What the hell was this all about? Why did Paul know this guy?
I charged down the hall, entering a kitchen that had several days of dirty dishes and brimming ashtrays scattered everywhere, not to mention a stench that I associated with rotting vegetables. I kept shouting: ‘Monsieur, monsieur.’ Again no answer. Another charge down the long corridor. Another door thrown open. Only this time I found myself staring in at a huge carved bed, on which Omar and Monsieur Ben Hassan were sleeping naked. They were on separate corners of the expansive mattress, Omar looking so diminutive and compact compared to the fleshy enormity of Ben Hassan. As soon as I threw open the door Omar snapped awake. Seeing me he scrambled for a sheet to cover himself, then started hissing at me in Arabic. At which point Ben Hassan opened his eyes slowly, took me in, and said:
‘You interrupted our siesta.’
‘I can’t find my backpack.’
‘And you immediately thought that the dirty Moroccans had stolen it.’
‘You let me sleep through my flight. Where have you put my bag?’
‘In the cupboard by the front door. You will find that nothing has been touched. If you need the bathroom it’s the door next to the cupboard. There is a shower there as well. Fresh towels have been laid out for you. Please excuse the state of the kitchen. We have been working flat out on a project for several days, and housekeeping, alas, has taken a back seat. But we’ll eat out tonight.’
‘I need to get going.’
‘Get going where?’
‘To find Paul. You know where he’s gone, don’t you?’
‘Go and have a shower. I will ask Omar to make some tea, and then we will discuss your husband and his whereabouts.’
‘I left Essaouira in a hurry yesterday when I learned that Paul had come to Casablanca. So I have nothing to change into, no toiletries.’
‘I can supply you with a toothbrush, but I sense we are in two different worlds when it comes to clothing size or taste. However, there is a big French clothing shop a five-minute walk from here. Omar would be happy to guide you.’
‘I’ll think about it. Could I use a phone, please?’
‘Are you wanting to call Royal Air Maroc?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘I’ve taken care of that for you.’
‘You what?’
‘When you passed out I tried waking you many times. When you wouldn’t stir I took the liberty of looking in your bag and finding your travel documents. I saw that your flight was at midday today. Given your exhaustion I knew you simply wouldn’t be making the flight. So I called a friend who runs everything at Royal Air Maroc and you are booked on the same flight at midday tomorrow. May I now extend the invitation for you to take advantage of our guest bed tonight and allow me to take you out for dinner?’
I found myself just a little bemused by all this.
‘If you will give us ten minutes to wash and dress . . .’ he said.
I nodded accord and headed down the corridor. In the closet near the front door there, indeed, was my bag. My passport was in place. So too my laptop. And my wallet with assorted credit cards. And a fresh printout of the changed reservation with the old one stapled behind it. The new printout also showed that the flight change had been made without cost to me.
I reproached myself for assuming that my host and his assistant/lover had robbed me. I was having that knee-jerk Western reaction to things North African: a belief that, with few exceptions, no one here was to be trusted. But if the past few weeks had proven anything it was that, outside of a few hassled moments, I had been treated with considerable respect and propriety. And Monsieur Ben Hassan, rather than turning me away from his door, had taken me in, allowed me to pass out and sleep undisturbed for much of the day, changed my flight reservation to the following day, and was now offering me the chance to stay here tonight. I owed him thanks for that. Just as I was also still a little dubious about him going through my bag to see if I had a plane ticket in need of changing. Wasn’t there some hidden motive? The man was up to something in what I presumed was the false-passports department. Just as I kept wondering what he might have on Paul in the way of information that my husband might not want shared with others. Then there was the way that, like a ruthlessly cool bridge player, he had trumped me with that little bombshell: ‘He’s seeing his wife.’ A revelation that landed like a kick to the head.
Still, I couldn’t fault his hospitality to date, though I could certainly fault my hyper-anxiety and paranoia for coming across as wildly suspicious and distrustful. I returned to the living room and began making up the bed in which I had slept.
