The Saffron Gate

  I put my hands on my belly, just the tiniest rise now.

  SIXTEEN

  I had to stop overnight at Marseilles; the ship for Tangier sailed late the next afternoon. I was strangely weary after the week of sailing from New York, even though I had done little but lie on my narrow bed and, twice a day, walk the deck alone. I looked at the port with little interest as my cases were loaded into a taxi; and we drove through the streets to the hotel recommended on board.

  At the hotel, the concierge asked my name, and I hesitated, and then said, ‘Madame Duverger.’ I hadn’t intended on saying this, and had no reason to lie.

  ‘How many days?’

  ‘Only tonight. I’m taking another ship to Tangier late tomorrow.’ I was also not sure why I felt I had to divulge my business to this unsmiling, severe-looking woman. The name tag on her blouse said Madame Buisson. She held out her hand.

  ‘Do you wish me to pay in advance?’

  She shook her head. ‘Your passport, madame. We keep the passport until you leave.’

  I swallowed. ‘Surely it’s not necessary,’ I said.

  ‘It is necessary,’ she told me, her hand still waiting. ‘Your passport,’ she repeated.

  I reached into my bag and handed the stiff, red-covered little book to her. She opened it and looked at my photograph, and her expression changed, subtly, as her eyes went over the page containing my name and date of birth and marital status: Sidonie O’Shea. 1 January 1900. Albany, New York. Single.

  Even if she couldn’t read English, Madame Buisson could see that the name I had given her different from what was in my passport. I was not a madame.

  She said nothing, but turned and went into a small room behind the desk with my passport. When she came back, she handed me a large metal key on a leather strap. ‘Room 267, madame,’ she said, and I was grateful that she said the last word with no sarcasm. ‘The boy will soon bring up your bags.’

  ‘Merci,’ I said, and taking a deep breath, slowly climbed the wooden steps to the second floor.

  The room was small but clean, with the luxury of an attached salle de bains. I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for my bags so I could undress and ready myself for sleep.

  I had no desire to see more of Marseilles. The docks had been filthy, piled with boxes and shipments, and dark-skinned men lounged everywhere, watching with veiled expressions. On the ride to the hotel I had seen too many wasted children and crumbling, decaying ruins of tall buildings.

  My mother’s family had, at some point in history, come from France; French blood ran within my veins. My baby’s father was from this country. Our child would be three-quarters French.

  As soon as my bags were deposited on the floor near the wardrobe, I took out my nightdress. It was only seven in the evening, but I had an unfamiliar, persistent pain in my back. I longed for a hot-water bottle. I fell into the single, hard bed with a sigh of relief, and in spite of the discomfort in my back, fell asleep almost immediately.

  My body woke me in the night. The pain had moved into my abdomen, more painful now, and I curled tighter into myself, wanting it to stop. I thought a warm bath might help. I slowly put back the covers, and as I stood, there was a rush of fluid down my legs. Horrified, I looked at the wet darkness on my ankles. My hands over my belly, I made my way to the bathroom and switched on the light. The brilliance of the blood made me weak — not because of the sight of it, but because I knew what it signified.

  ‘No!’ I cried out into the empty bathroom, my voice echoing. I couldn’t leave my room and make my way downstairs to find the concierge; the cramping and blood flow were overwhelming. Who could I call? ‘Etienne,’ I said, aloud, for there was no other name. ‘Etienne,’ I repeated, quietly now, but of course there was only my own voice bouncing off the walls and ceiling.

  And there appeared nothing for me to do, no way to stop the life rushing from me.

  Afterwards, I lay on my side on a towel on the hard tiles of the bathroom floor, my knees drawn up. I had wept so much that my head throbbed; I was so thirsty, and yet I didn’t have enough energy to even pull myself up to drink from the bathroom faucet.

  I stayed that way, on the floor, until a thin morning light came through the window and on to my face through the open bathroom door. I stared at the light as it moved across the bed and wall. There was a light tapping on the locked door, but I didn’t call out. I couldn’t get up, and I couldn’t close my eyes. It was as though my body was an uncooperative, flimsy shell, but my mind was a tight, rigid fist, with only one pulsing, hard sentence that kept running through it. Your baby is dead. Your baby is dead.

