EQMM, August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Many of the tiny shops they passed were completely open to the alley and filled with bright babouches, a thousand shades of thread, pyramids of dates or olives. They watched snake charmers and jugglers. From indeterminable places came wave after wave of mingled smells: fresh-butchered meat, burning olive pits, the sharp smell of kif—Morocco's hashish, bread baking, clogged sewers, laundry, and all the other odors of people and their animals living and working in tight spaces. Hassan had called the Kasbah “a two-thousand-year-old maze,” and as they walked—"Watch your step"—and walked, Eugenia heard the Frenchman mutter to his wife, “Now I know what ‘infinity’ is."

  "What's that?” the woman asked, and indicated something that hung in the front of a butcher's stall, dripping blood.

  "A camel's head,” said Eugenia.

  "No. Surely not.” The woman went closer and turned quickly back. "Mon Dieu."

  When time finally came to return to the bus, they had to run a gauntlet of pushing and jostling vendors of clanging brass pots and plates that clashed like cymbals, suspect jewelry, black, red, and mustard-colored leather bags, prayer rugs, carvings, everything portable they had seen in the bazaar and more. With a strategic dip of her broad hat brim, Eugenia could screen out most of this desperate army, but the Frenchwoman, buffeted by screaming pitchmen, started to panic. Eugenia and the woman's husband moved close to shield her on each side.

  Gratefully, the harried tourists clambered down a dozen stone steps to the safety of the bus, where they found the gypsy boy ahead of them once again, this time with his hand out for tips. When the bus reached the hydrofoil terminal, everyone collapsed exhausted on the steel benches and concrete floor to wait while some last-minute repair was made to the ship and their passports were returned to them. Back on familiar ground, the busloads of visitors now bravely shared their adventures and displayed their purchases.

  Eugenia put on her new bracelet and looked around, astonished. No wonder the street hawkers had been so insistent. The tourists, so cautious in the well-regulated bazaar, had lost all restraint in the press of the street, and their accumulated booty soon turned the sterile waiting room into a small bazaar.

  Across the room, the girls had their own piles of purchases.—"been waiting forever"—"who has cigarettes?''—a new leather case brought out—"never buy your own"—"think she'll like it?"—"sort of wavy in front, then pulled back"—a new scarf tied around unruly hair—"I love it!"—

  Eugenia took out her notebook to record her impressions of the day. This task so absorbed her that she didn't immediately notice the handsome young man wearing an ivory djellabah who quietly sat down beside her.

  "A nice piece,” he said softly, indicating her new wooden bracelet, dark as night and studded with tiny brass stars. “Did you find it in the Kasbah?” Like Hassan, he emphasized the second syllable.

  "Yes, I did.” She smiled.

  "You are American?"

  "Yes, I am.” She was suddenly conscious that her passport still lay in her lap.

  "How did you like my country?” He crossed his legs under the long garment and listened intently to Eugenia's recitation of what she had found particularly interesting and lovely. When she mentioned a pale green women's mosque, he interrupted.

  "Oh, yes! I know that one. My mother often goes there. It is tiny, as you say, but very pretty inside, she tells me. And the color—like candy, don't you think?"

  "Like candy—yes, like candy mints."

  "Yes.” He nodded and idly stared at the foot of his crossed leg. He had the handsome, dark looks of a younger Hassan, and wore the guides’ robe and fez, but Western shoes.

  "You had our mint tea?” he asked.

  "Very refreshing. A treat.” Then she added, “Do you think the delay will last much longer?"

  "Oh, I hope not.” He smiled and drew a long wooden box, about three inches high and wide, from inside his robe. “I am taking this to my wife for her birthday. She works in Tarifa, in a hotel. Very nice.” He barely muttered this last aloud.

  Ashamed that his wife works, she thought. Especially at a job where she serves, or more likely cleans up after, foreigners.

  "They are five silver...” He paused, his English failed him. With apologies, he made a graceful u-shaped gesture over his chest.

  "Necklaces!” Eugenia laughed.

  "Yes, necklaces. Five. All very beautiful. Silver.” He shook the box gently and cocked his head to hear them rustle in their paper wrapping.

