The Spider's House (21 page)

When he had finished his tea, he decided to go outside and walk around the pool, but the small door had not been opened for a long time, and the bolt was rusty. This occupied him for a while, until he had succeeded in hammering it back with a stone which lay in the corner near by, perhaps kept there for that purpose. Then he opened the door, breaking all the spiderwebs, and stepped out. The sun was painfully hot in the airless space here between the café and the high city wall, and the pool was a malignant mirror magnifying its white light. He knelt down to feel the water: it also was hot. A dragonfly had skimmed too close to the surface and wet its wings; it made desperate contortions in its struggle to rise from the water. He watched it for a moment with interest, then, feeling sorry that it was about to die, he rolled his trouser-legs up as high as he could and lowered himself into the pool. It was rather deeper than he had imagined; the water came up to his thighs. The floor felt slippery and unpleasant on the soles of his feet, but he waded out, put his hand under
the dragonfly and lifted it up. Then he stood there in the water looking at it and grinning, because its two enormous eyes seemed to be returning his stare. Perhaps it was thanking him. “How great are the works of Allah,” he whispered. When the hot sunlight had dried its wings, it moved them a few times, and suddenly flew off into the air toward the ramparts. Amar climbed out of the pool, rolled his trouser-legs down, and wrung them out. Then he sat by the edge of the pool in the sun letting them dry. It seemed to him that in the distance, coming up over the roofs out of the dusty city, he could distinguish the clamor of human voices. But it was far away, and it sounded a little like the wind blowing through a crack in the door. If the procession came through Bab Bou Jeloud he wanted to be in the outer room to watch, and if there were a fight, a few of the French police were bound to be knocked down; that was what he wanted to see. It was always the Moslems who were pushed about, beaten and killed, even, as had happened today before his eyes, when it was Moslems who did the beating and killing. For a moment he felt a belated surge of sympathy for the two
mokhaznia
back in the alley near the lawyers’ booths. Perhaps they had not known when they accepted their jobs with the French that they would be required to inform against their own people, and when they discovered it, it was already too late, they knew too much for the French to let them go free, and they were caught fast.

But in that case, he argued, it was their duty, even under pain of death, to refuse to carry out orders. How much more heroic it would have been for them to die as martyrs at the hands of the French than to be shot down shamefully like animals, their bodies cursed and spat upon by their brothers! He knew that a Moslem who died on the battlefield went directly to Paradise, without waiting for judgment, but he was not well documented on the fate of traitors. However, it seemed logical that they should be consigned straightway to the jurisdiction of Satan. He shuddered inwardly at the thought of what awaited anyone who landed in Hell. It was not the idea of the suffering that seemed fearful, but the certainty of its eternal continuation, no
matter how repentant the victim might be. Suppose a man’s heart changed, and he longed for Allah with all his might. The pain would lie, not in being forever roasted on a spit like a
mechoui
of lamb, or in being torn limb from limb the way the friends of freedom said the French had done to the Moslems at Oued Zem, but in the knowledge that never under any conditions could he be vouchsafed the presence of Allah. Death is nothing, he told himself, looking between his almost closed eyelids at the blinding sun reflected in the pool; the fortunate man is the one who can make of his death a glorious event that people will not forget. It occurred to him that perhaps that was why Mohammed Lalami had been so smug yesterday: he might already have known that his brother was going to be executed by the French. Some day, he thought, Mohammed would lie in wait for him and catch him unawares, and he would have a real fight on his hands. It might be a good idea, if ever he should catch sight of Mohammed, to go up to him and offer him his hand in apology. Probably Mohammed would not accept, but it might soften his heart and prepare the ground for a future reconciliation.

The sounds of shouting and singing were coming louder, and his trousers were nearly dry. He got up and went inside.

BOOK 3
THE HOUR OF THE SWALLOWS

To my way of thinking, there is nothing more delightful than to be a stranger. And so I mingle with human beings, because they are not of my kind, and precisely in order to be a stranger among them.

