Robin

 

Harsh insistent knocking woke Robin from his dream—of a boy flying a kite in a meadow, of dazzling sunlight catching his gray woolen shorts, causing them to glow like lustrous pewter.

"Entrez," he growled, semi-comatose. "Come in, whoever you are."

The form of a man appeared at the door. Robin recognized the catlike step. "Inspector Ouazzani. Come in. Come in." He brushed some newspapers off the stool by his bed.

The Inspector advanced through the gloom, then stopped. A moment later he was at the window throwing open the shutters.

"Christ, no, Hamid! You'll wake me up!"

"Can't stand the smell of hash."

He came then and sat down, his black leather jacket gleaming in the light.

"You don't usually call so early. I hope there's nothing wrong."

"There's always something wrong, Robin. You ought to know that." He put his feet up against the side of the bed. "This morning, fortunately, it doesn't have to do with you."

"Well, I'm glad of that." Robin sighed, then pulled up his naked body and arranged a decaying pillow behind his head.

"How can you live in such filth? The poorest Moroccan wouldn't put up with this."

They both gazed around at the mess. Suitcases were piled into a teetering tower, books were scattered everywhere, along with boxes of newspapers and other trash. Broken phonograph records and unwashed laundry littered the floor, ashtrays overflowed, and the little table where Robin worked was piled with dishes and a typewriter covered with dust.

"This place is disgusting—absolutely foul. Even your sheets are filthy. What a hole!"

"It's my lair, Hamid. All my treasures are here."

"At least you could change your sheets."

"I will. Today is washday. On my way to breakfast I'll take them out."

"I smell something. Do you keep a cat?"

"They come and go—come and go."

"Well, I'm disgusted. You live like a pig!"

"This is just my little niche in Tangier."

Hamid offered him a cigarette.

"No thanks. My throat's still raw."

Hamid shrugged and lit up. "Why don't you get an apartment somewhere, get out of this stinking hotel?"

"I should. I keep telling myself that. But I like living day to day. Also, it's nice to have the Socco Chico downstairs. It makes a good salon."

Hamid shook his head. "You're lazy. You need a good kick in the ass."

Robin brushed some crumbs out of his bed—he'd had a picnic the night before. There were some kif seeds too, where his body depressed the mattress. He rolled over and swept them out.

"Ugh!"

"All right, Hamid. Enough about my habits. Please tell me what you want."

"Nazis," the Inspector said.

"Nazis?"

"Ex-Nazis—you know what I mean."

"You mean former Nazis who might be living in Tangier?"

"Yes. That's it."

"Well—what about them?"

"I want their names."

Robin shrugged. "There aren't any since Dr. Keitel left."

"Keitel?"

"Awful little man. He's in Liberia now."

"Well, there must be others. Tangier's filled with scum."

Robin shook his head. "There're plenty of old collaborators. Lanier, the surgeon. Princess Leontieff—they say she had an affair with Von Stuelpnagel. For that matter there's Madame Diplomante, but she was more of a Fascist type. Plenty of those left, but not the real thing. I guess there were a few in the international days."

"Some of them must still be around."

"Of course, Hamid, if you insist."

"Damn it, Robin, think. You know all the seamy types."

Robin shrugged. "There's a German boy who lives in the Casbah, but he must have been an infant during the war. He's writing a book about Himmler, who was 'vastly underrated' he says. I don't know him very well."

Hamid shook his head. "That's not what I mean."

"I'm sorry. I can't help you."

"All right." The Inspector stood up. "Call me if you think of anyone else. And clean this damn place out."

"Ha!"

When Hamid was gone, Robin slumped back in his bed. He scratched his chest and then a sore on his rump. The Inspector had looked tired, as if he wasn't getting sufficient sleep. What did he mean—he couldn't stand the smell of hash? With Kalinka he lived in it all the time. Everyone knew she was stoned to the ears.