  Reel silver. The phrase echoed in Eugenia's mind.

  "Your wife will be very pleased with such a fine birthday present."

  "Yes. I want to take them to her myself.” He frowned.

  "Of course."

  "She would be so happy to see me."

  "It would be a lonely birthday without her husband."

  He sighed and stroked the smooth wood of the box. “But the longer we wait, I don't know..."

  Eugenia sat back. She studied the pale, slightly frayed embroidery at the neck of his robe. Its wide sleeves hid the precious box from everyone but her. She smelled cheap cigarette smoke and another acrid odor she couldn't quite identify. She saw how his eyes studied her, but when she looked directly at him, they shifted minutely to the side.

  Later she never could decide why the hair on the back of her neck suddenly stood out, or why fear crept up her scalp and settled in her brain. She quickly busied herself by putting her passport into a zipper pocket of her handbag to cover the involuntary shiver that ran up her arms and shoulders.

  "If I arrive too late, I will miss my ride back to Tangier tonight."

  "Is there a late boat?” Eugenia was doubtful.

  "Some of my friends—businessmen—are coming back on a private boat. They have made arrangements for me with the immigrations and the customs. It will be easy, and I will not miss my work tomorrow.” His hands rose in a universal gesture of “What am I to do?"

  Eugenia waited.

  "Now I will have only a few moments with my wife.” He looked at the waiting-room clock. “Maybe I should not go. But I wanted her to have her present.” He held the box slightly closer to Eugenia, inviting her inspection. “To my wife it will be very dear."

  Wild horses would not get me to take this man's package into Spain, she thought suddenly. If she felt she had passed unnoticed through the day, this man had seen her, had seen who she was and understood it, and how it could help him.

  She stood up at once and smiled her brightest smile. “Then, for all our sakes, I hope we leave very soon! Please excuse me, but I see someone across the room whom I promised to speak with."

  Eugenia walked briskly over to join the French couple. As they talked, she watched the young man over the other woman's shoulder. He surveyed the room carefully and wound slowly among the benches and around the people clustered on the floor. Without haste, but with purpose, he walked over to where the girls talked and laughed amid a tumult of shopping bags and carryalls. He positioned himself next to the largest mound, his back to them, apparently oblivious.

  It happened so smoothly that Eugenia would not have noticed if she weren't watching so closely. He took a step back, a very small step, that disturbed the pile of purchases. Trays and cuspidor-shaped planters clattered down. The girls shrieked. Surprised, then deeply apologetic, he helped them regather their loot, and spoke softly to them the while. Even they stopped chattering to listen, amused at his profuse requests for pardon.

  As he neatly rearranged the items, the long wooden box slipped out of his sleeve and fell onto a pile of prayer rugs. Eugenia could almost read the girls’ lips as they asked him what it was. In a moment he sat on the floor among them, talking, turning the box this way and that, holding it—almost—out to them. She saw him smile, puzzle over a word, and make a u-shaped gesture over his chest. He held up five fingers.

  No!—Eugenia's eyes flashed.—No! You are not going to embroil these naive, thoughtless, generous girls in some smuggling game of yours!—

  As she saw h
e was about to make his move, she made hers. She abruptly left the startled French couple and walked around the perimeter of the room, avoiding the girls’ encampment. Michael was speaking in Arabic with a young guard.

  "Excuse me. Sorry.” She nodded to the guard. “I must speak with you, Michael. It's urgent. Important. You know the girls in our group? The large group of young girls over there? Sitting on the floor?” He gazed directly at her and did not follow the motion of her head. “The ones who were so late this morning?"

  "From the Hotel Costa España."

  "Yes.” She nodded. “They're part of my tour group, so I know them, and I—sort of—look after them.” She paused, uncomfortable. “That young man talking to them—there's something wrong about him."

  "He is Moroccan, no?"

  "Yes, but that has nothing to do with it. I think he wants them to carry something back—back to Spain—on the boat with them, for him. He's not going, you see."

  "But he is here. In the embarkation terminal."

