Stewart, Angus (21 page)

'Yes we are.'

'Why?'

'We'll be safer with a guide,' Jay said weakly. 'And understand more of what's going on.'

'No.'

'Then honestly, Simon, I think I must go home and sleep. I wasn't really thinking of a night out anyway.' It was childish to pinch a leaf from Manolo's book; but Jay sensed Brown wouldn't go to the feast alone.

'Just embarrassing,' Brown muttered. 'You've no other motive?'

'For heaven's sake! I don't plan quite as consistently as you,' Jay said drily. 'One needs the
mektoub
mentality here.'

'Deliverance from samsara,' Brown murmured.

'I'm sorry?'

'Just a prayer. Very well. I'll rinse peppermint paste round my mouth and find you a coat.'

'You must forgive me,' Brown fussed on the pavement outside, 'but you
have
got that toothbrush on you?'

Jay decided nothing less than its exhibition would to the case, and so produced it.

'Sorry,' Brown muttered again, as they clambered into the cab. It came to Jay then that once more he had come prospecting for a flat, and not even mentioned the matter further. So be it. The whisky was working pleasantly on his senses. Even the orange nicotine stain light that hung over the city couldn't altogether obliterate the stars. In the clear dark of
the hinterland they'd almost painfully prick the eyes.

'She'll be asleep,' Brown said

'We wake her.'

'I hope it's not one of the petit taxis,' Brown said, as they waited on the kerb.

  *  *  *  *  *

Abdslem Kerim held the Lüger quite steady in his hand. Driss and Mustafa had closed soundlessly on the bed as the light came on. Gurney sat up and swore. With an arm Driss locked the pillow to the mattress; felt quickly between the two with his other hand. Mustafa had the bedclothes torn back before he'd finished. Instinctively Gurney looked towards the door.

'You are leaving that way,' Abdslem said. He gestured with his head towards the balcony. The fingers of his left hand snapped like a pistol-shot as he directed Mustafa's attention to the filing cabinet He felt sick; but the gun held steady. 'I tell you this now. Before a Christian dies he likes time to pray. I give you that time.'

'Fucking hell you dope!' Gurney exploded.

'You do not want to pray?'

'I want the bloody bed covers back. It's perishing cold'

'Very well.' Minutely Abdslem's eyes sectioned the pyjama'd figure on the stripped bed before signalling to Driss. He glanced impatiently at Mustafa searching the files.

'If you could only see
how silly three blacks look in kid gloves' Gurney sneered. He gathered the confused bedclothes beneath his chin.

'Whisky. You have whisky, no?'

Gurney leered. 'A bloody Arab that drinks, eh?'

'To empty into, and over you, my friend.'

'No dice, Joey. I don't drink.'

Abdslem crossed to the bed. 'These are sleeping pills? Sodium amytal, yes. Water. He snapped his finger and thumb at Driss this time. 'You need only swallow eight-ten.'

'And you scatter broken capsules around before dropping me off the balcony? No cover up for you, you red bastard. I won't swallow. What if I hit the pavement and survive?'

'There is no danger.' Abdslem watched him steadily. 'A taxi is waiting. He couldn't stop in time, you see.'

'Wouldn't it be better just to turn my head towards Mecca and slit my throat?' Gurney mocked.

'We are not proposing to eat you.'

'I'll have you lick my arse-wiping hand! Or have you the guts to volunteer? Garn! I dare you! I'll write you a cheque for five thousand dirham if you're man enough to break taboo. Jesus Christ, a Muslim communist! A feeble kid who can hardly heft a gun. Hold your wrist steady with your other hand, Joey. Your boys are watching you, you know.'

Abdslem smiled sadly. 'You'll have no chance to provoke a struggle in here. The bed will be no more ruffled than by an old man dreaming of a woman.'

'For a murdering wog you talk too damn much,' Gurney said in disgust

'The official sentence is that you're a political enemy of the people, and a neo-colonial spy,' Abdslem said quietly. 'But I add economic exploitation of my country for your own ends. Many thousands of pounds you have taken from Morocco. Just for you. You do not even have sons. Nothing. Do you know that many hundred children starve to death each year in Morocco? That two dirham can save a man from blindness? How many dirham have you taken from our country, my friend? Half a million?'

'When your conscience feels better
just cut the crap and kill me, sonny. Allah's prepared a just reward for murderers. That lousy paperback of yours says so. What's he hope to find in that filing cabinet? Bananas?'

