Alexandra Singer (10 page)

“You know, you are working for the Historian here, but you can let off some steam now and again. I think you need to.”

“And why might you think that?”

“You are very uptight. Relax.’

“That is not true!”

Armand smiled, knowingly. But Maia knew he was right. The Historian left her without company, without real instructions. What did he expect her to do? Armand was taking her side, and she felt a
rush of warmth towards him. He was interested in her.

Maia thought about the unpleasantness she sensed emanating from the Historian, and she wondered for how long she would be able to tolerate his hospitality. She found her initial excitement at
the opportunity fading. But she needed the money. She thought about the woman she had met at the café. She wanted to stay and paint.

Suddenly Armand’s features tightened, his heavy eyebrows drew together, and his previously calm face concentrated upon an unseen point.

“What’s wrong?” Maia asked.

“I get a little down every so often,” said Armand. “It is so difficult to escape, once you are involved.” Maia had no clue what he was talking about, but she nodded.
“We are all here hiding from one thing or another.” At that, Armand seemed to collect himself. “It is nothing, just that sometimes I feel a little empty.”

He was looking at her, she imagined with hope. His strangeness was attractive, his present clouded by a distant past and unreadable emotions. She had found the distraction for which she had been
searching.

Over Armand’s head, Maia saw Rupert slouch into the café. Maia caught the look of utter delight that showed upon Rupert’s sly face as he took in the sight of all the gathered
men. He was in his element, and he was making his way straight over to them.

“Hello, Maia!” Rupert was effusive, but Maia was confounded by his friendliness, and she remained cold towards him.

“What are you doing here, Rupert?”

“I heard this was an interesting place to come, you never know who you might meet,” and he winked at them both.

Bemusement flickered across Armand’s face.

Rupert peered down at them and leaned his body against their table. “So, tell me my friends, how does this compare to the fabulous Grand Tazi?”

“Did we invite you to join us Rupert?”

He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Oh, Maia, Maia. Please don’t blame me for the other night. It was nothing to do with me.”

“I pity you. That woman you are with is dreadful.”

Rupert squealed and jumped around. He leaned back down again towards them and whispered, “I’m trying to get away from her. She just won’t leave me alone.”

“I thought you had some sort of mutually profitable arrangement.”

Rupert pulled up a chair and Maia relented. He seemed genuinely despondent. “I regret ever getting involved with them now. That woman is like a vampire! She wants me all the time. And the
husband... I just can’t stand him anymore, with his hangdog air and awful jibes.”

“So why are you here?” said Armand.

“To check out the talent, of course!”

Maia and Armand exchanged a silent and surreptitious look.

“You’re drunk,” Maia said. “You prefer men, don’t you, Rupert?”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“Of course, I don’t Rupert. But it makes me wonder how you bear being a woman’s manservant, especially one as unattractive as Lucy Bambage.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“But my friend,” Armand said softly, “that is exactly what you are.”

“I know,” wailed Rupert, and half the café’s clientele turned to look at him, “it’s so awful.” Maia suspected that Rupert was finding material luxury
no substitute for thwarted passions.

“How did you know where to find me?” Maia asked.

“It wasn’t really you I was looking for,” he said, and winked. “But I asked around. Apparently the locals don’t find it so difficult to spot a western woman trying
to blend in. What are you doing here?”

“The company is better. I found Armand in the street. Or rather, he found me.”

“How coincidental,” said Rupert.

“Yes, I thought so too,” said Armand.

“Have you two met before?” asked Maia.

Armand looked down.

“But of course we have!” laughed Rupert. “Armand is a regular at the Grand Tazi. He is rather tight with Mahmoud and your Historian.”

“Really?” asked Maia, thinking about Mahmoud’s warning the other night.

“
J’adoute!
”

Armand and Maia both looked at Rupert.

“Armand, you just touched the knight!”

Armand looked at him blankly.

“I’m afraid I’m rather strict on the subject of chess. I believe that if you touch a piece, even inadvertently, you must move it. You must say,
‘
J’adoute
’.”

