“He was also shouting in his room late last night. The night man had to go up and tell him to be quiet. He found Monsieur Leuen in a very bad place. Drinking wine and crying. He was very apologetic when he was told he was waking the other guests.”
I shut my eyes, trying to keep my emotions in check. I was furious at Paul. I was terrified for Paul—and the crazed trajectory down which he was traveling.
“Do you have any idea where he headed to just now?” I asked.
“None at all. But Ouarzazate is not a big place. And he just left five minutes ago. Try the cafés on the avenue Muhammed V.”
“I apologize for all the trouble he’s caused you.”
“I am simply happy to see you here, madame. If you can assure me that he will be quiet tonight, I will let you both stay here. Had you not arrived I would have shown him the door.”
I wanted to go upstairs and drop my bag and have a shower before facing the heat again. But part of me also knew that time was of the essence, that I needed to find Paul now.
“A question, madame,” I said. “Besides the flights to Casablanca, isn’t there a direct service from Ouarzazate to Paris?”
“Every Tuesday and Thursday at five o’clock. So yes, as it is Thursday today . . .”
“Could you please find out if there are any seats on this afternoon’s flight while I go look for my husband?”
“With pleasure, madame. If you would like to leave your bag here, I will make certain it is kept safe for you.”
“Thank you for your kindness and decency.”
“I wish you luck, madame.”
I wished myself that too.
Before I left I dug out Paul’s passport from my bag, and slipped it into the button-down pocket on my pants.
I headed out into the back street, turning up a dusty alleyway in which a young boy—he couldn’t have been more than seven—was milking a goat, the white liquid being sprayed into an empty tin can. He looked up and smiled at me, saying, “Fresh milk—just ten dirhams.”
I smiled back and moved on, dodging two elderly women on canes, their faces hidden by black niqabs. They moved slowly in the maniacal sun. How in the world were they able to cope with the hefty black Islamic garb in this inferno? One of the women held out a hand. I stopped, reached into my pocket, found a five-dirham coin, and placed it in her palm. Out of nowhere her fingers closed against mine. In a croaky whisper she uttered, “Faites attention, madame.”
Be careful.
What did she know that I didn’t?
I turned down another spindly street before reaching the city’s main drag, avenue Muhammed V. Adobe-shaded sandstone in a colonial fortress style defined the architecture. The sun was, after just two minutes outside, beginning to play games with my equilibrium. So I stopped at a small stall and bought a replacement green khaki field hat and a liter of bottled water, drinking almost half of it in one go. Then, over the next twenty minutes, I went from café to café, scanning all terraces and interiors for any sign of my husband. I approached every waiter I saw, Paul’s passport in hand, showing them his photograph, asking them if they’d perhaps seen this man in the past few minutes, indicating that finding him was an urgent matter. All the waiters were polite. All said that, alas, they hadn’t seen him.
One man at a café—midfifties, a little portly, but still relatively well preserved and dressed in Moroccan merchant casual (cream slacks, a gray polo shirt, Italianate loafers)—overheard me inquiring about Paul and stood up.
“Perhaps I can help you,” he said in excellent English, motioning me over to his table. He introduced himself as Mr. Rashid and offered me a coffee.
“You think you’ve seen this man?” I asked, holding up the passport photo.
“Indeed I have. But you first need something to drink, I think.”
“Where did you see him exactly?”
“On this street a few minutes ago.”
“Can you tell me exactly where?”
“I’d love to know your name first.”
I told him.
“Well, Robin, let me offer you a citron pressé and then we can get into my car—I have a very large and comfortable Mercedes—and we can start looking for him. And if we don’t find him, maybe you can have lunch with me.”
I stood up.
“Thank you for wasting several valuable minutes of my time.”
The man looked shocked at this rebuff.
“Now, there’s no need to talk to me that way.”
“You never saw him, did you? You were just hoping to take advantage of a woman in distress.”
