“Of course, some people don’t seem to mind all this dirt and heat. By the time they go back home they’re raving about the place. I’ve been trying to get sent to Copenhagen now for almost a year.”
Miss Ferry stopped talking and looked out at a lumbering native bus as they overtook it. She suspected a faint, unpleasant odor about the woman beside her. “She’s probably got every known disease,” she said to herself. Observing her out of the corner of her eye for a moment, she finally said: “How long have you been down there?”
“A long time.”
“Have you been under the weather for long?” The other looked at her. “They wired you were sick.”
Neglecting to answer, Mrs. Moresby looked out at the darkening countryside. There were the many lights of the city ahead in the distance. That must be it, she thought. That was what had been the matter: she had been sick, probably for years. “But how can I be sitting here and not know it?” she thought.
When they were in the streets of the city, and the buildings and people and traffic moved past the windows, it all looked quite natural—she even had the feeling she knew the town. But something must still be quite wrong, or she would know definitely whether or not she had been here before.
“We’re putting you in the Majestic. You’ll be more comfortable there. It’s none too good, of course, but it’ll certainly be a lot more comfortable than anything down in your neck of the woods.” Miss Ferry laughed at the force of her own understatement. “She’s damned lucky to have all this fuss made about her,” she was thinking to herself. “They don’t all get put up at the Majestic.”
As the cab drew up in front of the hotel, and a porter stepped out to open the door, Miss Ferry said: “Oh, by the way, a friend of yours, a Mr. Tunner, has been bombarding us with wires and letters for months. A perfect barrage from down in the desert. He’s been very upset about you.” She looked at the face beside her as the car door opened; at the moment it was so strange and white, so clearly a battlefield for desperate warring emotions, that she felt she must have said something wrong. “I hope you don’t mind my presumption,” she continued, a little less sure of herself, “but we promised this gentleman we’d notify him as soon as we contacted you, if we did. And I never had much doubt we would. The Sahara’s a small place, really, when you come right down to it. People just don’t disappear there. It’s not like it is here in the city, in the Casbah. . . .” She felt increasingly uncomfortable. Mrs. Moresby seemed quite oblivious of the porter standing there, of everything. “Anyway,” Miss Ferry continued impatiently, “when we knew for sure you were coming I wired this Mr. Tunner, so I shouldn’t be surprised if he were right here in town by now, probably at this hotel. You might ask.” She held out her hand. “I’m going to keep this cab to go home in, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Our office has been in touch with the hotel, so everything’s all right. If you’ll just come around to the Consulate in the morning—” Her hand was still out; nothing happened. Mrs. Moresby sat like a stone figure. Her face, now in the shadows cast by the passersby, now full in the light of the electric sign at the hotel entrance, had changed so utterly that Miss Ferry was appalled. She peered for a second into the wide eyes. “My God, the woman’s nuts!” she said to herself. She opened the door, jumped down and ran into the hotel to the desk. It took a little while for her to make herself understood.
A few minutes later two men walked out to the waiting cab. They looked inside, glanced up and down the sidewalk; then they spoke questioningly to the driver, who shrugged his shoulders. At that moment a crowded streetcar was passing by, filled largely with native dock workers in blue overalls. Inside it the dim lights flickered, the standees swayed. Rounding the corner and clanging its bell, it started up the hill past the Café d’Eckmühl-Noiseux where the awnings flapped in the evening breeze, past the Bar Metropole with its radio that roared, past the Café de France, shining with mirrors and brass. Noisily it pushed along, cleaving a passage through the crowd that filled the street, it scraped around another corner, and began the slow ascent of the Avenue Gallieni. Below, the harbor lights came into view and were distorted in the gently moving water. Then the shabbier buildings loomed, the streets were dimmer. At the edge of the Arab quarter the car, still loaded with people, made a wide U-turn and stopped; it was the end of the line.
Bab el Hadid, Fez.