Alexandra Singer (25 page)

“They were difficult, but I brought them round.”

“Very good, my good men. Now, I must get back to this party,” said Mahmoud.

The Historian’s voice cut the air. “You aren’t at the Grand Tazi now, Mahmoud. You owe us a share.”

“You do like to make money from the misery of others, don’t you, Mihai?” said Armand.

“Do not pretend you don’t appreciate my work. You benefit from my profits. It is very interesting,” he continued, stroking his chin, “that now the girl perceives you as
controlling her very survival itself.”

“What has she said to you?” said Armand.

The Historian sighed. “I wish you had been more careful. She nearly threatened me. But she will not do anything. How can she? Where will she go?” He laughed. “She cannot travel
the way she is now. She is isolated. She is stuck here with you, a man who does not want her. She mistakes any attention from you as kindness, even cruelty. You must tell me how you managed
it.”

“Do you hear me complaining about these trivial matters?” Maia saw Mahmoud’s fist bang down on the table. “This is a very good business we have here.”

“Yes, Mihai. Life is cheap,” Armand said. For a moment Maia wondered if that was a tinge of regret in Armand’s voice, but she knew it was impossible.

“Perhaps, if you want power... ”

“I did not want power, Mihai. That is your field. I wanted the money.”

“And I need the rest of the money for my hotel. Do you really want to see me lose it?” Maia was surprised to hear Mahmoud pleading desperately with the men. “You could go
anywhere, do anything. Go home.”

The Historian laughed; it was a low, tense noise, full of bitterness. “Do you really imagine, Mahmoud, that I want to go home? Understand this. I do not care about your problems. You
concern yourself only with your hotel. Then you expect a huge share of the profits.”

“Please. I have put myself at risk also.”

“I will give you what I owe you. But don’t try anything Mahmoud. I hold just a little too much power here for that now.”

“And you are far, far too wise,” Armand said, mockingly.

“I am on your side, Armand,” the Historian said. “The girl is irrelevant and you have my support. But do not push me.”

Maia stood at the slit in the door. Only now did the relationships between the men begin to clarify themselves in her mind. She was frightened, but the urge to stay and listen was compelling. It
was only Mahmoud who belonged here, and she felt a strange flash of sympathy for him. Despite his huge bulk, he was powerless before the Historian. She wanted him to lighten the mood, to make
another of his awful jokes, but he just sat there. Mahmoud and Armand were watching the Historian intently as he wandered about the room muttering to himself. She watched Mahmoud heave his bulk
into a low chair, and with a surge of fear, she listened.

“I long to dispatch her,” said the Historian, “but she is all too visible.”

Maia was sick to the pit of her stomach at the vision of the three men sitting around a table, discussing her corruption. She had allowed herself to be carried along, and could no longer remain
dependent upon their whims. Her longing to escape them all struck her with a sudden and elemental force.

Maia left the building and walked down through black glades. The land dipped and the garden swept away from her. At the foot of the slope, she reached the shallow, rectangular
pool. She observed the different people as they paraded around in front of each other.

“What a shame,” Lucy Bambage was whining. “The pool isn’t filled in properly.”

Maia looked down. It was true, the pool was very shallow.

“I’ve just had no time this year,” lisped Florian. He was very particular in his manner of speaking, talking in an oddly breathy voice. One had to strain to listen to him,
although he often punctured this illusion with his ill timed shrieks of excitement.

Armand was now in a corner with Paola. The revolting woman was rubbing herself up against Armand like a desperate alley cat.

There was Mahmoud, coming through the great doors towards her, and taking a drink from a waiter’s silver tray. Mahmoud was in a discussion with three men, he was recounting a conversation
he had had that afternoon with some trouble that had come to visit him at the hotel.

“One of them said to me, ‘Are you clever Mahmoud?’ Yes, I am, I told that bald one. I am very clever!”

“Do you think they will bother you again?” asked the thin man with an emphatic moustache.

“No!” Mahmoud shouted. “I gave them many
dirhams
and some female knickers as a going away present!” He began to chuckle, and turned to Maia, “Why don’t
you come to my bar anymore?” he leered.