“Are you always so aggressive?”
“Are you always so disrespectful?”
“Now I know why your husband went missing.”
He said this with a smirk on his face, quickly translating his comment into Arabic for the men who were seated nearby and watching the scene with amusement.
That’s when I lost it. “What the fuck did you say?” I hissed.
“Madame has an ugly way with words.”
“Only when being hustled by a little man with a small penis.”
Now he looked as if I had kicked him directly in the crotch.
“Go on, translate what I just said to your friends,” I said, hurrying off down the street, trying to contain my considerable fury.
But then I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks.
There, on the far side of the street, was my husband.
He was wearing the same white shirt and shorts he’d left the hotel room in over two days ago. He was seriously unshaven, his long gray hair askew across his head. Even in the white light of the Saharan morning I could see that he was exhausted, lost.
“Paul! Paul!” I yelled. But as soon as the words were out of my mouth a vast truck—the length of a city block—came rattling down the avenue. Paul didn’t seem to hear my cries, or maybe they were drowned out by the approaching truck. Not thinking, I tried to dash across the street, but was thrown by the deafening blast of the truck’s horn, the driver gesticulating to me wildly. I had to jump backward, and found myself now almost in the path of a Renault van coming in the opposite direction. The driver slammed on the brakes and started shouting things at me through his rolled-down window, while men in the nearby cafés stood up to watch.
When the truck pulled away fifteen seconds later, I prepared to dash across the street and take my husband in my arms and assure him that, despite everything, I still loved him; that we would be out of this craziness and be in Paris tonight.
But when the truck pulled away . . .
Paul was no longer there.
It took me a dazed moment to register this fact. Paul had vanished.
I dashed across to where I’d seen him standing. I looked north. I looked south. I ran into the little patisserie directly behind the place where he was momentarily rooted. There were only two people in the shop, along with the baker behind the counter.
“Anyone seen an American?” I shouted. “Very tall, long gray hair?”
They all looked startled by my outburst. When the baker shook his head, I ran back into the street, scanning all corners of the immediate horizon, certain he was there somewhere. There were two cafés nearby. I charged up the street toward them. No Paul. A fast dash back to the exact place I saw him, thinking maybe there was a rear alley directly behind this spot into which he had disappeared. No alley. No Paul. Up the street I hurried, turning left into the first side street I could find. It was open and spacious, with blocks of modern apartments on either side. No Paul. And no shops or restaurants or cafés into which he could have ducked. Back to the avenue Muhammed V, my head increasingly stricken by all this running in one-hundred-degree heat. No Paul. Again I stood in the spot where I’d just seen him, less than three minutes ago, beyond perplexed as to how I could have lost him moments after finding him.
I still had the half liter of water in hand. Standing under the shade of the patisserie’s awning, I leaned against the wall and downed it all in
moments, wooziness overtaking me. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. Paul!
But no, it was the baker from inside, who’d come out with a small folding stool and a small pastry and a bottle of lemonade. He insisted on helping me onto the stool.
After ensuring that I was eating and also getting some necessary sugar into my bloodstream, he went back inside and returned with a linen cloth soaked in cold water. He placed it around my neck—evidently a fast desert remedy for anyone suffering from dehydration. It worked. I felt somewhat better within a few minutes. Refusing my offer of money, he asked again if I was certain that I was all right, that he could get one of his assistants to help me back to my hotel. I thanked him repeatedly, telling him how truly touched I was by his kindness.
“I wish you luck, madame.”
Could he too read the despair and worry in my eyes?
