The Spider's House (12 page)

“At Aïn Malqa.”

Now the man frowned. “Excuse me, but I think you’re crazy. Do you know which way Aïn Malqa is?”

Amar sniffed, to keep another drop of blood from coming out his nostril. “I haven’t touched any of your fruit,” he said aggrievedly. “If you want me to get out, tell me and I’ll go.”

The man’s face assumed a pained expression. “Ld,
khoya, la,”
he said gently, as if he were soothing a skittish horse. “Where do you get such foolish ideas? Nothing of the sort.” He started up his motor. “He’s leaving,” thought Amar hopefully. But then his heart sank as the man, one foot on the ground, made a U-turn with the machine and brought it to a halt facing back the way he had come.

Above the clamor of the motor, he shouted: “Get on your bicycle!” Amar obeyed. “Ride ahead of me!” He pointed, and Amar set off, going deeper into the orchard, the roar of the slowly moving cycle behind him.

They kept going. There seemed to be no reason for turning his head around, because the man kept at an unvarying distance behind him. Amar was miserable. It was absurd to think of trying to escape; such a thing was manifestly impossible. But he was frightened: he had never before met a Moslem like this, one whose intentions were so difficult to guess that he might as well have been a Nazarene.

The road curved suddenly to the right, and there was an old house, standing in a clearing of the orchard. A path led up to its door; it was bordered by high rose-bushes that had been left to grow wild. For the country the house was enormous, its long expanse of windowless wall being fully ten meters high. There were cracks zigzagging down from the top; plants and bushes had grown in them, but they were all dead save for a tiny gnarled fig tree whose gray trunk thrust itself through the wall like a fat snake. The roar of the motor behind him stopped, and Amar at last looked back with some nervousness. The man had jumped off his motorcycle and was letting down the standard that would keep it upright. He caught Amar’s eye and smiled briefly. “Here we are,” he said. “The door is open. Walk in.”

Amar, however, went only as far as the doorway and stood waiting for his host, who, when he came, pushed him ahead impatiently. Inside the door was a long staircase which they climbed, coming out at the top onto a covered gallery which ran around three sides of a large square courtyard. In places the railing had rotted away, and several of the great beams overhead sagged precariously. In the air there was the humming of innumerable wasps.

“In here,” said the man, and he pushed him gently through a doorway into a long room whose light came from a series of small windows placed above the roof of the gallery. At the far end, seated on the cushions that went the length of the room, were three boys, all of them older than Amar by two or three years. The man led him over to them and he shook hands with each one, noticing as he did so that they all greeted him in the European fashion, without bothering to lift their fingers to their lips after touching his hand. And for that matter, they were all
dressed completely like Frenchmen, not only in the choice of the garments they wore, but in their way of wearing them. One boy had been reading a book and the other two had been talking while one of them rubbed the sleeve of a jacket with a cloth soaked in gasoline, but now they all politely ceased what they had been doing and leaned forward expectantly as Amar sat down.

The man seated himself on a high hassock facing them and held out his arm to indicate Amar as though he were a rare animal he had run to earth. “Look at this, will you?” he cried. “Here I was going to the city to meet Lahcen, who’s waiting at this minute at the Renaissance, and I come across this gazelle in the orchard. Not in the lane, you understand, but coming from the mill.”

“What mill?” interrupted Amar. The blood had finally managed to run down to his lip.

“Then he says,” the man went on imperturbably, “he’s coming from Aïn Malqa.” The boy who had been reading laughed. “Oh, he has a bicycle,” the man assured him. “It’s completely possible. But what’s happened to him? Look at him. He won’t talk. He says he had a fight with a friend.”

