The Forgiven (11 page)

DAVID WAS ON THE BED, NURSING HIS FACE WITH A TOWEL
, through which a spot of blood had permeated. He sat up and there was a look of bruised astonishment on his face. As she rushed over to the bed, he let the towel drop to reveal a small gash on the side of his forehead. “You fell off your horse,” she cried, but he shook his head impatiently and snatched the towel back from her as she dabbed the cut.

“Why would I fall off a bloody horse? I learned to ride, didn’t I? And why were you walking back with that idiotic American?”

“Well, if you didn’t fall …”

“Bloody Moroccan threw a stone at me.”

“What?”

“We were riding up on the hill. There was a pack of them waiting for us. Towel-heads.”

She settled beside him and took back the towel. Her little “oh!” of shock at the word went unnoticed. But she went dark inside for a moment.

“You’re the towel-head now. That could’ve been nasty.”

“It
was
nasty. Little cunt aimed it well.”

“Why were you riding at all?” she asked impatiently. “That was pure folly.”

He looked childishly surprised.

“Why? They were going riding, so I joined. You were fast asleep.”

“It just seems like folly. And I am right.”

“They were lying in wait behind the rocks at the top of the hill. We couldn’t have known that.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

But she thought of the angry men by the gate.

“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” he said waspishly. “I was with two French girls. They didn’t throw stones at
them
.”

The cut was nothing much and it had been tended by Richard’s local doctor, who was staying at the house for the weekend. But the shock had been great. David was shaken and his whole body twitched nervously. He clutched neurotically at the towel, dabbing the cut though it was dry, and the repetition of this movement calmed him bit by bit.

“The little bastards,” he growled futilely.

They were riding across open country, he explained. The two French girls were slightly behind him. What he didn’t tell his wife was that they were succulent in their way and he was in a flirty mood with them. They had spent time in London and spoke English well.

They rode for three or four miles along the trail that led past Tafnet, in single file, exchanging little jokes along the way. He had thought it would be a pleasant diversion from all the hassle and horror. They were all bad riders, and it took a while to reach the top of the hill, where the stream tumbled between high, gold-colored rocks.

He was feeling recovered after his long sleep. Where the path curved as it rose toward the next peak, there was a wooden shack, and there the miscreants were hiding. He didn’t see them; he just heard a stone ricochet against the ground. It made the horse jump, and as he turned it round, another stone hit him square in the face.

He dismounted and ran toward the shack, but the girls called him back. Five or six Arab boys ran backward and taunted him from afar, running up another slope and laughing at the horsed
gaouri
. He didn’t know what they called him. It sounded like
hassi
. But he saw the ragged hate in their faces. More stones rained down on them, hitting the horses and causing the girls to wheel about. The superficial gash bled profusely.

“We came back at once. They followed us, still throwing stones. I always said they were an irrational people. So now they think I am responsible.”

“Perhaps we should just leave,” she said quietly.

“It’s so incredibly primitive,” he plowed on, ignoring her. “They think of it as an eye for an eye. It’s like Sicily a hundred years ago. It’s
like
The Godfather
. So word got out. There was a crowd when we got back to the gates. The locals were out in force. What a bunch. Half of them with no eyes or teeth. They didn’t seem to like seeing me on a horse. They thought I was enjoying myself.”

“And weren’t you?”

“That’s not really the point. Is it against the law to unwind a bit after a traumatic event?”

She got up coldly and poured him a glass of lemonade from the jug that was always on the sideboard, and always replenished without them knowing how.

“It was just inconsiderate. You must have known they wouldn’t be thrilled by it.”

“So now I have to think about what they are and are not
thrilled
by? Thrilled?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Hamid said it was some kids from the other side of the valley. Everyone has heard about it. They’re insatiable gossips, apparently.”

“Here, drink this.”

“Yak yak yak. It’s a function of being illiterate.”

He was getting delirious. She pushed him back into the pillows and made fun of him.

“What a nice little fascist you’ve become since being hit by a stone. Is that all it takes?”

“It could have blinded me. It could have disfigured me.”

She made the fan turn faster, and when it was running at breakneck speed, she got up and closed the shutters with their rusted hooks. It was the sunlight itself that made them angrier and less controlled. She put a cold washcloth on his brow and lay with him for a while. They wouldn’t sleep but they could surely slow themselves down. He babbled a bit more, then gave up.

She opened a magazine and read for a while as he fell into a long, grumpy doze. Months of low-level disagreement and tension between them were finding a new surface. His practice was going badly. She
couldn’t exactly figure out why. Was there a dearth of people with skin cancers in modern London? Last year, he was sued by a patient. He hadn’t talked about it, but he had lost. It wasn’t written about in the papers, and in conversation he quickly brushed the subject aside. “It’s my life,” his attitude seemed to be. “If it goes wrong, I’d rather it went wrong in private.”

So she gave up trying to talk about it. The months went by when she wrote nothing, imagined nothing, and cared even less. A person can come to a point in their career when the magic formulas that worked before no longer work. Perhaps most people get to that point. It’s an interesting junction in life, but not an easy one to actually live through. The crackling anger in his voice as he poured scorn on the Arabs was a function of his private failures. On the other hand, they had thrown a stone at him. The look in Hamid’s eyes was not easy to dismiss either.

