The Stories of Paul Bowles (44 page)

He hid the gun under his bed. With a glass of tea and a piece of bread in his hand he went to see Driss. He found him asleep on the floor in the dark.

“Daylight is here!” he shouted. He laughed and kicked Driss’s foot to wake him up. Driss sat on the floor drinking the tea and the cabran stood in the doorway scratching his chin. He looked down at the floor, but not at Driss. After a time he said: “Last night you told me a dog was barking?”

Driss was certain the cabran was going to make fun of him. He was sorry he had mentioned the dog. “Yes,” he said, not sounding sure.

“If it was the dog,” the cabran went on, “I know how to get it back. You have to help me.”

Driss looked up at him. He could not believe the cabran was being serious. Finally he said in a low voice: “I was joking when I said that. I had kif in my head.”

The cabran was angry. “You think it’s a joke to lose a gun that belongs to the Sultan? You did sell it! You haven’t got kif in your head now. Maybe you can tell the truth.” He stepped toward Driss, and Driss thought he was going to hit him. He stood up quickly. “I told you the truth,” he said. “It was gone.”

The cabran rubbed his chin and looked down at the floor again for a minute. “The next time a Jilali begins to dance in the café, we’ll do it,” he told him. He shut the door and left Driss alone.

Two days later the cabran came again to the dark house. He had another soldier with him. “Quick!” he told Driss. “There’s one dancing now.”

They went out into the courtyard and Driss blinked his eyes. “Listen,” said the cabran. “When the Jilali is drinking his own blood he has power. What you have to do is ask him to make the
djinn
bring me the gun. I’m going to sit in my room and burn
djaoui.
That may help.”

“I’ll do it,” said Driss. “But it won’t do any good.”

The other soldier took Driss to the café. The Jilali was a tall man from the mountains. He had already taken out his knife, and he was waving it in the air. The soldier made Driss sit down near the musicians, and then he waited until the man began to lick the blood from his arms. Then, because he thought he might be sick if he watched any longer, Driss raised his right arm toward the Jilali and said in a low voice: “In the name of Allah,
khoya,
make the
djinn
that stole Mehdi’s gun take it now to Aziz the cabran.” The Jilali seemed to be staring at him, but Driss could not be sure whether he had heard his words or not.

The soldier took him back to the barracks. The cabran was sitting under a plum tree beside the kitchen door. He told the soldier to go away and jumped up. “Come,” he said, and he led Driss to the room. The air was blue with the smoke of the
djaoui
he had been burning. He pointed to the middle of the floor. “Look!” he cried. A gun was lying there. Driss ran and picked it up. After he had looked at it carefully, he said: “It’s the gun.” And his voice was full of fear. The cabran could see that Driss had not been sure the thing was possible, but that now he no longer had any doubt.

The cabran was happy to have fooled him so easily. He laughed. “You see, it worked,” he said. “It’s lucky for you Mehdi’s going to be in the dark house for another week.”

Driss did not answer. He felt even worse than when he had been watching the Jilali slicing the flesh of his arms.

That night he lay in bed worrying. It was the first time he had had anything to do with a
djinn
or an
affrit.
Now he had entered into their world. It was a dangerous world and he did not trust the cabran any longer. “What am I going to do?” he thought. The men all around him
were sleeping, but he could not close his eyes. Soon he got up and stepped outside. The leaves of the
safsaf
tree were hissing in the wind. On the other side of the courtyard there was light in one of the windows. Some of the officers were talking there. He walked slowly around the garden in the middle and looked up at the sky, thinking of how different his life was going to be now. As he came near the lighted window he heard a great burst of laughter. The cabran was telling a story. Driss stopped walking and listened.

“And he said to the Jilali: ‘Please, sidi, would you ask the dog that stole my gun—’”

The men laughed again, and the sound covered the cabran’s voice.

He went quickly back and got into bed. If they knew he had heard the cabran’s story they would laugh even more. He lay in the bed thinking, and he felt poison come into his heart. It was the cabran’s fault that the
djinn
had been called, and now in front of his superior officers he was pretending that he had had nothing to do with it. Later the cabran came in and went to bed, and it was quiet in the courtyard, but Driss lay thinking for a long time before he went to sleep.

In the days that came after that, the cabran was friendly again, but Driss did not want to see him smile. He thought with hatred: “In his head I’m afraid of him now because he knows how to call a
djinn.
He jokes with me now because he has power.”

He could not laugh or be happy when the cabran was nearby. Each night he lay awake for a long time after the others had gone to sleep. He listened to the wind moving the hard leaves of the
safsaf
tree, and he thought only of how he could break the cabran’s power.

When Mehdi came out of the dark house he spoke against the cabran. Driss paid him his ten rials. “A lot of money for ten days in the dark house,” Mehdi grumbled, and he looked at the bill in his hand. Driss pretended not to understand. “He’s a son of a whore,” he said.

Mehdi snorted. “And you have the head of a needle,” he said. “It all came from you. The wind blows the kif out your ears!”

“You think I wasn’t in the dark house too?” cried Driss. But he could not tell Mehdi about the Jilali and the dog. “He’s a son of a whore,” he said again.

