The Spider's House (35 page)

The mud had been dried into an inoffensive paste that crumbled underfoot, the sky was clear, and the glare that had accompanied the rising of the mist had been dissipated. For Stenham the act of stepping out into the street constituted an automatic leaving behind of rancor; he observed this and rejoiced, for it would have been an ordeal to wander through the town carrying the weight of his bad humor. As they followed the zigzagging street between the walls, he wondered whether coming out here had performed the same catharsis for her, or whether she even needed such a thing, seeing that she could not very well consider herself in any light save that of victor in the recent verbal bout. Apparently she had nothing at all on her mind save the things she was seeing around her. Every little while she hummed a tune to herself as she carefully picked her way around the places that might still be slippery. He listened: it was
On the Sunny Side of the Street
, phrased arbitrarily, according to her breathing.

They came to the pigeon market below the old mosque at Bab el Guissa. There was certainly something abnormal about the day, but he could not discover what it was that made him think so. Work was going on as always in the quarter, which was devoted largely to oil presses and carpenters’ workshops. There were the usual numbers of donkeys being driven and ridden back and forth, of small children bearing trays of unbaked and baked bread on their heads going to and from the ovens, of girls and old women carrying vessels of water from the public fountains. At the same time there was a definite if subtle difference between today and other days, one which he was convinced was not
imaginary, and yet he could not tell where the difference lay. Could it be in the expressions on the faces? He decided not; they were inscrutable as always.

They got to the blind passageway just beyond the Lemtiyine school, a long narrow alley leading downward to an arched door whose gate was always open. Split banana-leaves waved across the top of the wall like the battered paper decorations of a festival long past. Suddenly he knew what was amiss; seeing this empty corridor had told him.

“Ah!” he said with satisfaction.

“What is it?”

“I’d been thinking that there was something strange about the place today, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I know what it is. All the boys and young men are missing. We haven’t seen a boy over twelve or a man under thirty since we left the hotel.”

“Is that bad?” she asked.

“Well, it’s been known to be bad, all right. The crazy French think if they can get that age group behind bars they automatically remove most of the sources of trouble. But probably today it’s a case of something big going on down in the town, and they’re all there to see it. What’s going on is anybody’s guess.”

“I don’t want to get into any crowds,” she declared. “It’s all right with me where we go and what we do, as long as we steer clear of the mob. I have a thing about getting caught in a crowd. I don’t think there’s anything more terrifying.”

They walked more slowly. “I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said. Suddenly he stopped. “I’ll tell you what. If you don’t mind walking a little more, it might be the better part of valor to go back and out Bab el Guissa, and do the whole thing outside the walls. That way we’re sure of avoiding getting hemmed in down in the Talâa. We’ll get to Bou Jeloud a little later, that’s all.”

She looked at him as if she were wondering why he had not suggested this in the beginning, but all she said was: “Fine.”

For ten minutes or so they retraced their steps, until they came to the mosque. The massive arch of Bab el Guissa was behind, a short distance up the hill, a small fortress in itself, the interior of
which had been rebuilt by the French to house a police office. They went through the first gate into the cool darkness. The passage made a turn to the left, then to the right, and they saw the trees and hills ahead. As they walked through the outer arch, two French policemen standing along the wall conferred briefly, and then one of them called out.

“Where are you going, monsieur?”

Stenham said they were taking a walk.

“You are from the Mérinides Palace?”

Stenham said they were.

“When you go back into the Medina to return to your hotel, you will use the other gate, not this one,” the policeman told him.

Stenham said they would.

“And when you have finished your walk, you will take no more walks until you are told. They should have warned you at the hotel. There are disorders in the native quarter.”

Stenham thanked him and they walked on.

“We’ll have to go a little out of our way now,” he told her presently, “or they’ll see we’re turning in the wrong direction and call us back.”

They walked straight ahead toward the hills until they came to the main road. Then they stopped and looked back. Behind them stretched the blank face of the ramparts, broken only by the single arch of Bab el Guissa. The two policemen were still visible, tiny blue spots against the darkness of its opening.

When the road curved, they set off across the cemetery, cutting back toward a path that ran more or less parallel to the ramparts, but along extremely uneven terrain. First they were at a level with the top of the ramparts, and could see the further side of the Medina, then they were in a deep hollow where the path wound between rows of cactus and aloes, with nothing beyond but the steep dust-colored slopes rising on both sides toward the sky. Then the land dropped away, and the narrow lane which had been at the bottom of a ravine followed the spine of a twisting hill. Goats wandered and cropped the dwarf thistles under the olive trees on the hillside below. They skirted the bases of perpendicular
cliffs, where dogs barked to protect the caves that men had dug with their hands out of the clay, and where babies now squalled and occasionally a drum was being beaten. Then they were in a dried-up meadow where the earth was veined with wide dark cracks.

“Whew! It’s like walking inside an oven,” she said.

“We’ll take a cab back.”

“If we ever get there. How much further is it?”

“Not far. But you’re going to have to hold your nose pretty soon. I warn you.”

From the top of an absurd little crest of land across which the path led them, they could see over the ramparts into the Casbah en Nouar near by; its roofs and gardens hid the center of the Medina. They stood still a moment and looked at the panorama of strange formations around them. The earth’s configurations here were like those of an unruly head of hair. The land whirled up into senseless peaks and dropped off vertically into mysterious pits and hollows.

“Listen,” Stenham told her. Like the shrilling of insects came the distant sound of prolonged shouting from many throats. “There’s whatever’s going on,” he said.

“Well, thank heavens we turned around. I wouldn’t be down in there for anything in the world.”

The stench began before the village came into view. Then they passed the first dwellings, made with packing cases, thorn bushes and oil cans, tied together with rope and strips of rags. A more intense squalor would have been inconceivable. Children, naked or with mud-colored pieces of cloth hanging to them, played on the refuse-strewn waste land between the huts, where the ground glittered with tin and broken glass.

