Instead I hoisted my backpack and crossed the street to her building. I scanned the list of names accompanying the apartment numbers and buzzers that were banked on a wall to the left of the entranceway. They all listed the tenants by last name, with no Samira or even an S in sight. Damn . . . I considered going inside the shop next door and showing the picture of Samira, asking the man behind the counter if he knew her. Then I reasoned that, as she lived upstairs, she was a regular here. Which would probably mean that if some sleep-starved, stressed middle-aged American woman held up her snapshot and demanded to know her last name and apartment number, the guy in the shop would undoubtedly ring to warn her of some crazy lady lurking below. He might also call the cops. Best to be prudent and wait.
What I discovered inside the shop surprised me. It was well stocked with upscale prepared food, largely French in origin. It did have a considerable amount of local produce – hummus, tahini, couscous, assorted Moroccan pastries. But it also sold teas from Hédiard in Paris. And Nespresso coffee capsules. And Belgian chocolate. And Italian extra-virgin olive oil. This was the sort of local deli that would fit into any cosmopolitan city, and clearly catered to an educated clientele. There was also a rack of foreign newspapers in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian – all that day’s editions. I grabbed a copy each of the International New York Times and the Financial Times, paid for them, then crossed back across the street and found a table on the terrace with a direct view of the entrance to the apartment building. A waiter arrived at the table. I ordered breakfast, realising that, in addition to dealing with virtually no sleep, I hadn’t eaten anything except a single baklava since my late breakfast the previous day, fear and stress supplanting hunger. I started to take in my surroundings. The buildings here all were largely art deco, with a few new structures dotting what was otherwise a fairly intact architectural quarter. The café I was in wouldn’t have been out of place in Paris. There was an interesting-looking bookshop next to one of those places that specialises in exquisitely packaged soaps and bath oils. Advertisement posters showed young, vibrant, professional couples looking dreamily at each other while holding the latest in mobile phones. There was a high-tech electronics store, stocking the latest in laptops and cellular communications. A woman in tight track pants came jogging by. There were a considerable number of high-end Audis and Mercedes and Porsches parked on the road. There was not a burqa in sight. I was in a Morocco completely divorced from the realm behind the walls in Essaouira; a world familiar, yet utterly foreign.
Two more men with donkey carts came trudging down the road. One of the animals stopped to pee, simultaneously splashing the fender of a Mercedes SUV. Its owner – a portly business type in a black suit and white shirt, with a cigarette and a cellphone in either hand – rose from his café table and came waddling over, shouting reproaches and abuse. The donkey driver tried to amelior-ate the situation by rubbing the fender with a corner of his djellaba. This infuriated the owner even more. My orange juice and croissants arrived just as a policeman showed up, telling the businessman to calm down and also instructing the driver to stop rubbing more donkey urine into the Mercedes paintwork.
I bit into my croissant, relieved to be eating something. I stared down at the International New York Times, thinking that during our time in Essaouira never once had I thought about buying a newspaper. Now I was learning about a Wall Street downturn, and another wave of bombings in Beirut, and the death of a one-time dictator in the Caucasus, and . . .
The yelling across the street rose in volume. The businessman was now so frustrated with the donkey driver’s mild-mannered reaction to the bestial baptism of his car that he actually pushed him, causing the policeman to restrain him. Then, in a moment beyond stupid, the businessman shoved the cop so hard that he tumbled into the street. Regaining his balance the officer dodged an oncoming car. It braked wildly, front-ending the Mercedes.
Chaos ensued as the businessman became near-deranged, yanking open the door of the car that had just flattened the front of his own, clawing at the driver. The donkey, a little distressed, began to bray. His cries of confusion made me look directly across the street at a crucial moment – just when the door to the apartment building opened and a young woman with long, richly curled black hair walked out. She was exceptionally tall – over six foot, long-legged, absurdly thin, dressed in tight blue jeans, chic sandals and a loose white linen shirt. I had Paul’s notebook on the table and I pulled out the photo of Samira. It must have been taken a few years ago, as the woman before me was more mature, but still unbearably beautiful. I threw some money down on the table and raced over. She was standing not far away from the scuffle still in progress – the businessman now being handcuffed – watching the drama unfold. I approached her.
