Free The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

thought, would be to have no visible personality whatever, merely to be civil, to listen. It was likely that this ludicrous wrangling was the only form of conversation these two had ever managed to devise for themselves.
    They started up, Eric at the wheel, racing the motor first. The porters shouted:
“Bon voyage!”
    “I noticed several people staring at me when I left,” said Mrs. Lyle, settling back. “Those filthy Arabs have done their work here, the same as everywhere else.”
    “Work? What do you mean?” said Port.
    “Why, their spying. They spy on you all the time here, you know. That’s the way they make their living. You think you can do anything without their knowing it?” She laughed unpleasantly. “Within an hour all the miserable little touts and undersecretaries at the consulates know everything.”
    “You mean the British Consulate?”
    “All the consulates, the police, the banks, everyone,” she said firmly.
    Port looked at Eric expectantly. “But—”
    “Oh, yes,” said Eric, apparently happy to reinforce his mother’s statement. “It’s a frightful mess. We never have a moment’s peace. Wherever we go, they hold back our letters, they try to keep us out of hotels by saying they have no rooms, and when we do get rooms they search them while we’re out and steal our things, they get the porters and chambermaids to eavesdrop—”
    “But who? Who does all this? And why?”
    “The Arabs!” cried Mrs. Lyle. “They’re a stinking, low race of people with nothing to do in life but spy on others. How else do you think they live?”
    “It seems incredible,” Port ventured timidly, hoping in this way to call forth more of the same, for it amused him.
    “Hah!” she said in a tone of triumph. “It may seem incredible to you because you don’t know them, but look out for them. They hate us all. And so do the French. Oh, they loathe us!”
    “I’ve always found the Arabs very sympathetic,” said Port.
    “Of course. That’s because they’re servile, they flatter you and fawn on you. And the moment your back is turned, off they rush to the consulate.”
    Said Eric: “Once in Mogador—” His mother cut him short.
    “Oh, shut up! Let someone else talk. Do you think anyone wants to hear about your blundering stupidities? If you’d had a little sense you’d not have got into that business. What right did you have to go to Mogador, when I was dying in Fez? Mr. Moresby, I was dying! In the hospital, on my back, with a terrible Arab nurse who couldn’t even give a proper injection—”
    “She could!” said Eric stoutly. “She gave me at least twenty. You just happened to get infected because your resistance was low.”
    “Resistance!” shrieked Mrs. Lyle. “I refuse to talk any more. Look, Mr. Moresby, at the colors of the hills. Have you ever tried infra-red on landscapes? I took some exceptionally fine ones in Rhodesia, but they were stolen from me by an editor in Johannesburg.”
    “Mr. Moresby’s not a photographer, Mother.”
    “Oh, be quiet. Would that keep him from knowing about infra-red photography?”
    “I’ve seen samples of it,” said Port.
    “Well, of course you have. You see, Eric, you simply don’t know what you’re saying, ever. It all comes from lack of discipline. I only wish you had to earn your living for one day. It would teach you to think before you speak. At this point you’re no better than an imbecile.”
    A particularly arid argument ensued, in which Eric, apparently for Port’s benefit, enumerated a list of unlikely sounding jobs he claimed to have held during the past four years, while the mother systematically challenged each item with what seemed convincing proof of its falsity. At each new claim she cried: “What lies! What a liar! You don’t even know what the truth is!” Finally Eric replied in an aggrieved tone, as if capitulating: “You’d never let me stick at any work, anyway. You’re terrified that I might become