They ordered dinner, and as they ate, the Historian and the Professor became particularly vocal on the role of women in art.
“I prefer the buxom woman.” de Farcas said, staring obviously at Maia’s chest.
With a certain yearning, the Historian sighed, “Michelangelo’s David, is incomparable.” And Maia was beginning to see where his preferences lay.
De Farcas leered at a passing waiter, and asked him for more wine.
“De suite, monsieur,” said the waiter, bowing obsequiously.
“There is something, Maia, that you ought to know about men here,” said the Professor, “they never mix love and sex. You may find that the two are mutually exclusive. And sex, you see, may be performed with anything from a goat to a dead salmon!” He laughed heartily and felt for Maia’s thigh underneath the table. She pulled away sharply, and looked at the Historian to see if he knew what was happening, but he gave no hint.
“You will betray those ideals of yours. It is inevitable.” The Historian spoke as if he was tasting, savouring the words as he spoke them.
As she sat there, watching the men contemplate her in their varying ways, Maia toyed with the possibility of contacting the Professor who had sent her here. In her head, she composed several letters, which she already knew that she would never send. In any case, what could she say? That he had misled her; that the Historian was not the man he had known, that he had forced her into an arrangement? Could she accuse him of enslavement, or even corruption? There was nothing to say; there was no proof of intent or even of involvement, direct or otherwise. It was all of her own accord, it was all suspicion, and she had allowed herself to be lured in.
An announcement was made. Mahmoud was in his element, “Make way for my dancing girls,” he shouted, “make way!” The belly dancers passed by their table, shaking their hips to the beat of the drums, strings of coins hanging loosely around their waists. Maia had anticipated youth and beauty, but instead she marvelled at the expansive girth of the women who passed by their table, bearing plates upon their heads as a trick for the tourists. When they brushed past Maia, she smelt not perfume, but decay.
Now they lay back on the velvet couches, drinking sweet mint tea and cocktails. Here, just outside the medina, alcohol was easily available, intoxication almost immediate. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, as dense as fog, as thick as her thoughts. Yet despite their age, the belly dancers pulsated with sensuality.
“This pandering to the male fantasy of the eastern woman is absolutely pathetic,” Maia said, derisively. Immediately, the men were on their guard.
“Do be more specific, if you don’t mind,” said the Professor.
“It seems to me that men want to control the female body. For you lot, a woman is either hypersexual or completely asexual. In your minds you have this strange, contradiction between the sexual belly dancer and the constrained, covered woman. She is demure in public, but a slut in the bedroom – all forms of disguise for the object of the male fantasy. Just look at these women. Their only reason for existence is to cater to your whims!” Her tirade had exhausted her, and she sat back in her chair.
The Professor sniggered. “And what do you think is wrong with that? Perhaps they enjoy it.”
“Nothing, I suppose.” Maia decided to exude graciousness. But she despised the male fantasy of the eastern woman. She saw that it was slavery that he desired, slavery without any responsibility. “If you see how shallow it is.”
“Depth! Ha! Depth has never been my concern,” said the Professor, and he sneered at her.
Tariq was lighting the lanterns, and flickering on the tables they illuminated the guests with the ghastly glow of green. The men questioned Maia on her opinions on the role of women in art, but she feared that the alcohol had made her less articulate, and that they were mocking her. Maia could not help but despise the men she met here. Deprived of opportunities for employment, men young and old, crammed themselves into crowded cafés that were off limits to their wives, mothers and sisters. Here they sat on the terraces watching people go by as if the city was their own theatre, downing syrupy mint tea by the gallon and sucking incessantly upon cigarettes. They had nothing to do but argue and engage in their own favourite parlour game: politics. A game in which they would forever be utterly ineffectual. Maia felt that when she walked in the city streets, these men made her want to erode her own beauty, to become a gargoyle, if only to spite them. Maia looked at the men sitting before her.
