The Spider's House

  “Or probably the idea appeals to you, staying on here and seeing it all with your own eyes.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he said simply.

  Moss shifted his feet with impatience. He sighed. “Oh, well, John, it’s all too mysterious and complicated. We do what makes us happy, and there’s no point in going further into it.”

  “That’s right.” It was a completely erroneous summing-up of all the understandings they thought they had reached in the years they had known each other, but the world was the way it was. “That’s absolutely right,” Stenham said again, with more feeling.

  After a few more exchanges of words, they shook hands, and Moss left.

  CHAPTER 26

  When Polly Burroughs arrived back in her room, she put on a clean pair of shantung pajamas, got into bed with her tiny typewriter, and set to work writing letters. Her correspondence was a lusty one; most days she sent off a dozen or so missives, some short and some surprisingly lengthy, all of which she typed with great speed and gusto. It often happened that she could not be sure what she thought about a thing until she had written a letter to someone about it; in the spontaneous sentences that flowed from her fingertips as she ran them over the keyboard, her ideas were crystallized, became visible to her. She was not one to be concerned with profundities, for she was well aware that there are too many different angles, all of them more or less equally valid, from which to look at a simple truth; what she strove for was a neat arrangement of her own personal opinions and reactions to outward phenomena, and she possessed an over-all formula which greatly facilitated the achievement of this. By keeping in her mind’s eye the face, the sound of the voice, and the temperament of the individual to whom she was writing, she managed to speak directly to that person and to no one else. She had no one mode of expression, no style, which could properly be identified as hers. The letters were considered breezy and original, and were much admired (and carefully collected) by almost everyone who received them; the steady production of them had come to be one of her principal raisons d'être. “Wonderful? I don’t know what you mean. And anyway, I don’t write them; they write themselves. It’s just a state of mind you have to get into.”

  Polly belonged wholly to her time. Alert to its defects and dangers, she nevertheless had reached what she herself called an “adjustment,” and she was very firm in her belief that without the attainment of a state of conscious harmony with the society in which he functioned, no individual could hope to accomplish much of anything.

  She had understated the facts in telling Kenzie that she had “heard of” Stenham. Actually she had read all his books and was something of a fan of his. She liked his style, an important by-product of what seemed to her an unusually vigorous mind in a healthy state of controlled, and therefore constructive, rebellion. Particularly the way he wrote about love pleased her: the passages had a militant detachment that bordered on the clinical, and yet were saved from that kind of shallowness by what she felt to be an underlying and ever present sense of inevitability. These sections of his books were the very antithesis of what commonly is considered “romantic,” yet to her they were all of that and much more: she had gone so far as to call them “sheer poetry.” She had even known he was in Morocco when she had decided to come. There were Marrakech and the political situation and the Grand Atlas and native festivals, certain of which would take place during her stay, and Fez and Stenham and the Sahara, plus whatever might present itself in between. For Polly Burroughs had the makings of a good journalist. She believed that, assuming one had open eyes and an open mind, one needed only to be on the spot in order to capture the truth. If anyone had discussed it with her, she would have maintained that a photograph was nearer to reality than a painting, because it was objective. For her there was either the garden of facts or the wilderness of fantasy, and because Stenham’s florid ramblings appealed to her imagination, she had decided they were actually a variety of fact—symbolic fact, it was true, but still fact.

  “… I finally met your favorite writer,” she had written weeks back, the day they had all had lunch at the Zitoun, “or isn’t John Stenham your favorite? It seems to me I remember words to that effect from you, one day when we were sitting on the Brevoort terrace, at least five years ago. I’m a little disappointed because he’s not in the least as I had expected. Probably that’s my fault, because he’s a true writer, and the best of any true writer is in his books, where it belongs. There were also some real British drips present. They were useful as atmosphere, of course, along with the storks and Arab waiters in costume, but at least the last two didn’t try to make conversation, thank God.”

  To a different friend the next night she had written: “As you probably know, John Stenham lives here in Fez. We went for a long carriage drive together today. I don’t recommend ever meeting an author whose books you admire. It spoils everything, but everything. I had imagined someone so utterly different, someone more decided and less neurotic, more understanding and less petulant. I feel terribly let down. You could say he means well, I suppose, but he’s so clumsy and moody and calculating, all at the same time, that a little of him goes a long way. The most embarrassing moment came when it got dark and he decided that I expected him to take an interest in me. It was all very sad. He does know the country and speak the language, mais à quoi bon?, I keep thinking, since he couldn’t be more apathetic regarding the struggle for independence. That of course is the big thing here. You feel it in the air, something colossal and heroic and potentially tragic, and in any case very exciting….”