He pulled himself up, limped over to the mirror above his wash basin, and inspected his unshaven face. His hair was a mess, a halo of tight red curls. He needed a bath and a good combing out. He splashed on some water and scratched at his rear again. Suddenly a burst of laughter spilled into the room. He turned to the window and saw two little Moroccan girls watching from a roof across the way. They were giggling at his nudity, their hands covering their mouths. He made a threatening gesture and slammed the shutters closed.

Oh, the medina, he thought, how I adore this stinking place. There wasn't any privacy, and the Oriental Hotel was one of the seediest around, but at least there was life in the medina, not the sterility of the European town. He cupped his balls and bounced them several times. Good exercise, he thought. He tore a comb through his hair with no result, then brought it to his nose and shrugged.

He struggled into a pair of jeans, pulled on a red turtleneck, and stooped to tie his sneakers. Still bent, he gathered up his laundry: socks, underwear, numerous shirts and pants. When he had everything together he ripped the sheets off the bed and stuffed the whole lot into a burlap sack. He loved this sack, for it was stenciled with a pair of shaking hands and the slogan "A Gift from the People of the United States." He had a scheme to buy up a truckload, then have the sacks converted into hippie clothes. He was sure he'd make a killing if he ever got around to it, and equally sure he never would.

He was a flight and a half from the lobby, the sack on his shoulder and an unlit cigar dangling from his lips, when he remembered it was Thursday, the day his column was due. He'd have to get it in by noon or face his editor's wrath. Damn, he thought. He didn't feel like work.

Out on the street he paused, wondering which way to turn. He'd given up trying to find an honest laundry—whichever one he came to would have to do. All of them stole, either socks or underpants—the Moroccans were short of both, it seemed. But though they all charged outrageous fees, they were far better than the hotel. He'd had a terrible row there the year before, when the maid had taken all his clothes and washed them without his consent. Furious over that and the outlandish bill, he'd gone to the desk to complain.

"Your things have been washed," said the manager, "so you have to pay."

"But the point," Robin protested, "is that I didn't ask that they be washed. I prefer to take my washing out."

"Take it out. By all means take it out. But pay this time, or we'll dirty your clothes before we give them back."

"Dirty them? How will you dirty them?"

"Use them as dust rags, I expect."

It was absurd and hilarious—a typical situation with the people of Tangier. They'd do anything for money, anything to cheat, but later they'd want to discuss existentialism over sweet mint tea. Robin loved them, and hated them too. Though frequently they drove him to despair, he found them irresistible. What can you do with people, he often wondered, who throw up their hands and say "God's will" no matter what miserable thing happens in their lives? Their submission to destiny made them passive about everything but money—the one subject about which they were impossible all the time. They'd steal most cleverly, but not blame themselves if they were caught. It was always God's will—Imchalah, as they said, until Robin swore he'd scream the next time he heard that word. Their religion had most certainly destroyed them, but had also made them great. It had set them back centuries, if one counted up all the months they'd lost during their annual Ramadan fast, but it had given them a kind of grandeur—there was nobility in their helplessness in the face of fate. He much preferred their style to the North American one he'd left, but he never failed to be amazed when he gave a few francs to a beggar, then watched the man stare at him and thank Allah instead.

After depositing his sack at a laundry, where it was weighed on a crooked scale, he walked back to the Socco Chico and slid into a table at the Centrale. He loved this dilapidated café , which abounded with hustlers day and night. People constantly passed by—Moroccans on their errands, young Europeans in walking shorts lost in the medina maze. Here, for the price of a glass of tea, he could sit for hours and admire all their legs. Boys or girls, it didn't matter—smooth, tanned skin was his delight.

He ordered a coffee and lit his cigar. Two girls with stringy hair sat a table away, their eyes blue and empty from a night of kif and sex.

The season, he thought, is beginning—the parade of the sensuous young. They came, girls like that, proud, independent, with their bedrolls and their cash. Tangier welcomed them and gave them everything they sought: drugs, rape in their hotel rooms, unspeakable penetrations on the beach at night. When they left it would be without regrets, though later, back in Stockholm or Montreal, at the universities where they prepared themselves for wholesome competitive careers, they might find cause to worry about venereal disease.

