The Sheltering Sky Read online

  They reached the end of the staircase. There was hard ground beneath their feet. To his left Port saw the black silhouette of a huge agave plant in flower.

  “Wait here,” whispered Smaïl. Port was about to light a cigarette; Smaïl hit his arm angrily. “No!” he whispered. “But what is it?” began Port, highly annoyed at the show of secrecy. Smaïl disappeared.

  Leaning against the cold rock wall, Port waited to hear a break in the monotonous, low-pitched conversation, an exchange of greetings, but nothing happened. The voices went on exactly as before, an uninterrupted flow of expressionless sounds. “He must have gone into the other tent,” he thought. One side of the farther tent flickered pink in the light of the bonfire; beyond was darkness. He edged a few steps along the wall, trying to see the entrance of the tent, but it faced in the other direction. Then he listened for the sound of voices there, but none came. For no reason at all he suddenly heard Kit’s parting remark as he had left her room: “After all, it’s much more your business than it is mine.” Even now the words meant nothing in particular to him, but he remembered the tone in which she had said it: she had sounded hurt and rebellious. And it was all about Tunner. He stood up straight. “He’s been after her,” he whispered aloud. Abruptly he turned and went to the staircase, started up it. After six steps he stopped and looked around. “What can I do tonight?” he thought. “I’m using this as an excuse to get out of here, because I’m afraid. What the hell, he’ll never get her.”

  A figure darted out from between the two tents and ran lightly to the foot of the stairs. “Jean!” it whispered. Port stood still.

  “Ah! ti es là! What are you doing up there? Come on!” Port walked slowly back down. Smaïl stepped out of his way, took his arm.

  “Why can’t we talk?” whispered Port. Smaïl squeezed his arm. “Shh!” he said into his ear. They skirted the nearer tent, brushing past a clump of high thistles, and made their way over the stones to the entrance of the other.

  “Take off your shoes,” commanded Smaïl, slipping off his sandals.

  “Not a good idea,” thought Port. “No,” he said aloud.

  “Shh!” Smaïl pushed him inside, shoes still on.

  The central part of the tent was high enough to stand up in. A short candle stuck on top of a chest near the entrance provided the light, so that the nether parts of the tent were in almost complete darkness. Lengths of straw matting had been spread on the ground at senseless angles; objects were scattered everywhere in utter disorder. There was no one in the tent waiting for them.

  “Sit down,” said Smaïl, acting the host. He cleared the largest piece of matting of an alarm clock, a sardine can, and an ancient, incredibly greasy pair of overalls. Port sat down and put his elbows on his knees. On the mat next to him lay a chipped enamel bedpan, half filled with a darkish liquid. There were bits of stale bread everywhere. He lit a cigarette without offering one to Smaïl, who returned to stand near the entrance, looking out.

  And suddenly she stepped inside—a slim, wild-looking girl with great dark eyes. She was dressed in spotless white, with a white turban—like headdress that pulled her hair tightly backward, accentuating the indigo designs tattooed on her forehead. Once inside the tent, she stood quite still, looking at Port with something of the expression, he thought, the young bull often wears as he takes the first few steps into the glare of the arena. There was bewilderment, fear, and a passive expectancy in her face as she stared quietly at him.

  “Ah, here she is!” said Smaïl, still in a hushed voice. “Her name is Marhnia.” He waited a bit. Port rose and stepped forward to take her hand. “She doesn’t speak French,” Smaïl explained. Without smiling, she touched Port’s hand lightly with her own and raised her fingers to her lips. Bowing, she said, in what amounted almost to a whisper: “Ya sidi, la bess aâlik? Eglès, baraka ’laou’fik.” With gracious dignity and a peculiar modesty of movement, she unstuck the lighted candle from the chest, and walked across to the back of the tent, where a blanket stretched from the ceiling formed a partial alcove. Before disappearing behind the blanket, she turned her head to them, and said, gesturing: “Agi! Agi menah!” The two men followed her into the alcove, where an old mattress had been laid on some low boxes in an attempt to make a salon. There was a tiny tea table beside the improvised divan, and a pile of small, lumpy cushions lay on the mat by the table. The girl set the candle down on the bare earth and began to arrange the cushions along the mattress.

