The Sheltering Sky

At this point they had crossed the Atlantic for the first time since 1939, with a great deal of luggage and the intention of keeping as far as possible from the places which had been touched by the war. For, as he claimed, another important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking. And the war was one facet of the mechanized age he wanted to forget.

In New York they had found that North Africa was one of the few places they could get boat passage to. From his earlier visits, made during his student days in Paris and Madrid, it seemed a likely place to spend a year or so; in any case it was near Spain and Italy, and they could always cross over if it failed to work out. Their little freighter had spewed them out from its comfortable maw the day before onto the hot docks, sweating and scowling with anxiety, where for a long time no one had paid them the slightest attention. As he stood there in the burning sun, he had been tempted to go back aboard and see about taking passage for the continuing voyage to Istanbul, but it would have been difficult to do without losing face, since it was he who had cajoled them into coming to North Africa. So he had cast a matter-of-fact glance up and down the dock, made a few reasonably unflattering remarks about the place, and let it go at that, silently resolving to start inland as quickly as possible.

The other man at the table, when he was not talking, kept whistling aimless little tunes under his breath. He was a few years younger, of sturdier build, and astonishingly handsome, as the girl often told him, in his late Paramount way. Usually there was very little expression of any sort to be found on his smooth face, but the features were formed in such a manner that in repose they suggested a general bland contentment.

They stared out into the street’s dusty afternoon glare.

“The war has certainly left its mark here.” Smail, with blonde hair and an olive complexion, she was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze. Once one had seen her eyes, the rest of the face grew vague, and when one tried to recall her image afterwards, only the piercing, questioning violence of the wide eyes remained.

“Well, naturally. There were troops passing through for a year or more.”

“It seems as though there might be some place in the world they could have left alone,” said the girl. This was to please her husband, because she regretted having felt annoyed with him about the maps a moment ago. Recognizing the gesture, but not understanding why she was making it, he paid no attention to it.

The other man laughed patronizingly, and he joined in. “For your special benefit, I suppose?” said her husband.

“For us. You know you hate the whole thing as much as I do.”

“What whole thing?” he demanded defensively. “If you mean this colorless mess here that calls itself a town, yes. But I’d still a damned sight rather be here than back in the United States.”

She hastened to agree. “Oh, of course. But I didn’t mean this place or any other particular place. I meant the whole horrible thing that happens after every war, everywhere.”

“Come, Kit,” said the other man. “You don’t remember any other war.”

She paid him no attention. “The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no character, no beauty, no ideals, no culture—nothing, nothing.”

Her husband reached over and patted her hand. “You’re right. You’re right,” he said smiling. “Everything’s getting gray, and it’ll be grayer. But some places’ll withstand the malady longer than you think. You’ll see, in the Sahara here . . .”

Across the street a radio was sending forth the hysterical screams of a coloratura soprano. Kit shivered. “Let’s hurry up and get there,” she said. “Maybe we could escape that.”

They listened fascinated as the aria, drawing to a close, made the orthodox preparations for the inevitable high final note.

Presently Kit said: “Now that that’s over, I’ve got to have another bottle of Oulmes.”

“My God, more of that gas? You’ll take off.”

“I know, Tunner,” she said, “but I can’t get my mind off water. It doesn’t matter what I look at, it makes me thirsty. For once I feel as if I could get on the wagon and stay there. I can’t drink in the heat.”

“Another Pernod?” said Tunner to Port.

Kit frowned. “If it were real Pernod—”

“It’s not bad,” said Tunner, as the waiter set a bottle of mineral water on the table.

“Ce n’est pas du vrai Pernod?”

“Si, si, c’est du Pernod,” said the waiter.

“Let’s have another setup,” Port said. He stared at his glass dully. No one spoke as the waiter moved away. The soprano began another aria.