Eunice was unruffled. Since to her mind her aims were always irreproachable, she rarely hesitated before trying to attain them. «Come along, then,» she said to the girl. «We’ll go to my hotel». She let go of Hadija and stepped to the bar, fumbling in her handbag for money. While she was paying, Madame Papaconstante got slowly to her feet, wheezing painfully.
«She works here, vous savez!» she shouted. «She is not free to come and go». As an afterthought she added: «She owes me money».
Eunice turned and placed several banknotes in her hand, closing the fingers over them gently. The girls behind the bar watched, their eyes shining.
«Au revoir, madame,» she said with warmth. An expression of great earnestness spread over her face as she went on: «I can never thank you enough. It has been a charming evening. I shall stop by tomorrow and see you. I have a little gift I should like to bring you».
Madame Papaconstante’s large mouth was open, the words which had intended to come out remained inside. She let her gaze drop for a second to her hand, saw the corners of two of the bills, and slowly closed her mouth. «Ah,» she said.
«You must forgive me for having taken up so much of your time,» Eunice continued. «I know you are busy. But you have been very kind. Thank you».
By now Madame Papaconstante had regained control of herself. «Not at all,» she said. «It was a real pleasure for me».
During this dialogue Hadija had remained unmoving by the door, her eyes darting back and forth from Eunice’s face to that of her patronne, in an attempt to follow the meaning of their words. Now, having decided that Eunice had won in the encounter, she smiled tentatively at her.
«Good night,» said Eunice again to Madame Papaconstante. She waved brightly at the girls behind the bar. The men looked around for the first time, then resumed their talk. Eunice took Hadija’s arm and they went out into the dark street. Madame Papaconstante came to the door, leaned out, saying softly: «If she does not behave herself you will tell me tomorrow».
«Oh, she will, I’m certain,» said Eunice, squeezing the girl’s arm. «Merci mille fois, ma-dame. Bonne nuit».
«What he sigh you?» demanded Hadija.
«She said you were a very nice girl».
«Sure. Very fine». She slipped ahead, since there was not room for them to walk abreast.
«Don’t go too fast,» said Eunice, panting from her attempt to keep up with her. When they came out on to the crest of the hill at Amrah, she said: «Wait, Hadija,» and leaned against the wall. It was a moment she wanted to savor. She was suddenly conscious of the world outside herself — not as merely a thing that was there and belonged to other people, but as something in which she almost felt she could share. For the first time she smelled the warm odor of fulfillment on the evening air, heard the nervous beating of drums on the terraces with something besides indifference. She let her eyes range down over the city and saw clearly in the moonlight the minaret on the summit of the Charf with its little black cypress trees around it. She pounded her cane on the pavement with pleasure, several times. «I insist too hard on living my own life,» she thought. The rest of the world was there for her to take at any moment she wished it, but she always rejected it in favor of her own familiar little cosmos. Only sometimes as she came out of sleep did she feel she was really in life, but that was merely because she had not had time to collect her thoughts, to become herself once more.
«What a beautiful night,» she said dreamily. «Come and stand here a minute». Hadija obeyed reluctantly. Eunice grasped her arm again. «Listen to the drums».
«Drbouka. Women make».
«Aha». She smiled mysteriously, following with her eye the faint line of the mountains, range beyond range, blue in the night’s clarity. She did not hope Hadija would be able to share her sensations; she asked only that the girl act as a catalyst for her, making it possible for her to experience them in their pure state. As a mainspring for her behavior there was always the aching regret for a vanished innocence, a nostalgia for the early years of life. Whenever a possibility of happiness presented itself, through it she sought to reach again that infinitely distant and tender place, her lost childhood. And in Hadija’s simple laughter she divined a prospect of return.
The feeling had persisted through the night. She exulted to find she had been correct. At daybreak, while Hadija was still asleep beside her, she sat up and wrote in her notebook: «A quiet moment in the early morning. The pigeons have just begun to murmur outside the window. There is no wind. Sexuality is primarily a matter of imagination, I am sure. People who live in the warmer climates have very little of it, and so society there can allow a wide moral latitude in the customs. Here are the healthiest personalities. In temperate regions it is quite a different matter. The imagination’s fertile activity must be curtailed by a strict code of sexual behavior which results in crime and depravity. Look at the great cities of the world. Almost all of them are in the temperate zone». She let her eyes rest a moment on the harbor below. The still water was like blue glass. Moving cautiously so as not to wake Hadija, she poured herself a small amount of gin from the nearly empty bottle on the night table, and lit a cigarette. «But of course all cities are points of infection, like decayed teeth. The hypersensitivity of urban culture (its only virtue) is largely a reaction to pain. Tangier has no urban culture, no pain. I believe it never will have. The nerve will never be exposed».
