Tangier: A Novel

by Stephen Holgate

  As emblem of his nearly-forgotten status, Laurent wore his pinstriped suit, clean but faded, the pants barely holding a crease. He could only hope that the border guards would see only a French diplomat in a suit and tie, driving an impressive car, a beautiful woman at his side—none of it more real than Cinderella’s coach and footmen, but they wouldn’t know that. In fact, he was only tying to pass himself off for what he was, yet he felt like an imposter.

  Charlotte emerged through the portico looking as if she hadn’t slept in a week.

  M’barak left off wiping down the car and opened the driver’s door for Laurent. “Bon route, monsieur, ” he said, his face bland as a mummy’s.

  Laurent looked at Charlotte. “He’s not coming with us?”

  Without looking at Laurent she said, “No. It will be just the two of us,” and got into the passenger’s seat. “You will drive.”

  For the next twenty minutes Charlotte’s “turn left here” and “bear right at the circle” substituted for small talk. When she finally put them on the road toward Tetouan and Chefchaouen, she leaned her head against the seat, closed her eyes and feigned sleep to preclude further conversation.

  The big Panhard took the twisting mountain roads well and by early that afternoon they had arrived at the Spanish side of the border. A couple of bored Guardia Civil stood at the barricade. The taller of the two glanced at their passports, pocketed the few pesetas folded into Charlotte’s passport as the most honored of exit visas and waved them out of the Spanish zone.

  “Why didn’t you do this for me weeks ago?” Laurent asked. Charlotte’s cold stare was eloquent response. She hadn’t done it because there had been no advantage for her in doing so.

  Whatever Grant’s assurances about the plan, and Torrence’s judgement that no one was looking for him any longer, a sweat broke out on Laurent’s hands as they approached the French side of the border crossing.

  A Moroccan in the uniform of a colonial infantry regiment raised a barrier gate and let the Panhard pull forward to a second gate before lowering the first one behind them. A second uniformed Moroccan asked for their passports. After a brief glance he handed Charlotte’s back to her. He looked at Laurent’s passport for some time, a deep frown line between his eyes.

  “Monsieur Laurent,” he read aloud, then repeated “Laurent. You are a diplomat of the French Republic, yes?”

  Laurent leaned an arm through the open window and tried to breathe normally. “That’s right.” He glanced at Charlotte, who looked out her window, pretending to boredom.

  The Moroccan flipped through the passport a second time, then backwards through its pages again more slowly. Finally he looked at Laurent. “I see no entry stamp into the Spanish sector, nor an exit visa.”

  Laurent put on an annoyed frown. “I was posted to Tangier months ago, before the Spanish assumed charge. It was an open city. If I needed no entry stamp then, it is only normal that I need no exit visa now.”

  Laurent pondered the illogic of his response as the border guard’s eyes shifted from the passport to his face and back again.

  “And your name is Rene Laurent?”

  “It’s there on the passport in front of you. Now let us pass before I complain to your superiors.”

  The threat had no evident affect on the guard. “A moment, monsieur,” he said, then walked around the barricade toward a small building flying the French tricolor.

  Charlotte maintained her bland gaze out the window. “Stop fidgeting,” she told him.

  Laurent could only manage to make his agitation look like annoyance as he watched the guard enter the building and, a moment later, appear in the window of one of its offices, apparently speaking to someone seated at a desk. Their conversation was a long one.

  Laurent was conscious of his heart racing, his blood pounding at his temples.

  After an interminable wait, he saw the guard snap to attention and salute. The army officer he had been speaking to rose from his desk. The two men emerged from the building a moment later walking toward the Panhard.

  The French officer, a young lieutenant, held the passport, flipping through its pages as he approached.

  For a mad instant, Laurent thought of throwing the car into reverse, crashing through the barrier in back of them and make whatever excuses or spend whatever sums necessary to persuade the Spanish guards to let them back in.

  Charlotte read his thoughts. “Don’t be a damned fool.”

