"OK. But I don't understand you, Townes. You urge me to become an immoralist, then when I do something faintly immoral, you seem to disapprove."
"I only disapprove, Robin, because you didn't follow through. You didn't mention the silverware in your column—it only got around by chance. That's your trouble, you see. You're wishy-washy. You're even a little bourgeois. To be an immoralist, and then renew yourself as a saint, you have to let all that go. You need to come up with a strong concept of yourself, then rigorously act it out."
Robin laughed. "Why are you so intent on my canonization? What on earth does it mean to you?"
"Oh, I don't know." Townes grinned. "You have so much potential. When I look at someone like you, more or less on the right track of life, I feel a compulsion to give him a little push. You're so close to what you ought to be. That's why I'm encouraging you. Cut yourself loose, Robin. Discover yourself in sin."
Robin nodded, though he still wasn't sure what Townes had in mind, or even whether he was being serious or operating on some teasing level of irony intended to provoke. "I'll try," he said. "But what about you? Are you some kind of Svengali who organizes people's lives?"
"Yes—if you like. That's not so bad. I'm a writer. I live in a world of fantasy. I think about people constantly, and also about plots. The trouble is that most of the people in Tangier are floundering in half-created dreams. If they really went to the trouble to see their fantasies through, this town would be a much more interesting place. I think you come closer than most, as does Patrick Wax, and Inigo—an extraordinary man. But let's face it—most of our friends here are pathetic. They don't even know who they're pretending to be. Anyway, this is too abstract. I prefer the method of your column. You name names, describe real deeds, rip off people's disguises. That to me is a virtuous occupation. I wish you'd do it more."
"Fine. Give me material. What else have you got besides this bit about Lake and Mrs. Knowles?"
"Well—let's see. I'm sure you know all about Kelly and Luscombe, how Kelly and the Drears have found a loophole in the TP bylaws, which they obtained on the sly from Derik Law, and how they're going to use it to petition for a meeting where they plan to retire Luscombe from the club. As a result Luscombe is now wandering around Tangier mumbling about a 'conspiracy' to destroy his life. It's so sad to see him perspiring, stopping people on the street to enlist their support, or sitting dazed in Heidi's Bar telling perfect strangers his bitter tale. Then there's Jean Tassigny's affair with Claude de Hoag—they carry on madly at the tennis club every day; and Françoise de Lauzon's thing with her new gardener, whom I believe she calls 'Dent de Lion,' or 'Dandelion' for short. Inspector Ouazzani too—something's bothering him. His girlfriend, perhaps. I don't know exactly, but you might be able to find out, being his snitch and all."
"Really, Townes—that's a vicious lie, started by my enemies."
Townes laughed. "Sorry," he said. "Anyway, I think I know why Kranker told that silverware story on Doyle."
"I've wondered about that. It seemed like a betrayal, since they carry on as though they're friends."
"Just a facade," said Townes. "There's a lot of bitterness there. Years ago Doyle wrote a novel, a cool, bleak thing that became an underground classic, instrumental in the creation of the myth of Doyle, the dropout exemplar. Kranker wrote a play in which he used the essence of Doyle's idea. Not the details, you understand, not even the story exactly, but the essence, the vision, the thing that was so particular to Doyle's point of view. But Doyle was furious, and though he's never said a word to Kranker, the thing's been eating away at him for years. Now Kranker's become hostile and begun to tell stories, like this silverware thing that makes Doyle appear an ass. You get the idea—a vicious circle of neurotic intrigue. There's no point to any of it, it's all petty and ridiculous, and yet it's typical of Tangier, true to our community and its rotting ways. That's what you ought to reveal in your column."
"I never heard this story before. Do you mind if I use it?"
"I doubt it would make any difference if I told you no. The point, Robin, is that if you wanted you could turn your column into a mirror. You could confront our community and all its little secrets, reflecting them back in the form of lurid gossip which in turn would become a vision of the place."
Townes excused himself, left the room. While he was gone Robin thought about what he'd said.
"You know," he said when Townes came back, "I think you're putting me on with this sainthood crap. You're really after something else. Tell me what it is."