  Shouts came through the partly opened window, then children’s voices, the ceaseless barking of a dog.

  Someone knocked, more heavily, and a girl’s voice said, ‘Madame! Madame, I will clean the room.’ The handle rattled. At that I drew a deep, shaky breath, and managed to lift my hands to my face. My cheeks were wet. The rattling on the handle stopped.

  It hurt to move; my joints ached as though I were in the grip of influenza. Shakily, I managed to sit up, looking at the bloodied towels on the floor around me.

  ‘Etienne,’ I whispered. What do I do now? What do I do now?

  I pulled myself upright, holding on to the sink, and ran water into the bathtub and slowly bathed. I put on a fresh nightgown, bundling the soiled one into the waste can. I was too weak to attempt to rinse the blood and tissue from the towels, and left them in a pool of murky pink in the bathtub before going back to bed. I lay there, finally unable to cry any more.

  I kept touching my abdomen; it was difficult to comprehend that the tiny thing Etienne and I had created was gone.

  I believe I was in a state of shock; I was unable to think of anything more than the death of that little being. I know that at some point I clasped my hands and prayed for its soul.

  I don’t know how much time passed, but the next time there was the clanging of a pail in the hall, and then knocking at my door, I called out.

  ‘Please,’ I said, as loudly as I could. ‘Ask Madame Buisson to come to my room. Tell her to come in. I’m ill.’

  When she arrived, unlocking the door and standing in the doorway, looking at me across the room, I told her, flatly, that I had been sick during the night, and wished to have a doctor visit me. I had pulled myself into a sitting position in the narrow bed, the blankets piled haphazardly over my legs.

  She nodded, her face unreadable as it had been the day before, but when her eyes flickered to the open bathroom door I saw her chest rise. I followed her gaze. I’d left one of the bloody towels on the floor. She went to the bathroom and glanced in, then closed the door with a firm thud, bordering on a slam. She stared back at me, her head giving an almost imperceptible shake, and left.

  I think I slept, for within what felt like a very short time she returned, this time with a middle-aged man with a thick moustache and too much hair cream. He carried a black bag, and his fingers were chapped.

  ‘Mademoiselle O’Shea,’ Madame Buisson said, adding, ‘American, just arrived’, as if she smelled something unpleasant. The doctor nodded at me. So the concierge was now calling me by the name in my passport, with special emphasis on the Mademoiselle. She stayed in the room, by the door, her hands clasped in front of her.

  The doctor asked her — I wondered why he didn’t speak to me — the nature of the visit. The woman said, in a very low voice, that I had suffered a loss of blood in the night. She said the phrase, pertes de sang, in little more than a whisper, as if it were highly shameful to utter the words. And then she raised her eyebrows in a knowing gesture.

  ‘Ah,’ the doctor said, glancing at me. ‘Une fausse couche?’

  ‘Most certainly. There is every indication it was a miscarriage, Doctor,’ the woman said, seeming to take a strangely bitter pleasure in answering his questions.

  Glancing back at me, the doctor spoke quickly. ‘She’s alone?’ he said, turning to the woman, and by his tone it was clear he alrea
dy knew the answer.

  Then he asked the concierge what I was doing in Marseilles, and she told him I was going on to Tangier.

  He looked back at me and shook his head. ‘C’est impossible. Oh, but it’s not possible, mademoiselle,’ he said in tortured English, his words loud and slow, as if I were very deaf or very unintelligent. ‘You must not make the travel,’ he said, and then I knew why he had been ignoring me and speaking only to the concierge about my situation. Because she had emphasised that I was an American, he didn’t realise I spoke French, and she hadn’t told him. He switched back to French as he again faced the concierge. ‘She’ll never make it there alone, having just gone through a miscarriage.’

