Maatstaf. Jaargang 28

[p. 1]

[Nummer 4]

Ethel Portnoy Arabesque

It would have made a good beginning for a film. Night: the headlights of a car in the distance, coming closer and closer to the camera. The landscape: eroded mountains with not a tree upon them, the old mountains, the used-up mountains of the coast of Araby. Flashes of heat-lightning throw them suddenly into high relief against the ozone-tinted sky, then darkness closes in again. A Byronic scene!

Now: close-up of the people in the car. Up front: two Arabs, in tee-shirts and jeans. In back: three women and two small boys, crammed in among their hand-luggage. One of the boys - mine - is sleeping with his head on my shoulder, and no wonder, it's past midnight. The other boy, Jean-Claude, is wide awake, listening to the conversation of his mother, Madame Mélèze, and the other lady, who is obviously her sister. They are chattering vivaciously (how is it possible, in this incredible setting?) about parties they recently attended in Brussels. The names of men surface constantly, like bits of driftwood at which the ladies clutch as they bob about in a sea of anxiety. Who are they trying to impress? Not each other, since they seem to have attended the parties together? The Arabs up front? Me?

I and my son have been traveling, non-stop, since seven a.m. this morning. At the airport we had been collected by the boys in the tee-shirts. This car-trip will take another three hours - an hour longer than the flight across the Mediterranean. The drivers look like a solid pair of ruffians. Had they really been sent to fetch us? Why had we blindly followed these strangers? They might be taking us out to some remote valley to rob us, perhaps kill us. But I am too tired to care.

The heat-lightning is followed by big drops of rain. Soon it is raining in earnest, a tropical downpour, each heavy drop like oil, not water. Our headlights pick up a young soldier standing by the side of the road, his neat uniform drenched; he is hopefully holding up his thumb. We pass him in a flash, as if he were the figment of a dream.

All is dark when we arrive at the encampment. In a wooden shed, lit by a single dreary light-bulb, a sleepy boy hands us the keys to the huts that are to be ours. Each hut accommodates two - but the Soeurs Mélèze and their boy are three. They start fussing over who will sleep with whom, and who will have to share a hut with some stranger; they carry on to the tired lad behind the counter as if he were the concierge at the Ritz. There is no one to carry our bags, the drivers have vanished. The boy at the counter is pressed into carrying the suitcases of the ladies. I lift our own bags and we stumble out into the rain. The darkness all around us is filled with small, whitewashed huts. Each one bears a letter and a number; there seem to be hundreds of them. Staggering under our luggage, I plunge through the sucking sand. At last I find the number that corresponds to the one on our key. Then I feel for the light-switch by the door.

On a cement platform some ten inches off the ground lie a straw mattress, two pillows, some rough linen sheets, and a blanket. Next to the platform stands an orange-crate, designed to serve as a bed-table. If I had wondered why the price of our lodging was barely more than the price of the flight, here is the explanation. The child droops at my side. With our last strength we make up the bed. As I lay the mattress down on the cement platform, I discover that there is a wet spot on the stone. I look up; the roof is made of thatch, and it leaks. Luckily, the spot is at the foot-end.

[p. 2]

I lay myself down alongside my son and wonder what I am doing here. Why does one go to these places, what is one looking for? Don't I already have everything? Then what is it?

In the morning I push open the shutters and look out upon our surroundings: thatched huts, stunted trees, sand. The sun is shining on the scene with idiot benevolence. We dress and wander off in search of breakfast. As we approach the middle of the encampment, we can hear the strains of pop-music distorted by a poor record-player. And lo, under a great canopy of thatch, there are the other campers, sitting in sawed-off jeans, tee-shirts and sandals, clutching glasses of coffee. They are eating sandwiches of French bread, the kind one can get in any Paris bakery. Next to the bar where these victuals can be obtained there is a kiosk that sells sunglasses, Kodak film, and yesterday's Monde.

Our appearance on the scene has been of no interest to anybody. But everyone turns to stare when the Soeurs Mélèze appear, with Jean-Claude in their wake. Surely, with their Dior sunglasses, their long chiffon beach-dresses, and their leather make-up cases full of sun-tan lotions and waterproof mascara, they have come to the wrong party? Or perhaps, having spent all their money on clothes, they had no more left for the kind of hotel for which these garments were designed? The older sister is valiantly holding her stomach in, but she is at least fortyfive, I can see that in this bright light.