—SONG OF THE SWALLOW: THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

CHAPTER 15

Mornings, Stenham and Moss were in the habit of sending little notes to one another via the servants. Since his apartment gave on the garden, Moss would hand his missives to old Mokhtar, the man who swept the walks and tended the flowers outside his door; Mokhtar would go up to the main lobby and pass them to Abdelmjid, who had charge of vacuum-cleaning the rugs of the public rooms. The year before, it had been Abdelmjid himself who would climb up into the tower and deliver the envelopes at Stenham’s door, but recently he had married Rhaissa, a jolly black girl whose mother had been a slave in the house of á former pacha, and since she cleaned the three rooms of the tower every day, it was now she who came and knocked at his door
when there was a note that had been sent up from Room Fourteen for him.

The heart’s desire of every modern Moroccan girl is to have her incisors and canines capped with gold. Originally Rhaissa’s teeth had been healthy enough, but when her mother had found a husband for her, she had naturally taken her to have the necessary embellishments installed in her daughter’s mouth before the marriage. The work had been done by a native specialist in the Medina, and ever since, poor Rhaissa had suffered a great deal. Each day she insisted on showing Stenham her inflamed gums; in her opinion the dentist had worked an evil spell on her during the treatment because her mother had demurred at paying the price he had asked. But now, out of her own earnings, she had paid every franc herself, and still she had pain. Stenham came to dread her morning invasion of his quiet; he had bought her a packet of sodium perborate, and she was using it regularly, first having emptied the powder from the pharmacist’s envelope into a special paper covered with magic symbols she had got from a
fqih.
She thought it was doing some good, but she intended to go back to the
fqih
soon and get another paper with a different set of symbols.

“I want to help the poor girl,” he told Moss, “but I can’t go on looking into that red crocodile mouth every damned time she comes in to make the bed.”

It was one of those mornings when the city steamed quietly under the strong sun. A haze of wood smoke and mist hung above the flat terraces, enclosing and unifying the sounds that rose from below, until when they reached his window they were as monotonous and soporific as the uninterrupted humming of bees. Between ten and eleven o’clock in such weather the city sounds always took on this strange character. He wondered if perhaps it had to do with the direction of the wind, since the one recognizable noise was that of a distant sawmill somewhere over toward Bab Sidi bou Jida. A few sluggish flies would sail into the room and go to sleep on the tile floor in the sun. During this hour or so, Stenham would abandon his work and, putting two chairs together face to face in front of the windows, would
Stretch
out voluptuously in the hot sunlight, from time to time raising himself to scribble a few words in a notebook he kept lying beside him. He had to be sure to lock the door first, to prevent Rhaissa from bursting in on him and finding him naked; she had not completely mastered the difficult task of remembering to knock before turning the door handle.

Today however she did knock, and he struggled up and into his bathrobe, muttering: “Who the hell?” Any disturbance before lunch, other than the arrival of his breakfast tray, infuriated him. He flung the door open and Rhaissa tendered him the note she held in her hand. He thanked her gruffly, saw that she was eager to discuss the state of her gums, and shut the door in her face.

The note, from Moss, read: “What a beautiful day! Hugh has promised to join me for lunch at the Zitoun. Bastela has been ordered. Will you come too? May I expect you here in my room at half past twelve? My new model is a monster!!! Affly., Alain.”

He lay down again in the sun, but found it impossible to go on inventing details in his description of the court of the Sultan Moulay Ismail. Soon he sprang up, shaved and dressed, and went down to Moss’s room, hoping to catch him in the act of painting. But the model, an extremely gnarled old man, was just shuffling across the patio when he arrived, and Moss was cleaning his brushes. “This is most unusual,” he said. “You’ve come early. You’ll have to wait while I change. There’s a new
Economist
on the table behind you; it just came this morning. Why don’t you take it out into the garden with you? Or do you think you’d find it too dull after the incredible excesses of your creative imagination?”

