Alexandra Singer

by Tea at the Grand Tazi

  “Oh no, my dear. Rich people too. Especially very rich men! I’m hosting the exhibition of this artist’s latest work. You must come.” Florian’s smile was fixed rigidly on his face, which was twitching frenetically. As if nobody was paying him sufficient attention, he suddenly threw out his arms. “You must all come!”

  Paola was staring at him with a disapproving look. “I don’t think your party is exclusive anymore, Florian.”

  Florian’s face fell. “I just wanted to spread my love.”

  “Look at him! He’s so fabulous.” Konstantin was grinning ferociously.

  “You will never understand me, Paola,” said Florian, tossing his thick hair. Then he beamed. “Merely a trifle,” he muttered randomly, as if responding to some remark that no-one else had heard.

  Chapter 15

  The next morning, Maia found the Historian sitting peacefully in the courtyard, thoughtfully sipping his mint tea and reading the review of his main rival’s latest work in a New York paper. Maia could tell he was in a ferocious mood.

  But Maia was becoming desperate. “I need help,” she said and went over to sit beside him. The Historian shifted his newspaper away from her, and Maia’s hard façade began to disintegrate. “Please help me,” she repeated, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

  The Historian stared at her with disgust. “Stop it,” he said, irritatably.

  “How can I stop? I want to. I want to so much. But you know I can’t.”

  “You can,” said the Historian.

  “Did you know? Please tell me; just tell me if you were in on this. I can’t take these lies. Do you know what they did to me in the Atlas? What Armand and Mahmoud did? They say it is your fault. It was your house. But you weren’t there! You didn’t stop them! And now I’m stuck here. I need it; I can’t just leave. And I never see you. You are never here. Help me escape this!” She grabbed at his hands, and now she was sobbing violently as she caught her breath between bouts of tears.

  “Did you not like what they gave you?” the Historian said coolly, like a scientist measuring the success of an experiment.

  Through her tears, she looked up at him. “Yes, at first. Of course I liked it. But now I hate it. Look at me!” she shouted, and it was true; violet shadows encircled her sunken eyes, and the blue of her veins was growing more prominent.

  He drew away in disgust. “You have merely let yourself go.”

  “I will come off it. But I need more now.”

  “You will always need more. That is not a reason for me to help you. You can begin now.”

  “No! I can’t start here. Not near him.”

  The Historian sighed, as if he was relenting to a young child’s demands for ice cream. He had made this girl pathetic, and it had been so easy. Now she was begging at his feet, stripped of all her independence. It was so disappointing.

  “I will help you today,” he told her. “But after this, no more. I will not help you again,” and he turned away.

  Maia was torn between taking what he was offering, and confronting him. But she needed to know.

  “So you know all about it?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “Why?”

  His reticence provoked her. “I will make it known,” she shouted at him. “I will tell everyone. I will ruin you!”

  The Historian gave a ghastly, mirthless laugh. “And who will believe you against me?” Gently, he touched her arm. “I will speak to Mahmoud and Armand. I don’t know how they have been behaving while I have been away.”

  Maia was confused. She wanted to believe him.

  “Maia,” he said benevolently, “I let you stay here, don’t I? Even when I am so disappointed with you. I am your protector. Why don’t you go for a rest, and I will see you tonight at Florian’s exhibition.” He didn’t even bother to look up from his newspaper, and now ashamed, she rose from the table.

  Later that night, Maia dressed in flat sandals with a plain black dress, which fell below the knees, and silver necklaces and bracelets bought in the souk. Her shoulders were covered with a silver scarf. The taxi went slowly through the isolated Palmeraie, where the palms were dry and the roads dusty. The area was isolated, and along the ochre rubble she saw chameleons clinging. As she gradually approached the house, she saw white fairy lights decorating a gigantic villa, already exuding the sounds of a party in full flow.

  Maia got out of the taxi, and walked up the stone path to Florian’s riad. She entered into the brilliant white light of the huge hall, and despite the engraved invitation in her hand, lingered at the door.