She still felt an itch of regret at not having been allowed to go into a back room of the Bar Lucifer with Hadija. That would have given her a certain satisfaction; in her eyes it would have been a pure act. Perhaps another time, when she and Madame Papaconstante had come to know each other better, it would be possible.
Not until Hadija awoke did she telephone down for breakfast. It gave her great pleasure to see the girl, wearing a pair of her pyjamas, sitting up crosslegged in the bed daintily eating buttered toast with a knife and fork, to show that she knew how to manage those Western accessories. She sent her home a little before noon, so she would not be there when the Spanish maid arrived. In the afternoon she called by the Bar Lucifer with a small bottle of perfume for Madame Papaconstante. Since then almost every other night she had brought Hadija back with her to the hotel. She had never seen the old fisherman again — she could hardly expect to see him unless she returned to the beach, and she was not likely to do that. She had forgotten about getting exercise; her life was too much occupied at the moment with Hadija for her to be making resolutions and decisions for improving it. She taxed her imaginative powers devising ways of amusing her, finding places to take her, choosing gifts that would please her. Faintly she was conscious through all this that it was she herself who was enjoying these things, that Hadija merely accompanied her and accepted the presents with something akin to apathy. But that made no difference to her.
When she was happy she invariably invented a reason for not being able to remain so. And now, to follow out her pattern, she allowed an idea to occur to her which counteracted all her happiness. She had made an arrangement with Madame Papaconstante whereby it was agreed that on the nights when Hadija did not go with her to the Metropole she was to remain at home with her parents. Madame Papaconstante had assured her that the girl did not even put in appearance at the bar those evenings, and up until now Eunice had not thought to question the truth of her statements. But today, when Conchita returned from the market with her arms full of flowers, notwithstanding the fact that Hadija had left the room only three hours before and did not expect to return until tomorrow night, Eunice suddenly decided she wanted her back again that same evening. She would get her some very special gift in the Rue du Statut, and they would have a little extra celebration, surrounded by the lilies and poinsettias. She would go to the Bar Lucifer and have Madame Papaconstante send someone to fetch her.
It was at this moment that the terrible possibility struck her: what if she found Hadija in the bar? If she did, it could only mean that she had been there all along, that the parent story was a lie, that she lived in one of the rooms behind the bar, perhaps. (She was working up to the climax.) Then the place was a true bordel, in which case — it had to be faced — there was a likelihood that Hadija was entertaining the male customers in bed on those other nights.
The idea stirred her to action: she threw her notebook on to the floor and jumped out of bed with a violence that shook the room and startled Conchita. When she had dressed she wanted to start out immediately for the Bar Lucifer, but she reflected on the uselessness of such a procedure. She must wait until night and catch Hadija in flagrante delictu. By now there was no room in her mind for doubt. She was convinced that Madame Papaconstante had been deceiving her. Assailed by memories of former occasions when she had been trusting and complacent only to discover that her happiness had rested wholly on falsehoods, she was all too ready this time to seek out the deception and confront it.
As the afternoon advanced toward evening she grew more restless, pacing back and forth from one side of the room to the other, again and again going out onto the balcony and looking toward the harbor without seeing it. She even forgot to walk up to the Rue du Statut for Hadija’s present. A black cloud gathered above the harbor and twilight passed swiftly into night. Gusts of rain-laden wind blew across the balcony into the room. She shut the door and decided, since she was dressed, to go downstairs for dinner rather than have it in bed. The orchestra and the other diners would help to keep her mind occupied. She could not hope to find Hadija at the bar before half-past nine.
When she got downstairs it was too early for dinner. There was no electricity tonight; candles burned in the corridors and oil lamps in the public rooms. She went into the bar and was engaged in conversation by an elderly retired captain from the British Army, who insisted on buying her drinks. This annoyed her considerably because she did not feel free to order as many as she wanted. The old gentleman drank slowly and reminisced at length about the Far East. «Oh God oh God oh God,» she said to herself. «Will he ever shut up and will it ever be eight-thirty?»