  “Essmah!” she said to Port, and to Smaïl: “Tsekellem bellatsi.” Then she went out. He laughed and called after her in a low voice: “Fhemtek!” Port was intrigued by the girl, but the language barrier annoyed him, and he was even more irritated by the fact that Smaïl and she could converse together in his presence. “She’s gone to get fire,” said Smaïl. “Yes, yes,” said Port, “but why do we have to whisper?” Smaïl rolled his eyes toward the tent’s entrance. “The men in the other tent,” he said.

  Presently she returned, carrying an earthen pot of bright coals. While she was boiling the water and preparing the tea, Smaïl chatted with her. Her replies were always grave, her voice hushed but pleasantly modulated. It seemed to Port that she was much more like a young nun than a café dancer. At the same time he did not in the least trust her, being content to sit and marvel at the delicate movements of her nimble, henna-stained fingers as she tore the stalks of mint apart and stuffed them into the little teapot.

  When she had sampled the tea several times and eventually had found it to her liking, she handed them each a glass, and with a solemn air sat back on her haunches and began to drink hers. “Sit here,” said Port, patting the couch beside him. She indicated that she was quite happy where she was, and thanked him politely. Turning her attention to Smaïl, she proceeded to engage him in a lengthy conversation during which Port sipped his tea and tried to relax. He had an oppressive sensation that daybreak was near at hand—surely not more than an hour or so away, and he felt that all this time was being wasted. He looked anxiously at his watch; it had stopped at five minutes of two. But it was still going. Surely it must be later than that. Marhnia addressed a question to Smaïl which seemed to include Port. “She wants to know if you have heard the story about Outka, Mimouna and Aïcha,” said Smaïl. “No,” said Port. “Goul lou, goul lou,” said Marhnia to Smaïl, urging him.

  “There are three girls from the mountains, from a place near Marhnia’s bled, and they are called Outka, Mimouna and Aïcha.” Marhnia was nodding her head slowly in affirmation, her large soft eyes fixed on Port. “They go to seek their fortune in the M’Zab. Most girls from the mountains go to Alger, Tunis, here, to earn money, but these girls want one thing more than everything else. They want to drink tea in the Sahara.” Marhnia continued to nod her head; she was keeping up with the story solely by means of the place-names as Smaïl pronounced them.

  “I see,” said Port, who had no idea whether the story was a humorous one or a tragic one; he was determined to be careful, so that he could pretend to savor it as much as she clearly hoped he would. He only wished it might be short.

  “In the M’Zab the men are all ugly. The girls dance in the cafés of Ghardaia, but they are always sad; they still want to have tea in the Sahara.” Port glanced again at Marhnia. Her expression was completely serious. He nodded his head again. “So, many months pass, and they are still in the M’Zab, and they are very, very sad, because the men are all so ugly. They are very ugly there, like pigs. And they don’t pay enough money to the poor girls so they can go and have tea in the Sahara.” Each time he said “Sahara,” which he pronounced in the Arabic fashion, with a vehement accent on the first syllable, he stopped for a moment. “One day a Targui comes, he is tall and handsome, on a beautiful mehari; he talks to Outka, Mimouna and Aïcha, he tells them about the desert, down there where he lives, his bled, and they listen, and their eyes are big. Then he says: ‘Dance for me,’ and they dance. Then he makes love with all three, he gives a silver piece to Outka, a si
lver piece to Mimouna, and a silver piece to Aïcha. At daybreak he gets on his mehari and goes away to the south. After that they are very sad, and the M’Zab look uglier than ever to them, and they only are thinking of the tall Targui who lives in the Sahara.” Port lit a cigarette; then he noticed Marhnia looking expectantly at him, and he passed her the pack. She took one, and with a crude pair of tongs elegantly lifted a live coal to the end of it. It ignited immediately, whereupon she passed it to Port, taking his in exchange. He smiled at her. She bowed almost imperceptibly.

