The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  ‘Whatever you’ve had to deal with, Manon, has nothing to do with this. There is no reason imaginable for you to lie in such a terrible way. Why couldn’t you have simply told me he wasn’t here, when I first came to you asking about him? What twisted pleasure did you get from seeing me so …’ I stopped. I didn’t want to think of her expression as she watched me cry out, fall, when she told me Etienne was dead.

  Manon lazily lifted one shoulder. ‘Etienne would not have married you, you know.’ she said. ‘He would never have married you,’ she repeated. ‘So I thought it easier that you believed him dead. Then you would have no reason to hope any further. You would go home and put your silly dreams out of your head.’

  She didn’t fool me. She would never have thought of making it easier for me, of doing what she did out of perverted kindness.

  ‘How do you know he wouldn’t marry me? How do you know what your brother felt for me, or what he would have done?’ I knew he hadn’t discussed me with her, or she would have known who I was when I first came to her door.

  I thought, for one moment, that I would tell her about the child, then dismissed the idea.

  ‘Etienne is too selfish to marry anyone,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t know that. You didn’t see him with me.’

  ‘I didn’t have to. I know him all too well, Sidonie.’

  ‘You only know him as a brother. You can’t see some things when you’re tied by blood to a person. Brother and sister is not the same as the relationship between man and woman,’ I countered, and as I spoke something shifted in Manon’s face, something very small and slippery.

  ‘Plus he would not marry because he would not wish to father a child,’ she said, and I saw it again, that distinctly goading look.

  I swallowed, glad I hadn’t mentioned my pregnancy. ‘Why do you say that?’

  Now she sat back and smiled. There was a tiny blob of the red jam in the corner of her mouth; she licked it off. Her tongue was very pink, and pointed. ‘Majoun,’ she said, leaning forward again and taking another spoonful from the bowl. ‘Do you like majoun, Sidonie?’ she asked, the spoon in mid-air.

  ‘I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care,’ I said.

  ‘Sometimes the smoke from kif hurts my throat. This is better, the cannabis cooked with fruit and sugar and spices,’ she said, eating the spoonful without even bothering to put it on bread. ‘I give it to Badou, to make him sleep. When I need him to sleep,’ she added, and I thought of her entertaining the man the night before.

  I was so sickened by her that I stood. ‘I came here today hoping, in some small way, that you would give me the truth about how to find Etienne. And that perhaps I would also uncover the reason for your behaviour towards me,’ I said. ‘I should have known there’s no explanation. You’re simply a malicious and spiteful woman.’

  ‘You think I care about your opinion?’ She made a sound like a laugh. ‘You don’t know what life has given me, you with your easy existence, your house and garden, painting as a hobby to pass the time, playing with your old cat. All your life you’ve done only what you wanted.’ The majoun was gone: Manon lifted the bowl and, looking at me over its rim, delicately licked out the last traces of the hashish jam with that small, pointed tongue.

  I stared at her. She didn’t know I had a garden, or a cat. I hadn’t told her those things. I had briefly spoken to Aszulay about my garden, but Cinnabar … I had never mentioned her.

  ‘When you know what life is really about — when you have actually lived outside of your small, safe circle — then you may question my behaviour.’ She rose, facing me. ‘I lied to you because I can. Because it gave me pleasure to see you cry out, to see you so weak. You and Etienne made a good pair. He’s weak, like you. He didn’t even tell you, did he, about his illness.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘His illness?’ But it had been his father who had been so ill.

  She laughed, a loud, merry laugh. ‘Etienne was too weak to tell you the truth, and also too shamed to let you see him as he really is. Only I know the depth of his faults. I am the only one who has seen him at his lowest.’

  ‘What illness?’ I repeated.

  Manon sat again, pouring herself another glass of tea and then leaning back and languidly crossing one leg over the other. She drank her tea in one long, fluid swallow, and then called out in Arabic. Falida appeared with the sheesha and set it on the floor in front of Manon. She fussed with it, opening it, pulling out a flint and lighting a plug of tobacco, then fitting the sheesha together and handing the mouthpiece to Manon.

