“How do you mean, exactly?” prompted Maia, hoping she could remember the details in the morning.
But Paola was lost in her reminiscence, and a vague look washed over her face and she murmured something inaudible. Maia repressed an urge to shake her.
“Tell me again,” she said.
But Paola came to her senses. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” said Paola, and she stumbled off into the darkness.
As she turned, the Historian was standing there, as if waiting for her to notice him. “I think you are a silly little girl with a great deal to learn. You leave too much to chance.”
Maia was surprised at the sudden confrontation. “You mean, I trusted too much, and wrongly.”
“When I took you on, I have to admit that I expected rather more.” His fish eyes swam all around her.
“You are a lonely and disillusioned old man who can never go home,” said Maia, encouraged by the alcohol.
At first Maia believed he had been misunderstood, she felt injustice had been done to him, but he was revealed only as the blandest procurer and collector of human vices.
The Historian looked at her.
“You imagine that everybody wants to know your story. I came here, in awe of working for a famous Historian. But you are mundane. Just like my paintings, according to you. I pity you. In any case, I suppose you can’t use and destroy people you have contempt for, Mihai.”
“You do not know the whole truth,” he said.
“People talk about you. They say you are utterly corrupt.”
“I know,” he said, grinning proudly. “I know what they say. You know, Maia, you do not have a monopoly on suffering.”
“But you have a monopoly on inflicting it. I’ll be gone tomorrow,” said Maia, before she realised she had made the decision.
“I will ruin your reputation in the art world. It will not be hard; your talent is weak. It is a mess. Just colour, cloying colour. You are deluding yourself if you believe that you have any chance of success.”
“I trusted you when I came here.”
“Never trust a historian,” he said as he began to chuckle.
“I know you were behind it. I want to leave.”
The Historian bent down towards her, and this time he spoke softly. “You listen to me now. They gave you excitement, forget-fulness, what you craved when you came here to me. And how do you think you will cope on your own? You need us now. You are in no position to make demands.”
Maia saw how he now wanted to be rid of her. Before, he was able to use her, but now she had become damaging, and she would have to disappear. He was searching for a way to rid himself of her.
“Are we really reducing ourselves to this, Mihai?”
“As I have told you before,” he smiled nastily, “when you look at a situation from different perspectives, there can be so many varying truths. You never imagined that he truly cared for you, surely?” He gave a hideous laugh. “I employed him to corrupt you. For him, you have been a means to an end.”
“Look at how you treat your pet,” said Maia, reaching out for one last pathetic stab.
“Konstantin knows where his loyalties lie.”
The music throbbed and excitement was generating as though the evening was heading towards something intangible. Maia looked at the Historian; she recalled him sitting around a table with Mahmoud and her lover Armand, all three men discussing her and her use to them and then her ultimate fate; she surmised each one of their motives and her corruption and at this vision she was sick to her stomach.
“You are the coward, Mihai, you fled.”
“I came here to escape from achievement.”
“And look at you now.”
“I see, and yet look at what has become of you.”
His cold composure infuriated her. But when she spoke to him, he made her so nervous that she knew her face wore a foolish smile.
“What did you want from me? Why did you use me?”
“Must one do everything for a reason? Perhaps I do it merely to amuse. You are an experiment. Not so innocent, but certainly naive.”
“Does the process of corruption amuse you?”
“It does. I am bored, am I not? I have reached success in the world. I have what I need. I am growing old, and now I am becoming ugly. I am excluded from all I once held dear. My old colleagues forget me. A minor scandal, instigated by a jilted student – not even a boy, a student, a man, a man who expected too much, too many favours, then I was gone. They paid me nothing. I was forced out. A man like Konstantin. So you see, if the situation is considered from each perspective, there can be so many truths. Perhaps that is what you hoped to find in your paintings,” said the Historian with a cold and casual cruelty.
“The truth is what I found,” she said sharply, all effects of the drugs and alcohol having worn off.