They are poor, I have understood that from their conversation in the car. The tee-shirted campers cast derisive glances at them, which they don't see, or pretend not to.

The entrance to the beach is guarded by an ancient Arab who sits on an orange-crate wearing a torn white shirt, an embroidered skull-cap, and a pair of three-hundred-year old grey serge pants. My son, always on the lookout for grandfathers, puts the touch on me for money to buy him a glass of Coca-Cola. The old man is there to keep the local boys from getting into our camp, fellows who might steal things or bother us with their attentions. There are flimsy wooden railings all along the limits of the camp, a symbolic deterrant to mark off our territory - but they can't fence off the whole beach, and in less than a minute after we have revealed ourselves in bathing-suits a crowd of young men materializes, wrestling, standing on their heads, and pushing each other into the sand while keeping one eye on us.

The two boldest finally come and sit down beside me, sifting handfuls of sand through their fingers, alternately staring out over the blue waters at a ruined castle in the distance and then at me. At last, the older one plucks up his courage. ‘You are alone?’ he asks, point-blank, in French.

I nod, yes.

‘Your husband is back there?’ A toss of the head at the camp.

‘No, he's in Paris.’

‘He lets you go alone?’

‘Yes.’

Well, that means I'm fair game. When I walk toward the water he follows, with his bandy-legged pal. The sea is bathtub-warm. Is this the amniotic fluid out of which the gods came wading? No gods here now. Where do the sewers of the town come out, that is the question.

The two Arabs energetically splash water at each other; then they swim over to where I am floating about. They rise from the waves beside me, shaking drops of water from their wet black curls like dogs and flashing their shining teeth. This was after all the Barbary Coast, the savage shore. I try to imagine them capturing a ship, these fierce, gay, hot-tempered fellows, the kind of men who are quick to anger - and merciless. How they'd roar with laughter as they made us walk the plank! They are swimming closer and closer; soon I am enmeshed in a net of flailing arms and legs. My boy sees this, becomes nervous, calls my name. To reassure him, I screech and giggle. Undaunted by the watery element, the virile organ of the older fellow

[p. 3]

keeps pushing firmly against my thrashing legs. There's no escape from him; I have to make for shore. Will I ever be able to get a quiet swim at this rate?

As I sit toweling myself dry, the pirate and his bandy-legged friend come and plunk themselves down beside me. Neither of them has a job, it turns out, that's why they can sit around here in the middle of the morning. Not much work to do in these parts anyway. Maybe, some day, the government will build a sardine-factory... The younger one has a brother who works in Holland, in a coal-mine; he too would like to work in Europe - do I know of a job for him? He'll give me his address in case anything turns up. I tell him I sincerely doubt that I would ever hear of a job for him. He insists, pulls a ballpoint and a scrap of paper from the pocket of his jeans, with great care pens his name and address, and hands it over.

(Home again, turning out my luggage, I come across this mute appeal for escape from that blue sea, those green mountains.)

In the folder from the travel-agency it had said that a group from the Bolshoi Ballet would come down here to dance - admirable, traveling all the way down to a hole like this to bring culture to the People! The idea is to build this little fishing-port into a tourist-resort, put it on the map - so a sort of programme has been arranged, with local troupes and even musicians from Europe, and christened a Music Festival. On the outside wall of the office-hut a mimeographed sheet has been posted, to the effect that the Trio Tourtain will be giving a public rehearsal at five p.m. in the Basilica. The Basilica? What is a basilica doing in a place like this?

I beat a retreat from the sun-baked terrace outside the office-hut back to the shade of the bar. The afternoon fritters itself away. The Soeurs Mélèze are nowhere to be seen, no doubt having a siesta to preserve their beauty. Jean-Claude hangs about the bar with us, playing chess with my son on a marble pavement. The chessmen are almost as tall as the boys; they shift them from square as if they were beer-kegs.

At four-thirty we take a shower and head for town.

The main street is full of commercial activity. Boys are selling leather sandals, boys are selling shiny rayon kaftans, olive-wood salad bowls, peanuts. There are soft-drink tanks - big glass aquariums in which orangeade is permanently bubbling. There are cheap restaurants with oilcloth-covered tables right out on the sidewalk. From within the restaurants proceeds the smell of frying in much-used oil. (Soon it will be supper-time. What can I feed my child in the midst of all this grease?)

