The Spider's House (36 page)

“Lee!” he called. She slipped through the doorway and they sat down.

“Are you yelling so they’ll think you’re an American? Is that it?” she demanded.

“It’s very important they shouldn’t think we’re French, at least.”

“But you sounded so funny!” She began to laugh. “It would have been so much more effective if you’d just roared: ‘O. K., give money, twenty dollar, very good, yes, no, get outa here, god damned son of a bitch!’ Perhaps they’d have gotten the point then. The way you did it, I don’t think you got it across to them for a minute.”

“Well, I did my best.” Now that he was in the inner room out of sight of the inimical faces, he felt better.

Presently the waiter came in with a glass of tea for the boy at the other table. Stenham ordered tea and pastries.

“Damnation!” he said. “I forgot to leave a note for Moss.”

“It’s my fault,” she declared.

“Very sweet of you, but completely untrue.”

“You could phone him.”

“No. There’s no phone here. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me. I know just how to behave, but only before or after the fact. When the moment’s there in front of me, I don’t seem to function.”

“You’re no different from anybody else,” she said.

He suspected that she was waiting for an adverse reaction to this statement, so he said nothing. They were both silent for a minute. The Arab boy was sipping his tea with the customary Moslem noisiness. Stenham, in good spirits, did not mind his presence; he was a bit of native decoration. He would not have objected even if the boy had begun to make the loud belches that polite Moroccans make when they wish to show their appreciation of what they have eaten or drunk. The boy however did not belch; instead he rose from his table and taking up a good-sized stone from the floor, started to pound on the bolt of the door that led to the little garden outside. Stenham leaned across the table and took Lee’s hand. He had never noticed the wedding ring until this minute—a simple gold band. “It’s good to see you,” he told her, and then immediately wished he had sat still and said nothing, for at the contact of his hand her face had clouded. “It’s always good to see you,” he added with less buoyancy, watching her closely. For a time she seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to speak. Then she said: “Why do you do that?”

“Why shouldn’t I?” He spoke quietly because he wanted to avoid stirring up another argument.

Her expression was one of utter candor. “Because it puts me in a false position,” she told him. “It makes me so uncomfortable. I can’t help feeling that something’s expected of me. I feel I should either go coquettish or prudish on you, and I don’t want to be either one.”

“Why don’t you just be natural?” he suggested gently.

“I’m
trying
to be natural now,” she said with impatience, “but you don’t seem to understand. You put me in a position where it’s next to impossible to be natural.”

“Is it that bad?” he said, smiling sadly.

“They say you can’t tell any man that you don’t find him sexually attractive, that a woman’s whole success in life is based on the principle of making every man feel that given the right circumstances she’d rush to bed with him. But I think there must be a few men bright enough to hear the news without going into
a fit of depression. Don’t you think so?” She smiled provocatively.

He said slowly: “I think you know that isn’t true. What’s being bright got to do with it? You might as well say an intelligent man won’t mind being hungry as much as a slow-witted one will.”

“Well, maybe that’s true,” she said gaily. “Who knows?”

He was hurt; to keep her from knowing it he held her hand tighter. “I’m not that easy to discourage,” he assured her lightly. She shrugged and looked down at the table. “I was just being friendly,” she pouted. “Because I really like you. I like just being with you. If that isn’t enough—” she shrugged again— “well, then, the hell with it.”

“Fine, fine. Maybe you’ll change.”

“Maybe I will. I like to think I have an open mind.”

He did not answer, but sat back and looked out the window. The boy had taken off his shoes and was wading in the pool, a sight which, because of his state of mind, did not at once strike him as peculiar. When he saw him bend over and fish a large, bedraggled insect out of the water, he became interested. Now the boy held his hand very close to his face, studying his prey, smiling at it; he even moved his lips a few times, as though he were talking to it.

“What is it? What are you staring at?” she asked.

“Trying to make out what that kid’s doing out there, standing in the middle of the water.”

Suddenly the insect had flown away. The boy stood looking after it, his face expressing satisfaction rather than the disappointment Stenham had expected to see. He climbed out of the pool and sat down at its edge where he had been before.

Stenham shook his head. “Now, that was a strange bit of behavior. The boy made a special trip into the water just to pull out some kind of insect.”

“Well, he’s kind-hearted.”

