Alexandra Singer

by Tea at the Grand Tazi

  “Ignore her. I always do!” He paused, as if searching for the appropriate words. But he saw how questioningly she was looking at him. He sighed. “Ina is a strict Muslim. She does not approve of women like you.”

  “Women like me?”

  He laughed, cynically. “Liberated women, one must suppose. And she is old. It is now many years that she has worked for me. She is a good worker. But a little possessive of the house. And of me. She forgets that I am the master!” He began to laugh uproariously. It was very unusual behaviour. Abruptly, he became calm and looked at her. “Do not offend her.”

  “I have done nothing to offend her,” Maia said, bemused.

  He smiled. “I do know that. Now, follow me.”

  The Historians permission to explore the house pleased Maia; she now felt that she might be free of Ina’s critical gaze. Through low arched doorways they passed into a room of the house that was cool, alien from the stifling heat outside.

  “When did you leave London?”

  “Many moons ago.” The Historian was intolerably vague, and he looked distracted.

  “Please, do not play with me. I came here; I deserve an answer.”

  “And why not, when it is so amusing to play with so earnest a girl?”

  Maia was surprised. The Historian was almost debonair. He had made himself into a recluse. She had assumed that this had been the cultivation of his image, but now she began to wonder if he was hiding out here because, academically at least, he no longer had anything interesting to say. There were rumours about him. It was said that he had stolen money; that he procured girls, that he was intolerably self-indulgent. But Maia never believed rumours about anyone; and in this case there were academic jealousies to consider. She was inclined to believe the best of people. Sometimes she thought that it took to much energy to consider the worst.

  As they walked together through the house, the Historian bounding slightly ahead, he pointed out to her objects of interest.

  “This is an Al-Khazar armoire,” he said, pointing to a small cabinet carved in mahogany. “This is a marabou dining set,” and rushing ahead, he stopped at six carved wood and leather chairs, placed around a long, rectangular table. “And this is a Tuareg Buffet.” Lovingly he stroked the leather. “This will sell at auction, for a very high sum. And this! And this!” He pointed wildly around him.

  Maia was surprised to see him almost hysterical in his excitement; his behaviour seemed so out of character. She realised he exuded only a hint of warmth when he was displaying his accumulated possessions. He had carved out a niche for himself here, and somehow he was both guarding it and showing it off to her. She wondered if perhaps he wanted her to return home and talk about him, to gossip about his success to his former colleagues.

  “I knew the man who made this,” he said, pointing out a cabinet, which he assured her was made by the Ashanti tribe deep in West Africa. “I stayed with him for several weeks... but now he is dead.”

  “Why have you never returned to London?” she asked, hoping he might share some of his past while he was so relaxed. “Surely you must miss it. You were such a fixture there.” Maia tried to sound casual.

  “Yes, I was.” He was thoughtful.

  “You know, I don’t believe it about you, those rumours – ”

  “One has to live, no?” he said, almost nonchalantly, and carried on down the passageway.

  At that moment, as she saw his face darkening, she knew that she had made a mistake.

  He whirled on her. “If you wish to stay here, never talk to me again about the past.”

  She said nothing. He disappeared upstairs, then seemed to regret it, and he returned. But already she was sorry; she pitied him in his exile.

  “I know I can be sharp,” he said, “but I am so used to being alone here.”

  Maia was silent.

  “Come and see.”

  The house was tall and narrow on the upper floors, several storeys high. Rubble lay scattered on the ground.

  “I began all of this restoration several years ago, but I never do seem to get round to finishing the work. Or even simply to stay here to see the whole thing completed.” He waved his hand with an excessive flourish of his long, tapered fingers, as if they might brush away the rubble.

  “Can you not trust somebody to check on the work, and pay the builders?”

  “I trust nobody!” said the Historian vehemently.

  His complaints were incessant. The people here were unreliable, useless. The builders were lazy and corrupt.

  “I am always deceived,” he said, bowing his head ruefully.