  ‘You didn’t see the evidence?’ she asked, the mouthpiece just touching her lips.

  I blinked, trying to find answers in her face.

  ‘He had only the earliest signs, but can you really tell yourself you didn’t see it? The moment I saw him, when he arrived here, I knew. He was possessed in the same manner as our father. Are you really so thick-headed? So blind?’

  I envisioned Etienne at the hospital, and then at my home. When we were out for dinner, when he drove his car, in my bed. Small, unimportant images flashed through my mind: the way he sometimes dropped his fork or knife with an unexpected clatter on to the table, his occasional tripping over the edges of carpets. A sudden lurch and stumble as he walked across the bedroom to me one night, when I assumed he was simply exhausted from a long day at the hospital, or that the continual glasses of bourbon he took after dinner might have affected him more strongly that particular evening.

  I thought of the empty pill bottle I’d found in his room, the medication that could be taken for palsy.

  ‘Etienne inherited everything from our father,’ she said. ‘I was left nothing. But now I’m glad, for along with his wealth, Marcel Duverger left his son something else.’

  I felt behind me for the stool, and lowered myself to it.

  ‘Our father also left Etienne the djinns he carried in his body,’ she said. ‘The disease that killed him will now kill Etienne. But not for a long time. First he will suffer, as our father suffered.’ She smiled, a calm, slow smile, tilting her head the slightest, as though hearing music from afar, music she recognised and loved. ‘Am I sorry for my father’s suffering? No. My father paid for his behaviour towards me.’ Her smile suddenly turned to a grimace, and her voice was bitter. ‘This house,’ she waved one arm in front of her, ‘was bought for me by Etienne, before he left for America. But it wasn’t enough. There will never be enough to even the score. I was glad when my father died, and now I’m glad Etienne will suffer in the same way. He’s welcome to the inheritance, and now he will live with it until it kills him, crying and soiling himself like a baby.’

  What was it? What did she mean, the djinns in their bodies?

  ‘The djinns travel from parent to child,’ she added, then repeated, ‘Parent to child. Father to son.’ ‘

  The disease was genetic. She was talking about genetics. I remembered Etienne’s interest in genetics.

  Badou came back into the courtyard with the dog. He again sat beside his mother, holding the dog around the middle. The little creature’s short legs stuck straight out. Badou reached, tentatively, towards the round of bread still sitting on the plate, glancing at Manon. When she didn’t react, he took the bread and broke off a small piece and fed it to the dog. Then he stuffed the rest into his own mouth.

  ‘But … if Etienne is in Morocco,’ I said to Manon, ‘surely he’ll come back to Marrakesh. To see you, and Badou,’ I stated, my eyes darting from her to the child. These two people were his only family. ‘When will he come again, Manon? If what you say is true … I need to see him even more now.’

  She shrugged again, drawing in a deep breath from the mouthpiece, and then parted her lips, very slightly, letting a thin waft of smoke drift upwards into the still, warm air.

  TWENTY FIVE

  I walked for a number of hours. If this time Manon told the truth — that Etienne had a disease that would eventually take his life in a gruesome way
— perhaps I had found the answer I wanted.

  Etienne had left me because he didn’t want me to have to marry a man who would walk through what remained of his life with a noose around his neck, a noose that would grow tighter and tighter with each month, each year.

  He had left me because he loved me too much to do that to me. But he didn’t realise the depth of my feelings. I couldn’t envision him any other way than as I had last seen him, strong and loving. Whatever form the disease took — whatever djinns Manon spoke of — I could cope. I could care for Etienne when he eventually grew weak, as I’d cared for my mother.

  I went back to Sharia Zitoun and pounded on the gate; it was mid-afternoon.

  There was no sound from within. I knocked again, trying the handle, but the gate was locked. I hit the flat of my hand against the gold paint. ‘Manon!’ I called. ‘Badou. Badou, are you there?’

  There was a tiny sound; bare feet against tile. ‘Badou?’ I said again, my mouth against the minuscule line of light where the gate met the jamb. ‘It’s’ me, Sidonie. Mademoiselle O’Shea. Can you open the gate, please?’

