An Echo of Scandal

by Laura Madeleine

  Then he was out, ducking down the nearest alleyway. It was cooler here among the shadowed streets of the casbah. He took a right, through a passage that looked like a dead end but which led to a set of steps that would spit him out near the old, crumbling city gate. He’d been lost in the casbah more times than he could count, and even now, if he wasn’t concentrating he’d find himself facing a blind, peeling wall which he could have sworn was a gate the week before.

  He ducked past a tendril of some climbing vine and emerged on to a tiny square with a fountain in the middle, surrounded by children and women with buckets. It smelled of wastewater and drying dirt and ripe garbage from the pile in the corner. Some of the kids yelled when they saw him and rushed over, trying out monsieur and señor, are you lost? Follow me!

  He shook his head and brandished the typewriter in its case, but a few still ran ahead of him, staring back over their shoulders and calling: ‘Follow, follow, you are French? American? This way!’

  ‘I know the way,’ he said. ‘I’m going to see Abdelhamid in his shop.’

  ‘Abdelhamid?’ one boy persisted. He had no shoes, his shorts torn at the hem. ‘He is sick today, not there, come, I will take you to his home.’

  Sam shook his head and pressed on. The boy tried a few more times, but eventually, one of the other children called to him and he wheeled around, disappearing down another passage. Sam sighed and tried to blink his headache away. The typewriter was growing heavy, the handle slick with sweat.

  The smell of the casbah changed, the lower he went. Smoke and cooking, the thick fug of diesel from generators and the waft of fish innards, left out for the cats. He passed the weavers, their looms stretched into the middle of the passage, their hands crooked and swift, their legs sinewy from years of working the pedals. A few doors down rugs were spread over the uneven stones. The shops grew in number, spilling out from closet-like spaces, every inch a basket or drawer. In one, clocks and watches and alarms. In another, rounds of buttery msemen. He faltered at the sight of them.

  Cash first. Then food.

  Abdelhamid was just inside the entrance of his shop, wearing his fine old djellaba and brocade hat, as always.

  ‘I heard you were sick,’ Sam called, stepping a few inches out of the thoroughfare.

  Abdelhamid looked up in surprise. ‘I am never sick, monsieur, and even if I was, you would find me here.’ He smiled, and laid the kif workings to one side. Sam smiled back, and shook his hand. Abdelhamid cleared a space for him to perch at the edge of the shop. Usually, it filled Sam with pleasure to sit like this, watching the street, especially when he could catch the eye of bewildered tourists.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Labas, Monsieur Hackett.’ Abdelhamid’s eyes flicked to the typewriter case. He had clocked it the moment Sam approached, but he didn’t mention it, only continued rolling.

  They talked a little, as the evening flowed by. The dust hung in the air, making everything hazy, almost dreamy. People called to Abdelhamid as they passed, exchanged words, jokes, news. They glanced at Sam and sometimes smiled. Everyone knew why foreigners became so well acquainted with Abdelhamid.

  ‘What can I help you with, my friend?’ the man himself asked, finally. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hash, kif?’

  ‘In a minute,’ Sam said, trying to sound offhand. ‘I was wondering … what would you give me for this?’ He opened the case. The typewriter sat within, its orange body glossy in the evening light, the keys a little discoloured from years of his fingertips. ‘I’m tired of lugging it around.’

  Abdelhamid lifted the case on to his lap. ‘No money from America yet?’ he asked, testing a few keys.

  Sam rubbed at his head. It was the reason he had given last week, after selling the shades.

  ‘No.’ He tried to think up some excuse, but couldn’t. He was tired and his head hurt. It would probably cost him. ‘No more money,’ he sighed. ‘A ticket home, but no more money.’

  Abdel made a noise. ‘For you, there is always more.’

  ‘Not this time. Not from my parents. They mean it.’

  ‘But you have other family?’

  ‘They won’t help. My sister refused last time. My brother’s never given me a cent and he won’t start now. I told them all that I have nothing and this was their answer. No more.’