  Maia almost believed him, but in his self pity he was almost comical.

  “I have exact plans for this place.”

  Despite his relentless criticisms, Maia was convinced of his devotion to his place here. She smelled the scent of the oranges hanging succulently from the trees; saw the tiled blue fountain in the courtyard where he often spent the evenings, smoking incessantly.

  He saw her looking at it, “Why do you never come down here in the evenings? I do hope you are not scared of me.”

  Now that he was behaving so hospitably, she hardly felt able to tell him that he had failed to make her feel welcome. “I thought you would like to be alone.”

  “Of course you may come down,” he said, and clapped her lightly on the back.

  Maia was only able to speculate at his sudden turnaround. She wondered how he coped with his resentment, his self imposed exile, the ostracism and critical treatment from his fellow academics, but he didn’t mention it again.

  When they stopped in the corridor leading to the front of the house from the courtyard, Maia was able to see that the corridor was turned at such an angle that nobody from the street was able to see directly into the house. The house was well protected, with long, twisting passages, offering her security, protected from the loud intrusion of the people outside. The Historian led her through a delicately tiled arch into his reception room. Both the floor and the low, round tables had been constructed from dark cedar wood and the walls were painted a deep, dark green evoking the cool enclosure of a forest. Stuccoed, geometrical designs flitted across the side of the far wall and in high alcoves the bookcases spilled over with huge tomes on subjects ranging from the esoteric and the philosophical to psychology and mathematics. Strangely, Maia noticed, there were no historical books. Ceramic tiles lay placed in symmetrical patterns across the floor.

  He saw her looking at them. “Zellige, my dear.”

  The vividly coloured, terracotta tiles had been placed into geometrical shapes, spreading over the entire far wall. The Historian strode nimbly over to the wall and stroked the tiles. Carpets dyed in reds and purples lay across a raised stone platform, and the windows opened with shutters of latticed wood onto the courtyard outside. Maia understood why this misanthropic man might want to come in here and never emerge. She was warming to him. So far, she had found that the Historian’s misanthropic contempt for human nature was so strong that he wished to have as little contact with the world as he was able.

  “When I am in here, I do ask you not to disturb me... ”

  The intimacy of earlier was all gone. Maia was discomfited. Why had he wished to display this sumptuous room to her; and then forbid her from ever visiting it? Maia dismissed this strangeness merely as one of the Historian’s many foibles.

  Following the spontaneous tour of his abode, the Historian disappeared again without leaving word of his whereabouts. Occasionally she felt the urge to enquire about his travelling, but she knew that she would never ask. She had already witnessed a hint of the wrath that lay dormant in the Historian, and did not desire to witness it again. Somehow he succeeded in making her feel as if she judged him too harshly. She pitied the old man, living out the remainder of his life in isolation.

  In the Historian’s absence, Maia pushed on with the work that he had left for her and she continued to paint. Although Maia passed Ina in the corridor, the two women stil
l never spoke, and Maia no longer made any attempt to elicit any civility from the woman.

  Maia saw that the door of the riad was the main external feature against the blankness of the house, and savoured the privacy she found once inside. She often sat in the courtyard and worked in a room downstairs where two sofa beds sat, and rugs were laid out across the stone floor. In the corner, a wooden platform had been constructed for the desk, where at night, she ate alone with fresh produce she had bought in the day. She began to enjoy her solitude.

  Maia did as the Historian asked her. She executed his correspondence with the various publishers and newspaper editors from Paris to New York, she translated articles for him and the articles which he had written upon varying medieval religious topics from French into English, and she transcribed his indecipherable notes onto his ancient computer. She could sit for hours, her hands poised over the keys, desperately trying to understand the illegibility of the Historian’s handwriting, or looking abstractedly at the letters before her eyes, without really seeing them at all.

  One evening she was distracted and failed to save his work on time before there was a disastrous power cut. She swore loudly, and as she looked up she saw Ina was staring straight at her. Their eyes met and Maia refused to take her gaze away. After a few moments, the old woman withdrew, leaving Maia with an unpleasant sensation of having been spied upon.

