The Spider's House by Paul Bowles Read Free Book Online Page A

you understand what I’m saying to you?”
    “I understand,” Amar replied, twisting the sheet between his toes. He felt better; he would have liked to go out and walk a bit, but he knew that if he got up he would no longer feel like going out. Through the iron grillwork of the window he could see the flat rooftops of a distant corner of the city, with a square of darkening sky above.
    “It is worse for a Moslem to lie,” resumed his father. “And who among all the Moslems commits the greatest sin if he lies or steals? A Cherif. And thanks to Allah you are a Cherif….”
    “Hamdoul’lah ,” murmured Amar, obediently but with feel ing. “Thanks to Allah.”
    “Not only Hamdoul’lah, Hamdoul’lah! No! You must become a man and be a Cherif. The Cherif lives for his people. I Would rather see you dead than growing to be like the carrion you talk with in the street. Dead! Do you understand?” The oldman’s voice rose. “There will be no more Moslems unless every young Cherif obeys the laws of Allah.”
    He went on in this vein. Amar understood and silently agreed, but at the same time he could not keep himself from thinking: “He doesn’t know what the world is like today.” The thought that his own conception of the world was so different from his father’s was like a protecting wall around his entire being. When his father went out into the street he had only the mosque, the Koran, the other old men in his mind. It was the immutable world of law, the written word, unchanging beneficence, but it was in some way wrinkled and dried up. Whereas when Amar stepped out the door there was the whole vast earth waiting, the live, mysterious earth, that belonged to him in a way it could belong to no one else, and where anything at all might happen. The smell of the morning breeze moving in across the walls from the olive groves, the sound of the river falling over the rocks as it rushed in its canyons through the heart of the city, the moving shadows of the trees on the white dust beneath, when he sat at midday in their shelter—such things had a particular message for him that they could not have for anyone else, least of all his father. The world where the old man lived, he imagined, must look something like a picture in one of those newspapers that were smuggled in from Egypt: gray, smudged, meaningless save as an accompaniment to the written text.
    He listened to his father’s words with growing impatience. There were repeated references to his duties as a descendant of the Prophet. To whom could the people turn in times of difficulty, if not to the Chorfa? Every Cherif was a leader. It was true, but he knew there was something wrong with the picture. The Chorfa were the leaders, but they could lead their followers only to defeat, and this was something he could never say to anyone. As if the old man had sensed the emotion, if not the precise idea that was in his son’s mind, he stopped talking for a moment, and then began to speak again in a much lower voice, sadly. “I have committed a very great sin,” he said. “Allah will be the judge. I should have beaten you day and night, dragged you to school by your hair, until you knew how to write. Nowyou will never learn. It’s too late. You will never know anything. And this is my fault.”
    Amar was shocked; his father had never spoken in such a manner. “No,” he said tentatively. “My fault.”
    In the dimness Amar saw his father’s arms reach out toward him. A hand was placed on each temple, and the old man bent forward and touched his lips lightly to the boy’s forehead. Then he sat back, shook his head back and forth several times in silence, rose, and went out of the room without saying any more.
    A few minutes later Mustapha appeared frowning in the doorway, obviously having been sent by his father to inquire after Amar’s health. The first instant, upon seeing him, Amar had been about to say something bitter; then a strange calm took possession of