‘That’s none of your business,’ I said. ‘There are one or two questions I want to ask you. First, I want that passport. What have you done with it?’
‘The passport?’ He smiled at me. ‘You heard what Lopez say. He give it to you.’ He leaned closer to me, still smiling. ‘You tell me where Wade is, Lat’am, an’ I make it worth your while, eh?’
‘He’s left Tangier,’ I told him.
‘Left the Zone? Oh no.’ He shook his head, looking down at the suitcase I was carrying. ‘He don’t leave the Zone with you - not now. So you better cancel that other berth in the wagon-lit. He don’t leave till I get what I want.’
‘And that is the deeds of Kasbah Foum?’
He nodded, watching me closely. ‘Strictly between you an’ me, Lat’am, I trade the papers for his passport. You tell him.’
‘And if he hasn’t got them ?’
‘Oh, he has them.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know because …’ He stopped there and took hold of my arm. ‘Come. We cannot talk ‘ere. You come to the Cafe Normandie and have a drink with me, eh?’
‘All right,’ I said.
He nodded towards the Arab, who was about thirty, tall and well-built, but carrying a little too much flesh under his djellaba. ‘This is Si Ali bel-Caid El Hassan d’Es-Skhira.’ His use of the man’s full title rather than the way he said it conveyed his contempt of everything indigene. ‘Maybe he persuade you, eh?’ He smiled slyly, convinced that only money or power would persuade anybody.
I glanced at his companion with renewed interest. So this was the man who had employed Wade to get the deeds. At the mention of his name he had turned towards me and now that I could see his face I realised that he was Berber, not Arab. His features were long and pale, like a European’s, with prominent cheek bones and a high-bridged, aquiline nose. It would have been a fine face but for the cruelty of the mouth and a slight craftiness of the eyes. ‘Are you from the Atlas?’ I asked him in French.
‘From the Anti-Atlas. My father is Caid of Kasbah Foum-Skhira.’
‘Poor fellow, he is an exile, you see.’ Kostos tightened his grip on my arm with unpleasant familiarity. ‘Come, Lat’am. We go where we can talk.’ And he led me to one of the pavement tables of the Cafe Normandie, where he ordered two cognacs and a coffee for Ali, and then sat watching me uncertainly. The Berber stared out across the Place de France, his face impassive, his eyes remote. I was thinking they were typical of the cosmopolitan world of Tangier - the crook lured there by easy money and the Berber nationalist deported from his own country because he had been too actively anti-French. The roar of the traffic lapped round us, mingling with the shrill cries of the Arab news-vendors and the sound of Spanish music from the cafe radio.
The drinks came and Kostos raised his glass. ‘Salud!’ He was looking at me with a sly grin. Then he set his glass down and leaned towards me across the table. ‘Lat’am. You do something for me, will you - for the sake of old times. You tell me where Wade is.’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, amused that it was the exact truth.
‘Now don’t be silly, please.’ The smile had gone from his mouth. The lips were compressed into a hard line. His small, dark eyes had hardened, too. ‘I am going to have those papers. He is somewhere here in the Zone. If I do not get them, he never get out. Why do you smile? Do you think I don’t tell you the truth? Maybe you think to help him slip across the frontier with some Berber caravan. Well, you try. That’s all. You try an’ get him out like that. You see’ - he jabbed a tobacco-stained forefinger at me - ‘it is not only me he have to reckon with. It is Ali, also. The word has gone out to the souks.’ He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. ‘He don’t get out of Tangier till Ali has those papers.’
I was almost tempted to tell him how the man he thought was Wade had got out of the Zone. I would like to have seen his face. But it was too dangerous. Instead, I said, ‘He hasn’t got the papers you want.’
‘Then what is your interest in him?’ He said it with something near to a sneer. ‘Now come, Lat’am. Let us not waste time. I know he has the papers.’
‘How do you know?’ I asked again.
‘How? Because he come alone.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘Down on the beach las’ night you are asking about this man Kavan. Well, Kavan is not on the boat. He do not come. Wade is alone an’ he has the papers. He must have.’
‘Why? What’s Kavan got to do with it?’
