The Spider's House

  When he got to the top, he crawled on his belly to the center, flopped over onto his back, and lay looking up at the round moon almost directly above him. If he remained lying flat like this they could not catch him in any conceivable beam of light thrown from below. He wondered how many police there were down there with Chemsi, how much money they had given him, and whether Chemsi, as he stood hiding among the bushes with the French, and listening to the music of the flute, had been aware of any difference in the sound when Moulay Ali had ceased to play and Amar had begun. Very likely not, or there would have been a concerted attack on the house then and there; the police would have realized that this was the moment when Moulay Ali was getting away. He could very well imagine Chemsi standing out there, terrified, some petty grievance against Moulay Ali in his throat, so that all the friendship he had felt for him only a few days ago counted as nothing, whispering to the Frenchmen: “That’s Moulay Ali playing now! He always plays that piece when he’s drunk.” And the extra few minutes that Moulay Ali had thus induced the French to take in making their preparations, those precious minutes that had saved him (for still there had been no sound, and a silent capture was inconceivable) had been supplied by Amar as he lay there like a donkey, making music which he hoped Moulay Ali might admire. He smiled, twisting his head around, trying to see the rabbit in the moon, wondering why he felt no hatred for Moulay Ali for having tricked him—only admiration for the psychological accuracy with which the idea had been conceived and executed, and extemporaneously, too. There was true Fassi cleverness. And then, he felt a little sorry for Moulay Ali, because he would surely be caught sooner or later, and that was not a pleasant thing to look forward to. Even if the present trouble died down, the French would never rest until they had brought him to earth. The idea of being hunted day and night, of never having a really peaceful moment, struck him as particularly terrible. And Chemsi! He would not want to be Chemsi for everything in the world. “Don’t forget!” Moulay Ali had said as he went out, in case some were caught and some were not, in the flight they were about to make. Whoever was left free or could get a message to the outside would see to it that Chemsi was taken care of. For the Istiqlal was efficient above all at exterminating its own renegades. And they would find him eventually; he did not doubt that for a minute. The French would offer him only a token protection; they were at least sufficiently human to have only contempt for informers, even if it was merely because informers were so plentiful (and besides that, it was much more expedient to let the old ones be got out of the way and take on new ones whose identity was not yet suspected). It was not likely that Chemsi would live to see the Feast of Mouloud.

  The moon was so bright that the stars were invisible. The warm wind carried the faint odor of summer flowers that open at night. Apart from the crickets, were there any other sounds to be heard? He thought so: vague stirrings below, on the other side of the house. Soon he was certain; a slight rasping noise came up, and then, unmistakably, a voice. A moment later, many voices: they had got into the house. He smiled, amused by the mental image he had of the rage that would be on the Frenchmen’s faces when they discovered their quarry gone. They would run about like furious ants, along the galleries and into the rooms, up and down the stairs, shouting orders and curses, ripping open the mattresses and cushions, and smashing the tables—but carefully collecting all the papers. Not that it would do them any good, he thought; Moulay Ali was not the man to be careless with anything which could be compromising to members of the Party. If I’d been in the Party, he said to himself wistfully, he’d never have done this to me.

  They were calling to each other in their harsh, hateful language, banging doors, stamping up and down. Now they had found Mahmoud and the other servants, and were bellowing at them in what they supposed was Arabic. “Which door did he go out?” roared one, and a second later, mimicking the inaudible reply: “ ‘I don’t know, monsieur!’ Maybe you’ll know in the commissariat.” He lay completely still, listening to each sound, wondering how far away Moulay Ali and the others had got by now. He hoped neither for their escape nor for their capture. It could not make much difference to Morocco one way or the other, nor could it be important how many other Moulay Alis there were and whether they failed or succeeded. By having lived with Christians they had been corrupted. They were no longer Moslems; how could it matter what they did, since they did it not for Allah but for themselves? The government and the laws they might make would be nothing but a spiderweb, built to last one night. His father had told him that the world of politique was a world of lies, and he in his ignorance and stubbornness, pretending to agree, privately had gone straight ahead believing that the old man, like all old men, was out of touch with everyday truths. Thinking of his father made him want to cry; he clenched his fists and hardened all the muscles of his face.

  The sounds of shouting and banging had come very near. He heard the men climbing the stairs to the tower; he could even catch their little exclamations of satisfaction. Suddenly convinced that now they were going to find him, he abandoned precautions, and rolled over onto his side to press his ear against the concrete floor of the roof. The word “machine” figured in their comments. It was the typewriter whose discovery pleased them so much. Now he stared at the side from which they would appear. A thick hand, white in the moonlight, would come feeling its way up over the edge, then grasp the ridge, and then another hand would come up, and then a head with eyes.

  All at once they were breaking the windows. In rapid succession they pushed out the panes. The sheets of glass hitting the ground below made a brittle music. He wondered if Moulay Ali were still within hearing distance, and if so, what were his reactions when these sounds reached his ears. Would he think that Amar had been caught and that a struggle was in progress? Above all, would he think that Amar was going to tell them what innocuous facts he knew? But then he sighed: Moulay Ali surely had gone so far by now that he could hear nothing. Such tiny tinkling crashes would die on the night breeze even before it had carried them as far as the olive grove.