“That is ridiculous, Rupert. I might as well start on you with a lecture about the phallic symbolism of chess pieces. Ignore him,” Maia said to Armand. “This man is just a
gigolo.”

Armand smiled at them both benignly. Rupert was looking around the bar, shifting in his chair as the look of desire flitted over his face. She wondered how he was able to tolerate the
arrangement with the Bambages. Despite his slimness, there was a certain vulnerability about him. He had the face of one plunged into corruption.

A moment later, Rupert’s attention was fixed once more on the chessboard.

“So, my friends, did you know that chess originated in India, probably around the sixth century. The sixty-four squares of eight by eight is the
mandala
, the symbolic representation
of the Universe. It was a game of warfare and fate – ”

“It still is,” said Armand.

Rupert trailed off as he realised that Armand was staring at him. Maia was astonished to see the self-important Rupert silenced with a mere look.

Armand stood up. “I don’t think we will continue with the game. Maia, it seems you have won.”

“Armand, don’t be a bad loser.”

“Of course not Maia! It looks as if you have won. I can’t hang around here all day dragging out the game.”

“But I will play with you instead!” said Rupert.

“I don’t think so. I’m taking Maia down to the Grand Tazi. I have something to discuss with Mahmoud.”

“Then I shall accompany you!”

“Shall you?” Armand raised his eyebrow.

“I don’t mind.” Maia was becoming fond of Rupert and his eccentric ways. She was pleased by his decision to align himself with her after Lucy Bambage’s comments. She
accepted Armand taking charge, and found that she enjoyed it.

When they reached the Grand Tazi the violet sky was filled with shadows, and storks lined the city walls. In the dark, smoky recesses crudely carved into the stone behind the
pool, sat several Russians and Arabs quietly conversing, their heads bowed closely together. It was becoming obvious to Maia that the Grand Tazi was a popular venue for unsavoury exiles, for
expectations and transactions. Beneath the darkening sky, Maia saw how Mahmoud’s shabby yard might come to appear almost luxurious, despite the weeds twisting around the fixed stone plinths,
the cracked, peeling walls, and the filthy, ragged curtains. Emerald tiles lay broken beneath her feet, and Mahmoud had added several small lemon trees placed in huge terracotta pots placed around
the pool. Light glowed gently from intricately worked iron wrought lamps of tinted glass, which hung from the walls.

Maia’s stomach dropped as she turned and saw the Bambages. Watching them interact with one another and their paid escort, Rupert, who had returned straight to them just as surely as a dog
returns panting to its master, Maia wondered how the purple faced Martin Bambage found it possible to tolerate such an unbearable situation. All these people had something in common; they had
nothing in mind but a taste of oblivion whilst remaining cocooned in their wealth. Fleeing expectations that they were either unwilling or unable to meet, they were sidesteppers of life, who were
more than willing to leave everything behind and wait out their time beneath the North African sun.

Armand and Rupert disappeared off somewhere, and Maia hesitated to approach anybody. Mahmoud was nowhere to be seen, and no other familiar faces were visible. As she approached the pool, she
noticed the Historian sitting on the edge, dangling his legs in the water, his trouser legs rolled up. His arched eyebrows and patrician face, his high cheekbones and straight mouth set in the
stiff entirety of his face, she sensed a real dishonesty about the man. His trousers were dirty and splashed. The sight of the reserved and distinguished Historian sitting there was an amusingly
strange sight. He looked to her like a small schoolboy playing truant.

Maia sat down beside him.

“And how is it going with you this afternoon?” said the Historian, as if she saw him everyday.

Maia was learning to play the game. “Very well. You do look a little overdressed for paddling.”

The Historian had brought a man with him back from the bar, who was standing just behind. “Hello.” The man reached down to take Maia’s hand. He had long, thin fingers and they
were icy to the touch. An enormous gap between his two front teeth lent him an unassuming lisp.

