The Strange Land

by Hammond Innes

  ‘Why didn’t you knock and switch on the light?’

  ‘I do not wish to disturb you, senor.’ He said it quickly as though it were something he had expected to have to say, and then added, ‘May I take them please?’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘And you can take my jacket. That needs drying, too.’ I got out of bed and emptied the pockets. Then I ran through Kavan’s things. I thought he might have his wallet in one of the pockets of his windbreaker, but there was nothing but a jack-knife, an old briar, matches - the usual odds and ends of a man sailing a boat. ‘Thank the patrone for me, will you?’ The boy nodded and scurried out of the room. The door closed with a slam.

  ‘Who was that? What is it?’

  I turned quickly towards the bed and saw that Kavan was sitting bolt upright, a startled look on his face. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It was one of the hotel boys. He came for your wet things.’

  Relief showed on his face and his head sank back against the pillows. ‘I thought I was back on the boat,’ he murmured. Though he was utterly exhausted, his mind still controlled his body, forcing it to react to unusual sounds, as though he were still at the yacht’s helm. I thought of how it must have been at night out there in the Atlantic after Wade had gone overboard, and I crossed over to the window to draw the curtains and shut out the moonlight.

  As I pulled the curtains, I glanced down into the street below. A movement caught my eyes. There was somebody standing down there in the shadow of a doorway on the opposite side of the street, standing quite still, staring up at the window. I could see the pale circle of a face, nothing more. And then the figure moved, walking quickly away, keeping to the shadows of the buildings. It was a European girl and where an alley entered the street, she crossed a patch of moonlight.

  It was Kavan’s wife.

  She was in the shadows again now, walking quickly. I watched her until she turned at the end of the street, up towards the Boulevard Pasteur. I could have been mistaken, of course. But I knew I wasn’t — the suede jacket and the crumpled skirt, the way she walked, the shape of the face with its high, bony forehead as she had stared up at me from the shadows. What had she wanted? She hadn’t come into the hotel. She hadn’t asked to see him. The natural thing …

  ‘What is it? What are you staring at?’

  I swung away from the window and saw that his eyes were watching me, and there was the same fearful-ness in them that I had seen in his wife’s eyes when she asked me who I was. ‘I’ve just seen your wife,’ I said. ‘She was out there, looking up at the hotel.’

  ‘My wife?’

  ‘The girl who was on the beach.’

  He stared at me. ‘How do you know she is my wife?’ For the first time I noticed the trace of a foreign accent.

  ‘She told me,’ I said.

  He started to get out of bed then, but I stopped him. ‘She’s gone now.’ And then I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were Kavan down there on the beach? Surely you must have guessed who I was?’

  ‘How should I? Besides — ‘ He hesitated and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It is not the moment to say who I am.’

  ‘Because of the police?’ I asked. ‘And then, when you saw your wife …’ I hesitated, wondering how best to put it. ‘She loves you,’ I said. ‘Surely you must know that? Somehow she got out of Czechoslovakia and came here to meet you, and when you saw her you turned your back on her. Surely you could have — ‘

  His eyes suddenly blazed at me. ‘For Christ’s sake, stop it!’ he cried out. ‘Stop it! Do you hear? How do I know they don’t arrange for her to come here to Tangier? They may be watching her, trying to follow me. They are there in the background always.’ The words tumbled wildly out of his mouth, and then he steadied himself and pushed his hands up over his face and through his hair. ‘I have not seen Karen for more than four years.’ His voice was gentle, but with a note of bitterness in it. ‘And then suddenly we meet…’ He stared at me. ‘Do you think I like to have to turn my back on her?’ He shrugged his shoulders angrily. ‘I have had too much of this - during the German occupation and after, when the Russians walk in. You don’t understand. You were born British. You don’t understand what it is to be a middle-European - always to be escaping from something, always to go in fear - the knock on the door, the unopened envelope, the glance of a stranger in the street - to have people checking on you, spying on you, coming between you and your work, never to be trusted or to trust anybody. God! If only I’d been born British.’ There were tears of anger and frustration in his eyes and he lay back, exhausted.

