The Married Man

by Edmund White

  Some evenings they stood by a pond and looked down at big wet boulders that would suddenly crack apart and slide: turtles. One of the turtles was so lazy, almost inert, that they nicknamed it “Lucy.” As the evening came in, the cold arrived with it. Julien was cold all the time and he bundled up in several layers of clothes; when Austin touched his hand it was always icy. Julien wore pale tan jeans that rode very low in the back; Austin turned quickly once and saw two Arab bellboys laughing and looking at Julien’s skinny ass, nudging each other in the ribs.

  In one of the big sitting rooms some of the local notables sat around the fireplace with their beads, eating from big plates with their right hands and watching television. On the screen, the king was participating in a religious ceremony in Casablanca, in a building that was projected to be the world’s largest mosque, but was only partially finished. The king wore a white silk cloak and hood. So did the imam, whose big black glasses looked disconcertingly modern under his hood. Austin asked the clerk behind the desk what the holiday was. “We’re toward the end of Ramadan,” he said.

  Ah, Austin thought, that’s why the notables are eating so late and the hotel staff looks so pale by day. No food until sundown, not even any water, and of course no cigarettes. It was hardest on the smokers, people said. Usually Muslims slept as much as they could by day and then feasted till midnight. Then they set their alarms for four in the morning so they could eat breakfast before dawn and a new bout of fasting. The thought flickered through Austin’s mind that the whole population must be partying now, eating and making music and talking and laughing. He could imagine slipping out of the hotel once Julien fell asleep and trailing through smoky streets past open door ways giving onto rooms lit by kerosene lamps and crowded with robed figures….

  The next morning a guide, who spoke fluent French, attached himself to them as soon as they came out of the hotel. He lined up a carriage (undoubtedly the driver would slip him a commission later). The carriage was painted green and was bedizened with dangling hands of Fatima cut out of black plastic and spotted with red and yellow stars. They asked to be shown the outside of the walls. The carriage rolled past low olive trees with small gray-green leaves. Children were playing with a rubber tire. In some places the walls, which were medieval, had started to crumble. The carriage lurched when it went across a deep rut and almost turned over. Austin let out a little cry (“It’s going to turn over!”), and Julien laughed at him with his deep but no longer resonant laugh. The driver called out something like “Geesh” to the horses in a reproachful tone, as one might say, “Giddyap.” They went past some crudely fashioned cages in which rabbits were being raised. Then they passed a tannery. An old man was washing skins in a well of foul-smelling green liquid in which he was standing waist-high in rubber hip boots. When their carriage turned in through the gate, into the winding narrow streets, few people were out; the demands of Ramadan had driven the lethargic but uncomplaining population indoors.

  One day they rode out to a chic hotel compound where millionaires vacationed and played golf. The hotel itself was empty. At the end of a long walkway beside a stream was a swimming pool, surrounded by English people, bright red and fat, slathered in sun lotion. They were eating hamburgers; the smell of the cooking meat on the grill was heavy and wintry, nauseating. Five or six of the English had been talking all at once, fluty and merry, until they caught sight of Julien and Austin. The bathers were wearing swimsuits, but Julien and Austin, intimidated by the reputation of the place, had put on coats and ties. The English guests just stared at Julien with hostility. Austin became very nervous and said he wanted to go back to the main hotel dining room, which was deserted. But first Julien had to make the grand tour of the grounds—fields planted with vegetables, rose gardens, tennis courts, individual bungalows. He had the strength for all that. In the distance they saw the greens under the wide-cast arc of sprinklers. Julien hadn’t noticed how his presence had reduced those English men and women to appalled silence.

  At lunch they were waited on by an old, dignified Moroccan who treated them with a deference that concealed a certain tenderness. They were self-quarantined in the formal dining room, which was painted pistachio green and hung with chandeliers the shape of grape clusters. Julien started with a melon and went on to boiled fish and steamed potatoes. It turned slightly cold and they took their coffee (mint tea for Julien) in the dark, empty salon, looking at a television program from France.

  On the drive back to town they were hailed by the guide from the day before, a skinny man in his early thirties who smelled of old tobacco. He’d overheard them saying during their tour of the city walls that they were interested in buying an old Koran. Now he showed them a well-preserved hand-written Koran with glossy illuminated letters at the beginning of each sura. He said a friend of his needed to sell it in order to have enough money to pass his driver’s test (the baksheesh apparently ran very high), but Julien said to Austin, “We can’t take on the world’s problems,” and added to the guide, “I don’t like this copy, I don’t think it’s beautiful.”

  Back at the hotel they sat beside the pool and looked at the starlings rushing out of the old wall like sparks up a chimney. Thinking of their life back in Paris, Julien began to criticize Austin’s friend Rod, whom he had never even met. “You like him just because you two can gossip all night long like housewives. But he sounds to me like a ne’er-do-well and a drug addict.”

  Indignant, Austin said, “At least his conversation is lively and interesting.”

