The Forgiven: A Novel

by Lawrence Osborne

  As Richard and David came to the garage, the men from Tafal’aalt were there drinking mint tea and squatting at the base of the wall. They looked up with a soft, withdrawn curiosity. It was Richard who was nervous, for he felt nervous around Moroccans when Hamid could not be found immediately. And now Hamid was not around, drawn elsewhere, no doubt, by his innumerable duties. Richard therefore hesitated at the door of the garage. He sensed at once that the men from Tafal’aalt were unlike anyone he had encountered in this country. They were bone-dry and minimal in some way, like pieces of driftwood that have been whittled down to their essential shapes. They moved very slowly but with that purposefulness that makes even humble people seem formidable and relentless and aristocratic. Their poverty only accentuated this dangerous, fluid nobility. The intense darkness of their skin was like something acquired by effort, like carbuncles or scars. They talked in a subdued, gracious manner, as if nothing was worth shouting for or could be obtained in this way anyway. One couldn’t say what they were ever thinking, or calculating, because it was possible that they did neither. They were moldy and dusty, arthritic and dried out, and when they spoke, the eyes suddenly came alive, their hands moved like paddles flapping up and down, and one didn’t know what to think about them.

  “Where is the father?” he said to them in his blunt, rusting Arabic, and they made a gesture that said “Where do you think? Inside.”

  He waited for Hamid, who soon appeared, huffing and puffing, though quite splendid in a ceremonial djellaba. The guests were complaining about the cucumber canapés, and Hamid had had to have a whole set remade at the last moment. Can cucumbers, he’d been thinking for the last hour, really go off?

  “Monsieur,” he gasped, holding his sides, “I have been running all this time. I am sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Hamid. Catch your breath.”

  Richard took a quick look at David, who was pale and ice-cold.

  “Are you ready for this, David?”

  David nodded disdainfully and took his own steps toward the garage door, which was open and somewhat thronged. Richard ordered the bystanders back and took Hamid and David with him into the garage.

  The lights were all on. The father stood by the body, shaken by his own expressionless tears, and Richard saw at once that there was nothing calculating about him. That was unfortunate, and his heart sank a little. The old man simply stared at them, his hands clenched by his sides. David was unable to stop himself staring openly at the body of Driss, which he had never really looked at during the night. He couldn’t find within himself the appropriate emotion, but at least he could look sincerely grave, astounded. He was not invited to shake the man’s hand, and he knew intuitively that such a gesture had to wait. He waited, and he allowed his heart rate to rise, then fall again. Gradually, his sweat cooled. He lost his fear and he began to calculate the probable financial damage.

  It was Hamid who had to speak, and in broken Tamazight.

  “This,” he said solemnly, indicating David, “is the man who was driving last night. He declares his innocence, before God.”

  But his tone indicated to the Aït Kebbash that Hamid, too, had his doubts, and they were not doubts that could be easily tamed.

  ABDELLAH LOOKED AT DAVID WITH A CHILDISH CLARITY, his eyes wide open and questioning and yet somehow refusing to pose any question at all. For a moment David thought that they were remarkably free of acrimony. How could it be? The old man seemed to be simply examining him as one would a stone or a locust hanging in a tree. He looked right through him, too, as if the internal organs were visible and could be judged. He looked through him and there was no expression in his face.

  The air conditioners hummed loudly in the confined space and the old man was actually shivering slightly, his burnoose gathered tightly around his head.

  It was Hamid who said, “Are you taking the body home now?”

  “We are, God willing.”

  Richard strained to understand these odd words in Tamazight, but failed. He shot David a worried look.

  “Do you want to talk to the Englishman?” Hamid went on, bending solicitously toward the old man.

  Abdellah turned to face David more fully.

  “You may speak to him,” Hamid said quietly, “and I will translate.”

  “No, I will speak to you,” the father responded.

  Hamid stepped over to Richard for a moment. “He says he will speak to me. Perhaps it is because you are not believers.”

  David shrugged. “Here we go.”

  “It’s fine,” Richard reassured him. “Go ahead.”

  Abdellah spoke with his eyes fixed on Hamid’s round, pleasant face, with its waxy, comfortable complexion. His voice was gently coaxing in some way but also hard, and either way, it never lost its exquisite sense of measurement. He talked as if he had prepared his speech over many hours, as if every word had already been worked out and fitted into an irresistible argument. There was no visible effort in what he now said to Hamid, so that as he listened, the latter simply nodded and thought to himself, “It’s the most reasonable thing imaginable.” The old man occasionally emphasized a point with a jab of his index finger. He spoke more intensely now, and Hamid leaned forward even farther. The two Europeans were excluded completely. Richard rested his chin in his hand, cocking his head to one side and trying to disguise his befuddlement. He knew enough about locals to realize that the old man was proposing something quite complicated and that Hamid was going along with it. At length, the talking between them subsided, the old man turned away, and Hamid stepped to the Europeans, subtly changing his demeanor as he did so. A little abashed but also foxy, he protected himself with some obsequious apologies before reporting that the father had made a rather unusual suggestion, though Richard was not sure that suggestion was the most appropriate word. Insistence might be more like it. Abdellah, Hamid said, wanted David to return with them to Tafal’aalt to bury Driss. He thought it as only right and proper that the man responsible for his death should do this, and he was certain that David would agree to it, being a man of honor as he most obviously was. Indeed, how could he not agree to it? It was a father’s request to the killer of his son, but it was made with respect, with reserve, with a deep sense of propriety. It was customary in these parts, Hamid went on uncertainly, and his voice betrayed the extent of that uncertainty. Richard squinted, and he felt the question posed by Abdellah’s demand widening and deepening in some new dimension that could not be framed and resisted by the usual objections.

