I had finished, I found that I had written a “political” book which deplored the attitudes of both the French and the Moroccans. Much later Allal el Fassi, “the father of Moroccan nationalism,” read it and expressed his personal approval. Even coming so late, this was satisfying.

Each novel seems to impose its own particular working regime.
The Sheltering Sky
and
Let It Come Down
were written during travels, whenever the spirit moved and the physical surroundings were conducive to writing.
The Spider’s House
, on the other hand, from the outset demanded a rigorous schedule. I began writing it in Tangier in the summer of 1954, setting the
alarm for six each morning. I managed to average two pages a day. When winter came I sailed for Sri Lanka. There I adopted the same ritual; early tea was brought in at six o’clock, and I set to work, still meeting my quota of two daily pages. By the middle of March, in spite of visits to distant temples and nights spent watching devil-dances, the book was finished, and sent off from Weligama to Random House.

The tale is neither autobiographical nor factual, nor is it a
roman á clef.
Only the setting is objective; the rest is invented. The focal point of the action is the old Hôtel Palais Jamaï, before it was modernized. I called it the Mérinides Palace because one had to pass the tombs of the Mérinide kings on the way to the hotel. There is now an actual Hôtel des Mérinides, built in the sixties on the cliff alongside the tombs.

The city is still there. It is no longer the intellectual and cultural center of North Africa; it is merely one more city beset by the insoluble problems of the Third World. Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.

Paul Bowles
December 1981

PROLOGUE

It was just about midnight when Stenham left Si Jaffar’s door. “I don’t need anyone to come with me,” he had said, smiling falsely to belie the sound of his voice, for he was afraid he had seemed annoyed or been abrupt, and Si Jaffar, after all, was only exercising his rights as a host in sending this person along with him.

“Really, I don’t need anybody.” For he wanted to go back alone, even with all the lights in the city off. The evening had been endless, and he felt like running the risk of taking the wrong turnings and getting temporarily lost; if he were accompanied, the long walk would be almost like a continuation of sitting in Si Jaffar’s salon.

But in any case, it was too late now. All the male members of the household had come to the door, even stood out in the wet alley, insisting that the man go with him. Their adieux were always lengthy and elaborate, as if he were leaving for the other side of the world rather than the opposite end of the Medina, and he consciously liked that, because it was a part of what he thought life in a medieval city should be like. However, it was unprecedented for them to force upon him the presence of a protector, and he felt there was no justification for it.

The man strode ahead of him in the darkness. Where’d they get him from? he thought, seeing again the tall bearded Berber in tattered mountain garb as he had looked when he had first caught sight of him in the dim light of Si Jaffar’s patio. Then he recalled the fluttering and whispering that had gone on at one end of the room about an hour and a half earlier. Whenever these family discussions arose in Stenham’s presence, Si Jaffar made a great effort to divert his attention from them by embarking on a story. The story usually began promisingly enough, Si Jaffar smiling, beaming through his two pairs of spectacles, but with his attention clearly fixed on the sound of voices in the corner. Slowly, as the whispered conversation over there subsided, his words would come more haltingly, and his eyes would dart from side to side as his smile became paralyzed and meaningless. The tale would never be completed. Suddenly, “Ahah!” he would cry triumphantly, apropos of nothing at all. Then he would clap his hands for snuff, or orange-flower water, or chips of sandalwood to throw onto the brazier, look still more pleased, and perhaps whack Stenham’s knee playfully. A similar comedy had been played this evening about half past ten. As he thought it over now, Stenham decided that the occasion for it had been the family’s sudden decision to provide him with someone to accompany him back to the hotel. Now he remembered that after the discussion Abdeltif, the eldest son, had disappeared for at least half an hour; that must have been when the guide had been fetched.

The man had been crouching in the dark patio entrance just inside the door when they had gone out. It was embarrassing,
because he knew Si Jaffar was not a well-to-do man, and while a little service like this was not abnormally expensive, still, it had to be paid for; Si Jaffar had made that clear. “Don’t give this man anything,” he had said in French. “I have already seen to that.”

“But I don’t need him,” Stenham had protested. “I know the way. Think of all the times I’ve gone back alone.” Si Jaffar’s four sons, his cousin and his son-in-law had all murmured: “No, no, no,” together, and the old man had patted his arm affectionately. “It’s better,” he said, with one of his curiously formal little bows. There was no use in objecting. The man would stay with him until he had delivered him over to the watchman at the hotel, and then he would disappear into the night, go back to whatever dark corner he had come from, and Stenham would not see him again.

The streets were completely without passers-by. It would have been quite possible to go most of the way along somewhat more frequented thoroughfares, he reflected, but obviously his companion preferred the empty ones. He took out his little dynamo flashlight and began to squeeze it, turning the dim ray downward to the ground at the man’s feet. The insect-like whirring it made caused him to turn around, a look of surprise on his face.

“Light,” said Stenham.

The man grunted. “Too much noise,” he objected.

He smiled and let the light die down. How these people love games, he thought. This one’s playing cops and robbers now; they’re always either stalking or being stalked. “The Oriental passion for complications, the involved line, Arabesques,” Moss had assured him, but he was not sure it was that. It could just as easily be a deep sense of guilt. He had suggested this, but Moss had scoffed.