Dark Forces: The 25th Anniversary Edition

by Kirby McCauley

  “The hell you are. Get lost, Abdul. I’ll find my own way back.” He turned and started retracing their path. The boy followed about ten paces behind him, smoking.

  He walked for twenty minutes or so, trying to find the relatively broad alleyway that would lead back to the gate. The character of the medina changed: there were fewer and fewer places selling souvenirs, and then none; only residences and little general-merchandise stores, and some small-craft factories, where one or two men, working at a feverish pace, cranked out the items that were sold in the shops. No one tried to sell him anything, and when a little girl held out her hand to beg, an old woman shuffled over and slapped her. Everybody stared when he passed.

  Finally he stopped and let Abdul catch up with him. “All right, you win. How much to lead me out?”

  “Ten dirham.”

  “Stuff it. I’ll give you two.”

  Abdul looked at him for a long time, hands in pockets. “Nine dirham.” They haggled for a while and finally settled on seven dirham, about $1.50, half now and half at the gate.

  They walked through yet another part of the medina, single file through narrow streets, Abdul smoking silently in the lead. Suddenly he stopped.

  Scott almost ran into him. “Say, you want girl?”

  “Uh… I’m not sure,” Scott said, startled into honesty.

  He laughed, surprisingly deep and lewd. “A boy, then?”

  “No, no.” Composure, Lindsay. “Your sister, no doubt.”

  “What?” Wrong thing to say.

  “American joke. She a friend of yours?”

  “Good friend, good fuck. Fifty dirham.”

  Scott sighed. “Ten.” Eventually they settled on thirty-two, Abdul to wait outside until Scott needed his services as a guide again.

  Abdul took him to a caftan shop, where he spoke in whispers with the fat owner, and gave him part of the money. They led Lindsay to the rear of the place, behind a curtain. A woman sat on her heels beside the bed, patiently crocheting. She stood up gracelessly. She was short and slight, the top of her head barely reaching Scott’s shoulders, and was dressed in traditional costume: lower part of the face veiled, dark blue caftan reaching her ankles. At a command from the owner, she hiked the caftan up around her hips and sat down on the bed with her legs spread apart.

  “You see, very clean,” Abdul said. She was the skinniest woman Scott had ever seen naked, partially naked, her pelvic girdle prominent under smooth brown skin. She had very little pubic hair and the lips of her vulva were dry and grey. But she was only in her early teens, Scott estimated; that, and the bizarre prospect of screwing a fully clothed masked stranger stimulated him instantly, urgently.

  “All right,” he said, hoarse. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  She watched with alert curiosity as he fumbled with the condom package, and the only sound she made throughout their encounter was to giggle when he fitted the device over his penis. It was manufactured to accommodate the complete range of possible sizes, and on Scott it had a couple of inches to spare.

  This wonder condom, first-class special-delivery French letter is coated with a fluid so similar to natural female secretions, so perfectly intermiscible and isotonic, that it could fool the inside of a vagina. But Scott’s ran out of juice in seconds, and the aloof lady’s physiology didn’t supply any replacement, so he had to fall back on saliva and an old familiar fantasy. It was a long dry haul, the bedding straw crunching monotonously under them, she constantly shifting to more comfortable positions as he angrily pressed his weight into her, finally a draining that was more hydrostatics than passion, which left him jumpy rather than satisfied. When he rolled off her the condom stayed put, there being more lubrication inside it than out. The woman extracted it and, out of some obscure motive, twisted a knot in the end and dropped it behind the bed.

  When he’d finished dressing, she held out her hand for a tip. He laughed and told her in English that he was the one who ought to be paid, he’d done all the work, but gave her five dirham anyhow, for the first rush of excitement and her vulnerable eyes.

  Abdul was not waiting for him. He tried to interrogate the caftan dealer in French, but got only an interesting spectrum of shrugs. He stepped out onto the street, saw no trace of the little scoundrel, went back inside and gave the dealer a five while asking the way to Djemaa El Fna. He nodded once and wrote them down on a slip of paper in clear, copybook English.

