“Tunner,” she said with unfeigned innocence, as if it were a most natural occurrence. “He’s waiting for me while I get dressed.”
“What the hell goes on here?”
Kit flushed and turned away vehemently. “Nothing. Nothing,” she said quickly. “Don’t be crazy. What do you think goes on, anyway?”
He did not lower his voice. “I don’t know. I’m asking you.”
She pushed him in the chest with her outspread hands and walked toward the door to open it, but he caught her arm and pulled her around.
“Please stop it!” she whispered furiously.
“All right, all right. I’ll open the door myself,” he said, as if by allowing her to do it he might be running too great a risk.
He went into his room. Tunner was leaning out the window looking down. He swung around, smiling broadly. “Well, well!” he began.
Port was staring at the bed. “What is this? What’s the matter with your room that you have to be in here?” he demanded.
But Tunner appeared not to take in the situation at all, or else he refused to admit that there was any. “So! Back from the wars!” he cried. “And do you look it! Kit and I are going for a walk. You probably want some sleep.” He dragged Port over in front of the mirror. “Look at yourself!” he commanded. At the sight of his smeared face and red-rimmed eyes, Port wilted.
“I want some black coffee,” he grumbled. “And I want to go down and get a shave.” Now he raised his voice. “And I wish to hell you’d both get out of here and take your walk.” He pushed the wall button savagely.
Tunner gave him a fraternal pat on the back. “See you later, old man. Get some sleep.”
Port glared at him as he went out, and sat down on the bed when he had gone. A large ship had just steamed into the harbor; its deep whistle sounded below the street noises. He lay back on the bed, gasping a little. When the knocking came at the door, he never heard it. The servant stuck his head in, said: “Monsieur,” waited a few seconds, quietly shut the door and went away.
He slept all day. Kit came back at lunch time; she went in softly, and having coughed once to see if he would wake, went to eat without him. Before twilight he awoke, feeling greatly cleansed. He rose and undressed slowly. In the bathroom he drew a hot tub, bathed at length, shaved, and searched for his white bathrobe. He found it in Kit’s room, but she was not there. On her table was a variety of groceries she had bought to take on the trip. Most of the items were black-market goods from England, and according to the labels they had been manufactured by appointment to H.M. King George VI. He opened a package of biscuits and began to eat one after another, voraciously. Framed by the window, the town below was growing dim. It was that moment of twilight when light objects seem unnaturally bright, and the others are restfully dark. The town’s electricity had not yet been turned on, so that the only lights were those on the few ships anchored in the harbor, itself neither light nor dark—merely an empty area between the buildings and the sky. And to the right were the mountains. The first one coming up out of the sea looked to him like two knees drawn up under a huge sheet. For a fraction of a second, but with such force that he felt the change’s impact as a physical sensation, he was somewhere else, it was long ago. Then he saw the mountains again. He wandered downstairs.
They had made a point of not patronizing the hotel bar because it was always empty. Now, going into the gloomy little room, Port was mildly surprised to see sitting alone at the bar a heavy-looking youth with a formless face which was saved from complete non-existence by an undefined brown beard. As he installed himself at the other end, the young man said with a heavy English accent: “Otro Tio Pepe,” and pushed his glass toward the barman.
Port thought of the cool subterranean bodegas at Jerez where Tio Pepe of 1842 had been tendered him, and ordered the same. The young man looked at him with a certain curiosity in his eyes, but said nothing. Presently a large, sallow-skinned woman, her hair fiery with henna, appeared in the doorway and squealed. She had the glassy black eyes of a doll; their lack of expression was accentuated by the gleaming make-up around them. The young man turned in her direction.
“Hello, Mother. Come in and sit down.”
The woman moved to the youth’s side but did not sit. In her excitement and indignation she seemed not to have noticed Port. Her voice was very high. “Eric, you filthy toad!” she cried. “Do you realize I’ve been looking for you everywhere? I’ve never seen such behavior! And what are you drinking? What do you mean by drinking, after what Doctor Levy told you? You wretched, boy!”
The young man did not look at her. “Don’t scream so, Mother.”
She glanced in Port’s direction, saw him. “What is that you’re drinking, Eric?” she demanded again, her voice slightly more subdued, but no less intense.
“It’s just sherry, and it’s quite delightful. I wish you wouldn’t get so upset.”
“And who do you think’s going to pay for your caprices?” She seated herself on the stool beside him and began to fumble in her bag. “Oh, blast! I’ve come off without my key,” she said. “Thanks to your thoughtlessness. You’ll have to let me in through your room. I’ve discovered the sweetest mosque, but it’s covered with brats all shrieking like demons. Filthy little beasts, they are! I’ll show it to you tomorrow. Order a glass of sherry for me, if it’s dry. I think it might help me. I’ve felt wretched all day. I’m positive it’s the malaria coming back. It’s about time for it, you know.”
“Otro Tio Pepe,” said the youth imperturbably.
Port watched, fascinated as always by the sight of a human being brought down to the importance of an automaton or a caricature. By whatever circumstances and in whatever manner reduced, whether ludicrous or horrible, such persons delighted him.
The dining room was unfriendly and formal to a degree which is acceptable only when the service is impeccable; this was not the case here. The waiters were impassive and moved slowly. They seemed to have difficulty in understanding the wants even of the French; certainly they showed no sign of interest in pleasing anyone. The two English people were given a table near the corner where Port and Kit were eating; Tunner was out with his French girl.
