The Spider's House (13 page)

Amar had succeeded in rousing himself sufficiently so as to be no longer afraid of sleeping. Again the thunder rolled in some far-off part of the world. He lay still. Fairly soon there was the sound of the motorcycle in the distance, coming along the road, turning into the lane, arriving in the orchard among the trees, and finally, in a blast of noise, drawing to a stop before the house. In the stairway there were voices, and Moulay Ali entered the room, accompanied by another man with an extraordinarily resonant, deep voice. “This is Lahcen,” said Moulay Ali. The three boys acknowledged the introduction. “Aha! I see our friend is asleep! What’s that you’ve smeared over his face?
Filfil?”

“Fin not asleep,” said Amar. He would have liked not to be obliged to take part in the conversation, but obviously he could not merely lie there saying nothing.

“He’d better sit up,” said Moulay Ali. The boy from Meknès held Amar’s head and began to scrape the dried paste from his forehead and eyebrows with a knife. When he had cleaned it all off, he bathed the places with a damp cloth. Lahcen and Moulay Ali were holding a conversation which made no sense whatever.

“This?” “Yes, nine.” “I have that.” “I thought you said eleven.” “No! Not that. This, this!” “Oh, yes.” “This one, five.”
“Ouakha
.” “Now, this, I was telling you about. You see, you can’t be sure.” “I’m sure.” “It’s impossible to be sure. Take my word for it.” “All right, leave it open.” “Put six plus and leave it.” “And what about …?” “We’ll get to that later. Have a peach. The best in the Sais.”

When he thought the area around his eyes was dry, Amar opened them and sat up. “Ah, there he is!” cried Moulay Ali.
“Kif enta?
Better now?”

In the center of the room a tall man with a soft gray
tarbouche
on his head was bending over, eating a peach and trying to keep it from dripping onto his clothes. Eventually he straightened, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth and hands. Then at Moulay Ali’s request he stepped over and greeted Amar. The iris and pupil of his left eye were completely white, like a milky marble. Straightway Amar guessed that he was not of the same social condition as the three boys and his host. Assuredly he had not had the same education: his language was scarcely more distinguished than Amar’s. So this is Lahcen, he thought, and he could not imagine why Moulay Ali had rushed into the Ville Nouvelle to fetch him.

“We’ll leave our buying and selling until later,” Moulay Ali remarked pointedly, “and get Mahmoud to make us some tea.” He went to the door and called the servant.

Amar had been dreading the mention of tea; it meant that he could not leave until he had drunk at least three glasses with his host. He sat back disconsolately and looked at Lahcen, who
was picking his nose. The
tarbouche
on his head was the only article of Moslem clothing in the entire room, and it looked strangely out of place, both in its surroundings and on that bullet-shaped head. It was the sort of hat you would expect to see on an elderly, slightly eccentric gentleman of means, who might be taking his grandchildren out for a Friday stroll.

“Sit down,” said Moulay Ali to his new guest. “Talk to our friend here.” To one of the boys he said: “Chemsi, come over here. I want to show you something.” Lahcen smiled at Amar and sat down.

“I hear you went swimming at Aïn Malqa today,” he said. “How’s the water these days? Still cold?”

“Very cold.”

“Been to Sidi Harazem lately?”

“No. I work. It’s too far.”

“Yes. It’s far.” He was silent a moment. Then he said: “You work in the Ville Nouvelle?”

“No, at Bab Fteuh.”

“That’s my quarter.”

Amar did not recall ever having seen him, but he said: “Ah.”

“Have you ever been to Dar el Beida?” Lahcen asked him. Amar said he had not. “That’s a place to swim. At the beach, the sea. Nothing better.”

“French women by the million,” Amar said.

Lahcen laughed. “By the million.”

They talked on for a time about Casablanca, Amar wondering anxiously all the while how soon the daylight would begin to fade. It seemed to him that hé had been shut into this room for a week. But since tea was coming, he could not even mention the fact that he wanted to leave.

“It says:
dans la région de Bou Anane
,” Moulay Ali was saying. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Chemsi hesitated, and said it did not.

Moulay Ali snorted. “It does to Ahmed Slaoui.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Chemsi.

Moulay Ali nodded his head slowly up and down, looking slyly at Chemsi. “Do you see what I mean?” he asked him at
length. “Use the whole article word for word, put Maroc-Presse and the date, and then add what you know about the
région de Bou Anane”

“Poor Slaoui,” said Chemsi.