‘Are you Samira?’ I asked.
She seemed thrown by the question, but still asked me in flawless English:
‘Who wants to know?’
‘Paul’s wife.’
Her face tightened.
‘I have nothing to say to you.’
She turned and started walking off. I followed her, calling out:
‘Please, I need to know—’
‘Did you just hear what I said to you?’
She kept walking, me alongside her.
‘Is he here, with you?’ I asked.
‘I am not talking to you.’
‘You have to.’
As I said this I made the mistake of touching her on her arm. She shrugged me off, hissing:
‘You put a hand on me again . . .’
She stalked off. But I kept pace with her.
‘You know where he is,’ I said.
‘No idea. Now leave me.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
Now she stopped and turned on me:
‘Lie? Lie? You dare—’
‘Tell me where he is.’
‘Let him tell you that.’
‘So he’s upstairs? In your place?’
‘I wouldn’t let him through the front door.’
‘So he came here?’
‘I am getting into my car now.’
‘You have to help me,’ I pleaded.
‘No, I don’t . . .’
She reached into her bag, pulled out a set of keys and clicked open a small Citroën parked on the street. As she went to open the driver’s door I blocked her path.
‘I know who you are. I know that you’re involved with him. And if you want him, that’s actually fine by me. But I just need to know—’
I was all but yelling. But her voice became louder than mine.
‘Involved with him? I want him? Do you know who I am?’
‘Yes, I do . . .’
‘Do you really?’ she said, suddenly very cold and quiet. ‘Because if you did know, you wouldn’t dare make accusations like that.’
‘Who are you then?’ I demanded.
She met my gaze with a look of ferocious contempt and said:
‘I’m his daughter.’
Thirteen
I STOOD ON the kerb for a long time after she had pulled away in the car. I was so stunned by the revelation just delivered that I stopped dead in my tracks as she brushed me aside. When I glanced up I caught sight of her face, staring back at me with hardened contempt. Yet her eyes also radiated the saddest sort of despair.
Then she accelerated and the car shot off down the street.
I remained motionless for several moments, not knowing what to do next. Eventually I retreated to the café. The waiter was keeping an eye on my table: my newspapers, my croissants, my orange juice. As I approached he handed me the 100-dirham note I had thrown down before I got up to pursue Samira.
‘You left all this behind, madame.’
‘I had to speak to someone.’
A small nod of acknowledgement. Had he watched that scene unfold? Did he put two and two together and reason that it was a wife confronting the woman she thought was her husband’s mistress? If only he knew the truth. If only
I knew the truth.
I sat back down and shut my eyes, exhausted and confused and flattened by a disclosure that I simply never saw coming.
He has a child. He has a child who is at least thirty years old. Maybe older. A daughter. A beautiful daughter. Evidently conceived with a Moroccan woman. Judging by her age, the point of conception was decades ago – and the photo Paul kept of her in his notebook must have been ten years old. A secret he kept from me always. A secret that made his other great deceit – promising me a child and then having a vasectomy – even more heartbreaking.
‘Would you like your coffee now, madame?’
It was the waiter. I indicated that would be fine. Hunger forced me to eat the croissants, drink the very good orange juice. I tried reading one of the newspapers. The words swam in front of me and I pushed it away. The businessman was now being forcibly pushed into the back of a police car, struggling against the cuffs that were restraining his hands behind his back. He was going to be arrested for assaulting a police officer and would have to spend serious money on a lawyer. We really are the architects of our own miseries, aren’t we? Just as I saw the hatred and the hurt in Samira’s eyes and knew that her father had deeply wounded her in some way.
Her father.
Who was her mother? Where was she now?
