The Sheltering Sky - Bowles, Paul [43]
“Do you think you can be happy here?” asked Port in a hushed voice.
Kit was startled. “Happy? Happy? How do you mean?Ó “Do you think you’ll like it?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” she said, with an edge of annoyance in her voice. “How can I tell? It’s impossible to get into their lives, and know what they’re really thinking.”
“I didn’t ask you that,” Port remarked, nettled.
“You should have. That’s what’s important here.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Not for me. I feel that this town, this river, this sky, all belong to me as much as to them.”
She felt like saying: “Well, you’re crazy,” but she confined herself to: “How strange.”
They circled back toward the town, taking a road that led between garden walls.
“I wish you wouldn’t ask me such questions,” she said suddenly. “I can’t answer them. How could I say: yes, I’m going to be happy in Africa? I like Ain Krorfa very much, but I can’t tell whether I want to stay a month or leave tomorrow.”
“You couldn’t leave tomorrow, for that matter, even if you did want to, unless you went back to Boussif. I found out about the buses. It’s four days before the one for Bou Noura leaves. And it’s forbidden to get rides on trucks to Messad now. They have soldiers who check along the way. There’s a heavy fine for the drivers.”
“So we’re stuck in the Grand Hotel.”
“With Tunner,” thought Port. Aloud: “With the Lyles.”
“God forbid,” Kit murmured.
“I wonder how long we’ve got to keep on running into them. I wish to hell they’d either get ahead of us once and for all, or let us get ahead of them and stay there.”
“Things like that have to be arranged,” said Kit. She, too, was thinking of Tunner. It seemed to her that if presently she were not going to have to sit opposite him over a meal, she could relax completely now, and live in the moment, which was Port’s moment. But it seemed useless even to try, if in an hour she was going to be faced with the living proof of her guilt.
It was completely dark when they got back to the hotel. They ate fairly late, and after dinner, since no one felt like going out, they went to bed. This process took longer than usual because there was only one wash basin and water pitcher-on the roof at the end of the corridor. The town was very quiet. Some cafe radio was playing a transcription of a record by Abd-el-Wahab: a dirge-like popular song called: I Am Weeping Upon Your Grave. Port listened to the melancholy notes as he washed; they were broken into by nearby outbursts of dogs barking.
He was already in bed when Eric tapped on his door. Unfortunately he had not turned off his light, and for fear that it showed under the door he did not dare pretend to be asleep. The fact that Eric tiptoed into the room, a conspiratorial look on his face, displeased him. He pulled his bathrobe on.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Nobody’s asleep.”
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, old man.” As always, he appeared to be talking to the corners of the room.
“No, no. But it’s lucky you came when you did. Another minute and my light would have been out.”
“Is your wife asleep?”
“I believe she’s reading. She usually does before she goes to sleep. Why?”
“I wondered if I might have that novel she promised me this afternoon.”
“When, now?” He passed Eric a cigarette and lit one himself.
“Oh, not if it will disturb her.”
“Tomorrow would be better, don’t you think?” said Port, looking at him.
“Right you are. What I actually came about was that money-” He hesitated.
“Which?”
“The three hundred francs you lent me. I want to give them back to you.”
“Oh, that’s quite all right.” Port laughed, still looking at him. Neither one spoke for a moment.
“Well, of course, if you like,” Port said finally, wondering if by any unlikely chance he had misjudged the youth ‘ and somehow feeling more convinced than ever that he had not.
“Ah, excellent,” murmured Eric, fumbling about in his coat pocket. “I don’t like to have these things on my conscience.”
“You didn’t need to have it on your conscience, because if you’ll remember, I gave it to you. But if you’d rather return it, as I say, naturally, that