Among the Faithful (2 page)

Before we had finished eating, a mild argument between the
Mexican
and the Finn turned into a free-for-all shouting contest. On the assumption, perhaps, that we could not understand, they were
oblivious
of our existence. Each sought to yell down the others. For quite a while we could make nothing of the uproar, then, just as light was beginning to dawn, a strapping youth down the line floored the company by the announcement that he had lain with fourteen women in one afternoon and ‘
pas un gosse!
’ (not a single child!). That was the climax. Nobody could match that feat. Things quieted down
somewhat
and they turned their attention to us. Where were we going to stay in Tunis? We hadn’t an idea, did they know of a cheap hotel? Everybody knew of one and it looked as if there was really going to be
a fight. It was Pierre who settled the problem. It was decided that we would stay at the Hôtel de la Gare. He proposed to write a letter to the patronne, with whom he was on very good terms, so paper and pencil were produced and Pierre, in the midst of an impressive silence, was permitted to compose his letter. We had been doubtful as to whether we could afford to stop in Tunis. However, if we could get a room at this hotel for six francs a night. Pierre’s performance was acclaimed as a masterpiece. Introduced by such a letter Madame the patronne was not apt to overcharge us. We had definitely made up our minds to stay awhile in Tunis when Pierre put his mouth to my ear and
whispered
‘You will leave your door open a little crack?’ My heart sank. ‘Don’t you think,’ I said to Beatrice as casually as I could, ‘that we’d better go right down to Kairouan?’

She looked at me. ‘We’ll try to make the boat-train.’

Late that night as we stood near the bulwark we were both conscious of a new quality in the air – a marvellous softness and – or did we only imagine it – a perfume, ‘a soul-dissolving odour, to invite to some more lovely mystery?’ The sky was peopled with multitudes of stars, Sardinia had fallen behind us, across the calm black waters there was not the dimmest light to indicate how near we were to land. And yet, it was long after midnight, and at dawn we would be in Africa.

I
T WAS STILL QUITE DARK
when the
Général Grévy
entered the Goletta Canal and the shore lights far ahead were indistinguishable from the stars. The quiet deck had been plunged into feverish activity, we had ceased to exist for the seamen scuttling to and fro, and I felt a vague regret that our passage was over.

The stars went out, the sky paled perceptibly, from the dark pile beyond the twinkling harbour definite forms began to emerge – ample domes, turrets, and the tall fronds of palm trees. Colour suffused the east, twilight shimmered upon the water, presently the sun came up from the sea and we drifted into the dissonant roar of the harbour. It seemed wonderfully fitting to me that we should land at daybreak. I was terribly conscious, as we waited among our luggage, that a period had been affixed to the life that I had known. A line from Wordsworth kept chasing through my thoughts, ‘I made no vows, but vows were then made for me.’ That gang-plank, down which the first-class passengers were already filing, was all that bridged the past. It looked so easy – ten short steps to a new world, a new epoch. I marvelled the thing could be done so casually. A poke in the ribs put an end to dramatization. ‘Hey, wake up!’ said Beatrice. ‘Where’s your passport?’

‘
Américaines?
’ The immigration official barely glanced at our
passports
and waved us on. Fezzed porters were swarming the deck, a troop of them fell to haggling over our luggage, in the end each seized a part of our belongings and bumped us down the gang-plank. ‘We’ve got exactly twenty-two minutes to pass the customs and make that train!’ Beatrice warned over her shoulder.

We landed in such a raucous rabble of porters, hotel-scouts, guides,
and beggars that we were obliged to fight our way into the building. After rounding up our baggage we hung around in an agonized sweat while the officials made their leisurely examination. With nine minutes left us we tumbled into a lop-sided victoria and simply tore to the station, and as the train pulled out the last of our bags was thrown through the window.

Battered, exhausted, we sank back, too relieved to care much whether or not we had all our luggage. ‘Was your virginity worth it?’ grinned Beatrice, pulling off her beret to mop her brow.

There was plenty of room on the benches, but most of the
passengers
preferred the aisle. They sat in tight knots, smoking and
conversing
, – magnificent bronzed creatures swathed all in white; from the stench of oranges and tobacco they must have been there for hours. The occupants of the benches were, for the most part, types less distinctive and striking. Their brilliantly coloured robes opened upon embroidered vests, their headgear was the fez or the turban, and most of them affected Paris garters and Continental shoes. A time was to come when I would be able to tell by the tassel of a man’s fez or the coils of his turban his city as well as his trade or profession; now, however, it was evident only that our bench companions were town Arabs, from which we concluded that the others must be bedouins.