'Yes, the
Qu'ran
says so,' Abdslem said, ignoring the last remark. 'But you're a Christian. I gain merit.'

'The bloody book rays nothing about that:

'You read the
Qu'ran
?'

'Sure I've read it. It's lousily written. Every time the bloke writing it . . .'

'Mohammed,' Abdslem interrupted.

'Yes, that's right Every time Mohammed wants to threaten you all he can say is, "a just and terrible fate". When it's promises it's "wide-eyed virgins" and "camels' milk".'

'It's metaphorical,' Abdslem said.

'I know, I know. My point is it's dull, and you're blood stupid people to have to have those same old clichés repeated over and over.'

'Many people couldn't read. Repetition was important'

'Quite a philosopher, eh?' Gurney leered. 'I like that bit about the ginger-flavoured water. Maybe you can explain it. How does it go? . . . "They shall be
given cups brim-full of ginger-favoured water from the fount of Sesabil . . ." That's poetry. Only what . . .' Gurney's coiled legs launched him towards the boy. He didn't make half the distance. Driss intercepted with a shallow dive; pinned him to the floor.

'It was a holy spring,' Abdslem said, though without either malice or satisfaction. 'The water was blessed.' A pulse beat sickeningly in the hinge of his jaw. His eyes ached as thou he had fever. He hissed angrily at Mustafa to finish his search.

'No bananas, eh?' Gurney said to him.

Abdslem waited only until Mustafa had joined Driss at the bed before plunging the room into darkness. He dropped the gun to his side; sank, cross-legged, dry-retching, on the floor. Gurney made no sound. Abdslem heard the balcony door judder to. A moment later Driss and Mustafa joined him. 'Fire exit,' Abdslem said, on his feet again. He caught Mustafa a stinging slap across the cheek. 'Quickly this time.'

  *  *  *  *  *

It was a large taxi. Jay and Brown were thrown forward. At the junction of Rue Delacroix and the Boulevard it had braked violently. The revolving orange light on the roof of a white police Renault flayed the darkness like a rotor-blade. On the side of the ambulance the words 'People's Dispensary for Animals' were illuminated at half-second intervals. A taxi had hit a lamp-post. There were few people to gather; but the vehicles effectively blocked the road.

Their driver called out a long interrogation. 'An accident,' translated eventually.

Demonstrably,' said Brown.

The driver's further enquiries were leisured, spasmodic. The ambulance man answered them. Their exchange across the silent road faltered, became almost bored. Jay collected the gist of it.

'Seems someone has fallen, or jumped from a window,' he explained.

'Spik
arabe
?'
the driver beamed back at him.

'Turn the car around,' Brown said.

'You know, that's Dan Gurney's block,' Jay said slowly.

'Turn around!' Brown repeated. The authority in his voice had an immediate effect upon the Arab. He reversed the slackly sprung Packard in an elegant curve before turning up a side street.

Naima was easily woken. An old woman, clutching the folds of a
haik
to a toothless mouth, answered their hammering. The dwelling consisted of two ground-floor rooms, and was built of raw brick from which the stucco had peeled away in ragged patches. Damp interior stains betrayed the penalty of building with sand straight from the shore. Naima appeared in the light of a paraffin lamp the old woman was pumping into brilliance. She held the baby, shawled tightly save for its face, on her canted hip, and looked from one to the other of them in alarm.

'
Què cosas
?'

Brown explained the proposed visit to Sidi Ali.

'
Ahora
?'

'Yes, right away.'

'Esta bien
!'
Naima smiled assent, and Jay became aware of an awkwardness in Brown, who was clearly wondering what acknowledgement to make of the infant presence. Nashib gazed at them with large black eyes. Cautiously Brown stroked his nose with the back of his forefinger. Naima rocked the child on her hip, and he smiled toothlessly as the old woman.

Not surprisingly perhaps, in view of his unexpected appearance with Brown, Naima's glances at Jay were shy and uncertain. He endeavoured to sense the relationship between Brown and the girl. Was it quite minimal, he wondered; or was the mutual embarrassment due to his own presence?

'What hue would you describe him as?' Brown asked unexpectedly.

'Browner than Brown.' Jay was uncompromising.

'Seriously.'

'Don't they get progressively less pink?—What I don't understand,' Jay added irritably, 'is why you don't house a beautiful girl and a baby that looks like a baby in your flat?'

'Administrative difficulties,' Brown said. 'Besides, Naima's been working up till now, and the old crone's disconcerting.'