  “Many months go by, and still they can’t earn enough money to go to the Sahara. They have kept the silver pieces, because all three are in love with the Targui. And they are always sad. One day they say: ‘We are going to finish like this—always sad, without ever having tea in the Sahara—so now we must go anyway, even without money.’ And they put all their money together, even the three silver pieces, and they buy a teapot and a tray and three glasses, and they buy bus tickets to El Golea. And there they have only a little money left, and they give it all to a bachhamar who is taking his caravan south to the Sahara. So he lets them ride with his caravan. And one night, when the sun is going to go down, they come to the great dunes of sand, and they think: ‘Ah, now we are in the Sahara; we are going to make tea.’ The moon comes up, all the men are asleep except the guard. He is sitting with the camels playing his flute.” Smaïl wriggled his fingers in front of his mouth. “Outka, Mimouna and Aïcha go away from the caravan quietly with their tray and their teapot and their glasses. They are going to look for the highest dune so they can see all the Sahara. Then they are going to make tea. They walk a long time. Outka says: ‘I see a high dune,’ and they go to it and climb up to the top. Then Mimouna says: ‘I see a dune over there. It’s much higher and we can see all the way to In Salah from it.’ So they go to it, and it is much higher. But when they get to the top, Aïcha says: ‘Look! There’s the highest dune of all. We can see to Tamanrasset. That’s where the Targui lives.’ The sun came up and they kept walking. At noon they were very hot. But they came to the dune and they climbed and climbed. When they got to the top they were very tired and they said: ‘We’ll rest a little and then make tea.’ But first they set out the tray and the teapot and the glasses. Then they lay down and slept. And then—” Smaïl paused and looked at Port—“Many days later another caravan was passing and a man saw something on top of the highest dune there. And when they went up to see, they found Outka, Mimouna and Aïcha; they were still there, lying the same way as when they had gone to sleep. And all three of the glasses,” he held up his own little tea glass, “were full of sand. That was how they had their tea in the Sahara.”

  There was a long silence. It was obviously the end of the story. Port looked at Marhnia; she was still nodding her head, her eyes fixed on him. He decided to hazard a remark. “It’s very sad,” he said. She immediately inquired of Smaïl what he had said. “Gallik merhmoum bzef” translated Smaïl. She shut her eyes slowly and continued to nod her head. “Ei oua!” she said, opening them again. Port turned quickly to Smaïl. “Listen, it’s very late. I want to arrange a price with her. How much should I give her?”

  Smaïl looked scandalized. “You can’t do that as if you were dealing with a whore! Ci pas une putain, je t’ai dit!”

  “But I’ll pay her if I stay with her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I want to arrange it now.”

  “I can’t do that for you, my friend.”

  Port shrugged his shoulders and stood up. “I’ve got to go. It’s late.”

  Marhnia looked quickly from one man to the other. Then she said a word or two in a very soft voice to Smaïl, who frowned but stalked out of the tent yawning.

  They lay on the couch together. She was very beautiful, very docile, very understanding, and still he did not trust her. She declined to disrobe completely, but in her delicate gestures of refusal he discerned an ultimate yielding, to bring about which it would require only time. With time he could have had her confidence; tonight he could only have that which had been taken for granted from the beginning. He reflected on this as he lay, looking into her untroubled face, remembered that he was leaving for the south in a day or two, inwardly swore at his luck, and said to himself. “Better half a loaf.” Marhnia leaned over and snuffed the candle between her fingers. For a second there was utter silence, utter blackness. Then he felt her soft arms slowly encircle his neck, and her lips on his forehead.

  Almost immediately a dog began to howl in the distance. For a while he did not hear it; when he did, it troubled him. It was the wrong music for the moment. Soon he found himself imagining that Kit was a silent onlooker. The fantasy stimulated him—the lugubrious howling no longer bothered him.

