'Do you remember once when you were very angry?' he said. 'You were sulking—cursing Tanja, and all the Tanjouai. You had been delivering books, and had been arrested by a suspicious policeman. I had to go along and attest that you were my delivery boy, and had not stolen the books. Afterwards we decided to dress you more respectably. Do you member how, that afternoon, we walked through Dradeb? In a yard someone was trying to grow a tiny crop of ragged corn. And you sneered at the Tanjoua some more, spat on the crop, and declared it was as stupid and useless as all the people in the city. You remember? Then you did and said a strange thing. You asked me for a five dirham note. When I gave it to you, you looked at the corn pictured on it for a moment. Suddenly you were deeply disturbed and angry. Perhaps you didn't really know why. I'm not sure that I did. "Stupid Tanjoua!" you swore. "Their corn is dying in the earth! In the bled it only dies in the snow! Here, on the money, it's no better: it's blind." You used the French word—aveugle. It was a strange choice.' Frederick paused once more, puzzled now, no less than he had been then, by Achmed's fortuitous excursion into poetry. 'Of course, your grand-father lost his sight,' he went on. 'Perhaps that's how you knew the word. Before he died he had to ask for alms. But now tell me this: when he asked a stranger for alms did he cling to him, cry out, plead like a woman, or demand? Or did he ask only once, knowing that if the stranger followed Mohammed, he would give what he could freely?'
The picture of Achmed's whining request caused Frederick to ask this. Now he pushed away the pencil, the spilled matches. Achmed had listened. Once or twice he had spoken. Mostly he had understood. He crossed to the window and smoked a cigarette there. The first ash fell on the floor. The second he dropped into a plastic soap-box. When there was quite a collection of ash in the box, he blew on it, so that a soft grey cloud rose and covered his face. He turned, blinking, to Frederick.
'Medina!' he said decisively, gesturing with his head towards the stairs. 'Muftah?' he added after a moment.
Frederick took the key out of his pocket, turning it in his hands. But you're going now,' he said slowly. 'Alone. This is my house.'
The boy took the key from his hand and made as if to break it in two. This had been the symbol of his adoption.
'Not any more,' Frederick said.
Achmed turned away without speaking. A moment later Frederick heard the elaborate lock of the front door being drawn. He continued to stand in the middle of the floor. He stood for perhaps three minutes, quite still, because something was nagging at his memory. Suddenly he had it He had not heard the lock snap behind Achmed. No Moor leaves a door unlocked carelessly. Silently Frederick turned out the light. He crossed to the window that overlooked the street; knowing what he would see there. Sure enough, where the shop-front splashed light into the roadway, Achmed was sitting in the gutter.
Outside the wind was cold. Achmed snatched at a passing newspaper, caught it, folded it, and sat down upon it. The sounds floating up from the Medina grew wilder, but he no longer wanted to go there. He looked for no explanation of this. Instead he thought about Frederick. If Frederick made him go away it wouldn't matter perhaps because tomorrow was another day. But he was with Frederick now. Was it not better to stay? He thought that it was. He continued to sit in the gutter.
Frederick had been standing a long time by the window in darkness. He wanted to go down to the boy. Achmed was less problematical than he might have been. He thought of the times when they'd been closest together. There was the picnic—he thought of it as remedial therapy after the run-away—when they'd set out with sandwiches walking towards Ghana. He saw the boy on the great shore, whose sand was coarse and golden. Probably the beach where Hemingway's Old Man's lions played was like this, he remembered thinking at the time. ' "I wish the boy was here",' Frederick muttered ironically. Yes, that day grey rain had gathered over the hills and swept towards them like locusts. Then Achmed, a wise-eyed whore at the age of twelve, wouldn't dry out in a deserted coastguard hut miles from human eyes, because, as he explained, that sort of thing wasn't done in Morocco.
Still Achmed sat in the road, and still Frederick stood by the window. Achmed took out his harmonica, played half a tune, and then held it up to discover if the wind could make music. The wind whispered around the bright instrument. No musical sound came from it. Achmed blew on it once, sharply, and put it back in his pocket. Then suddenly he was on his feet and coming round to the door.