  Abdelhamid shook his head, and peered into the case. ‘I do not know if I can sell this here. There are not many people who would buy it, only foreigners, and they will want one that is new—’

  Sam shoved himself to his feet. Abruptly, it was too much. He couldn’t sit there while the Hermes was torpedoed, couldn’t be told that it was a worthless thing and nod in agreement.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Forget I brought it, it was a stupid idea, I …’

  The world began to fuzz, turning blue and yellow before his eyes. His head squeezed and his ears rang, as though he’d dived underwater. He heard a clatter and the next thing he knew he was sitting on Abdelhamid’s step again, blinking hard. There was bustle around him; he’d knocked over a stack of brass bowls. Abdelhamid’s neighbour was helping to retrieve them, before they rolled away into the socco.

  ‘Sorry,’ Sam mumbled. ‘My head.’

  Abdelhamid just waved a hand, smiling a little. He yelled to a passing boy, and pointed up the road.

  ‘You Americans,’ he said then, sitting down. ‘You smoke and you drink and you forget to eat.’

  Sam managed a husk of a laugh.

  ‘How much money do you have?’ Abdelhamid demanded.

  ‘Twenty-seven dirhams.’ It felt pointless to lie. ‘And I owe twenty-five to Madame Sarah for the rent.’

  Abdelhamid picked up his workings. His fingers moved calmly, but with every movement back and forth Sam knew he would be calculating exactly how much money Sam would need to buy kif, and pay the rent, and eat besides.

  He’d met Abdelhamid in the Petit Socco soon after he’d arrived in the city. A young man had approached him in one of the cafés and sold him a pouch of kif, which turned out to be just tea dust and dried weeds. Abdelhamid had been sitting a few tables away, watching the whole exchange. He had burst out laughing at the look on Sam’s face when he realized the con, and told him not to take it to heart, that Yassine hooked every new American the same way. They’d talked a little, and after sharing a few of Sam’s cigarettes, Abdelhamid had slapped him on the shoulder, and told him to follow. They’d found Yassine in one of the other cafés, illicitly drinking a bottle of brandy with a friend. After a bit of shouting, he’d handed Sam most of his money back, which Abdelhamid then appropriated, plus a finder’s fee of course, in exchange for some real and excellent kif. Over the weeks, Sam had come to think of him as a friend; if he was going to be fleeced by anyone, he’d prefer it to be Abdel.

  ‘OK.’ Abdelhamid finished his roll-up. ‘I can give you sixty dirhams for the machine.’

  Sam’s eyes felt hot. He couldn’t complain about the low offer. He was desperate, and he’d shown it.

  ‘I won’t take anything under two hundred.’

  ‘Bzzaf.’ Abdelhamid looked disappointed in him. ‘No one will buy it for that.’ He held out the cigarette, laced with kif. ‘Perhaps one hundred.’

  ‘Come on, have a heart. One fifty at least.’

  ‘Impossible, my friend.’ A moment later Abdel’s face brightened at the sound of a shout.

  The boy from earlier had returned with two bowls in his hands, and a chunk of bread stuffed in each pocket. Abdelhamid gave him a few coins.

  ‘Here,’ he said, passing Sam a bowl. ‘You need to eat.’

  Sam looked down into the soup. Harira; the smell of tomatoes and sweet onion and spices told him so. There was chopped hard-boiled egg on top, its pale surface sprinkled with salt and cumin. He was so hungry he could have unhinged his jaw and swallowed the bowl in one.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’ he mumbled.

  Abdelhamid shook his head, already starting on the s
oup. Sam followed suit. He scooped up half of the egg with the bread and for a minute or two, he forgot everything else.

  ‘Maybe,’ Abdelhamid said when Sam was mopping up the remaining lentils with the last mouthful of bread, ‘maybe I could offer you one hundred and ten.’

  Sam swallowed. It was less than he needed, far less. And yet, what choice did he have?

  ‘One thirty,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

  Abdelhamid gave him a look. ‘One fifteen.’

  The bowl was empty. Sam sighed.

  ‘OK. One fifteen.’

  To celebrate their deal, they smoked kif and talked, until it grew dark and the street’s vendors began to pack away, ravelling their wares into the tiny, cave-like shops that lined the Rue de Commerce. Sam helped, lazily handing in old beaten brass lanterns and jugs, paintings dark with time and baskets of metal ornaments that were mostly just shiny new ones scuffed up with boot polish until they looked suitably aged. He watched as the Hermes was tucked on to a shelf.

