Nevertheless, the Atlájala enjoyed both bandits and soldiers immensely, and was even more desolate when it was left alone once again. It would become one of the swallows that made their nests in the rocks beside the top of the waterfall. In the burning sunlight it would plunge again and again into the curtain of mist that rose from far below, sometimes uttering exultant cries. It would spend a day as a plant louse, crawling slowly along the under side of the leaves, living quietly in the huge green world down there which is forever hidden from the sky. Or at night, in the velvet body of a panther, it would know the pleasure of the kill. Once for a year it lived in an eel at the bottom of the pool below the waterfall, feeling the mud give slowly before it as it pushed ahead with its flat nose; that was a restful period, but afterward the desire to know again the mysterious life of man had returned—an obsession of which it was useless to try to rid itself. And now it moved restlessly through the ruined rooms, a mute presence, alone, and thirsting to be incarnate once again, but in man’s flesh only. And with the building of highways through the country it was inevitable that people should come once again to the circular valley.
A man and a woman drove their automobile as far as a village down in a lower valley; hearing about the ruined monastery and the waterfall that dropped over the cliffs into the great amphitheatre, they determined to see these things. They came on burros as far as the village outside the gap, but there the Indians they had hired to accompany them refused to go any farther, and so they continued alone, upward through the canyon and into the precinct of the Atlájala.
It was noon when they rode into the valley; the black ribs of the cliffs glistened like glass in the sun’s blistering downward rays. They stopped the burros by a cluster of boulders at the edge of the sloping meadows. The man got down first, and reached up to help the woman off. She leaned forward, putting her hands on his face, and for a long moment they kissed. Then he lifted her to the ground and they climbed hand in hand up over the rocks. The Atlájala hovered near them, watching the woman closely: she was the first ever to have come into the valley. The two sat beneath a small tree on the grass, looking at one another, smiling. Out of habit, the Atlájala entered into the man. Immediately, instead of existing in the midst of the sunlit air, the bird calls and the plant odors, it was conscious only of the woman’s beauty and her terrible imminence. The waterfall, the earth, and the sky itself receded, rushed into nothingness, and there were only the woman’s smile and her arms and her odor. It was a world more suffocating and painful than the Atlájala had thought possible. Still, while the man spoke and the woman answered, it remained within.
“Leave him. He doesn’t love you.”
“He would kill me.”
“But I love you. I need you with me.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid of him.”
The man reached out to pull her to him; she drew back slightly, but her eyes grew large.
“We have today,” she murmured, turning her face toward the yellow walls of the monastery.
The man embraced her fiercely, crushing her against him as though the act would save his life. “No, no, no. It can’t go on like this,” he said. “No.”
The pain of his suffering was too intense; gently the Atlájala left the man and slipped into the woman. And now it would have believed itself to be housed in nothing, to be in its own spaceless self, so completely was it aware of the wandering wind, the small flutterings of the leaves, and the bright air that surrounded it. Yet there was a difference: each element was magnified in intensity, the whole sphere of being was immense, limitless. Now it understood what the man sought in the woman, and it knew that he suffered because he never would attain that sense of completion he sought. But the Atlájala, being one with the woman, had attained it, and being aware of possessing it, trembled with delight. The woman shuddered as her lips met those of the man. There on the grass in the shade of the tree their joy reached new heights; the Atlájala, knowing them both, formed a single channel between the secret springs of their desires. Throughout, it remained within the woman, and began vaguely to devise ways of keeping her, if not inside the valley, at least nearby, so that she might return.
In the afternoon, with dreamlike motions, they walked to the burros and mounted them, driving them through the deep meadow grass to the monastery. Inside the great courtyard they halted, looking hesitantly at the ancient arches in the sunlight, and at the darkness inside the doorways.
“Shall we go in?” said the woman.
“We must get back.”
“I want to go in,” she said. (The Atlájala exulted.) A thin gray snake slid along the ground into the bushes. They did not see it.