  “You speak English?”

  “No,” he said with an Oxford vowel.

  Scott threaded his way through the maze of narrow streets, carefully memorizing the appearance of each corner in case he had to backtrack. None of the streets was identified by name. The sun was down far enough for the medina to be completely in shadow, and it was getting cooler. He stopped at a counter to drink a bottle of beer, and a pleasant lassitude fell over him, the first time he had not felt keyed-up since the Casablanca airport. He strolled on, taking a left at the corner of dye shop and motor scooter.

  Halfway down the street, Abdul stood with seven or eight other boys, chattering away, laughing.

  Scott half-ran toward the group and Abdul looked up, startled, when he roared “You little bastard!”—but Abdul only smiled and muttered something to his companions, and all of them rushed him.

  Not a violent man by any means, Scott had nevertheless suffered enough at the hands of this boy, and he planted his feet, balled his fists, bared his teeth and listened with his whole body to the sweet singing adrenalin. He’d had twelve hours of hand-to-hand combat instruction in basic training, the first rule of which (If you’re outnumbered, run) he ignored; the second rule of which (Kick, don’t punch) he forgot, and swung a satisfying roundhouse into the first face that came within reach, breaking lips and teeth and one knuckle (he would realize later); then assayed a side-kick to the groin, which only hit a hip but did put the victim out of the fray; touched the ground for balance and bounced up, shaking a child off his right arm while swinging his left at Abdul’s neck, and missing; another side-kick, this time straight to a kidney, producing a good loud shriek; Abdul hanging out of reach, boys all over him, kicking, punching, finally dragging him to his knees; Abdul stepping forward and kicking him in the chest, then the solar plexus; the taste of dust as someone keeps kicking his head; losing it, losing it, fading out as someone takes his wallet, then from the other pocket, his traveler’s checks, Lindsay, tell them to leave the checks, they can’t, nobody will, just doing it to annoy me, fuck them.

  It was raining and singing. He opened one eye and saw dark brown. His tongue was flat on the dirt, interesting crunchy dirt-taste in his mouth, Lindsay, reel in your tongue, this is stupid, people piss in this street. Raining and singing, I have died and gone to Marrakesh. He slid forearm and elbow under his chest and pushed up a few inches. An irregular stain of blood caked the dust in front of him, and blood was why he couldn’t open the other eye. He wiped the mud off his tongue with his sleeve, then used the other sleeve to unstick his eyelid.

  The rain was a wrinkled old woman without a veil, patiently sprinkling water on his head, from a pitcher, looking very old and sad. When he sat up, she offered him two white tablets with the letter “A” impressed on them, and a glass of the same water. He took them gratefully, gagged on them, used another glass of water to wash them farther down. Thanked the impassive woman in three languages, hoped it was bottled water, stood up shakily, sledgehammer headache. The slip of paper with directions lay crumpled in the dust, scuffed but still legible. He continued on his way.

  The singing was a muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer. He could hear others singing, in more distant parts of the city. Should he take off his hat? No hat. Some natives were simply walking around, going about their business. An old man was prostrate on a prayer rug in the middle of the street; Scott tiptoed around him.

  He came out of the medina through a different gate, and the Djemaa El Fna was spread out in front of him in all its early-evening frenzy. A troupe of black danc
ers did amazing things to machine-gun drum rhythms; acrobats formed high shaky pyramids, dropped, reformed; people sang, shouted, laughed.

  He watched a snake handler for a long time, going through a creepy repertoire of cobras, vipers, scorpions, tarantulas. He dropped a half-dirham in the man’s cup and went on. A large loud group was crowded around a bedsheet-size game board where roosters strutted from one chalked area to another, pecking at a vase of plastic flowers here, a broken doll there, a painted tin can or torn deck of playing cards elsewhere; men laying down incomprehensible bets, collecting money, shouting at the roosters, baby needs a new pair of sandals.

