Maia continued to follow the case with interest. Armand was sentenced for many crimes. He had produced pornographic films, incited prostitution, and dealt in illegal drugs. Mahmoud did not go to prison – he had too much influence for that. But to make a show of intolerance, the Grand Tazi was closed down. She had learned in Marrakech that life could be a delicate balance. It was a place of seductive contradictions.
In an interview for an art magazine, Maia told the journalist of her disappointment, her worries that in painting the women she had only served to inflate the whole host of stereotypes about the female. But as she expressed her disenchantment with what she had attempted to do, the journalist, who with his arched, dark eyebrows and dismissive demeanour reminded her of the Historian, was unsympathetic. Barely moving his thin, purse lips, and gingerly sipping his coffee, he dismissed her anxieties. He made her feel exactly as mundane as she was convinced she had become. He asked her why she had rejected the smooth qualities of painting.
“I do not simply wish to recreate scenes,” she said.
“It seems to me that you have a need to force the spectator to be aware of the physical act of painting, by making every gesture of the brush visible to the eye.”
Maia wondered at the man’s hostility. “I do not think so.”
“Why do you sometimes paint the female figures in red, when we all know perfectly well that they are draped completely in black?”
“Just because something is black does not mean that it should necessarily be painted as black.”
For a moment Maia was silent. She was recalling a party at which strange conversations had taken place, where indistinct characters peopled her memories and her dreams. People drifted towards her, sat with her, rejected her with their refusal to meet her eyes, before drifting away to other people. She was forced to raise her eyes and voice, to be solid and open. But then she would always hear her own voice outloud, as if it was coming from someone else.
“In fact I am consoled,” Maia continued, “because I have refused to depict the faces of the women in my paintings.” She pointed out the blank, beige faces of the women staring out from the canvas.
“And why is that?” asked the journalist.
“In showing the faces of the nude women, I would open them up to further surveillance. The viewing audience would invade their privacy. In this way, the woman shuns and rejects the overpowering viewer, and retains her mystery, her safety.”
“Is that your concern?”
“To show their features would be to contradict my values.”
“What difference does it make? You have shown them nude in any case.”
In a short space of time she was already taking a rabid dislike to this journalist, but the interview was vital. After so long, finally she was poised on the very edge of success.
“A true artist can paint faces,” the journalist said, trying to rile her. “Do you perhaps feel that you are not competent to depict them?”
“No, I never said that, I can paint faces; of course I can paint them!” she protested. In her head she heard the Historian’s voice telling her, ‘You will betray those ideals of yours.’
Later on in the exhibition, it emerged that it was not the nudes that were the most popular, but another painting that was lauded. It was her favourite work; a painting she had done of Safira, a nude woman holding a mirror to her face. The face in the mirror image was blank, whilst the nude woman on the rooftop was surrounded by veiled women absorbed in their daily tasks, and a café below, crowded with men, staring up at the scene. This painting, Maia considered, was indicative of how strongly she had come to view life, and to depict people with irony. The very limbs, the hands and feet of the men in the café trailed off to convey their listlessness and despair; the despondency she had experienced with the men in the café in the Atlas mountains.
Her agent had named the painting, ‘From the Erotic to the Mundane,’ and people worked themselves into a frenzy attempting to discover what Maia had intended to say when she had painted the scene. The truth was that Maia had not intended to say anything; it was simply a personal memoir to herself. She enjoyed the attention, took the money, and satisfied herself with the fact that she was now recognised as a successful woman in the eyes of her peers, even if she did feel some residual guilt for exploiting her own sex. But this, she comforted herself, was what women always did, and if she did not do it, then another woman certainly would. This, she realised, was not the only truth. Men act, and women appear and watch themselves being looked at. She had been handed the opportunity to freely express her sensuality.
Close to the end of her exhibition, Maia was appalled to receive a letter from the Historian. She read the scrawled handwriting, ‘Did you obtain what you wanted? So this is your sacrifice. One does not escape. MF.’
Her success had made her bold; she knew of his private despair, his academic failure, his financial ruin. She no longer had time to mourn for her lost integrity. He could never touch her now.
As time went on, memories of the Historian no longer made her shudder, she began to find it difficult to even remember his face. Surely, when she failed to recall details about him, forgetfulness was the ultimate revenge. She was free from her cravings, from the Historian, from Armand, from George.