  Abdelhamid caught the look and smiled in sympathy. ‘You are thinking of the great book this machine would write.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘In someone else’s hands maybe.’

  ‘Inshallah. But now you have kif, you have money, you will write again?’

  ‘Inshallah,’ Sam said, and Abdelhamid laughed. ‘Though I’ll have to write in pencil, or on my walls in charcoal. Madame Sarah would like that.’

  ‘In years to come she will open your room as a museum. Here is where the great writer Hackett did his work.’ Abdel patted his shoulder, then stopped, holding up a hand. ‘Wait a moment.’

  He stepped back into the shop, and began to root through the stacks of old suitcases and cracked trays and framed photographs, blooming with age spots.

  ‘Ah!’ He straightened his back with a wince. ‘Yes.’

  In his hands was a small leather case, not much bigger than a document wallet. The corners were battered, and the clasp that held it shut was thick with rust. ‘Here,’ he said, placing it into Sam’s hands. ‘Look.’

  Obediently, he peered down at the case in the fading light. He could make out the indentations of initials tooled into the leather.

  A. L.

  The kif made everything seem warm and unhurried. He turned the case over and heard something clunk inside. ‘What is it?’

  Abdel steadied it in his hands, working at the rusty clasp. A few flakes came away on his fingers, but then it released and the lid creaked open.

  A smell wafted out, pungent leather and musty paper. For a brief moment, it reminded him of the attic at his grandparents’ house; a warm-cold cinnamon smell of dust and objects long forgotten. He peered inside.

  It was a writing case. At the bottom was a blotter, the corners holding a sheaf of blank pages, yellowed with age. In the lid there was a leather pouch for envelopes, another for cards, and a tiny paper calendar that told him the year was 1928. Alongside the blotter was space for ink, a pencil and a pen. The ink was dry in its glass bottle, the pen crusted with it, like old blood. But it was all there, as if someone had scrawled out a last letter fifty years ago and hastily packed away, intending to return and clean up later.

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  Abdelhamid shrugged. ‘It has been here a long time, that’s all I know. Mouad found it, I think.’

  ‘Mouad?’

  ‘My second brother. He used to work the docks. He lives in Casablanca now.’

  Sam touched the sheets of paper. This was how people used to write, for themselves, for each other. Not relying on springs or keys or ribbon, not sending brief biro messages on cheap airmail paper. They wrote tangibly, personally; putting themselves into every curl and dot and line.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.

  Abdelhamid smiled. ‘It has been lying here waiting for a writer. For someone like you. If you want, I could let you have it for maybe twenty dirhams …’

  Bull Shot

  Take a jigger of imported vodka and a gill of homemade beef bouillon. Add half a pony of lemon juice and three dashes of Worcestershire sauce. Season with salt, pepper and hot Spanish paprika. Shake well and serve over cracked ice. Not for the faint of heart.

  I knew from the beginning there was something wrong about that day.

  Put it down to intuition, to a thief’s gut instinct, if you like, although it was undeniable that the morning started badly. Not long after breakfast a horse had gone wild in the stable – for no discernible reason – and trampled one of the cats. I didn’t blame the horse. They say animals know things, and I believe the creature had opened his nostrils and snuffed in the scent of a city on the edge of hysteria. Anyone would have gone wild, smelling that.

  It was the final day of the feria, the night when anything could happen. The heat of the past three days had been unbearable, too hot for the season, and people had taken to drinking themselves to sleep, only to wake an hour later tangled in their clothes, sweating sherry. Sore heads, parched throats, minds all too aware that after the feria came the heat of summer, merciless as the cracked mud of the yard.

  I’d not yet recovered from the chaos of the stable when I came face to face with Morales. Her dark hair was already damp with perspiration, her blouse giving up its starch to the heat.

  ‘We’ve received a request for tonight’s meal,’ she said.

  I nodded. It was not unusual for a group of swells to think highly enough of themselves to order something special. ‘What do they want?’ I asked.

  Morales shifted her neck in the taut collar. For a heartbeat, I thought she looked uncertain. ‘They have asked for rabo de toro.’

  I frowned. Stewed bull’s tail. It was rich and meaty and thick, and not at all suited to a summer night, to stomachs full of sherry.

  ‘I don’t have the ingredients,’ I told her. ‘And anyway, it’s too hot.’