  Wishing to escape a wartime treason charge seemed anything but foolish, but Laurent forced himself to do nothing.

  The officer walked up to the driver’s side of the car, still looking at Laurent’s passport. After an excruciating pause, he snapped it shut, and, with a crisp nod, handed it back to Laurent.

  “My apologies, Monsieur Laurent. The corporal is not familiar with diplomatic passports.” The lieutenant smiled briefly. “Or diplomatic niceties. I have spoken firmly with him and wanted to personally convey my apologies.”

  Laurent nearly burst out laughing. Clearly, the sentry had almost misfired on the plot, detaining them before they’d picked up the currency, rather than after, and the young officer needed to set things back on track. Was that a wink he saw from the Lieutenant?

  Laurent thought of raising his chin and saying, “See that it doesn’t happen again,” but didn’t want to overplay a hand he had already won. Instead, he adopted a patronizing smile. “I’m sure your corporal was only trying to be conscientious. We’ll let the matter drop.”

  The lieutenant came to attention. “Thank you for your understanding.”

  He motioned for the soldier to raise the second barrier, gave Laurent his sharpest salute and said, “Best wishes for a pleasant trip.”

  They left the clouds behind as they entered the more arid area away from the coast and the sun shone brightly as they arrived in Fez late in the afternoon. Charlotte directed him to their hotel, located on the edge of the most ancient part of the ancient city. While Laurent parked the car in the hotel’s covered garage, Charlotte checked them in.

  A bellboy showed them to the second floor, where their separate rooms opened on to a view of the dry hills to the north.

  Claiming exhaustion, Charlotte told Laurent she would have dinner in her room, adding “alone” in case he hadn’t heard the message clearly enough.

  Though weary from the long drive, Laurent felt too wound-up to rest, and after asking directions at the desk, found the narrow arched gate that led into the old city.

  As the sinking sun threw shadows across the old quarter, Laurent wandered the crowded and crooked lanes of old Fez, thinking that it made Tangier’s medina look like a modern development. The streets were thronged with men in turbans, their thin hardened faces softened by an unexpected gentleness, and with women in djellabas that revealed nothing but their eyes, which they averted at the sight of him. The air rang with the cries of men hawking wooden chairs, brass plates, leather slippers, while the rich aroma of spices, roasting meat, and freshly cut wood nearly covered the stink of leather dyeing and the earthy odors of the overloaded donkeys that pressed passersby against the walls. After weeks of blind navigation through the seamiest side of Morocco, of seeing nothing behind the poses of the people he met but more poses, Laurent felt he had finally found one true place.

  His immediate worries put aside for the moment, he enjoyed playing the tourist. He ate kabobs cooked on an outdoor grill, drank tea in an open-air café. From his seat on one of its rough benches he exchanged grave nods with a boy walking along the narrow street, carrying on his head a wooden slab stacked with bread. As darkness fell, Laurent watched the lights come on, not electric lights as in Tangier, but the warm light of oil lamps and small wood fires, which illuminated only their small corners, allowing night its domain.

  For an exhilarating moment Laurent thought of not going back to the hotel, of finding some way to stay here forever, to leave the world’s problems to the world that created them. But no, he had already cast his d
ie.

  His tea grew cold. He paid his bill and walked back to the hotel in the dark.

  Charlotte answered her door on the second knock, opening it only enough to reveal one forbidding eye.

  “When are we supposed to meet the men with the currency?” Laurent asked.

  She frowned at his indiscretion, looking up and down the hallway they both knew was empty. “We stay where we are. They know where the car is. In the morning we simply go down and drive away.”

  “That’s all there is to it?”

  She didn’t bother to reply.

  With a murmured “good night” Laurent walked down the hall to his room. Behind him, he heard Charlotte’s door close shut, followed by the sound of a lock tumbling into place.