As usual the meal was execrable. However, eating in the dining room she at least found the food hot, whereas by the time it reached her bed it generally had ceased being even Warm. Between orchestral numbers she could hear the wind roaring outside, and the rain streamed down the long French windows of the dining room. «I shall get soaked,» she thought, but the prospect was in no way a deterrent. On the contrary, the storm rather added to the drama in which she was convinced she was about to participate. She would plod through the wet streets, find Hadija, there would be an awful scene, perhaps a chase through the gale up into a forsaken corner of the Casbah or to some solitary rock far out above the strait. And then would come the reconciliation in the windy darkness, the admissions and the promises, and eventually the smiles. But this time she would bring her back to the Metropole for good.
After she had finished eating she went up to her room, changed into slacks, and slipped into a raincoat. Her hands were trembling with excitement. The air in her room was weighted down with the thick sweetness of the lilies. The candle flames waved back and forth as she moved about in haste, and the shadows of the flowers crouched, leapt to the ceiling, returned. From a drawer in one of her trunks she took a large flashlight. She stepped out, closing the door behind her. The candles went on burning.
It looked like a bright spring day. The sun shone on the laurel that lined the garden path where Sister Inez strolled, clutching her prayer book. Until she arrived at the fountain her long black skirts hid the fact that she was barefoot. It was the sort of garden whose air one would expect to be heavy with the sweet smell of jasmine, and although they did not appear, one could imagine birds twittering and rustling their wings with nervous delight in the shadow of the bushes. Sister Ine/ stretched forth one shining foot and touched the water in the basin; the sky glimmered whitely. From the bushes Father Jose watched, his eyes bright as he followed the two little feet moving one behind the other through the clear water. Suddenly Sister Inez undid her cowl, which was fastened with a snap-hook under her chin: her black tresses fell over her shoulders. With a second brusque gesture she unhooked her garments all the way down (it was remarkably easy), opened them wide, and turned to reveal a plump young white body. A moment later she had tossed her apparel upon a marble bench and was standing there quite naked, still holding her little black book and her rosary. Father Jose’s eyes opened much wider and his gaze turned heavenwards: he was praying for the strength to resist temptation. In fact, the words PIDIENDO EL AMPARO DIVINO appeared in print across the sky, and remained there, shaking slightly, for several seconds. What followed was not a surprise to Dyar, since he had not expected the divine aid to be forthcoming, nor was he startled when a moment later three other healthy young nuns made their entrances from as many different directions to join the busy couple in the fountain, thus making the pas de deux into an ensemble number.
Subsequently the scene of activities was shifted to an altar in a nearby church. Dyar, sensing that the frenzy of this episode announced the imminent end of the film, nudged Thami and offered him a cigarette which, after awakening with a jolt, he accepted automatically and allowed to be lighted. By the time he was really conscious, the images had come to an abrupt finish and the screen was a blinding square of light. Dyar paid the first fat man, who stood in the hallway still yawning, and they went downstairs. «If two gentlemen wishing room one hour» — the fat man began, calling after them. Thami shouted something up at him in Spanish; the young man let them out into the empty street where the wind blew.
When Eunice Goode stepped into the little bar she was disappointed to see that Hadija was not in sight. She walked up to the counter, looking fixedly at the girl who stood behind it, and noted with pleasure the uneasiness her sudden appearance was causing in the latter’s behavior. The girl made an absurd attempt to smile, and slowly backed against the wall, not averting her gaze from Eunice Goode’s face. And, indeed, the rich foreign lady’s mien was rather formidable: her plump cheeks were suffused with red, she was panting, and under her heavy brows her cold eyes moved with a fierce gleam.
«Where is everyone?» she demanded abruptly.
The girl began to stammer in Spanish that she did not know, that she thought they were out that way. Then she made for the end of the bar and tried to slip around it to get to the door that led back to the other rooms. Eunice Goode pushed her with her cane. «Give me a gin,» she said. Reluctantly the girl returned to where the bottles were and poured out a drink. There were no customers.
She emptied the glass at one gulp, and leaving the girl staring after her in dismay, walked through the beaded curtain, feeling ahead of her with the tip of her cane, for the hallway was dark.
