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The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep refrain of "Wur-ra-Wurra!" and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream. Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth. "Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her," he murmured.
And she had really the sensation of setting a captive at liberty. She turned to leave him, but he said: "Please, stop, Madame." "Why?" "You have made a mistake." "In what?" "I do want to see this garden." "Really? Well, then, you can wander through it." "I do not wish to see it alone." "Larbi shall guide you. For half a franc he will gladly give up his serenading."
Domini got up swiftly. "Come, Boris," she said, without looking at him. He obeyed her and rose to his feet. "Let us go to the wall," she said, "and look out once more on the desert. It must be nearly noon. Perhaps perhaps we shall hear the call to prayer." They walked down the winding alleys towards the edge of the garden. The sound of the flute of Larbi died away gradually into silence.
Marrakesh, like all other inland cities of Morocco, has neither hotel nor guest-house. It boasts some large fandaks, notably that of Hadj Larbi, where the caravans from the desert send their merchandise and chief merchants, but no sane European will choose to seek shelter in a fandak in Morocco unless there is no better place available.
A small boy in a white tunic and red fez, who called himself Larbi, was playing about near the beggar: being able to speak a little English, he made himself useful to visitors, and was rapidly exchanging his good qualities for the drawbacks of the hanger-on: he came out with us for a day or two, smoked several cigarettes in the course of the afternoon, and picked us useless bunches of ordinary flowers.
Through the archways and the narrow doorway the dense walls of leafage were visible standing on guard about this airy hermitage, and the hot purple blossoms of the bougainvillea shed a cloud of colour through the bosky dimness. And still the flute of Larbi showered soft, clear, whimsical music from some hidden place close by.
He was a Sicilian; but came to North Africa each winter. I have always heard the tomtoms and the pipes, and I know nearly all the desert songs of the nomads." "This is a love-song, isn't it?" "Yes. Larbi is always in love, they tell me. Each new dancer catches him in her net. Happy Larbi!" "Because he can love so easily?" "Or unlove so easily. Look at him, Madame."
She watched him, knowing that within less than a moment she would be watching only the trees and the sand. She gazed at the bent figure, calling up all her faculties, crying out to herself passionately, desperately, "Remember it remember it as it is there before you just as it is for ever." As it reached the turning, in the distance of the garden rose the twitter of the flute of Larbi.
"What is that?" said Domini, suddenly stopping on the pale sand. A thin and remote sound stole to them down the alley, clear and frail as the note of a night bird. "It is Larbi playing upon the flute. He is in love. That is why he plays when he ought to be watering the flowers and raking out the sand."
But presently, in the distance among the trees, there rose a light, frail sound that struck into both their hearts like a thin weapon. It was the flute of Larbi, and it reminded them of what did it not remind them?
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