  Julien was quiet so long that Austin, against his will, looked over to verify his expression, which was stony. But when at last he spoke, his voice sounded deeper and more vulnerable: “It’s too bad I didn’t die six months ago when I was still interesting. Now you’ll remember me only as I was at the end—boring and drugged on morphine.”

  Austin said, “You mean too much to me to judge you as either dull or interesting.” And it was true, true that Austin was so enthralled by Julien’s health and survival that he never thought he was dull, even though sometimes he became irritated when Julien started nodding off. Apparently he needed the morphine to mask the pain in his back and to calm the impulse to vomit, but the drug meant that he was alert now only for a few hours each day.

  On the way back to their room, Austin said, “I think you’re a bit better.”

  “Well, I didn’t vomit my meals today. It’s not exactly miraculous but I can’t complain.”

  A furniture dealer in Paris had told Austin to be sure to see the Berber Palace that was just off the road between Taroudant and Ouazarzate, before the turn-off up through the mountains back to Marrakesh. “It’s completely out-of-the-way,” the dealer had said, “and very beautiful. We ate lunch there.”

  Julien and Austin drove there with the guide. He had another Koran to show them, badly battered, perfectly square, slipped inside a leather satchel that folded shut like an envelope and could be worn on a chain around the neck. “You put a chain through this hoop,” the guide said. Then he laughed, showing his stained teeth. “Not you, of course, but one.” His laugh turned into a cough. Julien shifted away from him, afraid of being exposed to tuberculosis. Austin was certain that that fear was going through Julien’s mind.

  Despite his fears, Julien bought the Koran and was never seen without it afterwards. He fell asleep with it on his lap, usually still in its scuffed and water-stained leather case with the coarse stitching. Sometimes, when he was drowsy from morphine, he’d thumb through the pages with their long, cursive comet-tails and their bug-track vowel signs which looked like those radiating dots in comic strips that indicate delighted surprise or sudden enlightenment. It was the perfect book for a weary, dying man—pious, incomprehensible pages to strum, an ink cloud of unknowing.

  Julien was wearing a cotton caftan with tan and white vertical stripes over a T-shirt, under a gauzy white caftan and a white wool sweater he’d draped over his shoulders. He kept the sweater c
lose by in case he began to shiver. He’d abandoned his jeans since the seams cut into his fleshless hips and legs. Only in these robes did he feel comfortable. His black hair was thin and oily, pressed into a cap on his head; many white hairs were scattered through the black. Seen from behind his ears looked immense, especially if the sunlight was shining through them, perhaps because his neck had become so scrawny. His eyebrows had grown shaggy and his nose looked much bigger, as if old age, frustrated by his quick decline, had decided to rush ahead and hit him now.

  Although he walked very slowly, he was still game. He wanted to go places and see things. If he sat tranquilly in one place the morphine would make him fall asleep. He smiled sweetly wherever he went, though he spoke so softly people couldn’t hear him and Austin would have to repeat what he’d said. When he smiled his face broke into hundreds of lines that hadn’t been there six months earlier.

  The guide, who knew not to wear them out with his talk, kept silent in the back seat and spoke only to indicate the way to the Berber Palace. Austin appreciated his discretion; he obviously sensed that they were living through a difficult moment, but he didn’t ask questions or let his curiosity show through. The day was hot except when a breeze blew; then they were reminded that winter had just ended and that the mountain peaks on the horizon were still deep in snow. They slowed down as they rolled into a village of low houses and teeming streets. The pedestrians’ dull-witted stares were the look of grouchy nicotine withdrawal.

  They took the road to the right. A little farther on, the macadam gave out to be replaced by gravel. Soon they came to the massive structure of the Berber Palace with its alternating square and rounded arches, its tile roofs and its pale blank walls. Sometimes a small window, barred, was pierced into a wall, always at an improbable place, as if the rooms inside were of madly varying heights. As soon as they’d gone down two steps and along a walkway redolent of thyme, they were in an immense garden planted with palms crowding up from geometric plots of clipped bushes. The walkways were lined with white and faded blue tiles. A few tiles were missing. The inner courtyard was still large enough to seat a symphony orchestra.

  No one was around. Caged birds hanging in doorways were singing and flickering in the shadows, twitching shuttles of gold through the gloom. A small fountain drooled into a clear basin. Through the water green moss could be seen, waving from black boulders like hair on drowned heads. The thrown-open doors here and there were carved and painted wood decorated with abstract sunbursts. Like a bored shopper at the bazaar, the sun itself was feebly fingering the dusty lusters of a chandelier far inside a room, with no intent to buy. They went in one door and could smell stale smoke from last night’s banquet. An empty plastic water bottle had been thrown on the carpet. A tile dado lined the walls all the way round at shoulder height.

  Their guide, Ahmed, clapped loudly and called out something in Arabic. At last a white man in his fifties could be seen crossing the courtyard. He was wearing sunglasses and had a full head of graying hair cut short and spiky that grew low on his forehead. He had a goatee that emphasized the squareness of his jaw. His loose orange sweater was decorated with wide black bands on the sleeves, like an exaggerated sign of mourning. He seemed self-conscious walking toward them in sunlight as they watched from the shadows. At least his stride looked unnatural and he hung his head until he’d come within calling distance. He tried to speak French but with a German accent. Within a moment they’d all found their way into English.