«Madame!» cried the girl loudly from behind her. «Madame!»
On the right a door opened. Madame Papaconstante, in an embroidered Chinese kimono, stepped into the hall. When she saw Eunice Goode she gave an involuntary start. Recovering, she smiled feebly and walked toward her uttering a series of voluble salutations which, as she was delivering them, did not prevent the visitor from noticing that her hostess was not only blocking the way to further progress down the hall, but was actually pushing her firmly back toward the bar. And standing in the bar she talked on.
«What weather! What rain! I was caught in it at dinner time. All my clothes soaking! You see». She glanced downward at her attire. «I had to change. My dress is drying before the heater. Maria will iron it for me. Come and have a drink with me. I did not expect you tonight. C’est un plaisir inattendu. Ah, yes, madame». She frowned furiously at the girl. «Sit down here,» said Madame Papaconstante, «and I shall serve you myself. Now, what are we having tonight?»
When she saw Eunice finally seated at the little table she heaved a sigh of relief and rubbed her enormous flabby arms nervously, so that her bracelets clinked together. Eunice watched her discomfiture with grim enjoyment.
«Listen to the rain,» said Madame Papaconstante, tilting her head toward the street. Still Eunice did not answer. «The fool,» she was thinking. «The poor old god-damned fool».
«What are you having?» she said suddenly, with such violence that Madame Papaconstante looked into her eyes terrified, not quite sure she had not said something else. «Oh, me!» she laughed. «I shall take a machaquito as always».
«Sit down,» said Eunice. The girl brought the drinks, and Madame Papaconstante, after casting a brief worried glance toward the street, sank onto a chair opposite Eunice Goode.
They had two drinks apiece while they talked vaguely about the weather. A beggar crawled through the door, moving forward by lifting himself on his hands, leaned against the wall, and with expressive gestures indicated his footless lower limbs, twisted like the stumps of a mangrove root. He was drenched with rain.
«Make him go away!» cried Eunice. «I can’t bear to see deformed people. Give him something and get rid of him. I hate the sight of suffering». Since Madame Papaconstante did not move, she felt in her handbag and tossed a note to the man, who thrust his body forward with a reptilian movement and seized it. She knew perfectly well that one did not give such large sums to beggars, but the Bar Lucifer was a place where the feeling of power that money gave her was augmented to an extent which made the getting rid of it an act of irresistible voluptuousness. Madame Papaconstante shuddered inwardly as she watched the price of ten drinks being snatched up by the clawlike hand. Vaguely she recognized Eunice’s gesture as one of hostility toward her; she cast a resentful glance at the strange woman sprawled out opposite her, thinking that God had made an error in allowing a person like that to have so much money.
Up to her arrival Eunice had fully intended to ask in a straightforward fashion whether or not Hadija was there, but now such a course seemed inadvisable. If she were in the establishment, eventually she would have to come out through the front room, since the back of the building lay against the lower part of the Casbah ramparts and thus had no other exit.
Without turning her head, Madame Papaconstante called casually in Spanish to the girl behind the bar. «Lolita! Do you mind bringing me my jersey? It’s in the pink room on the big chair». And to Eunice in French: «With this rain and wind I feel cold».
«It’s a signal,» thought Eunice as the girl went beneath the looped-up beaded curtain. «She wants to warn Hadija so she won’t come out or talk loud». «Do you have many rooms?» she said.
«Four». Madame Papaconstante shivered slightly. «Pink, blue, green and yellow».
«I adore yellow,» said Eunice unexpectedly. «They say it’s the color of madness, but that doesn’t prevent me. It’s so brilliant and full of sunshine as a color. Vous ne trouvez pas?»
«I like all colors,» Madame Papaconstante said vaguely, looking toward the street with apprehension.
The girl returned without the sweater. «It’s not there,» she announced. Madame Papaconstante looked at her meaningfully, but the girl’s face was blank. She returned to her position behind the bar. Two Spaniards in overalls ducked in from the street and ordered beer; evidently they had come from somewhere nearby, as their clothes were only slightly sprinkled with raindrops. Madame Papaconstante rose. «I’m going to look for it myself,» she announced. «One moment. Je reviens a l’instant». As she waddled down the hallway, running her hand along the wall, she murmured aloud: «Qué mujer! Qué mujer!»