The Heat of Betrayal Read online

  ‘I’m sure your work is very interesting,’ she said.

  ‘When it comes to money, you do get to know a great deal about how other people function. Anyway . . . can you start tomorrow?’

  ‘I see no problem with that.’

  ‘Brilliant – and can you get me all the books I’ll need?’

  I handed her 300 dirhams, telling her that if they cost more, I’d reimburse her after our first lesson.

  ‘Three hundred dirhams will buy them all,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring them tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you want payment every day or once a week?’

  Again she looked away.

  ‘Whatever is easier for you. If you pay me on Friday the bank here is open until nine in the evening so I can deposit most of it then.’

  Ah, a saver.

  ‘Payment every Friday it is then. One last thing – how do you know Monsieur Picard?’

  ‘My mother is a cleaner here.’

  I considered my response for a moment before saying:

  ‘I’m certain she’s very proud of you.’

  She averted her gaze as she nodded acknowledgement. I told Soraya how much I looked forward to being her student and that I would see her tomorrow. Then I went upstairs. Paul was still on the balcony under the umbrella, a good half-dozen drawings strewn across the table. His face was swathed with sweat; his shell-shocked eyes indicating the onset of heat exhaustion. I grabbed the litre bottle of water that was by the bed and insisted that he drink it. He drained half of it in moments, staggered inside and collapsed onto the bed.

  ‘Are you insane, courting disaster like that?’ I asked.

  ‘Inspiration trumped perspiration.’

  ‘But you, of all people, know what the sun is like here.’

  ‘Can you rescue the drawings before they get bleached by the light?’

  I went outside and gathered up the six drawings exposed to the sun, bringing them inside. As I shuffled through them one by one, I felt myself sucking in my breath. What I saw floored me. They were a half-dozen variations on the same visual theme: the immediate rooftops in the direct vicinity of our balcony. What made these depictions so remarkable was the way that, in each drawing, Paul had re-envisaged the minarets and water towers and crumbling roofs and dangling laundry and satellite dishes that defined the Essaouira skyline. I glanced up at one point and stared out at the actual panorama on which Paul had based this sequence of intricately sketched compositions. Then I returned to his highly detailed drawings, marvelling not just at the sheer refined technique, but also the fact that, seen as a totality, they reminded me that there is no such thing as a correct vision of the state of things; that none of us ever see the same objects, landscape, vision of life, the same way. As such, everything is, by its very nature, an interpretation.

  ‘These are extraordinary,’ I told him.

  ‘Now it’s you who’s suffering sunstroke. They’re a couple of sketches I knocked off in a few hours.’

  ‘Didn’t Mozart often write a piano sonata in a morning?’

  ‘He was Mozart.’

  ‘You are incredibly gifted.’

  ‘I wish I could share your fulsome opinion of me.’

  ‘I wish that too. But in my humble opinion I think that these mark an entire new direction for you.’

  ‘You’re biased.’

  ‘Take the compliment. They’re brilliant.’

  But Paul just turned away, unable to accept such praise. I quickly changed the subject.

  ‘I start French lessons tomorrow,’ I said, then told him all about Soraya.

  ‘How much is she charging per hour?’ he asked.

  ‘She asked for seventy-five, I’m paying her one five.’

  ‘You’re a soft touch.’

  ‘Only when it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘Even seventy-five dirhams an hour is a huge amount of money for her.’

  ‘And not that much money for me. So what’s the big deal?’

  ‘None whatsoever. Your generosity is admirable.’

  ‘So too is your concern about our finances.’

  ‘Do I hear a tone?’ he asked.

  ‘Can we drop this?’

  ‘Of course we can,’ he said, getting up and heading into the bathroom. A moment or so later I heard the shower being turned on. When he came out ten minutes later, a towel wrapped around his midriff, he informed me:

  ‘I really wish we could get beyond these “exchanges”.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘Let’s try to steer clear of all stupidity.’

  ‘It gets corrosive, doesn’t it?’ I said. ‘Kindness is the better option.’

  He considered this for a moment.

  ‘That just might be a solution.’

  He came over and put his arms around me.

  ‘A fresh start, OK?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ I said, kissing him lightly on the lips while simultaneously wondering if I would be replaying this dialogue a day or two from now? Maybe I simply need to accept that this is how our marriage operates; that this is our weather system as a couple, and one in which the moments of inclemency do get supplanted by periods of genuine tranquillity and, indeed, the adventure that is love.

  Adventure. Now there’s a word I’ve been grappling with recently. The next day, during my first lesson with Soraya, I asked her whether it had multiple meanings in French. She blushed slightly, noting:

  ‘Yes, “une aventure” is the word for “adventure”. But also it’s a very French expression for a love affair. “J’ai eu une aventure avec Jacques . . . seulement une aventure, rien de bien sérieux.”’