Mehdi’s eyes grew narrow and stiff. “I’ll do his work for him. He’ll think he’s in the dark house himself when I finish.”

Mehdi went on his way. Driss stood watching him go.

The next Sunday Driss got up early and walked into Beni Midar. The
souk
was full of rows of mountain people in white clothes. He walked in among the donkeys and climbed the steps to the stalls. There he went to see an old man who sold incense and herbs. People called him El Fqih. He sat down in front of El Fqih and said: “I want something for a son of a whore.”

El Fqih looked at him angrily. “A sin!” He raised his forefinger and shook it back and forth. “Sins are not my work.” Driss did not say anything. El Fqih spoke more quietly now. “To balance that, it is said that each trouble in the world has its remedy. There are cheap remedies and remedies that cost a lot of money.” He stopped.

Driss waited. “How much is this one?” he asked him. The old man was not pleased because he wanted to talk longer. But he said: “I’ll give you a name for five rials.” He looked sternly at Driss, leaned forward and whispered a name in his ear. “In the alley behind the sawmill,” he said aloud. “The blue tin shack with the canebrake in back of it.” Driss paid him and ran down the steps.

He found the house. The old woman stood in the doorway with a checkered tablecloth over her head. Her eyes had turned white like milk. They looked to Driss like the eyes of an old dog. He said: “You’re Anisa?”

“Come into the house,” she told him. It was almost dark inside. He told her he wanted something to break the power of a son of a whore. “Give me ten rials now,” she said. “Come back at sunset with another ten. It will be ready.”

After the midday meal he went out into the courtyard. He met Mehdi and asked him to go with him to the café in Beni Midar. They walked through the town in the hot afternoon sun. It was still early when they got to the café, and there was plenty of space on the mats. They sat in a dark corner. Driss took out his kif and his
sebsi
and they smoked. When the musicians began to play, Mehdi said: “The circus is back!” But Driss did not want to talk about the Jilala. He talked about the cabran. He gave the pipe many times to Mehdi, and he watched Mehdi growing more angry with the cabran as he smoked. He was not surprised when Mehdi cried: “I’ll finish it tonight!”

“No,
khoya,
” said Driss. “You don’t know. He’s gone way up. He’s a friend of all the officers now. They bring him bottles of wine.”

“He’ll come down,” Mehdi said. “Before dinner tonight. In the courtyard. You be there and watch it.”

Driss handed him the pipe and paid for the tea. He left Mehdi there and went into the street to walk up and down because he did not want to sit still any longer. When the sky was red behind the mountain he went to the alley by the sawmill. The old woman was in the doorway.

“Come in,” she said as before. When they were inside the room she handed him a paper packet. “He has to take all of it,” she said. She took the money and pulled at his sleeve. “I never saw you,” she said. “Good-by.”

Driss went to his room and listened to the radio. When dinner time came he stood inside the doorway looking out into the courtyard. In the shadows at the other end he thought he could see Mehdi, but he was not sure. There were many soldiers walking around in the courtyard, waiting for dinner. Soon there was shouting near the top of the steps. The soldiers began to run toward the other end of the courtyard. Driss looked from the doorway and saw only the running soldiers. He called to the men in the room. “Something’s happening!” They all ran out. Then with the paper of powder in his hand he went back into the room to the cabran’s bed and lifted up the bottle of wine one of the officers had given the cabran the day before. It was almost full. He pulled out the cork and let the powder slide into the bottle. He shook the bottle and put the cork back. There was still shouting in the courtyard. He ran out. When he got near the crowd, he saw Mehdi being dragged along the ground by three soldiers. He was kicking. The cabran sat on the wall with his head down, holding his arm. There was blood all over his face and shirt.

It was almost a half hour before the cabran came to eat his dinner. His face was covered with bruises and his arm was bandaged and hung in a sling. Mehdi had cut it with his knife at the last minute when the soldiers had begun to pull them apart. The cabran did not speak much, and the men did not try to talk with him. He sat on his bed and ate. While he was eating he drank all the wine in the bottle.

That night the cabran moaned in his sleep. A dry wind blew between the mountains. It made a great noise in the
safsaf
tree outside the window. The air roared and the leaves rattled, but Driss still heard the cabran’s voice crying. In the morning the doctor came to look at him. The cabran’s eyes were open but he could not see. And his mouth was open but he could not speak. They carried him out of the room where the soldiers lived and put him somewhere else. “Maybe the power is broken now,” thought Driss.

A few days later a truck came to the barracks, and he saw two men
carrying the cabran on a stretcher to the truck. Then he was sure that the cabran’s soul had been torn out of his body and that the power was truly broken. In his head he made a prayer of thanks to Allah. He stood with some other soldiers on a rock above the barracks watching the truck grow smaller as it moved down the mountain.

“It’s bad for me,” he told a man who stood nearby. “He always brought me food from home.” The soldier shook his head.

