The Forgiven: A Novel

by Lawrence Osborne

  “Hamid, did you believe their story?”

  “But they are your guests. How am I not to believe them?”

  “But did you, in fact, believe them?”

  “I think they are very scared. They told the truth.”

  Hamid’s eyes turned away. There were times when discretion was not what Richard wanted from him, but the relation of employer to servant was impossible to surmount. The English were the master’s guests. They must be respected. This attitude could not be penetrated.

  “Go to the house and tell Monsieur Dally. Whisper in his ear and don’t make a fuss. Tell him to meet me in the garage.”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  RICHARD WENT BACK TO THE CAR AND LOOKED IT OVER. The massive dent on the left fender was unmistakable enough. The headlight had been shattered and the fender almost detached. So the boy had crossed the road from the left and been hit. They must have been going at a fair clip. He looked up at the moon and thought it a clear night. He walked through the gate onto the dirt road and looked down at the highway snaking around the bottom of the hill. One could see everything. One could see the formations of lignite on the mountains by the far side of the road, a distance of miles. The moon was full, and nothing escaped it. He’d be interested to hear what their story really was. He hadn’t asked Hamid, because he wanted to hear it himself from their own lips. People change their stories rapidly. He opened the phone and lingered among the high roadside weeds for a few moments, wondering if he should explain anything to the police, and then decided not to think about it too much. Every minute of delay was incriminating.

  “It is Richard Duddy here. At Ksour Azna.”

  The voice at the other end was sluggish and slightly hostile, its French clogged with uncertainties.

  “Good evening, Monsieur Galloway. Have you been burgled?”

  They laughed. “No, Yassine, I have an unfortunate situation. You will have to come over at once. A man has been hit by a car.”

  “Is it one of your guests?”

  “No, we don’t know him. He might be local.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “He was dead when he came in.”

  “Was the car belonging to a foreigner?”

  “It was.”

  “It is a shame.”

  There was a dragging irritation in the voice.

  “Monsieur Richard, keep everyone there, please. Put the body somewhere cool.”

  “The kitchen?” he wanted to yell at Yassine.

  “And, Monsieur Richard? Do not touch it.”

  WHEN RICHARD GOT BACK TO THE GATE, HE TOLD THE BOYS to send on a carafe of chilled water to the Hennigers’ rooms. Soon Hamid came trotting up.

  “Mr. Dally, Monsieur was very upset. One of the other boys must have told him. He has gone down to the garage.”

  “I must see the Hennigers first. Is the party going okay?”

  “They are all drunk and happy.”

  “Perhaps,” Richard wondered aloud, “I should calm the Hennigers down and get them into the dining room. There’s nothing they can do about it now.”

  “The others will be getting up from the dinner soon. Coffee and smoke.”

  “What we don’t want, Hamid, is a panic and a scene. They mustn’t know that there’s a body on the premises.”

  “Naturally not, Monsieur!”

  “Can you see to it?”

  The paunchy Hamid stiffened. “Count on me.” But to himself he thought, with disengaged fatalism, “Piece by piece the camel enters the couscous.”

  RICHARD WALKED THROUGH THE KSOUR TO THE LITTLE whitewashed house where they had put the late arrivals. Most of the houses were still ruined, and they formed picturesque streets like those of a bombed city. Twenty were renovated and turned into guest rooms, each one subtly individual. Chalet 22—they called them “chalets”—was near the walls, with a small desert garden around it. The windows and door were wide open, and from the interior came the sound of a difficult argument, the voices forcefully lowered but hissing away vigorously. He hung back for a minute or two. Not because he wanted to hear what they were saying, but because he didn’t want to embarrass them. Then the wife began to sob.

  The husband let it flow for a while, and drifted to the open door. He lit a cigarette and said nothing. Cicadas purred in the rosebushes and around the hairy boles of the palms. The party could be heard easily. David was breathing heavily, confused, indignant. He was sure it wasn’t his fault. He was certain of it, and he couldn’t talk himself out of his own innocence, not even when he was truthful.

