The Spider's House (4 page)

Moss stood in the center of the room, directly under the big chandelier, nervously smoothing his moustache, an expression of consternation in his eyes. The only feeling of which Stenham could be conscious at the moment was a devout wish that he had not knocked on the door, that he could still be standing outside in the dark where he had been five seconds ago. He disregarded the man who stood beside him. “Good evening,” he called to Moss, his intonation carrying a hint of casual heartiness. But Moss remained taut.

“Will you please come in, John?” he said dryly. “I must talk to you.”

BOOK 1
THE MASTER OF WISDOM

I have understood that the world is a vast emptiness built upon emptiness…. And so they call me the master of wisdom. Alas! Does anyone know what wisdom ist

—SONG OF THE OWL: THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

CHAPTER 1

The spring sun warmed the orchard. Soon it would drop behind the high canebrake that bordered the highway, for the time was mid-afternoon. Amar lay beneath an old fig tree, embedded in long grass that was still damp with dew from the night before. He was comparing his own life with what he knew of the lives of his friends, and thinking that certainly his was the least enviable. He knew this was a sin: it is not allowed to man to make judgments of this sort, and he would never have given voice to the conclusion he had reached, even if it had taken the form of words in his mind.

He saw the trees and plants around him and the sky above, and he knew they were there. And since he felt a great disappointment
in the direction his short life had taken, he knew the dissatisfaction was there. The world was a beautiful place, with all its animals and birds that moved, and its flowers and fruit trees that Allah had generously provided, but in his heart he felt that they all belonged really to him, that no one else had the same right to them as he. It was always other people who made his life unhappy. As he lay there propped indolently against the tree trunk, he carefully pulled the petals from a rose he had picked a half hour earlier when he had come into the orchard. There was not much more time for him to find out what he was going to do.

If he were going to run away he must go quickly. But already he felt that Allah was not going to reveal his destiny to him. He would learn it merely by doing what it had been written that he would do. Everything would continue as it was. When the shadows lengthened he would get up and go out onto the highway, because the twilight brought evil spirits out of the trees. Once he was on the road there would be nowhere for him to go but home. He had to go back and be beaten; there was no alternative. It was not fear of the pain that kept him from going now and getting it over with. The pain itself was nothing; it could even be enjoyable if he did not wince or cry out, because his hostile silence was in a sense a victory over his father. Afterward it always seemed to him that he was stronger, better prepared for the next time. But it left a bitter flavor in the center of his being, something that made him feel just a little farther away and lonelier than before. It was not through dread of the pain or fear of this feeling of loneliness that he stayed on sitting in the orchard; what was unbearable was the thought that he was innocent and that he was going to be humiliated by being treated as though he were guilty. What he dreaded encountering was his own powerlessness in the face of injustice.

The warm breeze that moved down across the hillsides and valleys from Djebel Zalagh found its way into the orchard between the stalks of cane, stirred the flat leaves above his head. Its tentative caress on the back of his neck sent a fleeting shiver through him. He put a rose petal between his teeth and chewed
it into wet fragments. Out here there was no one at all, and no one would arrive. The guardian of the orchard had seen him come in and had said nothing. Some of the orchards had watchmen who chased you; the boys knew them all. This was a “good” orchard, because the guard never spoke, save to shout a command to his dog, to make it stop barking at the intruders. The old man had gone down to a lower part of the property near the river. Except for a truck that went by now and then on the highway beyond the canebrake, this corner of the orchard lay in complete silence. Because he did not want to imagine what such a place would be like once the daylight had gone, he slipped his feet into his sandals, stood up, shook out his
djellaba,
inspected it for a while because it had belonged to his brother and he hated wearing it, and finally flinging it over his shoulder, set out for the gap in the jungle of canes through which he had entered.

Outside on the road the sun was warmer and the wind blew harder. He passed two small boys armed with long bamboo poles, who were hitting the branches of a mulberry tree while a larger boy scooped up the green berries and stored them in the hood of his
djellaba
. All three were too busy to notice his passage. He came to one of the hairpin bends in the road. Ahead of him on the other side of the valley was Djebel Zalagh. It had always looked to him like a king in his robes, sitting on his throne. Amar had mentioned this to several of his friends, but none of them had understood. Without even looking up at the mountain they had said: “You’re dizzy,” or “In your head,” or “In the dark,” or had merely laughed. “They think they know once and for all what the world is like, so that they don’t ever have to look at it again,” he had thought. And it was true: many of his friends had decided what the world looked like, what life was like, and they would never examine either of them again to find out whether they were right or wrong. This was because they had gone or were still going to school, and knew how to write and even to understand what was written, which was much more difficult. And some of them knew the Koran by heart, although naturally they did not know much of what it meant, because
that is the most difficult thing of all, reserved for only a few great men in the world. And no one can understand it completely.

“In the school they teach you what the world means, and once you have learned, you will always know,” Amar’s father had told him.

“But suppose the world changes?” Amar had thought. “Then what would you know?” However, he was careful not to let his father guess what he was thinking. He never spoke with the old man save when he was bidden. Si Driss was severe, and liked his sons to treat him with exactly the same degree of respect he had shown to his own father fifty or sixty years before. It was best not to express an unasked-for opinion. In spite of the fact that life at home was a more serious business than it would have been had he had a more easy-going parent, Amar was proud of the respected position his father held. The richest, most important men of the quarter came to him, kissed his garments, and sat silent while he spoke. It had been written that Amar was to have a stern father, and there was nothing to do about it but to give thanks to Allah. Yet he knew that if ever he wanted anything deeply enough to defy his father, the old man would see that his son was right, and would give in to him. This he had discovered when his father had first sent him to school. He had disliked it so much the first day that he had gone home and announced that he would never return, and the old man had merely sighed and called upon Allah to witness that he himself had taken the child and left him in the
aallem’s
charge, so that he could not be held accountable for what might come afterward. The next day he had wakened the boy at dawn, saying to him: “If you won’t go to school, you must work.” And he had led him off to his uncle’s blanket factory in the Attarine, to work at the looms. This had not been nearly so difficult as school, because he did not have to sit still; nevertheless, he did not stay, any more than he had stayed at any one of the several dozen different places where he had worked since. A week or two, and off he went to amuse himself, very likely without having been paid anything. His life at home was a constant struggle to keep
from being led off to some new work of his father’s devising.