(1962)

A
MAN WHO LIVED
in a distant town of the southern country was working in his garden. Because he was poor his land was at the edge of the oasis. All the afternoon he dug channels, and when the day was finished he went to the upper end of the garden and opened the gate that held back the water. And now the water ran in the channels to the beds of barley and the young pomegranate trees. The sky was red, and when the man saw the floor of his garden shining like jewels, he sat down on a stone to look at it. As he watched, it grew brighter, and he thought: “There is no finer garden in the oasis.”

A great happiness filled him, and he sat there a long time, and did not get home until very late. When he went into the house, his wife looked at him and saw the joy still in his eyes.

“He has found a treasure,” she thought; but she said nothing.

When they sat face to face at the evening meal, the man was still remembering his garden, and it seemed to him that now that he had known this happiness, never again would he be without it. He was silent as he ate.

His wife too was silent. “He is thinking of the treasure,” she said to herself. And she was angry, believing that he did not want to share his se
cret with her. The next morning she went to the house of an old woman and bought many herbs and powders from her. She took them home and passed several days mixing and cooking them, until she had made the medicine she wanted. Then at each meal she began to put a little of the
tseuheur
into her husband’s food.

It was not long before the man fell ill. For a time he went each day to his garden to work, but often when he got there he was so weak that he could merely sit leaning against a palm tree. He had a sharp sound in his ears, and he could not follow his thoughts as they came to him. In spite of this, each day when the sun went down and he saw his garden shining red in its light, he was happy. And when he got home at night his wife could see that there was joy in his eyes.

“He has been counting the treasure,” she thought, and she began to go secretly to the garden to watch him from behind the trees. When she saw that he merely sat looking at the ground, she went back to the old woman and told her about it.

“You must hurry and make him talk, before he forgets where he has hidden the treasure,” said the old woman.

That night the wife put a great amount of
tseuheur
into his food, and when they were drinking tea afterward she began to say many sweet words to him. The man only smiled. She tried for a long time to make him speak, but he merely shrugged his shoulders and made motions with his hands.

The next morning while he was still asleep, she went back to the old woman and told her that the man could no longer speak.

“You have given him too much,” the old woman said. “He will never tell you his secret now. The only thing for you to do is go away quickly, before he dies.”

The woman ran home. Her husband lay on the mat with his mouth open. She packed her clothing and left the town that morning.

For three days the man lay in a deep sleep. The fourth day when he awoke, it was as if he had made a voyage to the other side of the world. He was very hungry, but all he could find in the house was a piece of dry bread. When he had eaten that, he walked to his garden at the edge of the oasis and picked many figs. Then he sat down and ate them. In his mind there was no thought of his wife, because he had forgotten her. When a neighbor came by and called to him, he answered politely, as if speaking to a stranger, and the neighbor went away perplexed.

Little by little the man grew healthy once more. He worked each day in the garden. When dusk came, after watching the sunset and the red water, he would go home and cook his dinner and sleep. He had no friends, because although men spoke to him, he did not know who they were, and he only smiled and nodded to them. Then the people in the town began to notice that he no longer went to the mosque to pray. They spoke about this among themselves, and one evening the imam went to the man’s house to talk with him.

As they sat there, the imam listened for sounds of the man’s wife in the house. Out of courtesy he could not mention her, but he was thinking about her and asking himself where she might be. He went away from the house full of doubts.

The man went on living his life. But the people of the town now talked of little else. They whispered that he had killed his wife, and many of them wanted to go together and search the house for her remains. The imam spoke against this idea, saying that he would go and talk again with the man. And this time he went all the way to the garden at the edge of the oasis, and found him there working happily with the plants and the trees. He watched him for a while, and then he walked closer and spoke a few words with him.

It was late in the afternoon. The sun was sinking in the west, and the water on the ground began to be red. Presently the man said to the imam: “The garden is beautiful.”

“Beautiful or not beautiful,” said the imam, “you should be giving thanks to Allah for allowing you to have it.”

“Allah?” said the man. “Who is that? I never heard of him. I made this garden myself. I dug every channel and planted every tree, and no one helped me. I have no debts to anyone.”

The imam had turned pale. He flung out his arm and struck the man very hard in the face. Then he went quickly out of the garden.

The man stood with his hand to his cheek. “He has gone mad,” he thought, as the imam walked away.

That night the people spoke together in the mosque. They decided that the man could no longer live in their town. Early the next morning a great crowd of men, with the imam going at the head of it, went out into the oasis, on its way to the man’s garden.

The small boys ran ahead of the men, and got there long before
them. They hid in the bushes, and as the man worked they began to throw stones and shout insults at him. He paid no attention to them. Then a stone hit the back of his head. He jumped up quickly. As they ran away, one of them fell, and the man caught him. He tried to hold him still so he could ask him: “Why are you throwing stones at me?” But the boy only screamed and struggled.

And the townspeople, who were on their way, heard the screaming, and they came running to the garden. They pulled the boy away from him and began to strike at the man with hoes and sickles. When they had destroyed him, they left him there with his head lying in one of the channels, and went back to the town, giving thanks to Allah that the boy was safe.

Little by little the trees died, and very soon the garden was gone. Only the desert was there.

(1964)