“He may not be there now,” Moulay Ali reminded him.

Mahmoud arrived carrying an enormous copper tray, with a silver teapot and glasses. The two returned from the corner where they had been talking, and Moulay Ali tossed the folded newspaper he had been holding in his hand to the two other boys. He sat down and began to fill the glasses. The tea bubbled and steamed, and the odor of the mint came up.

“What’s your name?” he said suddenly to Amar.

Amar told him. Moulay Ali raised his eyebrows. “Fassi?” he asked.

“My family has always lived in Fez,” Amar answered proudly; he was aware that the boys were scrutinizing him afresh. Perhaps they had thought he was a
berrani,
an outsider.

“What
haouma?”
Moulay Ali was passing out the glasses of tea.

“Keddane, below the Djemaa Andaluz.”

“Yes, yes.”

Amar was waiting for his host to say: “
Bismillah,”
before he tasted his tea, but he said nothing at all. Nor did anyone else. Usually Amar murmured his prayer under his breath, so that it was scarcely audible, but this time, seeing that the others all had been so remiss, he said it in a normal voice. Lahcen turned his head to look at him.

The boy who was reading the newspaper put it down slowly and took his glass. There was consternation on his face. “Bubonic plague,” he said. “That’s a terrible disease. You burst.”

“Eioua!”
agreed Moulay Ali, as if he were saying: “I told you.”

Lahcen took a noisy sip of tea, licked his lips, said: “Laghzaoui—I mean, Lazraqi says Algeria’s full of it now.”

“It must have come across the border,” began the boy.

“Rumors!” snapped Moulay Ali, looking fixedly at Chemsi.

“We don’t know anything about Algeria.” Chemsi nodded his head in agreement.

They went on discussing remote towns in the south of the country, “as though they were important places,” thought Amar. It was perfectly clear to him that the conversation was being made around a central point which they all saw but were taking pains that he should not see. After he had drunk his third glass of tea, he stood up. “It’s very late,” he said.

“Of course, you want to go,” said Moulay Ali, smiling. “Very well. But don’t forget us. Come back some day and we’ll have a party, with music. Now you know where the house is.”

Lahcen grinned. “Our friend Moulay Ali plays the flute and the violin.”

“And if I’m not wrong our friend Lahcen plays the liter bottle,” added Moulay Ali archly. The boys laughed. “Especially Aït Souala rosé,” he added.

“But he’s very good on the flute,” went on Lahcen. “Play a little,” he urged.

Moulay Ali shrugged. “Amar wants to go. Another day. And Chemsi’ll bring his
oud
from Meknès.” Chemsi protested shyly that he played badly. “What do you play?” Moulay Ali asked Amar, taking his hand without rising from the hassock.

Amar was embarrassed. “The
lirah,
a little.”

“Baz! That’s perfect! You can take my place when I get tired. Good-bye. Take care of your war scars.” His face grew serious. “And don’t wander into any more private roads, do you understand? Suppose I hadn’t been me? Suppose I had been Monsieur Durand or Monsieur Blanchet?
Eioua!
You wouldn’t be going home on your bicycle now, would he?” He turned to the boys for corroboration. They smiled. Lahcen said: “Ay!” with great feeling.

Amar stood there, searching in his head for something to say that would show them he was not a fool, not a child, that he was aware that all their words had an inner core of meaning which they had kept hidden from him. He decided that the best thing was to be mysterious himself, to let them think that perhaps
he had understood them in spite of all their precautions, but not in such a way that they might imagine he bore any resentment toward them for playing what was, after all, no more than a rather childish game.

“Thank you for your trust in me,” he said gravely to Moulay Ali.

It had its effect; he saw that in Moulay Ali’s eyes, although Moulay Ali did not move a muscle. Perhaps precisely because he did not move; he seemed to freeze for a fraction of a second, eyes and all. And so did everyone else, if only for that short instant. But before the instant was over, Amar had pushed ahead, taking momentary command. He held out his hand and said: “Good-bye,” and then moved on to the three boys, one by one, and finally Lahcen. And bowing again briefly to his host, he turned and walked to the door. As far as he could tell, no one said anything as he went down the stairs.