Unexpectedly, Frederick was overcome with confusion. He fumbled through the darkness and fell into his chair. He was reaching for a book, and some semblance of preoccupation, when he realised that the light was off, and he had no time to turn it on. Then the light was blinding his eye, and Achmed grinned from the doorway.
'Sleep,' he said.
But Frederick shook his head. 'Medina—both of us! Come on! Let's go!' He felt released, elated by the boy's return. The prospect of walking down into the busy town seemed suddenly exciting.
Achmed wondered whether Frederick had had a lot of vino while he had been outside. 'D'accord!' he said laughing. 'Frederick bueno!' He collected a folding fork and spoon as they made their way out through the shop.
In the back streets the beggars sat where they always sat in the emptying time between sickness and death. They passed one with the sharp mackerel steel peeled back from an old coffee tin. Achmed dropped two francs into it. The beggars reminded Frederick of visions he had had, many years ago now, when he had first come to Africa. Often, upon closing his eyes, he had used to see thousands of faces. They were all strangers, and yet the detail was such that he might have known everything about each one of them. A painter he had known in those days said he would meet them. He never had.
Achmed watched Frederick walking beside him. There were no thoughts in his head. They were going to the Medina together, which was better than his going alone, but he felt no great excitement. Whenever he could he liked to walk a little ahead of Frederick. He quickened his pace now. Frederick watched the boy. His step lacked the enormous pride of the interior. It was flat-footed; a bit urban.
'Muftah,' Frederick said. 'You carry it.'
Achmed took the key and put it in his pocket They met an unveiled girl going home, and a stray dog, which was a rare sight in the city. Then they passed a policeman. Achmed thought suddenly that he would like to be one. He said so to Frederick. Frederick looked at him and smiled. It was the first ambition the boy had over expressed.
'Not a taxi man?'
'Polizia!' Achmed said. He spun round, firing an imaginary gun in the darkness.
'Okay!' Frederick said gently. 'Only don't keep that automatic on your belt wrapped in polythene. Some do. It's sinister.'
'D'accord,' the boy said. He hadn't understood; and had forgotten about the policeman.
The music grew louder. Frederick thought he could hear cheering in the blasts of wind. Suddenly a rocket arched into the sky and exploded in red fire.
'Bueno!' the boy exclaimed, and grinned. He was excited now.
'Let's eat at Mustafa's,' Frederick suggested. 'Don't leave ray sight. The Rifi are quite capable of roasting up a little Fassi tonight.'
'Si,' Achmed replied.
There was chaos in the large market place. Crowds tottered back and forth like teams of dizzy automatons. There was drunkenness—rarely seen among the Moors in public. Men holding bottles stood in the doorways of bars in the lightened temper that may spill into magnanimity or violence. So, at any rate, it seemed to Frederick
'Bar no bueno! Vino no bueno!' the boy said severely, so that Frederick had to smile. Imperiously Achmed led him to the restaurant.
Mustafa's restaurant was an excavation in the old wall. It held a table and four chairs; and a tattered muslin curtain divided it from the street, where the food was cooked over a charcoal brazier. Two old men were already seated. Frederick watched the common water glass pasted from a gnarled hand into the boy's young ones. Achmed rinsed it at the tiny basin.
'Con patata, I think Niño,' F
rederick said, referring, to a variant of a stew the restaurant offered.
Mustafa put the plates down. 'Tonight you communiste,' he said, winking at Frederick.
'Oh?'
'Much trouble,' Mustafa showed his gold teeth and put his hands on his hips. 'The American tourist begin it. Taking photo, and les Marocains not like. Very angry, señor. The American taking pistol out his pocket tu comprends? and he walking backwards into taxi.'
'So?'
Unexpectedly Mustafa slapped his filthy apron and roared with laughter. 'So marocains throw the stones at foreigners and communistes tonight! Faites attention, eh?'
Achmed was asking Mustafa's son what was on at The Roxy. It was Hercule. ‘Cine?' he suggested now to Frederick. He cleaned his plate expertly with bread; then washed his hands at the basin.
Frederick got up, nodding to the pair of silent Moors. 'mañana.'
