The Sheltering Sky / Let It Come Down / the Spider's House Read online

  “Damn him!” she thought. “He’s trying to get attention. He wants to be sick!” She climbed aboard and worked her way back to his seat, where he lay inert.

  “Port! Please come and have some coffee. As a favor to me.” She cocked her head and looked at his face. Smoothing his hair she asked: “Do you feel sick?”

  He spoke into his coat. “I don’t want anything. Please. I don’t want to move.”

  She disliked to humor him; perhaps by waiting on him she would be playing right into his hands. But in the event he had been chilled he should drink something hot. She determined to get the coffee into him somehow. So she said: “Will you drink it if I bring it to you?”

  His reply was a long time in coming, but he finally said: “Yes.”

  The driver, an Arab who wore a visored cap instead of a turban, was already on his way out of the bordj as she rushed in. “Wait!” she said to him. He stood still and turned around, looking her up and down speculatively. He had no one to whom he could make any remarks about her, since there were no Europeans present, and the other Arabs were not from the city, and would have failed completely to understand his obscene comments.

  Port sat up and drank the coffee, sighing between swallows.

  “Finished? I’ve got to give the glass back.”

  “Yes.” The glass was relayed through the bus to the front, where a child waited for it, peering anxiously back lest the bus start up before he had it in his hands.

  They moved off slowly across the plateau. Now that the doors had been open, it was colder inside.

  “I think that helped,” Port said. “Thanks an awful lot. Only I have got something wrong with me. God knows I never felt quite like this before. If I could only be in bed and lie out flat, I’d be all right, I think.”

  “But what do you think it is?” she said, suddenly feeling them all there in full force, the fears she had been holding at bay for so many days.

  “You tell me. We don’t get in till noon, do we? What a mess, what a mess!”

  “Try and sleep, darling.” She had not called him that in at least a year. “Lean over, way over, this way, put your head here. Are you warm enough?” For a few minutes she tried to break the jolts of the bus for him by posting with her body against the back of the seat, but her muscles soon tired; she leaned back and relaxed, letting his head bounce up and down on her breast. His hand in her lap sought hers, found it, held it tightly at first, then loosely. She decided he was asleep, and shut her eyes, thinking: “Of course, there’s no escape now. I’m here.”

  At dawn they reached another bordj standing on a perfectly flat expanse of land. The bus drove through the entrance into a court, where several tents stood. A camel peered haughtily through the window beside Kit’s face. This time everyone got out. She woke Port. “Want some breakfast?” she said.

  “Believe it or not, I’m a little hungry.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be?” she said brightly. “It’s nearly six o’clock.”

  They had more of the sweet black coffee, and some hardboiled eggs, and dates. The young Arab who had told her the name of the other bordj walked by as they sat on the floor eating. Kit could not help noticing how unusually tall he was, what an admirable figure he cut when he stood erect in his flowing white garment. To efface her feeling of guilt at having thought anything at all about him, she felt impelled to bring him to Port’s attention.

  “Isn’t that one striking!” she heard herself saying, as the Arab moved from the room. The phrase was not at all hers, and it sounded completely ridiculous coming out of her mouth; she waited uneasily for Port’s reaction. But Port was holding his hand over his abdomen; his face was white.

  “What is it?” she cried.

  “Don’t let the bus go,” he said. He rose unsteadily to his feet and left the room precipitately. Accompanied by a boy he stumbled across the wide court, past the tents where fires burned and babies cried. He walked doubled over, holding his head with one hand and his belly with the other.

  In the far corner was a little stone enclosure like a gun-turret, and the boy pointed to it. “Daoua,” he said. Port went up the steps and in, slamming the wooden door after him. It stank inside, and it was dark. He leaned back against the cold stone wall and heard the spiderwebs snap as his head touched them. The pain was ambiguous: it was a violent cramp and a mounting nausea, both at once. He stood still for some time, swallowing hard and breathing heavily. What faint light there was in the chamber came up through the square hole in the floor. Something ran swiftly across the back of his neck. He moved away from the wall and leaned over the hole, pushing with his hands against the other wall in front of him. Below were the fouled earth and spattered stones, moving with flies. He shut his eyes and remained in that expectant position for some minutes, groaning from time to time. The bus driver began to blow his horn; for some reason the sound increased his anguish. “Oh, God, shut up!” he cried aloud, groaning immediately afterward. But the horn continued, mixing short blasts with long ones. Finally came the moment when the pain suddenly seemed to have lessened. He opened his eyes, and made an involuntary movement upward with his head, because for an instant he thought he saw flames. It was the red rising sun shining on the rocks and filth beneath. When he opened the door Kit and the young Arab stood outside; between them they helped him out to the waiting bus.