I checked my watch. Six-forty-three a.m. My midday flight was not far off. I drank my coffee. Having been turned away by his daughter, seeking refuge in the city he once called home, Paul would surely turn to friends. Or more specifically: a friend. Someone whose name he dropped both in conversation and in the pages of his journal. Opening it I found the entry I was looking for. The entry where he wrote about wanting to re-establish contact with Samira.
Can Romain B. H. aid my cause?
Romain Ben Hassan. Whose address was written just below.
I called the waiter over, showed him the scrawled address and asked where it might be.
‘Two streets from here,’ he said, then insisted on drawing me a map on the back of a bar coaster, explaining that I could make it to the man’s front door in around five minutes.
A manic plan began to form in my head. I would walk over to Ben Hassan’s place – where, no doubt, my husband was sleeping off the events of last night, which must have involved some sort of confrontation with his daughter. Knowing Paul, the last thing he would have done was find a hotel and recuperate alone. Which is why I was pretty sure that he had taken refuge at his friend’s apartment. The idea of crossing the Atlantic now, uncertain of his whereabouts or his injuries, would be impossible for me. If he was at Ben Hassan’s I could, at least, make sure that he was in one physical piece (whatever his mental state), and have a direct face-to-face with him. Then hit the street. Jump a cab to the airport. And fly out of all this sadness.
The coffee arrived. I drank it quickly, the caffeine giving me a fast antidote to my fatigue, and I ordered a second. I threw it back and settled the bill, counting my remaining dirhams. I asked the waiter how much a taxi would cost from here to the airport.
‘You will need to negotiate, but don’t pay more than two hundred dirhams. Make sure you agree the price before he starts driving.’
I thanked him for his kindness and his advice, as well as his impromptu map which I now used to guide me to 3450 rue Hafid Ibrahim. Though I was too preoccupied to take in much in the way of my immediate surroundings I did note that this quartier – which the waiter told me was known as Gauthier, after the French architect who designed the layout and many of the 1920s apartment buildings that decorated the area – was still very jazz era, albeit in a slightly crumbling way.
Number 3450 rue Hafid Ibrahim was a building that had seen a happier past. Chipped masonry. A broken sequence of pavements in front of its main entrance. A huge water stain above its front doorway. Electrical wires dangling down from a broken entrance light. I scanned the list of names by the front door and spied ‘Ben Hassan, R., 3eme étage, gauche’. To hell with the fact that it was still so early in the morning. I had to see my husband. But I knew that to ring the bell would be to alert both Ben Hassan and Paul of my arrival. So I loitered with intent until a woman around fifty – dressed in a black business suit and big Chanel sunglasses – came out. She looked at me askance when I walked in past her, holding the door for her as she exited. I was about to invent some excuse – ‘I forgot the door code’ – but thought better of it. I simply headed to the staircase – probably once grand and marbled, now showing signs of the same water damage that marked the ceiling, with wooden banisters that bent when I grabbed hold of them.
The spiral staircase tilted upwards at a dangerous angle, and – as I noticed when I reached the first and second landings – the space between the apartment doorways and the deteriorating banister was minimal. A misstep or two and over you could go. The lack of sleep, the pressing sense of anxiety, the thought: What am I doing here? and the sheer dizzy incline all conspired to make me hug the wall on the way up, terrified of losing my balance and encountering what would certainly be a downward plunge.
I reached the third floor and turned left. The door in front of me was painted a crazed shade of purple, its outer frame gloss black. The choice of colour immediately threw me. Too hallucinatory, too out there. I rang the bell. No answer. I waited thirty seconds and rang it again. No answer. Everybody inside – my husband included – must be asleep.
I leaned on the bell, holding it down for a good thirty seconds. Eventually the door cracked open. I was facing a very short man in his early thirties, with a bald head and immaculate skin. He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. He stared at me with tired, leery eyes.
‘I need to speak with Monsieur Ben Hassan,’ I said in French.