Achmed seemed satisfied. He paid Mustafa two hundred and twenty francs for the meal, with a minimum of discussion as to its worth,
As they crossed the square towards the Pharmacie Centrale perhaps fifty people surged out of the narrow street leading to the small market place. They came on in a lurching, disorderly knot. There was someone at its centre, and the crowd seemed to be seeking to honour him, to touch him, or perhaps restrain him. Frederick couldn't be sure whether it was like Christ's entry into Jerusalem; or whether it was more like a stag fighting off hounds. He stood curiously absorbed by the ragged grace of mob movement. The crowd was suddenly all about them; they were become part of it. Then Frederick saw the crazed man at its centre, and the knife, only seconds before the knife entered his body.
There was little pain, and the anger which rose in him became mixed with astonishment at the vulnerability of life. He wondered at having lived so long, when always there must have been no more than this layer of flesh between carelessness and dying. His blood flowed out of the wound like the twisted ribbon from a half-open tap. He let it play on his hand in amazement while his fainting mind sought some secret that might staunch it. He searched for this as after a memory that had eluded him only temporarily. But he was dulled, spent. A sudden terror caused him to try to rise fully upright; only now there was no muscle in his body. To the watching by he seemed to take three aimless paces like a man who is ill with wine before falling on his face.
Achmed still tugged of the arm of the point-policeman, but there were other officers nearer now, the armoured car with the ballot was due, and he kept the traffic flowing.
* * * * *
Raphael Bonnington was going crazy. He knew it the moment Maria-Angeles slung the chamber-pot clean through the window. People just had not done that in Philadelphia. Could it have been instinctive knowledge of how to embarrass a man that had made her do it? Raphael thought so. He really did think so. Now he lay on the bed hearing the chamber-pot fall again in his mind; wondering for just how long the people in the little market place down there would stand about scratching their heads; and wondering whether a passing policeman might be feeling officious enough to come right on up the stairs. Maria-Angeles would say he had raped her. That would be it. Then . . . oh boy! Anything . . . but anything. There might well not be any policemen. It was voting day. He remembered now. What the Moroccans were voting for was: 'Should the king continue to have absolute power (answer, "Yes"). Or should the administration, in time of course, consider introducing something just a little bit different (answer, "No").' This, anyway, was what Harley Fowler had said it was about. But Harley was a cynic. Maybe he was lying when he said that.
Now Raphael looked at Maria-Angeles' heaving, naked shoulders, where the stood with her back to him. 'What you want here is a real democracy,' he said. It sounded good. He hadn't stipulated an American one even.
"When Raphael spoke Maria-Angeles shuddered with distaste. In the light of the Koutoubia the American had looked all right. She should have gone with the bald one. He had left a white-topped cap in the cloakroom. He could have had a yacht in the harbour. She fumed round swearing with all the pent pride and bestiality of the Madrid slum where she had had the fortune to have been born beautiful.
Just then the doorbell of the apartment rang. Raphael wiped a bad of spittle from his hair. Americans do not hit women, he told himself. Still, his knees were off the bed now, and his chest was huge with indignation. Harvard line-men had to be huge. The bell came again.
'I'll get it,' Raphael said. 'If he shoots on sight make The New York Times. You know. "One of our Beats bought it".'
Maria-Angeles didn't know. Her English was limited to hours, places, and one or two phrases which help the last seconds of sex, particularly for old men. She stood angrily thinking about the potential customer with the yacht. Raphael Bonnington opened the door to Achmed. 'Jesus,' he said. His chest was trembling with relief where it showed through a loosely tied dressing-gown.
'May I have cigarette?' Achmed asked, walking straight into the room.
'Sure, sure—there's a pack over there,' Raphael said, pointing. He sat down in a chair. He'd give that Koutoubia girl three thousand. He'd chuck her out if she wouldn't take it. 'May I have match?' Achmed asked.
Now it wasn't true of Raphael that Harvard had taken him on because of his football and upper-class connections. He had a good brain. He did. Now he stared at Achmed. 'What did you say just then?'
'May I have match?'
' "May I . . ." don't you mean "give me"? Just who taught you to say "May I"?'
Achmed didn't understand the question. 'Give me match, Raphael please thank you,' he said.
Raphael did. Then he went through to the bedroom. 'Baby, please go,' he said. 'If you make me mad I'll have to take you again, and that'll double up your dollar aid, won't it?'
Maria-Angeles had dressed while Raphael was in the living room. She didn't say a word. Now she walked to the door in her fine silk coat Raphael began putting thousand notes in her hand. It got to three and she still held her hand out.