  "Yes, but he's not going. I'm sure of it. He has a box that he says is a present for his wife, in Tarifa. I think he wants them to take it to her."

  "How do you know this?” interrupted the Moroccan guard.

  "You speak English?” With relief, Eugenia shifted slightly in his direction. “Because he sat next to me first, and he talked about the box."

  "And now he sits with the pretty young American girls?” Michael looked slyly at the young man.

  Annoyed, Eugenia pressed on. “He was going to ask me to take it, I'm sure.” It sounded worse and worse.

  "He looks harmless.” At that moment the young man was smiling with pleasure at the girls’ presentation of their purchases. He handled each object with care and nodded a knowing approval.

  "I know—I absolutely know—he was going to ask me to take the box. Everything was leading up to it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean there is something very wrong about that young man, and I think you have nothing to lose by at least checking into it.” She gazed so directly at the guard that he moved uneasily and muttered to Michael in Arabic.

  "You are making a serious accusation,” Michael countered. “If I understand, you say this man has some kind of contraband, you say he wants to smuggle it across an international border, a border where already there are deep tensions and suspicions, and you say he wants to persuade foreign nationals to carry this whatever-it-is for him."

  "Exactly.” Eugenia bit her lower lip, suddenly aware of the dangerous implications that sprang from her uneasy feeling.

  The guard started to walk slowly in the direction of the young man. Michael, after a moment, moved to join him. He looked back over his shoulder and said in a low tone, “I hope you haven't made a big mistake, señora."

  The young people were all laughing when they noticed the two men standing over them. The guard spoke to the young man quietly, and a puzzled look replaced his smile. He seemed to answer the guard with a question, and the guard gestured over his shoulder in Eugenia's direction.

  The young man looked directly at her, hard. She did not flinch. Then he made some comment to the guard and laughed. The guard shrugged and shook his head and helped the young man up. As the two of them walked to the terminal's curtained office, the girls pressed Michael to explain. He, too, gave a backward glance at Eugenia. As he walked off, the girls stared at her disgustedly.

  This time Eugenia did avert her eyes. She sat down on a bench against the wall and studied a travel folder she found in her handbag. A few of their remarks reached her across the room, quieter now as the rest of the tourists sensed some sort of official drama unfolding.

  —"can't let him just go like that"—"what's she got against"—"who asked her?"—sputtering like cats—"not fair"—

  A tiny doubt fluttered high in Eugenia's chest. The other tourists had picked up on the girls’ outrage and busily translated the story to one another. Many of them stared at Eugenia, her back to the wall, the color in her face deepening. A smile would not get her out of this.

  The flutter grew more insistent and moved up into her throat, too large to swallow. As the moments ticked on, she turned the tour brochure over and over, and its ink stained her damp palms. At last the door to the office opened and the young man, overheated and angry, came out and sat on a chair just outside.

  The supervisor leaned against the doorway and watched as the guard walked deliberately toward Eugenia, the wooden box in his hand. Michael angled over in her direction, too. Everyone else in the waiting room was absolutely still. The guard stopped in front of her.

  "Yes?” Eugenia said, her throat dry and tight. She looked up, hopeful of vindication.

  The guard's contemptuous look was her answer. She rocked back in her chair, shamed. Her throat felt as if it would burst. He thrust the wooden box under her nose and slid back its thin lid.

  "Is this what you were so concerned about?"

  There, in front of her, within pale blue tissue paper, lay five silver necklaces. Three had graduated beads, with the largest perhaps an inch in diameter, overlaid with a grillwork of filigree in different patterns; the other two were highly polished small beads, interrupted at intervals with a large filigreed bead. They were beautiful. Folded neatly on top was a jeweler's receipt, which the young man apparently had saved to present to customs.

  "He told me they are for his wife's birthday,” Eugenia said, with stinging eyes.

  "So he told me, also,” said the guard, and closed the lid. “I will return his present to him now.” He took the box back to the young man, and he and the supervisor went inside the office and shut the door. Michael stared at her awhile, then walked back to the girls.