Oh, he thought, to be young again, tanned and strong and smooth. To have a virgin asshole and be full of hope. To smoke my first pipe of Moroccan kif. He sipped at his coffee and stared out at the street. No cars allowed in the medina—just people walking back and forth. He knew all the regulars—the hustlers, rug merchants, bazaar keepers, and whores.

"Hello, Robin."

"Good morning, Robin."

"Hey, Robin—hi!"

He'd been in Tangier a decade, and his face was part of the scene. He was one of the fixtures around the place, like the one-legged fellow who guarded cars in the Casbah or Mustapha, the mailman, who worked the Mountain Road. Everyone read his column too, though he couldn't imagine why. They loved his gossip, though it was about people they didn't know, lives that had nothing to do with theirs.

Pumpkin Pie walked by, pacing the little square like a high-stepping Harlem dude.

"Hello, Robin. Where you been?"

"Around, Pie. Around."

"Yeah. Around. Always around. Good to see you, Robin babe."

And then he was gone, disappearing into the crowd. A beautiful specimen, Robin thought, though beginning to lose his looks. Yes, he'd been here ten years—ten years of nothing, he sometimes thought. But he never wanted to exchange that time for a decade anyplace else.

A boy in a faded jeans jacket sat down with the girls, setting his backpack on the terrace floor. Robin closed his eyes and listened to their dialogue, mellifluous counterpoint to the guttural Arabic spoken around.

"Didn't I see you last night?"

"Did we see him, Carol?"

"I don't know. Where was he last night?"

Good, he thought. A classic ritualistic beginning. He'd tried to capture that idiotic tempo once, in a long poem he'd called "Medina Voices."

"Hey, where do you get your stuff?"

"Don't tell him, Cynthia."

"What's the matter with her?"

"She's a slut."

"Now, look, Carol. I told you not to say that—"

"Who cares anyway."

"You're really nasty this morning."

"Shit—why don't the three of us get stoned?"

"Hey—wow!"

"We don't know this creep."

After a while Robin turned off—he'd heard that conversation a thousand times. The same petty insults, the same probing around, and all it ever came to was a lumpy mattress in a fleabag hotel and a third-rate screw. Still it was life, and there was something to be said for that. Or, he asked himself, is it really a kind of death?

He watched the threesome firming up their deal. In a few minutes they'd be pooling their cash and then the hustlers would crowd around. Someone would have some "special stuff" to sell; someone else would offer a "terrific freaky room." It was all marvelously degrading, but that was what he loved about the town—the crumbling buildings, the seediness, made a perfect backdrop for bringing fantasies to life.

He loved the medina and the Casbah, especially at night, loved to roam the littered streets, loved the stink of excrement, the quarrels, and the slops that were constantly being emptied from windows overhead. The medina had an intricate rhythm, was a slum, but not a serious one, nothing like Dradeb. The same rats, of course, the same ooze and fights and overcrowded Arab life, but with a sort of grim humor that redeemed it in the end. The people of the medina had a cosmopolitan style. They were poor, but they didn't starve. In Dradeb, on the other hand, life was all despair.

Well, he thought, it's time to go to work. He left a coin for the waiter, pocketed some sugar cubes, and nodded to the three Americans, who glanced back curiously at him. Perhaps someone had told them he was a man to see. But long ago he'd decided to deal only to his friends.

At the Oriental he began scrupulously to clean his desk. When everything was dusted off, he stared down at his battered Olivetti and wondered what to write. It hadn't been much of a week, though he had enough material for a column. He rolled in a piece of paper and began to type.

