The Spider's House (43 page)

“I can scarcely be of use to you on that score, madame. But if my personal opinion interests you, I should advise you to leave Morocco altogether. One can expect to encounter disorders of this kind in every city. Shall I order a car for you at three, after you have had lunch?”

“Mais c’est inoui
,” she protested feebly, “it’s unheard-of to send a woman off alone like this….”

“The police will see to it that you are in no danger,” he said wearily. “You will be escorted.”

She decided to temporize. “What about Monsieur Stenham? What time is
he
going?”

“One moment. I have not yet apprised him of the official decision.” And while she stood there, drumming her fingers on the desk, he turned and in funereal tones telephoned Monsieur Stenham and informed him that he too must prepare for an immediate departure.

Apparently the recipient of this news was no more pleased to get it than she had been; she heard insect-like buzzings issuing from the earphone, and the man’s face assumed a martyred
expression. “Let me speak to him,” she said, reaching out for the instrument.

“Good morning!” she cried, her eyes on the wall clock above: it was ten minutes to noon. “Isn’t this incredible?”

His voice sounded like the first phonograph record. “I guess it is.” This insufficient reply disappointed her; she felt somehow betrayed. “Would you mind coming down so we can talk about it?”

“Be right down.”

When he arrived, he said: “Bon jour,” in a peremptory fashion to the manager, took her arm and led her out and across the terrace to the court where the high banana plants grew. The sunlight burned the skin of her bare arm like an acid, and she took a step in order to be completely in the shade. He described his project for going to Sidi Bou Chta. She listened patiently, feeling all the time that it was a harebrained idea, but without a counter-proposition with which to meet it. “I see,” she said from time to time. “Oh.”

“And afterward?” she finally asked. “When we’ve finished there and seen the festival. Where do we go?”

“Well, we come back here and start out fresh from here, wherever we’re going. I’m going to the Spanish Zone.”

“Why not just go to the Spanish Zone today and have done with it?”

“Because I’d like to see what goes on up there at their festival.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said nervously. “It’s much more important to get out while it’s still possible.”

“Well, there’s no point in arguing about it,” he sighed, seeing that they were on the verge of doing just that. “I’ll be going in a native bus anyway. I don’t think it would be very comfortable for you.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she declared, snapping up the bait. “But the point has nothing to do with whether you go in a bus or on a mule.”

Then they did enter into a long argument from which they
both emerged hot and ill-tempered. “Let’s go and sit down,” he suggested finally.

“I’ve got to see the manager about getting a car. And I’m not packed. Perhaps I’ll see you at lunch.” She stepped back into the searing sun and strode across the terrace, furious at herself for having displayed even a little emotion. He would think it mattered to her whether he was with her or not. And to be perfectly honest, she admitted to herself, it did matter quite a lot. In a crisis like this she would expect any American man to do his utmost to see that she got out in comparative safety. And any other American man
would
have done his utmost. Each step she took across the terrace’s blistering mosaic floor was like another note in a long crescendo passage of rising fury, so that by the time she got to the office she was nearly beside herself with anger. “Selfish, egotistical, conceited monster,” she thought, vaguely eying a travel poster that showed a nearly naked Berber with a pigtail holding up a huge black cobra toward the cobalt sky, through which rushed a quadri-motored plane,
MOROCCO, LAND OF CONTRASTS
, ran the legend beneath. When she had ordered a car for three o’clock she went up to her room and packed. It seemed to her that the heat had increased to a fantastic degree in the past half hour. When she breathed she had the impression that she was not breathing at all, because the air was so warm she could not feel it entering her lungs, or even her nostrils. Then she breathed too deeply and violently, and that made her dizzy. And all the objects she touched seemed to be warmer than her hands, which was disconcerting. “How can it be so hot?” she thought. It was half past one when she finished her packing, and she telephoned down for a porter.

“Ah, madame, I regret. There are no porters,” said the manager.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she shrilled. “It’s absurd. There must be someone who can carry my things down.”