‘There is no need to assuage your guilt by tidying up.’
I turned around and saw that he was in a white djellaba, already marked with sweat, as the ceiling fans did little to temper the heat of the late afternoon.
‘But I do feel guilty – especially for the way I immediately assumed—’
‘We all have our prejudices – even when we tell ourselves that we are not prejudiced.’
‘I apologise.’
‘Ego te absolvo.’
I smiled back. ‘You’re Catholic?’
‘My mother was. My father kicked with the Muslim foot. Moi . . . I am somewhere in between. But the Catholic in me likes the instant redemption of confession. There is no need to be apologetic about before. You will join me for dinner tonight?’
‘That is most generous of you. But I need to find some clothes first. I left Essaouira with nothing at all.’
‘Being on the run from the police usually means urgent departures.’
‘How did you know I was running away from the cops?’
‘I have my sources. But fear not, none of them know you are here. I am completement discret. But bravo for eluding them the way you did. Of course they think that you beat up Paul with some heavy object. Perhaps he deserved your wrath. A brilliantly talented man, Paul. One of the most gifted artists I’ve encountered, yet someone who cannot face any sort of grounded reality. Instead of simply saying what he does not want, he plays the game of agreeing to something that he knows he cannot follow through on, and then uses these lies as the beginning of an exit strategy.’
I looked at Monsieur Ben Hassan with even greater respect. Never before had I heard someone nail Paul’s manifold psychological complexities. Of course, when you are in the midst of a crisis with somebody else, you are more than receptive to anyone who confirms your own dark thoughts. I sensed that if I hung around today and accepted Mr Ben Hassan’s hospitality, I would learn much more about the man I once thought I knew and understood, but whose outer shell was a veneer behind which multiple contradictory versions of the same person lived.
‘If you can put up with me for another few hours,’ I told Ben Hassan, ‘I’d very much like to stay.’
‘I think I can put up with you,’ he said.
Fourteen
THERE WAS, INDEED, a large chain department store just a five-minute walk from Monsieur Ben Hassan’s apartment. I took what few worldly goods I had with me, knowing that a passport is something you never leave anywhere in Morocco – especially with a man who dealt in travel documents of an illegal variety.
‘Do you want a shower before you depart?’ he asked.
‘I’ll get one when I return with clean clothes.’
‘Omar can show you the way.’
‘Just tell me.’
Ben Hassan explained how to find this store, and how there was a café next door – the Parisian – that had Wi-Fi.
Ten minutes later I found myself back in a monocultural world of consumerist goods and fashion; of air-conditioned environments and a low hum of poppy muzak which, some marketing guru no doubt reasoned, provides the right sonic smoothness to encourage you to buy more. As I filled my basket with several pairs of underwear, T-shirts, a pair of tan cotton pants, khaki shorts, two white linen shirts, a pair of sandals, I felt another stab of desperate sadness. A comment Paul made just days earlier refilled my ears. Sta
nding out on the balcony of our room, the sun declining into the Atlantic, a glass of wine in hand, still intoxicated with the love we had just made inside, the heat of the day diminishing, the light bathing the cityscape in a cognac glow, my husband turned to me with a near-beatific smile. And said:
‘There is so much to be said for slamming the door on consumerism. Because we’re all slaves to it. But here we are free from all that . . . for a spell.’
Then we talked excitedly about how we should consider a new way of dealing with that world. How, perhaps, in four or five more years, Paul could take early retirement from the university; how I could sell my accounting firm; how our house in Buffalo would be paid off, and could be sold and exchanged for a smaller house on the Maine coast, with a barn we could transform into a studio for Paul, and maybe with a large attic which we could convert into an office for me. An office where I could finally try to pound out the novel that had been gestating within me for years (but which, given my creative self-doubt, I’d never gotten around to starting): the story of my dad’s life, and the sadness inherent at the heart of the American success ethos.