  Tonight her work was cut out for her: to report to as many stay-at-homes as possible the events of the afternoon. “… I only got back to Fez last night, and during my absence things have moved swiftly to a crisis….” “… The city is without electricity, and in a virtual state of siege….” “Today there was a wholesale massacre of demonstrators at one of the gates. God knows how many hundred were slaughtered….” “… Here I am, in the middle of a real war. You won’t read about it, or if you do, it will be a perfunctory and watered-down version, since all news is strictly censored by the French. (As a matter of fact, you may never even get this, but anyway, I’m doing my best.)”

  It was only in her fourth letter of the evening, which was to a friend in Paris, and therefore, she thought, less likely to be destroyed by the French authorities than those going to America, that she allowed herself to divagate sufficiently from her theme to reach the subject of Stenham “… One person who could if he wanted give me a satisfactory breakdown on the whole situation is John Stenham, but God forbid that I should have to go to him for it. If he were standing in the middle of the railroad track and the crack express were coming around the curve, he would begin to ask himself which side of the tracks it would be better to stand on while the train passed. It’s that kind of mind, a little like Dr. Halsey, but even more ineffectual and soft. At the same time he’s the most reactionary and opinionated man I’ve ever met, bar none—a typical disillusioned liberal. (I might add I just had an argument with him, so you won’t think we’re on quite such bad terms as this might sound.) The mystery to me is where the books come from. It’s hard to believe they could have come out of that flabby, selfish mind. If I had several lives I’d read them again out of curiosity, just to try and tie them up with the man, and see what ever made me think they were alive, because he certainly isn’t….”

  When she reread this passage, it seemed a little excessive, because she did not feel so strong an antipathy to Stenham as its words suggested, and so she immediately added: “At the same time, there’s something vaguely saintlike about the man, but it’s as though he had only the mind of a saint and not the soul, and were quite conscious of the fact that he could never come any nearer to it than that. Very unsatisfactory for him, I should think. The awful thing is, and this is confidential, he’s definitely interested in me, and as far as I’m concerned it’s like having a two-toed sloth interested. Rien à faire. But one of these
days, if I get out of this country in one piece, I’ll be back at the rue St. Didier, and I’ll call Élysée 53-28 and tell you everything….”

  When she had finished her letter-writing, she set the typewriter on the night table, turned out the light, and at the end of five minutes of darkness, during which she was conscious of the mildewed smell of the bed and the intense silence around her, a silence changed only by the sound of a few leaves rustling outside her window when a faint breeze moved them, she fell asleep. There were almost no interstices in her life. When she was awake she was busy, and when she ceased being busy she went to sleep. It was seldom that she made room in her day for thought or conjecture: anything of an indefinite nature, not immediately soluble, made her uneasy. And so, untroubled by interior difficulties, she slept well; it was a habit of long standing.

  The following morning about nine o’clock she began to expect a telephone call from Stenham. The hysteria in the city below had irrupted then, and she thought it unlikely that he would be either sleeping or working through such an uproar. When time passed and he did not call her, she felt neglected and consequently resentful, although she told herself that she had every reason to rejoice at being left to her own devices. As the commotion down in the Medina increased, even though only slightly, she grew unaccountably nervous, her letter-writing mechanism jammed, and then she furiously typed: “Can’t go on now. The noise is too much.” She hesitated as to whether to add: “It sounds as though the mob had started up the hill toward the hotel,” decided it would look melodramatic (and in any case the noise did not really sound any nearer—merely louder and more general). She finished: “In haste and with love,” and signed her name with a fountain pen.

  Downstairs in the office she stood at the desk awhile, waiting for someone to come to sell her stamps. Here the sounds of disorder were almost shut out by the high walls that surrounded the garden, and in an adjacent room a subdued radio played Hungarian gypsy music.

  It was the manager himself who finally appeared. “Bon jour, madame,” he said ceremoniously. Then, abruptly changing his tone, he continued. “I meant to ask you, have you made arrangements for leaving Fez? We have received orders to close the hotel.”

  She was shocked. “You’re going to close? When? I don’t understand. Of course I haven’t made any arrangements.” Her voice sounded indignant and querulous, in spite of her efforts to keep it normal.

  “Ah, mais il faut faire des démarches,” he announced, as if she had told him she had known it all the time, but hadn’t bothered to do anything.

  “But what steps?” she cried. “You can’t put me out until I have somewhere to go.”

  The manager’s eyebrows went up. “You are not being put out, madame,” he said, enunciating with great clarity. “These are circumstances beyond our control.”

  She looked at his immaculate clothing, his supercilious face, and hated him. “And where am I supposed to go?” she demanded, knowing in advance that he would have an answer to everything, that she could not possibly win.

  “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.