The noise in the town still continued; she had forgotten about it for at least an hour, but there it was.

“I regret,”

“And lunch. I suppose there’s no one to serve lunch, either?”

“The
maître d’hôtel
will prepare you an omelette and an
assiette anglaise
, madame.”

“Why can’t one of the waiters carry my luggage?”

The manager seemed to be losing patience. “He cannot, madame, because all the native servants, including the waiters, are locked in their dormitories, and Europeans do not carry luggage in Morocco.
Vous avez compris?
The hotel regrets profoundly that it is unable to accommodate you, but as I pointed out to you earlier, these are circumstances which go beyond us. I suggest you ask Monsieur Stenham to assist in transporting your valises to the taxi.” He hung up.

She sat on the bed and looked out at the glaring, barren hills. A little fire of cosmic hatred had begun to burn inside her, a hatred directed at everyone and everything, at the idiotic poplar trees in the garden, whose leaves were stirring when there was not a breath of air, at the hideous satiny tenor of the manager’s voice on the telephone, at her rumpled linen dress, already soaked at the armpits, at the evasive geometrical designs so carefully painted on the beams over her head, at her red fingernails, at the popping of the deadly fireworks out there, and directed above all at her own weakness and carelessness in allowing herself to fall into such a state. Then she decided to blame it all on the heat. “It’s suffocating in here,” she thought. She took a deep breath and stood up. By herself she carried the bags out into the corridor. But then she realized that she would never be able to lug them through the hotel and out to the taxi. Perhaps when it arrived if she described her plight to the driver he would offer to help. However, long association with the French had taught her that they could be the least chivalrous of men when they chose, and so she did not have too much hope. “I
won’t
ask that son of a bitch,” she kept telling herself, as if it were a consolation, looking down the hall toward Stenham’s door.

Suddenly she thought of Amar. If she could get to the boy without seeing Stenham, he would surely help her. It occurred
to her that perhaps Stenham had already put him out; they had not mentioned him during their conversation. She decided to go down to lunch now; possibly then she could leave the dining-room while Stenham still was eating. Outside his door she stopped to listen; she heard nothing. The windowless hall was very still. No sounds came up from the hotel. Then she did hear an exchange of mumblings from the room. She passed silently along and down the stairs.

The omelette came in almost cold, and the
assiette anglaise
consisted of two very thin slices of ham, a piece of cold liver and some extremely tough roast beef, which she suspected of being horsemeat. When she had nearly finished, Stenham came into the dining-room, saw her, and approached the table. “Sit down,” she said, giving a ring to her voice that would make it sound as though she were trying, against great odds, to be pleasant.

He sat opposite her. “This is the worst meal I’ve ever eaten, I think,” she told him. He was staring beyond her head, out the window into the sky, and did not seem to have heard her. However, an instant afterward he said: “Is it?” The
maître d’hôtel
approached. “A bottle of beer,” she announced. “Tuborg.” When he had moved off, she said: “What’s happened to our orphan? Is he still upstairs or is he gone?”

Stenham looked at her almost as if he were surprised that she knew of the boy’s existence. “Why, no. He’s up there. He’s having his lunch.”

They made perfunctory conversation while she drank her beer, avoiding the topic which, proclaiming its presence afresh each instant with a new burst of bullets, filled their minds completely with itself and its corollaries. It could not be discussed because she hoped for an Istiqlal victory, and he did not.

“I’ve ordered a car for three o’clock. Did you say you were coming back here after your festival? How can you? I don’t understand.”

“Back here to Fez, to the French town, I mean.”

“Oh.” She laid her napkin on the table and got to her feet. “Will you excuse me? I’ve got a few more things to finish up.”

Climbing the stairs she wondered why she had gone to the trouble of such elaborate subterfuge in order to ask the boy to carry her bags. It would have been simple enough to go and knock on the door and say to him: “Come with me,” Stenham or no Stenham. But then Stenham very likely would have insisted on helping, which, since she wanted to keep her image of his supreme selfishness intact, was not at all desirable.

