Free The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles Page B

discernible, and he realized that the tents looked like the mountain peaks behind them on the horizon.
    As he watched the heat-covered landscape unfold, his thoughts took an inward turn, dwelt briefly on the dream that still preoccupied him. At the end of a moment, he smiled; now he had it. The train that went always faster was merely an epitome of life itself. The unsureness about the no and the yes was the inevitable attitude one had if one tried to consider the value of that life, and the hesitation was automatically resolved by one’s involuntary decision to refuse participation in it. He wondered why it had upset him; it was a simple, classic dream. The connections were all clear in his head. Their particular meaning with regard to his own life scarcely mattered. For in order to avoid having to deal with relative values, he had long since come to deny all purpose to the phenomenon of existence—it was more expedient and comforting.
    He was pleased to have solved his little problem. He looked around the countryside; they were still climbing, but they had gone over the first crest. About them now were barren, rounded hills, without details to give them scale. And on every side was the same uneven, hard line of the horizon, with the blinding white sky behind. Mrs. Lyle was saying: “Oh, they’re a foul tribe. A rotten lot, I can tell you.” “I’ll kill this woman yet,” he thought savagely. As the gradient lessened and the car added speed, the fleeting illusion of a breeze was created, but when the road curved upward again and they resumed the slow ascent, he realized that the air was motionless.
    “There’s a sort of belvedere up ahead, according to the map,” said Eric. “We ought to have a superb view.”
    “Do you think we should stop?” Mrs. Lyle inquired anxiously. “We must be at Boussif for tea.”
    The vantage point proved to be a slightly perceptible widening of the road at a spot where the latter made a hairpin curve. Some boulders which had rolled down from the cliff on the inner side made the passage even more hazardous. The drop from the edge was sheer, and the view inland was spectacular and hostile.
    Eric stopped the car for a moment, but no one got out. The rest of the drive was through stony territory, too parched to shelter even the locusts, yet now and then Port caught a glimpse in the distance of a mud-walled hamlet, the color of the hills, fenced round about with cactus and thorny shrubs. A silence fell upon the three, and there was nothing to hear but the steady roaring of the motor.
    When they came in sight of Boussif with its modern white concrete minaret, Mrs. Lyle said: “Eric, I want you to attend to the rooms. I shall go directly to the kitchen and set about showing them how to make tea.” To Port she said, holding up her handbag: “I always carry the tea here in my bag with me when we’re on a voyage. Otherwise I should have to wait forever while that wretched boy attended to the automobile and the luggage. I believe there’s nothing at all to see in Boussif, so we shall be spared going into the streets.”
    “Derb Ech Chergui,” said Port. And as she turned to look at him in astonishment, “I was just reading a sign,” he said reassuringly. The long main street was empty, cooking in the afternoon sun, whose strength seemed doubled by the fact that over the mountains ahead to the south still hung the massive dark clouds that had been there since the early morning.

X
    It was a very old train. From the low ceiling in the corridor of their carriage hung a row of kerosene lamps that swung violently back and forth in unison as the ancient vehicle rocked along. When they had been about to pull out of the station, Kit, in the usual desperation she felt at the beginning of a train ride, had jumped down, run over to the newsstand, and bought several French magazines, getting back aboard just as they were starting up. Now, in the indistinct mixture of fading daylight and the