He stared at me and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Come, my friend. We are getting nowhere.’ His voice hardened. ‘We talk business now, eh? ‘Ow much you want?’
I suppose I should have told him then and there what Kavan had told me - that Wade never had the papers. I should have tried to convince him. But I couldn’t tell him that Wade was dead, lost overboard during the voyage, and I hesitated. The trouble was that I was consumed with curiosity about this place Kasbah Foum. Curiosity is something you suck up out of the atmosphere of Tangier. ‘It might help,’ I said, ‘if I knew something about Kasbah Foum.’
‘Ah, I understand. You wish to know what these papers are worth to us, eh?’ Kostos chuckled. ‘All right, Lat’am. I tell you. To me they are worth nothing. Nothing at all. It is to Ali only that they are important.’ He turned to the Berber and spoke quickly in French, explaining what had been said.
Ali nodded. ‘Kasbah Foum is part of the land that will come to me when my father, Allah preserve him, is dead,’ he said, speaking directly to me. ‘It is our own land, you understand, not collective land belonging to the tribe. But when the French come into the south of Morocco, what they call the Pacification’ - there was the suggestion of a sneer in the way he said it - ‘my father is forced to surrender Kasbah Foum to them. A Capitaine Marcel Duprez demand it of him as a personal gift. Now Duprez is dead and my people need that land because the trees are dying of some pest in the palmerie of Foum-Skhira. The date crop has failed and there is little food. But at Kasbah Foum there is water. New trees could be planted and the land tilled.’
‘The place is of no real value,’ Kostos cut in quickly.
‘C’est ca.’ Ali nodded. ‘It is about a thousand hectares of land, mostly mountain, and there is a kasbah, an old mud fort, at the entrance to a gorge. It is of no value, except to my father’s people.’
I looked across at Kostos. I didn’t believe him. Why should he trouble himself about this if there was nothing more to it than a matter of planting a few date palms? ‘Suppose you tell me the truth,’ I said, reverting to English.
‘You think we lie to you?’ His eyes had narrowed.
I didn’t say anything for a moment. I was thinking I ought to convince him I knew nothing about the papers and leave it at that. But I was back in the mood of Tangier and I was thinking of that entry at the end of Wade’s log. ‘Does the name Ed White mean anything to you ?’ I asked him.
The Greek’s eyes were suddenly hard and angry. ‘So you know all about it, eh? You sit there laughing at us — ‘ His hand gripped my arm across the table. ‘All right, Lat’am. We talk business now. ‘Ow much?’
I pulled my arm away. To gain time I turned to Ali and complimented him on his French. The Berber smiled so that his teeth showed through his rather thick lips. ‘I was educated in Paris.’ He said it with pride.
‘And now you are a nationalist.’
His eyes lit up. ‘I have dedicated myself before Allah to the task of driving the French out of my country.’ He started on a tirade against the Protecting Power, but Kostos cut him short.
‘This doesn’t get us nowhere.’ He leaned towards me across the table. ‘Listen, Lat’am. You an’ I, we understand each other, eh? You get Wade to hand over those papers an’ there is a hundred thousand francs for you. Understand? A hundred pounds sterling, if you like. That’s what I bring you ‘ere to tell you.’
‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘He’s out of the Zone now.’
‘That is a lie. He cannot be out of the Zone.’ He fini
shed his drink and nodded to Ali. The two of them got to their feet and Kostos came round to my side of the table, leaning over me, his hand resting on my shoulders. ‘Tell him I expect him at my office by midday tomorrow. If he comes before midday, I see you get the money. Okay? And don’t get some foolish ideas, Lat’am. He is in a fix, and there is nobody will lift a little finger to help him get out of ‘ere - not Arab, Berber or Jew. You tell him that.’ He tapped the side of his nose and smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile.
They left then and I watched them drive past. Kostos was staring at me, hard-faced and angry. Then they were gone, swallowed up in the whirl of traffic in the Place de France, and I sat there, smoking a cigarette, whilst dust descended on Tangier and the lights came on in the shops. Finally I picked up my suitcase and went across to the British Post Office and phoned the one man I could trust to do something for me and not talk about it, a retired Indian Civil Servant who had been a friend of my father’s. But he was out and his servant didn’t expect him back till late. It didn’t really matter. I could write to him about Karen Kavan from Enfida.