 

ABOUT TANGIER

by Robin Scott

 

PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT two parties on the Mountain Tuesday night, at Peter Barclay's and Françoise de Lauzon's. The rivalry between these two hosts has reached the point where their friends don't know what to do. Our informants tell us that at least one of Barclay's guests accepted with Francoise first. Was he right? We hear that Françoise gave a better time. Champagne flowed, and Mr. Patrick Wax gave an imitation of Barclay saying "Hello." Then Inigo, our Paraguayan genius, drew OBSCENE pictures with lipstick on the Countess's lavatory mirrors, and the Mesdames Drear, also in attendance, pleased everyone with a dance. At Barclay's the usual crowd, plus the Governor and our esteemed chief of customs, Omar Salah. Madame Joop de Hoag was accompanied by Monsieur de Hoag's confidential assistant, young Jean Tassigny, whose good looks have taken Tangier by storm. Camilla Weltonwhist complained to Mr. Salah about the shortage in town of Camembert cheese. The talk then turned to the price of aubergines, and the quality of grapefruit and courgettes. General Bresson complained to the Governor about his difficulties with his telephone. The Governor replied that he'd look into the matter the next time he had a chance.

THE NOTE: Much talk this week about the note delivered on the collection plate at St. Thomas Church. No one knows who wrote it yet, but rumors are all over town. Will our amateur sleuth, Colonel Lester Brown, be able to smoke the villain out? He's an avid reader of detective novels, we hear. The Vicar's up to something too. The service this Sunday may be the ecclesiastical event of the year.

OTHER SCANDALS: Sad scene at the airport a week ago Monday night. Members of a certain British ballet company were escorted to the London plane in handcuffs by Tangier police. Tourists gawked and flashbulbs popped. What was it the dear boys did?

TANGIER PLAYERS: Fever over at TP has gone up another ten degrees. Larry Luscombe, the club's founder and president, has told this column he won't resign. "Not under any circumstances," he said, and we take him at his word. If worse comes to worst, and the AMERICAN power play does succeed, Larry has promised he'll start another group.

DIPLOMATICALLY SPEAKING: The Foster Knowles’ out the other night at Heidi's Bar, along with the Willard Manchesters and the Ashton Codds. The young Knowles’ are becoming quite popular, we hear. A number of our older fellow Tangerenes have joined their early morning jogging group.

BY THE WAY, speaking of Heidi's, we wonder how they liked the food. We were poisoned there, ourselves, last week, by some over-pungent ratatouille!

DIPLOMATICALLY TOO: The Dan Lakes have been seen socially with Peter Zvegintzov. Just shows that détente works, even in Tangier.

BITS AND PIECES: Tessa and David Hawkins back from Dublin, where they bought an Irish jumper. This brother and sister horseback riding act, which has won every prize in Tangier, will be heading down to Rabat soon to take on the Royal Equitation Team.

ON THE LITERARY FRONT: Kranker, Klein, and Doyle back from Marrakech, where the three literary lions held forth at the Glaçière. The fourth member of the old quartet, Martin Townes, has been in deep seclusion for a month. We don't know what he's cooking up, but there are rumors that CERTAIN TANGIER PERSONALITIES may find themselves in his forthcoming book.

PEOPLE COMING: Pierre St. Carlton will be at "Capulet" by June 15. Our dapper Indonesian friend Jimmy Sohario is also expected soon. Dolores Faye spent the spring in Nepal and will come here after a stopover in Jaipur. No word yet on Henderson Perry, but his yacht has been spotted off Iran. When he gets here the real parties will start, and the talk won't be about the price of aubergines either.

FINALLY this from the Beaumonts (younger generation): a valuable pre-Colombian objet is missing from Villa Chapultepec. Would whoever took the thing, INADVERTENTLY, OF COURSE, please leave it with the gatekeeper? We promise not to report his name.

 

Robin pulled the last page out of his typewriter, sat back and gasped. He'd written the entire column in ten minutes, without stopping to choose his words. He lit up a pipe of kif and inhaled. Then he read the column through.

Poetry it wasn't. He folded the pages neatly, sealed them in an envelope, and threw himself down on his bed. His dream of making his name with serious verse had fled him years before, and now he didn't care anymore—life in Tangier was much too gay. There were still too many marvelous characters to meet, too many fine young bodies to screw. Hustler. Police informer. Dope dealer. Gossip. Robin, the redheaded weasel with the barbed tongue. He was all of these things, and had found himself a town that matched his seedy vision of his soul.