I am simply an image for them to look at. Yet I breathe, I rot, I emanate stench just like you, Maia thought. They only wished to perpetuate the image they had formed of her. They looked at her to assess her quality. Maia attempted to describe this to the Historian and de Farcas, but they both laughed at her.
“You should be flattered,” de Farcas admonished her. He genuinely believed that she should be grateful for their harassment of her.
Konstantin joined them and Maia sensed he was feeling particularly promiscuous. He was drunk and recalled in vivid detail the indulgences of a time when he lived in Cairo.
De Farcas leant over to whisper to Maia, “You know he prefers boys. Platonic, of course,” he said, and giggled horribly. It was a stage whisper, and Maia was embarrassed. She raised her eyebrow. He made the gesture, just below the table, to indicate their height. At that moment she glanced at Konstantin, and somehow he knew that he was the subject of their conversation. He lowered his head, but just before he did so, he caught the brief flicker of dislike flash across her face.
Maia was filled with dread, and an even newer horror about the workings of the city. She wondered who these people were, who walked in the dark, who longed to purge themselves of the former lives that cling, and what it was about this place that afforded them such refuge.
“Excuse me,” said Maia, hoping that they did not catch the look of disgust on her face. She walked inside the twisting bowels of the hotel and found an empty room in which she could prepare her ritual in piece. She always carried the usual paraphernalia with her; the belt, cotton wool and the stained silver spoon. The craving had by now come to dominate her life, but still she never failed to find the act itself shocking. She pumped her arm in frustration and the syringe broke her creamy skin. She watched the vein fill with her red, sticky blood breathing a sigh as relief took hold of her.
Afterwards she stood a while in the foyer hoping Armand would pass through, but he was nowhere to be seen so she went up the staircase, and lost herself in the hallways, roaming along through the foul smelling passages, passing the tiny, recessed rooms. In these grim corridors, there lingered a palpable odour of dried sweat, and she heard low voices coming from one of the rooms. Pushing open the heavy wooden door, the walls were covered with an artistic series of black and white photographs depicting various areas of Rome. Even from a distance she was able to see the photographer’s yellowing card; ‘Blake Cram, Roma, 1976,’ read the inscription proudly.
On the faded, psychedelic carpet, with its brown and yellow swirls, Cassandra’s shoes were placed neatly against the wall, and for a moment Maia stood perfectly still in the rancid, airless corridor. On all sides, the plaster walls rose above her, in an apparently ceiling-less gloom. Then there came Armand’s voice. Opposite the door was an old mirror, through which there ran a large crack. Flames shot up through her as she saw herself reflected; an open mouthed, ivory skinned woman, the lips a little too thin, black wide eyes placed far apart, more the face of an unadorned Venetian carnival mask than that of a human. Unable to help herself, Maia slowly turned round and saw them struggling with one another. As she stood there breathless, frozen and appalled, she felt her ribs contracting with misery and a hot sick feeling rising in her chest.
She walked over to the gilt edged mirror, a tribute to Mahmoud’s taste, and as she heard them move, her blood pounded deafeningly in her ears. She looked at her face a soulless, grotesque mask, ash white, with the consistency of moulded clay. She took a crimson lipstick from her bag, which s
he ran thoroughly over her trembling lips. Wondering how she appeared to others, she compared herself with Cassandra again, the exquisite, mysterious Cassandra who now lay sprawled beneath Armand on the bed, giving little gasping sighs. Maia looked at Cassandra quite differently, now that she had viewed her in these soiled surroundings, her glamour somewhat tarnished.
Walking purposefully, Maia went back outside and descended into the courtyard to join the Historian, the Professor and Konstantin. When she returned to the table, her face remained like a mask.
She sat detached and still in her chair, aware of their eyes resting upon her.
“You have become very quiet, Maia,” said the Historian. “Have you nothing more to add?”
Still she found that she couldn’t speak, and suspected that they were fully aware of her humiliation. She felt the shame was discernible through her clothes.