Unfortunately she had not counted on Stenham’s small appetite. He had found the food so bad that he had not bothered to eat it, and was back upstairs standing in the doorway while she was still trying to explain to Amar what it was she wanted.

“Is there something wrong?”

She jumped, startled, hoped she did not look as guilty as she felt, and turned to face him. “Nothing at all,” she said, flushing with annoyance. He was really incredible, to have followed her upstairs this way. “I’m just trying to get some help with my luggage. There’s no one in the hotel to carry it. I thought Amar might be willing.”

“We’ll have it out there for you in two minutes. Where is it?” He glanced down the corridor, saw the bags, and calling:
“Amar! Agi! Agi ts’awouni
!” started in the direction of her door.

“You go back and finish your lunch,” she said coldly. “He can do it perfectly well.” The boy ran past her.

Stenham laughed without turning his head. “What lunch?”

At that moment she heard someone coming up the stairs, and she stepped to the door so she would not actually be in Stenham’s room when the person passed. It was the fat waiter who had brought her breakfast. He smiled, said: “
Pardon, madame,”
and pushed by her into the room. As he returned, bearing Amar’s empty tray, he said: “It’s really hot, isn’t it?”

“Affreux
,” she agreed.

“Ah, yes,” he said philosophically.
“La chaleur complique la vie.”

She stared after him, feeling that he had been insolent, that he had somehow had his mysterious joke at her expense. This
was what she so hated about the French: when they wanted to be subtle it made no difference to them whether they were understood or not. The mere voluptuous pleasure they got from making their hermetic little phrases seemed to suffice; they imagined they became superior by shutting you out. It could be perfectly true that, as the waiter had said, the heat complicated people’s lives; it had even complicated hers this morning, but why should he make the observation to her at that particular moment?

By the time she had ceased trying to define the insult, all her luggage had been carried out. Stenham joined her in her room; Amar had remained at the back entrance with the bags.

“The hotel’s empty, deserted,” he informed her. “I was a little worried that somebody might see the kid and ask questions, but there’s not a soul, there’s nobody at all.”

The telephone rang. “Oui?” she said. Once again the manager’s doleful voice spoke. “We have been requested by the authorities to inform our guests” (Even as he talked,
Now
What’s coming? she thought.) “that vehicles will be permitted to circulate only along the highway to Meknès-Rabat-Casablanca, where adequate protection will be afforded them.”

“What?” she cried. “And if one wants to leave the country?”

“It is no longer possible, madame.”

“But you yourself advised me this morning to leave.”

“The frontier has been temporarily closed, madame.”

“But where will I go? What hotel can I find?”

“The Transatlantique in Meknès is not operating as of today. In Rabat the Balima and the Tour Hassan are full, of course. However, there are many hotels in Casa, as you know.”

“Yes, and I know they’re always full too, unless one has a reservation.”

“Perhaps madame has influence at the American Consulate. Otherwise I should advise her to stay here in Fez, in the Ville Nouvelle.”

She was shouting now. “
Mais ça c’est le comble!
This is the last straw!”

“Doubtless it is most disagreeable for you, madame. I have communicated to you the orders issued by the police. Your bill has been prepared. You will pass by the office to settle it?”

“I usually do,” she said furiously, and slammed the telephone into its cradle. She turned to Stenham. “It’s really too much.” She repeated the manager’s message.

Stenham’s face assumed a pensive expression. (If she had not been there, she decided, he would have been as indignant as she.) His mind raced ahead through likelihoods and possibilities. “The border’s closed. That’s bad,” he said slowly. “But they’ll probably reopen it in a day or two. It’s obviously to keep the Nationalists from getting out. They’ve been combing all the cities, street by street and house by house. It’s a
râtissage.”

She had gone to the window. “I just hope the Arabs raise holy hell with them, and make them wish they’d never set foot here.” She walked back toward him. “Why, if I spoke the language I’d be down there day and night working for independence. Nothing would give me greater pleasure at this point.” Without transition she continued. “Where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to sleep tonight? In the street?”