A little before noon he gathered himself up, walked out of the medina to the offices of the Dépêche de Tanger. He left his column under the door; he had no wish to see his Moroccan editor or hear a lecture on the dangers of submitting material late. Besides, he wasn't owed any money—he'd borrowed a month's salary in advance.

An hour later he was at the base of the Mountain, having walked across the city and through the valley of Dradeb. The Jew's River was marshy, full of debris. Women, washing clothes there, had spread sheets on the banks to dry. As he hiked by La Colombe, he saw Peter Zvegintzov closing up for lunch. The Russian was wrestling with his iron grill, but Robin didn't stop to help. Zvegintzov was like a tailor, he thought, with a little bedroom tucked away behind his shop. There he sat, glasses glinting, worrying over his accounts.

At Villa Chapultepec he rang the bell, then waited before the iron gate. Finally a servant opened up and led him through the house. It was a rambling old Moorish palace where the younger Beaumonts, all in their twenties, sat about wasting time. Their parents were in Paris fighting off litigations that had followed the collapse of the family's bank.

Robin was led down long, damp corridors and finally into a great salon. Here he was greeted by Hervé Beaumont, a dark, brooding young man of twenty-five. His two younger sisters, Guyslene and Florence, came up too, and Robin slipped them a kilo of kif. Hervé  handed him some soiled banknotes, and Florence grasped his hand.

"Oh, Robin," she said, kissing both his cheeks, "you're just in time to see our film."

She led him around to greet the other guests—all people he knew. They were sprawled on sofas yards apart, and he had the impression of an inanimate group. There was Patrick Wax, who raised his little pony whip in salute, Inigo in a white suede vest worn over a black shirt, the Hawkins' in riding clothes, Madame de Hoag with Jean Tassigny, and Martin Townes.

Townes was perched on a huge white Marrakech hassock, his blue-tinted glasses cocked warily on his nose. Robin sat next to him—though he didn't know the writer well he liked his looks and saw a plate of hors d'oeuvres nearby. The Beaumonts and Inigo were smoking kif. Wax was sipping champagne, the Hawkins' were drinking vodka, Claude de Hoag a pastis, and Townes a bottle of beer.

"You know," Robin said, "it's amazing to find you all here. I just finished writing my column, and there's not one of you I didn't name."

"You write nasty stuff, lad," said Wax, hissing through his teeth. "But I love it anyway."

"What did you say about us, Robin?" Hervé  passed Florence his pipe.

Robin brought a finger to his lips. "They're sealed," he said. "Anyway, you can read it yourselves Saturday morning. Nothing juicy, I assure you, though I mentioned your missing statuette. Oh, yes—I did take a few swipes at the conversation at Barclay's Tuesday night."

"Good for you," said Wax. "He's got it coming to him, the bloody snob. So grand he is, and so awfully dull. I'd love to know who wrote that note."

"You're a prime suspect," Robin said.

Wax laughed. "Unfortunately I don't go to his dreadful little church. They're all such phonies there, and the Vicar's liturgy stinks. But I'll be there Sunday—to hear the sermon, though not, I assure you, to pray." He brought down his little whip hard on the arm of the couch. The smokers were too stoned to turn, and the Hawkins so drunk they didn't hear.

"I doubt," said Townes, fixing Robin with a stare, "that you could have said very much about me. We rarely see each other, and everyone knows I don't go out."

"That's just what I wrote. I suggested you were up to something. Scribbling something nasty in that windowed tower of yours."

"You speculated, then?"

"If you want to put it that way."

Townes looked at him closely, then turned back to his beer. Robin lit his own pipe and watched Hervé set the projector up.

"Listen, everybody," said Florence. "We're going to show the film. It's just a home movie—nothing dirty. Move your chairs around. We'll project it on the wall."

"Guyslene will do the commentary," said Hervé.

"No," said Guyslene. "Florence."

"I think Florence might do better," said Patrick Wax. "She's a little less badly stoned."

"All right. Now someone draw the curtains." When no one did, Florence drew them herself.

A minute later the film was on, a flickering study, Robin thought, of a family in decline. Florence's voice-over was full of giggles and breathy gasps.

