She spent most of the day in bed reading, getting dressed only to have lunch with Port down in the stinking patio under the arcade. Immediately on returning to her room she pulled her clothes off. The room had not been made up. She straightened the bed sheet and lay down again. The air was dry, hot, breathless. During the morning Port had been out in the town. She wondered how he could support the sun, even with his helmet; it made her ill to be in it even for five minutes. His was not a rugged body, yet he had wandered for hours in the oven-like streets and returned to eat heartily of the execrable food. And he had unearthed some Arab who expected them both to tea at six. He had impressed it upon her that on no account must they be late. It was typical of him to insist upon punctuality in the case of an anonymous shopkeeper in Aïn Krorfa, when with his friends and with her he behaved in a most cavalier fashion, arriving at his appointments indifferently anywhere from a half-hour to two hours after the specified time.
The Arab’s name was Abdeslam ben Hadj Chaoui; they called for him at his leather shop and waited for him to close and lock the front of it, He led them slowly through the twisting streets as the muezzin called, talking all the while in flowery French, and addressing himself principally to Kit.
“How happy I am! This is the first time I have the honor to invite a lady, and a gentleman, from New York. How I should like to go and see New York! What riches! Gold and silver everywhere! Le grand luxe pour tout le monde, ah! Not like Aïn Krorfa—sand in the streets, a few palms, hot sun, sadness always. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to invite a lady from New York. And a gentleman. New York! What a beautiful word!” They let him talk on.
The garden, like all the gardens in Aïn Krorfa, was really an orchard. Under the orange trees were small channels running with water fed from the well, which was built up on an artificial plateau at one end. The highest palms stood at the opposite end, near the wall that bordered the river-bed, and underneath one of these a great red and white wool rug was spread out. There they sat while a servant brought fire and the apparatus for making tea. The air was heavy with the odor of the spearmint that grew beside the water channels.
“We shall talk a little, while the water boils,” said their host, smiling beneficently from one to the other. “We plant the male palm here because it is more beautiful. In Bou Noura they think only of money. They plant the female. You know how they look? They are short and fat, they give many dates, but the dates are not even good, not in Bou Noura!” He laughed with quiet satisfaction. “Now you see how stupid the people are in Bou Noura!”
The wind blew and the palm trunks slowly moved with it, their lofty tops swaying slightly in a circular motion. A young man in a yellow turban approached, greeted them gravely, and seated himself a little in the background, at the edge of the rug. From under his burnous he brought forth an oud, whose strings he began to pluck casually, looking off under the trees all the while. Kit drank her tea in silence, smiling from time to time at M. Chaoui’s remarks. At one point she asked Port in English for a cigarette, but he frowned, and she understood that it would shock the others to see a lady smoke. And so she sat drinking the tea, feeling that what she saw and heard around her was not really happening, or if it were, she was not really there herself. The light was fading; little by little the pots of coals became the eyes’ natural focusing point. Still the lute music went on, a patterned background for the aimless talk; listening to its notes was like watching the smoke of a cigarette curl and fold in untroubled air. She had no desire to move, speak, or even think. But suddenly she was cold. She interrupted the conversation to say so. M. Chaoui was not pleased to hear it; he considered it a piece of incredible rudeness. He smiled, and said: “Ah, yes. Madame is blonde. The blondes are like the seguia when it has no water in it. The Arabs are like the seguias of Aïn Krorfa. The seguias of Aïn Krorfa are always full. We have flowers, fruit, trees.”
“Yet you say Aïn Krorfa is sad,” said Port.
“Sad?” repeated M. Chaoui with astonishment. “Aïn Krorfa is never sad. It is peaceful and full of joy. If one offered me twenty million francs and a palace, I would not leave my native land.”
“Of course,” Port agreed, and seeing that his host no longer desired to sustain the conversation, he said: “Since Madame is cold, we must go, but we thank you a thousand times. It has been a great privilege for us to be allowed to come to this exquisite garden.”
M. Chaoui did not rise. He nodded his head, extended his hand, said: “Yes, yes. Go, since it is cold.”
Both guests offered florid apologies for their departure: it could not be said that they were accepted with very good grace. “Yes, yes, yes,” said M. Chaoui. “Another time perhaps it will be warmer.”
Port restrained his mounting anger, which, even as he was feeling it, made him annoyed with himself.
“Au ’voir, cher monsieur,” Kit suddenly said in a childish treble. Port pinched her arm. M. Chaoui had noticed nothing extraordinary; indeed, he unbent sufficiently to smile once more. The musician, still strumming on his lute, accompanied them to the gate, and solemnly said: “B’slemah” as he closed it after them.
The road was almost dark. They began to walk quickly.
“I hope you’re not going to blame me for that,” began Kit defensively.
Port slipped his arm around her waist. “Blame you! Why? How could I? And what difference does it make, anyway?”
“Of course it makes a difference,” she said. “If it doesn’t, what was the point of seeing the man in the first place?”
“Oh, point! I don’t suppose there was any particular point. I thought it would be fun. And I still think it was; I’m glad we went.”
“So am I, in a way. It gave me a first-hand opportunity of seeing what the conversations are going to be like here—just how unbelievably superficial they can be.”
He let go of her waist. “I disagree. You don’t say a frieze is superficial just because it has only two dimensions.”