  “Is it?” he whispered in disbelief.

  “Well, Monsieur, I cannot quite say. It is the deep desert. These are not people I know, in all honesty. They say it is their custom, and I will have to believe them.”

  Richard reflected. Nothing about the old man inspired suspicion. Nothing whatsoever. He was, after all, the aggrieved party, the victim, so to speak. But he couldn’t believe it was just a matter of David’s paying his respects to the grieving family. There had to be something else, and he said so.

  “Perhaps,” Hamid prevaricated, “the family might appreciate a sign of Monsieur David’s remorse.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “Not at all. But it will be understood. We do not say such things.”

  “But David has to know what is going on. He has to know the amount.”

  Hamid shrugged ineffably.

  “I cannot ask him, Monsieur. It would be gross. Monsieur David just has to take a certain amount with him.”

  “But Monsieur David,” David said, “has not agreed to this absurd plan. Go back with them to their unknown village? Are you crazy?”

  Hamid turned to him with a steely, harsh courtesy.

  “Monsieur David, I hate to say it, but it may be that you have no choice. They are not entirely asking you. They are being polite. I think they will insist.”

  There was stupefaction in David’s mind for a few minutes, but in truth he had been expecting something of this kind all along. Of cour
se they wouldn’t just take a handout. They’d extract as much out of him as they could. They’d hold him in some village until he agreed. It was pathetically predictable, with their bandit mentality and their extort-the-infidel ethic. He knew it would be useless to keep arguing against it, because Richard would insist, and would argue that, all in all, going back to the village for a night and paying his respects would be a damn sight easier than doing anything else. A handout would be easily affordable for a man of David’s income. And all of that was true. He felt immensely tired by the whole thing, almost worn out, and he already knew that he would give in. The idea in some way offered him relief. Since everyone seemed to tacitly think that he was guilty anyway, it would actually be a relief to be forgiven in some way. And nobody could forgive him except this shabby, stony old man in his dark brown burnoose. If this implacable father didn’t forgive him, no one could. Being forgiven and being exonerated by the authorities were two very different things, and it was because the people themselves felt that difference that he was forced into doing as Abdellah asked. It was a way out, and it was the only way out.

  “Unforgiven,” he thought, “I’ll be a marked man.”

  Richard read his face accurately enough, and the host felt a quick relief that David understood what he had to do.

  “I was expecting worse,” Richard whispered into his ear. “You could make a trip out of it. You’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  David twitched, and remained dignified, but Hamid caught his quick, disgusted nod.

  “So you will agree?” he urged.

  “I suppose I do.”

  “It is an excellent decision, if I may say.”

  “We’ll see about that. How much money shall I take with me?”

  Hamid looked slyly over at the father. “Take everything you have. Then give it all and say it is what you have. They will accept it. They are poor people, poorer than you can imagine.”

  “Poor makes greedy,” David wanted to add.

  “It’s not ideal,” Richard said, with an unavoidable sense of relief, “but it’s not so bad. It’ll be interesting.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Richard, that they are planning something a lot nastier than you anticipate? I mean, it’s just a thought, old boy. There wouldn’t be much stopping them once they’ve fleeced all the cash off me. They might have rather unwelcoming feelings toward me, since, you know, I bumped off their boy and all that. Did we think about that?” He glared at Hamid.

  “Well, Hamid? Do you have any thoughts along those lines?”

  “Monsieur, you are exaggerating.”

  “Am I? Am I really?”

  “Yes,” Richard intervened, “you are. That’s the last thing they’re going to do. God, David. Are you paranoid all the time?”

  “Jo will take it badly.”

  “She’ll understand. I’ll talk to her if you want.”

  David raised an abrupt but unconvincing hand. “No, no more interventions, please. I’ll do it myself. Well, what a jolly weekend.” He beamed horribly at the old man. “I say, Mr. Deep Villager, when do we leave?”

  Outraged, Hamid provided him with the real name, but David couldn’t get his tongue around it.

  “Just say Monsieur Taheri,” Richard snapped finally, letting all his accumulated irritation burst out at last. “Or just Monsieur.”

  “Monsieur,” David said to the old man, who did not even look at him. “Quand voulez-vous partir?”

  “Tout de suite,” the old man replied without missing a beat.

  David felt the condensation of his own glands growing cold all over his body, the sticky coolness of a thousand bumps of sweat. He steadied the sudden giddiness that overcame him and he did this by using his closed fists as ballast. This made the overhead light, which had been swinging wildly, become still again. He blinked. Richard wanted to disengage, to leave it at that. He was being cut off, abandoned. It was damage control. It’s your circus, old boy, Richard was thinking. Go dance in it.

