A World I Never Made (14 page)

“I hate myself, too:”

“Why?”

“For dragging my young wife to the jungles of South America where she died in childbirth:”

Catherine remained silent, sipping her wine.

“And for leaving Megan with my brother and sister-in-law while I traveled around the world working on project after project. Drinking too much, using my bitterness as an excuse for my bad behavior, for hurting people:”

“Like Megan:”

“Yes.”

“You did not raise her?”

“When she was six, I bought a house and stopped running away. But Frank had to shame me into it. a man; he said.‘Be a father. Raise your daughter.’”

“So we have some things in common:”

“What?”

“I killed my husband by fantasizing about his death. We’re spouse killers. Outcasts:”

Pat did not immediately respond. Behind him were a series of surface relationships that had failed because of his refusal to commit, a refusal born of loyalty to his dead wife, a proud, stubborn loyalty that quickly became a fetish. It was, he had told himself with deadly seriousness, the least he could do for the girl he had killed—and to punish himself—to never fall in love again. Ahead was a world he could never have imagined would exist up until a few days ago: Megan running, desperate, turning to Pat for help; a grandchild. And Catherine.

“We can build on these things, I suppose,” he said finally, smiling, shaking off the somberness of his thoughts.

Catherine smiled as well on hearing this, and Pat, seeing how beautiful her smile was, took her hand and held it in his. Her skin was soft, feminine, her fingers delicately tapered. Pat felt that Catherine’s hand, unadorned, the fingernails cut short and unpolished, like a young girl’s, contained the story of her whole life, that if he stared at it long enough he would see her future. And his. Smiling at this thought, he touched the same spot on the back of Catherine’s hand that she had touched on his earlier, then returned it to her lap.

“You were very brave with Doro,” Catherine said.

“No, not really,” Pat answered.“He’s just a kid:”

“Gypsy boys grow up very fast:”

“Do you think he meant what he said?”

“I do. If Megan is with gypsies, Doro will find her:”

“And the revenge he’s seeking? Is he serious?”

“I believe he is:”

“The other two were mute:”

“Yes, they were quiet. I believe all three of them know how to kill:”

“So that’s our team. You and me and three gypsy boys:”

“And Uncle Daniel:”

“And Uncle Daniel:”

“And tomorrow you will see what your future looks like:”

“My future?”

“Yes, your grandson. You must live for him, Patrick. No matter what, you must live for him.”

And for Megan,
Pat thought.
And for you. Not least of all for you, Catherine.

~12~

MOROCCO, APRIL 4, 2003

Throughout the winter and early spring of 2003, Megan went back to Sidi Moumim, Casablanca’s vast slum, many times. At first Lahani accompanied her. When he wasn’t in town, he sent Mohammed. Sidi Moumim was not the place for a Western woman of a certain age, however modestly dressed, to be walking around alone. She discovered early on, however, that no one would engage in anything but polite and meaningless conversation with her in the presence of either man. So, despite the danger, in mid-March she started going on her own, primarily to the Carrières Thomas neighborhood, whose souk Lahani had introduced her to a week or so earlier. Her strategy was simple: go frequently to the open-air, and therefore safe, market square; befriend a respected, English-speaking merchant—preferably an older man—although
respected
was the operative word; be seen as being under his protection; use that friendship and the perception it generated to get the natives, preferably the angry young male natives, to open up. This strategy had worked before, in Muslim enclaves in London, Paris, Madrid, and Berlin. But here in Morocco it was different. Casablanca, Sidi Moumim, Carrières Thomas: these were Arab enclaves within Arab enclaves, concentric circles enclosing ever denser, more secretive, and more suspicious communities.

Her break came one afternoon in early April. She had been to a dress-maker’s shop in the Carrières Thomas market to pick up the four djellabas, two silk and two spun cotton, that she had been fitted for a few weeks earlier. In the interim, she had dropped by several times to speak to the wife of the shop’s owner, Yasmine, a plain-looking but highly intelligent woman of Lebanese descent who was vastly curious about America and who stopped whatever she was doing whenever Megan arrived to sit, sip mint tea, and talk. Yasmine had not been in the shop when Megan picked up her djellabas, so she decided to have tea by herself in the café in the square, edged in between a dentist’s and a brass worker’s stall. She had been feeling nauseous on and off since the day before and thought the tea might settle her stomach. From where she was sitting, in the shade of a frayed but serviceable awning, she could see a snake charmer squatting before a cobra, playing hypnotically on his wooden flute, the crowd of natives looking on in hushed silence, as if the slightest noise would break the spell the snake had been put under. Megan was mesmerized as well, and was therefore startled when she felt someone insistently tugging on the sleeve of the cotton blouse she had put on that morning over a silk T-shirt to go with her jeans and sandals. Looking up, she saw that it was Hakim, Yasmine’s twelve-year-old son, who was pulling on her sleeve.

“Miss America, Miss America,” he was saying, “you come for medicine, you come for medicine:”

Megan followed Hakim back to the dressmaker’s, where Yasmine greeted her with a hug and immediately poured out the thick, sweet mint tea that would be among the few contenders to be named Morocco’s national drink.

“You are ill,” Yasmine said.

“Yes,” Megan replied, remembering that she had mentioned her upset stomach to Yasmine’s husband when she picked up her djellabas.