"See—there's Hervé  in his Maserati! Just like James Bond! And there he is leaving the hospital. After his heroin detoxification in Suisse."

A cut then from Hervé walking out the hospital door to shots of Mexican women dressed in black sitting on mules.

"This is Acapulco, I think. We had Christmas there last year."

Florence was seen jumping topless into a pool, while a pair of panting Afghans eyed her from the side.

"You're fatter now," said Claude de Hoag.

"Hmmm. Maybe. There's papa leaving court! See all the photographers. And the mob!"

"The stockholders put them up to that," said Hervé . Robin watched a pan of angry faces—people who'd lost their savings in the Beaumont bank.

"Look! Here we are skiing. That's Jamie Townsend, Guyslene's fiancé last year."

The images went on, shakier and more blurred. There were scenes of the Beaumonts sitting around smoking hash, and barely legible footage of a Djillala party they'd organized the previous summer on the beach at Cap Spartel. They all looked young and rich, and vulnerable too, beneath their smiles. There was a sense of doom in the background—people playing while their fortunes turned unseen. Gone now were the Maserati, the Christmas vacations in Acapulco, the ski chalet in Klosters. Robin had heard that the elder Beaumonts were living on credit in a commercial rightbank hotel, and that their legal fees had mounted to more than a million francs.

Once, when the film broke and Hervé worked to splice it up, Martin Townes wandered out of the salon. Robin thought he'd gone to the toilet, but after a while, when he didn't return, Robin excused himself and went out to look. He found Townes, finally, sitting in the garden stretched out on a wicker chaise lounge.

"Couldn't stand it, huh?" Robin asked.

"I got the idea pretty quick."

"Disgusted?"

"Not really. These people are fascinating, in a macabre sort of way."

"Why do you think?"

"Their emptiness, their superficiality. In some strange way that film shows them as they are."

"It'll be over for them soon, you know. This house is on the market. Not that anyone in his right mind would want to buy it, of course."

"I'm a great admirer of your column," said Townes, looking suddenly into Robin's eyes.

"Well, thank you very much. I wouldn't have thought you'd like it much."

"Actually I do. Gossip is what the novel is all about. Men and women, society, news. But there's something special about your work that's attracted me a long time. You don't write particularly well, and most of it's crap, but still, beneath it, there's a voice. A distinct one, I think."

Robin was caught off guard. He knew his column was "crap," but he wasn't particularly happy to be told so to his face. "Oh?" he said. "Please tell me more. Just what is this voice you hear?"

"It's the voice of a young man weary with life, and also fascinated by his own despair. He loathes what he does, and revels in it at the same time. The Robin Scott that emerges from a year or so of reading 'About Tangier' is a soul who's found grandeur wallowing in the abyss. He leads a perfectly pointless life, but somehow, despite that, he achieves a kind of sainthood in the end."

"Like Jean Genet?"

"No. Genet is a thief. Robin Scott is not a criminal, except perhaps in a broader sense. But certainly he's an existential character living on the edge, striding through Tangier's filth with an angelic smile on his face. People say terrible things about you, Robin. They say you inform for the police."

"That's rubbish, of course."

"Of course. Anyway, the point is that people apprehend you as a diabolical character. You're sinister in their eyes, and they can't reconcile that with all the fun you seem to have. There must be envy in it too. Everyone, at times, wishes he could embrace immorality."

"So, I'm an immoralist. What else do people say?"

"Oh, the usual things. Faggot. Pimp. Heroin racketeer. What is this business about putting young boys in woolen shorts?"

Robin blushed. "It's something I've wanted to do."

"Tell me about it."

"I'd rather not."

"Come on, Robin. It's all the same to me. Besides, I've read your poems."

"You have? How on earth did you find them?"

"Doyle showed me some things, in a little magazine."

"What did you think?"

"There were some lines. I remember a pair: 'His face is the triangle of a Berber horse / He has the burning eyes of Moroccan dice.' Something like that. Anyway, what comes through is the voice of a man who has a passion to confess."

