Alexandra Singer (21 page)

Larbi stopped abruptly. He got up and began to walk off, but the men shouted at him. “What happens? How can you leave us like this?”

The storyteller shrugged and continued walking, but a stocky member of the audience grabbed him and forced him back. He smiled and sat down. It was all part of his act.

“Then, instead of finding the ogress fast asleep as she had expected, the girl found the ogress lying in terror upon the trodden floor, trying to scream. She was muttering incessantly for
help, but the girl looked on with contempt for the stepmother she had learnt to despise.

“Yet the ogress was not giving birth. Not, at least, from between her thighs. A few moments later, she was forced to stop her screaming. Something grotesque was wriggling its way out of
her gaping mouth, as the ogress and the girl’s eyes met in a shared moment of horror.

“All of a sudden, the snake made its entrance into the world, slithering out of the mouth of the ogress. It bit its own mother, and as she died, the ogress rocked with all the agonies of
poison and the girl simply watched the woman, transfixed. She had no time to run away, the snake was already fully grown and it turned its head to speak to her. It slithered over and was soon
breathing at her neck and coiling itself around her. It tried to hiss at her seductively, and there was nothing the girl could do to fight back as it took her on the very floor where her stepmother
had died and now lay motionless, the fluid of afterbirth pouring from her lifeless mouth.”

The crowd was transfixed.

“When the brother came to look for the girl at the house, he marched into his former home and found the girl and the snake together.”

Larbi stood up and shouted, “Yet wait! There is no happy ending!” His eyes were magnetic and he smiled apologetically. “If anybody would like to make a small donation for my
upkeep, it would be gratefully appreciated... ” He pulled a small clay bowl from beneath his cloak and went around, offering it to the crowd. During this momentary pause, a snake trader
brought his snakes into the centre of the crowd. The onlookers recoiled from them in delight and horror as the snakes horribly flickered their tongues through their stitched mouths. At the side of
the square some other snake charmers toyed with defanged black cobras, whilst robed Berber men and a few women chewed upon fried locusts.

On the side of the street an old man was laying the lute, high sweet notes rose into the air and floated above her head and the cobra rose out of its circle, its scaly loops undulating and its
reptile body upright, its small reptile head keeping in perfect time to the music as it bobbed its head about, its eyes moving almost lasciviously.

Maia saw Larbi sit down and someone brought him over some mint tea as several richer members of the crowd evidently took the opportunity to purchase some snakes. After a while Larbi returned to
take his place once more, counting the coins in his bowl. Seemingly pleased with the result, he intoned a blessing in Arabic, and started the story again. His voice began to rise, then whisper, and
his eyes grew large and wide.

“The snake kept the girl captive and the boy was forced to stay at the house. The snake presided over the household and soon began to speak against the girl whom he had forced to become
his wife. He was forging a bond with the girl’s brother, whispering seductively evil thoughts every day that the boy was finding hard to resist. The main desire in life for this creature was
corruption. It resolved to protect the boy from what it had come to consider its wife’s malevolence, for it was aware of how vehemently the girl still despised it. By this time, the girl was
no longer beautiful, the hardships and trials of her dreadful life having worn her down. When her brother looked at her, he sometimes felt a rush of sympathy, but the opportunity they might have
had to make their escape was long past, and he was now starting to enjoy the company of the snake.

“One evening the malicious snake and his brother-in-law hatched a vicious plan. As the girl was reluctantly preparing an elaborate evening meal, the snake slithered up behind her
affectionately, and viciously bit her on her neck. Just as her stepmother had died, the girl began to writhe in agony, the poison coursing through her veins. The snake and the boy, left together,
leaving the girl alone in the house to die. But the snake had bitten her only lightly, and she survived.

“The brother did not mourn his sister. He felt that she had been lost to him many years earlier, when she had allowed herself to become the property of the snake. So the boy, now a
handsome young man, together with the snake, went off together into the night, the snake as dedicated to destruction as it had been when it first came into the world, and the boy now addicted and
utterly corrupted by the snake.”