‘You’ll be able to write and I’ll be able to draw without encumbrance,’ he said. ‘If I manage to shift a few drawings a year, we can easily afford a couple of months here in Essaouira, or maybe somewhere in the South of France where I’ve heard you can rent cottages in the Pyrenees for three hundred euros a month . . .’
‘A life of ongoing adventure.’
‘That will be us,’ he said. ‘It’s all there for the asking. Even when we have our son or daughter with us.’
I felt myself going rigid with fury again. Hurt and rage and . . .
He has a daughter – and he has a wife.
Another wife.
‘Madame, are you all right?’
It was one of the shop assistants – a very pretty young woman, no more than twenty-one, her hand on my arm, trying to steady me. Did I need steadying? Did I look as if I was about to tip forward into . . .?
‘Fine, fine,’ I heard myself saying, even though I knew that was anything but the truth.
‘My apologies. I shouldn’t have intruded. Can I help you find anything?’
‘Toiletries. I need toiletries.’
‘And make-up?’
‘Do I need make-up?’
‘Madame, I am not trying to interfere. My apologies again.’
‘No, it’s me who’s sorry,’ I said. This kind young woman informed me that the toiletries were on the second floor, near the café. I thanked her and went upstairs and bought deodorant and talcum powder and shampoo and conditioner and a hairbrush and a toothbrush and toothpaste and a facial cream that ludicrously promised to reduce all noticeable wrinkles in two weeks. I paid for all my purchases and asked the woman behind the register where I could find the nearest post office. She said there was one right opposite a café called the Parisian. Now there was a bit of synchronicity. It was the café that Ben Hassan had told me had reasonable Wi-Fi. Leaving the department store I walked the block to the local outpost of Poste Maroc. I bought an extra-large padded envelope, then reached into my backpack and withdrew Paul’s one intact sketchbook, containing over fifty of his Essaouira drawings. I resisted the temptation to look through them again, certain that the sight of his artwork would toss me into further tumult. I sealed the book into the envelope, wrote the name and address of my accounting firm on the front, then had it airmailed by registered post back to the States. I wanted to get Paul’s recent work home right away. I figured that, whatever was to become of us, he would be relieved to know that not all his drawings had been lost in the vortex into which he had thrown himself.
I adjourned to the café across the street.
The Parisian was very much a facsimile of one of those big brasseries in Paris – like La Coupole or the Terminus Nord – which I had read about in guidebooks, and which I vowed to loiter in someday. I found a table. I ordered un express and asked the waiter if he could find me some bread and jam. I was ravenous. Seeing my laptop he told me the name of the network and the password that I needed to get online.
I hadn’t checked my email since yesterday, so there were over forty messages awaiting me. Mostly spam or commercial mail shots. A few professional matters to do with clients, all of which I answered while simultaneously forwarding them on to Morton.
The coffee and sliced baguette arrived. I thanked the waiter and layered the bread with strawberry jam, eating it quickly, hunger and disorientation making me feel light-headed. I drained the coffee in one go, then asked for another, along with un citron pressé.
‘Le petit dej’ est à dix-sept heures,’ he said with a smile. Breakfast at five p.m. I managed to smile back.
I switched over to a new screen, calling up the joint MasterCard account that Paul and I shared; a credit card with a severely enforced credit limit, over which neither of us could spend. I checked the balance and was horrified (but not surprised) to see that the $3,000 limit had been exceeded earlier today – whereas when I last looked at its balance only three days ago, it had just $300 worth of eating out and small incidentals in Essaouira. But since yesterday, there had been two large cash withdrawals of 10,000 dirhams apiece, a plane ticket on Royal Air Maroc this morning to Ouarzazate, and a 1,600-dirham charge to a hotel named the Oasis in that same city. I googled the hotel and was directed to its website, where I discovered it was a two-star establishment with rooms at this low-season time of year costing 400 dirhams a night. Which meant that he must have booked himself in for at least four nights. I wanted to call and find out if he was indeed in residence there right now, to confront him on the phone, to demand . . .
