Alexandra Singer

by Tea at the Grand Tazi

  He was attempting to get some point across to the very large man who was sitting opposite him, listening intently. On first sight, together the men formed a compelling contrast. The first, elegantly tall and slender, his face looking as if it had been deliberately chiseled, and the second, reclining heavily and almost overflowing from his low seat. There she stood, poised on the verge of the personal fiefdom that the Historian had carved out for himself in his years of self imposed exile. He was smoking a pipe, and the only disparity between the Historian in the flesh and the publicity photograph on the jacket of his first book was that he now appeared a little more aged. The book had been last year’s success in historical academia; a relentless history of the Almoravids in which he had left no stone unturned. After a long banishment, there had been a triumphant return. But still he had not returned to the universities of the West, and there was a pervading silence as to the reason. At the pinnacle of the enthusiasm generated by his work, he even made it onto the cover of a respected Parisian broadsheet. After an extended period where he had been excluded by the small academic community, he had then been afforded a long denied recognition and respect. All this, thought Maia, must have conspired to make him the envy of his intellectual peers.

  She lingered a few moments longer, still reluctant to approach him. The job offer was satisfactory; a recommendation was put forward to the Historian by a former, rather lecherous university Professor she had encountered browsing in a London bookshop. Maia had chattered on inanely about her art and financial struggles, until suddenly he tired of her. But before he left, he told her of an old Romanian friend’s opening for an assistant.

  ‘Well, not a friend, exactly,’ he had said, shifting from one foot to another. ‘He was a colleague. It isn’t permanent, you see. You’ll be back soon enough.’ He grinned, widely.

  ‘How long will I be working for him?’

  ‘About four months? You’ll have to agree all that with him. Free place to stay though. Lots of room for painting. Fabulous people. You can do whatever you like. Plus – you’d be doing me a huge favour, get me out of a bit of a situation. He’s a Romanian, but doesn’t have many friends left in Europe, I said I’d find someone for him.’

  His tone was pleading. Maia received the distinct impression that he was begging her to release him from this burden. Her curiosity was piqued; from all accounts this Historian was academically renowned, but now he was alone in a foreign country, imposing on his old colleagues to send him an assistant. It was all fabulously odd, and Maia decided to take the job offer at once.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said softly. ‘You’ve sold me.’ The offer had come just at the right time.

  ‘Wonderful! Very hot. You’ll come back all tanned,’ he leered, and placed his plump hand firmly upon her shoulder.

  She agreed to go for a coffee with him, just to take the Historian’s details, but fortunately she had been saved by the Professor’s sudden recollection of an appointment at the university, and she was left to contemplate her new obligation. She had nothing to leave behind, and so suffered no doubts.

  Now in the hotel bar, the belly of the Historian’s companion was bulging over the arm of his chair. They were so closely engrossed in conversation only in kissing could their heads be any closer. The man’s voice boomed, and his small hands flailed in the air as he made rapid, excitable gestures. He seemed to fill the space all around the Historian’s table with his very presence, and Maia was unsure if she ought to disturb them. The Historian turned round, and seeing her standing there, beckoned her over.

  “Hello, Maia,” said the Historian’s companion, as he gestured to the empty chair next to him. “We saw you loitering there!”

  “Loitering?” asked Maia.

  “Yes, loitering. Like a scared fawn! We suspected you were the new assistant,” he said, moving his arms around expansively.

  “You are just on time.”

  “For what?” asked Maia.

  “For more mint tea, of course!”

  As if on cue, a waiter brought a pot of mint tea, which he poured into three small, clear glasses.

  “Salut!” he almost shouted at her, holding up his glass.

  “This is mint tea?” asked Maia.

  “Mint tea, of course! I drink it with everything. This even has a tiny drop of vodka in it. You don’t mind, do you? Of course you don’t! I drink it with everything. Everything!” He took a huge gulp, and his throat moved as he swallowed. “Washes it all down!” He leaned conspiratorially towards her so that she assumed he was about to tell her something important. He lowered his voice. “The Grand Tazi serves the best mint tea. The best. The very best! No-one else makes tea like it.”

  “I see,” said Maia, not really seeing at all. Rather disconcerted by the man, she asked, “To what are we toasting?” She held up her glass, and the Historian silently held up his own glass.

  “To you, and of course to Mihai for taking on a new assistant. The last one... ” He made a snorting sound. The Historian looked on at him with a bemused silence. “Well, the last one… oh, don’t be perturbed,” he said, noticing Maia’s startled expression. “It was insignificant... I do hear she was intolerable to work with. Not very compliant.”

  “Did you meet her?” Maia wondered what he meant. Compliant was a strange word to choose.

  “Of course! Well, only briefly.” He slapped the Historian’s thigh with undisguised affection. Maia looked at the man. He seemed pleasant enough, but upon closer inspection, she thought that his eyes revealed something harsh.

  Maia drank, and shuddered at the drink’s strength. “I’m glad you told me about the vodka.”

  “Ha ha! I thought you would appreciate it!” he said, laughing heartily. Maia stared, at him, confused.

  “This girl you have here, she has good sense of humour, no? Dry. I like it, I like it.”