I stood up, gauging just how rubbery or resilient my legs were. Their present status was somewhere between those two extremes. I headed out across the boulevard with the intention of returning to the hotel and seeing if Paul had returned there in my absence, and was cursing myself for forgetting to tell the woman at the reception desk not to mention that I’d been out looking for him. But as I made it to the other side of the avenue and cut down the same narrow alley where I’d seen the boy milking the goat, a figure maybe fifteen feet in front of me veered to the right, taking an even narrower bypath. The man’s height and free-flowing gray hair left me in no doubt that it was Paul. When I shouted his name, he seemed oblivious to my voice. I started to sprint, determined to catch up with him. But when I reached the alley—a tiny passage no more than four feet wide—no Paul. There were no immediate doorways into which he could have disappeared. Even when I reached, after around a hundred feet, an archway, all I saw inside were two elderly men brewing tea on a little gas stove. Again I showed them the passport photo. They looked at me, puzzled. I returned to the alley—so attenuated and confined—trying to figure where he could have vanished. Or did he clear out of this byway further on? I hurried to the end of the alley, only to discover it dead-ended into a wall. The wall had some rusted barbed wire on it, which made the idea of getting over it just a little daunting. When I touched it I discovered that it had the density and grip of damp chalk. There was no way whatsoever that even a particularly adept cat could have scaled it.
I shut my eyes, wanting to be anywhere but here and also knowing that I had to get out of this blind alley now. So back I went, retracing my steps until I found the main alleyway again, glancing frantically everywhere as I made my way back to the hotel.
The woman who greeted me earlier was back at the front desk.
“No luck?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Maybe he’ll come back soon. If you want to go upstairs . . .”
“I would like that.”
“Housekeeping hasn’t been in to clean the room yet.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Just one small request: when my husband does come back, please don’t tell him I’m upstairs. He’s in a delicate place and might run off if he finds out I’m here. My hope is that, when he does come upstairs, I will be able to talk him into leaving this afternoon.”
“I have good news on that front. There are still seven seats open on the Paris flight. They are expensive, being last-minute—five thousand two hundred dirhams apiece. Still, if you want them you should let me know no later than three o’clock. D’accord?”
“D’accord.”
The room was air-conditioned. And reasonably spacious, though given the narrowness of these back streets, its balcony only afforded a view of a wall some ten feet away. What was more noticeable was the absolute chaos of the place. Twisted sheets, streaked with bloodstains on the pillows (was his head wound still bleeding?). Crumpled paper everywhere. An ashtray brimming with cigarette butts (he gave up nicotine around the same time we got together). The remnants of two bottles of wine. And in the bathroom . . . no, this was too grim . . . an unflushed toilet.
I pulled the cistern chain. I picked up the house phone and rang downstairs, asking if the maid could be sent up now. I then returned and dumped the ashtray into the toilet and flushed it all away. I found a box of matches and lit two of them, walking between the bathroom and the bedroom in an attempt to mask the fecal smell and the lingering aroma of sweaty sheets that permeated two rooms. I emptied the remnants of the wine bottles. I began to uncrumble the many pieces of paper that had been balled up and tossed everywhere. Tortured line drawings of a lone man in an empty space that seemed to be a desert. The drawings were half finished. In each one of them it was evident that Paul was having trouble finishing the figure’s face; a figure so tall that he seemed to be towering over a sand dune. But this self-portraiture was underscored by a face that had turned grotesque. Drawing after drawing showed this representation of Paul with his face half melting away, or being scorched beyond recognition by the sun. Amidst these discarded, unhinged sketches, there were several half-started letters. My love . . . Dearest Robin . . . You have married a catastrophe . . . Most chillingly, there were two notes, already half burned, with the same word repeated on both balled-up scraps of paper: Finished.
The last of these notes unnerved me—because the word appeared to have been scratched on the page with blood.
The maid knocked on the door. I told her to give me a minute and quickly finished dumping all the paper into a dustbin, then pulled off the bloodied pillowcase and gathered up the soiled towels and shoved them into a pillowcase so she wouldn’t be exposed to such extremity. Yet again I was cleaning up after my husband—and even slipped the very young cheery maid thirty dirhams, apologizing for the state of the room.
“Mon mari est bordélique,” I told her. My husband is out of control.
