“None, mon capitaine.”
“Go back to Atallah’s and look some more. We know she had money and a valise.”
A cracked little church bell pealed from time to time. The nun’s garments made a rippling sound as she moved about the room.
“Katherine Moresby,” said the sister, pronouncing the name slowly and all wrong. “C’est bien vous, n’est-ce pas?”
“They took everything but the passport, and we were lucky to find that.”
“Open your eyes, madame.”
“Drink it. It’s cool. It’s lemonade. It won’t hurt you.” A hand smoothed her forehead.
“No!” she cried. “No!”
“Try to lie still.”
“The Consul at Dakar advises sending her back to Oran. I’m waiting for a reply from Algiers.”
“It’s morning.”
“No, no, no!” she moaned, biting the pillowcase. She would never let any of it happen.
“It’s taking this long to feed her only because she refuses to open her eyes.”
She knew that the constant references to her closed eyes were being made only in order to trap her into protesting: “But my eyes are open.” Then they would say: “Ah, your eyes are open, are they? Then—look!” and there she would be, defenseless before the awful image of herself, and the pain would begin. This way, sometimes for a brief moment she saw Amar’s luminous black body near her in the light of the lamp by the door, and sometimes she saw only the soft darkness of the room, but it was an unmoving Amar and a static room; time could not arrive there from the outside to change his posture or split the enveloping silence into fragments.
“It’s arranged. The Consul has agreed to pay the Transafricaine for her passage. Demouveau goes out tomorrow morning with Estienne and Fouchet.”
“But she needs a guard.”
There was a significant silence.
“She’ll sit still, I assure YOU.”
“Fortunately I understand French,” she heard herself saying, in that language. “Thank you for being so explicit.” The sound of such a sentence coming from her own lips struck her as unbelievably ridiculous, and she began to laugh. She saw no reason to stop laughing: it felt good, There was an irresistible twitching and tickling in the center of her that made her body double up, and the laughs rolled out. it took them a long time to quiet her, because the idea of their trying to stop her from doing something so natural and delightful seemed even funnier than what she had said.
When it was all over, and she was feeling comfortable and sleepy, the sister said: “Tomorrow you are going on a trip. I hope you will not make things more difficult for me by obliging me to dress you. I know you are capable of dressing yourself.”
She did not reply because she did not believe in the trip. She intended to stay in the room lying next to Amar.
The sister made her sit up, and slipped a stiff dress over her head; it smelled of laundry soap. Every so often she would say: “Look at these shoes. Do you think they will fit you?” Or: “Do you like the color of your new dress?” Kit made no answer. A man had hold of her shoulder and was shaking her.
“Will you do me the favor of opening your eyes, madame?” he said sternly.
“Vous lui faites mal,” said the sister.
She was moving with others in a slow procession down an echoing corridor. The feeble church bell clanged and a cock crowed nearby. She felt the cool breeze on her cheek. Then she smelled gasoline. The men’s voices sounded small in the immense morning air. Her heart began to race when she got into the car. Someone held her arm tightly, never letting go for an instant. The wind blew through the open windows, filling the car with the pungent odor of wood-smoke. As they jolted along, the men kept up a constant conversation, but she did not listen to it. When the car stopped there was a very brief silence in which she heard a dog barking. Then she was taken out, car doors were slammed, and she was led along stony ground. Her feet hurt: the shoes were too small. Occasionally she said in a low voice, as if to herself. “No.” But the strong hand never let go of her arm. The smell of gasoline was very heavy here. “Sit down.” She sat, and the hand continued to hold her.
Each minute she was coming nearer to the pain; there would be many minutes before she would actually have reached it, but that was no consolation. The approach could be long or short—the end would be the same. For an instant she struggled to break free.
“Raoul! Ici!” cried the man with her. Someone seized her other arm. Still she fought, sliding almost down to the ground between them. She scraped her spine on the tin molding of the packing case where they sat.
“Elie est costaude, cette garce!”
She gave up, and was lifted again to a sitting position, where she remained, her head thrown far backward. The sudden roar of the plane’s motor behind her smashed the walls of the chamber where she Jay. Before her eyes was the violent blue sky—nothing else. For an endless moment she looked into it. Like a great overpowering sound it destroyed everything in her mind, paralyzed her. Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above. Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her. At any moment the rip can occur, the edges fly back, and the giant maw will be revealed.
“Allez! En marche!”