  ‘Why did you leave England then?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you become naturalised?’

  ‘Naturalised!’ He laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, for there was a note of hysteria in it. ‘How can I become naturalised when they…’ He closed his mouth abruptly, his eyes suddenly watchful. ‘Don’t ask me any more questions,’ he said. ‘You want a doctor for your Mission. All right, you have one. I am here. But don’t ask me any questions. I don’t want any questions.’ His voice shook with the violence of his feeling.

  I stood for a moment staring at him. I didn’t like it. I knew too little about the man. I’d been prepared for a failure. What else could I expect of a qualified doctor who was willing to come out to North Africa and bury himself in a village in the Atlas? But I hadn’t been prepared for this.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I won’t ask any more questions.’ And then to ease the tension between us I asked him if he’d like some food.

  ‘No. No, thank you. A little cognac. That’s all.’

  I got some dry clothes from my suitcase, put them on and went down to the Cypriot cafe at the corner. When I returned I found he had been sick. His face was ghastly white and he was sweating and shivering. I poured him a little cognac, added some water and handed it to him. His hands were trembling uncontrollably as he took the tumbler from me. ‘Shall I get a doctor?’ I asked.

  He shook his head, quickly and emphatically. ‘No. I’ll be all right in a minute.’ He sipped at the cognac. ‘I’m just exhausted physically.’

  But it was more than that. It was nervous exhaustion.

  ‘Can I have a cigarette please?’

  I gave him one and when I had lit it for him, he drew on it, quickly, eagerly, like a man whose nerves are crying out for a sedative. I stayed with him whilst he smoked. He didn’t talk and a heavy silence lay over the room. I watched him covertly, wondering how this odd, excitable man would settle into the quiet, lonely life that I had become accustomed to. It wasn’t lonely, of course. There was too much to do, too many demands on one’s time and energy. But for a man who wasn’t accustomed to it, who wasn’t accepting the life voluntarily … I had been so engrossed in the idea of getting a doctor out there that I hadn’t really given much thought to the fact that he would also be a man, with a personality of his own, a past and all the inevitable human complications and peculiarities. I had thought about it only as it would affect me, not as I and the conditions of life down at Enfida would affect him.

  ‘Have you ever been to Morocco before?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘No. Never.’

  I gave him a little more cognac and then I began to talk about Enfida. I told him how the olives were just being gathered and piled in heaps in the open space outside the auberge and how we would soon be thrashing our own trees to harvest the crop that was part of the tiny income of the Mission. I described the mountain villages to him; how they were flat-roofed, like Tibetan villages, and clung precariously to the sides of great ravines that cut back to the base of the peaks that rose twelve and thirteen thousand feet to form the backbone of the Atlas Mountains. And I tried to give him an idea of what it was like, travelling every day from village to village, sometimes on foot, sometimes by mule, living in the Berber huts and sitting around at night, drinking mint tea and listening to their stories and the gossip of the village.

  And then, suddenly, his hand fell limp at the edge of the bed and he
was asleep. I got up and took the cigarette from between his fingers and picked up the empty tumbler which lay on his chest. His face had more colour in it now, and it was relaxed. The nerve at the corner of his mouth no longer twitched and his features were smoothed out as though his mind were at rest.

  I put his arms inside the bedclothes and then I switched out the light and went out to the cafe for some food. When I returned he was still lying exactly as I had left him. His mouth was slightly open and he was snoring gently. I went to bed by the moon’s light that filtered in through the half-drawn curtains and lay there, wondering about him and about his wife and whether I had bitten off more than I could chew financially, for I would have to get her to join us at the Mission.

  In thinking about the Mission, I forgot to some extent the strangeness of his arrival and drifted quietly off to sleep.

