The Spider's House

  “What are they up to?” he wondered with a faint uneasiness. He could not believe that Amar would take part in any sort of craftiness directed at him, but of course Mohammed was an unknown quantity, probably a typical harami of Fez, and he did not know the extent of his influence over the other.

  It was as if the night, in her death agony, were making a final, desperate effort to assert herself by creating as much darkness as she could. The fires and flares in most of the circles had died, and the sound of the drums coming out of the gloom seemed much louder. Down here in the crease between the two hills, the chill in the air was intense; those who walked had the hoods of their djellabas up, so that the principal thoroughfare looked like a dim procession of monks. The smoldering fires gave forth much more smoke than when they had been blazing; one heard constant coughing.

  Several smaller circles had formed since he had last come this way. It was difficult to tell what was going on in their midst, or why people crowded in to watch. In one a woman stood perfectly still, her long hair almost completely covering her, making a faint and rhythmical moaning sound; occasionally she seemed to shiver imperceptibly, but Stenham could not be sure. In another, there was an old Negro leaning far forward, his chest propped against a stake that had been driven into the ground. Beside him lay an earthen pot of coals from which rose a sluggish smoke with a foul stench. “What is it?” asked Stenham in a scandalized whisper. “Fasoukh. Very good,” Amar told him. “If you wear that in your shoe, even though there’s something buried at the entrance of a house or a café, you’re safe.” “But why do they burn it?” he insisted. “This is a bad hour,” said Amar.

  He looked at the old man, and found him vaguely obscene. “What’s he doing?” he whispered. “He’s trying to remember,” Amar whispered back. The man’s eyelids were half open, but his pupils had rolled quite out of sight, and from time to time his ancient, soft lips moved very slightly to form a word which never came out; instead, a bubble of saliva would slowly form and break. In the front row of spectators, seated, was another very black man wearing a jacket and skullcap entirely sewn with white cowrie-shells. The sounds that came from the flat drum he was languidly beating were his only interest; he listened with complete attention, his eyes closed, his head to one side. “Nimchiou,” Stenham muttered, eager to escape the fantastic odor of the smudge rising from the pot of coals. There was a sweet aromatic gum in the substance, but there was also a greasy smell as of burning hair; it was the mixture that was offensive. Even when they had gone well out of its range, the membrane of his throat and nose seemed still coated with the viscid fumes. He spat ferociously. “You don’t like fasoukh,” said Amar accusingly. “That means you’re in the power of an evil spirit. No! By Allah!” he cried, as Stenham protested laughingly. “I swear that’s what it means.” “All right,” said Stenham. “A djinn lives in me.”

  They had come upon another small circle. Here two girls spun silently round and round, their heads and shoulders entirely hidden by pieces of cloth which had been laid over them. No grace was in their movements, no music accompanied them. One would have said that two children had taken it into their heads to see how many times they could turn before they dropped, and that the people had gathered to watch out of sheer inanition. “What is this?” Stenham inquired. “Zouamel,” said Amar softly. So they were not girls at all; they were merely dressed as girls.

  They turned to go back to the flatter part of the valley where the large groups were gathered. The exhibits had left Stenham with a faint nausea. The combination of meaninglessness and ugliness bothered him. There had been something definitely repulsive about those little rings of unmoving people. It was not the long-haired woman herself, nor yet the old Negro, and certainly it was not the spectators; the mindless watching of a thing which he felt should have been going on in the strictest privacy, that was what was upsetting. The world had suddenly seemed very small, cold, and still.

