The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories

They turned into the me du Télégraphe Anglais, and walked slowly down the hill. She decided she was trying to work up an appetite for lunch; in the noonday heat it was often difficult to be hungry. Driss had been Europeanized to the point of insisting on aperitifs before his meals; however, instead of having two Dubonnets, for instance, he would take a Gentiane, a Byrrh, a Pernod and an Amer Picon. Then he usually went to sleep and put off eating until later. They stopped at the café facing the Marshan Road, and sat down next to a table occupied by several students from the Lycée Français, who were drinking limonades and glancing over their notebooks. Driss wheeled around suddenly and began a casual conversation. Soon they both moved over to the students’ table.

She was presented to each student in turn; they solemnly acknowledged her “Enchantée,” but remained seated while doing so. Only one, named Mjid, rose from his chair and quickly sat down again, looking worried. He was the one she immediately wanted to get to know, perhaps because he was more serious and soft-eyed, yet at the same time seemed more eager and violent than any of the others. He spoke his stilted theatre-French swiftly, with less accent than his schoolmates, and he punctuated his sentences with precise, tender smiles instead of the correct or expected inflections. Beside him sat Ghazi, plump and Negroid.

She saw right away that Mjid and Ghazi were close friends. They replied to her questions and flattery as one man, Ghazi preferring, however, to leave the important phrases to Mjid. He had an impediment in his speech, and he appeared to think more slowly. Within a few minutes she had learned that they had been going to school together for twelve years, and had always been in the same form. This seemed strange to her, inasmuch as Ghazi’s lack of precocity became more and more noticeable as she watched him. Mjid noticed the surprise in her face, and he added:

“Ghazi is very intelligent, you know. His father is the high judge of the native court of the International Zone. You will go to his home one day and see for yourself.”

“Oh, but of course I believe you,” she cried, understanding now why Ghazi had experienced no difficulty in life so far, in spite of his- obvious slow-wittedness.

“I have a very beautiful house indeed,” added Ghazi. “Would you like to come and live in it? You are always welcome. That’s the way we Tanjaoui are.”

“Thank you. Perhaps some day I shall. At any rate, I thank you a thousand times. You are too kind.”

“And my father,” interposed Mjid suavely but firmly, “the poor man, he is dead. Now it’s my brother who commands.”

“But, alas, Mjid, your brother is tubercular,” sighed Ghazi.

Mjid was scandalized. He began a vehement conversation with Ghazi in Arabic, in the course of which he upset his empty limonade bottle. It rolled onto the sidewalk and into the gutter, where an urchin tried to make off with it, but was stopped by the waiter. He brought the bottle to the table, carefully wiped it with his apron, and set it down.

“Dirty Jew dog!” screamed the little boy from the middle of the street.

Mjid heard this epithet even in the middle of his tirade. Turning in his chair, he called to the child: “Go home. You’ll be beaten this evening.”

“Is it your brother?” she asked with interest.

Since Mjid did not answer her, but seemed not even to have heard her, she looked at the urchin again and saw his ragged clothing. She was apologetic.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she began. “I hadn’t looked at him. I see now . . .”

Mjid said, without looking at her: “You would not need to look at that child to know he was not of my family. You heard him speak. . . .”

“A neighbor’s child. A poor little thing,” interrupted Ghazi.

Mjid seemed lost in wonder for a moment. Then he turned and explained slowly to her: “One word we can’t hear is tuberculosis. Any other word, syphillis, leprosy, even pneumonia, we can listen to, but not that word. And Ghazi knows that. He wants you to think we have Paris morals here. There I know everyone says that word everywhere, on the boulevards, in the cafés, in Montparnasse, in the Dôme—” he grew excited as he listed these points of interest— “in the Moulin Rouge, in Sacré Coeur, in the Louvre. Some day I shall go myself. My brother has been. That’s where he got sick.”

During this time Driss, whose feeling of ownership of the American lady was so complete that he was not worried by any conversation she might have with what he considered schoolboys, was talking haughtily to the other students. They were all pimply and bespectacled. He was telling them about the football games he had seen in Malaga. They had never been across to Spain, and they listened, gravely sipped their limonade, and spat on the floor like Spaniards.