  She didn’t need to translate. Une aventure was just that: a fling that wasn’t love. When I asked about the semantical difference between adventure and love, Soraya said:

  ‘In French if someone says – as they often do – “C’est l’amour”, it indicates its profound seriousness, for the moment anyway. When I lived in Lyon I had several French friends who always seemed to be exclaiming the fact that they had fallen in love after seeing a man for two or three weeks. Then when it ended a few months later the next fellow they got involved with . . . “Oh, c’est l’amour” after the fourth night. The way I heard it used so frequently made me think that to exclaim “I’m in love” is to express immediate emotions that haven’t been allowed to deepen. It’s also to admit to being in love with the idea of being in love.’

  ‘And in Morocco?’

  Now her shoulders tightened.

  ‘We need to return to other things,’ she said, tapping the textbooks. This time I didn’t protest, because I realised that I had mistakenly crossed an invisible boundary, one which Soraya was going to maintain.

  So back we went to the pluperfect subjunctive.

  We sat together on the sofa in the small living area of the suite, the French books she’d brought along spread out across the little coffee table. Paul was at work on the balcony, shaded by the big umbrella and his wide-brimmed hat, the sun still at high wattage at five-thirty in the afternoon. He had come out to say hello when Soraya earlier knocked on the door of our suite. I could see that she was taking in his lankiness, his long grey hair, the age difference between us. Just as she was also (I could tell) impressed by his French and by the drawings that I had placed around the room.

  ‘Your husband did all these?’ she asked.

  ‘You approve?’

  ‘They capture Essaouira so well.’

  ‘Or, at least, the rooftops of Essaouira.’

  ‘Will he start doing street scenes as well?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him.’

  ‘Imagine being married to such a talented man. Your children . . .?’

  ‘We have none.’

  Now Soraya looked as if she wished the floor could open and swallow her whole. I quickly added:

  ‘None yet.’

  Her relief was immense.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I should never have pried like that.’

  �
��That was hardly prying.’

  ‘But it was an inappropriate question. Even though I know that, in the West, having children is not obligatory for married couples.’

  ‘That’s true. My first husband didn’t want any.’

  Soraya seemed thrown by my directness.

  ‘Is that the reason you left him?’

  ‘One of the many reasons.’

  ‘I see . . .’

  ‘But Paul definitely does want children.’

  Soraya seemed to approve of this.

  ‘He’s had none before now?’ she asked, but then added: ‘If that isn’t another inappropriate question on my part.’

  ‘Not inappropriate at all,’ I said.

  ‘In Morocco, marriage is so much about having children.’

  ‘Is that how you see it?’

  She considered this for a moment.

  ‘How I “see it” and how things are . . . those are two very different things entirely.’

  Over the first ten days of my lessons with Soraya the non-French-grammar conversations were an intriguing game of verbal ping-pong, in which her innate caution and cultural reticence were frequently undercut by her immense curiosity not just about my life but about the way a woman like me functioned in modern America. A rapid sense of trust developed between us, though it was not until the second week of our lessons that some of the more private aspects of her life began to be revealed. I sensed very quickly that her time in France had completely altered her way of thinking, and that her return to Morocco had been a reluctant one.

  ‘So when you went to university you actually lived on the campus itself?’ she asked in wonder when I started telling her about leaving home for the University of Minnesota.

  ‘Isn’t that the usual way in France or here?’ I asked.

  ‘In Morocco, if you go to another city for university, it is arranged that you will live with family there.’

  ‘And when you were in Lyon?’

  Her lips tightened.

  ‘The only reason I was allowed to go to Lyon was because my paternal uncle Mustapha was there. He and his wife have lived there for thirty years. He has a rather successful taxicab business and she is a teacher in a lycée – so they are both, on a certain level, quite assimilated. Except when it comes to their responsibilities as guardians of their niece from Essaouira. The entire year was a power struggle. Especially when they discovered I was not wearing the hijab when I went off to class, and was even using a friend’s place to change my clothes. When it came to staying out late, which I started to do when Fabien came into my life . . .’

  ‘Who was Fabien?’ I asked. But at that very moment Paul came in off the balcony, en route to the bathroom. The subject was abruptly dropped.

  Later that night, in a little back-street restaurant that had quickly become a favourite, I told Paul how Soraya had mentioned the name of a Frenchman whom I sensed she was involved with during her year in Lyon.

  ‘That’s what most educated Moroccan women dream of,’ he said. ‘Meeting a Westerner who can get them out of here.’

  ‘So speaks the voice of experience.’

  ‘Was I indicating that I had any experience of that whatsoever?’

  ‘Surely there must have been a Moroccan woman or two in your life back then.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Because you are a most attractive man now, which means you must have been even more so in your twenties. And you were probably hanging out with fellow artists, the Casablanca bohemian circle, right? Wasn’t there some abstract painter cutie who . . .’

  ‘What’s the point of this?’

  ‘The point is that I want you right now.’

  An hour later, we were back in bed in our hotel room, his body entwined with mine, the two of us sharing the most extraordinary metronomic symmetry; when he whispered to me just how much he loved me, promising wondrous times ahead, free of the shadowy recesses of the past, what else could I do but also proclaim my love for him? As actual and true a love as I had ever known.

  Afterwards, as we lay close next to each other, our arms interlocked, I said:

  ‘Maybe we did it this time.’

