As he watched, Mrs. Lyle came through the doorway from downstairs. It seemed to him that she looked unusually distraught. He invited her to sit with him, and she ordered her tea from an old Arab waiter in a shoddy rose-colored uniform.
“Gracious! Aren’t we ever picturesque!” she said.
Port called her attention to the birds; they watched them until her tea was brought.
“Tell me, has your wife arrived safely?”
“Yes, but I haven’t seen her. She’s still asleep.”
“I should think so, after that damnable trip.”
“And your son. Still in bed?”
“Good heavens, no! He’s gone off somewhere, to see some cald or other. That boy has letters of introduction to Arabs in every town of North Africa, I expect.” She became pensive. After a moment she said, looking at him sharply: “I do hope you don’t go near them.”
“Arabs, you mean? I don’t know any personally. But it’s rather hard not to go near them, since they’re all over the place.”
“Oh, I’m talking about social contact with them. Eric’s an absolute fool. He wouldn’t be ill today if it hadn’t been for those filthy people.”
“Ill? He looks well enough to me. What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s very ill.” Her voice sounded distant; she looked down toward the river. Then she poured herself some more tea, and offered Port a biscuit from a tin she had brought upstairs with her. Her voice more definite, she continued. “They’re all contaminated, you know, of course. Well, that’s it. And I’ve been having the most beastly time trying to make him get proper treatment. He’s a young idiot.”
“I don’t think I quite understand,” said Port.
“An infection, an infection,” she said impatiently. “Some filthy swine of an Arab woman,” she added, with astonishing violence.
“Ah,” said Port, noncommittal.
Now she sounded less sure of herself. “I’ve been told that such infections can even be transmitted among men directly. Do you believe that, Mr. Moresby?”
“I really don’t know,” he answered, looking at her in some surprise. “There’s so much uninformed talk about such things. I should think a doctor would know best.”
She passed him another biscuit. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to discuss it. You must forgive me.”
“Oh, I have no objection at all,” he protested. “But I’m not a doctor. You understand.”
She seemed not to have heard him. “It’s disgusting. You’re quite right.”
Half of the sun was peering from behind the rim of the mountain; in another minute it would be hot. “Here’s the sun,” said Port. Mrs. Lyle gathered her things together.
“Shall you be staying long in Boussif?” she asked.
“We have no plans at all. And you?”
“Oh, Eric has some mad itinerary worked out. I believe we go on to Ain Krorfa tomorrow morning, unless he decides to leave this noon and spend the night in Sfissifa. There’s supposed to be a fairly decent little hotel there. Nothing so grand as this, of course.”
Port looked around at the battered tables and chairs, and smiled. “I don’t think I’d want anything much less grand than this.”
“Oh, but my dear Mr. Moresby! This is positively luxurious. This is the best hotel you’ll find between here and the Congo. There’s nothing after this with running water you know. Well, we shall see you before we go, in any case. I’m being baked by this horrible sun. Please say good morning to your wife for me.” She rose and went downstairs.
Port hung his coat on the back of the chair and sat a while, pondering the unusual behavior of this eccentric woman. He could not bring himself to attribute it to mere irresponsibility or craziness; it seemed much more likely that her deportment was a roundabout means of communicating an idea she dared not express directly. In her own confused mind the procedure was apparently logical. All he could be certain of was that her basic motivation was fear. And Eric’s was greed; of that also he was sure. But the compound made by the two together continued to mystify him. He had the impression that the merest indication of a design was beginning to take shape; what the design was, what it might end by meaning, all that was still wholly problematical. He guessed however that at the moment mother and son were working at cross-purposes. Each had a reason for being interested in his presence, but the reasons were not identical, nor even complementary, he thought.
He consulted his watch: it was ten-thirty. Kit would probably not be awake yet. When he saw her he intended to discuss the matter with her, if she were not still angry with him. Her ability to decipher motivations was considerable. He decided to take a walk around the town. Stopping off in his room, he left his jacket there and picked up his sun glasses. He had reserved the room across the hall for Kit. As he went out he put his ear against the door of her room and listened; there was no sound within.
Boussif was a completely modern town, laid out in large square blocks, with the market in the middle. The unpaved streets, lined for the most part with box-shaped one-story buildings, were filled with a rich red mud. A steady procession of men and sheep moved through the principal thoroughfare toward the market, the men walking with the hoods of their burnouses drawn up over their heads against the sun’s fierce attack. There was not a tree to be seen anywhere. At the ends of the transversal streets the bare wasteland sloped slowly upward to the base of the mountains, which were raw, savage rock without vegetation. Except for the faces he found little of interest in the enormous market. At one end there was a tiny café with one table set outside under a cane trellis. He sat down and clapped his hands twice. “Ouahad atai,” he called; that much Arabic he remembered. While he sipped the tea, which he noticed was made with dried mint leaves instead of fresh, he observed that the same ancient bus kept passing the café, sounding its horn insistently. He watched it as it went by. Filled with native passengers, it made the tour of the market again and again, the boy on the back platform pounding its resonant tin body rhythmically, and shouting: “Arfa! Arfa! Arfa! Arfa!” without stopping.
He sat there until lunchtime.
XII
The first thing Kit knew when she awoke was that she had a bad hangover. Then she noticed the bright sun shining into the room. What room? It was too much effort for her to think back. Something moved at her side on the pillow. She rolled her eyes to the left, and saw a shapeless dark mass beside her head. She cried out and sprang up, but even as she did so she knew it was only Tunner’s black hair, In his sleep he stirred, and stretched out his arm to embrace her. Her head pounding, painfully, she jumped out of bed and stood staring at him. “My God!” she said aloud. With difficulty she aroused him, made him get up and dress, forced him out into the hall with all his luggage, and quickly locked the door after him. Then, before he had thought of finding a boy to help him with the bags, while he was still standing there stupidly, she opened the door and made a whispered demand for a bottle of champagne. He got one out, passed it in to her, and she shut the door again. She sat down on the bed and drank the whole bottle. Her need for the drink was partly physical, but particularly she felt she could not face Port until she had engaged in an inner dialogue from which she might emerge in some measure absolved for last night. She also hoped the champagne would make her ill, so that she could have a legitimate reason for staying in bed all day. It had quite the opposite effect: no sooner had she finished it than her hangover was gone, and she felt slightly tipsy, but very well. She went to the window and looked out onto the glaring courtyard where two Arab women were washing clothes in a large stone basin, spreading them out over the bushes to dry in the sun. She turned quickly and unpacked her overnight case, scattering the objects about the room. Then she began a careful search for any trace of Tunner that might be left in the room. A black hair on the pillow caused her heart to skip a beat; she dropped it out the window. Meticulously she made the bed, spread the woolen cover over it. Next she called the maid and asked her to have the fathma come and wash the floor. That way, if Port should arrive soon, it would look as though the maid had already finished the room. She dressed and went downstairs. The fathma’s heavy bracelets jangled as she scrubbed the tiles.