  “I HEARD WHAT HAPPENED,” RICHARD SAID AS HE WALKED out of the shadows and up to the door. Behind them, Jo lay curled on the brocaded tribal cushions of the bed. Richard closed the door behind them and went to put his arm around her. “It’s all right,” he said. There was a smell of sweat and dust in the room, of misery and disputes, and the bags had not yet been unpacked. It was a family scene, a scene of coupledom at its worst.

  He had never quite understood how men and women could get on anyway. It seemed so unlikely that deep down he didn’t believe in it. “Women,” he thought dourly, “are born recriminators.” Yet he had always liked Jo immensely. She was beautiful, spirited, a little mad, and she had that passive-aggressive, almost androgynous nobility that upper-middle-class British women often possessed, a hint of vast tenderness that could never arrive on your plate. She was a complete enigma, and he respected anyone resolute enough to be an enigma. She looked at his tuxedo with a hangdog trustingness. So people were dressed for dinner, which meant that the world was still normal. She dried her eyes. This slender, dry gay man in his perfect tuxedo seemed more authoritative than her deflated husband still covered with dust and another man’s blood.

  “I think you should change, David. Both of you. I’ve heard it was an accident. There’s nothing you can do. I think you should have showers and go down to dinner. The police will be here in an hour, but they’ll want to see the body first, and it will take time. They know you’re not going anywhere. And they’ll know you’ve done nothing criminal. It’ll be sorted out. The police officer told me to reassure you.”

  “Did he?” she broke out.

  “He did. I know him. It’s all a formality. Perhaps Jo should shower first. You need to get out of those clothes.”

  “I’d love a drink,” she said fiercely.

  She went into the bathroom, and David changed in the main room. He couldn’t stop shaking. Well, Richard thought, let him shake. He was dead sure this irresponsible bastard had had a drink on the road. Should he save him or let him hang? The Moroccan police would not be forgiving about a Breathalyzer test. Richard began as testily as he could.

  “I have to ask you. How did it happen? I think you should tell me before you tell the flics. So we can iron anything out.”

  “We were bowling along looking for the sign for Azna. There was a fossils seller standing by the road, like they always do. We’d seen hundreds of them since Chefchaouen. I couldn’t see. There was a lot of sand blowing across the road. Then the guy just stepped in front of us. He wanted us to stop. We thought he would carjack us. We’d heard about the carjackings.”

  “Carjackings?”

  David threw up one hand. “It’s like he wanted to bluff us. Or commit suicide. It was like he didn’t understand the speed of a car.”

  Richard didn’t know how to deal with an observation like that. A little dry irony?

  “These are simple people, David. They don’t always understand things like the speed of a car. Some of them don’t even know what cars are. They’ve only seen them in the movies. Incredible, isn’t it? In this day and age.”

  “I’m surprised they’ve seen movies.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jo said impatiently. “The fact is, we hit him.”

  Richard relented, and he merely watched David loosen his collar and sweat it out. The doctor didn’t even feel the barb. “These sorts of accidents happen. The main thing is to come clean, cooperate wit
h the police, and seem overwhelmingly contrite. Sometimes they will ask for a discreet bribe. We can do that, can’t we?”

  “If it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “It might be. We’ll see. The guy there now isn’t too bad. They’ll probably ask you if you knew the kid. They always ask that.”

  “How the hell could we have?”

  “It’s just their way of getting their suspicions out in the open. We have to go along with it.”

  They were both English, so there was complicity. Us and them. The “them” was especially Muslim officials who didn’t drink. The question was, did the “them” include the dead boy lying in the garage? They didn’t even know his name. There was no ID on him, and it was highly unusual for a Moroccan not to be carrying ID. There was nothing in his pockets at all, not even a single dirham note. Normally, one would laugh.

  David wondered if Richard was lying. There was something that made him think so. Not massively, but slightly. Lies are excusable, but it depends on what they are, and when he searched David’s boxy, hypermasculine face, he found it half open like a box that hasn’t been properly closed. The eyes were in eclipse.