  I awoke to a tap on the door and a shaft of sunlight cutting across my face. ‘Entrez!’ I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was one of the hotel boys to say that the police and the douane had arrived. ‘All right. Show them up.’ I got out of bed and slipped my dressing gown on. Kavan was still fast asleep. He didn’t seem to have moved all night. He still lay on his back, quite motionless, his mouth slightly open and his breathing regular and easy. I looked at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. He had had more than a dozen hours’ sleep. He should be fit enough now to cope with the immigration formalities.

  The door opened and they came in. It was the same sergeant and he had with him one of the Customs officers. I glanced back at the bed, wishing that I’d told them to wait. I’d have to wake him now and he’d be suddenly confronted with them. I hoped he’d be clear in his mind what he was going to tell them. He ought to have mentioned Wade’s death to them the night before.

  ‘Muy buenas, senor.’

  ‘Muy buenas.’ I gave the sergeant a chair. The Customs officer sat on the couch. They both stared at Kavan. I felt uneasy and only half awake.

  ‘So, he is still sleeping, eh?’ The sergeant clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘I am sorry to disturb him, but it is the formalities, you understand.’ He shrugged his shoulders to make it clear that he was not responsible for drawing up the regulations.

  ‘You want me to wake him?’

  ‘Si, si - if you please. He is all right, eh?’

  ‘Yes, he’s all right,’ I said. ‘He was just exhausted. He had a bad trip.’

  The sergeant nodded. ‘Of course. And to wreck the ship - terrible. We will be very quick. Then he can sleep again.’

  I went over to the bed and shook Kavan gently. His eyelids flicked back almost immediately. ‘What is it?’ And then he saw the police and there was instant panic in his eyes. ‘What do they want? Why are they here?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s about the immigration details. They said they’d come this morning. Remember?’

  He nodded, but all the blood seemed to have drained out of his face so that it looked as white as it had done the previous night.

  ‘Senor Wade.’ The sergeant had got to his feet.

  I started to explain that he wasn’t Wade, but Kavan checked me, gripping hold of my arm. I could feel him trembling. His eyes switched from the police sergeant to the door and then back again to the sergeant. ‘What do you want?’ he asked in fair Spanish and his voice shook slightly and I could feel him trying desperately to get control of himself.

  The sergeant was standing at the foot of the bed now. ‘You are captain of the boat that is wrecked last night in the Baie des Juifs?’

  Kavan hesitated, glancing up at me, and his tongue licked along the sore edges of his lips. ‘Yes.’ His voice was little more than a whisper. But then he added in a firmer tone, ‘Yes, I’m the captain of the boat.’

  ‘What is the name of the boat please?’

  “Gay Juliet.’

  The sergeant had his notebook out now. He was leaning over the end of the bed, his round, rather chubby face with its blue jowls puckered in a frown of concentration as he licked his pencil and wrote down the name of the boat. ‘And you are from where?’

  ‘Falmouth.’

  ‘You come direct, senor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your name is Senor Roland Wade?’

  Again Kavan hesitated and then he nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just a moment,’ I said, speaking to him in English. ‘This is absurd, you know. You can’t go on trying to pretend you’re Wade.’

  ‘Why not? Are you going to stop me? Listen.’ He grabbed hold of my arm again. ‘You want a doctor for your Mission, don’t you? It’s important to you. It must be or you wouldn’t be taking somebody you know nothing about.’

  ‘Yes, it’s important to me.’

  ‘Well then, you tell these men the truth and you won’t get your doctor. Not me anyway. So you’d better choose. If you want your doctor, don’t interfere. If you do, I’ll get sent back to England and you’ll never see me again.’ Though he was blackmailing me, his face had a desperate, pleading look. ‘It’s only until we get out of Tangier.’ He stared up into my face for a moment and then turned back to the, sergeant. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, reverting to Spanish.

  ‘You sail here alone?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is nobody with you?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked up from his notebook then and stared at Kavan. ‘Do you know a man called Dr Jan Kavan?’

