by Anne Raeff
You said there was something about that waitress’s eyes you didn’t like, something you couldn’t put your finger on—not that you didn’t trust her story. It wasn’t that, although I suspect you couldn’t quite believe it. Is it that you don’t believe she would leave what, in Morocco for a woman of her position, was almost paradise, or is it that you could never trust someone who would sacrifice so much?
But really, I had not meant to follow you like a sleazy private eye out of some bad 1940s film. You will never believe me, but I was racked with worry. Can one say that—racked with worry? In any case, I was. There we were in a strange city and it was getting so late, past midnight and you never called. You hadn’t left a note. So what was I to do if not take to the streets? I know, I should have announced myself when I found you. I should have said, “Where have you been? Don’t you think it’s time to come home?” I shouldn’t have slunked around. (I don’t know why all these expressions that I am not quite sure how to use are coming to my head.) I should have taken a seat next to you at the Juglar, ordered a cognac, and joined in on the conversation, but I didn’t feel up to it. I was not in the mood for talking that night. And you looked so happy. You were talking, waving your hands around. I could tell you were practicing your Spanish because your mouth was making large Spanish vowels. It was as if you were pulling the world in through your mouth, embracing the room in your gesticulating arms. At first, I was intent on observing you being so animated. But then you paused, took a sip from your glass, your hands fell to your sides, you leaned over to your left, to hear better, I suppose, and only then did I realize that you had been engaged in conversation, that you had been talking to someone.
And in all those places you went to that night, you never spotted me, never even sensed my presence. Even at that last stop where you two ate tiny snails, digging them out of their shells with pins, with me only three people down from you at the very same bar. Even there.
So perhaps I shouldn’t have said a word. I suppose it was quite unlike me to make a scene, to interrupt your conversation, to pull your arm and order you to come with me. And then to run out like that, leaving you there with everyone staring at you, although, remember, the bar was almost empty, that was especially horrible of me. Perhaps instead I should have snuck home through the dawn streets and gone to bed. Perhaps you would have tiptoed quietly through the house, taken off all your clothes and slipped in next to me. Perhaps you would have reached for me in the early light. But no, I had to sit up on that ugly gold and red Thai couch with my book, looking up every minute, my ears waiting for the sound of your key in the door. Did that make me seem stupid, buffoonish? And then you waltzed in, only you didn’t waltz, nor did you stumble; you simply walked in, not weaving, not with your head bowed. You walked in as if you were coming home from work, only it was seven o’clock in the morning. You might as well have been whistling.
Still, don’t you think my punishment for following you was a little stiff? You didn’t have to leave us for two entire days, but perhaps it is presumptuous of me to think of your absence as a punishment. And Deborah? You didn’t think about how she might feel in a foreign city with a missing mother and me, roaming through those underground parking lots where the heroin addicts shoot up, convinced that that was where you were. I don’t know why I was so sure you were lying in some oil spot surrounded by a crew of unsavory people. Yet you were the one who had said just a few days earlier when we passed a young woman, her teeth rotten, hipbones protruding, that you would try heroin if you were offered it, that you wanted to know what it was all about. You had scoffed at my fear of dirty needles.
We searched together for a while, Deborah and I, but then we went our separate ways, I staying underground as much as possible. I have no idea where she went, but somehow I wasn’t worried about her. I suppose I thought if she was looking for you, had a purpose of sorts, nothing would happen to her. And nothing did happen. Nothing happened to any of us. But why should I believe that you went to Cuenca, simply went to the station and bought a ticket to Cuenca because someone had told you how beautiful it was with its houses built right into the cliffs? Did you wake up on those two mornings you were gone, wash your face with cold water, and wander off through the still-cool narrow streets for a leisurely coffee, sipping it slowly as you watched the good citizens of Cuenca go about their morning business, buying bread, sharpening knives, hacking up rabbits and chickens? Are you sure you were alone? But why shouldn’t I believe you? You are not the lying sort; on the contrary, you are always too ready to tell the truth.
That last time we were in Morocco, on our second-to-last day when we were relaxing in Casablanca, I had a little adventure, too. I never told you about it because it didn’t seem very important at the time, but I imagine you would say that I didn’t tell you about it because it was important. In any case, you weren’t feeling well—the food always gets to you more than me—and you insisted I go out and “amuse myself.” Those were the words you used. I would have been perfectly happy to sit in the armchair and read by the open window. It was a beautiful night—the sea breeze blowing the curtains ever so slightly. You could see tiny lights speckling the sea. It must have been a good night for fishing. I stood there looking out at the sea, imagining the fishermen on those lonely boats, calmly expectant—a long quiet night ahead of them. They were surely happy to be away from their homes full of children, and women, and the smell of onions and lamb. But you urged me to leave. “Go on,” you said. “I’ll be fine.”