“Ah, a hint of defiance. Finally, I like you. I get so irritated by weakness.”
Maia looked at the Historian and saw a washed out, shabby old man. He looked at her with the cold, limp eyes of a fish.
“Do not believe you are indispensable,” he said. “None of us are. You will never find happiness. Wherever you go.”
A wave of fatigue washed over her; she saw the absolute futility of the conversation. She wanted to leave. She was tired of all their façades, their relationships and their masks. She had reached the end of her period of curiosity with these people, and she no longer cared for the truth about any of them.
Her thoughts were interrupted. She could hear shouting, which grew louder by the minute. There was a shrill and terrible scream, and as she looked up, she saw Mabouche flying through the air. There was a sickening, almost human shriek of pain, and a heavy thud. In a shocking abruptness the cat was lying sprawled on his back.
Members of the crowd looked up, but of course there was nobody there. Florian was screaming like an old woman, and a man she had not seen earlier had his arms around him.
In the ensuing silence she stood frozen, looking down at the dead cat with distaste. Its head appeared to be cracked, and blood seeped onto the tiled floor. Maia was fascinated for a moment by the contrast of scarlet and cream, the creation of the pretty flowing puddles trickling between the tiles. She began to laugh quietly to herself, but in the midst of the horror, nobody paid her any attention.
“How horrifying,” said the Historian, in a diffident tone, and his face was expressionless.
“You should get that cleaned up straight away, Florian. You don’t want to stain your beautiful tiles,” said Armand, patting the man’s arm. He simply walked past the cat, and looked at Maia, almost apologetically. “It was certainly swift.”
“It was cruel and pointless,” she replied. She could not understand how she could be so disgusted by a man to whom she had devoted herself. Now Maia knew who she was, and the door of her fantasies slammed shut. Armand shrugged, and stalked off into the night. Behind the door, the noise of Florian’s party ebbed away.
Guests began to disperse rapidly, like spirits. Some guests were still strewn across the floor, their bodies lying crumpled, and their masks discarded. A woman turned and moaned in her sleep as Maia stepped over her. Florian’s lauded party had now become the remnants of a nightmare. She felt sick, an overdose of pleasure. For a long time Maia sat savouring the smell of the garden at dawn. As the darkness fell from her eyes, she recoiled as flashes of last night’s sordidness came back to her. She tried not to remember, and she focused on the hibiscus opening to the dawn. Maia walked briskly from the house down the long driveway in search of a taxi.
Empty, barricaded properties circled the silent highway. Behind her the house rose up, brutally imposing in the pale light, all its glamour gone. The road was unnervingly exposed, and she hurried on, before suddenly breaking into a fast run. She realised she was no longer wearing shoes, and the smooth tarmac had melted away into rubble and potholes. The stones were cutting into the soft soles of her feet, but she was desperate to escape, and for now, at
least, she felt no pain. She didn’t care that her feet were being shredded beneath her; she needed to flee.
Evil, the final conclusion of her loathing, pulsated through her veins. Stumbling through the wreckage of abandoned refuse, iron and bricks, she was sharply aware of her own fatigue. Making her way back to the city’s centre, she felt exhilarated at the thought of freedom. With each step, the shackles loosened. She was becoming herself again. As far ahead as she could see, the road stretched empty before her. Her anger was tempered by fear, she moved on.
Chapter 18
When Maia awoke to the flush of daylight, vivid images of ghastly clarity filled her mind, and the tears poured down her face. As she hastily packed her few belongings, the house was silent.
She left the house without seeing Ina or the Historian. But as she was getting into her taxi, Konstantin brushed past her in the dust swirling up the street, and he pretended he had not seen her. For a moment, Maia was unable to breathe. She watched Konstantin go. He was wearing his spectacles and a long, black cardigan, his head cocked to the side in a strange angle. She realised that despite her sympathy for him, he was just as suited to life here as the other men she had met, and she let him be, watching him slinking away into the dusk. She fled to Tangier, from where she arranged for her paintings to be sent to London. She wanted to disappear. The weaning process began.