She was in a standing position, she was turned about and led toward the quivering old Junkers. When she was in the co-pilot’s seat in the cockpit, tight bands were fastened across her chest and arms. It took a long time; she watched dispassionately.
The plane was slow. That evening they landed at Tessalit, spending the night in quarters at the aerodrome. She would not eat.
The following day they made Adrar by mid-afternoon; the wind was against them. They landed. She had become quite docile, and ate whatever was fed her, but the men took no chances. They kept her arms bound. The hotel proprietor’s wife was annoyed at having to look after her. She had soiled her clothes.
The third day they left at dawn and made the Mediterranean before sunset.
Chapter 30
Miss Ferry was not pleased with the errand on which she had been sent. The airport was a good way out of town and the taxi ride there was hot and bumpy. Mr. Clarke had said: “Got a little job for you tomorrow afternoon. That crackpot who was stuck down in the Soudan. Transafricaine’s bringing her up. I’m trying to get her on the American Trader Monday. She’s sick or had a collapse or something. Better take her to the Majestic.” Mr. Evans at Algiers had finally reached the family in Baltimore that very morning; everything was all right. The sun was dropping behind the bastions of Santa Cruz on the mountain when the cab left town, but it would be another hour before it set.
“Damned old idiot!” she said to herself. This was not the first time she had been sent to be officially kind to a sick or stranded female compatriot, About once a year the task fell to her, and she disliked it intensely. “There’s something repulsive about an American without money in his pocket,” she had said to Mr. Clarke. She asked herself what possible attraction the parched interior of Africa could have for any civilized person. She herself had once passed a weekend at Bou Saada, and had nearly fainted from the heat.
As she approached the airport the mountains were turning red in the sunset. She fumbled in her handbag for the slip of paper Mr. Clarke had given her, found it. Mrs. Katherine Moresby. She dropped it back into the bag. The plane had already come in; it lay alone out there in the field. She got out of the cab, told the driver to wait, and hurried through a door marked: Salle d’Attente. Immediately she caught sight of the woman, sitting dejectedly on a bench, with one of the Transafricaine mechanics holding her arm. She wore a formless blue and white checked dress, the sort of thing a partially Europeanized servant would wear; Aziza, her own cleaning woman, bought better looking ones in the Jewish quarter.
“She’s really hit bottom,” thought Miss Ferry. At the same time she noted that the woman was a great deal younger than she had expected.
Miss Ferry walked across the small room, conscious of her own clothes; she had bought them in Paris on her last vacation. She stood before the two, and smiled at the woman.
“Mrs. Moresby?” she said. The mechanic and the woman stood up together; he still held her arm. “I’m from the American Consulate here.” She extended her hand. The woman smiled wanly and took it. “You must be absolutely exhausted. How many days was it? Three?”
“Yes.” The woman looked at her unhappily.
“Perfectly awful,” said Miss Ferry. She turned to the mechanic, offered him her hand, and thanked him in her almost unintelligible French. He let go of his charge’s arm to acknowledge her greeting, seizing it again immediately afterward. Miss Ferry frowned impatiently: sometimes the French were incredibly gauche. Jauntily she took the other arm, and the three began to walk toward the door.
“Merci,” she said again to the man, pointedly, she hoped, and then to the woman: “What about your luggage? Are you all clear with the customs?”
“I have no luggage,” said Mrs. Moresby, looking at her.
“You haven’t?” She did not know what else to say.
“Everything’s lost,” said Mrs. Moresby in a low voice. They had reached the door. The mechanic opened it, let go of her arm, and stepped aside for them to go through.
“At last,” thought Miss Ferry with satisfaction, and she began to hurry Mrs. Moresby toward the cab. “Oh, what a shame!” she said aloud. “It’s really terrible. But you’ll certainly get it back.” The driver opened the door and they got in. From the curb the mechanic looked anxiously after them. “It’s funny,” went on Miss Ferry. “The desert’s a big place, but nothing really ever gets lost there.” The door slammed. “Things turn up sometimes months later. Not that that’s of much help now, I’ll admit.” She looked at the black cotton stockings and the worn brown shoes that bulged. “Au revoir et merci,” she called to the mechanic, and the car started up.
When they were on the highway, the driver began to speed. Mrs. Moresby shook her head slowly back and forth and looked at her beseechingly. “Pas si vite!” shouted Miss Ferry to the driver. “You poor thing,” she was about to say, but she felt this would not be right. “I certainly don’t envy you what you’ve just been through,” she said. “It’s a perfectly awful trip.”