I headed for the sea, down the hill from our window. I looked back a few times before turning the corner and saw that the light was still on. A young man called after me from the shadows of a doorway, but I didn’t reply. “Monsieur, Monsieur,” he called softly at first and then louder, “Monsieur, Monsieur.” I didn’t turn around, but I knew he was following me even though his shoes made no sound on the pavement. He walked next to me, asking me the usual: “Where are you going? Are you alone?” I didn’t reply, but that never works. I don’t know why I always think it will. I quickened my pace, then slowed down, and still he followed just a few steps behind me now, silently. We came to the end of the street, and I had to decide whether to turn left or right. The sea was straight ahead, but it was impossible to reach it without twisting and turning through the old streets.
“Where are you going?” he tried again, and this time I answered.
“To the sea,” I said in Arabic.
“What business do you have at the sea at this time of night?” he asked in French.
“None,” I said in Arabic.
“So why are you going there?” he asked, still in French.
I remained silent. He repeated his question. Again I was silent. I decided to turn right and he turned right with me. We walked for a while longer—he a few paces behind, I leading the way. At this point I had no idea what he looked like. I knew he was young by his voice. After a few minutes he said in Arabic, “If you wanted to go to the sea, you should have turned left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, turning around for the first time.
“You did not ask,” he said. He was older than I had suspected—in his twenties—wearing the usual dress pants, T-shirt, and dress shoes. “My friends live just down this street.”
“I see,” I said, kicking myself for being so open to him. I should have yelled at him, shooed him away. It would have worked eventually. Then he would have laughed and said, “Comme vous voulez, Monsieur.”
“Viens,” he said and I followed him. I was not in the mood to get angry and knew that the sooner I resigned myself to his wishes, the easier it would be, for, in the end, I would find myself trotting off behind him anyway. I had let it go too far already, and Moroccans do not understand why one would want to be alone, especially in the dark by the sea, unless, of course, one were a fisherman or a truck driver or otherwise engaged in some kind of work that required
one to be alone.
You would ask if I was afraid. I wasn’t, although I probably should have been. We walked in silence, but all the while I kept trying to think of something to say to him, something innocuous and without implications, which is not so easy with people who seem to be able to communicate through implications alone. We came to a building. We had moved away from the sea now and were in the thick of the city again, and my companion opened the door without knocking. “Viens,” he said again. At this point I could very easily have run off, darted down the narrow street. I don’t think he would have tried to capture me since he did not seem too inclined to strenuous physical activity that evening. There was a lethargy about him that young people have in the summer. We came into a beautiful courtyard. Its walls were magnificently tiled three stories high. He led me to a windowless room off to the side although what I wanted was to sit in the courtyard and look up at the stars. I almost asked him for permission, but he was already telling me to sit down. The room was filled with other young men who were all wearing athletic warm-up suits.
“Did you just come from playing soccer?” I asked them in Arabic. They found my question extremely funny and laughed for a good minute over it before responding that they had not just come from playing soccer. It was the combination of the laughing and the athletic suits that made me uncomfortable. One or the other, I could have handled, but the combination gave them such an air of sleaziness that I was repulsed. Still, they did not seem particularly menacing. I kept looking at them for signs, but it was hard to tell what was going on inside their heads, especially since they weren’t really paying any attention to me. At first I took this as a good sign, but after a while, I found it increasingly disconcerting, inhospitable. My guide was sitting on the other side of the room and wouldn’t even look me in the eye. There were six men in all, none of them older than thirty. Instead of paying attention to their conversation, which was about a friend who had been cheated in a very complicated business deal (something about olive oil), I watched, turned off my hearing as one can do when one is not listening to one’s native tongue. They were all entwined in each other, holding hands, caressing each other’s thighs and bare feet, arms drooped over shoulders, like a litter of kittens, I thought, although not so benign. None of them made any attempt to touch or talk to me. I began to think they had some plan for me later in the evening, when the kif they had started smoking right after my arrival had taken full effect. They offered me kif too and were not overly offended when I refused. They offered me tea, which I accepted, and one of them always made sure to refill my cup when it was empty.
I think they sensed that I do not really enjoy the company of men. But they were not as puzzled by my presence as I was. I kept trying to find a reason to stay or leave, but it was as if I were suffering from some strange paralysis like in that Buñuel movie The Exterminating Angel. As I sat there thinking that they probably thought I was the unfriendly one, that it would be so easy to move in closer to the huddle, make some joke, touch my neighbor’s arm, I thought, why must they always be so close to one other? Don’t they get claustrophobic?