  As the morning passed, the landscape took on a gaiety and softness that were not quite like anything Kit had ever seen. Suddenly she realized that it was because in good part sand had replaced rock. And lacy trees grew here and there, especially in the spots where there were agglomerations of huts, and these spots became more frequent. Several times they came upon groups of dark men mounted on mehara. These held the reins proudly, their kohl-farded eyes were fierce above the draped indigo veils that hid their faces.

  For the first time she felt a faint thrill of excitement. “It is rather wonderful,” she thought, “to be riding past such people in the Atomic Age.”

  Port reclined in his seat, his eyes shut. “Just forget I’m here,” he had said when they left the bordj, “and I’ll be better able to do the same thing. It’s only a few hours more—then bed, thank God.”

  The young Arab spoke just enough French to be undaunted by the patent impossibility of his engaging in an actual conversation with Kit. It appeared that in his eyes a noun alone or a verb uttered with feeling was sufficient, and she seemed to be of the same mind. He told her, with the usual Arab talent for making a legend out of a mere recounting of facts, about El Ga’a and its high walls with their gates that shut at sunset, its quiet dark streets and its great market where men sold many things that came from the Soudan and from even farther away: salt bars, ostrich plumes, gold dust, leopard skins—he enumerated them in a long list, unconcernedly using the Arabic term for a thing when he did not know the French. She listened with complete attention, hypnotized by the extraordinary charm of his face and his voice, and fascinated as well by the strangeness of what he was talking about, the odd way he was saying it.

  The terrain now was a sandy wasteland, strewn with occasional tortured bushlike tress that crouched low in the virulent sunlight. Ahead, the blue of the firmament was turning white with a more fierce glare than she had thought possible: it was the air over the city. Before she knew it, they were riding along beside the gray mud walls. The children cried out as the bus went past, their voices like bright needles. Port’s eyes were still shut; she decided not to disturb him until they had arrived. They turned sharply to the left, making a cloud of dust, and went through a big gate into an enormous open square—a sort of antechamber to the city, at the end of which was another gate, even larger. Beyond that the people and animals disappeared into darkness. The bus stopped with a jolt and the driver got out abruptly and walked away with the air of wishing to have nothing further to do with it. Passengers still slept, or yawned and began looking about for their belongings, most of which were no longer in the places where they had put them the night
before.

  Kit indicated by word and gesture that she and Port would stay where they were until everyone else had left the vehicle. The young Arab said that in that event he would, too, because she would need him to help take Port to the hotel. As they sat there waiting for the leisurely travelers to get down, he explained that the hotel was across the town on the side by the fort, since it was operated exclusively for the few officers who did not have homes, it being very rare that anyone arriving by bus had need of a hotel.

  “You are very kind,” she said, sitting back in her seat.

  “Yes, madame.” His face expressed nothing but friendly solicitousness, and she trusted him implicitly.

  When at last the bus was empty save for the debris of pomegranate peel and date pits on the floor and seats, he got out and called a group of men to carry the bags.

  “We’re here,” said Kit in a loud voice. Port stirred, opened his eyes, and said: “I finally slept. What a hellish trip. Where’s the hotel?”

  “It’s somewhere around,” she said vaguely; she did not like to tell him that it was on the other side of the city.

  He sat up slowly. “God, I hope it’s near. I don’t think I can make it if it isn’t. I feel like hell. I really feel like hell.”

  “There’s an Arab here who’s helping us. He’s taking us there. It seems it isn’t right here by the terminal.” She felt better letting him discover the truth about the hotel from the Arab; that way she would remain uninvolved in the matter, and whatever resentment Port might feel would not be directed against her.

