The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [98]
When she had gone to her room, Madame Daoud Zozeph brought her a plate piled high with pieces of bread. She thanked her and said good night, but her hostess was not inclined to leave, making it clear that she was interested in seeing the interior of the traveling case. Kit was determined not to open it in front of her; the thousand-franc notes would quickly become a legend in Sba. She pretended not to understand, patted the case, nodded and laughed. Then she turned again toward the plate of bread and repeated her thanks. But Madame Daoud Zozeph’s eyes did not leave the valise. There was a screeching and fluttering of wings outside in the court. Daoud Zozeph appeared carrying a fat hen, which he set down in the middle of the floor.
“Against the vermin,” he explained, pointing at the hen.
“Vermin?” echoed Kit.
“If a scorpion shows its head anywhere along the floor-tac! She eats it!”
“Ah!” She fabricated a yawn.
“I know madame is nervous. With our friend here she will feel better.”
“This evening,” she said, “I am so sleepy that nothing could make me nervous.”
They shook hands solemnly, Daoud Zozeph pushed his wife out of the room and shut the door. The hen scratched a minute in the dust, then scrambled up onto the rung of the washstand and remained motionless. Kit sat on the bed looking into the uneven flame of the lamp; the room was full of its smoke. She felt no anxiety-only an overwhelming impatience to put all this ludicrous d&cor behind her, out of her consciousness. Rising, she stood with her ear against the door. She heard the sound of voices, now and then a distant thud. She put on her coat, filled the pockets with pieces of bread, and sat down again to wait.
From time to time she sighed deeply. Once she got up to turn down the wick of the lamp. When her watch said ten o’clock, she went again to the door and listened. She opened it: the court glowed with reflected moonlight. Stepping back inside, she picked up Tunner’s burnous and flung it under the bed. The resultant swirl of dust almost made her sneeze. She took her handbag and the valise and went out, taking care to shut the door after her. On her way through the inner room of the shop she stumbled over something and nearly lost her balance. Going more slowly, she moved ahead into the shop, around the end of the counter, feeling lightly along its top with the fingers of her left hand as she went. The door had a simple bolt which she drew back with difficulty; eventually it made a heavy metallic noise. Quickly she swung the door open and went out.
The light of the moon was violent-walking along the white street in it was like being in the sunlight. “Anyone could see me.” But there was no one. She walked straight to the edge of town, where the oasis straggled over into the courtyards of the houses. Below, in the wide black mass formed by the tops of the palms, the drums were still going. The sound came from the direction of the ksar, the Negro village in the middle of the oasis.
She turned into a long, straight alley bordered by high walls. On the other side of them the palms rustled and the running water gurgled. Occasionally there was a white pile of dried palm branches stacked against the wall; each time she thought it was a man sitting in the moonlight. The alley swerved toward the sound of the drums, and she came out upon a square, full of little channels and aqueducts running paradoxically in all directions; it looked like a very complex toy railway. Several walks led off into the oasis from here. She chose the narrowest, which she thought might skirt the ksar rather than lead to it, and went on ahead between the walls. The path turned this way and that.
The sound of the drums was louder: now she could hear voices repeating a rhythmical refrain, always the same. They were men’s voices, and there seemed to be a great many of them. Sometimes, when she reached the heavy shadows, she stopped and listened, an inscrutable smile on her lips.
The little bag was growing heavy. More and more frequently she shifted it from one