The Spider's House
“Sunburn can be pretty bad,” Stenham agreed.
“No, I can take any amount of it on my skin. But I get sunstroke so easily. It wasn’t so bad when I had Georges with me—my husband—but when I left him and began batting around alone, it wasn’t funny. It’s frightening to be all alone and have a fever and be delirious, and know there’s not a living soul within a thousand miles who gives a damn whether you live or die. And I nearly did die last year in Cyprus. The doctor I called in gave me aspirins, one after the other, and when they didn’t seem to have any effect he went off to consult an old woman, and I found out later she was the local witch.”
“But at least you came out of it all right,” Stenham said.
“It looks like it.” She smiled. “Anyway, her treatment was all done over her own fire in her own hut somewhere on the edge of town. I never even laid eyes on her.”
Kenzie was laughing, a little too enthusiastically, Stenham thought. “Priceless!” he exclaimed. An instant later he rose, saying to her: “Would you like to see the inside of the tea-house? It’s quite attractive. Order coffee, will you, Alain?” The two moved off, she stooping every few steps to examine a flower or a leaf.
Stenham arranged his chair so that he could lie far back in it, staring into the blue afternoon sky. “Basteld’s an indigestible dish,” he said heavily. The inevitable languor that followed on the heels of such a noonday meal was announcing itself. He was not sleepy, but he felt an utter disinclination to move or think. In his mind’s eye he began to see vignettes of distant parts of the town: arched stone bridges over the foaming river, herons wading in shallow places among the reeds and cane, the little villages that the very poor had recently built at the bottoms of the ancient quarries—you could stand at the top and look down vertically upon their houses made in building-block patterns; the people were not so impoverished that their terraces could not be spread with orange and magenta rugs being aired, and women sat in tiny courtyards that were pools of shade, out of the venomous sun, thumping on their drums of clay. Now he saw the entrances to the vast caves in the further quarries, hidden by the wild fig trees that had grown up; inside the huge rooms and long corridors it was cool, and the greenish light came down through deep shafts, filtered by the vegetation that choked their openings. The silence of centuries was in here; no one ever entered but an occasional outlaw who did not fear the djenoun that inhabited such places. It was all these strange and lonely spots outside the walls, where the city-dwellers unanimously advised him not to walk, that he loved. Yet their beauty existed for him only to the degree that he was conscious of their outsideness, or that he could conjure up the sensation of compactness which the idea of the Medina gave him. It was the knowledge that the swarming city lay below, shut in by its high ramparts, which made wandering over the hills and along the edges of the cliffs so delectable. They are there, of it, he would think, and I am here, of nothing, free.
Soon Kenzie and Mme Veyron came out of the tea-house, chatting affably. The waiter appeared with coffee (although Stenham could not have told when Moss had ordered it), and the general conversation was resumed feebly, with isolated remarks and distraught if polite rejoinders. It was dying because everyone wanted nothing better than merely to sit in silence. But of course silence was unthinkable, and so they talked.
Interesting things would be happening in the not-too-distant future, Kenzie promised. Although Casablanca was the present theatre of activity, Fez was the fountainhead of resistance to French rule, and the government was nearly ready to crack down on the rebellious elements there. But it would be extremely serious because it would mean mass arrests on a gigantic scale. The concentration camps were being enlarged at the moment, to have everything in readiness for the day. This was all being recounted for Mme Veyron’s benefit, but it was not eliciting the response which it should have; from time to time she said: “Oh,” or “I see,” or “My God!” and that was all. And Stenham thought sadly: “He enjoys all this. He wants to see trouble.” For Kenzie was making it very clear that he sided wholly with the Moroccans. Stenham, for his part, could find no such simple satisfaction. There was no possible way, he felt, of telling who was right, since logically both sides were wrong. The only people with whom he could sympathize were those who remained outside the struggle: the Berber peasants, who merely wanted to continue with the life to which they were accustomed, and whose opinion counted for nothing. They were doomed to suffer no matter who won the battle for power, since power in the last analysis meant disposal of the fruits of their labor. He could not listen to Kenzie’s excited recounting of arms discoveries by the police in the homes of wealthy citizens of the Medina, or of what the followers of Si Mohammed Sefrioui were rumored to be plotting in some stinking cell of the Medersa Sahrij at that very moment, because it was all of no importance. The great medieval city had been taken by force and strategy innumerable times; it would be taken again some day, the difference being, he feared, that on that day it would cease for all time being what it was. A few bombs would transform its delicate hand-molded walls into piles of white dust; it would no longer be the enchanted labyrinth sheltered from time, where as he wandered mindlessly, what his eyes saw told him that he had at last found the way back. When this city fell, the past would be finished. The thousand-year gap would be bridged in a split second, as the first bomb thundered; from that instant until the later date when the transformed metropolis lay shining with its boulevards and garages, everything would have happened mechanically. The suffering, the defeat or victory, the years of reconstruction—none of it would have had any meaning, it would have come about all by itself, and on a certain day someone would realize for the first time that the ancient city had been dead since the moment the first bomb had gone off.
