The Stories of Paul Bowles (29 page)

Saturday 8th
—

The police assuredly are playing some sort of game. There must have been at least fifteen deaths, and not a word about one of them has appeared. That of course is their business, but I am amused and a little mystified to see how they are conducting it. Mrs. C. has a heavy summer cold. I tried hard to make her stay in bed, but she is the soul of conscientiousness, and insists on continuing with her regular work.

Sunday 9th
—

It is an odd thing, that part of the mind which invents dreams and retains them, sometimes making a certain dream a colored lens, as it were, which comes between one’s consciousness and one’s vision of what passes for reality. That is, the feeling of the dream can remain when every detail has been lost. For several days now a particular atmosphere, taste, sensation, or whatever it may be called, has been haunting me. It can only be a dreamvestige, yet in spite of the fact that I have forgotten the dream it is very strong. And since it is gone it is unlocatable in time. It may have been this week or many years ago that the dream itself took place. The feeling, if it can be put into words at all, is one connected with languor, forgetfulness, lostness, emptiness, endlessness—one thing which would be all those things. Living my life and thinking my thoughts through that lens makes for a certain melancholy. I have tried desperately to find a door into the dream; perhaps if I could recall it, get back there, I could destroy its power. It is often a way. But it is almost as if it were an entity in itself, aware of my efforts to find it, and determined to remain hidden. As I feel I am approaching it I seem to sense a springing away, a definite recoil into some airless, unreachable region within. I don’t like it; it worries me.

Monday 10th
—

When things become wholly unbelievable, all one can do is laugh. There is nothing to fall back upon but the bare fact of one’s existence; one must forsake logic for magic. Because it was raining this morning (a morning rather like the day of my excursion to the city) and I wanted to take a short stroll, I went to the clothes closet and took out my gray flannel suit. I was entirely dressed when I suddenly recalled that there was a large hole in the right trouser-pocket. A strange feeling of confusion came over me, even before I started to think. But then the mental process commenced. How had the pennies stayed in my pocket that day? It was quite simple. I had changed my suit; now I remembered clearly taking off the gray flannel and putting on the herring-bone tweed. Perhaps if I had been able to live completely in the mind at that moment, I should have given it no further thought, and the unacceptable discovery would not have been made—at least, not then. But evidently I could not be satisfied
with anything so simple. Another reflex sent my left hand to the pocket of the jacket, and that was the instant of my undoing. Later I took them all out and counted them sitting on the bed, but then I merely stood still, my hand inside the pocket feeling the jumble of small cardboard boxes, my mouth hanging open like an idiot’s. It was inescapable—they were there. A second later I said aloud: “Oh.” And I rushed over to the bureau drawer and opened it, because I wanted to be sure that these were not the untouched boxes I had collected. But they too were there, scattered among the piles of clean handkerchiefs. Then the others—? There is nothing to think. I
know
I delivered them.

At least, I believe I know. If I am to doubt my own eyes and ears, then it is time I gave up entirely. But in connection with that idea a ghastly little thought occurs to me: am I doubting my eyes and ears? Obviously not; only my memory. Memory is a cleverer trickster by far. In that case, however, I am stark, raving mad, because I remember every detail of those hours spent in the subway. But here are the boxes piled in front of me on the desk, all twenty. I know them intimately. I glued down each little flap with the maximum of care. There is no mistaking them. It is a shattering experience, and I feel ill, ill in every part of my being. A voice in me says: “Accept the impossible. Leave off trying to make this fit in with your preconceived ideas of logic and probability. Life would be a sad affair if it reserved no surprises at all.” “But not this sort!” I reply. “Nothing quite so basically destructive of my understanding of the world!” I am going to bed. Everything is all wrong.

3:15
AM
—

The dream has emerged from its wrappings of fog. Not all of it, but that does not matter. I recognized it immediately when only a piece of it appeared, as I was lying here in the dark, half asleep. I relaxed and let more of it come. A senseless dream, it would seem, and yet powerful enough to have colored all these past few days with its sadness. It is almost impossible to put down, since nothing
happens
in it: I am left only with vague impressions of being solitary in the park of some vast city. Solitary in the sense that although life is going on all around me, the cords that could connect me in any way with the life have been severed, so that I am as alone as if I were a spirit returned from the dead. Traffic moves past at some distance from where I am reclining on the ground under the trees.
The time—timeless. I know there are streets full of people behind the trees, but I will never be able to touch them. If I should open my mouth to cry out, no sound would come forth. Or if I should stretch my arms toward one of the figures that occasionally wanders along the path nearby, that would have no effect, because I am invisible. It is the terrible contradiction that is unbearable: being there and yet knowing that I am not there, for in order to
be,
one must not only be to one’s self: it is absolutely imperative that one be for others. One must have a way of basing one’s being on the certainly that others know one is there. I am telling myself that somewhere in this city Mrs. Crawford is thinking of me. If I could find her, she would be able to see me, and could give me a sign that would mean everything was all right. But she will never come by this place. I am hidden. I cannot move, I was born here, have always been here under these trees on this wet grass. And if I was born, perhaps I can die, and the city making its roar out beyond this park will stop being. That is my only hope. But it will take almost forever. That is about all there is to the dream. Just the static picture of sadness and lostness.