  Amar raised his arm and pointed. “The day’s coming,” he said. Stenham could see no light in the sky, but Amar was insistent that it was there. They edged into what looked like the largest of all the circles. In the center, by the light of what remained of a fire, stood a woman all in white, singing. And the chorus of men surrounded her, their arms interlocked, answering at the end of each strophe with a cry like a great gush of water, but one which ended miraculously each time in the same long channel of accurate musical sound, that led to the first note of her next strophe. At this moment it seemed always that they were about to rush in upon her and crush her. Lowering their heads, they would push forward like charging bulls, take three long steps, so that the circle, receding inward from the spectators, became very small; then, while the woman slowly turned like a stately object on a revolving pedestal, they would catch themselves up and pull backward and outward. The very repetitiousness and violence of the dance gave it a hieratic character. The woman’s song, however, could have been a signal called by one mountain wayfarer to another on a distant hill. In certain long notes which lay outside the passage of time because the rhythm was suspended, there was the immeasurable melancholy of mountain twilights. Telling himself it was a beautiful song, he decided to stand still and let it work upon him whatever spell it could. With this music it was senseless to say, because the same thing happened over and over within a piece, that once you knew what was coming next you did not need to listen to the end. Unless you listened to it all, there was no way of knowing what effect it was going to have on you. It might take ten minutes or it might take an hour, but any judgment you passed on the music before it came to its end was likely to be erroneous. And so he stood there, his mind occupied with uncommon, half-formed thoughts. At moments the music made it possible for him to look directly into the center of himself and see the black spot there which was the eternal; at least, that was the way he diagnosed the sensation. Cogito, ergo sum is nonsense. I think in spite of being, and I am in spite of thinking.

  The dark died slowly, fighting to remain, and the light came, at first gray and hideous, and then suddenly, once the sky existed, beautiful and new, and people began surreptitiously to look at one another, to see who had been standing next to them, and the lone woman in the middle became a real woman, but somehow less real for being more than a mask made red by the fire’s light. And as all these things came about, and the sum of the drumming grew less urgent (because so many of the drummers, suddenly realizing that something had changed, and it was daylight now, had ceased pounding on their drums), a strange new sound rose up on all sides to meet the dawn. It was like cockcrow, but it was the voices of the thousands of sheep roundabout, inside the tents, calling to each other, greeting the day on which they were to die for the glory of Allah.

  The piece had finished, although there was never any clear-cut end, because the drumming always went on in a desultory fashion through the interlude, until a new piece had begun and had swept it along with it, back into the stream. The woman quietly stepped through the circle of men and disappeared. Stenham glanced at Amar, looked away, and then looked again carefully. There was no doubt about it: tears had wet his cheeks. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the boy become conscious of his surroundings, rub his face with his sleeve, harden his expression, turn a quick hostile glance at Mohammed to reassure himself that the other had not noticed his weakness, and then spit loudly on the ground behind him.

  Inwardly Stenham sighed. Even here there existed the unspoken agreement that to be touched by beauty was shameful; one must fight to keep oneself beyond its reach. Nothing was really what he had imagined it to be. In the beginning the Moroccans had been for him an objective force, unrelieved and monolithic. All of them put together made a thing, an element both less and more than human; but any one of them alone existed only in so far as he was an anonymous part or a recognizable symbol of that indivisible and undifferentiable total. They were something almost as basic as the sun or the wind, subject to no moods or impulses started by the mirror of the intellect. They
did not know they were there; they merely were there, at one with existence. Nothing could be the result of one individual’s desire, since one was the equivalent of another. Whatever they were and whatever came about was what they all desired. But now, perhaps as a result of having seen this boy, he found himself beginning to doubt the correctness of his whole theoretical edifice.

  It was not that what Amar said was different from what so many others had said before him. Probably it was that he said it with such a degree of certainty, and had been so unaffected by the presence of the other culture, rational and deadly, at his side. Stenham had always taken it for granted that the dichotomy of belief and behavior was the cornerstone of the Moslem world. It was too deep to be called hypocrisy; it was merely custom. They said one thing and they did something else. They affirmed their adherence to Islam in formulated phrases, but they behaved as though they believed, and actually did believe, something quite different. Still, the unchanging profession of faith was there, and to him it was this eternal contradiction which made them Moslems. But Amar’s relationship to his religion was far more robust: he believed it possible to practice literally what the Koran enjoined him to profess. He kept the precepts constantly in his hand, and applied them on every occasion, at every moment. The fact that such a person as Amar could be produced by this society rather upset Stenham’s calculations. For Stenham, the exception invalidated the rule instead of proving it: if there were one Amar, there could be others. Then the Moroccans were not the known quantity he had thought they were, inexorably conditioned by the pressure of their own rigid society; his entire construction was false in consequence, because it was too simple and did not make allowances for individual variations. But in that case the Moroccans were much like anyone else, and very little of value would be lost in the destruction of their present culture, because its design would be worth less than the sum of the individuals who composed it—the same as in any Western country. That, however, he could not allow himself even to consider; it required too much effort to go on from there, and he had not slept at all during the night.