  I don’t know what made me speak like that. Perhaps it was the blackened end of my temper, or the animal shrieks and frenzied hooves that lingered in my mind.

  Morales’ face hardened, her lip curled as she leaned towards me.

  ‘They have asked for rabo de toro, and that is what you will make.’

  The words were plain, but there was a viciousness in her tone that made me step back.

  ‘Of course,’ I murmured, dropping my eyes. ‘I’ll make it. For how many?’

  ‘For four,’ she said. ‘The Señor, and his friends.’

  My guts flinched at that. We had many señors visit us, genuine or otherwise. I disliked most, and envied them their freedom, but Morales knew which señor I truly despised, the one I kept the greatest distance from, the one who seemed to take pleasure in my discomfort.

  ‘Don’t skimp on the sherry,’ she said, watching my face.

  There were few things she could have said to make my day worse.

  Although it was barely ten o’clock in the morning, the Plaza de la Corredera was already awake. The plaza itself, a slab of hot stone, was empty. Life was taking place in the shade of the colonnades, in the cave-like bars.

  The market smelled of bruised tomatoes and fermenting vegetables, fish turning pungent in their trays, perspiring cheeses. The stalls had already been picked over. With all the extra mouths to feed in the city, other cooks would have arrived at dawn, perhaps even waylaid the farmers on the road into town to buy what was best. I jostled through, wishing I could wear Ifrahim’s old, roomy work trousers out here without being sneered at, instead of the too-thick skirt that made my thighs chafe.

  The butcher looked at me as if I was mad when I asked for bull’s tail, and I had to bite my tongue rather than roll my eyes and remind him that we always catered to clients’ whims. He was a church man and didn’t like us. The second butcher was friendlier. His stall was smaller, dirtier, and sold what the other had turned down.

  ‘Try the slaughterhouse,’ he said, palsied hands laying down the cleaver. ‘Heard they had a bull in today. If not, they might give you cow, or a bit of ox. Those drunk bastards
won’t know the difference.’

  Outside the slaughterhouse, the cobbles were tacky with bloodstained water. When I stepped across the threshold into the dim, reeking shed, I found the place in a frenzy. The butcher was right, they had just slaughtered a bull, but it had gone badly. The creature had worked loose and tried to escape, crushing a boy’s chest in the process. When I asked, the man in charge skinned the tail and gave it to me for free, saying that the beast had been possessed by the devil, and if I wanted to cook with its meat, that was between god and myself.

  The bull’s tail was so fresh that it dripped through the newspaper. I paired it with some old, ropey ox-tails and thought it lucky that the slaughterman was such a fool. I imagined telling Ifrahim about it. He would have winked at me and said that idle fears never did put food on the table. That thought was enough to dilute some of the anxiety I’d felt since speaking to Morales.

  I had to hurry, for there was the noon meal to prepare and the girls to feed. All week I’d served ajo blanco for lunch, soaking the previous day’s bread in milk and water and pounding it into a silky soup, as cold as I could get it. People scooped it down, sitting on stools in the shade of the balconies, and I was glad to see them eat – glad to see them sigh, soothed by the simple flavours, for a little garlic and bread does wonders for stomachs wretched with wine.

  That day, the siesta hour felt strange. Heads fell on to arms, shutters were pulled closed, and hardened drinkers shrank into the darkness of the wine cellars as usual, but there was something fretful about it all; like a breath being held.

  No rest for me, not with a rabo de toro to make along with everything else. In the kitchen, I changed into Ifrahim’s old trousers and hid my hair under a scarf once more. Then, slowly, I unwrapped the bull’s tail. The animal had killed someone today, for all I knew. When they ate it, the señors would have the blood of the bull’s victim in their stomachs.

  Watch what comes out of their mouths, as well as what goes in, and you will know them for what they are …

  I had never liked those men.

  I smiled as I portioned the tails and plunged them into water. I smiled as I cut onions and burst ripe tomatoes into fleshy pieces, and smashed cloves of garlic with the heel of my hand. I smiled as I rolled up my sleeves to get the stove going, though I feared I might keel over from the heat of it. By the time I tipped the tails into the stew pot, threw in bay and peppercorns, I felt like a true witch, brewing strong magic while the rest of the world slumbered away the afternoon.