For months she experienced an utter loss of will. Muscle aches, cold flushes and diarrhoea. She locked herself in a hotel room, screaming uselessly.
Maia was desperate to purge herself, to fully return to the old Maia. The nights in particular made her quake. Tormented, she suffered a raging despair. She slept through whole days, and she knew that the nights would soon fill her with their horrific dreams.
Maia dreamt of so many things: nuns who strangled babies and washed them out to sea, and the Coptic Christians of the East. She dreamt of the holy men who prowled the tombs and kidnapped little girls for their pleasures, and the same men of La Koutoubia, who wandered the nearby streets with their bright eyes and flickering tongues. Obscene in the dusk and gruesome in the darkness.
One dream in particular reoccurred each night. Maia was running through a dark, barren forest chased by mysterious creatures. Impeding her was an arrogant angel and his devils, an ogre holding a bellyful of babies and a monster followed by hordes of young men. All of them were foaming at the mouth, and someone was dragging himself laboriously, scraping his body along the parched earth. She was running, turning round constantly for fear that one of them might reach her. They were all shouting incoherent phrases. At a certain point, she stopped paying attention to the obstacles and began shouting back.
She saw the kind face of a man who, taking her by the hand, led her through dark secret paths to the foot of a high tower. He held up a finger and said, ‘Ascend the stairs and never turn round. At the top, you will halt and discover what you sought in vain. Now, run, before you meet up with them again,’ the man screamed, violently shaking his head.
‘But you are my saviour! I don’t need to climb the tower, I have already found you!’ This time she was shouting joyfully.
‘Run!’ he repeated. Then his eyes changed, turning red and ravenous, and he ran off, foaming at the mouth.
Always in the background there stood that imposing, grinning Priapus, leering at her hideously. Inside the tower, something flew in and out of the window. A muttering woman in black appeared and a chess box was left on her windowsill. She caught a glimpse of a figure in black; sure that it was Ina scuttling away.
Maia looked at the chess box, scared to touch it. There were Arabic letters carved into the beautiful dark wood. She took a knife and ran it along the deftly rim of the box. Curves of red wax fell onto the floor, and she read the paper inside but understood nothing.
With a start, Maia jumped back, away from the box. Cockroaches fell onto the floor, scuttling away into unknown corners of the room.
A cold horror took hold of her. She began to scream and could not stop. She believed that Armand was shaking her. He looked at the box and took it away. Maia would wake, curled into a small knot, her head aching from screaming, and her body wracked with dry, soundless sobs.
When she thought she felt well enough to leave the room, Maia opened the door into the dark hallway. She anticipated confrontation with the monsters of her dreams. A succubus sat on her chest, a shroud wiped her face, a snake brushed her with its soft scales. Along the hallway ran her memories, and they sucked her backwards. She expected a hand to grab out to reach her, but when she opened the door, there was nothing there, and the sky had already begun to grow light.
Maia suffered delusions and hallucinations, the shudders and the terrors, the freezing and the extreme heat, until one morning, she felt well enough to leave her room. When she had arrived at the hotel in such a panic, she had paid the proprietor in advance. He was a pleasant enough man, with a wide, open face.
“I would like a receipt,” she had said.
“Why, do you not trust me? I have given you the keys.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” she replied.
The hotel owner had looked her over. “Many travellers get into your state,” he said, as he handed her the receipt.
But now, after many months, he seemed pleased to see her. He served her breakfast on the terrace, and handed her a French newspaper, which he held out to her between his sausage-like fingers. Autumn was approaching, and the air was gentle with a slight chill. Although she began to feel better, a nagging feeling still gnawed at her.
She struggled to read the newspaper article, as the small black print squirmed before her eyes. A pornographic scandal had shaken the country. Thirteen people had been arrested, one of them was Armand. His photograph was placed prominently in the centre of the article.