  A wide flight of marble stairs was placed in the centre of the hall, and as Maia looked up, she saw Florian was descending, jerking sharply to the music of the Tango, and clutching a tiny white cat in his arms. When he reached the bottom of the steps he did not greet Maia, indeed she thought that he may not even have seen her. Guests were draped not so seductively on cushion divans placed against the tiled walls, and handsome young men were proudly walking around, displaying themselves. A very fat Frenchman who smelt strongly of whisky came and stood next to her picking up one of the sweets, which lay upon a pile of sweet sugar pastries. Maia moved away before the man had a chance to talk to her.

  Maia was the first person to greet Paola as she entered the hall. “Is the Historian here?”

  “I have no idea. I saw him this morning and he said he might see me here. Listen, Paola, I think we might have set off on the wrong foot. I don’t really like the way women are treated here, and I think as another woman you might have been more sympathetic to that.”

  “But you let yourself be treated like that.” Paola smirked.

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Don’t pretend, Maia. I know all about you and Armand. Everybody here knows about it, and what he’s like.”

  “That is none of your business, Paola.”

  But a condescending smile was already forming on Paola’s lips. “He started with me, you know. Although all that was quite a few years ago.”

  “Oh.”

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “What do you expect me to say? Things here don’t really come as so much of a shock to me anymore.”

  “How very jaded you are. Why are you still here, anyway?”

  “I don’t have much to go back to at the moment. The Historian gave me a job and somewhere to live, and my painting hasn’t gone too badly.” She didn’t know why she was bothering to explain herself to this woman.

  Florian’s gathering had been presented to her as exclusive. But as Maia looked around, she saw the usual gathering of lowlifes from the Grand Tazi.

  Where Florian’s money came from, no-one was quite sure. When the sun went down, it was rumoured that he went out to play in the secret corners of the city, notably in the Jardins de la Koutoubia, where it was reported boys were brought in to satisfy the lusts of the men who lurked there. It seemed that Florian’s activities were rather well documented by the gossip tongues, although evidently it did not stop people from attending his events.

  It was whispered that Florian was known to prowl certain nightspots, as predatory as his fluffy white cat Mabouche, whom he loved with a passion matched only by his appetite for the working boys of the city. Maia thought that people were so bored here, they might easily read deeper into a rumour of Florian’s supposed penchant for perversions. The expatriate community was so small.

  When he finally saw her, Florian’s scream made him sound deranged. “Maria!” he squealed.

  “It’s Maia.”

  “It was made for vice, this place! It could conceal an absolute retinue of concubines in linked rooms.” He was excited by the idea.

  Maia looked at the man now standing beside her, and she recognised him as the American, Jacopo, with the Panama hat from whom she had been trying to escape in the souk.

  “I’ve seen you before. What are you doing here? How do you know Florian?”

  “I’m an artist. Perhaps we met at the Grand Tazi?” Sh
e smiled politely at his abrupt manner.

  “An artist! Where did you meet Florian?”

  “The only bar I go to here, the Grand Tazi.” Maia said wearily.

  “Oh, that old place. I used to go there.”

  “What made you stop?”

  “A difference of opinion. That fat old guy Mahmoud. I didn’t want to give him my money anymore. And he was always pushing drugs on me. I didn’t want to get involved.”

  “I see.”

  “It looks like we have a lot in common. I am an antiques restorer.”

  “Why would we have anything in common?”

  “You are an expatriate, I’m an expatriate, and we both like art.”

  He was staring at her, and Maia returned the look. He had a shock of bright orange hair, and two front teeth. His face was huge and his skin had a waxy pallor. He was monumentally ugly. She decided to make her excuses to leave as he began his story about a decidedly nasty case of hookworm.

  Maia passed shadows hunching behind one another, flickering tongues, all encompassing mouths set in protruding jaws. Cologne reeked strongly, cruelly pinching her nostrils.

