The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [41]
“We’re being attacked!” cried Kit.
Tunner set about fanning her with a piece of news paper. Port was still asleep by the door; the corners of his mouth bristled with flies.
“They stick when it’s cool,” said the driver. “Early in the morning you can’t get rid of them.”
“But where do they come from?” demanded Kit.
The outraged tone of her voice made him laugh.
“This is nothing,” he said, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “You must see them in the town. Like black snow, over everything.”
“When will there be a bus leaving?” she said.
“You mean back to Boussif? I go back tomorrow.”
“No, no! I mean toward the south.”
“Ah, that! You must ask in Ain Krorfa. I know only about the Boussif service. I think they have a line that makes Bou Noura once a week, and you can always get a ride on a produce truck to Messad.”
“Oh, I don’t want to go there,” said Kit. She had heard Port say Messad was of no interest.
“Well, I do,” interrupted Tunner in English with some force. “Wait a week in a place like this? My God, I’d be dead!”
“Don’t get excited. You haven’t seen it yet. Maybe the driver’s just having us on, as Mr. Lyle would say. Besides, it probably wouldn’t be a week, the bus to Bou Noura. It might be leaving tomorrow. It could even be today, as far as that goes.”
“No,” Tunner said obstinately. “One thing I can9t stand is filth.”
“Yes, you’re a real American, I know.” She turned her head to look at him, and he felt she was making fun of him. His face grew red.
“You’re damned right.”
Port awoke. His first gesture was to drive away the flies from his face. He opened his eyes and stared out the window at the increasing vegetation. High palms shot up behind the walls; beneath them in a tangled mass were the oranges, figs and pomegranates. He opened the window and leaned out to sniff the air. It smelled of mint and woodsmoke. A wide river-bed lay ahead; there was even a meandering stream of water in the middle of it. And on each side of the road, and of all the roads that branched from it, were the deep seguias running with water that is the pride of Ain Krorfa. He withdrew his head and said good morning to his companions. Mechanically he kept brushing away the insistent flies. It was not until several minutes later that he noticed Kit and Tunner doing the same thing. “What are all these flies?” he demanded.
Kit looked at Tunner and laughed. Port felt that they had a secret between them. “I was wondering how long it would be before you discovered them,” she said.
Again they discussed the flies, Tunner calling upon the driver to attest to their number in Nfn Krorfathis for Port’s benefit, because he hoped to gain a recruit for his projected exodus to Messad-and Kit repeating that it would be only logical to examine the town before making any decisions. So far she found it the only visually attractive place she had seen since arriving in Africa.
This pleasant impression, however, was based wholly upon her appreciation of the verdure she could not help noticing behind the walls as the bus sped onward toward the town; the town itself, once they had arrived, seemed scarcely to exist. She was disappointed to see that it rather resembled Boussif, save that it appeared to be much smaller. What she could see of it was completely modern and geometrically laid out, and had it not been for the fact that the buildings were white instead of brown, and for the sidewalks bordering the principal street, which lay in the shadows of projecting arcades, she easily could have thought herself still in the other town. Her first view of the Grand Hotel’s interior quite unnerved her, but Tunner was present and she felt impelled to sustain her position as one who had the right to twit him about his fastidiousness.
“Good heavens, what a mess!” she exclaimed; actually her epithet fell far short of describing what she really felt about the patio they had just entered. The simple Tunner was horrified. He merely