This pleasant impression, however, was based wholly upon her appreciation of the verdure she could not help noticing behind the walls as the bus sped onward toward the town; the town itself, once they had arrived, seemed scarcely to exist. She was disappointed to see that it rather resembled Boussif, save that it appeared to be much smaller. What she could see of it was completely modern and geometrically laid out, and had it not been for the fact that the buildings were white instead of brown, and for the sidewalks bordering the principal street, which lay in the shadows of projecting arcades, she easily could have thought herself still in the other town. Her first view of the Grand Hotel’s interior quite unnerved her, but Tunner was present and she felt impelled to sustain her position as one who had the right to twit him about his fastidiousness.
“Good heavens, what a mess!” she exclaimed; actually her epithet fell far short of describing what she really felt about the patio they had just entered. The simple Tunner was horrified. He merely looked, taking in each detail as it reached his gaze. As for Port, he was too sleepy to see much of anything, and he stood in the entrance, waving his arms around like a windmill in an attempt to keep the flies away from his face.
Originally having been built to shelter an administrative office of the colonial government, the building since had fallen on evil days. The fountain which at one time had risen from the basin in the center of the patio was gone, but the basin remained. In it reposed a small mountain of reeking garbage, and reclining on the sides of the mountain were three screaming, naked infants, their soft formless bodies troubled with bursting sores. They looked human there in their helpless misery, but somehow not quite so human as the two pink dogs lying on the tiles nearby—pink because long ago they had lost all their hair, and their raw, aged skin lay indecently exposed to the kisses of the flies and sun. One of them feebly raised its head an inch or so off the floor and looked at the newcomers vacantly through its pale yellow eyes; the other did not move. Behind the columns which formed an arcade at one side were a few amorphous and useless pieces of furniture piled on top of each other. A huge blue and white agateware pitcher stood near the central basin. In spite of the quantity of garbage in the patio, the predominating odor was of the latrine. Above the crying of the babies there was the shrill sound of women’s voices in dispute, and the thick noise of a radio boomed in the background. For a brief instant a woman appeared in a doorway. Then she shrieked and immediately disappeared again. In the interior there were screams and giggles; one woman began to cry out: “Yah, Mohammed!” Tunner swung about and went into the street, where he joined the porters who had been told to wait outside with the luggage. Port and Kit stood quietly until the man called Mohammed appeared: he was wrapping a long scarlet sash around and around his waist; the end still trailed along the floor. In the course of the conversation about rooms, he kept insisting that they take one room with three beds—it would be cheaper for them and less work for the maids.
“If I could only get out of here,” Kit thought, “before Port arranges something with him!” But her sense of guilt expressed itself in allegiance; she could not go out into the street because Tunner was there and she would appear to be choosing sides. Suddenly she, too, wished Tunner were not with them. She would feel much freer in expressing her own preferences. As she had feared, Port went upstairs with the man, returning presently to announce that the rooms were not really bad at all.
They engaged three smelly rooms, all giving onto a small court whose walls were bright blue. in the center of the court was a dead fig tree with masses of barbed wire looped from its branches. As Kit peered from the window a hungry-looking cat with a tiny head and huge ears walked carefully across the court. She sat down on the great brass bed, which, besides the jackal skin on the floor by it, was the only furnishing in the room. She could scarcely blame Tunner for having refused at first even to look at the rooms. But as Port said, one always ends by getting used to anything, and although at the moment Tunner was inclined to be a little unpleasant about it, by night he would probably have grown accustomed to the whole gamut of incredible odors.
At lunch they sat in a bare, well-like room without windows, where the temptation was to whisper, since the spoken word was attended by distorting echoes. The only light came from the door into the main patio. Port clicked the switch of the overhead electric bulb: nothing happened. The barefoot waitress giggled. “No light,” she said, setting their soup on the table.
“All right,” said Tunner, “we’ll eat in the patio.”
The waitress rushed out of the room and returned with Mohammed, who frowned but set about helping them move the table and chairs out under the arcade.
“Thank heavens they’re Arabs, and not French,” said Kit. “Otherwise it would have been against the rules to eat out here.”
“If they were French we could eat inside,” said Tunner.
They lighted cigarettes in the hope of counteracting some of the stench that occasionally was wafted toward them from the basin. The babies were gone; their screams came from an inner room now.
Tunner stopped eating his soup and stared at it. Then he pushed his chair back and threw his napkin onto the table. “Well, by God in heaven, this may be the only hotel in town, but I can find better food than this in the market. Look at the soup! It’s full of corpses.”
Port examined his bowl. “They’ve weevils. They must have been in the noodles.”
“Well, they’re in the soup now. It’s thick with ’em. You all can eat here at Carrion Towers if you like. I’m going to dig up a native restaurant.”
“So long,” said Port. Tunner went out.
He returned an hour later, less belligerent and slightly crest-fallen. Port and Kit were still in the patio, sitting over coffee and waving away flies.
“How was it? Did you find anything?” they asked.
“The food? Damned good.” He sat down. “But I can’t get any information on how to get out of this place.”
Port, whose opinion of his friend’s mastery of the French language had never been high, said: “Oh.” A few minutes later he got up and went out into the town to collect by himself whatever bits of knowledge he could relating to the transportation facilities of the region. The heat was oppressive, and he had not eaten well. In spite of these things he whistled as he walked along under the deserted arcades, because the idea of getting rid of Tunner made him unaccountably lively. Already he was noticing the flies less.
Late in the afternoon a large automobile drew up in front of the hotel entrance. It was the Lyles’ Mercedes.
“Of all the utterly idiotic things to have done! To try to find some lost village no one ever heard of!” Mrs. Lyle was saying. “You nearly made me miss tea. I suppose you’d have thought that amusing. Now drive away these wretched brats and come in here. Mosh! Mosh!” she cried, suddenly charging at a group of native youngsters who had approached the car. “Mosh! Imshi!” She raised her handbag in a menacing gesture; the bewildered children slowly backed away from her.
“I must find the right term to get rid of them with here,” said Eric, jumping out and slamming the door. “It’s no use saying you’ll get the police. They don’t know what that is.”
“What nonsense! Police, indeed! Never threaten natives with the local authorities. Remember, we don’t recognize French sovereignty here.”
“Oh, that’s in the Rif, Mother, and it’s Spanish sovereignty.”
“Eric! Will you be quiet? Don’t you think I know what Madame Gautier told me? What do you mean?” She stopped as she saw the table under the arcade, still laden with the dirty dishes and glasses left by Port and Kit. “Hello! Someone else has arrived,” she said in a tone that denoted the greatest interest. She turned accusingly to Eric. “And they’ve eaten outside! I told you we could have eaten outside, if you’d only insisted a bit. The tea’s in your room. Will you bring it down? I must see about that putrid fire in the kitchen. And get out the sugar and open a new tin of biscuits.”