  Outside in the dust was the disorder of Africa, but for the first time without any visible sign of European influence, so that the scene had a purity which had been lacking in the other towns, an unexpected quality of being complete which dissipated the feeling of chaos. Even Port, as they helped him out, noticed the unified aspect of the place. “It’s wonderful here,” he said, “what I can see of it, anyway.”

  “What you can see of it!” echoed Kit. “Is something wrong with your eyes?”

  “I’m dizzy. It’s a fever, I know that much.”

  She felt his forehead, and said nothing but: “Well, let’s get out of this sun.”

  The young Arab walked on his left and Kit on his right; each had a supporting arm about him. The porters had gone on ahead.

  “The first decent place,” said Port bitterly, “and I have to feel like this.”

  “You’re going to stay in bed until you’re absolutely well. We’ll have plenty of time to explore later.”

  He did not answer. They went through the inner gate and straightway plunged into a long, crooked tunnel. Passersby brushed against them in the dark. People were sitting along the walls at the sides, from where muffled voices rose, chanting long repetitious phrases. Soon they were in the sunlight once more, then there was another stretch of darkness where the street burrowed through the thick-walled houses.

  “Didn’t he tell you where it was? I can’t take much more of this,” Port said. He had not once addressed the Arab directly.

  “Ten, fifteen minutes,” said the young Arab.

  He still disregarded him. “It’s out of the question,” he told Kit, gasping a little.

  “My dear boy, you’ve got to go. You can’t just sit down in the street here.”

  “What is it?” said the Arab, who was watching their faces. And on being told, he hailed a passing stranger and spoke with him briefly. “There is a fondouk that way.” He pointed. “He can—” He made a gesture of sleeping, his hand against his cheek. “Then we go hotel and get men and rfed, très bien!” He made as if to sweep Port off his feet and carry him in his arms.

  “No, no!” cried Kit, thinking he really was about to pick him up.

  He laughed and said to Port: “You want to go there?”

  “Yes.”

  They turned around and made their way back through a part of the interior labyrinth. Again the young Arab spoke with someone in the street. He turned back to them smiling. “The end. The next dark place.”

  The fondouk was a small, crowded and dirty version of any one of the bordjes they had passed through during the recent weeks, save that the center was covered with a latticework of reeds as a protection from the sun. It was filled with country folk and camels, all of them reclining together on the ground. They went in and the Arab spoke with one of the guardians, who cleared the occupants from a stall at one side and piled fresh straw in its corner for Port to lie down on. The porters sat on the luggage in the courtyard.

  “I can’t leave here,” said Kit, looking about the filthy cubicle. “Move your hand!” It lay on some camel dung, but he left it there. “Go on, please. Now,” he said. “I’ll be all right until you get back. But hurry. Hurry!”

  She cast a last anguished glance at him and went out into the court, followed by the Arab. It was a relief to her to be able to walk quickly in the street.

  “Vite! Vite!” she kept repeating to him, like a machine. They panted as they went along, threading their way through the slow-moving crowd, down into the heart of the city and out on the other side, until they saw the hill ahead with the fort on it. This side of the town was more open than the other, consisting in part of gardens separated from the streets by high walls, above which rose an occasional tall black cypress. At the end of a long alley there was an almost unnoticeable wooden plaque painted with the words: Hôtel du Ksar, and an arrow pointing left. “Ah!” cried Kit. Even here at the edge of town it was still a maze; the streets were constructed in such a way that each stretch seemed to be an impasse with walls at the end. Three times they had to turn back and retrace their steps. There were no doorways, no stalls, not even any passersby—only the impassive pink walls baking in the breathless sunlight.

  At last they came upon a tiny, but well-bolted door in the middle of a great expanse of wall. Entrée de l’Hôtel, said the sign above it. The Arab knocked loudly.

  A long time passed and there was no answer. Kit’s throat was painfully dry; her heart was still beating very fast. She shut her eyes and listened. She heard nothing.

  “Knock again,” she said, reaching up to do it herself. But his hand was still on the knocker, and he pounded with greater energy than before. This time a dog began to bark somewhere back in the garden, and as the sound gradually came closer it was mingled with cries of reproof. “Askout!” cried the woman indignantly, but the animal continued to bark. Then there was a period during which an occasional stone bumped on the ground, and the dog was quiet. In her impatience Kit pushed the Arab’s hand away from the knocker and started an incessant hammering, which she did not stop until the woman’s voice was on the other side of the door, screaming: “Echkoun? Echkoun?”