"All right." Townes paused. "I am putting you on. I've been observing you for quite a while, Robin, and I've come to the conclusion that you're riding for a fall."
"Oh, come on—"
Townes stood up. He was often abrupt like that, sometimes even rude. "Before you go I have a present for you," he said. "A book, if you haven't forgotten how to read." He handed Robin a worn paperback edition of The Confessions of St. Augustine.
"Ugh! A classic! And by a saint, no less."
"Yes, Robin—by a saint indeed."
Townes walked him out to his terrace, where they paused before the view. Townes' garden framed Tangier, illuminated by the setting sun, which cast long shadows of trees upon the grass and coated the buildings below with a golden sheen. It was a powerful vision of the city, and it caught Robin by surprise.
"Funny to live up here," he said. "Tangier looks empty when you look down."
"It's a writer's view," said Townes, "too far away to see people. I can sit up in my tower"—he pointed to the glass cubicle on his roof—"and use my imagination to fill it up. From here the town is a set which I can populate as I like."
"What a wonderful place to write about Tangier."
Townes looked at him. "Yes," he said sorrowfully, "there is a novel down there. I've thought about it a lot—" He turned away and grinned.
They shook hands, then Robin walked down Townes' driveway to the street. With the tattered copy of St. Augustine stuck in the back pocket of his jeans, he wandered down from the Mountain to the medina, the smells, the crowd.
The Socco Chico, jammed with tourists, seemed especially intense that night. Hot, sweaty bodies scantily attired—they blurred before Robin's eyes. Pimples, bruises, vaccination scars—impossible to keep them straight. It's the carnival of summer, he thought, an endless moist parade, all strut and rub and furious scramble to insure oneself a delirious night.
The Socco, which he'd always loved for its overheated sense of life, turned sour for him suddenly as he sat in Café Centrale. How many of these bodies, he asked himself, do I really want to touch? How much of this collective genitalia do I care anymore to fondle and grasp? The same of dope and drink, the intoxicants that prefaced all encounters. How much more hashish am I prepared to smoke?
He felt strange becoming so morose, particularly in the Socco, which was his circus, his TV. The whores in their high cork shoes, the hustlers in their clinging jeans—for ten years they'd been his clowns, and their antics his release. Perhaps, he thought, my trouble is I've tasted everything here too long.
Riding for a fall—what kind of shit was that?
Townes was a voyeur who sat up on the Mountain watching people play. Still what he'd said was interesting—his point about letting go. Patrick Wax had said the same thing at the picnic, that he lacked the instinct to go in for the kill. Were they right? Was that his trouble? Would things be better for him if he began to use his column like a knife?
He was so confused by then, and so sick of the Socco, that he left his table abruptly and dragged himself through the teeming streets. People clutched at him as he passed, urged him to sit with them, tell stories, score sex or dope, but he pushed them away and in a surly mood entered the Oriental and climbed its rotting stairs.
He thought of his room, in summer, as a hotbox, a place suitable for punishment in a Japanese prisoner-of-war-camp film. Even with the windows open he feared suffocation. He stood in the middle listening to the m
edina sounds—Arab songs blasting from a hundred radios, the crying of a thousand babies, the screams of ten thousand cats in heat. Barking dogs, children fighting in the courtyards—all the sounds of the quarter, echoing, rebounding off the walls, seemed to roll in upon him in a great, pained, undulating wail.
He stripped off his clothes and threw them on the floor. His body too was sweaty—tomorrow he'd have to go to the beach and bathe. Then, naked, he began to pace about, giving abrupt little kicks to his shabby belongings, his broken phonograph, his piles of clippings, his teapot, his old photographs—all the junk that documented a decade. He'd throw the whole lot of it out one day, live in an empty room with nothing but a sweater and a comb. He'd order the barber to chop off his curls, then return to North America and find himself a job. Perhaps he'd work as a maintenance man on the Alaska pipeline, live with the hardhats in frigid dormitory rooms. He'd work on the tundra wastes, eat flapjacks for breakfast, moosemeat steaks at night, and then, punished by hard labor and the boring company of narrow-minded men, he would find solace in weariness and deep, undisturbed, earned sleep.