Moreover, no one would care. Perhaps one could say it was already dead in one sense, for most of those who lived in it, (and certainly the younger ones without exception) hated it, and desired nothing more than to tear it down and build something more in accordance with what they considered present-day needs. It looked too impossibly different from any city they had ever seen in the cinema, it was more exaggeratedly ancient and decrepit than the other towns of Morocco. They were ashamed of its alleys and tunnels and mud and straw, they complained of the damp, the dirt and the disease. They wanted to blast the walls that closed it in, and run wide avenues out through the olive groves that surrounded it, and along the avenues they wanted to run bus lines and build huge apartment houses. Fortunately the French, having declared the entire city a monument historique, had made their aims temporarily unattainable. The plans for every new construction had to be submitted to the Beaux Arts; if there was any departure from the traditional style it could not be built.
“One thing you must give the French credit for,” he was fond of saying, “is that they’ve at least managed to preserve Fez intact.”
But often he felt there was a possibility that this was true only architecturally, that the life and joy had gone out of the place a long time ago, that it was a city hopelessly sick.
Suddenly Mme Veyron stood up. “I’m sorry, gentlemen,” she said, stifling a yawn. “This has been very nice, but I’m simply overcome with sleep. I’ve got to lie down and have a little siesta.”
Kenzie was disappointed. “I’d hoped to take you to the gardens later,” he said. They were strolling toward the gate.
“Why don’t you give me a ring about five-thirty from your hotel? Would there still be time?”
“It would be a good deal quicker if I called by here for you then.”
She assumed an expression of dubiousness, but not before Stenham had caught a flash of resentment in her eyes.
“Well,” she said slowly, “you may have to wait awhile for me to get myself ready.”
He would do some waiting, too, thought Stenham; she’d see to that. Then he decided to try his hand. “Why don’t you all have tea tomorrow with me? We can go to some out-of-the-way little café.”
They had
climbed the steps and were standing in front of the entrance door. Kenzie stood to one side with the waiter, paying the check.
“I think it would be wonderful. Let’s,” she said.
CHAPTER 17
Stenham awoke the next morning with a slight headache. The food at Si Jaffar’s had been unusually heavy, and as a result he had passed a night of fitful sleep during whose frequent moments of wakefulness he was leadenly conscious that he was suffering from indigestion. Bastela at noon, and then at night lamb with lemon and almonds, drowned in hot olive oil, and that glutinous bread, helped down by six glasses of mint tea that was so sweet it stung the throat…. The more honor they wanted to pay you, the more inedible they made the food, weighing it down with sugar and oil.
It was a day of violent clarity, throbbing with sunlight. Any part of the sky he stared at from his pillow blinded him. The doves that had their nests somewhere outside his windows gurgled beatifically, and he had the feeling that they were some sweet substance melting out there in the fierce morning sun; soon they would be nothing more than a bubbling syrup, but the sound would go on, the same as now. He yawned, stretched, and got slowly out of bed. The telephone was attached to the opposite wall. Moss found this an insufferable inconvenience. “I shouldn’t like to have to stagger across the room to order breakfast,” he had said when he first saw it. “Do take a comfortable room, and with a proper bath,” he had urged him. “Like yours?” Stenham had said. “Yours happens to be just four times as expensive as this. Have you thought of that?” “Come, now, John. When things are as cheap as they are here, such mathematics don’t mean anything,” Moss had objected. “And you have dollars. I with my poor pounds have some excuse for trying to make my money stretch.” This was another facet of the little game they played together. Stenham knew perfectly well that Moss had one of the largest fortunes left in England, and that moreover he owned apartment houses, cinemas and hotels in places that dotted the globe from Havana to Singapore, including several cities of Morocco, to which he made constant little trips, referring to these as “tours of inspection.” But he also knew that it gave Moss intense pleasure to play poor, to pretend that the security which his several million pounds gave him was not there in the background, because, as he had exclaimed one day when he was in a confiding mood, “it’s a stifling sensation, I assure you; every consideration is dictated by the existence of that thing there behind you. You have no freedom—none.” At the time Stenham had replied rather tartly that you had whatever freedom you really desired. But he was willing to abet him in his pretense.
He took the receiver off the hook; it began to make a loud, tinny purring which continued until there was a small explosion as a man’s voice said: “Oui, monsieur “
“I should like to order breakfast.”
“Oui, monsieur, tout de suite.”
The man hung up and the noise began again. Furious, Stenham jiggled the hook until the voice returned and spoke again with some asperity. “Vous désirez, monsieur?”
“I want breakfast,” said Stenham with exaggerated clarity;
“mais ce matin j’ai envie de boire du thé. Au citron. Vous avez compris?”
“But I have already ordered coffee for you, the same as every day,” the voice objected.
“Change the order.”
“I shall do my best,” the voice said with dignity, “but it will be somewhat difficult, since the coffee is at this moment being prepared in the kitchen.”