The Basilica is at the far end of the town. Under some huge old trees, aged Arabs are seated on broken tombstones in fatalistic attitudes. The church itself is dark and gloomy: nothing within it is even faintly reminiscent of what it used to be; the décor of Christianity has been scrubbed away as if by a sand-blaster, leaving only bare stone walls and huge columns that now support a corrugated tin roof. The floor is made of beaten earth and we must make our way around puddles of water to the front end, where the Trio Tourtain are rehearsing. A scattering of people from the camp are sitting on straw mats in the gloom, their backs against the huge grey columns, their eyes closed. The music seems to well up from the depths of another age; the echo that bounces it back from the empty walls gives it a ghostly quality. It is being expertly, flawlessly performed - but why did I expect otherwise? Because everything else around here is so approximate and tacky? There is a harpsichord, in the hands of a homely girl with a bad permanent wave. A cello, being played by the kind of stolid, introverted fellow one so often finds playing a cello. I cannot see the face of the oboe-player. The piece concludes with a flourish and he turns around. A thin face, with the kind of blue eyes that have smudges of shadow underneath them, like bruises. I fall in love with him on the spot. (Just ask me, and I'll follow you to the ends of the earth!)

[p. 4]

I subside onto a mat and rest my back against a column. They call this a rehearsal? The music flows, relaxed, perfect. I close my eyes, and like a snake rising to the enchanter's flute, my soul slithers out of my body and hangs in the air like smoke. Gently, this spiritual plasma begins twisting and turning, following the convolutions of the music, making invisible whorls and flourishes like an arabesque, the kind that used to decorate manuscripts in the seventeenth century.

I am roused out of my trance by my son, who is shaking my shoulder. He is getting impatient, wants to move on. We tiptoe out of the church, and lo, at the foot of the hill, the square is full of tables and reclining-chairs. Under the leafy trees in the twilight, people are lying, drinking mint tea, and sniffing at nosegays of jasmine mounted on sticks like ice-lollies. Some have the flowers stuck behind their ears. Overhead, birds swoop low from tree to tree. It's paradise; no wonder the Crusaders went to pieces out here.

Stars begin to twinkle through the leaves; it's time to look for something to eat. Just across the square is a building called the Hotel de France. It has a dining-room, and there are candles on the tables, but the menu turns out to be the same old cous-cous, merguez, brik-à-l'oeuf that I saw advertised in front of all the other gargottes. I manage to shake loose a tomato salad and a pair of plain fried eggs for my son. As we eat, the Soeurs Mélèze sweep in, in full evening toilette, perfumed and powdered and clanking all their bracelets, with the sulky Jean-Claude in their wake. They look about them with blind eyes, then sit down and order with little flourishes, pursing their lips. As they wait for their food to appear they talk with animation, ostensibly interested only in each other, but all the time covertly glancing around to see if they are being observed.

A day of misfortunes, starting even at breakfast! By the time we get to the bar, everyone has already had coffee, so we are given only some dregs, eked out with water. There is no bread left either, so we have to buy some oily doughnuts from a pie-man who is hanging about with his tray; they taste horrible.

At the office-hut there is a notice pinned to the wall: there's to be a bus-trip, tomorrow! The souks of Tunis, the Bardo Museum, and the ruins of Carthage, all in one day - what a programme! No wonder the departure is set at five in the morning. Carthage - that I must see! At the kiosk I had noticed a postcard showing the ruins of Carthage. A gigantic hand lay on the ground, amidst broken columns, clutching something that looked like a huge egg. Now I can sit beside it and bury my face in my hands, like l'artiste in Fuseli's drawing, ému par la grandeur des ruines antiques.

I dash in to the hut to sign us up for the trip: it's too late, all the places in the bus have been taken.

We spend the morning on the beach, swimming now and again in the piss-warm Mediterranean. The pirate and his bandy-legged friend appear, and plunk themselves down beside some French girls from the camp. I see the younger fellow getting out his pen and a scrap of paper. Is there nothing new under the sun? Not even this place is new with the newness of the world as it used to appear to me. Are there no longer any continents to explore? But what am I looking for, anyway? Was Jung right (the old charlatan) - am I ripe for religion? Except that there isn't any - it's like the empty basilica that nobody uses any more, except to play a bit of music in.

In the broiling sunlight I dream of the sweet tables under the trees. We retire to the bar. I buy yesterday's Monde and try to get interested in it. My boy and Jean-Claude play chess on the marble pavement. My son gets himself a sandwich and Jean-Claude eyes it longingly.

‘Aren't you having any lunch?’

‘My mother says she has no money.’ She lives on alimony, I have understood, and the sister lives with them. So I send him to the bar to get himself a sandwich too. The cellist, ac-

[p. 5]

companied by his hand-luggage, sits at the bar in shorts and sneakers, writing post-cards. I had seen the harpsichord-player that morning, in curlers, hanging up her laundry on a tree. But the beautiful oboist is nowhere to be seen.

Eternities roll by and at last it's five o'clock: now they will be setting out the tables in the square below the Basilica. We drag ourselves through the sun-baked streets to this oasis. The boy orders lemonade; I drink mint tea. Shall we eat again at the Hotel de France or try someplace else? While we are debating this important matter, we become aware of noises in the distance - a hubbub of voices and a kind of high-pitched squealing. If this were Scotland now, I would have said it was the skirling of a bagpipe.

We stand up and run to the lower end of the square. Along the main street a horde of children is rushing, and in their midst is a tiny, wizened black man: a full-fledged African in the midst of all these Hamites! Now I understand, on the programme their arrival had been announced, the Troupe Banga from Kairouan; the holy city has spewed forth this little black wizard from the depths of the ages. Where did they dig him up from, out of what desert cave did he emerge? The instrument that he is playing is a bagpipe, but I've never seen a bagpipe like this one. The pipe he holds in his mouth protrudes from a wind-swollen lamb's skin - all four of the tiny thighs are still jutting from the four corners. With his rose-tinted fingers, the pygmy is tapping at the holes on a ram's horn emerging from the lower end of the bag; the skirling tune repeats itself over and over again, as if it were on a loop of tape. The creature is wearing a woman's dress, that swings to and fro frivolously as he jogs up and down on bare feet. Under the dress - no mistaking it - he's wearing a black cotton jogging suit. Over his shoulders (in this heat) he has a jacket of long white goat-hair. His furious little bloodshot eyes are only just visible underneath a black felt headdress adorned with feathers and little mirrors.

He and his companions (a fat Arab thumping a drum with a stick, and a thin one shaking what looks like a pair of roller-skates) are submerged in a crowd of screaming, laughing, dancing children. Without further ado, my son and I add ourselves to the jolly cortège. Where is this Pied Piper leading us? Who cares? By now the entire world has come to jog along, we are dancing our way down the street as if we are about to be poured into the bowl of heaven. Someone tugs at my sleeve. I stop dancing and turn around. It's my own son, and he's pointing at his foot. Blood is gathering in the open toe of his sandal. How did this happen? (My first impulse: to attribute the blame). A piece of broken glass? The edge of a cobblestone? A discarded bottle-cap? But what's the point? For us the party is over. The dancers recede down the road into the distance, while I try to ascertain - as far as the flow of blood will permit - the extent of the damage.

I rush into the Hotel de France for a bottle of mineral water to pour over the wound, then I bind it up with my handkerchief. Under the rising moon we hobble slowly back to the camp. In the hut I wash the wound again, this time with the eau-de-cologne entrapped in one of the refresher-tissues they had given us on the plane. I bind it up, and then we lay ourselves down to sleep.

Everything is makeshift, out here in the desert.

A terrible thumping and banging awaken me. What has happened, what's going on? Then I understand, they are rousing the campers for the bus-trip. My God, it's only four a.m.! Oh well, if they intend to leave at five... I try to squirm my way back into my dreams, but I can't. The boy sleeps on, impervious, while I lie awake, fretting. With that wound, there'll be no swimming for him today, that's clear.

At eight we dress and hobble to the bar. Just outside the office-hut a bus is standing: surely they are not back from Tunis already? No, by God, they haven't even started! Disgruntled faces are peering out of all the windows. Well,

[p. 6]

with things as they are now, it's a good thing we didn't sign up after all.

And there is the pieman with his big tray of oily goodies. There is plenty of bread about this morning, but he seems less interested in selling his doughnuts than in being where the action is. He notices the hobbling boy. ‘What's the matter with him?’ he promptly asks.

I tell him.

‘Piqûre, piqûre!’ he cries.

‘No, not an insect-bite,’ I explain patiently. ‘A piece of broken glass, more likely.’

‘No, no, he must get a piqûre! Va voir le docteur!’

Suddenly it penetrates to my sun-addled brain what he is getting so worked up about. How could I have been so stupid? The main street is full of donkey droppings. He means an injection against tetanus!

There is a first-aid station in one of the huts, the barman tells me. Why had I not thought of asking before this? Leaving the boy at the bar, I go off to look for the hut in question. A card is tacked to the door, indicating that the doctor will be in attendance from ten to twelve every morning. And it's only nine. I go back to the bar and we consume another two glasses of watery coffee. At last, at nine thirty, the bus for Tunis pulls out.

Determined as usual to be the life of the party, the sun has begun to beat down in earnest. The boy complains that his toe is beginning to throb. At five minutes to ten we make our way painfully to the infirmary hut. Nothing happens. After a quarter of an hour has gone by, it is clear that nothing is going to happen. Through a crack in the wooden shutters I peer inside. There is nothing in there but two old straw mattresses, standing up against the wall.

Back to the bar again. Jean-Claude has gone off with the ladies on the bus. The boy droops. The pie-man obligingly stands on his head to provide entertainment. I rush to the office-hut. Can I perhaps phone a doctor? There is no phone. No phone! What now? Is there a hospital somewhere? Up in the hills, at the other side of town. But the boy can't walk!

They shrug. Well then, where is the camp-director? Gone to Tunis with the bus. A taxi, then? But how to call for one, without a phone? Planting a glass of Coca-Cola in the boy's hands, I set out on the twenty-minute walk to town, meanwhile wondering how long it takes for tetanus to spread throughout the whole body. On the main street I see a sign ‘Taxi’, and the numbers 1 and 2. In vain I wait for either 1 or 2. Twenty minutes go by. They'll be along, say the peanut-vendors encouragingly. Taking this to be an ill omen, I decide to walk to the hospital to commandeer an ambulance. Just then, old rattling beaten-up number 2 appears on the scene. Halleluia! A moment later we are speeding back to the camp to pick up the boy. What miracles are cars!

Up a stony, never-ending street is the hospital - a broken-down, abandoned French villa clinging to the side of the mountain. I ask Number 2 to wait. Inside, the empty rooms have all been painted blue to discourage flies. This is merely a first-aid station; there are no beds, only some tables covered in oilcloth, a few kitchen chairs, a rickety wooden bench, a desk. Behind this desk is a chubby Tunisian doctor who looks well satisfied with himself. Under his striped rayon djelleba he is wearing a sports-shirt. White suede sport-shoes and immaculate white socks emerge from the bottom end of the djelleba. After loftily ordering his minions to dress the wound, he agrees with me that a tetanus shot would be just the very thing. The first installment of the shot he administers himself; the boy is brave. A few moments must pass before the next installment, so, to while the time away, the doctor treats me to an exposition of his cosmological theories. Because of all this mucking about with atomic bombs, the balance of nature has been disturbed; one has but to observe the perturbations in the weather, the unusual number of natural catastrophes, to realize this. Meanwhile I'm hoping that this mystic is enough of a scientist to notice that something is wrong with the boy. He keeps

[p. 7]

saying that he feels so tired. He lies down on the wooden bench. The blood has drawn out of his face under his tan, his lips are white. He seems to have trouble breathing. A loud peeping sound proceeds from his chest. The doctor has started expatiating to me about archeological points of interest in the environs. Would I like to visit them with him? As soon as the boy is better, I say, we will all go and look at them together. Glancing at the subject, he observes what I did.

‘Does your boy have any allergies?’ he asks. Sometimes a touch of asthma, I admit.

‘Perhaps I had better phone the French doctor in Beja,’ he says.

A miracle - the French doctor answers the phone.

It turns out that the first shot was a mistake. The boy is clearly allergic to the serum; if he got any more of it, it would probably kill him. I silently thank heaven I have fallen upon a doctor who knows his stuff. But why did he feel he had to phone all the way to Beja to get a Frenchman to confirm what he already knew? Since the boy is allergic to serum made from animal blood, he must have some made from gamma globulin. There is none at the hospital, but if I wish I can order some from the pharmacist on the main street. A few seconds later, thanks to Number 2, we are there. No. They haven't any. (Well, what did I expect, in this one-horse town?) But they will phone the medical-supply depot in Tunis. If there is any there, it will be sent down with the train in the evening, and arrive tomorrow morning.

‘Mama, will I die?’ asks the boy.

Number 2 drives us back to the camp. I plead with him to pick us up again tomorrow morning, to take us to the pharmacist for the serum. He swears by all the gods in heaven that he will do so.

We sit at the bar, the only cool place in the camp. The record-player spews forth a diarrhetic stream of pop-music. The boy draws pictures on a pad. I read yesterday's Monde. A tiny bus draws up outside the office-hut, and lo, the Troupe Banga emerge from it - the fat man with his drum, the thin man with his rollerskates, and the little black wizard dressed exactly as the day before, clutching his bagpipe. Have they come to give us a concert? No, they set out for the huts - obviously, like us, they are quartered here. From the way their shoulders are drooping it seems they are distressed about something.

The day drags itself to a close. And we must think of getting supper. With the boy in this shape, no question of walking into town. Somewhat further down the beach, I had seen a kind of shack where the local people sat around making merry. We set out in that direction, making our way through the crowd of strollers taking the evening breeze along the low wall that separates the town from the sea. Groups of boys are perched on the wall, watching groups of girls promenade past. The boys are wearing jeans and sweatshirts stencilled with the names of American baseball or bowling-teams. The younger girls are wearing ordinary dresses, but the married ones - some hardly older than sixteen and already twenty pounds overweight - have shapeless cheesecloth saris pulled over their heads. As a concession to modesty, they hold one end of the cloth over their noses; some merely keep this end clenched between their teeth.

The rickety shack, all lit up with Japanese paper lanterns, is full of carousing Arabs. There are empty beer bottles all over the place. I thought Arabs didn't drink! But there are sinners everywhere in the world - also among Arabs, it appears. One can indeed get something to eat here. Roast chicken and fried potatoes, even! Lifting the first bit of chicken on my fork, I become aware of a powerful odor of putrefaction. Death and dissolution are all around us today! Too embarrassed to make a scene, I order the boy to eat only the potatoes.

Back in the hut, we lie for hours reading until he falls asleep by my side. I switch off the light and lie in the dark. He moans softly - such a small

[p. 8]

noise, but it makes me tremble. I put my lips to his forehead. Is this the natural warmth of his sun-toasted body, or is it a fever starting? Will they manage to get the serum here on time? Or must we fly back to Europe for it - how many days would that take? I seize his shoulder, then his arm, and hold it tight. Thin little dog, the cold, streaming waters of death are trying to sweep you away from me...

In the middle of the night I am awakened by the sound of vociferating voices. It is the ladies, returning with Jean-Claude from the bus-trip. I run to the door to hear their tale. They are flushed, disheveled, furious. Killing several birds with one stone, the driver had kept the entire busload of campers waiting at the airport for three hours, to pick up some new arrivals. After that they went through the Bardo Museum all right - but at a jog-trot. They never even got to Carthage. Delenda est!

In the morning I examine the wound. Clean, closed - a non-committal jagged red line. So far so good. Now to get the serum. Pushing aside the towels and bathing-suits hung up to dry on the branches of the low trees surrounding the huts, we limp along to the bar to wait for Number 2. All the campers, this morning, are holding mimeographed sheets of paper; I go up to the office-hut to get one too. It's not the programme of the day's events as I thought, but a brief, furious paragraph in French. As I sip my coffee, I read it over for the second time.

If the Trio Tourtain refuse to go and carry out their engagement to play in Beja, then that's their business. But when they refuse to travel in the same mini-bus as the Banga troupe - and call them ‘zouaves’ and ‘niggers’ to boot - then things are getting pretty serious. This is nothing more or less than racism! One wonders how the Trio Tourtain ever manage to get around in the Paris metro, if they have to pass up all the trains in which they see any ‘North African niggers’.

So that was why the little piper and his pals looked so upset yesterday. Can this really be true? That sweet-looking oboist, the scholarly cellist, the innocent harpsichord-player with her proper permanent-wave - racists? I feel dismay - but nothing like the dismay I feel when it becomes amply clear that despite his many oaths and promises, Number 2 is not going to show up.

Providence: a truck loaded with soft drinks pulls up just outside the camp, and after the driver has unloaded several cases of Coca Cola, he gives us a lift into town.

