Jane Bowles writes to husband Paul from Morocco, shortly before France’s recognition of its independence. Bowles situates her depressive turns and financial travails within a city struggling with decolonization.
Tangier, Morrocco
Dearest Bupple:
It has been very difficult for me to write you. I have covered sheet after sheet, but now I am less troubled in my head for some reason. Maybe because I hit bottom, I think. And now I feel that the weight is lifting. I am not going back in that wild despairing way over my departure from Ceylon, my missing the end of your novel, the temple of Madura, that terrible trip back alone (a nightmare to the end because it was the twin of the other trip I might have made with you). It was better toward the end, but I hit bottom again in Tangier. The house reeked of medicine and there was the smell of other people’s stale soup in the velvet haeti and even in the blue wall. I put my nose on the wall. It was cold and I could smell soup. The first day I was in the house the whole Casbah reeked of some sweet and horrible chemical smell which doubled its intensity with each new gust of the east wind. The Arabs were holding their noses, but I didn’t know that. On the first day I thought I alone could smell it, and it was like the madness I had been living in. A nightmare smell coming up from the port, and a special punishment for me, for my return. I really felt very bad. I can’t even remember whether or not Cherifa came to me here that first night in the house. Truly, I can’t. On the second day the barber came over to me in his white and black hood and asked me to go to the Administration about the smell. He was holding his nose. “There are microbes in the air. We will all perish,” he said. As he spends his entire time in the mosque and is one of the few old-fashioned Arabs left in the quarter, I was amused. The smell is gone now. The sewer pipes had broken, and they were dumping some chemical into the sea while they were mending them. And from that day on I felt better. And the house smells better—at least, to me. Fathma said: “Naturally. Filthy Nazarene cooking. Everything made of pork. Pork soup, pork bread, pork coffee, an all-pork house.” But now there is kaimon, and charcoal, in the air. I feel so much better. But I am terrified of beginning to work. I don’t know what I’ll do if that nightmare closes in on me again. I am sorry too that you have to live through it. I won’t go near you if it happens again. Actually I cannot allow it to happen again. But I must work. I had some shattering news when I returned… le coup de grâce … my taxes. Clean out of my mind from the first second that I banked the money. Somewhere way back, someone, either you of Audrey, warned me not to consider the money all mine, and I was a fool to forget. Having never paid taxes … However, I suppose it is understandable. The slip of paper doesn’t say much, not even what percent I am to be taxed. Perhaps all that has gone off to you. In view of the condition I was in this winter in this winter and on the boat, I should think this blow would have landed me in the hospital. In fact I went to bed and waited. But I got up again the next day alive and sane still, though my head was pounding with blood-pressure symptoms. I had to get out of that state, obviously, and I did. I tried writing you, but the letters were magillahs and all about Madura and the tax and Mrs. Timmer and Cherifa in one tajine. Senseless and anguished, and they weighed a ton.
[…]
Tangier looks worse. The Socco in the afternoon is mostly filled with old clothes. A veritable flea-market that I’m trying to preserve. I’ve been booming away at Phyllis about it, because she knows the new Administrator. I also asked her about my hair. She has me down on a list. It says: Janie, Grand Socco, hair. Which is just about it, isn’t it? The same obsessions, over and over. When I am sure about my hair I will write. But I think the news is good. You will never know what that nightmare was like. I know you thought it was in my mind. I am going on with Bépanthène Roche. On the days I buy it I try to eat more cheaply, so that I can keep, as much as I can, within a budget. Phyllis gave me a blue bead for luck and to ward off the evil eye. Brion’s restaurant is the only thing does business in town. John Goodwin invited me to go to Spain any time during the Feria and Holy Week. He has an apartment for a month. But I’m not sure that the trip alone wouldn’t come to a thousand pesetas or more. Also I never go anywhere, so why should I suddenly get to the Feria, since I didn’t get to Madura. I would like to hear some Gypsies, but not with those tourists there. I do not think I will go. And certainly not if I’m working.
My terrace smells of male pipi. I suppose it will forever. Eric Gifford brought his male cat with him, Hassan, whom he never mentioned to me. Or else I wasn’t paying attention. The worst of the bad weather is over, although the first two weeks at the Massilia were hell. Temsamany scared me so on the boat, about people being able to stay in one’s house forever, that I offered them two weeks grace in the house. I wrote you that I cheered up on the boat when I thought of Jorge Jantus, and sure enough having him as a neighbor has made a lot of difference to me. I rather like their little group, and they are so near I can pop in there. He is bringing me some kif today. I had a cigarette of kit last night before supper and rather liked the effect. I had some drinks too, so I don’t suppose I can judge, but it changed the effect of the drink noticeably.
[…]
The baqals announced a three-day close-down in commemoration of the upset here two or three years ago, and they were closed one. Plus ça change. Now my left hand is tired. Please write, and especially about your book, and don’t about all scold me or put me in a panic. We’ll talk about it all when you come,if you ever do. I wonder if instead you’ll go to England? Anyway,Bubble, I think the trip has done some good. Much love. I hope you are well and that it got really hot. Write everything.
Jane
FURTHER READING
For a pleasant account of Jane and Paul Bowles’ marriage, click here
“Jane Bowles’ Fiction of Psychic Dependency, ” is available here for your reading
For a strange review of the documentary Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, venture here