The boys needed no invitation; they were studying Amar carefully but without insolence. To avoid their scrutiny, which, however civil and unhostile, embarrassed him, Amar began to look nonchalantly around the strange room. He had never seen a room remotely like it. It was, by his standards, extremely disorderly, with no sign of the scrubbed neatness that characterized the rooms in his own house, although he could not have said that it was precisely dirty. There were great crooked piles of books and magazines everywhere on the floor, and fat leather hassocks that looked as though they had been tossed purposely here and there, with no attempt to place them in a row, the way they should have been placed. On three small coffee tables, also just put down anywhere in the middle of the room, there were huge baskets of peaches; the air was thick with their rich odor. The walls, which one would have expected to bear large gold-framed photographs of relatives—for this was obviously a
rich man’s house, even though it was old—were empty of any kind of picture or adornment, save for a very large map of Morocco printed in pastel colors; he had seen one like it when he peeked through a window at the Bureau du Contrôle Civil one day. And in whichever direction he looked he saw bowls of cigarette stubs and ashes, and there were ashes on the floor as well. He decided that this was a typical French room, and that the man wanted people to think he was French.

“This isn’t the Tribunal,” said the man, smiling at Amar. “Still, the fact is, I caught you on my property and I want to know what you were doing here. Do you blame me?”

Amar had never heard his own tongue spoken quite in this way before: the man used all the local expressions, but at the same time he interspersed his sentences with words which showed that he knew true Arabic, the language of the mosque and the
medersa,
the
imam
and the
aallem.
And the manner in which he mixed the two languages was so skillful that its result sounded almost like a new tongue, easy and sweet to the ear.

“No,” said Amar. “But I told you the truth.” He was uncomfortably aware that his own speech was hopelessly crude, the language of the street.

“Perhaps, but you didn’t tell me enough. Z
id.
Go on. Tell us the whole story. Maybe you’d like a drink.”

Amar was thirsty, and so he said: “Yes.” One of the boys jumped up and stepped to the other end of the room, returning with a tall bottle and several very small glasses. Amar looked at the bottle suspiciously. The boy caught his glance, said: “Chartreuse,” and poured a little out for him. Then he served the others. This was not at all what Amar wanted, but he sipped it and proceeded to recount the happenings of the day. When he got to the fight, the man stopped him. “
Essbar
,” he said. “What were you fighting about?”

He wanted to say: “I don’t know,” for he did not know how to put into words the real reason why he had felt like proffering the insult to Mohammed. Certainly it was not the suggestion Mohammed had made; there was nothing unusual in that, nor would there have been anything extraordinary in his accepting
it. It had more to do with Mohammed’s smug sureness of being right—he was simply the kind of person you feel a need of hitting. But he knew he could scarcely hope to make his listeners understand that, without going into a long digression which would lead them into politics, and even if he had been mentally equipped to engage in such a discussion with them, the thing was unthinkable. He did not even know where his audience’s sympathies lay; they could easily all be with the French.

“I didn’t like him,” said Amar. “He was the kind of
ouild
that needs a good punch now and then.”

“I see,” the man said seriously, turning his head and taking in the three boys with a glance which seemed to be warning them not to laugh. “So you punched him. Zid.”

Amar was a little more relaxed now; he felt that the man believed him, and this set him enough at his ease so that he could remember all the details of the fight, which he told minutely. The man was frankly amused now—Amar could see it in his eyes—but he remained sitting solemnly listening while Amar brought the story up to the moment when he had heard a motorcycle coming through the orchard and had tried vainly to escape among the trees, only to turn back and be discovered before he had reached the lane. The man reached over and clapped him on the shoulder, laughing. “Very good, very good,” he said. “I think we can take that story just as it comes. Now I’ve got to go to the city for a little while, but I’ll be back. You stay here, and the house is yours. If you want anything, just ask for it.”

He got up; Amar automatically jumped to his feet. He had heard and understood the man’s invitation, but he considered it mere urbane politeness. Besides, he wanted to be off; the house and the boys and his host were somehow all unexplained, like a dream, and he was overwhelmed by uneasiness. He looked up and saw almost wistfully the patches of blue sky through the windows at the top of the wall.

“Sit down,” the man said. This was certainly a command, and he obeyed. The man stepped lightly to the door and disappeared.
An instant later the motorcycle roared, and then its sound slowly became fainter.