The men were paid only five hundred dirhams, and a promise of immigration to France. They were accused of encouraging sexual tourism. This was typical of the men she had left behind. Armand, described as a French national of Moroccan descent was handed six years in prison, and Maia knew that for the moment, at least, she was safe. Relief swept over her, as she felt the last of their tight grip slip away.
What she found amusing about the self-righteous, supportive tone of the article was the claim that ‘Mahmoud Arouss, an upstanding member of the community and long-time hotelier was not aware that the rooms of his hotel were being abused for such a pestiferous purpose.’ Mahmoud had made a point of cultivating useful acquaintances, and she wondered how she had never suspected. The hotel owner peered over her shoulder as he placed her breakfast on the table, and sniffed.
“Whatever they say about him, he knew. He was no decent man.”
There was no mention of the Historian. He had gone utterly undetected. Maia wondered what Mahmoud, with his corpulence and his convivial façade, would do now. In shock, she nodded; she folded the newspaper carefully, laid it on the table, and went out of the café, blinking into the light.
She entered the modern streets, looking at the women mixing freely; at the people sitting on steps and strolling along. The views from the port were sweeping and it was a beautiful clear day. She watched the men lounging on the front, looking wistfully across the straits, imagining a different life. These were Armand’s victims, thought Maia, whilst Mahmoud was his associate, the Historian, his boss. Visible in the distance was Spain, the land of plenty, with employment in bars, driving taxis, sweeping floors, all for the dim possibility of citizenship. In this gateway to Europe, some of these men might pack themselves into small boats to struggle across the nine choppy miles, which might transform their lives of poverty into one of supposed wealth. They might evade men like Armand, or they might submit to the oblivion on offer.
She found herself desperate to leave Tangier. Her affinity with the city was too great; like her, the city was still living under the shadow of its sordid, notorious past.
Maia walked up the Rue d’Angleterre to St Andrews, and the quiet of the ch
urch was an antidote to the cacophony outside. She sat for a while in a pew, and then she went into the lemon tree filled garden. The cemetery was deserted, and she passed an hour wandering amongst the graves, thinking about the expatriates who had once lived here, where they had revelled in a place where nothing was truly forbidden and anyone, or anything could be purchased at the right price. Here in the cemetery, where the dry air felt cool, she wandered amongst the white tombs stretched out into the distance like great hunchbacked whales, marooned and forgotten on a foreign shore.
Maia left Tangier by bus, when she was still in the last struggle of her fight against her cravings. She travelled for a while through the desert wilderness, in the grip of a fiery, vengeful rage.
But when she returned to her own country, she found that her will to fight was replaced with something else. The adventure was over. She experienced a sense of a key turning in a lock, the faint heartburn of the displaced.
In London, she took back her flat and received uplifting news from her agent, who was surprised at her sudden return. A gallery had expressed interest in exhibiting her paintings. Somehow word had got out about her project to portray covered women in a different light, and a few months after she returned from Marrakech she was finally invited to display them.
Maia was filled with excitement at the opportunity to finally show what she had been working on for so long. Her exhibition was full every night for the first week. Commercially, she achieved the success that for so long had eluded her, but the reaction of the audience surprised her. The paintings on which she had laboured for hours, focusing on the women going about their daily tasks, laughing in the private courtyards, playing with their children, and then ignored in the streets, were ultimately ignored in favour of her paintings based on what she had seen in the hamam, and from when she had used the disloyal Safira as her model. They called to her mind those long, hot evenings stretched out in the shade of her room. When she looked at them, sensations flitted through her, but it soon changed from a desperate anger to a melancholy sadness. Although the other paintings were lauded as controversial, it was her series of paintings of women in varying poses which were most popular. Individually, or in intertwining groups, they raised their arms, arched their backs, reclining passively in the habitual anatomical distortions of the female nude.
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