‘He’s sleeping.’ The man’s voice defined tonelessness.
‘It’s urgent.’
‘Come back later.’
He started to close the door, but I inched my foot into its path.
‘I can’t come back later. I must see him now.’
‘Not now.’
Again he tried to close the door, but my foot stopped him.
‘You see him some other time,’ he said.
‘No, I am seeing Monsieur Ben Hassan now.’
I barked that last word. I could see the man’s eyes grow wide. I grabbed the knob and pushed my left knee up against the door just as he tried to force it closed.
‘You go away,’ he now hissed.
‘I am Monsieur Paul’s wife. I know he’s inside. I have to talk to him.’
Then shoving against the door I began to shout:
‘Paul? Paul? You have to see me . . .’
Suddenly the door swung open and I found myself face to face with a man who must have weighed three hundred pounds. He was in his early sixties, with thin hair that he brushed leftwards across his great bowling ball of a head. His face, besides being corpulent and treble-chinned, was also oleaginous. His eyes – vampire blue – hinted that my entreaties had just roused him into consciousness. But it was his girth that threw me. Encased in a sweaty white kaftan, he had the appearance of a monumental block of Camembert cheese that had been left out in the sun and was now oozing. He studied me through squinting, tired eyes.
‘Your husband is not here.’
I was thrown by this comment.
‘You know who I am.’
A shrug. ‘Of course I know who you are, Robin. I am Ben Hassan. And, alas, your husband is gone.’
‘Gone where?’
As I said this I felt my equilibrium giving way. I leaned against the wall for support. Putting my right hand over my face I wondered if I was about to pass out. I heard Monsieur Ben Hassan say something to his friend in Arabic. That’s when he put his hand on my arm. I flinched, pulling away.
‘Omar simply wants to help you inside – before you faint.’
Wooziness was now overtaking me.
‘He’s gone where?’ I asked.
Ben Hassan looked directly at me. And said:
‘He’s gone to see his wife.’
Now I was in free-fall.
‘His wife?’ I heard myself saying. ‘I’m his wife.’
That’s when I felt myself pitch forward. Omar caught me. I remember mumbling something about needing to sit down. What happened next? I remember little, except being led into a large room that also appeared to be painted purple and furnished with a surfeit of heavily embroidered velvet cushions. I was guided to what seemed to be a mattress on the floor covered by some sort of velvet blanket. Words were being spoken to me in French. They wafted over me, garbled. I kept telling myself: ‘Get up, you have a plane to catch.’ Just as that declaration ‘He’s gone to see his wife’ kept ricocheting around my head. Surely I hadn’t heard that correctly.
And then, having been settled by Omar on the mattress, I promptly blacked out.
When I woke again I was in a world of shadows. It took a moment or two to work out where I was. Just as it took another nanosecond for me to descend into panic as I glanced at my watch and saw that it was four-twelve. That’s when I jolted upright and found myself in a state of panic. Four-twelve in the afternoon. I had been asleep for hours. I had missed my flight.
I was in a large living room with dark purple walls. Floorboards painted black gloss, heavy red velvet drapes. Red velvet cushions. The red sheet covering the mattress on which I’d crashed for the last . . . had I been asleep almost nine hours? Strange, inferior abstract art on the walls; boxes within boxes, or gyrating circles that seemed to spin inwards and had been painted in blooded tones against a black background.
I had a terrifying thought: Where is my backpack, with my laptop, the printout of my plane ticket, my wallet with all my credit cards and, most crucially, my passport? I was on my feet, scrambling around the room in search of its whereabouts. When there was no sign of it in this velvet whorehouse of a room I started shouting: ‘Monsieur, monsieur, monsieur,’ and running down a corridor, throwing open doors. The first one led into a room that was bare except for several wooden folding tables, on which were piles of passports in a variety of official colours, a photocopier, assorted embossing stamps, and a machine that, on closer inspection, seemed to provide a plastic covering for documents.
The Heat of Betrayal Page 14