Strangely, the Historian appeared sympathetic. “He is a useless man,” he said. “Armand has his weaknesses. He likes to imagine that he is tortured, but never has a young man been so lucky, or had so many opportunities offered up to him. He is cold blooded, an egotist,” he went on, not fully realising the irony of his statement. “He sees himself as a wanderer. But at the same time he is anxious.”
“How?” asked Maia, intrigued by the Historian’s analysis of her lover’s psyche. “You speak of him so disparagingly.”
“He is worried about the fate of his masculine freedom in a world full of feminine distraction, tossed around upon a sea of lustful breasts.” And at this vivid image conjured up by his master, Konstantin laughed politely. Unlike his master, however, Konstantin did not despise women. Rather, he envied their feminine allure. It was the incense of women, their gentleness and softness that he sought to emulate.
“You are sad, my dear,” said the Historian gently. “Besides, all life is ephemeral. Armand, for instance, is himself a very transient character. He was just another young Arab man in Marseilles. I met him many years ago, and I helped to educate him. He reinvented himself. And then he saw what we have here. That is what you imagine you love, Maia – a mere creation.”
“But we are all creations of our circumstances,” said the Professor, who was in turn ignored by the Historian. These were callous men, and with a lurching passion she resented them and hated herself. They had opened a cesspool for her and then welcomed her in. Out here in Morocco, nobody could reach her. She had allowed herself to become stranded. She had welcomed it.
“Very well, then. I think we might have exhausted this subject already.”
Maia could not answer. She was sweating and shaking. Soon afterwards, Armand and Cassandra joined the table, and Maia watched the Historian as he arranged his mouth in a careful smile. The air was thick with tension. Her companions wanted to see her reaction, to have the evening’s entertainment, but she would not show fear or distress before them. With her sweaty arms sticking to the chair, their eyes clung to her, her neck, her calves, her ankles, searching her any small morsels of emotion, dissecting her for any betrayal, any muscle reflex in her face or her body which would reveal her unhappiness. They were all of them inescapable.
An image of being with Armand flashed up in her mind, and the taste of acid flowed up bitterly into her mouth. Maia hated him, but hated the fact that someone else could have him, even more.
Konstantin prodded her. “Are you alright Maia?”
She forced out her words through a tight throat, “I’m fine. I think I am going to get another drink.”
Beside Armand and Cassandra, she felt small, inadequate. She was no competition. When she looked at him, Maia was stricken. Until this point she had not realised the full extent of his indifference to her. She tried to smile at them gently, with all the benevolence that she was able to summon. “Where have you two been?”
She was accusing him now, and Armand ignored her and joined in the conversation, while Cassandra left their company. She resented Armand for this ability to change her opinion of him from moment to moment.
Irrevocably now, Maia was a participant in her own destruction. Armand did not want her, but still she wanted him. Any slight kindness that he showed her, she took as a sign that his feelings might be changing. But Cassandra was invincible. The most attractive woman that Maia had ever met, Cassandra was able to slink in and out of clandestine involvements and freely participate in them without ever being spoiled by them.
Cassandra surveyed Maia, but Maia met her straight in the eye. She was quite aware of her own magnetism; it was her lack of power that troubled her.
As the conversation developed, Maia stared about her abstractedly; at the curving bar and the guests milling around it, each struggling for the limelight amongst the pitiless clamour. She felt thousands of miles away from London, from the clean lines and the neat rows, Sunday afternoons, rain and freshness, familiarity. Then there were her neatly folded clothes and the jackets packed away at the back of her wardrobe in her flat, now rented out to a stranger who would be cooking in her kitchen, sleeping in her bed. She thought of the huge art galleries where she often spent hours alone considering the different types of brushstrokes made by other artists. She had left it all behind, but she still had not found what she was searching for.