"Oh—shit," he whimpered, kicking at his discarded jeans.
"Shit again!" This time he yelped with pain. He'd stubbed his toe on something hard. It was that damn book that Townes had given him. He picked it out of his pants and flung it at his bed. Then he went to the sink, opened the faucets, stood on one foot like an ostrich, and nursed his swelling toe. When it felt a little better he limped back to the bed, and there he found Townes' note.
Dear Robin: Because I know you're lazy, and hate to read serious things, I've devised a little game to get you started on this book. Turn to the third part of these Confessions and you'll see I've marked some lines. (I've also changed a word or two, just to smooth things out.) All you have to do is read what I've marked, leaving out what's in between. You'll get the point pretty fast, I think. Yrs, M.T.
Well, he thought, that was considerate of Townes, to go to so much trouble. He turned to Part Three and followed his instructions. What he read came out like this:
I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron. I muddied the stream of friendship with the filth of lewdness and clouded its clear waters with hell's black river of lust. And yet, in spite of this rank depravity, I was vain enough to have ambitions of cutting a fine figure in the world.
I was caught up in the coils of trouble, for I was lashed with the cruel, fiery rods of jealousy, suspicion, anger, and quarrels. I enjoyed fables and fictions, which could only graze the skin, but where the fingers scratch, the skin becomes inflamed. It swells and festers with hideous pus. And the same happened to me. I exhausted myself in depravity, in the pursuit of an unholy curiosity. I sank to the bottom-most depths of skepticism and the mockery of devil worship.
I was at the top of the school of rhetoric. I was pleased with my superior status and swollen with my conceit. But I behaved far more quietly than the "wreckers," a title of ferocious devilry which the fashionable set chose for themselves. I kept company with them, and there were times when I found their friendship a pleasure, but I always had a horror of what they did when they lived up to their name. "Wreckers" was a fit name for them, for they were already adrift and total wrecks themselves. The mockery and trickery which they loved to practice on others was a secret snare of the devil, by which they were mocked and tricked themselves.
These were the companions with whom I studied the art of eloquence at that impressionable age. I fell in with a set of sensualists, men with glib tongues who ranted and raved. Yet the dishes they set before me were still loaded with dazzling fantasies, illusions with which the eye deceives the mind. I knew nothing of this at the time. I was quite unconscious of it, quite blind to it, although it stared me in the face.
For nearly nine years were yet to come during which I wallowed deep in the mire and the darkness of delusion. Often I tried to lift myself, only to plunge the deeper.
Well, he thought, this is heady stuff. The connections to himself, Tangier, his column, the Socco, and the Mountain crowd did not escape him; in fact, he was fascinated. And thinking these Confessions might yield up some secret about his destiny, he opened the book at its beginning and read on and on. Not until hours later, when he'd finished the confessional part and had come to St. Augustine's conversion, did he droop his head, extinguish the bare bulb above his bed, close his eyes, and begin to dream of boys in woolen shorts.
The next morning he was surprised to find himself elated, even though it was Thursday and his column was due at noon. He bounded out of bed, attempted a set of vigorous calisthenics, then panting and wet stood by his window and breathed deeply the rank medina air. He didn't bother to dress but walked nude to his table to give his Olivetti its weekly blowing off. He choked on the dust but stood his ground, disgusted, for there were ants climbing all over the keys of the machine. He squashed them with his forefinger, one at a time, then wiped off their remains on the wall. Finally, when everything was clean, the table crumbed and cleared of chocolate bar tinfoil bits, odds and ends of unfinished poems, and rinds of cheese, he sat down, still naked, willed himself to work, scratched at his ankles, and with flashing fingers began to type:
ABOUT TANGIER
By Robin Scott
We find Tangier, this first week of July, standing on its head. Our city is a vortex of illusions. We are seedy actors playing out delirious roles.