"Perhaps I do, but my woolen shorts fetish is something I don't talk about anymore."

Townes shrugged. "As you like, Robin. But please tell me the story about your being nearly castrated last year. I've heard several versions, but not the true saga from the authoritative source."

"Ah! That was something! I was asleep in my room, my grubby little hole as everyone calls it, when this Moroccan boy I know—not a boy, exactly; he's over twenty—stole in and got into my bed. I didn't lock the door in those days, though I sure as hell do now. Anyway, he snuggled down next to me, and I was quite happy about that until I suddenly felt this rather sharp, cold piece of steel just beneath my balls. Christ, he had a knife down there. He told me not to move or he'd cut the damn things off. Then it began, his tirade, two hours in broken English, French, and then Arabic—so fast I couldn't make much of it out. It was all about Vietnam and U.S. imperialism, and when I protested that I was Canadian he brought the blade up a little tighter and told me to shut my trap. He went on and on then, pouring out his poor, young, angry heart, and I lay there terrified, afraid to say a word, wondering if I was going to be unmanned to expiate America's sins. Finally he grew tired, pulled the knife away, and gave my cock (totally retracted by then) a few smart fondles, which did not bring it back to life. He snitched my wallet, my coins, my watch, even my wretched stamps, and stole back out into the dark. I lay there the rest of the night shaking with fear, and in the morning, when I'd more or less recovered my senses, I thought about going to the police. Anyway, I thought better of it, decided the whole business was a crude but important experience, and so I kept quiet until, a few days later, I ran into him again."

"How was that?"

"He was simply sitting, sweet as you please, at a front table in the Café de Paris. I went up to him, we shook hands, then I sat down and we began to talk. He wasn't wearing my watch, and he said nothing about what he'd done. We chatted about this and that, and he was absolutely normal—as I'd thought he was before. We had such a good time we went out to a couscous joint and continued chatting there. Then, afterward, we shook hands, and he went back to his place and I returned to mine. Why didn't I ask him about it? Or at least ask him to return my things? I don't know. It was very odd, and he was so correct, so charming, that I wondered if I'd dreamed the whole thing up. But there was this thin red line where he'd pressed the blade beneath my balls, and I knew I hadn't done that to myself. Later I told a few people—it was such an extraordinary experience, perhaps the most terrifying and extraordinary of my life."

"And you never went to the police?"

"No."

"Did you ever see your things again?"

Robin shook his head. "Lost. Completely lost. A few weeks later I bought myself a cheap Japanese watch."

"Was this boy a political type?"

"No. That's the point. None of his political talk made any sense. I think he was just filled with rage—the rage they all have against us every now and then—and he simply expressed it in this strange dual way, the knife (which is pure Moroccan) and this crazy rhetoric he'd heard and half understood from Europeans he'd met around the Socco."

"Fascinating! I'd like to meet him if that's possible."

"You know him already, I think."

"I do?"

"Sure. He's around Inigo all the time now. The queens all call him Pumpkin Pie."

Townes nodded and the two of them fell into silence. A few minutes later the others drifted out. They assembled on the lawn furniture, drinks and pipes in hand, while a servant passed bowls of olives and dates, and the conversation, which was intermittent, lapsed slowly with the afternoon.

"Soon," said Wax, "the summer will come, and we'll not be able to bear the heat."

"Parties," said Florence. "Parties. Parties. I wish it were summer now."

No further talk about the movie they'd seen, but it had induced a feeling of malaise. The Beaumonts sensed this too and sat curled, brooding with their pipes. After a while Hervé got up to take a long walk along the cliffs above the sea.

At four o'clock Townes and Inigo excused themselves—they both, they said, had to return to work. Townes looked at him warmly as they shook hands. Robin decided to seek him out and talk to him again. As they left he was filled with the feeling that they were serious people and he was not. He had no doubt they were much more talented than himself—Inigo was probably a genius and Townes' books were good—but talent wasn't the point so much as waste: he knew that if he still had something to say he wasn't bothering to say it anymore.