  Fully clothed, he lay on his bed for a long time and stared at the ceiling, the obvious question playing through his mind, the one Grant had broached during their last conversation: Why shouldn’t he go down to the garage, take the car, drive to Rabat and make contact with the consulate? It couldn’t pose any greater risk than what he was doing now. Once he got into town he could call from a pay phone and fish for the names of anyone he might know and trust. If he found no one, he could sell the car and use the proceeds to buy an exit visa. Better yet, if Charlotte’s elves had already loaded the currency into the car, he would have enough money to do anything he pleased.

  He glanced at the clock. Nearly midnight. He couldn’t wait any longer. Once Charlotte knew he had gone, she would guess where he was headed. In her present state she wouldn’t hesitate to have him chased down and killed. He would need to get to Rabat before she woke.

  Laurent packed his valise and made his way downstairs, where he crossed the empty lobby and entered the garage. If the night guard should ask him where he was going, he would say he couldn’t sleep and wished to go for a drive. Implausible with his valise in his hand, but local guards were not in the habit of questioning European guests.

  Walking between the rows of cars, his footsteps echoing faintly, he spotted the nose of the Panhard protruding between two smaller cars. He had already taken the keys out of his pocket when he saw the two men leaning against its fender, their arms crossed, looking at him with agate eyes.

  Charlotte had referred to elves. She had said nothing about goblins.

  He kicked himself for his stupidity. With six million francs in the back of the car, they would have it under close watch all night. They weren’t a bunch of damned fools. Not like him.

  With a polite nod, which the two men did not return, Laurent turned around and went back upstairs to his room.

  Laurent and Charlotte went down to the garage early the next morning, just as the two men Laurent had seen the previous night casually strolled out of the garage, their watch ended.

  This time she insisted on driving. “You look more like a diplomat when you’re doing nothing,” she told him.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The same men who had packed six million francs in the trunk had also filled the gas tank, and Charlotte motored west to Meknes under clear morning skies before taking the highway north toward Chefchaouen and Tangier.

  As they had the previous day, they drove in silence, the larger issues between them beyond recovery, the smaller ones too banal to waste their breath on. A few kilometers north of Meknes, where the highway skirted a range of rugged hills to the east, Charlotte turned left onto a dirt road leading toward a broad plain.

  “There’s a place I want to visit,” she said without looking at him.

  The Panhard raised a plume of dust as it descended the road to its end at the top of a low bluff overlooking a patchwork of irrigated fields.

  They had not come, though, to enjoy the view of the valley.

  To each side of the car rose an expanse of Roman ruins—broken columns, shattered walls, the gap-toothed remains of a basilica. Large paving stones, grooved by long-departed mule carts and polished by the feet of the town’s centuries-dead inhabitants, led to an imposing stone arch, the entrance to the once-bustling town.

  Though Laurent thought them unimpressive compared to the better-preserved Roman remains in Southern France, their isolated setting and the surrounding silence rendered them more evocative than those tourist-infested sites.

  Charlotte parked the car in the shade of an old olive tree, its trunk and limbs twisted like frozen smoke, and walked slowly across the bare ground into the dead and empty city. Laurent followed her amidst the stones of fallen temples and the crumbled walls of residences abandoned for centuries.

  They came upon a well-preserved mosaic that had once brightened the floor of a wealthy family’s dining room. Charlotte carried a bottle of water, which she now poured over the mosaic. Like a desert flower brought to life by a rare shower, the dust washed away and the wet stones bloomed with color. At the corners of the large mosaic, the faces of four women represented the seasons, with two other female figures placed in the center, all of it surrounded by intricate patterns of red, black and yellow tessarae.

  They crossed an open square to the base of a fallen temple. After gazing a moment at its magnificent columns, Charlotte climbed the steps to what had once been its porch. Laurent followed and looked out over the valley, contemplating two millennia of patient farmers taking their livelihood from its soil.

  He recalled their visit to the Grotto of Hercules and thought of Charlotte’s reflections on Morocco and the civilizations that had washed over it and her hope that some man would prove strong enough, ruthless enough to stop the tides of history. He wondered how much grief and disillusionment he might have saved himself if he had understood then what she meant.