  “Hello Maia, please meet Mahmoud,” said the Historian, finally opening his mouth to speak. The languidness of his manner suggested that by speaking he was bestowing an honour upon them. “He owns the Grand Tazi.”

  He gestured extravagantly with his hands as if to indicate a vast expanse, but his movements were slow. Maia had no idea how old the Historian was, but the age spots littered his white hands, with fingers abnormally long and graceful. As Maia looked around, and reading the sceptical expression upon her face, the Historian softly admonished her, “There is much you have not seen. Moroccans are very discrete,” he said quietly, but his face was wreathed in smiles. He was cordial enough, thought Maia, but a reflective man. His friend was openly welcoming; she assumed that this reticence was the Historian’s nature.

  “Welcome, my friend, many welcomes,” bawled Mahmoud, vigorously shaking her small hand. Maia felt that her first impression of him had been correct. The man was jovial enough on the surface, but something about the way in which the flesh folded over his small black eyes repelled her.

  The Historian gazed at her reflectively. His eyes were a pale green, and they made her afraid to look into them for too long. His pupils were small, like two block dots keeping themselves afloat in the centre of a cold sea.

  “Call me Mihai,” said the Historian, and stretched out his hand, his mouth forming a smile that did not match his eyes. “I really am so pleased to finally meet you.” Maia returned his smile, but she felt that calling him by his first name would be too familiar. He was detached, well known for his tendency to reclusiveness, and she sensed that he liked to keep others at a distance. She felt the detachment between them undefined, yet there all the same. In contrast to the bulbous Mahmoud, the Historian was tall and aged, still remarkably handsome, with clear white skin and grey eyebrows that formed a unifying frown across his forehead.

  “I must leave you now. I have that appointment.” Mahmoud winked extravagantly at Maia, making her wince.

  “We have known one another for years. He has a big personality,” the Historian remarked. It was more of a statement than a judgment. Maia nodded in agreement,
wondering what sort of friendship this strange pair might share.

  For a few moments they sat together in silence. When he finally spoke, the Historian’s voice was soft and low, and peculiarly sad, as if radiating despair.

  “It’s been a very long time since I saw him,” said the Historian.

  “You mean – ”

  “Yes,” he said abruptly. He was talking about the academic who had recommended the Historian. He tilted his head contemptuously. “Feels guilty, does he?”

  Maia wondered what the academic had to feel guilty about. “He was very helpful.”

  “Yes,” said the Historian. “I am surprised he was so helpful. They don’t think so highly of me in London.”

  “Oh no, I believe you are very respected.”

  “Oh yes, respected academically, perhaps, but not liked. They’ll never like me again. Not enough to have me back.”

  “I see,” Maia said, not knowing what she could say. “I didn’t know.”

  “No, of course you didn’t know. A young girl like you. Why would you know? Why would you know anything at all?” and he began to mumble something under his breath. As she watched his mouth form the words, she understood that he was swearing in French with a coarseness that surprised her, making obscene, bizarre accusations against his former colleagues. Maia began to understand why the Historian had been so ostracised, why he had never returned to London. He had a temperament that made others feel uncomfortable.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I am not cracked in the head. Not yet, anyway. Memories of the past, they make me angry. Do you know what it is like to be pushed out of your position?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. So tell me, how is that lecherous little Napoleon? What I could tell you about him. Flourishing, I suppose?”

  “I don’t know,” said Maia, which was the truth.

  “So, you have had time to explore?” he asked.

  “Not so much. I didn’t set my alarm to wake today. After all the travelling I’ve done in the past few weeks.”

  “Of course, I know just how it is,” said the Historian, in a manner that suggested he had little sympathy with her.

  Maia had felt justified in having slept away most of the day. All the travel and the emotional exhaustion had caught up with her. The endurance of the fact that four years had gone up in smoke and humiliation. Maia decided that if she wanted to sleep all day, she would.

  “I only eventually woke because of the call to prayer.”

  “Have you eaten nothing?”

  “Not much.”

  He called over the waiter and said something unintelligible in a throaty, gurgling accent.

  Maia was taken aback. “You speak Arabic?” He had lived here long enough, but she had not expected such fluency.

  “I’ve been studying for years.”

  Maia’s late breakfast arrived; rolls of bread with butter and jam, sweet black coffee and squeezed orange juice with bottled water. Maia devoured it as the sun continued to set, turning the city’s sandstone a deeper shade of pink.

  At the next table along, a large woman was laughing, her head thrown far back. She must have been in her early fifties at least, and her voice made a low, rasping sound. Her head was uncovered, her skin pitted and her hands rough, and she was talking to her much younger male companion with all the innocent flirtatiousness of a school girl. But when she laughed, she laughed loudly, with the voice of a savage. Maia was enthralled by the woman’s plumpness, her great femininity.

  The Historian watched Maia so distracted, looking at the woman. “You mustn’t be so surprised, Maia. This is one of the very last decadent outposts of Europe. Africa begins here!”

  “I’m afraid you haven’t been to Europe recently then.”

  “Ah, a quiet humour. My favourite type. But Mahmoud maintains that it is always the quiet ones one must watch.” He looked at her anew, and she shivered.