  He explained that he was German and a friend of the owner, who was Muslim and sleeping through the difficult Ramadan day.

  “Do you think we can eat something?” Austin asked.

  “An omelette. I’m sure they could make you a cheese omelette and a green salad. Would you like to eat outside? In the sun?”

  Austin turned to Julien; would he be too cold? The German suddenly shrugged and said, “I don’t work here. I’m a guest.” He smiled. “I don’t know why I’m interfering.” He looked at Julien. “You won’t be cold. It’s protected from the wind.” Julien asked where the toilet was and shuffled off toward it with Ahmed. The German said in a low voice, “I can see how ill your friend is—is he your son?”

  “Friend.”

  The German, who said he was called Hermann, touched Austin’s arm. They were seated at a rusting white metal table on the pale blue and white tile floor. Unseen birds were chirping from within the stand of trees toward the entrance to the grounds.

  “What’s that delicious smell?”

  “Orange blossom,” the German said, then added, confidingly, “I know what he has. My friend just died of it. Your friend is not long for this world.”

  “Oh?” Austin asked nervously. He felt a flutter of panic play like fire over his solar plexus. The early spring was so calm with all the daytime torpor of a small Moroccan village, and even though it was noon the sun seemed veiled and remote. Was Julien about to die? “He’s come so close to dying before, but he always survives. He has miraculous powers of recuperation.”

  “No,” the man said, shaking his head, “he’s dying.”

  This is “German coarseness,” Austin said to himself, quick to label the offending stubbornness, although he knew few Germans and usually detested the almost inevitable generalizations everyone made about national character.

  Hermann added, “I’m a doctor. I watched my friend—” He interrupted himself and touched Austin’s sleeve again, “It’s all right, we needn’t say the name of the disease, but I know what he—do you say, what he suffers of?”

  “From. You say from.” Austin put on a bright social smile. “And what brings you to Morocco?”

  “I will tell you all,” the man said solemnly. “I am bisexual. I have a good wife I live with since thirty years. But my real love was my friend. I am a doctor, a Narkosearzt.”

  “Anesthesiologist?”

  “Yes, but a doctor of that. But my friend was a famous surgeon. You see?” He pointed to a neat scar fifteen centimeters long buried in his clipped hair. “I had a brain tumor, most unusual. That’s why I have trouble speaking. I know English very good before, but now I forget and only slowly, slowly the words come.”

  For a moment Austin was confused. He thought the “friend,” the surgeon, had been a brain surgeon and had removed the tumor, but a moment later Austin had reshuffled the kaleidoscope and saw the same elements in a new configuration. He smiled and said, “Your English is perfect. Don’t worry. Did you know your friend for many years?”

  “Yes, yes, all my life. He was twenty years older than me, but age means nothing to the souls—”

  “Kindred spirits.”

  “Yes. That.”

  “And did your wife know him?”

  “Oh, yes, we were all very close. You know, in Europe we do not go into details, no, but she knew. Ah! Here comes your friend.”

  Julien was slowly coming down the long allée of trees and boxwood hedges. He stopped to gather a mass of orange blossom in his arms and to breathe in the fragrance. He was smiling as he walked with tiny, stiff steps toward them, accompanied by the deferential guide, who was frowning. Julien’s outer robe was faintly damascened, which made it shine when it caught the light.

  Over lunch Hermann talked on and on. It seemed that his older lover, the “friend,” had fallen for a Berber from this very village. “My friend bought this palace and installed Ali in it. His plan was to turn it into a hotel that Ali could run. But Ali, who is thirty now—ah! how time, like a bird …” He mimed flapping wings.

  “Flies?”

  “Yes, how time flies.” He said that Ali had never learned how to run a hotel. He’d become obsessed with sports-car racing and had never concentrated on ordering food, supervising the staff, holding down expenses.

  “When my friend was dying he asked me to look after Ali. Now I’m here, although I have had much mental loss with the tumor. Ali’s family is challenging his inheritance
of this palace, as is the commune, as are the pasha’s original descendants.”

  This man with the unsmiling mouth, the big, unironic eyes and the look of confusion traceable to his scarred skull, seemed disturbingly intimate and real. For so long now Austin and Julien had been rocked in the comforting arms of French gaiety and discretion, the illusions made possible by silence or elision. Now here was a flat-footed (if unsteady) German with a metal plate in his head and a verbal problem in several languages who was, with all the misguided kindliness in the world, making them look at the inevitable, from which they’d so long averted their eyes.

  “It’s strange for me,” Hermann said. “I’m here to recuperate but all I can do is worry and worry about Ali.” With a familiar Teutonic gesture, he performed an immense shrug of his shoulders and let his lifted hands collapse rhetorically onto the slats of the chair he was sitting on. With the same gesture he propelled himself into a standing position and said, much more loudly, “Gut! We go?”