The man looked at her perplexedly. “It’s late,” he said.
But she jumped down from her burro by herself and walked beneath the arches into the long corridor within. (Never had the rooms seemed so real as now when the Atlájala was seeing them through her eyes.)
They explored all the rooms. Then the woman wanted to climb up into the tower, but the man took a determined stand.
“We must go back now,” he said firmly, putting his hand on her shoulder.
“This is our only day together, and you think of nothing but getting back.”
“But the time…”
“There is a moon. We won’t lose the way.”
He would not change his mind. “No.”
“As you like,” she said. “I’m going up. You can go back alone if you like.”
The man laughed uneasily. “You’re mad.” He tried to kiss her.
She turned away and did not answer for a moment. Then she said: “You want me to leave my husband for you. You ask everything from me, but what do you do for me in return?You refuse even to climb up into a little tower with me to see the view. Go back alone. Go!”
She sobbed and rushed toward the dark stairwell. Calling after her, he followed, but stumbled somewhere behind her. She was as sure of foot as if she had climbed the many stone steps a thousand times before, hurrying up through the darkness, around and around.
In the end she came out at the top and peered through the small apertures in the cracking walls. The beams which had supported the bell had rotted and fallen; the heavy bell lay on its side in the rubble, like a dead animal. The waterfall’s sound was louder up here; the valley was nearly full of shadow. Below, the man called her name repeatedly. She did not answer. As she stood watching the shadow of the cliffs slowly overtake the farthest recesses of the valley and begin to climb the naked rocks to the east, an idea formed in her mind. It was not the kind of idea which she would have expected of herself, but it was there, growing and inescapable. When she felt it complete there inside her, she turned and went lightly back down. The man was sitting in the dark near the bottom of the stairs, groaning a little.
“What is it?” she said.
“I hurt my leg. Now are you ready to go or not?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I’m sorry you fell.”
Without saying anything he rose and limped after her out into the courtyard where the burros stood. The cold mountain air was beginning to flow down from the tops of the cliffs. As they rode through the meadow she began to think of how she would broach the subject to him. (It must be done before they reached the gap. The Atlájala trembled.)
“Do you forgive me?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he laughed.
“Do you love me?”
“More than anything in the world.”
“Is that true?”
He glanced at her in the failing light, sitting erect on the jogging animal.
“You know it is,” he said softly.
She hesitated.
“There is only one way, then,” she said finally.
“But what?”
“I’m afraid of him. I won’t go back to him. You go back. I’ll stay in the village here.” (Being that near, she would come each day to the monastery.) “When it is done, you will come and get me. Then we can go somewhere e
lse. No one will find us.”
The man’s voice sounded strange. “I don’t understand.”
“You do understand. And that is the only way. Do it or not, as you like. It is the only way.”
They trotted along for a while in silence. The canyon loomed ahead, black against the evening sky.
Then the man said, very clearly: “Never.”
A moment later the trail led out into an open space high above the swift water below. The hollow sound of the river reached them faintly. The light in the sky was almost gone; in the dusk the landscape had taken on false contours. Everything was gray—the rocks, the bushes, the trail—and nothing had distance or scale. They slowed their pace.
His words still echoed in her ears.
“I won’t go back to him!” she cried with sudden vehemence. “You can go back and play cards with him as usual. Be his good friend the same as always. I won’t go. I can’t go on with both of you in the town.” (The plan was not working; the Atlájala saw it had lost her, yet it still could help her.)
“You’re very tired,” he said softly.
He was right. Almost as he said the words, that unaccustomed exhilaration and lightness she had felt ever since noon seemed to leave her; she hung her head wearily, and said: “Yes, I am.”
At the same moment the man uttered a sharp, terrible cry; she looked up in time to see his burro plunge from the edge of the trail into the grayness below. There was a silence, and then the faraway sound of many stones sliding downward. She could not move or stop the burro; she sat dumbly, letting it carry her along, an inert weight on its back.