These men were overly concerned with her view of the city, and they all wanted to give her their own interpretation of it. They competed viciously with one another. The Historian wanted her to see it as a city of ancient battlegrounds, of tribes, of historic references, a place between east and west where the desert caravans came to rest. Konstantin needed her to view the city as an expatriate refuge, as if here she too could join him in hiding something. Armand, she could barely understand. He reminded her of the Tuareg warriors who emerge out of the desert draped in white with only their kohl rimmed eyes left uncovered. His suit was his armour, yet he too was another European who came here to take advantage of what the city could offer him. Armand was simply conducting himself with his customary arrogance.
Maia was suddenly tired of them all, and wished now to meet more Moroccan women, coy and aloof, not these men who were only interested in foisting their own opinions on her. These men wanted to break her down, and diminish her. They were, all of them, caught fast in the Historian’s net, and all three of his disciples were irrevocably tangled.
She decided to try loneliness over subservience. The longer she spent here, the less anything surprised her.
“There are so many gay men here,” Maia said. “Yet the men harass women terribly. Perhaps if relations between the sexes were a little more liberal…”
The Historian laughed bitterly. This was a legendary gay destination in a place were homosexuality was illegal.
Maia scrutinised the Historian carefully. At first he seemed so sensitive, discerning. Now his change was like that of a chameleon that hides, shudders and crawls from the light. This evening, the Historian was unusually talkative. When Maia complained about the incessant, unwanted attention she received from the men in the street, she was told to be grateful. She had never imagined he might be so garrulous. As she watched him, she imagined that she was watching a strange transformation, that of a spider emerging from its chrysalis. A sudden irritation at his quick change of character pricked at her.
Maia went outside into the street, and bumped straight into Cassandra again, who was just leaving. “He went to look for you. I have an early flight tomorrow. Well, goodbye. It has been fun, hasn’t it?” Cassandra smiled, with a slight wave of her hand, where Maia noticed the faint, jagged trace of a tattoo.
“So much fun,” agreed Maia, almost snarling at her, but she managed to restrain herself and the taxi took Cassandra away.
Maia went back inside and there was Armand still at the table. The light appeared to fall only upon her companions, giving her the sensation of being pushed out further and alone. The beautiful cut of their clothes hid all of their ugliness and the honest human traits, which would have made them up into real people. She longed for their
masks to at last slip.
Occasionally Armand’s eyes caught hers across the room. He wanted to check that she was watching him. And as she looked at him, the strength of her venom, her hatred and her desperation grew. Yet still she continued to smile, a smile that started to resemble more of a grimace.
Later, Maia was sitting alone at the bar when there was a terrible crash. She turned in the direction of the sound and she saw that the grotesque, leering Priapus, the chief piece of Mahmoud’s garden furniture had fallen into the pool, along with de Farcas, who rose to the surface, spluttering. He had been sitting on it just a few moments earlier, and she covered her hand with her mouth to hide her laughter.
“Isn’t that rather dangerous? Have you ever fallen in here?” de Farcas was shouting frantically at Mahmoud. The entire bar was amused, and de Farcas looked furious.
Mahmoud was nonplussed, he held out his hand to help de Farcas to his feet as he climbed out of the pool.
“Oh they are falling in all the time,” he said, and began on one of his incessant courses of laughter.
That night when she returned to the house, she painted the belly dancers as she recalled them before she forgot their fluidity. She painted them in swirls of white and bright energetic colours, and their unlimited movement and flexibility reverberated across the canvas. For a few hours, as she stood alone and stared at the coloured surface she was creating, she revelled in the broad canvas that stared back at her, the twisted tubes beside it, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared along the hands of her brushes and the turpentine stench filling the room. She thought that she might once again learn the meaning of joy.
Chapter 12
Maia woke early one morning to a dull ache that had plagued her for days. The fan whirred soullessly, and out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed a small cockroach scurrying along the cracks of the skirting board. She caught sight of her face in the mirror directly opposite her. Her eyes beneath the dark, almost purple grey lids, swollen from sleep stared back at her.
Alexandra Singer Page 15