  Not more than a quarter of an hour later, he got up and peered around the blanket, to the flap of the tent: it was still dark. He was seized with an abrupt desire to be out of the place. He sat down on the couch and began to arrange his clothing. The two arms stole up again, locked themselves about his neck. Firmly he pulled them away, gave them a few playful pats. Only one came up this time; the other slipped inside his jacket and he felt his chest being caressed. Some indefinable false movement there made him reach inside to put his hand on hers. His wallet was already between her fingers. He yanked it away from her and pushed her back down on the mattress. “Ah!” she cried, very loud. He rose and stumbled noisily through the welter of objects that lay between him and the exit. This time she screamed, briefly. The voices in the other tent became audible. With his wallet still in his hand he rushed out, turned sharply to the left and began to run toward the wall. He fell twice, once against a rock and once because the ground sloped unexpectedly down. As he rose the second time, he saw a man coming from one side to cut him off from the staircase. He was limping, but he was nearly there. He did get there. All the way up the stairs it seemed to him that someone immediately behind him would have hold of one of his legs during the next second. His lungs were an enormous pod of pain, would burst instantly. His mouth was open, drawn down at the sides, his teeth clenched, and the air whistled between them as he drew breath. At the top he turned, and seizing a boulder he could not lift, he did lift it, and hurled it down the staircase. Then he breathed deeply and began to run along the parapet. The sky was palpably lighter, an immaculate gray clarity spreading upward from behind the low hills in the east. He could not run very far. His heart was beating in his head and neck. He knew he never could reach the town. On the side of the road away from the valley there was a wall, too high to be climbed. But a few hundred feet farther on, it had been broken down for a short distance, and a talus of stones and dirt made a perfect stile. He cut back inside the wall in the direction from which he had just come, and hurried panting up a gradual side hill studded with the flat stone beds which are Moslem tombstones. Finally he sat down for a minute, his head in his hands, and was conscious of several things at once: the pain of his head and chest, the fact that he no longer held his wallet, and the loud sound of his own heart, which, however, did not keep him from thinking he heard the excited voices of his pursuers below in the road a moment later. He rose and staggered on upward over the graves. Eventually the hill sloped downward in the other direction. He felt a little safer. But each minute the light of day was nearer; it would be easy to spot his solitary figure from a distance, wandering over the hill. He began to run again, downhill, always in the same direction, staggering now and then, never looking up for fear he should fall; this went on for a long time; the graveyard was left behind. Finally he reached a high spot covered with bushes and cactus, but from which he could dominate the entire immediate countryside. He sat down among the bushes. It was perfectly quiet. The sky was white. Occasionally he stood up carefully and peered out. And so it was that when the sun came up he looked between two oleanders and saw it reflected red across the miles of glittering salt sebkha that lay between him and the mountains.

  VI

  Kit awoke in a swe
at with the hot morning sun pouring over her. She stumbled up, closed the curtains, and fell back into bed. The sheets were wet where she had lain. The thought of breakfast turned her stomach.

  There were days when from the moment she came out of sleep, she could feel doom hanging over her head like a low rain cloud. Those were difficult days to live through, not so much because of the sensation of suspended disaster of which she was acutely conscious then, but because the customary smooth functioning of her system of omens was wholly upset. If on ordinary days on her way out to go shopping she turned her ankle or scraped her shin on the furniture, it was easy to conclude that the shopping expedition would be a failure for one reason or another, or that it might be actually dangerous for her to persist in making it. At least on those days she knew a good omen from a bad one. But the other days were treacherous, for the feeling of doom was so strong that it became a hostile consciousness just behind or beside her, foreseeing her attempts to avoid flying in the face of the evil omens, and thus all too able to set traps for her. In this way what at first sight might seem a propitious sign could easily be nothing more than a kind of bait to lure her into danger. Then, too, the turned ankle could be a thing to disregard in such cases, since it had been brought upon her so that she might abandon her intention of going out, and thus might be at home when the furnace boiler exploded, the house caught on fire, or someone she particularly wanted to avoid stopped by to see her. And in her personal life, in her relationships with her friends, these considerations reached monstrous proportions. She was capable of sitting all morning long, attempting to recall the details of a brief scene or conversation, in order to be able to try out in her mind every possible interpretation of each gesture or sentence, each facial expression or vocal inflection, together with their juxtapositions. A great part of her life was dedicated to the categorizing of omens. And so it is not surprising that when she found it impossible to exercise that function, because of her doubt, her ability to go through the motions of everyday existence was reduced to a minimum. It was as if she had been stricken by a strange paralysis. She had no reactions at all; her entire personality withdrew from sight; she had a haunted look. On these days of doom friends who knew her well would say: “Oh, this is one of Kit’s days.” if on these days she was subdued and seemed most reasonable, it was only because she was imitating mechanically what she considered rational behavior. One reason she had such a strong dislike of hearing dreams recounted was that the telling of them brought straightway to her attention the struggle that raged in her—the war between reason and atavism. In intellectual discussions she was always the proponent of scientific method; at the same time it was inevitable that she should regard the dream as an omen.