  Then a quiet, patient line, men and women squatting, waiting for the services of a healer. The woman being treated had her dress tucked modestly between her thighs, back bared from shoulders to buttocks, while the healer burned angry welts in a symmetrical pattern with the smoldering end of a length of clothesline, and Scott walked on, charmed in the old sense of the word, hypnotized.

  People shrank from his bloody face and he laughed at them, feeling like part of the show, then feeling like something apart, a visitation. Drifting down the rows of merchants: leather, brass, ceramics, carvings, textiles, books, junk, blankets, weapons, hardware, jewelry, food. Stopping to buy a bag of green pistachio nuts, the vendor gives him the bag and then waves him away, flapping; no pay, just leave.

  Gathering darkness and most of the merchants closed their tents but the thousands of people didn’t leave the square. They moved in around men, perhaps a dozen of them, who sat on blankets scattered around the square, in the flickering light of kerosene lanterns, droning the same singsong words over and over. Scott moved to the closest and shouldered his way to the edge of the blanket and squatted there, an American gargoyle, staring. Most of the people gave him room but light fingers tested his hip pocket; he swatted the hand away without looking back. The man in the center of the blanket fixed on his bloody stare and smiled back a tight smile, eyes bright with excitement. He raised both arms and the crowd fell silent, switched off.

  A hundred people breathed in at once when he whispered the first words, barely audible words that must have been the Arabic equivalent of “Once upon a time.” And then the storyteller shouted and began to pace back and forth, playing out his tale in a dramatic staccato voice, waving his arms, hugging himself, whispering, moaning—and Lindsay followed it perfectly, laughing on cue, crying when the storyteller cried, understanding nothing and everything. When it was over, the man held out his cap first to the big American with the bloody face, and Scott emptied his left pocket into the cap: dirham and half-dirham pieces and leftover francs and one rogue dime.

  And he stood up and turned around and watched his long broad shadow dance over the crowd as the storyteller with his lantern moved on around the blanket, and he spotted his hotel and pushed toward it through the mob.

  It was worth it. The magic was worth the pain and humiliation.

  He forced himself to think of practical things, as he approached the hotel. He had no money, no credit cards, no traveler’s checks, no identification. Should he go to the police? Probably it would be best to go to American Express first. Collect phone call to the office. Have some money wired. Identity established, so he could have the checks replaced. Police here unlikely to help unless “tipped.”

  Ah, simplicity. He did have identification; his passport, that he’d left at the hotel desk. That had been annoying, now a lifesaver. Numbers of traveler’s checks in his suitcase.

  There was a woman in the dusty dim lobby of the hotel. He walked right by her and she whispered “Lin—say.”

  He remembered the eyes and stopped. “What do you want?”

  “I have something of yours.” Absurdly, he thought of the knotted condom. But what she held up was a fifty-dollar traveler’s check. He snatched it from her; she didn’t attempt to stop him.

  “You sign that to me,” she said. “I bring you everything else the boys took.”

  “Even the money?” He had over five hundred dirhams’ cash.

  “What they gave me, I bring you.”

  “Well, you bring it here, and we’ll see.”

  She shook her head angrily. “No, I bring you. I bring you… to it. Right now. You sign that to me.”

  He was tempted. “At the caftan shop?”

  “That’s right. Wallet and ’merican ’spress check. You come.” The medina at night. A little sense emerged. “Not now. I’ll come with you in the morning.”

  “Come now.”

  “I’ll see you here in the morning.” He turned and walked up the stairs.

  Well, he had fifty out of the twelve hundred dollars. He checked the suitcase and the list of numbers was where he’d remembered. If she wasn’t there in the morning, he would be able to survive the loss. He caressed the dry leather sheath of the antique dagger he’d bought in the Paris flea market. If she was waiting, he would go into the medina armed. It would simplify things to have the credit cards. He fell asleep and had violent dreams.

  He woke at dawn. Washed up and shaved. The apparition that peered back from the mirror looked worse than he felt; he was still more exhilarated than otherwise. He took a healing drink of brandy and stuck the dagger in his belt, in the back so he wouldn’t have to button his sport coat. The muezzin’s morning wail stopped.