  After a complicated scraping of the inside lock the gate swung inward. Badou looked up at me. ‘Maman said nobody can enter,’ he said.

  ‘But it’s me, Badou. Can I come in for only a moment?’

  He studied my face, and then nodded solemnly, stepping back. In the courtyard was a tub of water, sticks floating on the surface.

  Badou went to the tub and pushed one of the sticks around as though it was a boat.

  ‘Maman is sleeping?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘She went to the hammam to bathe,’ he said, not looking at me.

  ‘And Falida? Where is Falida?’

  ‘In the souks, buying food.’

  I looked at the house. ‘You’re here alone?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. I am a big boy,’ he said, busily taking the sticks from the water and setting them in lines on the courtyard floor, kneeling and arranging them in different patterns. ‘Maman says I am a big boy, and can look after myself.’

  I was quiet for a moment, and then said, ‘Yes, yes, you are a big boy, Badou.’

  I studied his features as he concentrated on his sticks. I saw Etienne again: this look, right now, of intensity. The intelligent forehead under the thick hair. The long, slender neck.

  I thought, again, of what our child might have looked like.

  ‘Are you sad, Sidonie?’ Badou asked, and I realised he had stopped arranging his sticks and was looking up at me. He hadn’t called me mademoiselle, as usual.

  My initial response was to say oh no, of course I’m not sad, and try to smile. But as before, I couldn’t bring myself to be dishonest with this serious child. ‘Yes. Today I’m a little sad.’

  He nodded. ‘Sometimes I’m sad too, Sidonie. But then I think for a while, and become happy again.’ He was so earnest.

  ‘And what is it that you think of, Badou, when you are feeling sad? What do you think about to make yourself happy again?’

  ‘Once, a long time ago, my mother made a lemon cake,’ he said, his lips turning up in the beginning of a smile.‘Oh, it was so sweet, and so yellow. When I think of that cake, I’m happy. Inside my head I make a picture. I put the cake in the blue sky, beside the sun. The sun and the lemon cake. Like two suns, or two cakes. Two are always better than one.’ He stood. ‘Maman used to paint me pictures. I asked her to paint this picture for me, of the two cakes, but she didn’t. I wanted to put it on the wall beside my bed. Then I would always be happy, because I could look at it whenever I liked.’

  Unexpectedly, tears came to my eyes. Was it normal for a six year old to speak like this? I didn’t know.

  ‘Sidonie? Now you must think about what makes you happy, to make the sad things go away.’

  I kneeled, wincing at the pressure on my sore knees, and put my arms around him. I pressed his head against my shoulder.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked, his voice muffled against me. He pulled his head back and looked at me again. ‘Is it happy?’

  I couldn’t answer. His soft cheek, his thick hair. I looked into his huge eyes. He was so still, as always, watching me. And oh, so clever.

  ‘You can think of the lemon cakes, Sidonie,’ he finally said, easing out of my arms and again picking up the little sticks, smiling at me.

  Half an hour later Manon returned, carrying two buckets filled with various implements. When she saw me she glared at Badou, and he stared back at her with a stricken look.

  ‘Don’t be angry at him,’ I told her. ‘I made him let me in.’

  Manon set down her pails.

  I licked my lips. ‘What about you, Manon? Do you have the disease as well?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and I wanted it to be true, looking at Badou. I couldn’t bear to think of something dangerous and harmful within his small, perfect body. ‘But how touching,’ Manon went on, her voice laced with sarcasm, ‘that you care about my health.’

  I didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I just want to know either where Etienne is, or when he’ll come back to Marrakesh. It’s even more important, now, that I tell him that …’ I stopped, suddenly knowing it would be unwise to divulge anything more to this woman.

  ‘As well as not discussing his weaknesses, Etienne obviously didn’t share his dreams with you, either. As he did with me,’ Manon said, not answering my question. ‘He had a dream of fame and glory for his work. He wanted to discover a way to prevent the passing of the djinns.’ She was still staring at me. ‘And he did,’ she added, then fell silent.