She closed the magazine and put her arms halfheartedly around him. She had to remember that he was a man of dismissive judgments that were often right. He was a bit of an animal. He smelled things out, and he was rarely off the mark. It was what had always compelled her about him. But the downside to David’s enviable trait was a brittle vulnerability before things that didn’t exist inside his admirably supple world. He was supple with things he did know and brittle with things he didn’t, and the latter broke him. So he could be flipped easily, and then he became less intelligent, less penetrating; it was then that he needed protection from himself.

She leaned down and brushed the tip of his sunburned nose with her lips.

“You look like a pirate. Like Blackbeard after a sword fight.”

“Be glad I don’t have a sword.”

“Beast. No more wisecracks about Moroccans.”

“It depends on how many stones they throw at me. One wisecrack per stone. I think that’s fair. Sticks and stones, and all that. It’s between us. There’s no one listening. I need to get it off my chest. It’s an injustice, that’s all.”

But the boy is dead, she thought.

“Sometimes things aren’t fair,” she said. “One gets blamed for things one hasn’t done.”

“Not me.”

“Especially you.”

Eight

LONG THE MUD WALLS, THE LIZARDS SCATTERED LETHARGICALLY
. They darted into crevices, leaving the pale red surfaces clean and hot. The cactus spines shone like polished steel, and the dust on the road gradually settled with the gravitational grace of a mass of feathers descending from a burst pillow. In the Source des Poissons, a single girl with delicate coffee-colored tattoos on her hands floated on her back. She looked up at the clusters of unripe dates on the undersides of the palms that were reflected in the water, then spread her hands through the cold water and thought of a certain boy, who at that very moment was driving goats into the shade of a tree. A dragonfly skimmed the water. The cicadas died off and the girl closed her eyes. When the dragonflies mated an inch above the water, they looked as if they were strangling each other to death. She watched them dance
across the black surface, their wings making a quietly desperate, vicious sound that was pleasing to the ear.

The trees went silent and from afar she could hear the hum of the generators inside the foreigners’
ksour
. The old men sitting on the wall under the tamarisks lit their cheap cigarettes. For three hours, no one would do anything. It was like night. In the garage, the air conditioners hummed and Richard stood alone with the body, anxiously glancing at his watch. His skin prickled with the heat that penetrated even into this secluded place. His back was wet and he marveled at how dry the dead boy’s skin was. It was like writing paper.

By the gate, meanwhile, a man stood with his hand on the bolt, listening carefully. The small crowd had finally dispersed, driven off by the seasonable temperatures, and its members now lay under trees, on lice-ridden mattresses, on pieces of palm bark. They lay awake waiting for the sun to decline. All it needed was a certain eager patience. The guests inside the
ksour
did much the same. Some lay on floating mattresses in the pool, half asleep; others made love in their rooms, taking care not to make too much noise. A few read books with an iced orange juice at their side. They had tracked their position on maps, some of them, and on GPS devices, but their sense of place was not yet firm. Their minds drifted easily. They ironed their lips with lip balm and evened the tanning oil on their noses, wondering what they were going to do next. There was a fancy dress ball in the evening—costumes provided—but would they be expected to dance? Would they be expected to be themselves or to impersonate people they were not? Would it be fun or the reverse of fun, whatever that was?

IN THE HIGHEST ROOM OF THE HOUSE, A PRIVATE DRAWING
room painted with apple-green geometrical tile designs where Dally and Richard spent hours alone reading and tipping bottles of
Laphraoig before sunset, the two men stood by the great plate-glass window watching a swirl of dust rising from the distant road.

“Looks like a car,” Dally said hopefully.

“It isn’t the police. They said they were dealing with a morgue, but I haven’t heard from them.”

Richard wondered if he should call Hamid. The afternoon was winding down and the trees were spreading their shadows around the cliffs. They had been sleeping for two hours and the nightmares had not completely blown off. But what would Hamid do? He decided to wait and see. When the body was finally taken away, the cloud hanging over them would presumably be lifted at a stroke. All they had to do was remove it circumspectly, without desecration of custom.

“It’s definitely a car, Dick.”

“The mint suppliers?”

“They came this morning. Maybe someone from the morgue.”

“But which morgue?”

Dally shrugged. He had no idea what morgues there were in the neighborhood of Azna. He didn’t know if they had morgues at all. Didn’t they just throw the body into a pit or something?

Richard had to handle Dally carefully sometimes. He was liable to go off if arrangements carefully made suddenly came unstuck.

“There’s a morgue in Errachidia. Might be a pickup from them.”

Dally did go off. “I wish you hadn’t invited those English people. What a bore they are. And what a mess they’ve made.”

“Are they a bore?”

“They’re a horrible bore. And did you see Mr. Limey’s shoes?”

Richard nodded. “It’s a type, Dally. He’s a public school doctor. What do you expect?”

“I guarantee that tonight they’re the only ones who don’t dress up. They’ll claim they have post-traumatic stress disorder.”