  As she thought about leaving, Maia’s heart sank as she recognised the Bambages approaching. She nodded at them, and Martin Bambage looked away. Since they had last met, Lucy Bambage’s skin had blistered and coarsened, her skin nearly crimson. Maia had no idea what to say to the woman, but Florian broke the silence.

  “How do you like my riad? I rescued it from ruin!”

  “It’s fabulous,” said Lucy Bambage. “The house, the night, the people, the people!” she bellowed hideously, and the insipid moon illuminated her unfortunate face. Lucy Bambage was even more tiresome than Maia remembered.

  “Have you met Mabouche?’ Florian asked, to no-one in particular, and he began to mumble delightedly to the cat, which jumped out of his arms, looked at him contemptuously, and went off to feed into the night. Maia was filled with a desperate, painful envy for this cat.

  The Historian appeared, and without saying anything to Maia, he simply handed her another glass of wine. He seemed to already know the Bambages, for there were no introductions.

  Maia walked on into the enormous courtyard and saw the fig trees and the huge hanging brass lanterns under which some guests were sprawled languidly.

  She could hear people laughing at her, she felt sure of it. She heard Mahmoud’s bellowing voice.

  “She has had far too much again. You had better not let her drink anymore.”

  Maia couldn’t reply. She saw them and tried to speak, but was unable. She wondered why he was so concerned about her alcohol levels of all things.

  “Nonsense,” came the Historian’s voice. Maia made her way over to them, as a tall, imposing man with a huge grey moustache came up behind the Historian and slapped him on the back, grabbing his hand affectionately. “This is my brother,” said the Historian. Maia was flustered, reminded how little she really knew of the Historian and his former life.

  And with that, a woman appeared beside the Historian’s brother and linked his arm to hers.

  “Noor is a doctor,” said the Historian. The woman smiled proudly, wearing a sleeveless fuchsia dress that on any other woman might have revealed a severe lack of taste. She held out her hand, and Maia was gracious.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” said the doctor’s wife.

  Maia ignored her and turned to the doctor. “What type of medicine do you specialise in?”

  “I only work with people who have contracted certain diseases. Sub-Saharan ones, mainly.”

  “Do you know much about hookworm infestations?”

  The wife sniggered.

  “No, no!” Maia said. “It’s not me, I met someone earlier who started to talk about an nasty infestation.”

  “Do you really think this is appropriate?” said the wife.

  The doctor rubbed his chin, ‘I would like to meet this man. I believe I may have once treated him.”

  “He was telling me all about it. It sounded very unpleasant. His name is Jacopo. He is an antiques restorer. An American. He was telling me all about it but I walked away.”

  “No wonder!” said the wife, who was still staring at her coldly with her brilliant blue eyes.

  Maia turned back towards her. “From who have you heard about me, exactly?”

  “From Mihai, of course,” she said. Her voice had an American twang. Maia shrugged her off, turning and heading back into the throng of people lining the marble staircase, and up into the house.

  Chapter 16

  Armand was returning from a meeting in Tangier. Having driven for hours, the prospect of the evening ahead filled him with an unusual sense of apprehension. He felt a slight twinge of guilt for testing merchandise on Maia, but she was useless to him now. She was becoming an irritation, more than a minor inconvenience. She would take anything he gave her. Perhaps it was best to leave her to her own devices. He thought of Maia’s face. It was utterly unremarkable, and he found her beautiful only in her fear. He hated how her sad eyes followed him around. But the entire duplicity had filled him with a sweet, subtle pleasure; this was how real vice tasted.

  The people with whom he had been dealing were particularly difficult. He knew that others were out to get him.