I went to a French restaurant and had some food and after that I walked down to the station and joined the queue waiting in the booking hall to go through the passport check. I wondered whether Kostos would have somebody follow me on the train and I looked about for the Arab who had kept watch outside the hotel. But I couldn’t see him. I wasn’t really surprised, for Kostos was essentially a Tangerois.
The minutes ticked slowly by on the station clock and the queue moved forward only a pace at a time. As always, it was a strangely mixed crowd — tourists and Spaniards and native tribesmen all jam-packed together. There were several Americans in gaily-coloured shirts and lumber-jackets - construction men from the big new Moroccan air bases. There were two Jews with grey beards and little black skull caps on their heads. And close beside me was a Berber chieftain with fierce, swarthy features and a black beard. The curved sheath of his knife was beautifully worked in silver.
The queue shuffled forward and one of the Americans said, ‘Jesus, these Goddamned Spaniards! The way they behave, you’d think we were on Ellis Island.’ He had a hard, braying laugh. Beyond his wide-brimmed hat, I could see the face of one of the passport officials framed in the oval of the hatch. And then a hand plucked at my arm and I turned, startled, thinking it was Kostos or perhaps the police to say that Kavan had been stopped at Casa.
Instead, I found Karen Kavan’s grey eyes looking up at me. ‘I’m so glad I found you.’ Her voice was breathless with relief. ‘I was afraid I might miss you in all this crowd, or else that you would have arrived early and be on the train.’ She was nervous and her face was as pale and strained as it had been the previous night.
‘How did you know where to find me?’ I asked.
‘I telephoned to your hotel. Then I try Cook’s, just in case. I wanted to know — ‘ She stopped there, uncertain how to go on.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I know who he is. And you needn’t worry. Your husband left for Casablanca by plane this afternoon.’
‘Oh.’ She closed her eyes momentarily. ‘Oh, thank God. I was so afraid. You see, when I telephoned to the hotel, they said he had gone to the Pension de la Montagne. It’s not far from where I work, so I walked there. But no guests had arrived there this afternoon and I was if raid the police …’ The rush of words stopped abruptly and her eyes stared at me uncertainly. ‘Where has he gone please? Last night, you said something about him working for you, but I don’t remember - I am too distrait.’
I gave her my address and explained that her would be working as a doctor at the Mission. ‘You’ll always be welcome there,’ I added. ‘When you’re ready to come to him, you’ve only to write and let me know.’
‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’ She breathed a little sigh. ‘I was so afraid I shouldn’t find you, that I shouldn’t know where he had gone. I felt so alone.’
I glanced quickly at my watch. It was already nine thirty,
‘How long have you been in Tangier?’ I asked her.
‘Just two weeks now. I am working as governess for an American family - Mr and Mrs Schulborg.’
Just two weeks! It was an odd coincidence. ‘Straight from Czechoslovakia?’
“No. From the American Zone of Austria.’ And then her eyes widened as she understood the drift of my questions. ‘Surely Jan doesn’t think I am here because they — ‘ She stopped there and then added quickly, “Please. You must explain to him that I received his message and that is why I am here.’ Her voice was desperately urgent. ‘His message arrived the 15th November. A week later, on the night of the 23rd, I escape across the border into Upper Austria on skis. That is in the American Zone. It was the Americans who find me this job here in Tangier. Please explain to him.’
‘Of course I will,’ I said. And then I added, ‘You must love your husband very much.’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ The shadow of a smile suddenly touched her lips. ‘But I hardly know him any more, you know.’
‘Well, that’s something that can be altered now. But it was a brave thing to do.’
She shook her head. ‘No, not brave. It was dangerous, yes, but… You see, I was desperate. They had already arrested Pan Rudolph Kavan - that is his father. Fortunately I am away from Prague, staying with friends. When I returned, I was warned that our house was being watched and that I should be arrested also. That is what made me try to cross the border. I had no alternative. Explain to him, will you, please?’