  It was only now that he discovered and verified an astonishing fact: with the police only three or four meters below him, he became aware that it was largely a matter of indifference to him whether they found him or not. He even had a crazy momentary impulse to bang on the roof and shout: “Here I am, you sons of dogs!” They would try to climb up to get him, and he would simply lie still and watch. And when they did have him finally, they would beat him and carry him off to the torture room in the police station where they would attach electrodes to his qalaoui, and the pain would be more terrible than anything he had ever known or imagined, but he would keep his lips closed tight. It would serve no purpose at all, beyond that of giving him at last the wonderful satisfaction of feeling a part of the struggle. Perhaps if he had had a secret to withhold, the temptation to announce his presence would have become too strong to resist. But he knew nothing; it would have been only a silly game. And it occurred to him that no one cared whether there was an Amar or not, that if anyone but his family should care, it would not be because he was he, but because, as he moved blindly along the orbit of his life, he had accidentally become the repository of some scrap of information.

  He listened: they were going back down the stairs, back along the galleries, back through the house, and away. They had parked their jeeps somewhere far out in the fields, for he waited an interminable time before he heard the faint sound of doors being shut and motors starting up. When they were gone he turned over and sobbed a few times, whether with relief or loneliness he did not know. Lying up here on the cold concrete roof he felt supremely deserted, exquisitely conscious of his own weakness and insignificance. His gift meant nothing; he was not even sure that he had any gift, or ever had had one. The world was something different from what he had thought it. It had come nearer, but in coming nearer it had grown smaller. As if an enormous piece of the great puzzle had fallen unexpectedly into place, blocking the view of distant, beaut
iful countrysides which had been there until now, dimly he was aware that when everything had been understood, there would be only the solved puzzle before him, a black wall of certainty. He would know, but nothing would have meaning, because the knowing was itself the meaning; beyond that there was nothing to know.

  After a long time he crawled over to the edge and climbed down into the tower, slipping his feet into his sandals to protect them from the slivers of shattered glass that reflected the moon’s light. His silent passage through the dark house was not even frightening: it was only infinitely sad, for now the house belonged completely to what had been and never would be again. He went straight to the broken front door and stepped outside. There were no sounds at all. The night had reached its furthest point: no crickets strummed in the grass, no night birds stirred in the bushes. In another few minutes, although it still was far away, the dawn would arrive. Even before he reached the olive trees, he heard the melancholy note of the first cockcrow behind him.

  CHAPTER 35

  And here he was in the Ville Nouvelle, and it was the middle of the morning. The sun hammered down upon the pavements that covered the earth of the plain, and the pitiful little trees that were meant to give shade slowly withered in its heat. He kept to the quiet back streets where few people passed. It was a painfully hot day. An old Frenchwoman was approaching, dressed all in black, carrying her shopping bag full of food home from the market. She looked at him with suspicion, and crossed the street slowly before he got to her, so as not to have to meet him face to face. Not a single child played outside the houses, no traffic passed, and no radios played; possibly the electricity was still cut off. The city seemed nearly deserted, but he knew that behind the curtains of the windows were a thousand pairs of eyes peering out into the empty streets, following the passage of whoever ventured along them. Every sign was bad: when the French were frightened there was no knowing what they might do.

  Beyond the small park with the iron bandstand was the beginning of the street that led to the hotel where he had gone with the Nazarene man and woman. He did not know how he was going to get to see the man (nor did it even occur to him that he might not yet be back from Sidi Bou Chta, or that he might already be gone); he knew only that he had to see him, to set things straight between them, to hear him talk a while in his halting but learned Arabic, saying things that he knew would in some way comfort him in his unhappiness.

  He went around the end of the park instead of crossing it: often there were policemen in there walking along its paths. At the end of the long avenue on his right a few cars were parked, but no person was in the street; it was like a flat stretch of stony desert shimmering in the sunlight. Before he got to the hotel a truck laden with cuttings of rusty tin drove slowly past. A blond Frenchman at the wheel stared at him curiously and yawned. The gray façade of the hotel looked as if it had been boarded up and vacated a long time ago. Its six windows with their closed shutters were like eyes asleep. In a loud voice he said: “Bismil’lah rahman er rahim,” and pulled the bell.

  The woman who answered the door had seen him before, the day he had come with the two tourists and had helped them in with their luggage, but now she did not appear to recognize him. Her face was like a stone as she asked him in French what he wanted. A few paces behind her stood a large red-faced man who stared over her shoulder at him threateningly. When she found Amar did not speak French, she was about to shut the door; then suddenly something in her face changed, and although her expression remained unfriendly, he knew she had remembered him. She said something to the man, and called in a shrill voice: “Fatima!” A Moslem girl appeared, dragging a broom behind her, and said to him: “What is it?” The Frenchwoman seemed already to have known his answer, for she said nothing, and walked over to where some keys hung in a row against the wall. She examined them, exchanged a few words with the man, and spoke to the girl, who said to Amar: “Wait awhile,” and shut the door. He walked to the curb and sat down. His knees were trembling.

