The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [35]
“Oh, he’s a halfwit,” said Port absently, taking her hand and stroking it. “Are you sleepy, baby?”
“Yes, terribly, and I’m only going to take a tiny sip of coffee because I don’t want to get waked up. I want to sleep.”
“So do I, now that I’m lying down. If he doesn’t come in a minute I’ll go down and cancel the order.”
But a knock came at the door. Before they had time to reply, it was flung open, and the boy advanced bearing a huge copper tray. “Deux cafis,” he said grinning.
“Look at that mug,” said Port. “He thinks he’s come in on a hot romance.”
“Of course. Let the poor boy think it. He has to have some fun in life.”
The Arab set the tray down discreetly by the window and tiptoed out of the room, looking back once over his shoulder at the bed, almost wistfully, it seemed to Kit. Port got up and brought the tray to the bed. As they had their coffee he turned to her suddenly.
“Listen!” he cried, his voice full of enthusiasm.
Looking at him, she thought: “How like an adolescent he is.”
“Yes?” she said, feeling like a middle-aged mother.
“There’s a place that rents bicycles near the market. When you wake up, let’s hire a couple and go for a ride. It’s fairly flat all around Boussif.”
The idea appealed to her vaguely, although she could not imagine why.
“Perfect!” she said. “I’m sleepy. You can wake me at five, if you think of it.”
Chapter 13
They rode slowly out the long street toward the cleft in the low mountain ridge south of the town. Where the houses ended the plain began, on either side of them, a sea of stones. The air was cool, the dry sunset wind blew against them. Port’s bicycle squeaked slightly as he pedaled. They said nothing, Kit riding a little ahead. In the distance, behind them, a bugle was being blown; a firm, bright blade of sound in the air. Even now, when it would be setting in a half-hour or so, the sun burned. They came to a village, went through it. The dogs barked wildly and the women turned away, covering their mouths. Only the children remained as they were, looking, in a paralysis of surprise. Beyond the village, the road began to rise. They were aware of the grade only from their pedaling; to the eye it looked flat. Soon Kit was tired. They stopped, looked back across the seemingly level plain to Boussif, a pattern of brown blocks at the base of the mountains. The breeze blew harder.
“It’s the freshest air you’ll ever smell,” said Port.
“It’s wonderful,” said Kit. She was in a dreamy, amiable state of mind, and she did not feel talkative.
“Shall we try and make the pass there?”
“In a minute. I just want to catch my breath.”
Presently they started out again, pedaling determinedly, their eyes on the gap in the ridge ahead. As they approached it, already they could see the endless flat desert beyond, broken here and there by sharp crests of rock that rose above the surface like the dorsal fins of so many monstrous fish, all moving in the same direction. The road had been blasted through the top of the ridge, and the jagged boulders had slid down on both sides of the cut. They left the bicycles by the road and started to climb upward among the huge rocks, toward the top of the ridge. The sun was at the flat horizon; the air was suffused with redness. As they stepped around the side of a boulder they came all at once on a man, seated with his burnous pulled up about his neck-so that he was stark naked from the shoulders downdeeply immersed in the business of shaving his pubic hair with a long pointed knife. He glanced up at them with indifference as they passed before him, immediately lowering his head again to continue the careful operation.
Kit took Port’s hand. They climbed in silence, happy to be together.
“Sunset is such a sad hour,” she said, presently.
“If I watch the end of a day-any day-I always feel it’s the end of a whole epoch. And the autumn! It might as well be the end of everything,” he said. “That’s why I hate cold countries, and love the warm ones, where there’s no winter,