The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [61]
The lieutenant stretched forth the bottle, which Port declined. “Perhaps after my little investigation in Messad you will recover your identity,” he laughed. If the American wished to extend him such confidences, he was quite willing to be his confessor for the moment.
“You are here with your wife?” asked the lieutenant. Port assented absently. “That’s it,” said the lieutenant to himself “He’s having trouble with his wife. Poor devil!” It occurred to him that they might go together to the quartier. He enjoyed showing it off to strangers. But as he was about to say: “Fortunately my wife is in France-” he remembered that Port was not French; it would not be advisable.
While he was considering this, Port rose and politely took his leave-a little abruptly, it is true, but he could hardly be expected to remain by the bedside the whole afternoon. Besides, he had promised to stop by and withdraw the complaint against Abdelkader.
As he walked along the hot road toward the walls of Bou Noura he kept his head down, seeing nothing but the dust and the thousands of small sharp stones. He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking. He knew how things could stand bare, their essence having retreated on all sides to beyond the horizon, as if impelled by a sinister centrifugal force. He did not want to face the intense sky, too blue to be real, above his head, the ribbed pink canyon walls that lay on all sides in the distance, the pyramidal town itself on its rocks, or the dark spots of oasis below. They were there, and they should have pleased his eye, but he did not have the strength to relate them, either to each other or to himself, he could not bring them into any focus beyond the visual. So he would not look at them.
On arriving back at the pension, he stopped by the little room that served as office, and found Abdelkader seated in a dark corner on the divan, playing dominoes with a heavily turbaned individual. “Good day, monsieur,” said Port. “I have been to the authorities and withdrawn the accusation.”
“Ah, my lieutenant has arranged it,” murmured Abdelkader.
“Yes,” said Port, although he was vexed to see that no credit was to be given him for acceding to Lieutenant d’Armagnac’s wishes.
“Bon, merci.” Abdelkader did not look up again, and Port went on upstairs to Kit’s room.
There he found that she had ordered all her luggage brought up and was unpacking it. The room looked like a bazaar: there were rows of shoes on the bed, evening gowns had been spread out over the footboard as if for a window display, and bottles of cosmetics and perfumes lined the night table.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” he cried.
“Looking at my things,” she said innocently. “I haven’t seen them in a long time. Ever since the boat I’ve been living in one bag. I’m so sick of it. And when I looked out that window after lunch,” she became more animated as she pointed to the window that gave onto the empty desert, “I felt I’d simply die if I didn’t see something civilized soon. Not only that. I’m having a Scotch sent up and I’m opening my last pack of Players.”
“You must be in a bad way,” he said.
“Not at all,” she retorted, but a bit too energetically. “It’d be abnormal if I were able to adapt myself too quickly to all this. After all, I’m still an American, you know. And I’m not even trying to be anything else.”
“Scotch!” Port said, thinking aloud. “There’s no ice this side of Boussif. And no soda either, I’ll bet.”
“I want it neat.” She slipped into a backless gown of pale blue satin and went to make up in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. He decided that she should be humored; in any case it amused him to watch her building her pathetic little fortress