  “Watch? What do you mean?”

  The Historian ignored her question and already he was gathering his thoughts. “A few years ago, there were only a handful of foreigners living within the city walls. But now we are everywhere! This is a historic walled city, a veneer of Western influence contrasting ever more starkly with its Islamic core.”

  “You sound just like a guidebook.”

  “Ah ha! Already you have managed to catch me out. Clever girl. I did write a guidebook to the country. That was several decades ago.” He sounded nostalgic. “It is true, what I am saying. When I first arrived here, there was only a small colony of expatriates, not so many of us. It was a place to hide, not the place to see and be seen, as it has become now. It has changed.”

  “Not for the better, I take it?”

  “No, certainly not,” said the Historian glumly. “Rather significantly, I would say, for the worst.” He looked more closely at the woman across the room. “That woman you are watching. She is very interesting to you, isn’t she? She seems completely unaware of how she appears to others. But the persona she portrays is forced. She is not at all natural. You will soon learn about Moroccan ways.”

  Together they continued watching her.

  “Tell me, how are you getting on with your painting? Have you managed to find that inspiration you were looking for?” asked the Historian.

  “To be honest, I haven’t done any painting since I arrived here,” she confessed. “I have been moving around a lot. Tangiers, Essaouira. There were... complications.” Maia stopped and listened to herself speak for a moment, and she despised the tone of self-justification in her own voice.

  But the Historian did not look surprised at all.

  “You will find much more to interest you here. There will be distractions, of course. This is a very distracting city. But you will have all the time and space you need to observe and paint, and you will of course carry out any tasks I require, such as research.”

  “What tasks do you require exactly?”

  “In the morning, you will organise the library, perform research and carry out all my correspondence, of which there is a great deal, and which I find it extraordinarily time consuming. A lot of silly people to deal with. It is a little tedious, but it has to be done. They, after all, control the purse strings. I really do not know why so many people are interested in me and my life. Surely they should care only about my work! But always, you see, they want to know about me. It is unbearable, intrusive. These people, I detest them! The more I hide from them, the more they run after me. I have had photographers trying to capture me, even an intruder once, in the riad.”

  “An intruder?”

  “Yes, exactly. Do not worry. There will be no more. Now.”

  “Is photography not allowed here, Professor?”

  “Call me Mihai. No, no photography at the Grand Tazi. That is exactly what I said. You must listen to me carefully. I am an old man. I do not care to repeat everything I say.”

  “You mean to tell me that absolutely no photography at all is ever permitted within the city walls?”

  “And on the walls where the storks line their nests... ” He began to sing. His voice was surprisingly sweet. Suddenly he grabbed her hand so tightly that it was almost painful. She tried to pull it away. “You must never harm a stork, Maia.” He looked at her intensely and she tried to break his gaze.

  “Why would I ever wish to harm a stork, or any animal for that matter?”

  “People here have ways of making you do things. To be malicious. For magic.”

  “Surely you don’t believe in such things, a man like you?” She looked at him, but couldn’t tell if he was being serious. His eyes penetrated her. She had the strange sense that he was putting on a sort of private show for her, a character act. She decided to play along. She too would take a role, if life really was the stuff of reinvention.

  “There are many things here that cannot be explained,” he continued, “but I will tell you, that some people here believe that storks are transformed humans, and you will receive a
three month prison sentence merely for disturbing one.” His eyes flicked over her, “I can assure you that a girl like you would not last long in there. In any case, such a scandal would reflect badly on me.”

  As Maia inspected him more closely, she now looked at him with a new admiration and could only wonder at his past. She began to suspect that the Historian enjoyed playing upon his advanced age; how it suited him to play the demented old man. From nowhere the image came to her of the Shakespearean fool, but the Historian was no servant. He was sharp, that much was certain. As she was talking to him, she sensed the Historian’s insincerity, that for some unknown reason he was attempting to dupe her into believing he was confused. But she was able to see through him, and his mind was still just as sharp as it always had been. She watched him appraising her critically with his small reptile eyes, the enlarged pupils firmly fixed on her. She did not believe him about being forbidden to photograph. What he really meant was that he did not wish her to record any images of him.

  “What is that song you were just singing?”

  “Oh yes, that is just a song we used to play on the piano. Several years ago. At the bar!”

  “Which bar?”

  “You know! Mahmoud’s bar. The downstairs bar at the Grand Tazi. It used to be much more exciting than it is now. I am afraid that Mahmoud has let standards fall. He seems to let just anyone in these days. Once upon a time oh yes, once... ”

  Maia looked at him, long and hard, and she wondered what sort of act the Historian was trying to put on for her, that of a cantankerous old man whose mind might occasionally wander. She did not know of any bar here. But she knew that the Historian was in complete possession of all his faculties. If he imagined that she could be taken in by his act, he was wrong.

  “So I cannot take photographs at all? But it is essential to my work.”

  “Your work here, I can assure you, is to work for me.”

  “But not all the time, I am a painter; that was our agreement.” She had feared that this may happen.

  He looked at her disparagingly. “You are receiving a good deal here. Try not to forget it.”