  After not too long a time he heard the door open behind him. Quickly he stood up, but the long walk in the sun and his stomach with no food in it had made him dizzy. He saw his friend in the doorway, his arm raised in a gesture of welcome; then a cloud came swiftly across the sun and the street shot into its dark shadow. He leaned against one of the small dead trees to keep from falling. From a distance he heard the Frenchwoman calling abusive words—whether at him or at the tourist, he did not know. But then the Nazarene was at his side, leading him into the cool shade of the hotel, and although he felt very weak and ill, he was happy. Nothing mattered, nothing terrible could happen to him when he was in this man’s care.

  The man eased him into a chair and in no time had wrapped a cold wet towel around his head. “Rhir egless,” he said to him. “Just sit still.” Amar did, breathing heavily. The room held the sweet smell of flowers that the woman had always had on her clothing. When he finally opened his eyes and sat up a little straighter, he expected to see her, but she was not in the room. The man was sitting on the bed near by, smoking a cigarette. When he saw that Amar’s eyes were open, he smiled. “How are you?” he said.

  Before Amar could answer, there was a knock at the door. It was the girl called Fatima, bringing a tray. She set it on the table, went out. The man poured him a cup of coffee with milk, and handed him a plate with two rolls and some butter on it. As Amar ate and drank and looked around the dim room with its closed shutters, the man wandered back and forth, eventually coming to stand near him. Then Amar told him his story. The man listened, but he seemed restless and distraught, and twice he glanced at his watch. Amar went on until he had come to the end of his story. “And thanks to Allah you were here,” he added fervently. “Now everything is well.”

  The man looked at him curiously and said: “And you? What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing,” said Amar, smiling. “I’m happy now.”

  The man got up and walked to the window as if he were about to open it, then changed his mind and went to the other. There was a crack in the shutter through which he peered briefly.

  “You’re lucky the police didn’t see you here in the Ville Nouvelle today,” he said suddenly. “Any Moslem in the street goes to jail. There’s been big trouble.”

  “Worse than before?”

  “Worse.” The man went to the door. “Just a minute,” he told him. “I’ll be right back.” He went out. Amar sat still for an instant. Then he stepped to the bed and carefully examined the pillow cases. Even in the half-light they were visible, the smears of red paint that whores and Nazarene women used on their lips, and the flower smell came up in a heavy invisible cloud from the bed. He went back and sat down.

  The man opened the door, came in. It was only now that Amar saw the luggage stacked by the door.

  “Well, I’m glad you came,” said the man.

  “I’m glad too.”

  “If you hadn’t come now I wouldn’t have seen you again. We’re going to Casablanca.”

  It was all right, because the man was still there in front of him, and Amar could not really believe that having found him he would lose him so soon. If Allah had seen fit to bring them together once again, it was not so that they might talk for five minutes and then say good-bye. A car door slammed outside in the quiet street. “Here’s the taxi,” said the man nervously, without even going to peek through the shutter. “Amar, I hate to ask you again, but how about helping us once more with our luggage? This is the last time.”

  Amar jumped up. Whatever the man asked him to do, he would feel the same happiness in obeying; of that he was sure.

  As he carried the valises downstairs one by one, the Frenchwoman and the big man stared out at him through a little window from where they sat in their room, observing a hostile silence. When all the luggage had been packed into the car, and Amar, a bit dizzy again from the exertion, stood on the curb with the man, the woman appeared in the doorway, looking prettier than Amar had ever seen her look, and walk
ed toward them. She smiled at Amar and began to go through a pantomime of looking up and down the street fearfully, then pointed at him. Grinning back at her, he indicated that he was not afraid.

  “Can I take you anywhere?” the man asked him. “We’re going out the Meknès road. I don’t suppose that will help you much—”

  “Yes!” said Amar.

  “It will?” said the man, surprised. “Mezziane. Get in front.” Amar took the seat beside the driver, who was a Jew from the Mellah.

  The woman was already sitting in the back, and the man got in beside her. When they had driven out to the end of the Avenue de France, the man said: “Do you want to get out here?”

  “No!” said Amar.

  They went on, past the service station and down the long road leading to the highway. The high eucalyptus trees went by quickly, one after the other, and in each one the insects were screaming the same tone. The man and the woman were silent. In the mirror before him, a little higher than his eyes, Amar could see the man’s fingers caressing the woman’s hand, lying inert in her lap.

  As they approached the highway, the man leaned forward and told the driver to stop. Amar sat quite still. It was stifling in the car now that no breeze came in through the windows. The man touched his shoulder. “El hassil, b’slemah, Amar,” he said, holding his hand in front of Amar’s face. Amar reached up slowly, grasped it, and turning his head around, looked at the man fixedly. In his head he formed the words: “Incha’Allah rahman er rahim.”