'But good enough to look after your child.' Jay glanced at the Berber woman squatting beside the lamp. Her chin and forehead were indigo tattooed, and the palms of her hands stained with henna. 'Supposing the child gets pneumonia or something,' he said brutally. 'How are you going to feel? If you assume some resistance to the local bugs is inherited, then he only started out with a fifty per cent immunity. I don't reckon you're ashamed of the whole set up, so you can only be frightened of it.'

Brown's reaction to the outburst was simply to look at Jay steadily; but the strain Jay had sensed in the taxi was visibly apparent in the lamp light.

Naima was in process of transferring the child to the old Berber. An inflated, india-rubber arm sprung loose; then, in the more familiar embrace perhaps, Nashib closed his eyes. The girl drew the veil up from about her neck until the fold of pale mauve chiffon lay across the bridge of her nose, and its embroidered hem of tiny green and yellow flowers trembled an inch below her chin. Disconcertingly, she raised towards Jay eyebrows rapid with the consciousness of drama, exactly as might a European girl disguising herself in parody. She flexed and then coiled her toes before stepping into heel-less slippers. Good nights and admonitions were minimal. Within moments Brown's secondary household was behind them.

Brown's apathy did not lift in the taxi. Naima sat between them. Jay was conscious of the warmth of her thigh, and with this came awareness that she was sitting more closely to him than to Brown. Street lamps at the edge of the city sent spokes of light cartwheeling into the cab at regular intervals, and Jay found himself synchronising sideways glances with their passage. Their eyes met just in time for it to become a game; then the street lighting was left behind.

Some miles out of the city the cab pulled off the road on to a rough track. It began climbing.

'It's impassable if there's been any rain at all,' Brown said.

The ascent got steadily steeper. Crouched forward, the driver tacked the car between the worst of the potholes. Sometimes the wheels spun whining on dry mud, or a loose rock hit the car's underside with an angry thud. They wallowed spongily upward.

'Explains the six thousand,' Brown said. 'Good thing we got a big one. Manolo thinks of everything. It's just occurred to me the girl can't really come into the tents.'

Why 'the girl'? Jay wondered, laying his hand on Naima's thigh. Was Brown consciously working some disassociation? 'Should have thought to lend her The Renaissance Page—even though it tickles,' he said.

'Place might be overflowing with indifferent Italians.' Brown clung to a strap in the lurching cab.

'I don't follow.'

' "And no Lesse, alas!

Th'indifferent Italian, as we passe

His warme land, well content to thinke thee Page,

Will hunt thee with such lust, and hideous rage,

As
Lots
faire guests were vext." '

Brown quoted succinctly. 'Donne—persuading his mistress not to follow him in disguise.'

'Ah!' Jay said, wiser.

'We'd better have a rendezvous in case any of us gets lost. A sweet-stall. There's bound to be one.'

'There're bound to be fifty.'

'Then the taxi,' Brown decided. 'It's the obvious place.'

'Naima can stay with me.'

'I'd be inclined to leave her with kinsfolk,' Brown said. 'She's sure to meet some. Stoning can be uncomfortable, as well as humiliating. But call her your responsibility, by all means.'

Jay looked at him to sense more strongly that there was only some surface of Brown talking. There was preoccupation behind it; though this was something quite other than that which had so curiously involved himself in the flat.

'Okay,' he said.

The taxi pivoted from the near vertical to the horizontal, like a beetle just making it over the edge of a table. They were suddenly engulfed by a slow-moving concourse of humanity, among whom fluttered the soft radiance of raw light from a hundred scattered fires and lanterns, and into which the taxi's harsh electric beams probed garish, intrusive. Jay drew forward the dark hood of the naval duffle coat with which Brown had provided him. Perhaps the crinkling at the corners of Naima's eyes betrayed amusement over the derivative garment. Mouthless, it was difficult to tell. But then her hand touched his. It was reassurance she was seeking to convey.

Outside the wind was strong enough to move the trodden grass. It raised a gentle billow along the length of a tent, and the family inside, thrown into shadowed relief upon the flimsy wall by the lantern beside them, appeared to shudder in unison at its passage. One figure, standing, where the others sat, was stooped to the unending distribution of tea. The wind was thinly audible too among the guy-ropes, for they were only at the edge of the giant, casual encampment. Where the taxi parked there was only a bus, and one or two other taxis. Beside the area was a seemingly endless corral of pack animals.