He was convinced that before he could get well away from the house someone would call him back; it seemed too good to be true that he should at last be out in the open again. Quickly he hopped on the bicycle and in a great burst of energy began pedaling along the bumpy lane. The sun was still fairly high in the sky; it was not quite so late as he had thought. The light in the orchard was golden; the shadows of the tree trunks made straight black stripes along the earth. Cicadas still whirred their song in the branches above his head, but the sound was less intense than it had been at noon. He continued to ride as hard as he was able, to get sooner onto the main road. Once out there, he felt, he could refuse to return to the house if Moulay Ali should come roaring after him on the motorcycle. He was sweating and panting by the time he reached the road, but then there were no more ruts and clods and bumps, and he relaxed into an easy, steady speed. The hundred-meter slabs sped past; he began to feel happy again. There were shadows in the back of his mind, questions that needed to be answered, matters that had to be faced, and they were imminent, all around him, but for the moment the strength of the present was great enough to
keep them all there at bay, backed up against the wall of eventuality.

CHAPTER 9

The sun was rapidly retiring from its vague position in the bowl of the sky overhead, toward the definite remotenesses of the Djebel Zerhoun; the dark mass of peaks at the extremity of the plain had been brought nearer by the intense light behind them. Somewhere there in the heart of the mountains nestled the holy city of Moulay Idriss, built by his own family many centuries ago when Haroun er Rachid was still alive. He knew how it looked from the postcards he had seen—draped like a white cloth over its escarpments, and surrounded by whole forests of giant olive trees, forests that stretched in all directions through the valleys and up the slopes. He was whistling as he passed the first small farms that were scattered at the outskirts of the town. The odious little dogs that French people seemed to like so much rushed out at him as he rode by, barking furiously. He pretended they were Frenchmen, tried to run them down, and called out: “
Bon jour, monsieur
!” to them when he had gone by.

The daytime air with its hot smell had made room for the new evening air that was rolling down from the heights ahead. The difference between them was the difference there is between a boulder and a flock of birds flying, or, he thought, between being asleep and being awake. “Perhaps I’ve been asleep all day,” he said to himself as a joke. No dream could have been more senseless than his day had been; that was certain. But because the events of the day had really taken place, he was troubled by
their possible meaning in the pattern of his destiny. Why had Allah seen fit to make him meet Mohammed Lalami as he came up from his bath in the river, and why had He directed his bicycle to the hidden house of Moulay Ali in the fruit orchard? Since nothing in all existence could ever be counted as accidental, it had to mean that his life was fated to be linked with Mohammed’s and Moulay Ali’s, and this he did not want at all. Perhaps by saying the proper prayers he could persuade Allah to direct the path of his life in such a way that he could miss seeing them again, all of them, including Lahcen and the three boys. It was always the entrance of other people into his life that made it difficult. But then the happy thought occurred to him that it was possible Allah had given him his secret strength precisely in order to enable him to protect himself in these entanglements with other people, which were, after all, inevitable. If he could learn to trust it, use it when it was needed, was it not likely that he could win out over them? He pondered the question. Surely that was what Allah had meant by making Amar Amar, by giving him the gift of knowing what was in the hearts of other men. The problem was to make this gift strong and absolutely sure, as he had done to his body during his childhood, while the other boys were sitting in classrooms; he had done that not by imposing any conscious discipline, for he had no conception of discipline (save that he had watched athletes training, and felt sorry for them) but by a process opposed to discipline—by simply allowing his body to express itself, to take complete command, and develop itself as it wished.

He pedaled past the suburban villas with their plots of green lawn, through small streets that were short cuts to the side of town where he was going. The last open space before the beginning of the city proper was the botanical garden. Part of the land was a nursery enclosed by a fence of barbed wire; the rest was an uncultivated wilderness veined with well-trodden paths. If you wandered quietly in here at twilight you sometimes came upon surprising scenes, for it was the only place near the town where the French boys and girls could find any degree of privacy. On several occasions Amar had discovered couples lying
tightly embraced in the bushes, oblivious of his passage, or merely indifferent to it. What puzzled him was why they did not do their kissing and love-making in the brothels. The girls obviously worked as prostitutes, otherwise they would not be out walking with the boys. Why then did they leave the brothels and carry on their work in the open air, like animals? Was it that all the rooms were full at the moment, or that they were doing this without the knowledge of the
batrona,
so that they could keep all the money themselves and not give her any? Or were they merely evil, vicious creatures that had lost all shame, whose hearts Allah in His wrath had changed to the hearts of dogs? This was perhaps the facet of Nazarene life which shocked him most profoundly, but still, it amused him to walk silently along the paths until he came upon a couple, and then to cough loudly as he passed near them.