  Because it was right in the middle of my cycle. And because, tonight, our normal level of passion hit an even more dizzying summit.

  Paul kissed me lightly on the lips.

  ‘I’m sure it happened this time. We’re blessed, after all.’

  Outside, the muezzin sang praises to his Almighty. ‘Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!’

  To which I could only think:

  Your timing, sir, is impeccable.

  Eight

  THE NEXT TWO weeks were supremely happy ones. Happiness has always struck me as a fleeting event – a moment here or there when the dreck of life washes away for a few precious hours. You’re free of all the fears and pathologies that seem to act as a subtext to everything you are trying to do in life. The problem when you are a couple is that you are also in thrall to your partner’s fears and pathologies. So if there is a period when you are both outside the reach of all the historic dark stuff you both cart around with you . . . well, that is one of those rare, sublime junctures when you can truly think: We are blessed.

  Those first fourteen days in Essaouira were magic. Paul got into a serious, high-end creative groove when it came to his work, spending close to six hours a day on his line drawings, moving from the panoramic eyrie that was our balcony to a café table right in the heart of the souk. There he became something of a local celebrity. Its manager – a young guy in his mid-twenties named Fouad – saw the quality of the work that Paul was producing and made it his business to keep him free of unnecessary distraction, especially from hawkers and tourist touts. Paul, in turn, paid Fouad’s protective decency back by drawing him a small postcard image every day. This came at the end of his three to four hours at the café where he was at work on a larger line drawing – always capturing some essence of souk life in a manner that was both representational and simultaneously skewed. He caught the kinetic madness of the life screaming around him, as the souk was never in respite. Yet his artistry was to delineate it all in a manner that made it both tangible and oblique.

  Fouad was a shrewd, cool customer. His patron was his father, who owned the café but spent much of the time in Marrakesh – where, as his son once intimated to Paul, he had a mistress. Fouad had studied in France – at a school of Beaux Arts in Marseille where he’d fallen in love with a fellow painter. She was from Toulon and she wasn’t a Muslim. Fouad’s father – though willing to pay for his son’s three-year adventure on the other side of the Mediterranean – pressed the paternal guilt button and insisted, at the end of his course, that he drop all hopes of a life of art and love with the Frenchwoman. He had to return home to Morocco and learn the family business.

  So now Fouad managed this café and a small hotel in the souk for his largely absent father. The café was located right at a corner of the medina where spice and fruit merchants plied their trade next to butchers with animal carcasses bleaching in the midday sun. It gave Paul a ringside seat on all the manic, chromatic action, which he captured in edgy black pencil and charcoal on off-white card. Fouad – clearly in need of an older brother (especially one who was a fellow artist) – insisted on settling Paul at a shaded corner table which became his office, and on keeping him supplied with mint tea throughout the hours he worked there. He also provided lunch for us both. He refused to take any payment, which is when my husband began to pay with a daily original postcard. Paul told me that he was borrowing a trick from Picasso, who paid for his hotel and bar bills in the French seaside town of Collioure by leaving a sketch with the patron every few days . . . in the process making him the possessor of a very lucrative art collection.

  ‘I doubt Fouad will be able to retire to the Côte d’Azur on the proceeds of my scribbles,’ Paul noted one afternoon when we had retreated to the hotel to make love and have a nap.

  ‘Don’t underestimate your
market value just yet. This new sequence of drawings you’re doing is such a breakthrough.’

  I was making progress myself. My classes with Soraya were rigorous. Most of the mornings I would spend hunched over my textbooks, forcing myself to learn ten new verbs and twenty new words per day. I also read local newspapers in French and bought a small radio so I could hear RFI – France’s version of the BBC World Service.

  ‘You really are committed,’ Soraya said when, around ten days into our lessons, I surprised her by asking all sorts of questions about the uses of ‘soutenu’ French – the most elevated and formal version of the language.

  ‘Bravo for your diligence,’ she said. ‘To be able to speak un français soutenu is the key to so much. If you can master it, the French will be most impressed.’

  ‘If I ever get to France.’

  Soraya looked at me quizzically. ‘Why do you think you won’t get to France?’

  ‘I’ve never travelled much before.’

  ‘But you’re travelling now.’

  ‘It depends on certain things happening in my life.’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘les enfants sont portables.’ Children are portable.

  ‘You used the word “portable” incorrectly here. Un portable is a cellphone or a laptop computer. The verb to use here is “transporter”. So try rephrasing it.’

  There was one central reason why I was obsessed about getting my French back in working order: the sense of accomplishment. I wanted to use my time here in a positive, beneficial way. Watching Paul so focused on his own work made me push myself even harder, as I told him when he complimented me on my progress.

  Essaouira became a home for us. I figured out, by and large, the maze-like geography of the old city and was able to find my way unencumbered through the souk. I also learned how to deflect attention from the occasional tout or young guy playing macho. But though I began to feel as if I had a true handle on Essaouira’s exuberantly twisted realities, the city after dark was a place I never ventured alone. This precaution did not dim my appreciation of the place. Or the fact that, as I discovered, its residents were supremely welcoming and pleased to see that you had decided to spend time among them.