For quite a while we followed the shore-line, making prodigious stops at villages constituted, so far as we could see, of names made up entirely of consonants and of white, block-like stations. Camels in caravan, camels yoked to ploughs, camels pasturing, or turning ancient waterwheels, cactus hedges, olive trees, vineyards, orange orchards, and almond groves. After we left the sea we journeyed for hours over a vast plateau featureless of any growth save cactus and stubble, and enlivened only occasionally by a flock of earth-coloured sheep or a cluster of black tents.

We fell to discussing what our procedure would be upon our arrival. First of all we must locate the cheapest hotel in town. ‘Do you mind bed-bugs?’ said Beatrice. I did, horribly, but I told her I guessed I could get used to them. She laughed and said I’d probably have to. Then we must avoid guides. They would besiege us upon our arrival, but we would have none of them. Guides were stupid and costly; we
were not tourists, we were here to work, and we’d see what there was to see during the course of a whole winter.

Just before the train pulls into Kairouan you are given a flash of it, a momentary glimpse of a dead-white city within battlemented ramparts. My heart was pounding as we approached the station. True to her prediction, we hardly set foot off the train when the guides accosted and strove to attach themselves to us, but in the face of every grace and stratagem we stoutly maintained that we had no need of them. Scores of urchins clamoured to carry our luggage, for a few sous we engaged a couple of them, and with the heaviest bags on their heads, we set out to find an hotel.

There was not a wide range of choice. The Hôtel Splendide was naturally out, the small Hôtel de la Gare, which appeared to be a
roistering
hang-out for soldiers, was crowded, much to my relief; we had no alternative but to register at another hotel. Madame the patronne emerged from her cups to show us our rooms, which were light and spacious enough, if not over clean. Then Beatrice asked the price. Madame, not too drunk to have sized us up for Americans, named one that would have been exorbitant for a whole suite at the Splendide. We had prepared ourselves for the usual contest. This, however,
lengthened
to a siege. At last Madame, with a gesture of accepting defeat, came down five francs apiece, and left us faced with the appalling fact that our living would cost us each a dollar a day. But since, for the time being anyway, there was nothing to do about it, we started forth to see the town.

The French quarter was negligible – pseudo-Moorish buildings on broad streets lined with stuffy palms and eucalyptus trees. Beyond the crenellated walls was the real Kairouan. A gate like a massive key-hole admitted us to the main street. It was broad at first and shaded by pepper trees, the deep fringe of which hung so low that camels in
passing
bit off garlands to munch along the way. On either side the
mysterious
life of the shops and coffee-houses flowed on, as ignorant of us as if we had walked invisible. We mingled with the traffic and, like chips in a stream, were carried along we knew not where. Donkey
drivers
cleared their way with incessant ‘
Burra! Burra! Burra!
’ from around a curve, or suddenly from behind a camel loomed upon us, loping
along with an inexorable tread that stepped aside for neither man nor beast, a pack of shaggy goats scampered, bleating and bolting in and out of doorways, to the frenzy of the goatherd. Majestic Arabs swept by conversing with ringing voices and wide gestures, uncouth bundles of black or white drapery – veiled women, as we lived – brushed us, their bright slippers clip-clapping on the cobbles, and I could have sworn that one of them nudged me. There were women without veils, bedouin women who might have been struck from copper. They moved through the crowd like goddesses, their loose blue robes
revealing
now and then a breast or a lean thigh. Small girls with large babies on their backs simply
flew
past, clutching their headshawls and boys with school-bags contrived to walk arms around. A sound from another world – an imperious honk-honk-honk – announced a relic of the goggles-and-duster era packed with hilarious youths who had the air of enjoying that mode of conveyance for the first time in their lives. We had no sooner taken to the road again when a two-wheeled cart, as fantastic as a Czechoslovakian toy, loaded with turnips and pulled by a perfect giant of a camel, drove us once more to the curb. The street swung through the town like an S – at times it was broad, the shops set well in from the street, then it narrowed to a lane, and the very curb served as doorsteps. A sudden turn brought us into the heart of the town. I couldn’t rid myself of the impression that we had come upon it at a time of carnival. The din, the swarm, the shifting colours of robes and turbans made it hard to believe that this was an everyday street scene. Here the shop-fronts were crowded with booths, and on the high counters turbaned vendors sat cross-legged fanning the flies from their wares, their cries jangling with the shouts of pedlars who strode through the streets bearing upon their heads trays of
glistening
cakes or loaves of bread. The fruit and vegetable stands, too, suggested fair day; it was as if a prize was to be awarded the most conspicuous display, but I couldn’t take my eyes from the hideous little meat-stalls. On hooks above each block hung a frieze of staring sheeps’ skulls. Scraps of gold leaf adorned the meat, the very fat of which was carved in naïve arabesques, and the piles of cloven hoofs and entrails could hardly be seen for the flies. Cats, grown enormous on butchers’ offal, lurked about or slept on the sagging roofs, and the sight of them,
combined with the unholy stench and the sickening hum of the flies, made me feel a little faint. The sun beat down upon our bare heads. ‘God, let’s get out of this!’ Beatrice exclaimed. Casting about for an escape we spied an arched portal through which people were passing in and out. We dived through the door into a cool, shadowy arcade. Light sifted through apertures in the beams overhead and open shops occupied niches in the walls. Each cubicle was exactly like the next in its display of saddles, reins, and other accoutrements fashioned of dyed leather heavily embroidered; the stone step, on a level with the floor, was the customer’s seat. Within the dim recesses the shopkeepers lounged at ease over their coffees, or sat on pleated legs busily
stitching,
conversing the while with competitors across the aisle. The street ended at right-angles to a similar passage, the street of the
slipper-makers.
The walls of these shops were bright with slippers of cherry red and canary yellow. The workers sat on low stools, noses fastened to their work-blocks, industriously stitching, fitting, pounding, clippng, measuring, and cutting like a bevy of gnomes with hearts set on shoeing the entire populace before sundown. One passage merged with another, crossed by still others, and if the footing had been precarious on the highway it was doubly so in the bazaars, where the passage of a diminutive donkey was a tight squeeze for pedestrians. From the street of the slipper-makers we drifted into the dignified street of the drapers, on through the street of the tailors, the balmy street of the perfumers, the street of the weavers, the dingy street of the smiths, the street of the carpet merchants, where bedlam in the guise of an auction rushed furiously up and down. We were wandering around in a futile attempt to retrace our steps when we hit upon an arcade that ended in sunlight.