CHAPTER 8

As if it were part of a ritual, everyone sat perfectly quiet until the hum of the motor had died away completely, and it was no longer possible for them to hear anything, even by listening with great attention. Then the boy who had been reading turned to Amar and said: “Have some peaches. There are thousands of them.”

Amar rubbed his hand across his face. “I’m very thirsty.” He looked at his hand and saw dried blood and fresh blood, and the day suddenly seemed endless. “I ought to go,” he said tentatively.

The three immediately murmured polite protests. He could see that they would prevent him from leaving, perhaps even by force if they had to. “I ought to go home,” he said again. “My nose—”

The boy who had spoken got up and stood looking down at him. “Look,” he said. “You lie down here and I’ll take care of you.” He went to the doorway and called:
“Yah, Mahmoud!”
An elderly man in a slightly soiled white
gandoura
appeared presently; the boy stepped out onto the gallery and conferred briefly with him. Then he returned, knelt in front of Amar, and began to remove his sandals. Embarrassed, Amar pushed his hands away and took them off by himself. “Now lie down here,” the boy commanded, indicating the place where he had been sitting. The other two watched while he helped Amar to make
himself comfortable, stuffing pillows under his head, Amar feebly protesting the while, ashamed at having such a fuss made over him. But it felt good to be stretched out. He was very tired. No one spoke until the servant came in bearing a tray, which he set down on the floor beside the cushion where Amar lay. Raising himself on one elbow, Amar drank the glass of cold water. There were storks on the glass, embossed in bright red outline.

“Perhaps I can come back and visit your father some other day,” he began. He was certain the man was not the father of any one of them, but he wanted to hear what they would reply. There was silence for a moment; it was clear that the others were not sure what they ought to say.

“Moulay Ali will be back very soon,” said the boy who had taken charge of him; apparently he was to be spokesman. “Lie down. I’m going to put some
filfil
on your face.” Amar lay back. “Close your eyes, tight.” This was unnecessary advice, as Amar did not intend to let any of the red pepper get into his eyes, whatever happened. The boy gently smeared the paste over his forehead and across the bridge of his nose. “You ought to go to a doctor,” he said, when he had finished. “I think your nose is broken.”

Mektoub
, thought Amar, mentally shrugging. He had no desire to consult a doctor; he was going to keep his money for shoes.

The boy sat down somewhere further along on the cushion, beyond the other two, who Amar felt were merely sitting there watching him. It was very silent in the room; now and then there was the sound of the page of a magazine being turned, or one of them cleared his throat. He could hear the steady hum of the wasps on the gallery, and beyond, an occasional cock crowing, out in the afternoon sunlight. He had been pressing his eyes very tightly shut, but slowly the facial muscles relaxed and he felt himself in danger of falling asleep. That could certainly not be done here in this house, with strangers looking at him; the idea of it terrified him. He decided to talk, about anything at all, so long as he remained awake. It was imperative that he open his mouth and say something. It seemed to him that he
was sitting up, having a long, serious discussion with the three boys, and they were listening and agreeing with him. And somewhere, very far away, there was the booming of thunder in the sky. Suddenly someone coughed, and he realized that he was not sitting up at all; that meant that he had very nearly fallen asleep.

“Tell me,” he said aloud. “Did Moulay Ali really think I had come to set fire to his place?”

Unexpectedly all three boys laughed. “You’d better ask him about that,” said the one who had helped him. “How do I know what he thought? He’ll be here in a minute.”

“Do you all live in Fez?” It did not matter what the others thought of his foolish questions, if only he could keep from falling asleep.

“They do. I live in Meknès.”

“Are you staying here now?”

“Sa’a, sa’a,
sometimes I come and stay a few days. Moulay Ali is a great friend. I’ve learned more from him than from any
aallem
.” The other two murmured in agreement.

This seemed a strange statement to make. “But what does he teach you?”

“Everything,” the other said, almost fervently.

“I want to sit up,” said Amar. “Could you wipe off the
filfil,
please?”

“No, no. Lie still. Moulay Ali will be coming. I want him to see that I’ve taken care of you.”