The Heat of Betrayal (19 page)

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.

What the hell was this all about? Why did Paul know this guy?

I charged down the hall, entering a kitchen that had several days of dirty dishes and brimming ashtrays scattered everywhere, not to mention a stench that I associated with rotting vegetables. I kept shouting: ‘
Monsieur, monsieur.
' Again no answer. Another charge down the long corridor. Another door thrown open. Only this time I found myself staring in at a huge carved bed, on which Omar and Monsieur Ben Hassan were sleeping naked. They were on separate corners of the expansive mattress, Omar looking so diminutive and compact compared to the fleshy enormity of Ben Hassan. As soon as I threw open the door Omar snapped awake. Seeing me he scrambled for a sheet to cover himself, then started hissing at me in Arabic. At which point Ben Hassan opened his eyes slowly, took me in, and said:

‘You interrupted our siesta.'

‘I can't find my backpack.'

‘And you immediately thought that the dirty Moroccans had stolen it.'

‘You let me sleep through my flight. Where have you put my bag?'

‘In the cupboard by the front door. You will find that nothing has been touched. If you need the bathroom it's the door next to the cupboard. There is a shower there as well. Fresh towels have been laid out for you. Please excuse the state of the kitchen. We have been working flat out on a project for several days, and housekeeping, alas, has taken a back seat. But we'll eat out tonight.'

‘I need to get going.'

‘Get going where?'

‘To find Paul. You know where he's gone, don't you?'

‘Go and have a shower. I will ask Omar to make some tea, and then we will discuss your husband and his whereabouts.'

‘I left Essaouira in a hurry yesterday when I learned that Paul had come to Casablanca. So I have nothing to change into, no toiletries.'

‘I can supply you with a toothbrush, but I sense we are in two different worlds when it comes to clothing size or taste. However, there is a big French clothing shop a five-minute walk from here. Omar would be happy to guide you.'

‘I'll think about it. Could I use a phone, please?'

‘Are you wanting to call Royal Air Maroc?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘I've taken care of that for you.'

‘You what?'

‘When you passed out I tried waking you many times. When you wouldn't stir I took the liberty of looking in your bag and finding your travel documents. I saw that your flight was at midday today. Given your exhaustion I knew you simply wouldn't be making the flight. So I called a friend who runs everything at Royal Air Maroc and you are booked on the same flight at midday tomorrow. May I now extend the invitation for you to take advantage of our guest bed tonight and allow me to take you out for dinner?'

I found myself just a little bemused by all this.

‘If you will give us ten minutes to wash and dress . . .' he said.

I nodded accord and headed down the corridor. In the closet near the front door there, indeed, was my bag. My passport was in place. So too my laptop. And my wallet with assorted credit cards. And a fresh printout of the changed reservation with the old one stapled behind it. The new printout also showed that the flight change had been made without cost to me.

I reproached myself for assuming that my host and his assistant/lover had robbed me. I was having that knee-jerk Western reaction to things North African: a belief that, with few exceptions, no one here was to be trusted. But if the past few weeks had proven anything it was that, outside of a few hassled moments, I had been treated with considerable respect and propriety. And Monsieur Ben Hassan, rather than turning me away from his door, had taken me in, allowed me to pass out and sleep undisturbed for much of the day, changed my flight reservation to the following day, and was now offering me the chance to stay here tonight. I owed him thanks for that. Just as I was also still a little dubious about him going through my bag to see if I had a plane ticket in need of changing. Wasn't there some hidden motive? The man was up to something in what I presumed was the false-passports department. Just as I kept wondering what he might have on Paul in the way of information that my husband might not want shared with others. Then there was the way that, like a ruthlessly cool bridge player, he had trumped me with that little bombshell: ‘
He's seeing his wife
.' A revelation that landed like a kick to the head.

Still, I couldn't fault his hospitality to date, though I could certainly fault my hyper-anxiety and paranoia for coming across as wildly suspicious and distrustful. I returned to the living room and began making up the bed in which I had slept.

‘There is no need to assuage your guilt by tidying up.'

I turned around and saw that he was in a white djellaba, already marked with sweat, as the ceiling fans did little to temper the heat of the late afternoon.

‘But I do feel guilty – especially for the way I immediately assumed—'

‘We all have our prejudices – even when we tell ourselves that we are not prejudiced.'

‘I apologise.'

‘
Ego te absolvo.
'

I smiled back. ‘You're Catholic?'

‘My mother was. My father kicked with the Muslim foot.
Moi
. . . I am somewhere in between. But the Catholic in me likes the instant redemption of confession. There is no need to be apologetic about before. You will join me for dinner tonight?'

‘That is most generous of you. But I need to find some clothes first. I left Essaouira with nothing at all.'

‘Being on the run from the police usually means urgent departures.'

‘How did you know I was running away from the cops?'

‘I have my sources. But fear not, none of them know you are here. I am
completement discret
. But bravo for eluding them the way you did. Of course they think that you beat up Paul with some heavy object. Perhaps he deserved your wrath. A brilliantly talented man, Paul. One of the most gifted artists I've encountered, yet someone who cannot face any sort of grounded reality. Instead of simply saying what he does not want, he plays the game of agreeing to something that he knows he cannot follow through on, and then uses these lies as the beginning of an exit strategy.'

I looked at Monsieur Ben Hassan with even greater respect. Never before had I heard someone nail Paul's manifold psychological complexities. Of course, when you are in the midst of a crisis with somebody else, you are more than receptive to anyone who confirms your own dark thoughts. I sensed that if I hung around today and accepted Mr Ben Hassan's hospitality, I would learn much more about the man I once thought I knew and understood, but whose outer shell was a veneer behind which multiple contradictory versions of the same person lived.

‘If you can put up with me for another few hours,' I told Ben Hassan, ‘I'd very much like to stay.'

‘I think I can put up with you,' he said.

THERE WAS, INDEED
, a large chain department store just a five-minute walk from Monsieur Ben Hassan's apartment. I took what few worldly goods I had with me, knowing that a passport is something you never leave anywhere in Morocco – especially with a man who dealt in travel documents of an illegal variety.

‘Do you want a shower before you depart?' he asked.

‘I'll get one when I return with clean clothes.'

‘Omar can show you the way.'

‘Just tell me.'

Ben Hassan explained how to find this store, and how there was a café next door – the Parisian – that had Wi-Fi.

Ten minutes later I found myself back in a monocultural world of consumerist goods and fashion; of air-conditioned environments and a low hum of poppy muzak which, some marketing guru no doubt reasoned, provides the right sonic smoothness to encourage you to buy more. As I filled my basket with several pairs of underwear, T-shirts, a pair of tan cotton pants, khaki shorts, two white linen shirts, a pair of sandals, I felt another stab of desperate sadness. A comment Paul made just days earlier refilled my ears. Standing out on the balcony of our room, the sun declining into the Atlantic, a glass of wine in hand, still intoxicated with the love we had just made inside, the heat of the day diminishing, the light bathing the cityscape in a cognac glow, my husband turned to me with a near-beatific smile. And said: