Back in No Time. Brion Gysin

had his hair well cut and covered with a great deal of brilliantine called “Essence de Violettes,” which smelled very good and very strong.

      When he knocked and Zuleika opened the door, she must have thought that it was some stranger for she covered her face and just stood there looking at him for a long time. Then she said, “Ahhh,” letting her breath out. After that she said, “Mmmm,” and it sounded as though a pigeon with its tail out were strutting on the ground between them; her voice came from so far down. That night when she made some broth for Hamid, she came and set the pot of chicken before Yussef who was sitting in the other room and waited until he had put his hands in it before she took any.

      Perhaps because the weather had grown colder, she made a bed for him in the other room and laid one of the best rugs on it. He slept there very well, but she lay awake beside Hamid all the night. In the morning she had decided what she must do. When Hamid’s mother and sister came to see him, she began to cry right away, saying he was so very sick that she was afraid he might die at any minute. Her mother-in-law peered into her face, but she looked so haggard from not having slept all night that the old woman decided this outburst must be genuine. Zuleika said that, if Hamid was really going to die, which Allah forbid, she hated the idea of him dying in that house.

      “What’s the matter with this house?” snapped the mother-in-law who guessed what was coming although she thought there was quite another reason behind it. “You never complained about it before.”

      “But it’s in the Mellah,” wailed Zuleika. “You don’t want him to die in the Mellah!”

      “I see,” said the mother-in-law and it was agreed that Hamid should be carried to their house in another quarter of the town.

      “I can sleep there with him in your big house,” sobbed Zuleika, “and then I’ll have to come back here every day to see that this horrid boy looks after the pastry business. We don’t want to be entirely a charge on you. That way, there’ll be a little money coming in every day.”

      “Hmm, yes,” said the mother-in-law, “That’s quite true.”

      “Oh, I know that he will be happier in the house where he was born,” smiled Zuleika through her tears. “I just know he will, although he hardly noticed anything any more. I want to go and get him some water from the holy fountain of Sidi Bou Galem: I know it will do him some good. No, no; I don’t want either one of you to come with me. I’ll take Yussef to carry the water jar. The cakes are made, and that good-for-nothing who has just spent all his money, and the Prophet only knows how much of ours too, on useless new clothes, has nothing to do. Why don’t you just run home and get someone to come and carry Hamid while your mother sits with him a while?”

      On the way to the fountain she was very charming to Yussef and told him how awful her family-in-law was and how much she would hate having to live with them. “But I’ll be back every day to look after the house,” she said with a laugh. “In fact, I’ll come twice a day; once in the morning and once at night. Oh, it will be wonderful to get away from them. And for another reason, too. Can you guess what that is?”

      “No,” said Yussef dully.

      “Silly,” she said.

      On the way back from the fountain she pulled him aside on a little side path which led into a field of nothing.

      “Why do you want to come this way?” he asked, stumbling after her.

      When she turned swiftly to him and cunningly put her two hands on his chest, he said nothing, so she spoke to him; when she asked him again with different words and he said no, she spoke to him sharply. He felt that he could not change his mind which had said no in spite of him; now he could not say yes to her while she was insisting.

      She spat at him and said in a low voice trembling with fury, “I’ll kill you, kill you: have him kill you. I’ll tell them you attacked me: here by the saint. D’you hear? They’ll tear you apart … his brothers will kill you. I’ll go now, right now, and tell them. I will; they’ll believe me, they will: you know they will. Kill you, kill you….” She ran after him when he turned up the path.

      “You don’t believe me? You’ll see, you’ll see….”

      She walked on ahead of him so rapidly that he could barely follow her although she was tripped all the time by her veils. When they got to the house two of Hamid’s brothers were there but she hesitated just at the door, half turned to him with a faltering smile, and Yussef knew that she would say nothing. He had been very afraid for a while, and he knew that he would have a difficult time with a girl like that. They all went out carrying Hamid, and he was left in the house alone for the night.

      It was barely light the next morning when she came and Yussef was still asleep; she crawled in beside him without taking her clothes off. When they both got dressed later, she said that she would come back to make his dinner, and she did.

      While he was eating she kept urging him to eat more and leaning across the food to stroke his hair. He said that it bothered him. After that, when she first came into the house, she would be almost as she had been before and then she would gradually change, like a cat that seeks to be petted, until she had become quite the contrary.

      “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t do that all the time. Stop putting your arms around me and wetting my face with your face. I don’t like it when you want to breathe in my mouth. When you feel like that just go and draw two pails of water from the well in the courtyard and put them on to heat.”

      Yussef was a very religious boy, and he liked to bathe several times a day on the occasions which the ritual law demands. At first it was like that, and he knew, although he had never had a woman before, that he was a man; acting like a man. He felt that he was more of a man than Hamid, who let her do what she wanted. Before the month was over he no longer felt so safe or so sure. Often, when she came in the morning, he was up already; drawing the water. After that it was always he who drew the two pails of water and then they both went into the room: he went and drew water twice a day, at least.

      She was staying longer and longer in the house each day, saying that she really could not stay any longer with Hamid’s family; they were impossible. Her mother and sister began to come and visit her nearly every day. They had not come before because Hamid had said that he did not want to see them in the house all the time because they were on bad terms with his family ever since the wedding dispute. They sat and talked and, when they stayed for meals, having brought a little something with them, Yussef sat down and ate it first as the man of the house should. Because he was so young, one could not treat him as though he were really the man of the house, so it turned into a family meal as though he were still a little boy and they all enjoyed themselves.