  From a wealthy French family of Moroccan origin, Armand had enjoyed oblivion in the past but he had never allowed it to better him. Armand enjoyed control and power far too much for that. Yet Maia was the first woman who had ever tempted him to share the experience. When he watched people taste it for the first time, as he had watched Maia, he squirmed with distaste, not pleasure. He found it obscene, like watching someone else having sex. And although he was the executor of the Historian’s wishes, he got as much pleasure from observing the emotions of that pitiful creature as he got from anything. He took part wholeheartedly in the man’s misanthropic experiment, just as if it were his own, and in a mere few months they had closed the gap between a curious innocence and the sweet, succulent knowledge of evil. By nurturing her cravings, her inhibitions had waned. It was an amusing process, but she irritated him and she made him need to purge this irritation she caused him. He had led her gradually, with his devious steps, from humiliation to humiliation, and a degradation that he had found delightful, and now the gratification he derived from this cruelty had become a necessity to him. But recently he had sensed a change in her. Surely he was not losing his grip on her?

  Armand played his cards close to his chest. He was renowned for his utter inability to trust. He never revealed much about himself because he believed that it would give people ammunition against him. He was always careful of being watched, or of having his calls intercepted, as a suspicious, residential foreigner.

  It amused Armand to think that at this event of Florian’s, he would be mingling with the officials and elite who were so dependent on men like him and Florian. For both their illegal income which buoyed up the city, and their own wealth, as well as their own private pleasures.

  Armand stared blankly at the empty road as Palmeraie rose up ahead of him. Throwing his cigarette out of the window, he thought about Maia. She had got what she had come searching for, and now she was a casualty. What a perfect example of supply and demand.

  At that moment, Maia was wandering aimlessly through the party, past the questionable figures and their debauched characters. She blundered through, passing their gargoyle like faces, the sickly scent of their perfumes. The masque swirled on. Maia caught the eye of a man and he grinned at her, flashing his perfect white teeth and she looked away. Through tall marble columns, she entered a maze of corridors, which led into rambling, ruined, empty rooms lit by large, white candles. In the centre of a small square stood a statue, a Priapus on a plinth. This Priapus was carved out of marble; it too was perfectly proportioned and grotesque in member. As she looked up, its smile leered down horribly.

  At the far end of Florian’s vast garden, grass covered the steps going down to the pool, arou
nd which strange statues were placed in a bizarre mix of tastelessness. Myriad lights reflected on the shallow water of the pool, so shallow that it was almost empty, and the soft spheres of the lanterns were illuminated as the aroma of oranges lingered delicately in the air. Every so often, the moon vanished behind the clouds.

  Maia found herself stuck with Konstantin in a booth. He was moaning about his decrepit lodgings, the general hopelessness of his life. She could no longer stand him, and she stared at the blurred outlines of the passing figures.

  “Have you seen the exhibition yet?”

  “No, Konstantin, I’ve been exploring the house. It’s huge. It reminds me of a Roman villa.”

  Konstantin repeated as if from a textbook. “The basic riad floor plan is plain and geometrically precise, consisting of rooms surrounding a central courtyard. It is a Roman villa designed to meet African climatic conditions, the riad provides shade and shelter from the African heat and the central courtyard is a peaceful oasis lush with plants and surrounded by fountains and pools.”

  “Is that what you tell the tourists, Konstantin?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” he said and began to sob.

  Maia felt only irritation. A coldness overtook her. “What is it now, Konstantin?”

  “I love, and I am not loved.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I hate him!” he said vehemently, clutching his fists together. “You know who.”

  Already she knew who it was. But she said, “I don’t know, Konstantin. Let’s look around.”

  “He is here! I know it! Don’t lie to me. I hate him!”

  “Why don’t you let him go, Konstantin? You don’t hate him.”

  “I do, I do!” he cried out, like a child. “I know he is here with Armand!”

  He rounded on her, and hissed, “Your inability to confront him is inexplicable.”

  Maia looked at Konstantin; his face was horribly contorted as if a different man stood before her. She stood, abruptly, and walked along the edge of the pool, heading for the exhibition.

  A series of photographs was being shown in the crumbling garden, each one as similar and as insipid as the last. Maia thought they were rather banal. The feted photographer was Blake Cram, who had been lauded with compliments for his work for several American magazines. He was renowned for his use of light and focus. If this exhibition was the purpose of the party, as Florian had claimed, then why, she wondered, were they being exhibited far away in his underground garden? Blake Cram was nowhere to be seen.