“My brother-in-law Abdullah is
a pbarmacien,
a chemist. He has a shop in the souk. If you like, Hakim will take you there. Abdullah will prescribe something for your stomach:”

“Thank you, yes,” Megan replied.“When I return we will talk:”

Physically, the Carrières Thomas souk, though much smaller and not nearly as clean, was not unlike its more famous counterpart in Marrakech. Both were accessible from a public square, and both consisted of a rabbit-warren of winding streets and alleys—many of them dead-ends-and permanently tented minimarkets that were often as dark during the day as they were at night. In both souks, the street-front shops and the stalls in the markets sold everything from freshly slaughtered lamb to love potions. Unlike in Marrakech, however, in Carrières Thomas there were no tourists, but more to the point, no foreigners at all. Not the adventurer looking for sex or drugs; not even the stereotypical ex-pat—stoned or drunk or both—that Megan had spotted with depressing consistency slumped at a café table deep in the bowels of other Arab cities. Did they enter and disappear, or did they sense the hatred in the air and stay away? The same hatred, for example, that she saw on the faces of the small group of Arab men—all young, all bearded—standing in front of a coffee shop, who turned to stare at her as she and Hakim passed. Once, when she and Hakim stopped to let a man leading a basket-laden donkey pass, she looked back along the narrow alley they were in and realized that not only would she have a hard time getting back on her own, but that she would not want to try. She said as much to Hakim, who assured her that he was under strict instructions from his mother to wait in his uncle’s shop for Megan to make her purchase and then lead her back.

Abdullah turned out to be not just a pharmacist, but a former chemistry instructor at the American University in Beirut. In his early sixties, of medium height and build, his liquid brown eyes shone brightly from a deeply lined sunburned face: intelligent eyes that looked out above a prominent, aquiline nose and a neatly cropped black beard shot through with streaks of white and gray. His shop was spacious by souk standards, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen feet, its walls covered with shelves lined with apothecary jars filled with powders, crushed herbs, barks, twigs, and teas of all kinds, each jar bearing a white label on which its contents were neatly written in Arabic and English. In the corner near a back door was a small table with a chess board on it, its pieces arrayed in mid-game. Megan turned to study the board when Abdullah went into a back room to mix a remedy for her nausea.

“Do you play?” he asked, seeing her scrutinizing the board when he came out of his small lab.

“My uncle taught me when I was a girl,” Megan replied, “but I haven’t played in years. Are you in the middle of a game here?”

“Yes, I am:”

“Did I interrupt you?”

“No, I am playing with a former student via e-mail. I can see the board on my screen, but I like to feel the pieces and to look at the board as I work. Would you like to play? I can easily play two games at once:”

“You mean now?”

“We can set a board up now, and then you will have to stop back so we can continue. I am busy with my shop, and so a move every few days is a good pace for me:”

“I won’t be much of an opponent:”

“Do you remember the basic moves?”

“I think so:”

“Then I will refresh your memory and we will proceed from there:”

Megan smiled. The man in the gray djellaba and thick sandals standing before her was her entree into the real life of Sidi Moumim. She had in fact turned on the tape recorder hidden in her bag the moment she entered the shop. But perhaps courtly Abdullah, with his old-world ways, was something else. Perhaps he would turn out to be a friend, as Abdel al-Lahani had turned out not to be. It struck Megan that she was lonely, something she could not remember feeling since she was a child and her father was away, always away, for months that seemed like years, like eternities at the time.

“How shall I address you?” she asked, meeting and holding his gaze, telling him with her eyes that she respected him and was grateful for his offer.

“Abdullah will be fine:”

“Not Professor?”

“No.”

“May I ask, Abdullah, are you Muslim?” Through a small window behind the chess table, Megan had seen three men kneeling on faded wool mats in a dusty courtyard, praying, their foreheads touching the ground.“I thought I heard the call to prayer:”

“I am a Coptic Christian:”

“Ah. Iraqi?”

“No, Syrian:”

“Can you worship here?”

“You cannot stop a man from worshiping, even if there are no churches:”

“Yes, I will play,” Megan said.
And we will talk.

~13~

LISIEUX, JANUARY 5, 2004

Pale winter sunlight slanted down on Pat and Catherine as they walked under the striped awnings of a row of shops and cafes on the perimeter of Lisieux’s main plaza. To the east, in the direction of the rising sun, was a series of low hills. On the nearest of these hills stood the Basilica of St. Thérèse, its oddly pointed white domes still in shadow as they reached heavenward. Next to it was the Carmelite convent that housed a group of cloistered nuns and a grandchild whose existence Pat could not quite grasp as real. It was a Sunday morning and, other than townspeople making their way in twos and threes to early mass, the plaza was empty. Ahead, near one of the small fountains that marked the corners of the square, Pat saw a girl selling flowers. Her raven-black hair shining in the sun, the girl stood placidly as the churchgoers passed her without a glance. His prior encounter with the pale and exotic flower girl on the Rue des Fleurs came back to Pat
—she told me you would come. You must go to her
—as he took Catherine’s arm with a sudden urgency and led her toward the fountain.

“Bonjour, Monsieur, Madame,”
the girl said as they approached.

“Bonjour,”
Pat
replied.“Comment allez-vous...
how are you?”

“I am well. Peaceful:”

“Peaceful?”

“Yes, Sunday mornings are very peaceful. When the bells ring the doves leave the church spires and come down here for me to feed them:”

Turning to Catherine, Pat said,“This young lady sold flowers to Megan last week. I met her the other day, just before you and I met, actually.” And then to the girl: “Do you remember me?”

“Yes, Monsieur. I knew you would come to Lisieux:”

Pat did not answer. He stared at the girl. She was very young and yet seemed as composed as a saint. Indeed, it struck Pat that her eyes, deep-set, dark, and glowing, were very much like the eyes of the image of St. Thérèse—the Little Flower—on the prayer card that the girl had given him in Paris.

“Your daughter is in danger, Monsieur,” said the girl.

“How do you know this?” Catherine asked, the sharpness in her voice jolting Pat out of his small reverie.

“And the child, too,” the girl said.

“Where is my daughter?” Pat asked.