Maia felt the entire crowd shiver, and then it erupted into applause as the ragged storyteller shuffled through the people. Larbi held his clay bowl stretched out for any extra coins. Maia
dropped some in his bowl and fell away.

She wondered why it was the girl who had to suffer, what had then happened to the girl, and why her punishment for existence had been a dreadful death. Abandoned because she had become old and
ugly, childless, alone amongst the sand dunes, her virginity lost, considered worthless and now isolated, what would become of her?

Maia turned back towards the crowd in the hope of finding Larbi, but he and the snake sellers had already left the square. Maia stood still, jostled by the people walking past, but she could not
feel them. She was thinking about the girl and her fate, and she felt that she too had been seduced into taking the plunge into a pool of terrible emptiness.

Larbi’s story haunted Maia’s nights. Her mind was becoming as cloudy as the dust that would swirl in from the desert. The inhabitants of Marrakech seemed to be even
more restless than normal. Tension rose until it exploded, like a crescendo of wrong notes. Anxiety pursued with an intensity that shrouded the air, and grey clouds lurked over the mountains.

Maia now hadn’t seen the Historian for weeks. In the afternoons, she painted and slept, and when Armand was in the mood, he visited her and they passed the time by making love. Yet there
was now no pretence of any tenderness between them. Armand did not fail to supply her with her needs, despite her increasing narcotic appetite. But with desperation she paced her empty room,
accepting the scant affection he bestowed on her.

In the evenings Maia found herself unable to stay away from the bar at the Grand Tazi. She drank the mint tea that Mahmoud offered her with enthusiasm, and every night Tariq delighted in
creating new concoctions. Her favourite was cold mint tea with vodka. Even Mahmoud commented on her intake.

“Are you not taking a little too much, Maia?”

“Why do you care?”

He laughed heartily.

“Because I still need you to paint! And it is not too good for you.”

“Why do you care about what I drink? You introduced me to something far worse.”

“I do not know what you mean, dear! You are imagining things. It is not the same!” He ambled off to charm some more guests.

But Mahmoud had begun to notice that the colours and shapes of Maia’s paintings were as murky as her mind. “Well, has the spider emerged from his lair?”

“Spider?”

“Mihai. Your Historian. You must know that you are his collateral, little fly, his collateral! My hands are tied, little fly.”

“Little fly? Why do you keep calling me that?”

“We are all caught in his web. Sticky, sticky!”

“I could leave.”

Suddenly he was serious. “We both know that you will not do that.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“He won’t let you go, you know too much about him now.”

“Not at all, Mahmoud. I don’t know what you mean. The problem is that I don’t know anything. I never see him.”

“That is no problem,” he said, and suddenly he looked extraordinarily depressed. “I am being squeezed,”

“By who?”

“Who do you suppose? By your employer.”

“Not the Historian? I thought you were friends.”

“Who else? He takes so much from me,” and he looked down at the ground.

Against all her instincts, Maia was sympathetic towards Mahmoud. She was too weak to fight against any of them now, and she didn’t care enough to bother.

“How can I have any sympathy for you Mahmoud? After what you did to me.”

“It was not my choice,” he said despairingly. “We were acting for the Historian. He made us.”

“Armand too?”

Mahmoud made a clicking sound with his tongue, “That man acts on his own. And the Historian is not my friend. Nor yours.”

Across the bar Maia caught sight of Armand; she lowered her face for fear that he might see her. The bar swirled and warped with bubbling voices, the spiralling exhalations and the loosening of
inhibitions. Mahmound relaxed into the seat beside her and placed his hand upon her knee. Maia wished that he would leave her alone. He tapped a stubby finger on the table top to an unheard
rhythm.

She left him in a mood of frustration; unable to elicit any sense from him. At the bar the guests dropped out and were succeeded by other people. Maia returned to the riad.