“Here they are,” whispered Port. “Keep an ear open. But try and keep a straight face.”
“He looks like a young Vacher,” said Kit, leaning far over the table, “the one who wandered across France slicing children into pieces, you remember?”
They were silent a few minutes, hoping to be diverted by the other table, but mother and son appeared to have nothing to say to each other. Finally Port turned to Kit and said: “Oh, while I think of it, what was all that this morning?”
“Do we have to go into it now?”
“No, but I was just asking. I thought maybe you could answer.”
“You saw all there was to see.”
“I wouldn’t ask you if I thought so.”
“Oh, can’t you see—” Kit began in a tone of exasperation; then she stopped. She was about to say: “Can’t you see that I didn’t want Tunner to know you hadn’t come back last night? Can’t you see he’d be interested to know that? Can’t you see it would give him just the wedge he’s looking for?” Instead she said: “Do we have to discuss it? I told you the whole story when you came in. He came while I was having breakfast and I sent him into your room to wait while I got dressed. Isn’t that perfectly proper?”
“It depends on your conception of propriety, baby.”
“It certainly does,” she said acidly. “You notice I haven’t mentioned what you did last night.”
Port smiled and said smoothly: “You couldn’t very well, since you don’t know.”
“And I don’t want to.” She was letting her anger show in spite of herself. “You can think whatever you want to think. I don’t give a damn.” She glanced over at the other table and noticed that the large bright eyed woman was following what she could of their conversation with acute interest. When that lady saw that Kit was aware of her attention, she turned back to the youth and began a loud monologue of her own.
“This hotel has the most extraordinary plumbing system; the water taps do nothing but sigh and gurgle constantly, no matter how tightly one shuts them off. The stupidity of the French! It’s unbelievable! They’re all mental defectives. Madame Gautier herself told me they have the lowest national intelligence quotient in the world. Of course, their blood is thin; they’ve gone to seed. They’re all part Jewish or Negro. Look at them!” She made a wide gesture which included the whole room.
“Oh, here, perhaps,” said the young man, holding his g lass of water up to the light and studying it carefully.
“In France!” the woman cried excitedly. “Madame Gautier told me herself, and I’ve read it in ever so many books and papers.”
“What revolting water,” he murmured. He set the glass on the table. “I don’t think I shall drink it.”
“What a fearful sissy you are! Stop complaining! I don’t want to hear about it! I can’t bear to hear any more of your talk about dirt and worms. Don’t drink it. No one cares whether you do or not. It’s frightful for you, anyway, washing everything down with liquids the way you do. Try to grow up. Have you got the paraffin for the Primus, or did you forget that as well as the Vittel?”
The young man smiled with poisonous mock benevolence, and spoke slowly, as if to a backward child: “No, I did not forget the paraffin as well as the Vittel. The tin is in the back of the car. Now, if I may, I think I shall take a little walk.” He rose, still smiling most unpleasantly, and moved away from the table.
“Why, you rude puppy! I’ll box your ears!” the woman called after him. He did not turn around.
“Aren’t they something?” whispered Port.
“Very amusing,” said Kit. She was still angry. “Why don’t you ask them to join us on our great trek? It’s all we’d need.”
They ate their fruit,in silence.
After dinner, when Kit had gone up to her room, Port wandered around the barren street floor of the hotel, to the writing room with its impossible, dim lights far overhead; to the palm-stuffed foyer where two ancient French women in black sat on the edges of their chairs, whispering to one another; to the front entrance, in which he stood a few minutes staring at a large Mercedes touring car parked opposite; and back to the writing room. He sat down. The sickly light from above scarcely illumined the travel posters on the walls: Fes la Mysterieuse, Air-France, Visitez I’Espagne. From a grilled window over his head came hard female voices and the metallic sound of kitchen activities, amplified by the stone walls and tile floors. This room, even more than the others, reminded him of a dungeon. The electric bell of the cinema was audible above all the other noises, a constant, nerveracking background. He went to the writing tables, lifted the blotters, opened the drawers, searching for stationery; there was none. Then he shook the inkwells; they were dry. A violent argument had broken out in the kitchen. Scratching the fleshy parts of his hands, where the mosquitoes had just bitten him, he walked slowly out of the room through the foyer, along the corridor into the bar. Even here the light was weak and distant, but the array of bottles behind the bar formed a focal point of interest for the eyes. He had a slight indigestion—not a sourness, but the promise of a pain which at the moment was only a tiny physical unhappiness in some unlocatable center. The swarthy barman was staring at him expectantly. There was no one else in the room. He ordered a whiskey and sat savoring it, drinking slowly. Somewhere in the hotel a toilet was flushed, making its sounds of choking and regurgitation.
The unpleasant tension inside him was lessening; he felt very much awake. The bar was stuffy and melancholy. It was full of the sadness inherent in all deracinated things. “Since the day the first drink was served at this bar,” he thought, “how many moments of happiness have been lived through, here?” The happiness, if there still was any, existed elsewhere: In sequestered rooms that looked onto bright alleys where the cats gnawed fish-heads; in shaded cafés hung with reed matting, where the hashish smoke mingled with the fumes of mint from the hot tea; down on the docks, out at the edge of the sebkha in the tents (he passed over the white image of Marhnia, the placid face); beyond the mountains in the great Sahara, in the endless regions that were all of Africa. But not here in this sad colonial room where each invocation of Europe was merely one more squalid touch, one more visible proof of isolation; the mother country seemed farthest in such a room.