  Now he had to go back and face Lee. If I know her at all, he thought, she’ll still be angry. She was not the sort to wake up in the morning having decided to forget the night before. “Yallah!” he said roughly, and the two boys followed him. On the way back to the café he turned to see if they were in his wake, and again he found Mohammed engaged in surreptitious conversation with Amar; its conspiratorial nature was confirmed when they saw Stenham looking back at them and quickly drew apart. He stopped walking, to wait for them to catch up with him. Mohammed immediately slowed his pace, obviously in the hope he would go on, but he stood still and waited. Amar came first; his face wore a determined expression. Before Stenham had an opportunity to speak, he said: “M’sieu! Mohammed and I want to go back to Fez.”

  Stenham was both relieved that Amar should have spoken out, and troubled by his request. “Oh,” he said. “That’s what you’ve been whispering about together all night.”

  “Sa’a, sa’a. Once in a while. Mohammed says the French let everyone come here so it would be easier for them to kill the ones who stayed behind.”

  Mohammed, guessing the subject of their dialogue, loitered even more shamelessly.

  “I thought you had some brains,” Stenham told Amar disgustedly. “How many people do you think have come here from Fez? Probably about fifty. How are the others going to get out of the Medina and come here when it’s all closed and the soldiers are at every gate? Tell me that.”

  Amar did not reply. At last Mohammed had arrived within speaking distance.

  “What’s this about going to Fez? Why do you want to go?”

  Assuming an aggrieved air, Mohammed enumerated a list of utterly unconvincing arguments for their being in Fez that day, rather than here in the mountains. At first Stenham had intended to reply to each point, demolishing them one by one, but as the number and absurdity of Mohammed’s reasons increased, he despaired, and then grew angry. “Just tell me one thing,” he finally demanded. “Why did you come?”

  This question presented no difficulties to Mohammed. “My friend asked me.” He pointed at Amar.

  “You can go back again if you want to. It has nothing to do with me.”

  “The bus ticket.” He looked reproachfully at Amar.

  “None of it has anything to do with me. I’m not going to buy your bus ticket. I invited you both here, and you’re here. I haven’t invited you back to Fez yet. When I do, I’ll buy your bus tickets. But it won’t be today. You’re lucky to be here out of trouble. If you had any heads, you’d both know that.” As he spoke he watched Amar, whose changing countenance convinced him that he was voicing what were more or less Amar’s opinions, and that it was only Mohammed who was bored and wanted to get back to the city. Mohammed was a troublemaker; there was no doubt of it. But it was out of the question that he should be sent back alone: he would not have gone without Amar, nor would Amar have allowed him to go by himself. The shame attached to such behavior would be overwhelming. If Amar had invited Mohammed to Sidi Bou Chta, Mohammed was Amar’s guest, and Amar was responsible for his well-being and contentment while he was there. Now Mohammed wanted to go to Fez, therefore Amar must take him to Fez.

  “If Amar wants to buy your bus ticket, that’s all right.” But Amar looked woebegone upon hearing this. Now I’m in the act of becoming the wicked Nazarene, Stenham thought. They always have to have one around, and I might as well be it. He began to walk again.

  In the café Lee was sitting up, smoking, and looking even more dour than he had expected. “Good morning,” he said jovially. “Good morning,” she said quickly, like a machine, and without glancing at him.

  A wave of rage swept over him; he wanted to say, with the same pleasant heartiness: “How’s the martyr this morning?” but of course he said nothing. The two boys came in, removed their sandals, and sat down, still muttering to each other. Then Amar remembered Lee and looked toward her, saying: “Bon jour, madame,” and Mohammed followed suit. Her acknowledgment of their greeting was slightly more cordial.