For one final instant, as she reached the pass which was the edge of its realm, the Atlájala alighted tremulously within her. She raised her head and a tiny exultant shiver passed through her; then she let it fall forward once again.
Hanging in the dim air above the trail, the Atlájala watched her indistinct figure grow invisible in the gathering night. (If it had not been able to hold her there, still it had been able to help her.)
A moment later it was in the tower, listening to the spiders mend their webs that she had damaged. It would be a long, long time before it would bestir itself to enter into another being’s awareness. A long, long time—perhaps forever.
(1950)
The Delicate Prey
THERE WERE THREE Filala who sold leather in Tabelbala—two brothers and the young son of their sister. The two older merchants were serious, bearded men who liked to engage in complicated theological discussions during the slow passage of the hot hours in their hanoute near the market-place; the youth naturally occupied himself almost exclusively with the black-skinned girls in the small quartier réservé. There was one who seemed more desirable than the others, so that he was a little sorry when the older men announced that soon they would all leave for Tessalit. But nearly every town has its quartier, and Driss was reasonably certain of being able to have any lovely resident of any quartier, whatever her present emotional entanglements; thus his chagrin at hearing of the projected departure was short-lived.
The three Filala waited for the cold weather before starting out for Tessalit. Because they wanted to get there quickly they chose the westernmost trail, which is also the one leading through the most remote regions, contiguous to the lands of the plundering Reguibat tribes. It was a long time since the uncouth mountain men had swept down from the hammada upon a caravan; most people were of the opinion that since the war of the Sarrho they had lost the greater part of their arms and ammunition, and, more important still, their spirit. And a tiny group of three men and their camels could scarcely awaken the envy of the Reguibat, traditionally rich with loot from all Rio de Oro and Mauretania.
Their friends in Tabelbala, most of them other Filali leather merchants, walked beside them sadly as far as the edge of the town; then they bade them farewell, and watched them mount their camels to ride off slowly toward the bright horizon.
“If you meet any Reguibat, keep them ahead of you!” they called.
The danger lay principally in the territory they would reach only three or four days’ journey from Tabelbala; after a week the edge of the land haunted by the Reguibat would be left entirely behind. The weather was cool save at midday. They took turns sitting guard at night; when Driss stayed awake he brought out a small flute whose piercing notes made the older uncle frown with annoyance, so that he asked him to go and sit at some distance from the sleeping-blankets. All night he sat playing whatever sad songs he could call to mind; the bright ones in his opinion belonged to the quartier, where one was never alone.
When the uncles kept watch, they sat quietly, staring ahead of them into the night. There were just the three of them.
And then one day a solitary figure appeared, moving toward them across the lifeless plain from the west. One man on a camel; there was no sign of any others, although they scanned the wasteland in every direction. They stopped for a while; he altered his course slightly. They went ahead; he changed it again. There was no doubt that he wanted to speak with them.
“Let him come,” grumbled the older uncle, glaring about the empty horizon once more. “We each have a gun.”
Driss laughed. To him it seemed absurd even to admit the possibility of trouble from one lone man.
When finally the figure arrived within calling distance, it hailed them in a voice like a muezzin’s: “S’l’m aleikoum!” They halted, but did not dismount, and waited for the man to draw nearer. Soon he called again; this time the older uncle replied, but the distance was still too great for his voice to carry, and the man did not hear his greeting. Presently he was close enough for them to see that he did not wear Reguiba attire. They muttered to one another: “He comes from the north, not the west.” And they all felt glad. However, even when he came up beside them they remained on the camels, bowing solemnly from where they sat, and always searching in the new face and in the garments below it for some false note which might reveal the possible truth—that the man was a scout for the Reguibat, who would be waiting up on the hammada only a few hours distant, or even now moving parallel to the trail, closing in upon them in such a manner that they would not arrive at a point within visibility until after dusk.