Years later, Maia returned to the city. Everything had shifted; nothing was in its right place. Its air of authenticity and dissoluteness had disappeared. There were more foreigners, greater openness and more openly distasteful behaviour, but there was greater transparency, too. The hotel where she stayed was so bland it might as well have been in London. She wandered the streets, almost hoping to at least catch a glimpse of her former associates.
When Maia looked back upon all the wretched deceivers she knew that summer, amongst all the liars and the false sophisticates desperately hawking their false histories to disbelieving acquaintances, the only character that Maia was able to recall with anything approaching fondness was Konstantin, who maintained his constant vigil in the private bar at the Grand Tazi.
As she sat and looked at the boarded up building, she forgave herself for the vulnerability that had once made her so attractive. She turned to face the sky. She had spoiled this city for herself.
But an unbearable truth stole up on her, a truth so unpalateable that she could hardly bear to entertain it; the fact that she had been shown her most authentic self. They had shown her who she was.
Sitting outside a café in the clear freshness of a November morning, Maia asked the waiter if he had heard of the Historian and his work.
“Yes. I know he used to live in the medina. Everybody knew him. He was friendly with the owner of this place. Before the scandal.”
The Historian merely aroused a quiet horror in her. Once he had terrified her, but ultimately he had revealed himself as powerless. As Maia listened to the waiter, she considered him and thought how friendly he was, how polite, so different to the men she had once known here.
“What scandal?” she asked sharply, wondering if the Historian’s involvement had been discovered. But it was evident that the Historian had friends in high places, for the waiter was referring only to the Historian’s death.
“It was a strange time. I was a boy, but I still remember it. A two headed cow was found wandering the Bab Agnou gate and the streets were in uproar.” The polite waiter was eager to tell her about the rumour of madness that contributed to the Historian’s death. “The owner of the Grand Tazi had disappeared.”
“Mahmoud.”
The waiter was surprised. “You knew him?”
“We were acquainted. Go on.”
“The police didn’t pursue him, he had some friends. But the Historian, this man you talk of, he died insane. He was a recluse, I hear, and after the Grand Tazi went, people left. The foreigners you see here now, they are all new. None of the old lot we used to see. But the appearance of the cow caused a terrible stampede, and this man was caught up in it.”
“And that was
how he died?” An image came to Maia of a frail, white Historian, caught in the excited stampede.
“Yes, horrible isn’t it?”
“You really were there? Surely though, it was just a rumour?”
“Exactly! But people still believed such things happened. They still do. But I never came face to face with the man you talk of,” the waiter said.
“He was a miserable man,” said Maia.
The waiter said nothing, and he just stood there, looking at her as if waiting for her instructions.
“I know the gate, it reads ‘Enter with blessing, serene people’.” Again she imagined the Historian, flailing around desparately in the crowd, crying out and no-one paying attention. His face came to her mind; the knitted eyebrows, his voice, precise and low, his maliciousness. His only gift to her had been a terrifying glimpse of degradation.
“That’s the one,” said the waiter.
“It was a fitting end for him,” she said, and smiled brightly at the waiter.
The waiter looked down at Maia strangely as he poured the tea into her glass and hurried away. For hours Maia stayed sitting there, sipping her tea, looking down into the glowing street.
Alexandra Singer was runner up in the 2010 Luke Bitmead Bursary Award for her debut novel, Tea at the Grand Tazi.
Set up in 2006, the Bursary aims to encourage and support the work of struggling talented writers, whose work is yet to be published.
Founded shortly after Luke’s tragic death at the age of just 34. Luke’s book White Summer was the first novel to be published by Legend Press and Luke was one of the UK’s most talented up-and-coming writers.
Legend Press are delighted to be working with Luke’s family to ensure Luke’s name and memory lives on.
Previous winners of the award are:
Andrew Blackman in 2008 for On the Holloway Road
Ruth Dugdall in 2009 for The Woman Before Me
Sophie Duffy in 2010 for The Generation Game
J.R. Crook in 2011 for Sleeping Patterns
For more information on the Bursary, visit
www.legendpress.co.uk
Come and visit us at
www.legendpress.co.uk
www.twitter.com/legend_press
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication page
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Alexandra Singer Page 21