Stenham snorted; he was tired of having to react to Moss’s banter. “Excesses?” he said, picking up the magazine and stepping back out into the sunlight. “Excesses?” Down here there were sparrows twittering, and the air was strong with the scent of datura blossoms. Moss was bright; he knew fairly well where to stick the needles, but now the spots that had been tender were leathery, and Stenham, when he reacted at all, did so only out of
courtesy and laziness. It made conversation easier, for Moss would simply have gone on, poking about, looking for other vulnerable points in his friend’s character which so far he had not exploited.

He liked Moss because he was an enigma, and he was certain Moss enjoyed playing the magician, the mystery man with a thousand unexpected eccentricities up his sleeve. “I’m a simple businessman,” Moss would declare piteously, “and I don’t understand this mad jungle that seems to be the natural habitat of all you Americans.” … “Don’t take anything for granted when you talk to me. I must have everything explained. Your American ethical system is so utterly fantastic that my simple brain is quite at a loss trying to contemplate it.”

But other times he would forget himself and complain: “After all, the English are really too much. One can’t live in that constipated fashion forever. The world is a very lovely place. Have you ever been to Bangkok? I rather think you’d approve. Delectable people.” … “The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it’s having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels. Do you understand?”

Stenham would bait him, saying very seriously: “No, I don’t think I do. I’m afraid perfection doesn’t interest me. It’s always the exception; it’s outside everything, outside reality. I don’t see life that way.”

“I know,” Moss would say. “You see life from the most unattractive vantage-point you can find.”

Stenham had long ago seen through the simple businessman pose; Moss had even confided on one occasion that he was writing a book, but without going further to say what kind of book it was going to be. And once from London, enclosed along with a rather pointless letter whose purpose was patently that of making the enclosure seem an afterthought, he had sent him a sheaf of short lyric poems, not very original but sufficiently well fashioned to convince Stenham that their author was by no means new to
the muse. “He’s as guilty as I am,” Stenham liked to remind himself.

The sun down here in the garden was hot; the moist black earth exuded a sweetness, the heavy and disturbing odor of spring. Old Mokhtar came along the walk, his spent
babouches
scuffing the mosaics beneath. His turban always gave the impression of being about to come unwound. Not that it mattered how presentable he looked; ill health and overwork had drained all character from his soft, small face, and the turban, firmly or loosely wound, could do nothing for his woebegone appearance. Stenham always felt vaguely uneasy in his presence: the gentle vanquished expression he wore awoke a distant sense of guilt.

Moss moved out onto the terrace, adjusting his dark glasses, dressed as always for a stroll along Piccadilly. “I think I’m about ready to go, if you are. Shall we start?”

In the courtyard they looked to see whether Kenzie’s MG were there, but it was not. Moss frowned.

“He’s gone. We shall have to walk. And do let’s go the short way.”

“There are a dozen short ways,” Stenham objected.

“The least labyrinthine, the least tiring. The quickest! Really, you are so difficult.”

Stenham leading, they turned into the street to the left, making their way around the donkeys loaded with olives that were being carried to the press. “What do you mean, difficult? Why do you say that?” Stenham never could quite decide why it pleased him to lure Moss into a particular vein of querulousness; it was a game that could go on for hours, Moss playing the part of the simple, ingenuous soul, mystified and complaining, to Stenham’s patient, mundane mentor, and it added pungency if Stenham occasionally made a direct accusation, such as: “Why do you insist on pretending this crazy unworldly innocence? What are you trying to discover?” It increased the savor because he said these things in such a way that they fell far short of the truth, of what he would have said had he really wanted to put an end to the game. Moss was quite aware of this, and knew that Stenham
knew he was aware, and thus the game continued, growing always more ramified, more complex, more subtle, and taking up more of the time they spent together. Some day, thought Stenham, there would come a moment when it would no longer be possible to pull Moss out of it; whatever he said or did would only be in character, and the words would be uttered, the gestures made, no longer by Moss, but by this absurd creation of his that had nothing in common with the man it was meant to mask. I started him on this, he told himself, but he was there waiting to respond. And he picked the role of imbecile. And here I am, as usual, leading him, and he’s pretending he doesn’t know the way.