  She looked into the shadows moving in the courtyard, at a bit of inky sky, and at the other side of the house, which was turning black in the darkness. Through the shutters she could almost smell the heat smouldering in the night and then somewhere, not far off; she could hear the rising tremolo of a lute. Maia began to ache again for excitement. She knew that out there in the streets below there was a party and fascinating, entertaining people, but she didn’t know how she would find it and in any case she was tied in here now. In the isolation of her self-sufficiency, her longing for privacy and retirement from life was now morphing into loneliness.

  With no-one to amuse her, Maia painted. The houses, the city itself from different angles and those inhabitants whom she was able to persuade to sit for her. She soon found the courage to enter cafés and introduce herself to the regulars, to explain that she was a painter who needed models she could paint in public, in all the mundane situations of daily life. But the men were all inappropriately keen, and disillusion showed on their faces when once they had agreed she began to take out her pens and paints, rather than inviting them to pose privately.

  Inevitably, the men would begin to make salacious advances towards her, but they were always in public and as soon as this began, Maia made clear her lack of interest. She passed the afternoons with an interchangeable series of men in cafés, with passing tourists and people doing up their riads in the old medina, and soon she had amassed a small number of acquaintances. But the people she met were always on the cusp of leaving, and the lack of women in the midst of the crowds of local men began to concern her.

  Too often, she saw that women were neither seen nor heard, and her curiosity about them grew. She saw that here women were allowed to exist only on the periphery of life, and only in the roles allocated to them, and even those she saw in the streets were often silent and covered, or hovering on the rooftops of the uniformly plain stone houses which lined the labyrinthine alleys.

  Maia prepared her canvas in white, so that the material glowed through with the illusion of dazzling sunlight, and the light and colours splintered the surface and created an uneven perception for the viewer, in an imitation of the real life of the city. Her use of colour was so imaginative and exuberant that she lost hours in experimentation at sunset exploring all the shades of red and pink, vivid hues of terracotta, salmon and red earthstone. When she went out onto the roof to paint, Maia tried to forget the objects which stood before her, and she saw only shapes, lines and curves, rather than houses, trees, the small, drab black clad figure of a woman. As she painted she increased her sense of perspective and an understanding of at least the architecture of the city. But it was a true appreciation of the character of the inhabitants of the city, which still eluded her.

  Maia wanted to grasp the true character of the inhabitants. She watched the women, waiting for an opportunity to see behind their doors into their lives. Sometimes she brushed past a woman in the street; she smelt her scent, looked at the worries etched upon her face, but Maia knew that she would never know her. She was aware that while the women were hidden from her, the city would not reveal its secrets, however hard she tried to immerse herself.

  Chapter 4

  Maia was sitting at the Historian’s dark wooden desk, translating a lengthy correspondence between his French agent and London publisher, when the telephone rang shrilly and knocked her out of concentration. The Historian hardly ever received telephone calls.

  “Bonjour, ma petite!” bellowed the man at the end of the line. Immediately Maia realised it was Mahmoud. His voice was even more robust than at their first meeting at the Grand Tazi.

  “Hello, Mahmoud. I’m afraid that the Historian is away in Europe.”

  “Really? Do you imagine that I am not aware of where Mihai is, child? I know all his movements. I also know that you have nobody here and I hate to think of you sitting there all alone in the house and well... all cold and lonely.”

  “I am not cold, Mahmoud.”

  “Yes, yes, so you say. That is by the bye. Still, too much time alone for a young lady. Come back to my hotel and you can meet all my regulars. You come at once! Straight away! I give you very nice time.” Then he thought for a moment. “No – there is another place. A bar. Ask at the desk.”

  “I have a lot to do for the Historian before he returns, Mahmoud.”

  “Mihai won’t mind.”

  “I think, in fact, that he will. He is expecting this work to be finished.”

  “But you must have some enjoyment too, my dear. That is what you come for, no, a new life?”

