Read The Boy Who The Set Fire and Other Stories for Free Online

said.
    She went out and came back with one skewer. That’s all we have, she told me.
    After a while they all went into the dining-room upstairs, and Mrs. James saw that the table was laid for six people instead of seven.
    Haven’t you laid a place for our driver? she said.
    Why doesn’t he eat downstairs? said the English woman. He’d be happier there.
    No, no! He always eats with us.
    The English woman came down into the bar and said: Come upstairs.
    I went up and sat with the Nazarenes. The servants brought the soup and I did not take any. The main course was chicken with potatoes. I turned my plate upside down. I did not want to eat because I was afraid. They had a black cook from Marrakech. When I had first seen her, my heart had tried to escape from her. I did not trust her at all.
    Mrs. James kept saying to me: You must eat. Why aren’t you eating?
    I don’t want anything.
    The English woman said: Oh, so you don’t want to eat? Why not?
    My stomach hurts. Besides, I had a pinchito downstairs, and it filled me up.
    She did not say anything. The meal was not a meal. The servant brought the fruit. Two pieces of melon and four cherries for each person. And they looked as if they had been waiting for a month in the icebox.
    When the Nazarenes had finished eating, they began to smoke cigarettes. A small boy came in. He was the son of the cook. Do you want coffee? he asked me in Arabic. A little coffee, and lots of milk, I said.
    After I had drunk my coffee, Mr. and Mrs. James and I went out into the garden. We sat down around a table and looked across at the Moroccan palace on the other side of the valley. They had spotlights turned on it so it would look like a postcard. We could see all the lights of Granada below. The day had been very hot, but the night was cool. Mr. James and his wife were talking together, and I was thinking only of those four English people in the house, the man and his wife, and the sister with her daughter. I could see that they had a terrible life there.
    In a little while some drunken Spaniards came out into the garden. One of them leaned against the wall, and a woman came and put her arms around his neck and began to kiss him. Then they would talk, and then kiss some more. This went on for nearly an hour.
    Later the two English women came out. We were wondering where you were, they said, looking at Mr. James, and I could see that they had just been talking about him. Then they went back into the house. A friend of the two who were kissing came and took them into the bar. I was thinking that the English women were crazy. On the telephone they had said they were very angry, but when Mr. James was there with them they talked and joked with him as if they were his friends.
    I’m sleepy, I told Mr. and Mrs. James. I’m going to bed. I went upstairs to the room where they had put me. It had a sewing-machine in it, and there were piles of old sheets and towels lying around. I had to go through Mr. James’s room to get into it. I pulled the spread off the bed the woman had told me was mine. There was a dirty blanket under the spread, and no sheets. The mattress was very old and filthy. Then I looked at the second bed. It had one sheet. I lay down on the bed they had given me, but I could not sleep. The room was over the bar, and there was flamenco noise and loud dancing going on. I lay on one side and the other, and on my back, and people cried: Olé! and all the time I was wondering if I would ever get to sleep.
    A little later I heard footsteps, and someone opened the door of my room. I saw the Englishman’s wife come in. She was holding one hand behind her. She’s got a knife, I said to myself, and she’s coming to use it on me. She walked toward my bed, and I was getting ready for her. Then I saw her other hand. There was nothing in it. But she kept coming, until she was beside the bed. Then she bent over and picked up a roll of electric cord that was lying on the floor. I decided that she