  “Look up there,” she said, facing the rugged hills to the east. “Do you see that town—there at the top of that conical hill? It’s the town of Moulay Idriss. Yes, like your hotel. Why would people build a city in such an impossible place? So far from water and farmland and shade. You can barely grow olive trees on those slopes. Certainly no wheat.” She looked at him like a professor regarding a middling student she still had hopes for, and frowned when he made no reply. “Look at this town. The one we’re walking through,” she continued, trying again to make him understand. “Volubulis, it was called. Well-watered, the crossing point of imperial roads, close to fertile ground. Groves of olive trees all around.” She waited a moment before giving up on him. “Here’s the answer: It was founded in a time of peace and order, built for comfort and convenience, close to the sources of its wealth. But when the Roman Empire weakened there were no legions left to protect the city from the bandits coming out of the desert. The empire allowed barbarians to join its armies, to become citizens, diluting the purity of its Roman heritage, undermining its vision, its strength. Betrayed by this pollution of their blood, the people of Volubulis were forced to flee to the hills, to the very top of that rocky cone and huddle behind a stone wall. That’s what happens when order collapses, when there is no one strong enough to hold the barbarians off, to halt the degeneracy of a whole people.”

  It was much the same speech she had given at the grotto, but its meaning was now terrifyingly clear.

  “Someone like, say, Adolf Hitler.” He could barely make himself utter the words.

  She turned to him, a strange exhilaration lighting her eyes. The student had finally gotten it right. “Yes!” She took Laurent’s hand and held it to her breast. “Say his name. Say his name and feel my heart beat faster.”

  Laurent pulled his hand back in disgust. “Hitler’s not even a madman. Just a mediocrity with infantile notions of grandeur. He and all the rest of them, a bunch of evil dwarves who have willed themselves to power over a disturbed and bitter people.”

  His words, as harsh as he could make them, did nothing to undercut her ecstasy. “No, Rene. You’re wrong. So wrong. Come with me. It will save your life, will make it worthy”

  Laurent turned away, sickened, but she took his arm and stepped in front of him. “I don’t ask you to believe in him as I do. Not yet. Just embrace life
over death. The world is turning, the time to choose is growing short.”

  He thought of telling her that it was she who had only a short time left, that she was moving quickly toward a prison cell. It was she who had chosen death over life. But it was too late to tell her anything.

  “I’ve already made my choice,” he said.

  The glow faded from her eyes. “You don’t understand the truth. It’s right there in front of you, but you won’t take it,” she said quietly, her eyes cast down. Without another word, she descended the temple steps and headed back to the car.

  After their strange conversation, his refusal of her bizarre invitation, the silent drive north felt interminable. With each curve in the road, every straightaway devoured by the powerful touring car, Laurent felt a growing tightness in his chest, an agitation he found increasingly difficult to conceal.

  Though the drive seemed endless, the sight of the border post came all too quickly.

  Charlotte rolled the car up to the barriers. Laurent looked for Grant’s car, but the Englishman had evidently parked out of sight and Laurent saw only a lone military truck sitting in the shade of a tree. Three soldiers leaned against it, watching the Panhard.

  Charlotte eased the big car through the first barricade. As the arm lowered behind them, the same corporal who had nearly ruined the operation the previous day stepped from his sentry booth and asked for their passports.

  Laurent assumed it would be done quietly. A question about their documents. Could Monsieur and Madame come inside for a moment? They would follow the soldier into the lieutenant’s office and there Charlotte would be placed under arrest. Would she start yelling, cause a scene? No, she wasn’t the sort. Would she somehow guess that he had betrayed her and call him a traitor? Likely not, if they made a show of arresting him, too.

  While he contemplated these possibilities, the corporal gave Charlotte a crisp salute, returned their passports and signaled for a guard to raise the second barrier. Charlotte nodded her thanks, put the car in gear and left French Morocco behind them.