Port was impatient; he was not in the mood for café philosophizing.
“Yes, I know,” he said shortly, and he sighed. Smaïl pinched his arm. His eyes were shining.
“When we leave here, I’ll take you to see a friend of mine.”
“I don’t want to meet him,” said Port, adding: “Thank you anyway.”
“Ah, you’re really sad,” laughed Smaïl. “It’s a girl. Beautiful as the moon.”
Port’s heart missed a beat. “A girl,” he repeated automatically, without taking his eyes from the glass. He was perturbed to witness his own interior excitement. He looked at Smaïl.
“A girl?” he said. “You mean a whore.”
Smaïl was mildly indignant. “A whore? Ah, my friend, you don’t know me. I wouldn’t introduce you to that. C’est de la saloperie, ça! This is a friend of mine, very elegant, very nice. When you meet her, you’ll see.”
The musician stopped playing the oud. Inside the café they were calling out numbers for the lotto game: “Ouahad aou tletine! Arbaine!”
Port said: “How old is she?”
Smaïl hesitated. “About sixteen. Sixteen or seventeen.”
“Or twenty or twenty-five,” suggested Port, with a leer.
Again Smaïl was indignant. “What do you mean, twenty-five? I tell you she’s sixteen or seventeen. You don’t believe me? Listen. You meet her. If you don’t like her, you just pay for the tea and we’ll go out again. Is that all right?”
“And if I do like her?”
“Well, you’ll do whatever you want.”
“But I’ll pay her?”
“But of course you’ll pay her.”
Port laughed. “And you say she’s not a whore.”
Smaïl leaned over the table towards him and said with a great show of patience: “Listen, Jean. She’s a dancer. She only arrived from her bled in the desert a few weeks ago. How can she be a whore if she’s not registered and doesn’t live in the quartier? Eh? Tell me! You pay her because you take up her time. She dances in the quartier, but she has no room, no bed there. She’s not a whore. So now, shall we go?”
Port thought a long time, looked up at the sky, down into the garden, and all around the terrace before answering: “Yes. Let’s go. Now.”
V
When they left the café it seemed to him that they were going more or less in the same direction from which they had just come. There were fewer people in the streets and the air was cooler. They walked for a good distance through the Casbah, making a sudden exit through a tall gateway onto a high, open space outside the walls. Here it was silent, and the stars were very much in evidence. The pleasure he felt at the unexpected freshness of the air and the relief at being in the open once more, out from under the overhanging houses, served to delay Port in asking the question that was in his mind: “Where are we going?” But as they continued along what seemed a parapet at the edge of a deep, dry moat, he finally gave voice to it. Smaïl replied vaguely that the girl lived with some friends at the edge of town.
“But we’re already in the country,” objected Port.
“Yes, it’s the country,” said Smaïl.
It was perfectly clear that he was being evasive now; his character seemed to have changed again. The beginning of intimacy was gone. To Port he was once more the anonymous dark figure that had stood above him in the garbage at the end of the street, smoking a bright cigarette. You can still break it up. Stop walking. Now. But the combined even rhythm of their feet on the stones was too powerful. The parapet made a wide curve and the ground below dropped steeply away into a deeper darkness. The moat had ended some hundred feet back. They were now high above the upper end of an open valley.
“The Turkish fortress,” remarked Smaïl, pounding on the stones with his heel.
“Listen to me,” began Port angrily, “where are we going?” He looked at the rim of uneven black mountains ahead of them on the horizon.
“Down there.” Smaïl pointed to the valley. A moment later he stopped walking. “Here are the stairs.” They leaned over the ledge. A narrow iron staircase was fastened to the side of the wall. It had no railing and led straight downward at a steep angle.
“It’s a long way,” said Port.
“Ah, yes, it’s the Turkish fortress. You see that light down there?” He indicated a faint red glimmer that came and went almost directly beneath them. “That’s the tent where she lives.”
“The tent!”
“There are no houses down here. Only tents. There are a lot of them. On descend?”
Smaïl went first, keeping close to the wall. “Touch the stones,” he said.
As they approached the bottom, he saw that the feeble glow of light was a dying bonfire built in an open space between two large nomad tents. Smaïl suddenly stopped to listen. There was an indistinguishable murmur of male voices. “Allons-y,” he muttered; his voice sounded satisfied.
They reached the end of the staircase. There was hard ground beneath their feet. To his left Port saw the black silhouette of a huge agave plant in flower.
“Wait here,” whispered Smaïl. Port was about to light a cigarette; Smaïl hit his arm angrily. “No!” he whispered. “But what is it?” began Port, highly annoyed at the show of secrecy. Smaïl disappeared.
Leaning against the cold rock wall, Port waited to hear a break in the monotonous, low-pitched conversation, an exchange of greetings, but nothing happened. The voices went on exactly as before, an uninterrupted flow of expressionless sounds. “He must have gone into the other tent,” he thought. One side of the farther tent flickered pink in the light of the bonfire; beyond was darkness. He edged a few steps along the wall, trying to see the entrance of the tent, but it faced in the other direction. Then he listened for the sound of voices there, but none came. For no reason at all he suddenly heard Kit’s parting remark as he had left her room: “After all, it’s much more your business than it is mine.” Even now the words meant nothing in particular to him, but he remembered the tone in which she had said it: she had sounded hurt and rebellious. And it was all about Tunner. He stood up straight. “He’s been after her,” he whispered aloud. Abruptly he turned and went to the staircase, started up it. After six steps he stopped and looked around. “What can I do tonight?” he thought. “I’m using this as an excuse to get out of here, because I’m afraid. What the hell, he’ll never get her.”
A figure darted out from between the two tents and ran lightly to the foot of the stairs. “Jean!” it whispered. Port stood still.
“Ah! ti es là! What are you doing up there? Come on!” Port walked slowly back down. Smaïl stepped out of his way, took his arm.
“Why can’t we talk?” whispered Port. Smaïl squeezed his arm. “Shh!” he said into his ear. They skirted the nearer tent, brushing past a clump of high thistles, and made their way over the stones to the entrance of the other.
“Take off your shoes,” commanded Smaïl, slipping off his sandals.
“Not a good idea,” thought Port. “No,” he said aloud.
“Shh!” Smaïl pushed him inside, shoes still on.
The central part of the tent was high enough to stand up in. A short candle stuck on top of a chest near the entrance provided the light, so that the nether parts of the tent were in almost complete darkness. Lengths of straw matting had been spread on the ground at senseless angles; objects were scattered everywhere in utter disorder. There was no one in the tent waiting for them.