'Look,' Raphael said, perplexed. 'Only five minutes ago you spat on my head. You just can't do that sort of thing and then expect infatuation rates.'
Maria-Angeles continued to stand with her hand out A cold wind came through the broken window of the bedroom. It reached the two of them where they stood in the hall; and the girl's fine eyes moved significantly towards it.
'That's blackmail, that really is!' Raphael cried, catching on.
Suddenly Maria-Angeles' attitude changed completely. She kissed the American, slowly, using all she had. When she broke the clinch it was as tenderly as wind divides cloud. Not even her eyes showed that she knew Raphael Bonnington was broken.
'Well,' the footballer said, bemused. 'I guess maybe it's stupid not to part friends. It's a lonely world. Maybe it is for you . . . I dunno.' After that Raphael didn't know what he paid. It was better that way he reckoned. It really was better. In the living room Achmed was smoking with glazed eye. Raphael wondered what the hell he was doing here. He had better try to say something.
'Well, if it's not the Berber Baby!' he exclaimed. 'Classed-up too! I haven't seen you for maybe six months. Who gave you those clothes? Look, you don't want to sleep here, do you? I don't have many parties now. No, wait a minute, Would you like to come Tuesday? You know—maybe play the flute a bit? There's some fellows coming in then. I guess it'd be nice to have you. Party,' Raphael repeated, because the kid didn't seem to follow. 'You know—party. Tuesday.'
Achmed smiled because party was a word he recognised. 'Hey! Raphael! Come here!' he beckoned with his head. Raphael went over to where the boy sat. 'You can still give orders okay!' he said without thinking. He wanted black coffee. He wanted it alone.
'Esta noche . . . in Medina. Frederick finish,' Achmed said.
He slashed at his throat with a finger.
'Sure,' Raphael said. 'Frederick, eh? Why don't you go to a movie now? Get some of those—you know—what is it? Peanuts, isn't it you eat at the movies?'
Raphael gave the boy two hundred fr
ancs and walked to the door with him. Achmed was dazed. He shook Raphael, hand, then covered his heart.
'You still do that!' Raphael was pleased.
'Hey, Raphael, may haf' five hundred, please thank you,' Achmed said, intuitively following the advantage. 'Sure, sure,' Raphael said enthusiastically.
After that the boy left.
* * * * *
Achmed bought five loose Casa Sports cigarettes. He had them wrapped in paper for him. He walked back to the European town; let himself in to the shop, and stood there a moment in the darkness. He went over to the cash register and pressed one of the keys. The white teeth flew up like those of the startled rabbits his father killed in the hills. At the same time the bell rang loudly through the empty house and the money drawer sprang open. Achmed counted the money in the half light before returning it and closing the drawer. He crawled into the brightly lit display window. There was no one in the streets, because it was late now, and he stayed there some time looking at the picture books. He found the lions. Without thinking why he did it, he tore out the best photograph of the lioness with her five cubs. He put this under his pullover and went upstairs.
In the small flat over the shop Achmed began to collect things. First he took his towel. It was a big one. Gradually he put together a chromium mouth-organ, a wooden pipe, his spare shoe, a reel of cotton and a needle, some buttons, his Brylcreem and face-flannel, a wooden spinning-top with a length of whip-cord, two orange plastic aeroplanes from Tide packets, an English sheath-knife, and a folding clasp-knife, whose many implements included another spoon and fork. He fetched a suit with creases still in the trousers, a plain red tie, and another with space rockets, a shirt that was still drying over the bath, his best handkerchief with monogram, about a cupful of sugar in a polythene bag, a small piece of bread, and a tin of sardines. He emptied his money box once more, and finally unlocked the strong box and took out a shapeless lump of gold on a fine gold chain. This had been a crucifix presented to Achmed by Frederick's sister who was a missionary in Pretoria. When Achmed wouldn't accept it, he and Frederick had spent an evening melting the lithe figure on its tyrannically symmetrical cross. But having done this they lacked both the tools and the knowledge to create anything else. It was simply a lump of gold on a chain. Its worth was around thirty pounds South African sterling. Frederick's sister had said as much when she sent it; her reason for stating the value of the gold being to impress upon the boy that its spiritual value was incalculably more.
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