The Sheltering Sky

He did not answer. They went through the inner gate and straightway plunged into a long, crooked tunnel. Passersby brushed against them in the dark. People were sitting along the walls at the sides, from where muffled voices rose, chanting long repetitious phrases. Soon they were in the sunlight once more, then there was another stretch of darkness where the street burrowed through the thick-walled houses.

“Didn’t he tell you where it was? I can’t take much more of this,” Port said. He had not once addressed the Arab directly.

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” said the young Arab.

He still disregarded him. “It’s out of the question,” he told Kit, gasping a little.

“My dear boy, you’ve got to go. You can’t just sit down in the street here.”

“What is it?” said the Arab, who was watching their faces. And on being told, he hailed a passing stranger and spoke with him briefly. “There is a fondouk that way.” He pointed. “He can—” He made a gesture of sleeping, his hand against his cheek. “Then we go hotel and get men and ~fed, tris bien!” He made as if to sweep Port off his feet and carry him in his arms.

“No, no!” cried Kit, thinking he really was about to pick him up.

He laughed and said to Port: “You want to go there?”

“Yes.”

They turned around and made their way back through a part of the interior labyrinth. Again the young Arab spoke with someone in the street. He turned back to them smiling. “The end. The next dark place.”

The fondouk was a small, crowded and dirty version of any one of the bordjes they had passed through during the recent weeks, save that the center was covered with a latticework of reeds as a protection from the sun. It was filled with country folk and camels, all of them reclining together on the ground. They went in and the Arab spoke with one of the guardians, who cleared the occupants from a stall at one side and piled fresh straw in its corner for Port to lie down on. The porters sat on the luggage in the courtyard.

“I can’t leave here,” said Kit, looking about the filthy cubicle. “Move your hand!” It lay on some camel dung, but he left it there. “Go on, please. Now,” he said. “I’ll be all right until you get back. But hurry. Hurry!”

She cast a last anguished glance at him and went out into the court, followed by the Arab. It was a relief to her to be able to walk quickly in the street.

“Vite! Vite!” she kept repeating to him, like a machine. They panted as they went along, threading their way through the slow-moving crowd, down into the heart of the city and out on the other side, until they saw the hill ahead with the fort on it. This side of the town was more open than the other, consisting in part of gardens separated from the streets by high walls, above which rose an occasional tall black cypress. At the end of a long alley there was an almost unnoticeable wooden plaque painted with the words: Hotel du Ksar, and an arrow pointing left. “Ah!” cried Kit. Even here at the edge of town it was still a maze; the streets were constructed in such a way that each stretch seemed to be an impasse with walls at the end. Three times they had to turn back and retrace their steps. There were no doorways, no stalls, not even any passersby—only the impassive pink walls baking in the breathless sunlight.

At last they came upon a tiny, but well-bolted door in the middle of a great expanse of the wall. Entree de l’Hotel, said the sign above it. The Arab knocked loudly.

A long time passed and there was no answer. Kit’s throat was painfully dry; her heart was still beating very fast. She shut her eyes and listened. She heard nothing.

“Knock again,” she said, reaching up to do it herself. But his hand was still on the knocker, and he pounded with greater energy than before. This time a dog began to bark somewhere back in the garden, and as the sound gradually came closer it was mingled with cries of reproof. “Askout!” cried the woman indignantly, but the animal continued to bark. Then there was a period during which an occasional stone bumped on the ground, and the dog was quiet. In her impatience Kit pushed the Arab’s hand away from the knocker and started an incessant hammering, which she did not stop until the woman’s voice was on the other side of the door, screaming: “Echkoun? Echkoun?”

The young Arab and the woman engaged in a long argument, he making extravagant gestures while he demanded she open the door, and she refusing to touch it. Finally she went away. They heard her slippered feet shuffling along the path, then they heard, the dog bark again, the woman’s reprimands, followed by yelps as she struck it, after which they heard nothing.

“What is it?” cried Kit desperately. “Pourquoi on ne nous laisse pas entrer?”

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Madame is coming,” he said.