Thus it was that among all his early friends Amar was the only one who had not learned to write and to read other people’s writing, and it did not matter to him in the least. If his family had not been Chorfa, descendents of the Prophet, his life no doubt would have been easier. There would not have been his father’s fierce insistence on teaching him the laws of their religion, or his constant dwelling on the necessity for strict obedience. But the old man had determined that if his son were to be illiterate (which in itself was no great handicap), at least he was not going to be ignorant of the moral precepts of Islam.

As the years had passed, Amar had made new friends like himself, boys of families so poor that there had never been any question of their going to school. When he met his childhood friends now and talked to them, it seemed to him that they had grown to be like old men, and he did not enjoy being with them, whereas his new friends, who played and fought every minute as though their lives depended upon the outcome of their games and struggles, lived in a way that was understandable to him.

A great thing in Amar’s life was that he had a secret. It was a secret that did not even have to be kept secret, because no one could ever have guessed it. But he knew it and lived by it. The secret was that he was not like anybody else; he had powers that no one else possessed. Being certain of that was like having a treasure hidden somewhere out of the world’s sight, and it meant much more than merely having the
baraka.
Many Chorfa had that. If someone were ill, or in a trance, or had been entered by some foreign spirit, even Amar often could set him right, by touching him with his hand and murmuring a prayer. And in his family the
baraka
was very strong, so powerful that in each generation one man had always made healing his profession. Neither his father nor his grandfather had ever done any work save that of attending to the constant stream of people who came to be treated by them. Thus there was nothing surprising about the fact that Amar himself should possess the gift. But it was not this he meant when he told himself that he was different from everyone else. Of course, he had always known his secret,
but earlier it had not made so much difference. Now that he was fifteen and a man, it was becoming more important all the time. He had discovered that a hundred times a day things came into his head that never seemed to come into anyone else’s head, but he had also learned that if he wanted to tell people about them—which he certainly did—he must do it in a way that would make them laugh, otherwise they became suspicious of him. Still, if one day in his enthusiasm he forgot and cried: “Look at Djebel Zalagh! The Sultan has a cloud on his shoulder!” and his friends answered: “You’re crazy!” he did not mind. The next time he would try to remember to include their world, to say it in reference to some particular thing in which they were interested. Then they would laugh and he would be happy.

Today there were no clouds on any part of Djebel Zalagh. Each tiny olive tree along its crest stood out against the great, uniformly blue sky; and the myriad ravines that furrowed its bare slopes were beginning to fill with the hard shadows of late afternoon. A threadlike road wound along the side of one of the round hills at its feet; tiny white figures were moving very slowly up the road. He stood and watched them awhile: country people returning to their villages. For a moment he wished passionately that he could be someone else, one of them, with a simple, anonymous life. Then he began to spin a fantasy. If he were a
djibli,
from the country, with his cleverness—for he knew he was clever—he would soon amass more money than anyone in his
kabila.
He would buy more and more land, have increasing numbers of people working on it, and when the French tried to buy the land from him, no matter how much they offered, he would refuse to sell to them. Then the peasants would have great respect for him; his name would begin to be known further and further afield, men would come to him as to a
qoadi
for help and advice, which he would give generously. One day a Frenchman would arrive with an offer to make him a
caïd;
he saw himself laughing good-naturedly, easily, saying: “But I am already more than a
caïd
to my people. Why should I change?” The Frenchman, not understanding, would make all kinds of supplementary, underhanded
offers: percentages of the taxes, girls of his choosing from distant tribes, an orange grove here, a farm there, the deed to an apartment house in Dar el Beida, and money in great quantities, but he would merely go on laughing pleasantly, saying that he wanted nothing more than what he already had: the respect of his own people. The Frenchman would be mystified (for when had any Moroccan ever made such a statement?) and would go away with fear in his heart, and the news of Amar’s strength would travel fast, until even as far as Rhafsai and Taounate everyone would have heard of the young
djibli
who could not be bought by the French. And one day his chance would come. The Sultan would send for him secretly, to advise him on matters pertaining to the region he knew so well. He would be simple and respectful in his manner, but not humble, and the Sultan would find this very strange, and be a bit resentful at first, until Amar, without saying it in so many words, would let him see that his refusal to prostrate himself was a result only of his realization that sultans, however great, were merely men, all too mortal and all too fallible. The monarch would be impressed by Amar’s wisdom in having such an attitude, and by his courage in showing it, and would invite him to stay on with him. Little by little, with a whispered word here and there, he would come to be more valuable to the Sultan than El Mokhri himself. And there would arrive a time of crisis, when the Sultan would not be able to make a decision. Amar would be ready. With no hesitation he would step in and take control. At this point certain difficulties might arise. He would solve them the way every great man solves his problems: by staking everything on his own force. He saw himself sadly issuing the order for the Sultan’s execution; it must be done for the people. And after all, the Sultan was nothing but an Alaouite from the Tafilalet—to use plain language, a usurper. Everyone knew that. There were scores of men in Morocco with far more right to rule, including anyone in Amar’s own family, for they were Drissiyine, descendants of the first dynasty, the only rightful one in the land.