I nodded. I was thinking of what Jan Kavan had told me in the taxi going up to the British Consulate. So it was all true. ‘I’ll tell him,’ I said. ‘Come to Enfida and join him as soon as you can.’ And I added, ‘You’d better write to me, not to him - just in case.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I will write to you.’
‘And your address?’
‘The Villa da Vinci on La Montagne.’
‘Senor! Deprisa, deprisa, senor!’ It was the passport officer telling me to hurry. I handed him my passport and went through the barrier to the next hatch where I got the necessary forms. I turned to speak to Karen again. A whistle shrilled. A voice called, ‘En voiture! En voiture!’ There was the sound of running feet. ‘Give Jan my love,’ she called to me.
‘I will. He will be expecting you. Come when you…’ A blast of steam cut short my words and I saw the train begin to move. I waved to her and dashed on to the platform and scrambled on board.
My last memory of Tangier was Karen’s small, pale face staring after me, her hand fluttering as she waved farewell to the only link she had with her husband. I round my sleeper and slumped into my seat, thinking about how she must feel, having come so far, still to be separated from him by two frontiers.
At El Ksar el Kebir there is a long wait. It’s the frontier station between Spanish and French Morocco. I hung about in the cool night air until the frontier police returned my passport and then I went to bed. I was tired and I remember little except the usual vague noises of night travel by train - the rattle of the wheels on the rail is and the sudden, deathly silence of the stations where isolated noises become magnified.
When I woke it was daylight. The country was flat and there were glimpses of the sea through the ragged ribbon of factory buildings that lined the coast. We were approaching Casablanca. The buildings became taller, springing up all round the tracks - white concrete gleaming in the sunshine - and then the train was slowing down and we were running in to the station.
I rubbed the condensation from the window and peered at the people standing on the half-deserted platform, suddenly fearful that Kavan might not be there. But as the train jerked to a halt, I saw him a little farther down, standing alone beside some crates of oranges. He was smoking a cigarette and his face looked hard and set as he scanned the length of the train, watching the doors open and the passengers begin to alight.
He saw me as soon as I got off the train, and he rushed over to me and seized hold of my hand
, pumping it up and down.
‘You got through the immigration officials all right then?’ I said.
‘Of course, of course. There was no difficulty at all. They asked me whether I’d come straight from England and I nodded and talked to them in Czech and they stamped my papers and that was that. They’re like little lambs.’ He grinned and put his hand on my shoulder, patting me as though I were a dog. ‘First you save my life. Then you get me out of Tangier. You are a wonderful man! Wonderful!’ He was bubbling over with excitement. ‘And now, here I am in Morocco. My new country! My new life!’ His hand gripped my shoulder. ‘I shall always be grateful. Always.’
‘Wait till you’ve walked twenty miles in the mountains,’ I said, ‘and attended dozens of children half blind with trachoma.’
‘You think I can’t start my life again? I tell you I can. I’m tough. I have a stake in this country now. I shall learn Arabic and soon I shall be more Moroccan than the Moors.’ He laughed and then stopped abruptly and said, ‘Did you see Karen?’
‘Yes.’ And I told him how she had met me at Tangier station. He had me repeat everything she had said, and when I had finished, he stood there with bowed head. ‘So my father has been arrested.’ He blinked his eyes. ‘He is an old man, so maybe they will…‘But then he gave a little shrug. ‘He was a fine man.’ He used the past tense. ‘He did much good in Prague. I’m sorry.’ He straightened up and looked at me. ‘Thank God Karen got out in time. I was afraid that perhaps … But never mind that now. Give Jan my love!’ He murmured the words to himself and then gave a little awkward laugh that was so near to a sob. ‘And she really said that? You heard her?’ And when I nodded, he smiled a little sadly and said, ‘You know, it is hard to believe that you have actually heard her voice. You’re the first person to give me actual words she has spoken in all these four years. There have been messages, of course - through the underground. But you are telling me her actual words.’ He cleared his throat briefly. ‘Come on. Let’s get some breakfast. Now you are here, I find I’m hungry.’
The Strange Land Page 9