  For a moment, Maia remained silent. “Well, not only that.”

  “You are too alone. It is never good for a young girl to be too alone.”

  “I am happy.”

  “As you say, my dear, as you say. Come this afternoon, this evening, whenever you wish. Consider this an invite, and you know, one must be invited to visit the bar at the Grand Tazi,” said Mahmoud proudly, with an unmistakable tinge of snobbery.

  “I’m not sure... ” She was nervous to meet new people, and beginning to enjoy her reclusive lifestyle.

  “But of course you will come!” It was clear that Mahmoud was of a persistent nature.

  “I will come this evening,” said Maia, accepting her fate. There was to be no escape, no more revelling in her self imposed loneliness.

  “You need to see people,” said Mahmoud in a softer voice.

  She could almost imagine him saying he had her best interests at heart. He was so convincing that for a moment Maia forgot that the man barely knew her.

  “Well, that is settled then! Make sure that you bring a bathing suit,” said Mahmoud, and the click on the line signalled the call was over.

  Maia decided to take the least revealing bathing suit she could find. She didn’t know that the Grand Tazi possessed a private pool, but then, thought Maia, why should she? The Historian had not mentioned it to her. A thought struck her; perhaps the Historian would not be pleased if she were to visit the Grand Tazi. He might consider it an intrusion into the life that he had built for himself, a life about which he was so secretive. Maia decided to ignore these doubts. She was beginning to resent the Historian; surely in his absence she could visit the Grand Tazi, if she had been invited. The Historian had left her here, with piles of his work, leaving all of his affairs in disarray, publishers hounding him to return advances, and she, alone in the city. A sudden fury overtook her; she began to forget how she had arrived here searching for peace and a tranquility in which to concentrate upon her art; she now resolved to immerse herself again in the world.

 
; Going down into the street, Maia found herself intrigued by Mahmoud’s invitation. She was apprehensive at the prospect of entering his private bar and meeting his ‘regulars’. Weaving her way through the crowds, all that she was able to hear were the angry voices of shouting men and women and the wail of an ambulance. She could see a mass of people peering round several police cars, with a camel at the centre of the chaos. Resisting any fruitless attempt at seeing anything further, Maia tore herself from the growing crowd, and continued on her way to the Grand Tazi.

  Arriving at the hotel, Maia went through the empty foyer until she heard a voice frenetically calling her back. A woman was standing at the desk sporting a visibly black moustache that lined her upper lip. Maia was unable to tear her eyes away; the thing wriggled. The woman appraised her from top to bottom.

  “I have been invited by Mahmoud. He knows I am coming. Where is the pool and bar?” Past events had disposed Maia to take a harsh position towards other women.

  “It is a long, long way away,” the woman said mysteriously. She then spoilt the effect by smirking widely.

  “Your boss has invited me.” Maia felt herself go pale with hostility. The woman relented, and she bowed low, with a false sycophancy.

  “Par ici, mademoiselle,” she said, pointing to a half open door in the corner of the foyer.

  Maia crouched slightly and passed through the windowless, smoky corridor. Crumbling and peculiarly low, the few feet she took seemed endless, until she emerged into the sun.

  A gloomy sight greeted Maia; a dried up old courtyard filled with weeds, a wall at the far end peeling with paint, and a small, square shaped pool with sea monsters carved of stone malevolently peering down into the water. The tangled snake hair of Medusa trailed along the ground, dripping into the pool and twisting round the sides. The statue’s nostrils flared angrily at the guests. By the other side of the courtyard, only a few metres away from the pool, the bar curved softly, quietly admonishing the ostentation of the sea monsters. Beside the small pool there lay scattered small tables and cushions. Over the bar towered an enormous fig tree providing shade in the heat, and the pool itself was immaculately tiled with a pale blue, which lent the water an alluring glow in the fading light. The place had a certain louche charm, but the weeds beside the pool were overgrown and had begun to fall into it, so that shards of green leaves fluttered across the water’s surface.