The boxes are still there on my desk. They at least are no dream!

That little Dorothy is a horror. This evening at dusk I was returning from a short walk. It was nearly dark, and for some reason the street lights had not yet been put on. I turned into the front walk, climbed up the steps, and had almost reached the house, when I banged full-force into her damned tricycle. I am afraid my anger ran away with me, for I deliberately gave it such a push that it bumped all the way down both flights of steps and ran out into the middle of the street. A truck coming down the hill finished it off in a somewhat spectacular fashion. When I got inside I found the child in the kitchen talking with Mrs. C. I did not mention the incident, but came directly upstairs.

It is a lovely evening. After dinner I am going to take all forty boxes to the woods behind the school and throw them on to the rubbish heap there. It’s too childish a game to go on playing at my age. Let the kids have them.

(1954)

“If one could awaken all the echoes of one’s memory simultaneously, they would make a music, delightful or sad as the case might be, but logical and without dissonances. No matter how incoherent the existence, the human unity is not affected.”

—
Baudelaire

O
H, YOU’RE A MAN!
What does a man know about such things? I can tell you how much: absolutely nothing!” When she argued with her husband at mealtimes, Mrs. Callender often sought the support of the other diners in the room. In this instance, however, her appeal was purely formal, since at the moment she was the only woman present, and thus assumed she had their attention anyway. Her bright eyes flashed indignantly from one male diner to the next, and she even turned around in her chair to include old Mr. Richmond, the teller in the Bank of British West Africa. He looked up from his food and said: “Eh? Oh, yes. I dare say.”

The Pension Callender was surprisingly empty these days—empty even for the hot season. Besides old Mr. Richmond, who had been with them since they had started eleven years ago, there was Mr. Burton down from London to write a book; he had come last autumn and as yet had given no indication of being ready to leave. Mr. Richmond and Mr. Bur
ton were the only true residents of the pension. The others either came and went irregularly, like Mr. Van Siclen the archeologist and Clyde Brown who was in business in Casablanca, or were merely there for a few days waiting for money or visas before they continued southward or northward, like the two young Belgians who had left that morning.

“A young girl—any young girl—is unbelievably sensitive. Like a thermometer or a barometer. She catches hold of whatever’s in the air. It’s true, I tell you.” Mrs. Callender looked around at each one defiantly; her black eyes flashed.

Mr. Callender was in a good humor. “That may be,” he said indulgently. “But I wouldn’t worry about Charlotte. And anyway, we don’t even know for sure whether Monsieur Royer’s coming or not. You know how he is, always changing his mind. He’s probably on his way to Marrakesh right now.”

“Oh, he
will
come. You know he will! You simply don’t want to face facts.” (Sometimes this was true of Mr. Callender. When it was obvious that one of the Moslem servants was systematically stealing foodstuffs from his pantry, he would make no effort to discover who the culprit was, preferring to wait until he might possibly catch him red-handed.) “You hope that somehow he won’t get here. But he will, and he’s a filthy, horrible man, and he’s going to be sitting opposite your own daughter at every meal. I should think that might mean something to you.”

Her husband looked around at the other diners, an expression of amusement on his face. “I don’t think sitting opposite to him at mealtimes’ll bring about her downfall, do you?”

“Abdallah!
Otra taza de café!
” The boy who had been standing by the fireplace trying to follow the conversation stepped forward and filled her cup. “Silly boy!” she cried, sipping the coffee. “It’s quite cold.” He understood, and lifted the cup to carry it out. “No, no,” she said sighing, reaching out for it.
“Déjalo, déjalo.”
And without pausing: “He has a sinister personality. It has an effect on one. Women
feel
those things. I’ve felt it myself.”

Her husband raised his eyebrows. “Aha! So now we come to the meat of the conversation. Gentlemen! Wouldn’t you say that my wife is the one to watch? Don’t you think
she
should be kept from Monsieur Royer?”