I started feeling nauseated, sitting there enveloped in the sweet smell of kif smoke, male sweat, and cologne. I tried hard to find it all exotic or visceral or something to that effect, but I wanted nothing more than to be back in our room, with the window open and the smell of the sea wafting in and the sound of your light breathing in the background. I imagined they all were noisy sleepers who thrashed around and grunted and snored and woke up with rancid breath. Yet I envied them. The more repulsed I got, the more I wanted to be like them. Their talk had turned to women, sexual things that I do not find necessary to repeat. Their laughter grew lascivious and their hands stroked higher and higher on each other’s thighs. I was careful not to allow my eyes to wander too close to their crotches. They no longer tried to include me and I found that I was getting more and more annoyed about being ignored. It was this annoyance that gave me the impetus to get up from the floor and walk out of the room, through that beautiful courtyard and out into the cool night. Somehow I found my way back to the hotel without any incidents. I passed a number of men in the streets, but almost miraculously, they said nothing, didn’t even look at me. In the hotel, the young man behind the desk smiled at me as if he were in on a secret.
Do you remember that evening at all? For you it was most likely nothing more than a respite—your precious wallowing time. Once back in the hotel, our favorite, I tried to sit quietly in the chair by the window. I tried reading. I tried sitting without reading, but what I had thought I wanted more than anything else that evening was not what I wanted at all. I watched you for a long time, stood directly over you, and you didn’t even flinch, but you should have. There you were so quietly sleeping, so happy to be alone in a pleasant room in a difficult country that you had no idea I was standing over you with terrible thoughts of ripping off your nightgown and much, much worse. I cannot bear to tell you the details.
You would ask if I have such thoughts often, and I am happy to say that they are not frequent at all, but they do occur and there is no way to stop them. I suspect that I have such thoughts far less often than most men do and that, I am sorry to say, is all I have to offer you.
The twins say that people fear homosexual men because they are the only ones who really get what they want. All they have to do is go into a bathroom or a park or a bar and in five minutes they can have what they want—no games, no dinners in restaurants, no flowers or tender conversations or poetry—while unhappy heterosexual men have to jump through thousands of hoops for such a simple thing. And women? I cannot begin to list what they must put up with for a tiny bit of affection. But I feel as if I have not failed you on those lines. Could I be horribly wrong about that, too? “Love is a female creation,” the twins say, and perhaps they are right, but I have felt love myself, still feel it. I cannot speak for others, but I don’t believe the twins to be an authority in this area either.
“Don’t you ever get lonely?” I asked the twins once.
“Why should we be lonely?” they said. “We have each other.” And I have you, Clara.
We have each other, which is not something to scoff at. Why do you think I spend hours and hours at your side, trying to convince you that Deborah needs you, that if you would only get out of bed, you would feel better? “Things don’t change just because you get out of bed,” you would say. I don’t really agree with you about that, though. Fatalism has never been my preferred philosophy because I have seen the effects of action, both positive and negative, but effects nonetheless.
Maybe you have a better temperament for Morocco than I do. Maybe you wouldn’t even notice you were depressed there. You could just lie on a couch watching television and you wouldn’t think about how depressing it is to believe that nothing was in your hands. You would embrace it, and when one of your neighbors bade you goodbye after stopping for a cup of tea and sweets during the hottest part of the afternoon, you would say, “Come again soon,” and she would say, “Insha’allah,” and so would you. But what would be my purpose then if you no longer needed someone to keep you from jumping finally and irreversibly into the abyss? What would give me the energy to get up in the morning and read the newspaper, drink my coffee, arrange my notes on the importance of the dietary laws in Judaism and Islam? What would be the point of carrying on with endless ordinary days if you were not waiting for me and my embraces and tired words of encouragement? I would like to believe that if it were not for me, you would have given up long ago, but I know I should not give myself so much credit.
But really, what would happen if our little psychodrama were to come abruptly to an end? What if I started poisoning your coffee with antidepressants? Every morning I could slip the pills in and you would never know. They are tasteless, I am sure, like arsenic. Is arsenic really tasteless? Little by little you would spend more time away from your bed. You would hum in t
he shower, and then, without knowing why, you would be happy. Would you be happy? Do antidepressants make you happy or merely not depressed? So you wouldn’t be happy, you would be undepressed, and you would go back to the store and we would have discussions at the dinner table and go to concerts and to the theater. In the spring you would plant tulips, or does one do that in the fall? You would plant something and read Virginia Woolf. We could go on a trip, somewhere completely different like Denmark or Chile.
Would they wear off after a while or would you figure out that something was not quite right? What if years and years went by and then, when we were in our eighties and living in one of those assisted-living places that your mother refuses to consider, I would tell you? What if we had thirty years of concerts and gardens and trips and books and discussions and minor ailments and dinners at our favorite restaurants under our belts? Would you be able to forgive me then?
Seriously, we could just try something different, couldn’t we? After all, we should not be such old sticks-in-the-mud, refusing to even entertain the advancements of modern medicine. Because really, Clara, what is the alternative—Freud, Jung? What could be more absurd than psychoanalysis? You yourself say that we are ninety percent water, pure chemical, so why not try a chemical solution? But perhaps you do not want a solution. Would you even be you without your moods?