“I won’t drink the coffee,” announced Stenham severely. “I want tea.” He hung up, certain that he was going to find it impossible to work this morning. Any small incident at this hour could prove a barrier. And now the blood seemed to be pounding harder in his head. After swallowing two Empirins with a glass of cold water, he unlocked the door into the corridor and lay back to relax. He knew it was absurd to think so, but a day which did not provide at least some progress to his book seemed a day completely lost. In vain he argued with himself that a man could scarcely make his writing a reason for living unless he believed in the validity of that writing. The difficulty was that he could find no other reason; the work had to be it. At the same time he was unable to attach any importance to the work itself. He knew, no matter what anyone said to the contrary, that it was valueless save as a personal therapy. “Life has to be got through some way or other,” he would tell himself. To others he said: “Writing is harmless, and it keeps me in dinners and out of trouble.”
The tea came, brought by Rhaissa, who had a new tale of woe. Her relatives from the country had arrived without warning and deposited themselves in her house, seven of them, and being, of course, wildly envious of her good fortune as a city-dweller, had set about making her life miserable. They had appropriated her clothing, some of which they had sold in the Joteya; the rest they were wearing on their persons at the moment. They had broken several of her dishes, and let the children gouge holes in her walls. And worst of all, they had either stolen or destroyed her precious sodium perborate, because in an unguarded moment she had been foolish enough to tell them of its magic properties. Her eyes blazed with indignation when she came to this part of the recital. Stenham lay back against the pillows watching her, sipping his tea, thinking that at least the two disturbances had come simultaneously, that it would have been worse had the tea difficulty been today and Rhaissa’s saga tomorrow. When she had stopped he said, with the inflection of outrage he had learned from years of speaking with these people: “Menène jaou? O allèche? And why don’t you put them out?”
She smiled sadly. Of course that could not even be considered. They were relatives. One had to put up with them. In another two weeks or so they would be gone, if Allah willed it so. Until then she would have to feed them and bear their depredations in silence.
“Don’t you ever go to visit them?” he asked her.
She shook her head with contempt. Why should she? They lived in the country, far away, and you had to walk or go on a donkey after you got off the bus, and their village was several hours away from the road.
“But if you did go, wouldn’t you do the same thing, just sit down and eat their food and make yourself at home?”
Rhaissa began to laugh gently. Such ingenuousness touched her sense of the ridiculous. In the first place, she explained, they hid all their food when they saw you coming. And then, you never went to visit the people who lived in the country unless there was an important marriage or a death which involved a possible inheritance, because why would anyone go to the country otherwise? It was empty, there was nothing to see. And if for some reason you did have to go, then you took all your food with you from the city.
“But that’s crazy,” objected Stenham. “The food all comes from the country.”
“Hachouma,” said Rhaissa, shaking her head. (It was the classical Moroccan reply, which, along with “Haram,” provided an unanswerable argument that could end any discussion; Shame and Sin were the two most useful words in the common people’s vocabulary.) If you were lucky enough to live in the city, you had to pay for that privilege by being an uncomplaining, if not eager prey to the greed of your rustic relations; any other course of behavior was shameful, and that was that.
“I’ll give you another paper of powder tomorrow, incha’Allah” he told her.
A flood of blessings poured forth. Grinning, Rhaissa went out. Presently he heard her singing as she scrubbed the floor of the corridor.
His headache was going away. At the back of his mind there was expectation: he was looking forward to the tea later in the day with the American girl. “Madame Veyron” was the most inapposite name that fate could have provided for her. She should be called something like Susan Hopkins or Mary Williams. He found himself wondering what her name really was, and what she was really like. But if he allowed himself to dwell on such conjectures he would do nothing all day. Was it a foregone conclusion that he would not be able to work? With the prospect in mind of seeing her, it should be possible for him to discount t
he telephone scene and Rhaissa’s interruption. He sprang out of bed and shaved. Then he sat and worked quite well until half past twelve, when he dressed and went down to the dining room for an early lunch, having decided to write letters afterward.
If there happened to be many tourists staying in the hotel, the restaurant proved to be slightly understaffed. These last few weeks, however, the news of unrest in Morocco had apparently frightened away all but the most hardy prospective visitors: there had been only a handful of transients, so that the waiters spent most of their time standing along the walls talking together in low voices. The Europeans stood by the entrance door and the Moroccans lined up near the door that led into the kitchen.
The three most desirable tables were those in front of the windows, looking over part of the hotel garden, the crenelated walls of the former palace, and the Medina beyond. Recently Stenham had been able to sit here when he pleased. Today he was annoyed to see that all three tables were occupied by groups of Americans. He sat down at a small table where the light was fairly good, and began to read. The waiters were used to his eating habits; sometimes he took two hours to complete a meal, turning page after page before he signaled to them that he was ready for the next course.
The Americans nearest him were discussing their purchases, made that morning in the souks. Eventually they shifted to the subject of a woman acquaintance who had been present at the bombing of a café in Marrakech; she still had pieces of shrapnel in her, they claimed, and the doctor had told her it was quite safe to leave them there. A man’s voice then declared that such a procedure was dangerous, that they could work their way to the heart. Stenham tried without success to cut the sound of their talk from his consciousness and isolate himself in his book. He went on listening. When the people left the table, he managed to read a bit; this was interrupted by an unexpected tap on his shoulder. He looked up angrily into the amused face of Mme Veyron.