Mrs. Callender simpered. “Bob! You’re positively appalling!” At the same time Mr. Richmond raised his head in a startled fashion and said: “Monsieur Royer? Oh?”

Clyde Brown was the only one of the four guests who had been following the conversation from the beginning. His watery blue eyes stared with interest. “Who is this Monsieur Royer? A Latin Quarter Don Juan?”

There was a slight silence. The wind was blowing a blind outside the dining-room window back and forth; the distant sound of heavy waves pounding against the cliffs came up from below. “Don Juan?” echoed Mrs. Callender, laughing thinly. “My dear, I wish you could see him! He looks like a furious lobster, one that’s just been cooked. Absolutely hideous! And he’s at least fifty.”

“You’re treading on delicate ground,” said Mr. Callender into his plate.

“I know, darling, but you don’t go about annoying girls and getting into messes. He gets into the most frightful messes. You haven’t forgotten Señora Coelho’s niece last year, when he…”

Mr. Callender pushed back his chair; the scraping sound it made on the tile floor was very loud in the room. “Probably does, and probably richly deserves whatever trouble he gets into,” he announced. Then impatiently, quickly, to his wife: “I know all about him. What do you want me to do—wire him we’re full up?” He knew she would say no, and she did. There was always something in one of the stores in town which she coveted at the time: a silk scarf, a pair of shoes or gloves, and the only money which came in was that paid by the guests who stayed at the pension. “But I should think you’d show more interest where your own daughter is concerned,” she added.

Mr. Burton, who had just become aware that a discussion was in progress, raised his head from the book he had been reading and smiled affably at Mrs. Callender. Old Mr. Richmond folded his napkin, stuffed it into its aluminum ring, and said: “I expect it’s time to be getting back into town.” Mr. Callender announced that he was going to his cottage to take his afternoon siesta. Soon only Mr. Van Siclen remained at his table by the window, sipping his coffee and looking distractedly out at the windblown landscape. He was a young man who had let his beard grow during the war when he had been stationed on some distant island in the Pacific; now finding that he looked more impressive with it (he was very young to be an archeologist, people told him), he still wore it. Mrs. Callender found herself watching him, wondering whether or not he would be better-looking without its black decoration: he would be less romantic, she decided, perhaps even a little frail of face. As he turned to look at
her she felt a tiny thrill of excitement, but his expression swiftly effaced it. He always seemed pleasantly preoccupied; the cynical smile that flickered about his lips made him more remote than if there had been no smile at all. His way of being friendly was to look up from his book and say: “Good morning. How are you today?” in a very firm voice; then by the time you had replied he would be buried again in the book. She considered his behavior insufferably rude, but then, she never had met an American who did not impress her as wanting in courtesy. It was more their attitude than it was anything they did or failed to do. She herself had been born in Gibraltar of an English father and a Spanish mother, her school days had been passed in Kent, and, although Mr. Callender was an American, she considered herself English through and through. And Charlotte was going to be a typical English girl, a wholesome, simple lass without the ridiculous attitudes and featherbrained preoccupations of most American girls. Nor would she be granted the freedom so many American mothers allowed their daughters. Mrs. Callender had enough of the Mediterranean in her to believe that while a boy should have complete liberty, a girl should have none at all. The wind continued to bang the shutter.

“I see. Trying to get rid of old Royer,” said Mr. Van Siclen lazily, shaking his head with mock disapproval. “Poor old Royer who never did any harm except ruin a girl’s life here and there.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” she cried; the force of her emotion startled him. He glanced at her suspiciously.

“Glad about what?”

“Glad that you agree with me about Monsieur Royer.”

“That he’s a useless old rake who’ll be up to no good until the day he dies? Sure I agree.”

“Of course you do,” she assured him; she did not see that he was baiting her.

“But I don’t agree with you about keeping him away from anybody. Why?
Sauve qui peut,
I always say. And the devil take the hindmost.”

She was genuinely indignant. “How can you talk that way? I’m being perfectly serious, even if you’re not.”

“I’m perfectly serious, too. After all, a girl’s education has to start somewhere, some time.”

“I think you’re quite revolting. Education, indeed!” Her eyes looked beyond his face, through the window, to the stunted cypresses below, at
the top of the cliff. She could remember some experiences she would have liked to avoid, or at least have put off until later, when she might have been ready for them. Her aunt in Málaga had been far too lenient, otherwise it never would have been possible for her to meet the sailor from the
Jaime II,
much less to have made an appointment with him in the Alameda for the following day. And the two students she had gone on the picnic with to Antequera, who had thought they could take advantage of her because she was not Spanish. “I must still have had a slight accent,” she thought. She was sure it was because of such memories as these that she now had “sad days,” when she felt that life would never be right again. There were many things a girl should not know until she was married, and they were the very things it seemed every man was determined to impart to her. Once she was married and it all mattered so much less, precisely then the opportunities for learning were cut down to a minimum. But of course it was better that way.

