One hundred and fifteen

The nurse was doing her rounds, passing out little green pills to everyone on the fifth floor of Clinique Mogador.

Propped up with three pillows, the bandage on his head now gone, Monsieur Raffi took his ration and gulped them down. He was about to close his eyes for a snooze, when he heard a voice. A voice in English.

‘I might have been killed!’

The shopkeeper looked up, rummaged for his spectacles.

‘Ah, bonjour Monsieur Américain,’ he said.

Blaine’s expression was uncharacteristically stern.

‘I know it was you who hid it!’ he shouted.

‘Excuse me?’ replied Raffi.

‘I could be lying in a morgue right now!’

Monsieur Raffi took off his glasses, wiped them on the sheet, and slipped them on again.

‘I do not follow,’ he said, blinking.

Blaine moved closer, his shadow inching up over the bed.

‘You hid the UN passport in my satchel,’ he said indignantly. ‘That time I brought it in and put it on your chair.’

The shopkeeper blinked again. He moistened his lips.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘How ever did you guess?’

‘That it was you?

‘Yes.’

‘Because of a little receipt that I found in the back.’

‘A receipt?’

‘For a silver cigarette box. It bore your signature.’

‘Ah,’ Raffi said once again. ‘I wonder how that got in there.’

He took a sip of water, rinsing it around his mouth.

‘I should never have accepted the passport as payment,’ he said. ‘I knew it would lead to nothing but danger.’

Blaine sat down beside the nightstand.

‘If you knew, then why did you give it to me?’ he asked gruffly.

‘Don’t you see?’ the old man asked.

‘No, I don’t!’

Monsieur Raffi shifted in the bed.

‘Because that passport is of such value to so many people that it raised... how can I say...? It raised the stakes.’

‘What stakes?’

Raffi took in Bogart’s face on the nightstand, the strand of cigarette smoke curling up from his hand.

‘You came to Casablanca in search of adventure,’ he said. ‘And that document was nothing more than a catalyst, a cast iron guarantee.’

‘That I found instant death?’

‘That you found adventure!’ Raffi exclaimed. He began to choke, then wiped a hand to his mouth, clearing his throat. ‘After all, the worst crime is to live a wasted life – a life of mediocrity, one untouched by uproar.’

‘But I could have been killed!’ Blaine exclaimed, repeating himself.

‘Surely it was a trifling insignificance, for it opened a door to a memorable experience.’ Monsieur Raffi coughed and then swallowed. ‘As for your reward, it’s the passport itself,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find a use for it – I certainly shan’t.’

Blaine frowned.

‘But what of the murdered student?’ he replied.

The shopkeeper shrugged.

‘These things happen.’

‘Murder?’

Raffi shrugged again.

‘Oh yes,’ he said with nonchalance, ‘it happens all the time.’

‘But why did they kill him – if he didn’t have the passport?’

‘I dare say he had something else.’

‘Something worth killing for?’

‘Of course.’

His gaze moving fitfully from the bed to the nightstand, Blaine found himself looking hard at his idol, Humphrey Bogart. There was something so confident about him. It was as though every trial and tribulation he had ever endured was marked on his face. Yet despite all the scars of life, he was calm, aloof.

Blaine blew into his hands.

‘I’ll never understand this city,’ he said.