“I know, but they’re not. That’s the whole point. In all my time here I’ve never seen anyone do a thing like that.”

He looked at the boy’s round face, heavy, regular features, and curly black hair.

“He could be a Sicilian, or a Greek,” he said as if to himself. “If he’s not a Moroccan, there’s nothing surprising about his deed. But if he is, then I give up. Moroccans just don’t do things like that.”

Lee stood up briefly and looked out the window; then she sat down again. “He looks like the model for all the worst paintings foreigners did in Italy a hundred years ago.
Boy at Fountain, Gipsy Carrying Water Jar;
you know?”

“You want another tea?”

“No!” she said. “One’s plenty. It’s so sweet. But anyway, I don’t believe you can make such hard and fast general rules about people.”

“You can in this case. I’ve watched them for years. I know what they’re like.”

“That doesn’t mean you know what each one is like individually, after all.”

“But the whole point is, they’re not individuals in the sense you mean,” he said.

“You’re on dangerous ground,” she warned him.

For fear that she might take exception to his words, he was quiet, did not attempt to explain to her how living among a less evolved people enabled him to see his own culture from the outside, and thus to understand it better. It was her express desire that all races and all individuals be “equal,” and she would accept no demonstration which did not make use of that axiom. In truth, he decided, it was impossible to discuss anything at all with her, because instead of seeing each part of total reality as a complement to the other parts, with dogged insistence she forged ahead seeing only those things which she could twist into the semblance of an illustration for her beliefs.

From somewhere outside there came a faint sound which, if he had not known it was being made by human voices, he might have imagined sounded like the wind soughing through pine branches. The boy, who sat by the pool as though he were the
express reason for the sun’s existence at that moment, seemed to hear the sound, too. Stenham glanced at Lee: apparently she heard nothing. There were only two bits of stage business, he reflected, of which she was capable. One was to pull out her compact and occupy herself by looking into its mirror, and the other was to light a cigarette. On this occasion she used the compact.

He watched her. For her the Moroccans were backward onlookers standing on the sidelines of the parade of progress; they must be exhorted to join, if necessary pulled by force into the march. Hers was the attitude of the missionary, but whereas the missionary offered a complete if unusable code of thought and behavior, the modernizer offered nothing at all, save a place in the ranks. And the Moslems, who with their blind intuitive wisdom had triumphantly withstood the missionaries’ cajoleries, now were going to be duped into joining the senseless march of universal brotherhood; for the privilege each man would have to give up only a small part of himself—just enough to make him incomplete, so that instead of looking into his own heart, to Allah, for reassurance, he would have to look to the others. The new world would be a triumph of frustration, where all humanity would be lifting itself by its own bootstraps—the equality of the damned. No wonder the religious leaders of Islam identified Western culture with the works of Satan: they had seen the truth and were expressing it in the simplest terms.

The sound of shouting suddenly increased in volume; it was obviously coming from a moving column of men. How many thousand throats did it take, he wondered, to make a sound like that?

“Listen,” said Lee.

The progress through the streets was slow, and the acoustics, changing from moment to moment, brought the sound nearer, then removed it to a more distant plane. But it was clear that the crowd was on its way up toward Bou Jeloud.

“Here comes your trouble,” he said to her.

She bit her upper lip for a second, and looked at him distraughtly. “What do you think we ought to do? Get out?”

“Sure, if you like.”

The boy came through the door, glanced shyly at them, and turned to sit down at his table. Stenham called out to him:
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe dehors
?” The boy stared at him, uncomprehending. So he was a Moroccan, after all. “
Smahli,”
Stenham said.
“Chnou hadek el haraj?”

The other looked at him with wide eyes, clearly wondering how anyone could be so stupid. “That’s people yelling,” he said.

“Are they happy or angry?” Stenham wanted to know.

The boy struggled to keep his sudden suspiciousness from becoming visible in his face. He smiled, and said: “Maybe some are happy, some are angry. Each man knows what is in his own heart.”

“A philosopher,” Stenham laughed in an aside to Lee.

“What does he say? What is it?” she asked impatiently.

“He’s being cagey.
Egless.”
He indicated the third chair at their table, and the boy sat down carefully, never taking his eyes from Stenham’s face. “I’d better offer him a cigarette,” Stenham said, and did so. The boy refused, smiling. “Tea?” asked Stenham. “I’ve drunk it. Thank you,” said the boy.