  Behind them, David crept about unsurely, trying to figure a way out of this mess, and prepared to bend things a little. His face sweated and wouldn’t dry, and he rubbed his fingers frantically as if he wanted to get something off them, though he had obviously washed them thoroughly. He kicked off his expensive Oxfords in disgust and his face became petulantly enraged. Gradually he calmed down. Richard sat on the bed next to him while they listened to the woman showering in the next room. They had known each other for some time in London, but they had never seen each other elsewhere. Richard watched him gulp down the pitcher of water.

  “It’s so damn hot,” David moaned.

  “Yes, it’s the Sahara, old boy.”

  “I know. But it’s so hot.”

  His teeth chattered.

  “Have you told me everything, David? You might as well tell me everything so I can help you.”

  “I have.”

  “Have you really?”

  David tried to get up, then sat down again. “I’m very sorry for the trouble. We both are. Incredibly sorry.”

  “It’s not something to apologize for. As long as I know you’ve remembered everything correctly.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “You’re okay to be grilled by this fat slob of a policeman? Do you speak any French?”

  “Of course I speak French. And why would I not be okay?”

  Richard got up and suddenly felt claustrophobic. A few stray thoughts rushed through his mind. The DJ from London, the people who wanted to arrive by helicopter—Lord Swann—the supply of dates and sugar from Errachidia, the pool party they were going to throw the following night. There was too much to remember. And the paparazzi they had turned away at the gates. It was all going awry and he was getting a headache.

  The shower stopped and David began organizing a fresh shirt. He dithered and his fingers struggled with buttons. “Come down to dinner, both of you. No one will know anything. And if they do, what have you done wrong? You’re as much victims as that poor kid.” Again, Richard’s brisk tone to keep up morale.

  David nodded, and tied up his shoes. He had nothing more to say and his shoulders slumped forward. He was like a Pinocchio with snipped wires, and it would take a miracle to get him rewired before the weekend was out. For the first time, Richard felt sorry for him. He leaned down and whispered, “David, did you have a drink earlier?”

  “Rubbish.”

  BEFORE RICHARD COULD ASK AGAIN, JO EMERGED. SHE WAS now noticeably less tense. Her skin had revived, and soon the three of them were upright, ready to roll. They sauntered back to the house in a chattering of egrets. By the opulently lit doors, the staff stood awkwardly, their nervousness written large on their faces, while bats wheeled close to their heads.

  “Never mind the bats,” Richard drawled. “They only live for twenty-four hours.”

  There was a look of terror on Jo’s face. It had suddenly dawned on her that this was a very elegant party and she didn’t know anyone there. She faltered at the threshold as the sound of massed voices no longer in control of themselves swept through the opening doors and the candlelight burst on their eyes. She looked around at Richard and said, “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “I have to go to the garage. That’s where the boy is.”

  “Couldn’t you stay?”

  “Not now. David will be next to you.”

  She didn’t seem very reassured.

  “Entrez,” one of the staff said gently, holding open the door for her. The air-conditioning was a shock, and she hesitated.

  “Go on,” Richard said. “Be brave.”

  But what did braveness have to do with it?

  THE BOY HAD BEEN LAID OUT ON ONE OF THE WORKTABLES in the garages—former stables that had been converted into a space for five cars. Between two jeeps, the mangled body lay in its stained djellaba with three oil lamps standing around it. Disturbed by the sight, the staff had turned off the overhead neon light and stood around the corpse, not knowing what to think. Dally was with them, pacing around the table without looking at it, and Hamid was there with him, observing him anxiously. Dally, he was thinking, was not a cool head. He overreacted to everything. He was not a commanding man. He cursed under his breath and kept asking Hamid when the police were arriving.

  “They arrive when they arrive,” Hamid replied icily.

  “It’s a fucking disaster,” the American muttered.

  The boy’s hands were spread out on either side of him, and the eyes had been closed; the blood had come to a standstill. The staff whispered among themselves. Before them lay the considerable mystery of his identity.

  Different tribes dealt in different fossils, and only black market dealers crossed the lines. The Aït Atta, for example, dealt in crinoids. That much they knew. But was he Aït Atta? Some of the staff claimed that he might be from the north-facing mountains, those who called themselves “the Atta of the shadow.” Some thought he might be Aït Iazzer or even Aït Merad. But they had no way of saying. They were merely speculating to dispel their unease.

  Richard came in finally, at half past one. He was flustered and his face was damp, and when he saw the body, he went cold and officious.

  “I want to know if we emptied his pockets thoroughly?”

  “It was illegal,” Hamid whispered, “but we did it anyway.”

  “There was nothing in them,” Dally snapped. “Which is not really possible. Where are the Hennigers?”

  “They’re at dinner. I think I calmed them down.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “Not at all. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Not drunk now,” Dally sneered. “He ran right over him. The kid wasn’t just hit. Am I right, Hamid?”

  They thought for a while. Richard stepped slowly around the table. The boy had cropped hair, dark bronze skin with blue tattoos. A high, perfect, aristocratic nose and wide, sensual lips. It was a tragic waste of an exquisite boy, he thought airily.

  Dally took his arm, going into a rapid English that would make their words private in front of the staff. He was visibly upset.

  “What are we going to do, Richard? You’ve called the flics. So now it’s going to be a circus.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “I think we should get it settled tonight. We can pay them.”

  “Settled? They have to find out who he is first. When they find that out, it might change.”

  “Jesus, are you kidding?”

  “I don’t think we have anything to worry about. It’s clear what happened.”

  “Oh, is it? Is it clear that he has nothing on him? It’s like he’s been robbed. I don’t think anything is clear at all. I think that limey is hiding something. Any chance to fuck with us, and they will.”

  “They?” Richard opened his eyes wide.

&nb
sp; “The Moroccans. They will, too. They will fuck with us.”

  “He must have a family,” Richard said quietly, nodding at the body.

  “That’s what I mean. The family will show up—and then they’ll fuck with us. They’ll say the infidels killed their boy.”

  “They might, yes. Which would be true.”

  Then he added, “Dally, you really should calm down a bit. They’re not going to fuck with us.”

  Hamid looked at them intently, since he understood at least half of what they were saying, and his eyes seemed to pluck words out of the air and devour them. He understood that they were discussing fear of Moroccans. It was only natural. The rumors would spread like wildfire, and he wanted to touch them on the shoulder and tell them how little liked they were by the indigènes. Or rather, how little trusted they were. He was inclined to offer them some help, but he also enjoyed their sudden helplessness. It was interesting, to say the least. Truly, there was no line of people waiting at the gate of Patience.

  “What do you think, Hamid?”

  “I think, Monsieur, we should tell the staff to not tell anyone in Tafnet.”

  And he smiled, because it was impossible.

  “Yes,” Richard said dutifully. “Can you ask them?”

  Suddenly there were tears in Dally’s big brown eyes, and a cow look ruined his superbness.

  “How?” he moaned.

  The staff stirred, and they pulled out a chair for him. Richard asked them to close the doors to the garage and keep them shut. The guests’ cars were all parked in the open inside the ksour walls. It was childish, because of course they would find out, and it was not as if they would come storming down to the garage in a mob. It was more to calm Dally and help him retain his sanity.

  “Get us some drinks from the house, will you?” Richard said to Hamid. “Two Scotches. We’ll take them outside.”

  The weather had been stifling lately. The Chergui was blowing, with its saline taste and its withering scorn. Living things scattered before it.

  They went outside to the gate, and the light of the stars cooled their minds by emptying them. The river echoed below, with its promise of cool, and gradually Dally stopped crying. “That poor fucking kid,” he kept saying, as if he wanted to pound something with his fist. His brown silk shirt looked self-mocking now and faintly ridiculous.