‘I regret, Madame,’ says the pharmacist, ‘there is no gamma-globulin anti-tetanus serum in the country.’

‘Can't they fly some in from the mainland? I'll pay for it!’

He bends over the wound. ‘If you get them to disinfect this and change the dressing twice a day, you will probably have nothing to worry about.’

Probably! And how to get the limping boy up to the hospital twice a day? Now I understand why Africans take up residence around their hospitals when there is something wrong with them. And suppose one of their own children were to need gamma-globulin for his tetanus-shots?

Suppose nobody happened to notice that he did? Well, that's the difference between us and them. Where we live, they die.

Is there nothing I can find here to give myself a treat, to compensate for the weary marches through the town, every morning at eight and every evening at five, to get the wound washed and the bandage changed? Is there no pleasure to console me for those interminable afternoons we have to spend lying on the bed in the hut, playing tick-tack-toe and naval-battle?

Yes! There is to be a flea-market on Friday morning. To persuade myself that I am really being a good mother, I tell myself that I will only go there to buy the boy a pair of sandals with closed toes, so that such an accident can never happen to him again.

[p. 9]

I wake up, alerted by a mysterious alarm-clock in my brain, at six-thirty in the morning, creep out of the hut, and run to the field outside of town where the flea-market is to be held. A flea-market in a place like this: what wonders mightn't it have in store? But the absence of the least scrap of debris on the streets of the town or on the beach should have forewarned me. Out here, even garbage is used to the bone. There is nothing on the market but a lot of tin cutlery, plastic necklaces, and acres of used American clothing as far as the eye can see. Returning, I discover that the Soeurs Mélèze are up early for a change, hanging their laundry on a tree.

‘The Bolshoi Ballet were here last night,’ says the elder lady.

Then why weren't they on the programme!? ‘Oh, they didn't do anything. They just took one look at the huts and went right away again.’ Why the fuss, I wonder. It hasn't rained for days; there aren't any damp spots on our beds. You can never satisfy some people!

Later in the morning, after the long walk through town to have the dressings changed, the boy and I put on our bathing suits and go to sit by the water's edge. In deference to him, I do not bathe. His toe is in a big bandage all sealed off with adhesive plaster. I ask him if he can move his jaw, and he demonstrates with exaggerated chewing motions. The sun beats down on one and all with insane benevolence. In such heat, one becomes like an animal, capable of holding on to only one, large, looming thought at a time. For me, this thought is tetanus.

I try to read. Buried in my book, with a towel over my head, I don't notice that the boy has got his feet wet. A rotten mother!

Back at the hut, I take off the loosely-hanging bandage and examine his toe. Under the action of the salty water the skin has gone white and puffy like a poached egg. The wound has blanched itself completely shut. ‘It doesn't hurt at all, mom,’ he says.

At lunch-time we at last find the programme for the day lying at the bar. At five p.m. there will be a lecture on ‘Three modem Arab poets’. There are some notes describing their past activities. From these notes I am able to observe that at least one European virus - that of poetic prose - has made terrible inroads around here. Further, at six p.m., there is to be a film: ‘The Mother’, based on a novel by Maxim Gorky - no doubt designed as a tribute to the troupe from the Bolshoi, by now miles away and still running.

But wait a minute! Tonight was to be the concert of the Trio Tourtain, the one they had been rehearsing for so diligently. Has it been cancelled? Or have they slunk away in shame, after the hideous incident of the other day?

‘Mama, you promised that we would go to the wreck,’ says the boy.

‘It's a long way; are you sure you can walk it, in this heat?’ I would prefer to go to the hut and play naval-battle again, rather than brave the afternoon sun. Instead I stumble dutifully along the beach, with him limping by my side. And there it is, sticking up out of the sea, the rusty brown skeleton of a small ship that had been sunk during the war. A war in this kind of climate - let me not think of it! But thanks to that war (I tell the boy) we are here today, vacationing without a care in the world. He nods solemnly.

On the beach near the wreck a camper is lying, his head under a towel. He looks up and - no mistaking it - it's the beautiful oboist.

‘I thought you were supposed to be giving a concert tonight,’ I say.

‘That's right.’

‘Then why isn't it on the programme?’ To back up my statement I pull it out of my beach-bag and hand it over. He reads it and swears.