  ‘And she’s a cripple,’ the woman said, looking over the doctor’s shoulder at me. I was too weak, too distraught to care about her callousness.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘Well. It’s all the more obvious that she’s not the sort to travel to such a dangerous location. And it will most likely take her some time to recover. Tell her to return to America as soon as she’s able.’

  ‘Monsieur le Docteur,’ I said, in French, ‘I understand. Please speak to me directly.’

  His cheeks stained, but he quickly regained his composure, clearing his throat and straightening his already impeccable lapels. ‘I apologise.’ He glanced at Madame Buisson. ‘I wasn’t aware you spoke French.’

  I pushed back my tangled hair. ‘I must go on. To North Africa,’ I said. ‘I must get to Tangier, as quickly as possible. When do you think it will be safe for me to travel again?’

  ‘Oh, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘I really cannot recommend that you take on a journey just now. Do you have friends in Marseilles? Or perhaps elsewhere in France, with whom you can stay for a while? Until your body recovers.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I need to go,’ I said, trying to make my voice firm, but it refused to cooperate. It was weak, my lips trembling.

  ‘If you’re so insistent, I can only say that you should then find someone to accompany you. To … perhaps protect you, once you’re there. I meant this, when I spoke earlier, in no disrespectful way. It will require physical stamina as well as the ability to adjust to new surroundings. Surroundings that may be offensive to a lady such as yourself, obviously one of a well-bred and delicate nature. And one who has just suffered such a loss.’

  My eyes burned, but I blinked rapidly. ‘There’s no reason I shouldn’t recover quickly, is there?’ I asked.

  ‘Mademoiselle. As I’ve said, you must rest and let your body grow stronger. How many months were you?’

  ‘Three,’ I said.

  He smoothed his moustache with his thumb and index finger, then picked up his bag and opened it, looking through it and pulling out a thin green bottle and setting it on the chair beside the bed. ‘Has the bleeding stopped?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘And the miscarriage was complete?’

  I didn’t understand. ‘I … I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think your body has rid itself of everything?’

  I swallowed. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Do you feel you should go to the hospital? There is a small one nearby that caters to foreigners. I could arrange a car—’

  ‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’

  ‘All right. But if there are further symptoms, you must go to the hospital. Otherwise, stay in bed for the next few days, and don’t exert yourself in any way. I’m leaving you something,’ he gestured at the bottle, ‘that helps in these situations. Take two spoonfuls morning, midday, and evening for the next two days. You will experience some cramping. If the miscarriage wasn’t complete, this will help to dispel everything from the womb.’

  At those last words, the enormity of what had occurred came over me again with a pain so deep that I had to put my hand over my eyes. My body trembled, my teeth chattering the slightest. I knew I had to ask the question looming so huge in my head. I didn’t know how I would deal with, the answer. I took my hand from my eyes and looked into the doctor’s face.

  ‘Could it have been my fault?’ I asked. ‘Was it the travel, on the ship from America for the last week? Or … I’ve had a great deal of worry lately.’ I let my breath out in a long, shaky exhalation. ‘Perhaps I haven’t eaten well enough. I’ve had trouble sleeping. Did I cause it? Is it my fault I lost my baby?’

  ‘Mademoiselle,’ the doctor said, more kindly now. He came closer to the bed. ‘Sometimes this is just the way of nature. We can never be sure.’ He patted my hand. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. Try to rest. Madame Buisson, have another blanket brought up for her, and some soup. You will have to regain your strength. And please, as I’ve said, if you have more pain, or other difficulties, you must go to the hospital. Do you promise you will do this, mademoiselle?’

  His unexpected gentleness with me was more than I could take. I covered my face with both hands, weeping, rocking back and forth, while the doctor and the concierge silently left the room.

  For the next few hours I tried to sleep, but was unable. The bowl of steaming soup set on the dresser by a stout, red-haired girl, who glanced at me and then quickly away, grew cold. I pulled the extra blanket over me and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling.

  I put my hands on my belly again, then looked at the limp white curtain lightly dancing in the early afternoon breeze.