  The young Arab and the woman engaged in a long argument, he making extravagant gestures while he demanded she open the door, and she refusing to touch it. Finally she went away. They heard her slippered feet shuffling along the path, then they heard the dog bark again, the woman’s reprimands, followed by yelps as she struck it, after which they heard nothing.

  “What is it?” cried Kit desperately. “Pourquoi on ne nous laisse pas entrer?”

  He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Madame is coming,” he said.

  “Oh, good God!” she said in English. She seized the knocker and hammered violently with it, at the same time kicking the base of the door with all her strength. It did not budge. Still smiling, the Arab shook his head slowly from side to side. “Peut pas,” he told her. But she continued to pound. Even though she knew she had no reason to be, she was furious with him for not having been able to make the woman open the door. After a moment she stopped, with the sensation that she was about to faint. She was shaking with fatigue, and her mouth and throat felt as though they were made of tin. The sun poured down on the bare earth; there was not a square inch of shadow, save at their feet. Her mind went back to the many times when, as a child, she had held a reading glass over some hapless insect, following it along the ground in its fre
nzied attempts to escape the increasingly accurate focusing of the lens, until finally she touched it with the blinding pinpoint of light, when as if by magic it ceased running, and she watched it slowly wither and begin to smoke. She felt that if she looked up she would find the sun grown to monstrous proportions. She leaned against the wall and waited.

  Eventually there were steps in the garden. She listened to their sound grow in clarity and volume, until they came right up to the door. Without even turning her head she waited for it to be opened; but that did not happen.

  “Qui est lá?” said a woman’s voice.

  Out of the fear that the young Arab would speak and perhaps be refused entrance for being a native, Kit summoned all her strength and cried: “Vous êtes la propriétaire?”

  There was a short silence. Then the woman, speaking with a Corsican or Italian accent, began a voluble entreaty: “Ah, madame, allez vous en, je vous en supplie! . . . Vous ne pouvez pas entrer ici! I regret! It is useless to insist. I cannot let you in! No one has been in or out of the hotel for more than a week! It is unfortunate, but you cannot enter!”

  “But, madame,” Kit cried, almost sobbing, “my husband is very ill!”

  “Aie!” The woman’s voice rose in pitch and Kit had the impression that she had retreated several steps into the garden; her voice, a little farther away, now confirmed it. “Ah, mon dieu! Go away! There is nothing I can do!”

  “But where?” screamed Kit. “Where can I go?”

  The woman already had started back through the garden. She stopped to cry: “Away from El Ga’a! Leave the city! You cannot expect me to let you in. So far we are free of the epidemic, here in the hotel.”

  The young Arab was trying to pull Kit away. He had understood nothing except that they were not to be let in. “Come. We find fondouk,” he was saying. She shook him off, cupped her hands, and called: “Madame, what epidemic?”

  The voice came from still farther away. “But, meningitis. You did not know? Mais oui, madame! Partez! Partez!” The sound of her hurried footsteps became fainter, was lost. Around the corner of the passageway a blind man had appeared, and was advancing toward them slowly, touching the wall as he moved. Kit looked at the young Arab; her eyes had opened very wide. She was saying to herself: “This is a crisis. There are only a certain number of them in life. I must be calm, and think.” He, seeing her staring eyes, and still understanding nothing, put his hand comfortingly on her shoulder and said: “Come.” She did not hear him, but she let him pull her away from the wall just before the blind man reached them. And he led her along the street back into the town, as she kept thinking: “This is a crisis.” The sudden darkness of a tunnel broke into her self-imposed hypnosis. “Where are we going?” she said to him. The question pleased him greatly; into it he read a recognition of her reliance upon him. “Fondouk,” he replied, but some trace of his triumph must have been implicit in the utterance of his word, for she stopped walking and stepped away from him. “Balak!” cried a voice beside her, and she was jolted by a man carrying a bundle. The young Arab reached out and gently pulled her toward him. “The fondouk,” she repeated vaguely. “Ah, yes.” They resumed walking.