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 Ain 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 Ain 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 Ain Krorfa. The seguias of Ain Krorfa are always full. We have flowers, fruit, trees.”
“Yet you say Ain Krorfa is sad,” said Port.
“Sad?” repeated M. Chaoui with astonishment. “Ain 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.”
“You do if you’re accustomed to having conversation that’s something more than decoration. I don’t think of conversation as a frieze, myself.”
“Oh, nonsense! It’s just another way of living they have, a completely different philosophy.”
“I know that,” she said, stopping to shake sand from her shoe. “I’m just saying I could never live with it.”
He sighed: the tea-party had accomplished exactly the contrary to what he had hoped it might. She sensed what was in his mind, and presently she said: “Don’t think about me. Whatever happens, I’ll be all right if I’m with you. I enjoyed it tonight. Really.” She pressed his hand. But this was not quite what he wanted; resignation was not enough. He returned her pressure halfheartedly.
“And what was that little performance of yours at the end?” he asked a moment later.
“I couldn’t help it. He was being so ridiculous.”
“It’s not a good idea generally to make fun of your host,” he said coldly.
“Oh, bah! If you noticed, he loved it. He thought I was being deferential.”
They ate quietly in the nearly-dark patio. Most of the garbage had been cleared away, but the stench of the latrines was as strong as ever. After dinner they went to their rooms and read.
The next morning, when he took breakfast to her, he said: “I nearly paid you a visit last night. I couldn’t seem to sleep. But I was afraid of waking you.”
“You should have rapped on the wall,” she said. “I’d have heard you. I was probably awake.”
All that day he was unaccountably nervous; he attributed it to the seven glasses of strong tea he had drunk in the garden. Kit, however, had drunk as much as he, and she seemed not in the least nervous. In the afternoon he walked by the river, watched the Spahis training on their perfect white horses, their blue capes flying behind in the wind. Since his agitation appeared to be growing rather than diminishing with the passage of time, he set himself the task of tracing it to its source. He walked along with his head bent over, seeing nothing but the sand and glistening pebbles. Tunner was gone, Kit and he were alone. Everything now depended on him. He could make the right gesture, or the wrong one, but he could not know beforehand which was which. Experience had taught him that reason could not be counted on in such situations. There was always an extra element, mysterious and not quite within reach, that one had not reckoned with. One had to know, not deduce. And he did not have the knowledge. He glanced up; the river-bed had become enormously wide, the walls and gardens had receded into the distance. Out here there was no sound but the wind blowing around his head on its way from one part of the earth to another. Whenever the thread of his consciousness had unwound too far and got tangled, a little solitude could wind it quickly back. His state of nervousness was remediable in that it had to do only with himself: he was afraid of his own ignorance. If he desired to cease being nervous he must conceive a situation for himself in which that ignorance had no importance. He must behave as if there was no question of his having Kit, ever again. Then, perhaps, out of sheer inattention, automatically, it could happen. But should his principal concern at the moment be the purely egocentric one of ridding himself of his agitation, or the accomplishment of his original purpose in spite of it? “I wonder if after all I’m a coward?” he thought. Fear spoke; he listened and let it persuade—the classical procedure. The idea saddened him.