THE BRITISH COMMUNITY in an uproar over the latest OUTRAGES at St. Thomas Church. Early Sunday morning, when Vicar Wick unlocked the doors, he found the great altar crucifix hacked to pieces on the floor. Deeply upset by this sacrilege, the Vicar sent out a plea for help. Jack Whyte, Tangier's "Mr. Fix It," quickly improvised another cross out of some two-by-fours lying around his shop. A new and better crucifix is now in the works, but the question remains: WHO DID THE DASTARDLY DEED? Perhaps it's a coincidence, but on Tuesday the Vicar found a black widow spider crawling across his desk. Lester Brown refused to speculate on whether there was some connection between these two events, but the wily colonel left no doubt in this reporter's mind that he thought there was. Ever since May, when an anonymous note turned up on the collection plate, and then a skewered sheep's eye the following week, Colonel Brown has made it his mission to find the perpetrator and bring him to account. Now, with the ruined crucifix and the black widow spider, the plot thickens and the hunt becomes more intense. Camilla Weltonwhist declares she will not enter the "devil's house." Dr. Radcliffe has been called to attend to Lady Pitt, who says she will not leave her bed until the culprit is caught and expelled. So, a pillar of our British society is now riddled with fury and fear. The work of a single madman, we may ask, or a symptom of our DISEASE?
DIPLOMATIC AND OTHER AFFAIRS: Much consternation now, in Tangier's diplomatic set, over the behavior of a senior representative of a major power. We're not naming any names, but if our readers care to learn more, we suggest they station themselves at odd hours by the overlook near the Rimilat Café . They might see an ODD COUPLE making whoopee in a BIG BLACK CAR.
Speaking of AFFAIRS, there's another one burning white hot. It's been going on in secrecy for months behind a certain prominent Mountain resident's back. A handsome young man, an older woman, and a much older husband who's often out of town. That's the triangle if you can figure it out. (Think of the tennis club if you need a hint.) Tread softly, passionate lovers, lest you inspire a crime passionnel.
HOW REFRESHING to take note of men loving women in Tangier! Recently Clive Whittle was heard to comment brusquely about our city's vice. As quoted to us (and we hasten to add we were not invited to the dinner where these statements were made) Her Majesty's Consul General is alleged to have said: "I don't give a fig what they do behind the blinds, but there'll be no mincing, no lisping, no limp wrists in this house!" Good luck, Clive! You may have to drop half your clientele, but in a STRANGE way, DEAR BOY, you've put your finger on the difference between "gay" and "queer."
"Gay,"
a matter of sexual preference, is something that's neither here nor there, while "queer" has nothing to do with bed, but with a set of mannerisms "gay people" sometimes display. Well, try to understand, OLD BOY. All that lisping bitchiness which you so contemptuously despise comes from years of self-hatred engendered by just such homophobic statements as you're alleged to have made. Understand, old FRUIT?
LITERARILY SPEAKING: We have another sad tale to add to the endless misfortunes of David Klein. You'll all remember the unfortunate accident when David was attacked by his gardener several years ago. All's mended and well, thank God, but now another mishap has occurred. David's new "Mohammed," after washing out his best Berber rug, placed it on the garden wall to dry. A great wind came and blew it to the other side, where a gang of Dradeb urchins snatched it away. No sign of the rug yet, though the police are working on the case. Thank the Lord, David, it was just a rug, and not your ratty old toupee!
AN INTERESTING FEUD is brewing up beneath the cloak of a friendship going sour. Two of Tangier's most prominent LITERATI are now talking viciously behind each other's backs. A sack of silverware, a case of "moral plagiarism"—the whole thing's too complex to lay out here. The strange thing about it, though, is that both parties still pretend they're friends. Isn't there enough hypocrisy in Tangier? What a shame it's spread to the artistic CAMP!
THEATER CLUB: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players. . .." Our players' machinations continue at a heady pace. Laurence Luscombe informs us that Emperor Jones will be his first production in the fall. He has approached Mr. Fufu about playing the lead, but a certain AMERICAN ACTOR has sworn he'll play it in blackface himself. Meantime a copy of the TP bylaws has been surreptitiously acquired by a DISSIDENT group. There's a plot afoot to unseat the older guard by holding a meeting on a night when the voting patrons cannot attend. The undemocratic employment of democratic principles—that's the conspiracy here. Our theater club, like the church, has become a stage for vengeance, intrigue, and deceit.
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