  “I have to talk to my wife,” David said to Abdellah, as Hamid translated. “She’ll be extremely unhappy.”

  “She might be,” Richard agreed sadly.

  “A gazelle is a gazelle,” the old man said, as if this needed no further explanation, and Hamid smiled, and if it had been polite, he would have laughed. “Ghanchoufou achno mkhebilina ghedda,” he murmured—we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

  JO WAITED FOR HIM ON THE PORCH OF THEIR CHALET. AS the light faded, the staff came by to light tall mosquito tapers, though she had the impression that the air was so scorching that even mosquitoes couldn’t survive in it. They brought with them painted plates of melon and Italian prosciutto, stemmed glasses with a pricked peach in each one submerged in champagne. It was the German cocktail Kullerpfirsich, the peaches rolling as the bubbles entered the fork grooves and made the fruit turn. The Moroccan boys were highly startled by this invention, which might have seemed to them like a sleight of witchcraft, and they set down her drink as if they were dying to be rid of it. They wore tarbouches that night, and she felt for them.

  “Why do the peaches turn?” they asked with big eyes.

  “Because Monsieur Richard made them,” she replied.

  Out of nowhere, a firework rocket shot up into the sky, narrowly missing the moon. Silver sparks floated back down, and by their light, she saw the edges of the outdoor disco and its seething mass of heads and arms. They had set up fake silver palm trees around it ribboned with rose-colored lights, and between them were narrow silk tents with high-pitched roofs, inside which there were probably refreshments or dope. Richard and Dally made a point of making naughty stuff available to their guests in insouciant ways that obviously gave them a good laugh. There were plates of majoun crackers in the library at all hours, reefers expertly made up stacked in cedarwood boxes on the hallway tables. You’d see some elderly roué pause as he swept by on his way to dinner, sniff the goods, and pick one up with a mincing elegance. The idea was to get them all stoned all the time, and it had worked because they were all stoned now, she was sure, all except for David and her. A collective mood had come upon them. A couple staggered by trailing fallen olives and cocktail sticks, very young, the girl incredibly glamorous and the boy soaking wet. They cast a quick look at her and the girl said “Coming?” Their faces were like young wolves. The girl looked like Isadora Duncan just before the strangulation. Jo shook her head and raised her spinning peach. See, no need for anything else.

  “It was what I was saying about the Americans in Iraq …”

  The girl’s voice trailed off, and she lost her balance, falling to one side, but held up. Another rocket zoomed up and expired in a shower of special effects. She looked at her watch. Where was David? A large plastic beach ball appeared over the heads of the dancers, kept aloft by successive pokes and slaps, rolling around just like her peach. A wave of laughter. Her anxiety would not relent, however. It was an exhausting guilt that had no issue, no resolution. Who could she beg to be forgiven? There was not a soul to beg, if not the old man at the gates, and David was dealing with him. And she hadn’t begged anything from anyone her whole life. How did you do it?

  She felt herself losing distinctness. Though her body remained still, her mind whirled round and round on an increasingly unstable axis. The body can turn to sand, dissolving at its extremities and mixing with its surroundings, gradually disappearing, merging into other things. The moon rose, thank God. And then the familiar form came hunkering down the strange repaved paths that crisscrossed Dally and Richard’s fantasia like so many black snakes. She tensed. David was grim, as always.

  She sometimes wondered if she really hated him. You know, she’d say to herself, that jittery hatred that is a perfect counterfeit for an exhausted, dissolving love. You can hate a man simply because you let him in, and then he didn’t do what he was supposed to do. It was insulted feminine egotism in some ways, but other than that, she thought primly, the sacrilege was all his. He blustered and bullied. His pride wa
s insurmountable. Men are the sinners, not us. She believed she had minor faults, not sins.

  She gulped down the whole glass of fizzy and then took a wet bite out of the alcoholic peach.

  “They’re dancing like babies,” he said coldly as he came up, searching at once for a towel with which to wipe his hands. “I’m so glad I can’t dance.”

  HE SLUMPED DOWN NEXT TO HER, AND HIS FACE WAS grainily damp and sickly looking. The resignation in his voice now was startling, and she waited to see what it might be. One never knew with him. Disasters broke over him like dust storms and were gone before you knew it, leaving behind them his rugged, obstinate form that reminded her of a great pile of boulders.

  He sat back, and his bitterness made no bones about itself.

  “Dicky and the Arab servant have cooked up a perfectly wonderful plan for me. I’m to go back with the old crone to his village in the middle of nowhere and do some atonement. I have no idea what they have in mind. I have to take all the cash. Dicky says he’ll lend you whatever you need here, which is nothing. I agreed to go. Everyone seems to think it’s the only thing to do. The nomads might get nasty.”

  “They’re not nomads, darling.”

  “Well, whatever they are. I am being hauled back to a place I can’t pronounce. Still, at least there’ll be no dancing.”

  “That’s what you think.”