  Eugenia bowed her head over the travel brochure. She noticed the drops that splashed the polychrome lovers on the sandy beach and rained on whitewashed hillside villages, but they didn't seem to come from her own eyes. Sorrow and shame of the soul demanded more than tears.

  She did not notice that several of the girls went over to sit with the young man or that, eventually, he began to smile a little with them. From time to time he looked up from the box he held gently in his lap to glance worriedly at the wall clock. Nor did she see that finally one of the girls held out her hand for the box; nor that he, who had not dared to ask this great favor, looked so grateful and relieved.

  Some twenty minutes later, the ship was finally ready. The weary passengers stood up, stretched, and gathered their many belongings. As they filed out, Eugenia lagged far behind and saw the girls shake the young man's hand—one impulsively hugged him—saw the guard open the office door and watch them leave, all but one headed for the ship. She passed by and did not look at him.

  The return trip seemed endless. The other passengers pointedly ignored her. She managed to avoid the girls, who were glued to the snack bar. She stayed up on deck in the dark and let the sea spray mingle its salt with a few more tears. As they finally roared past Tarifa's stone sentinel, he glared at her.

  The pretty blond American carrying a wooden box entrusted to her by a handsome Moroccan stranger walked unchallenged through customs. Outside, she walked up to a man standing near the dock's exit gate. He wore a fez and carried a bouquet of bright red flowers. She said something and must have received the response she had expected, because she handed him the precious birthday present without hesitation and ran to rejoin her friends. By the time Eugenia reached the gate, the man had disappeared.

  The next evening, Eugenia sat in her hotel room in front of the blank screen of her laptop for many long minutes, pondering how to describe the trip to Tangier. The blinking cursor mocked her hesitation. She stared at her hands that rested on the keys. She gazed out her open window at the pool of light under the nearby streetlight. It illuminated laughing couples, businessmen hurrying home, families with happy children out for a stroll in the warm evening. In the distance, lighted cathedral towers stood out dramatically against the night sky. Finally, she typed: “Tangier is a rich cu
ltural feast, a brilliant bazaar, a boisterous riot—so overwhelming a stew of tastes and sounds and sights and smells that you will mistrust your own senses.” She stopped and thought some more. Almost involuntarily her right hand came up and made a small u-shaped gesture over her chest. She whispered to herself, “Even when you shouldn't."

  (c)2007 by Victoria Weisfeld

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  THE DRAGON'S BREATH by Norman Keifetz

  A prize-winning medical journalist for thirty years, Norman Keifetz managed to write three mainstream novels in his spare time: Jack Is a King (The Dial Press, 1962), The Sensation (Atheneum, 1974), and Welcome Sundays (G.P. Putnam, 1979). Recently he's turned his attention to the mystery short story. One of his stories appeared in our sister publication, AHMM, in 2004. This is his EQMM debut.

  One gathers from Ingmar Bergman's films that when you experience a sudden chill, death has come calling but somehow luckily missed you. Some men of a certain age sense these near misses with a flash, hormonal changes being what they are, I guess. Sometimes I wonder how I'm still standing even “half made up” after certain brushes with the Furies. I'm forever ducking for cover, it seems, even when there really isn't anyone shooting at me. I feel I've escaped financial ruin, for instance, by convincing myself that I live on the edge of poverty, even though it's clear I somehow have money in the bank. As Matthew Arnold said, “...we are here as on a darkling plain/Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight...” No matter what internalized chicanery I resort to, I am aware that “they” can always get me. Who's they? Well, behold:

  My daughter had come calling. She and my wife had planned to shop for shoes. My wife's asthma was acting up again; her breathing wasn't labored, as it had been just four years before when she was kept barely alive on a hospital respirator for ten of the worst days of my life and, equally, if one can ever really know another person's sense of dread, the lives of my grown children. At the time, my kids looked to me for comfort about Mom. I could see in their eyes and grim looks that they were bedeviled because their indefatigable Iron Mom was on the ropes for the first time in their lives, and I saw they feared the worst. They wanted something soft or at least hopeful from me, words they could not get from the young intensive-care physician, still wet behind his internship. I reminded them that Mom could be a tiger when cornered—even by a chill the likes of Bergman's.