The maid seemed nonplussed by the state of things, yet graciously replied, “I’ve seen worse.”
She told me to come back in a half hour—“when everything will be all fine again.” Would that a magic wand could be waved.
All I could think of now was that one word—finished—interspersed with those wildly destructive self-portraits. And my fear that unless rescued . . .
No, don’t enter that terrain. He’s still here in Ouarzazate. It’s only a matter of time before he shows up back at the hotel. I glanced at my watch. It was just a little after 9:00 a.m. As long as he returned here within four hours, we could secure those seats on the Paris flight and be out of all this.
I went down to the lobby. The woman behind the desk asked me if she could get me anything. She also told me her name was Yasmina. I suddenly needed to confide in someone—not about the grubbier aspects of the story, but about the fact that my husband had suffered a breakdown, had disappeared from our hotel in Essaouira, and, through the wonders of the internet, I had traced him here.
“Anything you can do to help me find him—or, at the very least, hold him here and get us on that plane to Paris . . .”
“I don’t have a pair of handcuffs,” she said with a half-smile. “But I do have a man who runs things here at night. His name is Yusuf, and he usually sleeps until eleven a.m. But if you would agree to give him, say, three hundred dirhams, I sense he wouldn’t object to me ringing him now and getting him out of bed and searching Ouarzazate for your husband. He knows every corner of this town. He knows everybody here. If he can’t find him, then he is lost to the sand.”
I handed over the three hundred dirhams, thinking this was a small price to pay for someone who might be able to root out Paul.
The maid came downstairs to tell me that the room was cleaned, and that she had lit a jasmine incense stick there to purify the place. Again I thanked her and Yasmina for their benevolence.
“If you leave your clothes outside the door we’ll have them washed and dried in less than two hours.”
I felt absurdly tired—the short night, the climatic adjustment to the ferocious Saharan heat, the fruitless hundred-yard dashes all morning in search of Paul . .
. all I could think of now was a cool shower and then a spell in cool sheets. I headed back upstairs. Once inside I stripped everything off and dropped it outside the door. Then I stood in the shower for a good ten minutes. Before climbing into the freshly laundered bed, I called downstairs and asked Yasmina to give me a wake-up call at three . . . unless Paul arrived before then.
I fell asleep instantly. Then, out of nowhere, the phone rang. The little alarm clock on the bedside table glowed in the dark, 15:02. And here I was, alone. No sign of Paul. I reached for the phone.
“Your three o’clock wake-up call, madame,” Yasmina intoned in the phone.
“And my husband?”
“No sighting of him so far. But Yusuf is still out looking, and he is phoning in regularly. Alas, not a trace so far.”
“I’ll be down in a few minutes. Might you be able to call me a taxi?”
“But the Paris flight isn’t until five o’clock.”
“I’m not going to Paris. I’m going to . . .”
Reaching over to a pile of paper I dug out of my pocket before tossing my dirty clothes outside the door, I found the scrap on which Ben Hassan had given me Faiza’s address. I read the details into the phone. Yasmina told me that the address given was a five-minute drive, tops—and that my clean clothes were now on the way upstairs with the maid.
A quarter of an hour later I was in a taxi headed to an apartment complex not far from the entrance to the Atlas Film Studios. The complex was semimodern in a 1970s reinforced concrete style. There were three separate blocks, all no more than seven or eight floors tall. I asked the driver to drop me in front of Block B. I paid him and headed up four concrete flights of stairs to Apartment 402. I took a long steadying breath before pressing the doorbell, expecting either no answer or an angry woman refusing to see me and telling me to go away and never come back.
But on the third ring the door opened. There stood a woman who was surprisingly tall and still stylish, albeit wildly thin, with a face probably once beautiful. She had a lit cigarette in one hand, a glass of pink wine in the other. When she spoke, her voice sounded nicotine cured.
The Blue Hour Page 19