  I thought of what the child might have grown to be, and imagined him — or her — with gleaming dark hair, thick and straight, like Etienne’s. With his same high, intelligent forehead, and slightly worried look between the brows. With my mother’s full lips. If it had been a girl I would have called her Camille or Emmanuelle. A boy, Jean-Luc. I would have curled the small fingers around a paintbrush, I would have bought a kitten to love. We would have whispered bedtime prayers in French together.

  I watched the curtain, mesmerised by its lift and fall. I told myself that perhaps the doctor was right. Perhaps I should return to Juniper Road — return home, where I would be safe. Would I stay there for ever? I envisioned myself standing in front of my easel, stooped, my hair white. My hands, clutching the paintbrush, were spotted with age marks, my fingers either fleshless digits or puffy with retained water. And I was alone.

  That was all I could see: the child who no longer existed, and the bleakness of the rest of my days without Etienne. Without a child.

  I wiped my nightgown sleeve over my face and got up, slowly walking to the window, holding back the curtain so that I could look over the rooftops of Marseilles. The shouts of playing children still rang out, and somewhere the same dog still barked. I had begun this journey to find Etienne, and now — even though our baby was no more — I needed him more than I ever had.

  I stared at the rooftops, then lower, at the lines of drying clothes strung between the tall, narrow buildings. I knew that if I decided to go on to Marrakesh, there was no guarantee I’d find Etienne, or even his sister.

  And yet I could not turn back now. As the room darkened, I knew I could not return to my former life until I completed what I had started, no matter the final outcome.

  SEVENTEEN

  After my first night in Marrakesh, where I slept restlessly in spite of the wide, soft bed smelling of rose petals, I dressed in a swift, distracted manner and went immediately to the front desk.

  I asked Monsieur Henri if Dr Etienne Duverger was — or had been — a guest at Hôtel de la Palmeraie. I realised I was twisting my fingers painfully, and when Monsieur Henri shook his head, I dropped my shoulders and unclasped my hands. ‘You’re certain?’ I asked, and Monsieur Henri stared at me for a second too long.

  ‘I assure you, mademoiselle, I have been here since the opening of the hotel over five years ago, and have an excellent memory.’

  I looked down at the thick registry book. ‘It would have been in the last while. Could you please check? Maybe someone else was working the front desk when — if he checked in, or —’

  Monsieur Henri closed the large book with a slow,
deliberate movement, just hard enough that a puff of warm air blew into my face. ‘That is not necessary. I do know our clientele, as I have told you, Mademoiselle O’Shea: Some have actually lived here for the last few years, preferring the ease and luxury of the hotel to the complex bureaucracy of purchasing a home in the French Quarter.’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘The requirements for buying land or a house in Morocco are quite antiquated and ridiculous,’ he added, and then, looking at me more closely, said, ‘I do hope you are assured, mademoiselle, that Dr Etienne Duverger was never a guest here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said quietly, turning to leave, then looked back at Monsieur Henri. ‘What of a Manon Duverger?’ I asked. ‘I believe she lives in Marrakesh, surely here, in La Ville Novuelle. Do you know her?’

  Again he shook his head. ‘I know of no Duvergers. But … ‘

  ‘Yes?’ I said, perhaps a bit too eagerly, approaching the desk again.

  ‘Try the Bureau of Statistics on Rue Aries. They have a list of homeowners in Marrakesh.’ He pulled a small folded pamphlet from under the high desk. I wasn’t sure why he was suddenly being more helpful. ‘Here is a map of the French Quarter; it will help you find your way about.’

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur Henri,’ I said. ‘I appreciate your assistance.’

  He gave a tiny, imperious nod, and busied himself refilling his fountain pen.

  On the way out, I noticed a series of watercolours on one wall of the lobby. I was anxious to start my search, but glanced at them as I passed. They were by various French artists, none of whom I recognised. But some had managed to capture a particular essence of light in the renditions of what appeared to be the daily nuances of life in Morocco.

  There were a number of paintings of the Berber people, in their villages of clay and in their nomadic tents.