Desert Air | Page 3

here it used to mount to my head like wine.'
"'Bad for you, Marnier!' I said, laughing.
"Then I added, to the aumônier:
"'My friend never drinks wine, and so ought to be peculiarly
susceptible to such an influence.'"

II
"Opposite to the aumonier's dwelling was the great dancing-house of
the town, and when we had bade him good-night, and turned to go back
to the inn, I rather tentatively suggested to Marnier that, perhaps, it
would be interesting to look in there for a moment.
"'All right,' he responded, with his most donnish manner. 'But I expect
it will be rather an unwashed crowd.'
"A quantity of native soldiers--the sort that used to be called
Turcos--were gathered round the door. We pushed our way through

them, and entered. The café was large, with big white pillars and a
double row of divans in the middle, and divans rising in tiers all round.
On the left was a large doorway, in which gorgeously-dressed painted
women, with gold crowns on their heads, were standing, smoking
cigarettes, and laughing with the Arabs; and at the end farthest from the
street entrance was a raised platform, on which sat three musicians--a
wild-looking demon of a man blowing into an instrument with an
immense funnel, and two men beating tomtoms. The noise they made
was terrific. The piper wore a voluminous burnouse, and as the dancers
came in in pairs from the big doorway, which led into the court where
they all live together, each in her separate little room with her own
front door, they threw their door keys into the hood that was attached to
it. As soon as they had finished dancing they went to the hood, and
rummaged violently for them again. And all the time the piper blew
frantically into his instrument, and rocked himself about like a man in a
convulsion.
"We sat on one of the raised divans, with coffee before us on a wooden
stool, and Marnier observed it all with a slightly supercilious coldness.
The women, who were dressed in different shades of red, and were the
most amazing trollops I ever set eyes on, came and went in pairs,
fluttered their painted fingers, twittered like startled birds, jumped and
twirled, wriggled and revolved, and inclined their greasy foreheads to
the impenetrable spectators, who stuck silver coins on to the perspiring
flesh. And Marnier sat and gazed at them with the aloofness of one who
watches the creatures in puddle water through a microscope. I could
scarcely help laughing at him, but I wished him away. For to me there
was excitement, there was even a sort of ecstasy, in the utter barbarity
of this spectacle, in the moving scarlet figures with their golden crowns
and tufts of ostrich plumes, in the serried masses of turbaned and
hooded spectators, in the rocking forms of the musicians, in the strident
and ceaseless uproar that they made.
"And through the doorway where the Tur-cos--I like the old
name--crowded I saw the sand filtering in from the desert, and against
the black leaves of a solitary palm-tree, with leaves like giant Fatma
hands, I saw the silver disc of the moon.

"'I vote we go,' said Marnier's light tenor voice in my ear. 'The
atmosphere's awful in here.' "'Very well,' I said.
"I got up; but just then a girl, dressed in midnight purple embroidered
with silver, came in from the doorway, and began to dance alone. She
was very young--fourteen, I found out afterwards--and, in contrast to
the other women, extremely beautiful. There were grace, seduction,
mystery, and coquetry in her face and in all her movements. Her long
black eyes held fire and dreams. Her fluttering hands seemed
beckoning us to the realms of the thousand and one nights. I stood
where I had got up, and watched her.
"'I say, aren't we going?' said Marnier's voice in my ear.
"I cursed the day when I had agreed to take him with me, leaped down
to the earth, and struggled towards the door. As we neared it the girl
sidled down the room till she was exactly in front of Marnier. Then she
danced before him, smiling with her immense eyes, which she fixed
steadily upon him, and bending forward her pretty head, covered with a
cloth of silver handkerchief.
"'Give her something,' I said to him, laughing, as he stared back at her
grimly.
"He thrust his hand into his pocket, found a franc, stuck it awkwardly
against her oval forehead, and followed me out.
"When we were in the sandy street he walked a few steps in silence,
then stood still, and, to my surprise, stared back at the dancing-house.
Then he put his hand to his head.
"'Is the air having its alcoholic effect?'