Certainly the stranger himself was no Reguiba; he was quick and jolly, with light skin and very little beard. It occurred to Driss that he did not like his small, active eyes which seemed to take in everything and give out nothing, but this passing reaction became only a part of the general initial distrust, all of which was dissipated when they learned that the man was a Moungari. Moungar is a holy place in that part of the world, and its few residents are treated with respect by the pilgrims who go to visit the ruined shrine nearby.
The newcomer took no pains to hide the fear he had felt at being alone in the region, or the pleasure it gave him to be now with three other men. They all dismounted and made tea to seal their friendship, the Moungari furnishing the charcoal.
During the third round of glasses he made the suggestion that since he was going more or less in their direction he accompany them as far as Taoudeni. His bright black eyes darting from one Filali to the other, he explained that he was an excellent shot, that he was certain he could supply them all with some good gazelle meat en route, or at least an aoudad. The Filala considered; the oldest finally said: “Agreed.” Even if the Moungari turned out to have not quite the hunting prowess he claimed for himself, there would be four of them on the voyage instead of three.
Two mornings later, in the mighty silence of the rising sun, the Moungari pointed at the low hills that lay beside them to the east: “Timma. I know this land. Wait here. If you hear me shoot, then come, because that will mean there are gazelles.”
The Moungari went off on foot, climbing up between the boulders and disappearing behind the nearest crest. “He trusts us,” thought the Filala. “He has left his mehari, his blankets, his packs.” They said nothing, but each knew that the others were thinking the same as he, and they all felt warmly
toward the stranger. They sat waiting in the early morning chill while the camels grumbled.
It seemed unlikely that there would prove to be any gazelles in the region, but if there should be any, and the Moungari were as good a hunter as he claimed to be, then there was a chance they would have a mechoui of gazelle that evening, and that would be very fine.
Slowly the sun mounted in the hard blue sky. One camel lumbered up and went off, hoping to find a dead thistle or a bush between the rocks, something left over from a year when rain might have fallen. When it had disappeared, Driss went in seach of it and drove it back to the others, shouting: “Hut!”
He sat down. Suddenly there came a shot, a long empty interval, and then another shot. The sounds were fairly distant, but perfectly clear in the absolute silence. The older brother said: “I shall go. Who knows? There may be many gazelles.”
He clambered up the rocks, his gun in his hand, and was gone.
Again they waited. When the shots sounded this time, they came from two guns.
“Perhaps they have killed one!” Driss cried.
“Yemkin. With Allah’s aid,” replied his uncle, rising and taking up his gun. “I want to try my hand at this.”
Driss was disappointed: he had hoped to go himself. If only he had got up a moment ago, it might have been possible, but even so it was likely that he would have been left behind to watch the mehara. In any case, now it was too late; his uncle had spoken.
“Good.”
His uncle went off singing a song from Tafilalet: it was about datepalms and hidden smiles. For several minutes Driss heard snatches of the song, as the melody reached the high notes. Then the sound was lost in the enveloping silence.
He waited. The sun began to be very hot. He covered his head with his burnous. The camels looked at each other stupidly, craning their necks, baring their brown and yellow teeth. He thought of playing his flute, but it did not seem the right moment: he was too restless, too eager to be up there with his gun, crouching behind the rocks, stalking the delicate prey. He thought of Tessalit and wondered what it would be like. Full of blacks and Touareg, certainly more lively than Tabelbala, because of the road that passed through it. There was a shot. He waited for others, but no more came this time. Again he imagined himself there among the boulders, taking aim at a fleeing beast. He pulled the trigger, the animal fell. Others appeared, and he got them all. In the dark the travelers sat around the fire gorging themselves with the rich roasted flesh, their faces gleaming with grease. Everyone was happy, and even the Moungari admitted that the young Filali was the best hunter of them all.