  Most of the men in the café were the same ones who had been there the night before, but there were also two or three new faces among them, noticeable because they were obviously from the city. Having nothing else to do, he watched them, comparing their city gestures and postures with the noble bearing of the country folk. Decadence, decadence, he said to himself. They’ve lost everything and gained nothing. The French had merely daubed on the finishing touches at the end of a process which had begun five hundred years ago, at least. Their intuitive moral desires coincided with the ideals embodied in the formulas of their religion, yet they could live in accordance neither with those deepest impulses nor with the precepts of the religion, because society came in between with all the pressure of its tradition. No one could afford to be honest or generous or merciful because every one of them distrusted all the others; often they had more confidence in a Christian they were meeting for the first time than in a Moslem they had known for years.

  Now, that foxy-looking one there in seedy European clothes, he thought, with the thick lips and the heavy fuzz on his cheeks and the boil on his neck, talking so secretively to the enormous mountain man with his silver-handled dagger stuck in its scabbard at his hip—what could a miserable young purveyor of the souks like that have of interest to tell a man who looked like a benevolent king? Something of vital concern, to judge from the way in which the man presently reacted, for his eyes gradually opened very wide, as an expression of consternation spread across his face. The younger one sat with narrowed eyes, rubbing his hand over his unshaven chin, and leaned even closer, whispering urgently.

  Seized with a sudden suspicion, Stenham rose and left the tent. At random he chose another café a little further down the hill, went in, and ordered a glass of tea, disregarding the glances of suspicion that were leveled at him. Such glances were an old story and he was used to them. This café differed ver
y little from the other, save that it was somewhat larger, and had a second room, more symbolic than actual, the division being marked by a length of matting tacked onto some upright poles. In the larger space where he had seated himself very little seemed to be going on: the men smoked their kif pipes and sipped their tea. Soon he rose and entered the second room, where he chose a corner and sat down to wait for his tea. Here again were the same peculiar and unexpected circumstances, only more strikingly presented than in the other café, in that here the city youth, this one wearing glasses, was speaking to six important-looking rustics, instead of only one. It was difficult for him to feign nonchalance in the face of the sudden silence and the frankly hostile glares that followed his entry into this little chamber. He decided to play the innocent tourist, in search of atmosphere; not that they would recognize the part he was playing, but it was the only way he could be sure of being able to carry it off. He smiled fatuously at them all, and said: “Good morning. Bong jour. Avez-vous kif? Kif foumer bong .” I hope I haven’t overdone it, he thought. Two of the men had begun to smile; the others looked confused. The city man sneered, said contemptuously: “Non, monsieur, on n’a pas de kif.” Then he turned and said to the mountain men: “How did that foreign pig find his way to Sidi Bou Chta? Even here, and on the Aid, we have to look at these sons of dogs.” One of the men smiled philosophically, remarking that last year there had been three Frenchmen at the Moussem of Moulay Idriss, and they had taken photographs. “This one’s not even French,” the young man told him disgustedly. “He’s some other kind of filth from England or Switzerland.” Again he let his gaze of hatred play over Stenham’s face for a moment; then he turned away with an air of finality and resumed his monologue, but now in a very low voice which kept Stenham from hearing all but an occasional isolated word or phrase. However, the young man, forgetting, soon raised his voice a shade, and this difference made it possible for Stenham to hear most of the words. When the tea came he drank it as quickly as he could without the risk of attracting attention to himself, then, bidding a clumsy good-bye to the men in the room, he went outside once more. There was no possible way of believing that one or two stray young men from Fez had come up and happened to be telling friends of the recent turn of events there, but he wanted the pleasure of knowing, instead of merely entertaining a suspicion. He determined to try a half dozen more cafés, to see on how large a scale the campaign was being waged. In the event anyone asked him what he was doing, he would pretend to be looking for Amar. And so, one after the other, he stopped and went in, glancing about in a preoccupied manner, and retiring after scanning the faces of the occupants.