“I’ve heard it all for years,” said Kit. She sat up in the near-dark, cocked her head and said: “Listen!”
Somewhere outside, not far away, perhaps in the market place, an orchestra of drums was playing, little by little gathering up the loose strands of rhythmic force into one mighty compact design which already was revolving, a still imperfect wheel of heavy sounds, lumbering ahead toward the night. Port was silent awhile, and said in a whisper: “That, for instance.”
“I don’t know,” said Kit. She was impatient. “I know I don’t feel any part of those drums out there, however much I may admire the sounds they make. And I don’t see any reason why I should want to feel a part of them.” She thought that such a straightforward declaration would put a quick end to the discussion, but Port was stubborn that evening.
“I know, you never like to talk seriously,” he said, “but it won’t hurt you for once,”
She smiled scornfully, since she considered his vague generalities the most frivolous kind of chatter—a mere vehicle for his emotions. According to her, at such times there was no question of his meaning or not meaning what he said, because he did not know really what he was saying. So she was banteringly: “What’s the unit of exchange in this different world of yours?”
He did not hesitate. “The tear.”
“It isn’t fair,” she objected. “Some people have to work very hard for a tear. Others can have them just for the thinking.”
“What system of exchange is fair?” he cried, and his voice sounded as if he were really drunk. “And whoever invented the concept of fairness, anyway? Isn’t everything easier if you simply get rid of the idea of justice altogether? You think the quantity of pleasure, the degree of suffering is constant among all men? It somehow all comes out in the end? You think that? If it comes out even it’s only because the final sum is zero.”
“I suppose that’s a comfort to you,” she said, feeling that if the conversation went on she would get really angry.
“None at all. Are you crazy? I have no interest in knowing the final figure. But I am interested in all the complicated processes that make it possible to get that result inevitably, no matter what the original quantity was.”
“The end of the bottle,” she murmured. “Perhaps a perfect zero is something to reach.”
“Is it all gone? Hell. But we don’t reach it. It reaches us. It’s not the same thing.”
“He’s really drunker than I am,” she thought. “No, it isn’t,” she agreed.
And as he was saying: “You’re damned right,” and flopping violently over to lie on his stomach, she went on thinking of what a waste of energy all this talk was, and wondering how she could stop him from working himself up into an emotional state.
“Ah, I’m disgusted and miserable!” he cried in a sudden burst of fury. “I should never take a drop because it always knocks me out. But it’s not weakness the way it is with you. Not at all. It takes more will power for me to make myself take a drink than it does for you not to. I hate the results and I always remember what they’ll be.”
“Then why do you do it? Nobody asks you to.”
“I told you,” he said. “I wanted to be with you. And besides, I always imagine that somehow I’ll be able to penetrate to the interior of somewhere. Usually I get just about to the suburbs and get lost. I don’t think there is any interior to get to any more. I think all you drinkers are victims of a huge mass hallucination.”
“I refuse to discuss it,” said Kit haughtily, climbing down from the bed and struggling her way through the folds of netting that hung to the floor.
He rolled over and sat up.
“I know why I’m disgusted,” he called after her. “It’s something I ate. Ten years ago.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Lie down again and sleep,” she said, and went out of the room.
“I do,” he muttered. He crawled out of the bed and went to stand in the window. The dry desert air was taking on its evening chill, and the drums still sounded. The canyon walls were black now, the scattered clumps of palms had become invisible. There were no lights; the room faced away from the town. And this was what he meant. He gripped the windowsill and leaned out, thinking: “She doesn’t know what I’m talking about. It’s something I ate ten years ago. Twenty years ago.” The landscape was there, and more than ever he felt he could not reach it. The rocks and the sky were everywhere, ready to absolve him, but as always he carried the obstacle within him. He would have said that as he looked at them, the rocks and the sky ceased being themselves, that in the act of passing into his consciousness, they became impure. It was slight consolation to be able to say to himself: “I am stronger than they.” As he turned back into the room, something bright drew his eye to the mirror on the open door of the wardrobe. It was the new moon shining in through the other window. He sat down on the bed and began to laugh.
XX
Port spent the next two days trying assiduously to gather information about El Ga’a. It was astonishing how little the people of Bou Noura knew about the place. Everyone seemed in agreement that it was a large city—always it was spoken of with a certain respect—that it was far away, that the climate was warmer, and the prices high. Beyond this, no one appeared able to give any description of it, not even the men who had been there, such as the bus driver he spoke with, and the cook in the kitchen. One person who could have given him a somewhat fuller report on the town was Abdelkader, but intercourse between him and Port had been reduced to mere grunts of recognition. When he considered it, he realized now that it rather suited his fancy to be going off with no proof of his identity to a hidden desert town about which no one could tell him anything. So that he was not so much moved as he might have been when on meeting Corporal Dupeyrier in the street and mentioning El Ga’a to him, the corporal said:
“But Lieutenant d’Armagnac has spent many months there. He can tell you everything you want to know.” Only then did he understand that he really wanted to know nothing about El Ga’a beyond the fact that it was isolated and unfrequented, that it was precisely those things he had been trying to ascertain about it. He determined not to mention the town to the lieutenant, for fear of losing his preconceived idea of it.
The same afternoon Ahmed, who had reinstated himself in the lieutenant’s service, appeared at the pension and asked for Port. Kit, in bed reading, told the servant to send the boy to the hammam, where Port had gone to bask in the steam room in the hope of thawing out his chill once and for all. He was lying almost asleep in the dark, on a hot, slippery slab of rock, when an attendant came and roused him. With a wet towel around him he went to the entrance door. Ahmed stood there scowling; he was a light Arab boy from the ereg, and his face had the telltale, fiery gashes halfway down each cheek which debauchery sometimes makes in the soft skin of those too young to have pouches and wrinkles.
“The lieutenant wants you right away,” said Ahmed.
“Tell him in an hour,” Port said, blinking at the light of day.
“Right away,” repeated Ahmed stolidly. “I wait here.”
“Oh, he gives orders!” He went back inside and had a pail of cold water thrown over him—he would have liked more of it, but water was expensive here, and each pailful was a supplementary charge—and a quick massage before he dressed. It seemed to him that he felt a little better as he stepped out into the street. Ahmed was leaning against the wall talking with a friend, but he sprang to attention at Port’s appearance, and kept a few paces behind him all the way to the lieutenant’s house.
Dressed in an ugly bathrobe of wine-colored artificial silk, the lieutenant sat in his salon smoking.
“You will pardon me if I remain seated,” he said. “I am much better, but I feel best when I move least. Sit down. Will you have sherry, cognac or coffee?”