  She was sitting in the lobby’s only chair, and stood when he came down the stairs.

  “No tricks,” he said. “If you have what you say, you get the fifty dollars.”

  They went out of the hotel and the air was almost cool, damp smell of garbage. “Why did the boys give this to you?”

  “Not give. Business deal, I get half.”

  There was no magic in the Djemaa El Fna in the morning, just dozens of people walking through the dust. They entered the medina and it was likewise bereft of mystery and danger. Sleepy collection of closed-off shopfronts, everything beaded with dew, quiet and stinking. She led him back the way he had come yesterday afternoon. Passing the alley where he had encountered the boys, he noticed there was no sign of blood. Had the old woman neatly cleaned up, or was it simply scuffed away on the sandals of negligent passersby? Thinking about the fight, he touched the dagger, loosening it in its sheath. Not for the first time, he wondered whether he was walking into a trap. He almost hoped so. But all he had left of value was his signature.

  Lindsay had gotten combat pay in Vietnam, but the closest he’d come to fighting was to sit in a bunker while mortars and rockets slammed around in the night. He’d never fired a shot in anger, never seen a dead man, never this never that, and he vaguely felt unproven. The press of the knife both comforted and frightened him.

  They entered the caftan shop, Lindsay careful to leave the door open behind them. The fat caftan dealer was seated behind a table. On the table were Lindsay’s wallet and a china plate with a small pile of dried mud.

  The dealer watched impassively while Lindsay snatched up his wallet. “The checks.”

  The dealer nodded. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “You’ve learned English.”

  “I believe I have something you would like to buy with those checks.”

  Lindsay jerked out the dagger and pointed it at the man’s neck. His hand and voice shook with rage. “I’ll cut your throat first. Honest to God, I will.”

  There was a childish giggle and the curtain to the “bedroom” parted, revealing Abdul with a pistol. The pistol was so large he had to hold it with both hands, but he held it steadily, aimed at Lindsay’s chest.

  “Drop the knife,” the dealer said.

  Lindsay didn’t. “This won’t work. Not even here.”

  “A merchant has a right to protect himself.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You can kill me, I know, but you can’t force me to sign those checks at gunpoint. I will not do it!”

  He chuckled. “That is not what I had in mind, not at all. I truly do have something to sell you, something beyond worth. The gun is only fo
r my protection; I assumed you were wise enough to come armed. Relinquish the knife and Abdul will leave.”

  Lindsay hesitated, weighing obscure odds, balancing the will to live against his newly born passion. He dropped the dagger.

  The merchant said something in Arabic while the prostitute picked up the knife and set it on the table. Abdul emerged from the room with no gun and two straight wooden chairs. He set one next to the table and one behind Lindsay, and left, slamming the door.

  “Please sign the check you have and give it to the woman. You promised.”

  He signed it and asked in a shaking voice, “What do you have that you think I’ll pay twelve hundred dollars for?”

  The woman reached into her skirts and pulled out the tied-up condom. She dropped it on the plate.

  “This,” he said, “your blood and seed.” With the point of the dagger he opened the condom and its contents spilled into the dirt. He stirred them into mud.

  “You are a modern man—”

  “What kind of mumbo-jumbo—”

  “—a modern man who certainly doesn’t believe in magic. Are you Christian?”

  “Yes. No.” He was born Baptist but hadn’t gone inside a church since he was eighteen.

  He nodded. “I was confident the boys could bring back some of your blood last night. More than I needed, really.” He dipped his thumb in the vile mud and smeared a rough cross on the woman’s forehead.

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “But you can.” He held out a small piece of string. “This is a symbolic restraint.” He laid it over the glob of mud and pressed down on it.

  Lindsay felt himself being pushed back into the chair. Cold sweat peppered his back and palms.

  “Try to get up.”

  “Why should I?” Lindsay said, trying to control his voice. “I find this fascinating.” Insane, Lindsay, voodoo only works on people who believe in it. Psychosomatic.

  “It gets even better.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out Lindsay’s checkbook; opened it and set it in front of Lindsay with a pen. “Sign.”