“I was there just a few nights ago, Mahmoud!”

But he had already fallen back into discussion with the men and chose to ignore her answer.

Lucy Bambage was asking her something. “Have you been to the souk here?”

Mahmoud had fallen into an animated discussion, flailing his arms around so wildly that they hit a passing female guest on the chin. The men were standing back from him, as to keep his anger at
bay.

“
Tout simple!
” yelled Mahmoud, and he strode vigorously from the room. From the corner of her eye, Maia watched him go, but Lucy Bambage continued to twitter.

“I can’t blame you for how you behaved that evening. It all turned out to be very disagreeable. Quite unpleasant. I wouldn’t want you to imagine that we think badly of you.
Martin was a little shocked, but he can be very uptight. I like to let myself go when we’re abroad.”

“Don’t worry, Lucy. I don’t,” said Maia, wondering if Lucy Bambage really understood what a difficult situation she had rescued them from.

Martin Bambage was staring at her fastidiously. He now seemed fascinated by Maia and her erratic behaviour. She looked at their sumptuous surroundings and wondered why they were filled with such
dreadful people. She heard the trickle from the fountain, saw the pine trees stretched up to the sky and quickly made her exit from the present company.

The doctor approached her, “Where is this Jacopo you spoke of? I have failed to find him anywhere.”

“He was in the garden... ” before she could finish her sentence, she was shocked to see the doctor’s leering face drifting far too close.

“I know your type,” he said.

Maia pulled back from him. “You know nothing.”

She took a sip of her whisky and the man pushed her down against the side of the wall before Maia started to retch. When she looked up, the doctor had left her. Beside the garden wall Paola was
watching them, a strange look in her eyes.

Maia realised that she was more intoxicated than she thought. Around her, the faces of the guests whirled. The urge to vomit overtook her and then Armand was standing next to her once again.

“I can’t leave you alone for even five minutes, can I?”

“You can leave me alone now.”

“I want you to hear about something, Maia,” Paola said as she simpered over to them. She took Maia by the elbow, and led her towards the exhibition. “I want you to know that I
knew the Historian you work for. A long time ago, I went to his wedding, as a guest of my Uncle Morris.”

“I wasn’t aware the Historian had ever been married.”

“Oh, but of course he was. I had Armand too.”

Maia was shocked at her frankness.

Paola was looking at her, “So he makes you feel that way too, does he? He ruined it all, you know. He was a very secretive man... he did things that no-one would ever have expected of
him,” she said, completely oblivious to the inner turbulence that Maia was suffering. “Yes, I knew him very well. He was very different.”

“How do you mean, exactly?” prompted Maia, hoping she could remember the details in the morning.

But Paola was lost in her reminiscence, and a vague look washed over her face and she murmured something inaudible. Maia repressed an urge to shake her.

“Tell me again,” she said.

But Paola came to her senses. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” said Paola, and she stumbled off into the darkness.

As she turned, the Historian was standing there, as if waiting for her to notice him. “I think you are a silly little girl with a great deal to learn. You leave too much to
chance.”

Maia was surprised at the sudden confrontation. “You mean, I trusted too much, and wrongly.”

“When I took you on, I have to admit that I expected rather more.” His fish eyes swam all around her.

“You are a lonely and disillusioned old man who can never go home,” said Maia, encouraged by the alcohol.

At first Maia believed he had been misunderstood, she felt injustice had been done to him, but he was revealed only as the blandest procurer and collector of human vices.

The Historian looked at her.

“You imagine that everybody wants to know your story. I came here, in awe of working for a famous Historian. But you are mundane. Just like my paintings, according to you. I pity you. In
any case, I suppose you can’t use and destroy people you have contempt for, Mihai.”

“You do not know the whole truth,” he said.

“People talk about you. They say you are utterly corrupt.”

“I know,” he said, grinning proudly. “I know what they say. You know, Maia, you do not have a monopoly on suffering.”

“But you have a monopoly on inflicting it. I’ll be gone tomorrow,” said Maia, before she realised she had made the decision.