Series of houses with grilled windows and doorways of sculptured stone fronted the quiet road, in which a tangle of lanes converged. With an idea of getting back on the main street we threw in our luck with one of them until it ended abruptly against the ramparts. The
December
sun was lowering when we came out of the honeycomb at the far gate of the city. The throng, pouring through the great arch, had
gathered
density and noise until, in the market-place just beyond,
commotion
had its climax. The jutting ramparts formed an amphi theatre that
was swarming and buzzing with multitudes of bedouins, through whose midst strode camels in stately procession; sheep and goats were homeward bound from pasture, and for at least every other man there was a donkey; while seated on the ground, in danger of sudden death from every direction, were sand-diviners, beggars, public letter-writers, vendors, as well as bedouins in spirited
tête-à-tête.
The city wall was faced with rows of miscellaneous shops, booths, and coffee-houses, and separate chains of shops extended the entire length of the common. On the north side, deep within the shade of pepper trees, were the fragrant huts of the basket-weavers. The doorways opposite were festooned with earthenware and green and yellow pottery. We found seats on a bench under the trees, and a grisled old man in a pink turban appeared with a bouquet of long-stemmed tin cups. ‘
Kaweh?
’ he smiled, making as if to drink out of his fist. We assented rapturously, dying for coffee, never dreaming it could be had so simply.

The trees were alive with birds, the vast place swam in golden light and the white city, its turrets and clustered domes washed in rose, seemed about as palpable as a vision of the celestial city. It was good to be apart like this, quietly drinking our coffees. I realized with some surprise that we had landed only that morning, the boat, the trip, even the hotel, seemed a little as if I had dreamed them. It occurred to me that I was tired, stuffed, surfeited with impressions; even as I sat there watching the movement I wasn’t relaxed. My eyes weren’t big enough, I hadn’t enough ears to take it all in, the things I couldn’t understand tormented me, and while I strained for more, more, I craved a respite from my excited senses. I was about to announce that I was going back to the hotel when the beat of a tom-tom pulled us into the very midst of the market-place, where a circle was rapidly forming. The attraction was apparently contained in a hide sack which the performer, a
cross-eyed
wight with a head like a snake’s nest, was opening with a killing pretence of caution. As he danced, and he never stopped dancing, his whole body swayed as if it had been simply thrown together. Now and then he would glide over to the bag, give a pluck to the strings,
whereupon
the little boys in front squirmed closer together. The bag yawned as the string fell away; the audience started chanting. Now the clown redoubled his capers, thrusting out his skirts shrilling ‘
Aiyah! Aiyah!
’
The snake slithered out in his own good time, erected a yard or two of his neck and raised his hood. ‘
Wah! Wah! Wah!
’ screamed the charmer retreating, then advancing, diving to scratch the serpent’s chin, always shooing his skirts. The snake, his tongue flicking, wavered like a branch, as fascinated as ourselves in the demented dance of the charmer who suddenly grabbed up a tambourine and gambolled right over to us, shaking it suggestively. We each dropped in a franc, in
addition
to which four or five sous were tossed into the drum and, the snake having sneaked back into his sack, some of the crowd moved off. We turned to go, but the performer was before us convulsively swaying, exhorting us with eyes and arms upraised. Everybody was grinning. ‘He says,’ the Arab next to us explained in French, ‘that good luck will follow you if you double the amount.’