Maia painted women in natural poses, capturing them in moments of action, walking sedately in the serpentine streets. Now the wind was blowing, she found that her view from the
rooftops was becoming useless, the women always fully garbed, dark, barely visible figures. They were depicted as only insignificant black dots on her canvas, for that was how they seemed to her,
small and inconsequential.

As she slipped further into dependence and craving, a voice within her still reprimanded her for her days of indolence and futility, and she knew that the longer she stayed in this expatriate
refuge, the further she would become corrupted.

Maia’s fear was that she too would become like the Historian, like Armand, nihilistic pleasure seekers on the periphery of a world, which they would never be able to enter, and exiled from
the one they had rejected. She knew that she had never found the bright light and inspiration she had been hoping for. Nothing good had come out of this escapade; no decent work, no friendships.
The chance to paint nude women, still eluded her. So she decided to enter the private world of women, and then she could draw the images and transfer them to the canvas.

Armand did not visit her for days and Maia wondered if she ought to go in search of a new supplier. But her craving was not yet so strong, and so she now worked up the courage to visit the
hamam
alone.

On entering, she undressed. She saw the other naked women wandering around without shame, bodies moving forwards through the steam. Maia looked at the women and imagined how she would portray
their secret world.

It was a social ritual. This was where the male fantasy of the east came alive. Women of all shapes and sizes walked around unabashed, gossiping and laughing with one another.

A woman came to exfoliate her and began with some abrasive cleaning, before she was doused with a bucket of cold water. But as Maia lay on her front and the woman continued to clean her, she was
only able to think about the life of this woman. The attendant was silent, simply going about her job with methodical, mechanical actions. Maia sensed a misery about this woman, and felt guilty.
This was supposed to be the ultimate Moroccan experience, but instead Maia could only think about how it must be to spend one’s time scraping the backs of more privileged women. The steam was
dense as she entered the next room, and she went to sit on one of the tiled benches. A woman came to sit next to her, smiling at Maia.

“I am Safira.” Her hair was as short as that of a boy and her eyes were huge and dark, her breasts feminine and full. Maia could think only of how she would paint those eyes.

Over time, Maia told her about the Historian, about her art, and about the Grand Tazi and Mahmoud, but she did not tell her about Armand. For the first time in months, Maia felt the joy and
closeness of communicating with another woman.

Maia began to frequent the
hamam
daily, avoiding the Grand Tazi. The two women would pass their evenings together, wondering about the streets. She took Safira back to the
Historian’s house, and they passed Ina on the stairs. Again, Maia felt her penetrating gaze, but still she said nothing.

Maia had never kissed a woman before, but on the rooftop she felt a sharp, sweet taste and their new adoration for one another unfolded. A few weeks went by and Maia realised that the Historian
was still away, and in that time she was yet to visit the Grand Tazi. With Safira’s presence, Maia found her art was improving, the colours becoming clearer and brighter. She even began to be
less dependent on her supplies.

Maia painted Safira in countless poses. In her paintings and studies, as in reality, the charismatic presence of her model was inescapable. She felt that the best depiction of Safira was in the
nude. She lounged in a blue armchair, facing toward the viewer but at an angle, both hands held nonchalantly resting behind her head.

Maia’s paintings were not decorative or superficial, as Armand and the Historian had suggested, but her characters advanced purposefully through the shades of red, carrying a fierce erotic
charge. The broad, choppy strokes suggested an extreme disturbance; the stories suggested weakness, an enforced surrender. Looking at it she saw that each painting was a confrontation. There was
something coarse and primitive in them.

Safira looked up at her from beneath lowered lids as Maia told Safira about her broken past. “We do not keep all our old sentiments. The mind is cultivated enough already. You must learn
to let go.”

“People are always telling me that. But I don’t know how.”

Maia believed that finally she had found a friend, an ally who supported her, not competed with her. They shared everything, Maia’s bed, Maia’s body, Maia’s ritual. They shared
more than Maia could ever have imagined.