“I will ruin your reputation in the art world. It will not be hard; your talent is weak. It is a mess. Just colour, cloying colour. You are deluding yourself if you believe that you have
any chance of success.”

“I trusted you when I came here.”

“Never trust a historian,” he said as he began to chuckle.

“I know you were behind it. I want to leave.”

The Historian bent down towards her, and this time he spoke softly. “You listen to me now. They gave you excitement, forget-fulness, what you craved when you came here to me. And how do
you think you will cope on your own? You need us now. You are in no position to make demands.”

Maia saw how he now wanted to be rid of her. Before, he was able to use her, but now she had become damaging, and she would have to disappear. He was searching for a way to rid himself of
her.

“Are we really reducing ourselves to this, Mihai?”

“As I have told you before,” he smiled nastily, “when you look at a situation from different perspectives, there can be so many varying truths. You never imagined that he truly
cared for you, surely?” He gave a hideous laugh. “I employed him to corrupt you. For him, you have been a means to an end.”

“Look at how you treat your pet,” said Maia, reaching out for one last pathetic stab.

“Konstantin knows where his loyalties lie.”

The music throbbed and excitement was generating as though the evening was heading towards something intangible. Maia looked at the Historian; she recalled him sitting around a table with
Mahmoud and her lover Armand, all three men discussing her and her use to them and then her ultimate fate; she surmised each one of their motives and her corruption and at this vision she was sick
to her stomach.

“You are the coward, Mihai, you fled.”

“I came here to escape from achievement.”

“And look at you now.”

“I see, and yet look at what has become of you.”

His cold composure infuriated her. But when she spoke to him, he made her so nervous that she knew her face wore a foolish smile.

“What did you want from me? Why did you use me?”

“Must one do everything for a reason? Perhaps I do it merely to amuse. You are an experiment. Not so innocent, but certainly naive.”

“Does the process of corruption amuse you?”

“It does. I am bored, am I not? I have reached success in the world. I have what I need. I am growing old, and now I am becoming ugly. I am excluded from all I once held dear. My old
colleagues forget me. A minor scandal, instigated by a jilted student – not even a boy, a student, a man, a man who expected too much, too many favours, then I was gone. They paid me nothing.
I was forced out. A man like Konstantin. So you see, if the situation is considered from each perspective, there can be so many truths. Perhaps that is what you hoped to find in your
paintings,” said the Historian with a cold and casual cruelty.

“The truth is what I found,” she said sharply, all effects of the drugs and alcohol having worn off.

“Ah, a hint of defiance. Finally, I like you. I get so irritated by weakness.”

Maia looked at the Historian and saw a washed out, shabby old man. He looked at her with the cold, limp eyes of a fish.

“Do not believe you are indispensable,” he said. “None of us are. You will never find happiness. Wherever you go.”

A wave of fatigue washed over her; she saw the absolute futility of the conversation. She wanted to leave. She was tired of all their façades, their relationships and their masks. She had
reached the end of her period of curiosity with these people, and she no longer cared for the truth about any of them.

Her thoughts were interrupted. She could hear shouting, which grew louder by the minute. There was a shrill and terrible scream, and as she looked up, she saw Mabouche flying through the air.
There was a sickening, almost human shriek of pain, and a heavy thud. In a shocking abruptness the cat was lying sprawled on his back.

Members of the crowd looked up, but of course there was nobody there. Florian was screaming like an old woman, and a man she had not seen earlier had his arms around him.

In the ensuing silence she stood frozen, looking down at the dead cat with distaste. Its head appeared to be cracked, and blood seeped onto the tiled floor. Maia was fascinated for a moment by
the contrast of scarlet and cream, the creation of the pretty flowing puddles trickling between the tiles. She began to laugh quietly to herself, but in the midst of the horror, nobody paid her any
attention.

“How horrifying,” said the Historian, in a diffident tone, and his face was expressionless.

“You should get that cleaned up straight away, Florian. You don’t want to stain your beautiful tiles,” said Armand, patting the man’s arm. He simply walked past the cat,
and looked at Maia, almost apologetically. “It was certainly swift.”