  I heard the slight hissing intake of Kavan’s breath and felt the muscles of his hand tense. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We were told that he was sailing with you.’

  ‘Who told you?’ The sergeant didn’t answer, but his small, brown eyes stared at Kavan watchfully. ‘No, he didn’t sail with me,’ Kavan added quickly. ‘He -changed his mind.’

  I felt sure that slight hesitation must have been as noticeable to the sergeant as it was to me. But all he said was, ‘Can you tell me, senor, why he changed his mind?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me,’ Kavan said. ‘He came on board the night before I was due to sail. I was leaving with the tide at 4 a.m. and when I woke him, he said he had changed his mind and wanted to be put ashore.’

  The sergeant nodded and wrote it all down. ‘So you sailed alone, senor?’

  Kavan nodded. His eyes were fixed on the sergeant and little beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead.

  ‘That was very dangerous, surely, senor - to sail alone? It is a big ship for one man.’

  ‘I have sailed a great deal - often single-handed.’

  The sergeant turned to me ‘Twice last night you asked the senor here about another man. You thought there were two of them on the yacht.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Who was the second man? Was it Dr Kavan?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why were you so sure that Dr Kavan was on board the boat?’

  ‘He wrote to me to tell me he was sailing with Mr Wade.’

  ‘I see. Do you know of any reason why he should have changed his mind?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘No, but there are easier methods of reaching Tangier than by sailing in a yacht.’

  ‘Of course.’ He nodded towards the bed. ‘Can you confirm the identity of the senor here?’

  ‘No. I had never seen him before last night.’

  ‘Si, si, it is understood. So you think Dr Kavan changed his mind?’

  I glanced down at Kavan. His eyes were watching me, very blue and with the same expression in them that they’d had when he’d implored me not to take him to a hospital. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think he must have changed his mind.’

  I felt the grip of Kavan’s fingers on my arm relax. ‘Bueno!’ The sergeant closed his notebook. ‘You have the papers for this boat?’ he asked.

  Kavan nodded.

  ‘I would like to have the papers. What is the port of registration?’

  ‘Southampton.’ Kavan’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

  ‘Also w
e would like to have your passport, senor. And if you have the record of the voyage …’ He stopped then, for Kavan had suddenly closed his eyes. He leaned over, clutching at me and retching violently. His hand reached out automatically for the pot, gripped it and the retching sound went on and on - dry, rasping and foodless, a horrible sound in the sullen stillness of the room. And then he dropped the pot and keeled over, his body suddenly limp.

  I got hold of him and pushed him back into the bed. He was sweating and his face was ashen. I wiped his lips with my handkerchief. His eyes opened and he stared past me at the sergeant. ‘I’ll bring the papers later,’ he whispered, and then he closed his eyes again and seemed to pass into unconciousness.

  I glanced at the sergeant. He was shaking his head and making little clicking sounds with his tongue. ‘He is bad, very bad. I am sorry, senor.’

  Til get a doctor,’ I said.

  ‘Si, si. That is what he need - a doctor.’ He turned to the Customs officer and they began talking quickly, shrugging their shoulders and gesticulating. Several limes they glanced at the man’s body lying there on the bed, and their expressions were sympathetic. At length the sergeant turned to me. ‘Senor. Do you know if he has his passport?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. I think he had some papers with him, but I don’t know what they are. If you like I can bring them down to you?’

  The sergeant nodded. ‘Bueno. If you will take them to the office of the douane down by the harbour, senor, they will be stamped. There is no necessity for him to come himself. Also, there is this paper to be completed.’ He handed me the usual immigration form. ‘As soon as he is sufficiently recovered, perhaps you will have him fill it in and bring it with you to the douane.’

  ‘Very well.’ As I opened the door for them, I asked the sergeant why the police were interested in Dr Kavan.

  ‘Oh, it is not we who are interested,’ he replied. ‘It is the British Consulate. It is they who ask us to watch for him.’