“This is all new,” he told her. “None of this existed a few years ago.”

“God,” she said with feeling.

The mud had not dried here; they were obliged to walk at the sides of the path. The ground crawled with countless flies; at each step a small swarm rose a few inches into the air, only to settle again immediately. As they passed through the village the people
stared at them, but with no expression beyond that of mild curiosity. The way now led up a steep hill toward the ramparts. Tons of garbage and refuse had been dumped at the top and, sliding down the long slope, threatened now to engulf the improvised dwellings below; along the side of this encroaching mountain half-starved dogs wandered like hopeless ghosts, feebly nosing the objects, occasionally dislodging a tin can which rolled a bit further down. There were people here, too, carefully examining the waste, and from time to time putting something into the sacks they carried slung over their shoulders.

When they reached the top of the hill, panting, they did not stop and turn to see the village behind them, but continued to walk until the stink had been left behind and they had gone through Bab Mahrouk’s two portals. Then, beyond the shadow of the ramparts, in the wicker market, they stood still a moment to catch their breath.

“I’m going to say something that’s almost worthy of a John Stenham,” she told him. “And that is, that I wish you hadn’t taken me through there. It somehow spoils the rest of the place for me.”

“That’s about one twentieth of what there is outside the walls,” he said. “Don’t you take slums for granted, yet? Have you ever seen a city that didn’t have them?”

“Oh, but not that kind! Not quite that hopeless. My God, no!”

“I should think you’d be glad to have seen it. It’s one more thing to be changed.”

Ignoring his sarcasm, “That much it certainly is,” she said grimly.

He pointed back at Bab Mahrouk’s wide arch. “One reform they’ve made recently,” he went on in the same mock-innocent fashion, “is that now there are no heads decorating that beautiful gate. They used to have a row of them on pikes for people to admire as they went out. Enemies of the Pacha and other evildoers. Not in the Middle Ages, I mean, but in the twentieth century, just a few years ago. Don’t you think it’s an improvement without them?”

“Yes,” she said with exasperation. “It’s an improvement without them.”

It was a pleasure to walk in the shade of the plane trees along the avenue that led back toward Bou Jeloud. When they got to the square where the buses waited, policemen were lined up in front of the gaudy blue gate; it looked like a scene in a lavish musical comedy. They waited at the far end of the open space, studying the array of men in uniform. Framed by the arch of Bab Bou Jeloud among the squat mud buildings was a low minaret with a huge mass of straw atop it, and in the middle of the straw stood a stork with one leg raised and bent against its body; it looked very white in the strong sunlight.

“I think this is the end of our excursion,” he said to her. “If we go through the gate we’ll be in the Medina, and we don’t want that. And anyway, it doesn’t look to me as though they’d let us through. There’s a nice little café here. Are you game for a mint tea?”

“I’m game for anything as long as I can sit myself down,” she said. “Just to sit would be a terrific luxury at this point. But let’s make it inside, out of the glare.”

CHAPTER 23

There were four cafés on the square, and each one had a large space in front of it which was ordinarily full of tables and chairs. Today, these had prudently not been set out, so that the sides of the square presented a deserted aspect which was emphasized by the fact that the center also was empty, for no one was walking in it. True, it was hot, and there would have been few strollers at this hour in any case, but the absence of people was so complete that the scene—even if the line of police could have been disregarded—had
no element of the casualness which ordinarily gave the place its character.

“Very
strange,” Stenham muttered.

“Am I wrong,” she said, “or does this look sort of sinister?”

“Come on.” He took her arm and they hurried across to the café nearest the waiting buses. One of the
mokhaznia
standing by the footbridge across the stream looked at them dubiously, but did not stop them from passing. In the café, a group of thirty or forty men sat and stood quietly near the windows, peering out through the hanging fronds of the pepper trees at the emptiness of the sunny square. More than by the unusual tenseness of these faces, Stenham was at once struck by the silence of the place, by the realization that no one was talking, or, if someone did speak, it was in a low voice scarcely pitched above a whisper. Of course, without the radio there was no need to shout as they ordinarily had to do, but he felt that even had the radio been playing, together with all its extra amplifiers for the smaller rooms, they still would only have murmured. And he did not like the expressions on their faces when they looked up and saw him. It was the first time in many years that he had read enmity in Moroccan faces. Once more than twenty years ago he had ventured alone inside the
horm
of Moulay Idriss—not the sanctuary itself, but the streets surrounding it—and then he had seen hatred on a few faces; he had never forgotten the feeling it had given him. It was a physical thing that those fierce faces had confronted him with, and his reaction to it had likewise been purely physical; he had felt his spine stiffen and the hair at the back of his neck bristle.

He began to speak with Lee in a loud voice, not paying much attention to what he was saying, but using what he thought would be an unmistakably American intonation. He saw her glance at him once with surprise.

“There are a lot of little rooms out in the back,” he went on. “Let’s get one that’s not so crowded.” She was annoyed; he could see that. He could also see that the only result his bit of playacting had brought him was that a good many more of the bearded, turbaned and
tarbouched
individuals had looked away
from the window and were staring at them with equally hostile countenances.

“Let’s just sit anywhere and stop being so conspicuous,” she said nervously; at the same time she took several steps toward an unoccupied table by the wall opposite the entrance. But Stenham wanted, if it were possible, to get out of the range of these unfriendly faces. In the next room they found a party of elderly men from the country sprawled out, smoking kif and eating. A boy stood in the doorway to a further room. Behind him the room appeared to be empty. Stenham stepped across and peered in; the boy did not move. There was no one in there at all. Through a back window he caught sight of a sheet of water shining in the sun.