He stayed until everyone had left—Wax off to Madame Porte's for his daily tranche of pâté de foie gras, the Hawkins' for their afternoon ride, Claude de Hoag and Jean Tassigny to the Emsallah Tennis Club, where their matches were said to be a disguised erotic dance. Finally, when the Beaumonts had become impossibly uncommunicative, Robin decided it was time to leave himself. There was nothing to say to them anymore, not even any gossip to pick up. So he loaded his pockets from the bowls of food and made his way, against the sunset, down the Mountain to Tangier.

 

Eleven o'clock. He was sitting in the Centrale surveying the scene. The small-time hustlers, the ones who sold fake watches and third-rate hash, had long since disappeared. Now the big-time dudes were out, and a hard core of Anglo-American queers inspected the meat rack as it passed.

Darryl Kranker was sitting with a boy whom Robin had once known well. He was a dancer now—a teenage beauty who put on makeup, danced with a tray of candles on his head, and made passes at men sitting in the nightclubs on Avenue d'Espagne. Robin had known him when the boy was thirteen years old. He was the last of the ones he'd dressed in woolen shorts.

He had no idea where he'd acquired that obsession: perhaps at his Canadian boarding school, a strict, cold, damp, unhappy place. Somehow the image had infected his brain—sunlight glittering off shorts of the purest wool, worn by prepubescent boys whose leg hairs still were fair. He'd never been able to shake it off, and when he'd moved to Tangier he'd brought the dream to life. One winter he'd grubbed his way to London on a cheap charter out of Gib and bought a dozen pairs. These he'd put on his favorite boys—made them wear them when they were in his room. When he was alone he kept them tucked in the closet, to be brought out when he needed inspiration for his work. The habit was so odd he spent much time trying to analyze it—more, in fact, than he spent composing verse. In the end he gave up the boys—there'd been too many close calls with Hamid. The Inspector, he knew, would not hesitate to throw him out; despite their friendship it was the one vice he despised. And soon after that he got rid of the shorts too, sold them in the flea market for a few measly francs. He'd hoped that some Moroccan mother might buy them for her son, and then, at least, he'd have the pleasure of seeing them catch the sunlight around Tangier. It was a gamble that didn't pay off: he never saw the shorts again.

Still the image haunted him, no matter how hard he fought it off. It was sick, he knew, and he was afraid to yield to it again, fearing a fall so deep he'd never find his way out of the abyss. He'd decided to draw the line, and kept to his resolve, for it was one thing to revel in degradation and quite another to yield so completely that he'd be addicted the remainder of his life. This way, guarding it as a fantasy, he could maintain the balance of his mind. And he recognized that he sublimated in many ways, absorbing himself in gossip, becoming a raconteur.

Boys—mere children: though he lusted after them terribly, he repressed that desire now too. Better to imagine a young man as a boy, hold him in his arms and transform him in his mind, than to corrupt a child who deserved something better than to be used as a receptacle for a sick man's lust. Still it was difficult—he suffered over his fantasies and accumulated guilt.

He looked over at Kranker, seated at his table, his piercing eyes focused on the boy. Suddenly Robin was filled with envy. Kranker did what he wanted and never suffered a pang. Why couldn't he do the same? It was so hard to fight off desires, to immerse himself in the foolish gossip of Tangier, to care what Peter Barclay thought, or about the absurd antics of Patrick Wax. Sainthood! Martin Townes had been wrong about that, but Robin wished he'd been light. If only he could pass through the barrier that kept good and evil apart, become a true immoralist and leave the guilt, like a whiff of smoke, trailing behind him in the breeze. Then he could turn evil into a festival of joy and revel in the dirt.

Suddenly he hated Kranker, sitting there so guiltless, so steely and cold. He was an unattractive man who'd always had to pay his boys. He was horrible, a man who'd never known love and never would.

All of us in Tangier, he thought, live in our grubby little holes.

At that he stood up, stretched, then walked back to the Oriental, where he mounted the stairs, entered his shabby room, flung himself onto his bed, lit up a pipe, and dreamedof a boy flying a kite in a meadow, woolen shorts glowing in the light.