The man’s name was Konstantin and he had a bald, marble looking head, upon which spectacles perched. Konstantin moved in an awkward way, his trunk seemed unstable, and as he spoke he
swayed like a willow tree in the breeze. Amongst the hordes of vacationing foreigners, Maia had come to recognise the occasional individual who appeared a little more accustomed to their
surroundings. The world of foreigners in Morocco existed separately whilst remaining at the same time part of the broader society. They had their own economy, myths and code of ethics. At first
Maia thought they were, for the most part, the frauds, the freaks and the failures who could not make it at home, but by now she was prepared to admit that their stories were more varied and
complex than their appearances would suggest and the Grand Tazi was the social hub for this transient tribe. Konstantin followed the Historian obediently around the bar. Every time the Historian
moved, his bulbous eyes swivelled to follow him and they barely left him for a moment. He glared at Maia as the Historian talked, his animosity palpable.

“What is this statue?” asked Maia, and she pointed to a grotesque statue, which had been placed awkwardly on a raised plinth at the furthest corner of the pool. Carved in grey stone,
it was a small, awkward creature with a hugely swollen, obscenely large member. It was grinning lewdly at her in the dusk. Maia wanted to tear her eyes away from the creature, but it stood directly
facing the guests, commanding their attention.

“That is the Priapus, Mahmoud keeps it here to guard his garden.” said the Historian, managing to maintain a serious expression.

“Really?” said Maia, incredulously.

“Oh yes,” said the Historian, “the Priapus was the ugly child of Aphrodite, cursed by Hera, who made him offensive in his ugliness.” Maia inspected the statue; he seemed
to lend the hotel an even more hedonistic air.

“Priapos was born from Aphrodite’s womb with a huge belly, feet and hands, nose and tongue, and this gigantic, continuously erect phallus. It seems that Aphrodite was so offended
that she cast Priapos out and abandoned him.”

“How cruel,” was all that Maia felt able to say.

“Very cruel,” continued the Historian, “but due to his voracious fertility, he is presumed to protect gardens.” Happily he quoted, “‘O, wayfarer, thou shalt
fear this god and hold thy hand high: this is worth thy while, for lo! There stands ready thy cross, the phallus.’”

Maia looked on, sceptical. Everything that the Historian was; her suspicions of his dishonesty, his chequered past, his secrets, were inseparable from this hotel. The Grand Tazi kept drawing her
in; she was intrigued by the oddness of it all. When Maia was around the Historian, she was starting to have the horrible suspicion that he was mocking her.

“Who said that?” asked Maia.

“Virgil. Be careful not to transgress.” And with that, the Historian sauntered off to speak to Mahmoud, and Maia was left alone with Konstantin.

“Mihai tells me that you are an artist,” he said, “and that you are obsessed with painting the female form.”

Maia sighed. “I have already explained this. You must admit that especially here, the social presence of women is very different to that of a man. To be born a woman is to be born into the
keeping of men, into an allotted and confined space.”

“Have you finished?” Konstantin asked, in his bizarre lisp.

She continued, though slightly taken aback, “Do you not understand that a woman must constantly watch herself? Here, I must always watch myself. It becomes a little tedious.”

Konstantin smiled. His accented English was stilted. “I feel I must tell you not to worry. I prefer men.”

“I am sorry. Then I suppose that you have visited The Parador bar?” said Maia, recalling the café she had visited with Armand.

“Of course, but usually I come here. I have seen several of your new friends there, however.”

Maia was intrigued. “Which friends?”

Konstantin only tapped the side of his nose with his long fingers. He leaned towards her. “Don’t trust him.”

“Trust who?”

“Anyone.”

“Not even you?” Maia tried to joke, she didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. “Do you mean Armand?”

“I was not referring to him. But, him too. I am sorry for him.” He said this with a tone of superiority.

“Why is that?”

“He must run to the Historian’s whims; he is desperate for success. He runs too much. They do not like one another.”

“I know he has suffered,” said Maia.

“No, you do not know what you think you know. Armand makes many other people suffer too.”

“So he is damaged, that is not so unusual.”

“Be careful. Armand suffers no internal conflict. If the theory is correct that feeling is in the head, then... the Historian is the worst. He likes to weave his webs.”

“Webs? What do you mean? I thought you and the Historian were close.”

Konstantin beamed proudly. “We are. But that does not mean he is without fault.”