‘Have they cancelled your concert? They must really be furious with you.’

‘You mean, about the mini-bus? They tried to cram us all into that tiny car - the cello, the harpsichord, the three of us, and the three of them.’

‘Niggers is a strong word to use around here.’

‘I never said that! I called them “zouaves”. It's

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a word I use a hundred times a day, to all kinds of people!’

‘They're sensitive.’

‘And what about us? Did you know we spent our first night in this country sleeping on the grass in front of the airport because nobody even bothered to come and pick us up? And then they try to squeeze us with all our instruments into a tiny car with three other people and two drivers! And that stinking goat-skin on top of it all! If you had been treated the way we have since we got here, you'd have called them zouaves too!’

‘Listen, don't worry, everybody in the camp knows your concert is to be tonight,’ I reassure him. ‘If I know it, everyone else must know it too.’

But he is already gathering up his towel and his sneakers. ‘I shall have a word with them at the office,’ he says grumpily, and moves off, his face like a thundercloud.

By the time we have limped our way back to the camp, a note about the concert of the Trio Tourtain has been posted on the outside wall of the office-hut. But has anyone noticed it? Nobody seems to be around but the pie-man.

Hand in hand, the boy and I make our way from the hospital toward the Basilica. Good news; we don't have to go back to the villa any more. No more bandages, no more antiseptics. The sea has done its work.

It is five-thirty. At six p.m., there are two conflicting items on the programme - ‘The Mother’ (in Russian with Arabic sub-titles; what fun that will be) and the concert of the Trio Tourtain. The boy wants to stop and examine some fake African sculptures laid out on a carpet by the side of the road, but I drag him firmly along. Then I see something. Two young vendors are squatting on the pavement, next to their tank of bubbling orangeade, holding a bird by its wings, a big grey bird, some kind of sparrow-hawk. One glance, and I know it's dying. Each of the fellows is clutching a wing-tip and they are making the poor creature, its

[p. 11]

eyes glazed in death-agony, trot back and forth between them on the pavement like a baby. The savages! Why don't I stop them, why don't I hit them, like the old lady who beat the coachman with her umbrella? But I haven't the nerve; I'm just an onlooker, letting events take their course - not so much passivity as cowardice! I manage to divert the boy's attention to the window of a barber-shop; on a big poster of Habib Bourguiba, waving his hand at the camera, the barber has stuck the label from a bottle of hair-lotion, so that it looks as if Bourguiba is presenting the lotion, with a huge smile, to the viewer. Thanks to this, my son does not notice the bird; if he had, he would have started screaming and tried to kill the fellows, who would only have laughed at him, ruining forever the notion I have tried to implant that the world is full of nice people like us.

The tables in the little square are full of chattering campers; the lecture on the three Arab poets must have let out. But although it is five minutes to six, nobody seems to be making a move toward the Basilica. Even the boy wants to stop and have a drink, but I drag him firmly along up the hill.

Inside the Basilica, only a few shapes are visible in the gloom. Did the others not see the notice, or are they wilfully boycotting the performance? Six o'clock goes by, six-fifteen. The musicians fuss with their stands, tune their instruments, arrange their music, cough.

Finally, as it becomes clear that no more people are going to show up, they start to play. But the music that sounded so beautiful in rehearsal now seems slightly dispirited - the same music, is such a thing possible? The musicians step up the tempo, which in their discouragement was at first a bit to slow - and now it is just a trifle too fast. It sounds dutiful, mechanical. Some Arabs peep in at the door to see what is going on, then go away again; seventeenth-century European music doesn't interest them. I think of the French cemetery on the cliff overlooking the sea, the marble slabs fallen over into the weeds covering the graves. The Trio play doggedly on. The piece ends. Our thin applause only points up how few of us there are.

The last number on the programme is a duet of the cello and the harpsichord. While his colleagues play, Gérard Tourtain puts his oboe away in its case. Then he swiftly leaves the church down a side-aisle - too swiftly, looking neither to the right nor to the left.

I nod to the boy and we get up too.

Going back down the main street again, we pass the fellows at the orangeade-tank. The bird is now good and dead; they have hung it, spread-eagled by its wings, over the tank like a blason. Thank God those dull bewildered eyes are closed at last!

‘Oh mom, look what a beautiful bird,’ says the boy.

‘Let's get out of here,’ I say.