“Ask him what he thinks about staying here,” Lee said nervously.

“You can’t hurry these people,” he told her. “You get nothing out of them if you do.”

“I know, but if we’re going to go we should go, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes, if we are. But I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to go out there running around looking for a cab now, do you think?”

“You’re the expert. How should I know? But for God’s sake try and make sense at this point. I don’t feel like being massacred.”

He laughed, then turned his head to face her completely. “Lee, if I thought there were any serious danger you don’t think I’d have suggested coming here, do you?”

“How do I know what you’d have suggested? I’m just telling you that if there’s any question of a mob smashing into this
café I want to get out now, and not wait until it’s too late.”

“What’s this sudden hysteria?” he demanded. “I don’t understand.”

“Hysteria!” She laughed scornfully. “I don’t think you’ve ever seen a hysterical woman in your life.”

“Listen. If you want to go, we’ll go now.”

“That’s just what I
didn’t
say. I merely asked you to be serious and realize that you’ve got the responsibility for us both, and act accordingly. That’s all.”

What a schoolmarm, he thought angrily. “All right,” he said. “Let’s sit right here. This is an Arab café. There are about fifty police outside and there’s a
poste de garde
right across the square. I don’t know where we could be safer, except in the Ville Nouvelle. Certainly not in the hotel.”

She did not answer. The noise of the crowd had become much louder; it sounded now like prolonged cheering. He turned to the boy again.

“The people are coming this way.”

“Yes,” said the boy; it was evident that he did not want to discuss the subject. Another tack, a different approach, thought Stenham, but not a personal one, either. “Do you like this café?” he said after a moment, remembering too late that statements were better than questions in the task of trying to establish contact with the Moroccans.

The boy hesitated. “I like it,” he said grudgingly, “but it’s not a good café.”

“I thought it was a good café. I like it. It has water on both sides.”

“Yes,” the boy admitted. “I like to come and sit. But it’s not a good café.” He lowered his voice. “The owner has buried something outside the door. That’s not good.”

Stenham, bewildered, said: “I see.”

The noise now could not be disregarded; its rhythmical chanting had grown into a gigantic roar, unmistakably of anger, and it was at last possible to hear details in its pattern. It had ceased being a unified wall of sound, and become instead a great, turbulent mass of innumerable separate human cries.

“Smahli,”
said the boy. “I’m going to look.” Quickly he rose and went out of the room.

“Are you nervous?” Stenham asked her.

“Well, I’m not exactly relaxed. Give me a cigarette. I’ve run out.”

While he was lighting her cigarette there came the sound of one lone shot—a small dull pop which nevertheless carried above the roar of voices. They both froze; the roar subsided for a second or two, then rose to a chaos of frenzy. Their wide eyes met, but only by accident. Then from what they would have said was the front of the café there was a phrase of machine-gun fire, a short sequence of rapidly repeated, shattering explosions.

They both jumped up and ran to the door. The other room was empty now, Stenham noticed as they went through it, save for one old man sitting on the floor in the corner, holding a kif pipe in his hand. They went only as far as the doorway of the large front room. There men were still falling over each other in their haste to get to the windows. Two waiters were sliding enormous bolts across the closed entrance door. When they had finished doing that they hurriedly pushed a large chest in front of the door, and wedged tables between it and a pillar near by. They did the work automatically, as though it were the only reaction conceivable in such a situation. Then they went behind a wall of bottle cases and peered worriedly out a small window there. From where they stood in the inner doorway Lee and Stenham could see, through the florid designs of the grillwork in the windows, only a series of senseless vignettes which had as their background the hard earth of the square. Occasionally part of a running figure passed through one of the frames. The noise at the moment was largely one of screaming; there was also the tinkle of shattering glass at intervals. Suddenly, like so many huge motors starting up, machine-guns fired from all around the square. When they had finished, there was relative silence, broken by a few single revolver shots from further away. A police whistle sounded, and it was even possible to hear individual voices shouting commands in French. A man standing in one of the windows in front of them began to beat on the grillwork
like a caged animal, shrieking imprecations; hands reached out from beside him and pulled him back, and a brief struggle ensued as he was forced to the floor by his companions. Stenham seized Lee by the wrist and wheeled her around, saying: “Come on.” They returned to their little room.