Slowly her expression was changing from indignation to wistfulness. Voluptuous memories burned in the mind like fire in the tree stump: they were impossible to put out, and they consumed from within, until suddenly nothing was left. If she had a great many memories instead of only a few, she reflected, she would surely be lost.

“You wouldn’t talk that way, so playfully, if you knew the hazards of bringing up a girl in this place,” she said wearily. “With these Moors all about, and strange new people coming to the pension every day. Of course, we try to get the good Moors, but you know how they are—utterly undependable and mad as hatters, every one of them. One never knows what any of them will take it into his head to do next. Thank God we can afford to send Charlotte to school in England.”

“I’m chilly,” said Mr. Van Siclen. He rose from the table rubbing his hands together.

“Yes, it’s cool. It’s the wind. Mind, I have absolutely nothing personal against Monsieur Royer. He’s always been a model of fine behavior with me. It isn’t that at all. If he were a young man” (she almost added: “like you”), “I’d think it was amusing. I don’t object to a young man who’s sowing his wild oats. That’s to be expected. But Monsieur Royer is at least fifty. And he goes after such mere children. A young man is more likely to be interested in older women, don’t you think? That isn’t nearly so dangerous.” She followed him with her gaze, turning her head as he went toward the door. “Not nearly.”

He paused in the doorway, the same inexpressive smile on his lips. “Send him out to El Menar.” He had a little native house at El Menar, where he was digging through the Roman and Carthaginian layers of rubble, trying to get at the earlier material. “If he chases the girls around out there they’ll find him in a couple of days behind a rock with a coil of wire around his neck.”

“Such brutes!” she cried. “How can you stay out there all alone with those wild men?”

“They’re fine people,” he said, going out.

She looked around the empty room, shivered, and went out onto the terrace, feeling unpleasantly nervous. The wind was near to being a gale, but the clouds, which until now had covered the sky, were breaking up, letting the hard blue backdrop of the sky show through in places. In the cypresses the wind whistled and hissed, and when it hit her face it took her breath away. The air was sharp with the odor of eucalyptus, and damp from the fine spray of the breaking waves below. Then, when the landscape was least prepared for such a change, the sun came out. In all these years of living in Morocco she never had ceased wondering at the astonishing difference made by the sun. Immediately she felt the heat seeping in through her pores, the wind was warm, no longer hostile; the countryside became greener, smiled, and slowly the water down there turned to a brilliant blue. She breathed deeply and said tentatively to herself that she was happy. She was not sure it was true, for it seldom happened, but sometimes she could bring it about in this way. It seemed to her that long ago she had known happiness, and that the brief moments of it she found now were only faint memories of the original state. Now, she always felt surrounded by the ugliness of humanity; the scheming little human mind was always present. A certain unawareness of what went on around her was essential if she were to find even normal contentment.

She saw a Moroccan coming toward her from the driveway. Vaguely she knew that his arrival would entail something unpleasant, but for the moment she refused to think about it. She ran her hand through her hair which the wind had blown awry, and tried to bring her mind back to the pension. There was Mr. Richmond’s mirror which was broken, Brahim needed a new electric bulb in the pantry, she had to look in the laundry for an undershirt of Bob’s that was missing, she must catch Pedro before he drove the station wagon into town, to remind him to stop at the Consulate and pick up Miss Peters whom she had invited for tea.

The Moroccan, his ragged
djellaba
whipping in the wind, emerged from the shadows of the nearest eucalyptus. She exclaimed with annoyance and turned to face him. He was old and he carried a basket. Suddenly she remembered him from last year: she had bought mushrooms from him. And as she remembered, she glanced involuntarily at the withered hand holding the basket and saw the six dark fingers that she knew would be there. “Go away!” she cried passionately.
“Cir fhalak!”
She wheeled about and began to run down the path to her cottage in the garden below. Without looking behind she went in and slammed the door behind her. The room smelled of damp plaster and insecticide. She stood a moment at the window looking apprehensively up the path through the bushes. Then, feeling slightly absurd, she drew the curtains across and began to remove her make-up. As a rule the mornings took care of themselves; it was the hours after noon that she had to beware of, when the day had begun to go toward the night, and she no longer trusted herself to be absolutely certain of what she would do next, or of what unlikely idea would come into her head. Once again she peered between the curtains up the sunlit path, but there was nobody.