His ‘wife’ – his other wife – must live in Ouarzazate. So why did he drag us to Essaouira instead of going to that city where he could have snuck between the two of us? Why run here – to Casablanca – to see his daughter after I had exposed his deceptions? Why did his daughter slam the door in his face, and why did he feel the need to run off to his wife? And how did he get on a plane without some piece of identification . . . like the passport he left behind, and which I was now carrying?
Ouarzazate. I googled its name and discovered that it was a city of around sixty thousand people in the south-east of the country; that it was considered ‘the gateway to the Sahara’; that it had a film studio and was often used by foreign film companies as a location for anything with a desert setting; that it prided itself on ‘its modern infrastructure and historic Saharan architecture’; that it was home to an international airport with daily flights to Casablanca and Marrakesh, and three-times-weekly direct service to Paris Orly.
It was now five-twelve in coastal North Africa. Twelve-twelve in Buffalo. I found the printout of my changed Royal Air Maroc reservation. I went to their website and tapped in my reference number. I switched over to the Jet Blue website and changed my internal JFK-to-Buffalo flight to the same time tomorrow. The citron pressé arrived. I added a small half-teaspoon of sugar and a dribble of water to the freshly squeezed lemon, then downed it in one go. Citron pressé: such a simple drink; the soothing and beneficial within a very sour fruit.
I felt improved by this late-afternoon breakfast. I paid the waiter. On my way back to Ben Hassan’s I passed a florist and purchased a gift for my host: twelve long-stemmed lilies. Yes, I smelled my host’s deviousness, but he was also being hospitable and I needed that right now. And my mother would have climbed out of her grave to haunt me if I hadn’t followed one of her key social directives: always bring a gift.
‘Lilies!’ Ben Hassan said when I returned to his apartment. ‘How did you know I love this flower?’
‘Just a guess.’
‘Perhaps you think me death-obsessed?’
‘Are you?’ I asked.
‘When you weigh two hundred kilos and cannot walk more than two blocks without chest pains, yes, lilies do remind you that the River Styx is just a few streets away. But thank you for the gesture.’
‘Speaking
of death wishes . . . I know that my husband is now in Ouarzazate. That’s where she lives, isn’t it?’
Ben Hassan pursed his lips.
‘Paul told me that you were a dangerously thorough woman, as befits your profession. We will talk more over dinner. The guest bathroom, as you may remember, is two doors down on the right. If you throw your clothes out into the corridor, Omar will have them washed and ironed by the time we return tonight. We don’t want to send you back to the United States with dirty laundry, now do we?’
‘Don’t we all have dirty laundry, monsieur?’ I asked.
‘Ah, an accountant with soul.’
The bathroom was cramped; the shower a tiny stall with a handheld hose. But the water pressure was reasonable, the temperature hot. And it was good to strip out of clothes in which I had travelled and slept for the past twenty-four hours. I did indeed crack open the door to toss them into the corridor.
Getting dressed in the new clothes I had bought I caught sight of myself in the mirror. The eight-hour snooze had lightened the dark circles beneath my eyes. The seismic disturbances within had hardly dissipated. But the upending of a life – my life – is so much better handled after a proper sleep and a very hot shower.
‘Don’t you look radiant,’ Ben Hassan said when I wandered down the corridor and found him and Omar at work in the office in which multi-coloured passports were stacked high.
‘I thank you for all your kindnesses.’
‘You deserve nothing less than that, madame. Especially with all that you have discovered in the past few hours. Not that Paul himself would ever stare directly into the wrecked ship that is his life. Who on earth wants to do that?’
A pause, as Ben Hassan let that last comment hang between us. Then he whispered something in Arabic to Omar who got up from the laminating press at which he was at work on a Belgian passport. He brushed by me.
The Heat of Betrayal Page 15