  ‘And so?’ I finally prompted. ‘What did he uncover?’

  ‘That there would be no glory. That there is only one way to prevent the disease. Only one. He was very despondent, Sidonie, when he came here.’

  ‘Of course,’ I stated. ‘He realised his future.’

  ‘Yes. But also something else. He told me he had failed.’

  ‘Failed?’

  ‘He told me about you. I know everything, Sidonie.’

  I blinked, remembering how she’d mentioned my life in Albany, facts she couldn’t have known. So Etienne had spoken of me, had told her about me, and she had known who I was from the first time I came to her door. But why had she toyed with me? Why had she pretended she knew nothing about me? She had put on such an air of innocence when I introduced myself. Manon Maliki was an actress extraordinaire. Every time I saw her, this became more clear.

  ‘He told me about the child.’

  I instinctively put my hands to my abdomen, and her eyes followed.

  ‘Obviously you lied, to try to force him to marry you. Such an old and tiresome trick, Sidonie. But then I would expect something like this from a woman like you.’ Again she smiled, that slow smile I hated. ‘I saw with the first glance there was no child. Foolish woman. How did you think you would explain this to him if you caught up to him? Another lie, this one about losing it?’

  I couldn’t let her see how her words were affecting me. I looked into her eyes, keeping my face still.

  ‘You wanted Etienne to marry you, and so you lied to trap him. But the trap caught you. Because of your lie, you lost him. He came here because I wanted him to. Unlike you, I could get Etienne to do my bidding. But you had driven him away anyway. The only sure way for the djinns to die, he told me when he came,’ she stopped again, delicately stroking one eyebrow with her middle finger before continuing, ‘was for those possessing them to never procreate. Within a generation it would have disappeared. Just one generation, Manon, he told me. That’s all it would take.’

  Light fell in soft shafts through the leaves, shimmering across Manon’s face, making it look as though waves passed over it. Her pupils were huge, perhaps an effect of kif or majoun.

  Suddenly the gate banged open, and Falida came through, carrying a woven bag in each hand, the handle of a third bag looped around her neck so it hung on her back. Its weight caused her to walk bent almost in two.

 
Manon went to her and grabbed one of the bags. She looked inside, scrabbling through it, questioning Falida in Arabic. Falida’s voice was weak, fearful, and then Manon struck her on the side of the head. Falida fell. I heard the heavy thump of her elbow and hip hitting the tiles. Oranges spilled from the bag on her back, olives from another. Badou ran to pick up the oranges, cupping them in the bottom of his djellaba.

  Falida didn’t cry. She took the bag from around her neck and then gathered the olives, wrapping them back in their paper. An orange rolled towards my foot. I picked it up.

  Manon returned to me as if the small, miserable scene hadn’t occurred. ‘So, Sidonie, in essence …’ I looked away from the children, and back at her, ‘it is you who pushed Etienne away when he thought you would produce a child who might carry the djinns. Because he realised he was a hypocrite.’

  I pressed the dimpled skin of the orange over and over, thinking about Etienne’s face when he learned I was pregnant. About his expression, which I had presumed to be simply shock, but now, with Manon’s confident words, thought, suddenly, could have been panic.

  I thought of the child we had created, half me and half him. I tried to swallow, but my mouth and throat now felt cloaked in wool. Etienne knew there was a chance that he had passed on the gene, as his father had to him. He had seen the child we had created as possibly one of nature’s aberrations, a mistake.

  ‘You were just a diversion, a plaything for a short time,’ Manon said now. ‘He had no intentions of anything serious. He told me this himself.’

  I had to compose myself for a moment. I looked again at Badou, still helping Falida gather the spilled food. He glanced back at me and then came and took the orange from my hand.

  ‘Etienne made a choice to be with me,’ I said, ‘and the … result was unforeseen by both of us. There was a baby, Manon. And I lost it — before arriving in Tangier.’ I didn’t care if she believed me or not. ‘If he had felt so strongly about this, about not procreating, he wouldn’t have been with me. Nobody forced him.’ I hated the way my voice faltered on the last sentence.