Moroccan Traffic (8 page)

Twisting round, we watched her get nearer Johnson and Sullivan. We watched her stop by their table, and Sullivan detain her with a hand on her arm, and Johnson rapidly unwrap a coarse block of sugar and taking his pen, write something on the sugar paper. Then he rewrapped it and gave it to her smiling. Along with it went a packet of dirhams. I saw them. We all saw them. Mo Morgan said, ‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I’d like to know.’

‘Then you follow her,’ said my mother. ‘Or you are afraid. Or you have no sense of what is necessary.’

‘Or we don’t want to leave you, Mrs. Helmann,’ said Mr. Morgan.

‘In a café? In the French quarter of Marrakesh, with taxis passing before us? You are speaking to Wendy’s mother,’ my mother said.

I saw Mo Morgan hesitate. I didn’t hesitate. I said, ‘Come on. Leave her the bill. If we don’t get out now, then we’ll lose her.’

To his credit, he came. We slid out of the café. We mingled with the throng on the pavement, briefly held up by a heap of live turkeys. The small black figure hurried on, aiming south-west. I said, ‘That’s the way to the Assembly of the Dead and the souks.’

‘So what is the Assembly of the Dead?’ said Mo Morgan. He still carried his bag, in which were his holiday snapshots. He said, ‘It is just the square Jemaa-el-Fna where all Morocco comes to do business, and then spends the afternoon and evening having a ball, if you will forgive the understatement. And what are the souks to a stout-hearted woman? They are crowded, that is true. It is easy to get lost in them: that is true also. But they are no more than the quarter of the old Arab markets, where things are made and sold and bartered. She’ll exchange the sugar for something she needs.’

‘She’ll exchange that message for something she needs. Think!’ I said urgently. ‘Johnson is painting Sir Robert. Sir Robert is setting up an extremely sensitive deal. Seb Sullivan earns his living sussing out secrets. Don’t you see it matters who Johnson is writing to?’ As I spoke, I could hear myself panting. I was wearing a nice cotton dress and strap sandals, and my heels were blistering already.

‘Of course I do,’ said Mr. Morgan. ‘Mind you: it must be a very small message. Hardly room for more than a line and the Black Spot.’

‘Room for an assignation,’ I said. The woman, speeding up suddenly, staggered off round a corner. ‘Or he could have slipped a note in his dirhams.’

‘So he could,’ said Mo Morgan. He spluttered. ‘But who is he trying to meet, remembering there is such a thing as the telephone? The man who planted the bomb in the Boardroom? The guy who killed the guy who planted the bomb in the Boardroom? The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in bed with Smith and Dow Jones, diabetics?’ He calmed and said, ‘OK. Let’s see where she goes. And then I’ll show you my pictures of Toubkal.’

Just then we wheeled round the corner. The pavement was empty. It took a moment to spot our old woman beside a line of parked bicycles. As we strolled hurriedly forward she unlocked one, hoisted herself into the saddle, and disappeared billowing into the traffic, her sugar bag bumping the handlebars. Mo Morgan swore, for once, in genuine surprise. Then he hailed a small mustard taxi and shouted, ‘
Suivez la bicyclette!’
to the driver.

The driver stared at him. I hauled out Ellwood Pymm’s American–Arabic phrasebook and opened it. The first column said:

My name is Joe.

You are very beautiful.

I love your eyes and your long hair. Would you like some Pepsi-Cola?

There was nothing about following bicycles. Mo Morgan said patiently, in English, ‘Follow that bicycle!’ and with a grinding of gears, the taxi did.

It is quite a long way from the high life of the French café quarter to the Place Jemaa-el-Fna. We passed the Place du 16 novembre and the Place de la liberté and then suffered the full cultural shock of two wizened water-carriers in chenille tasselled hats who blocked the path of the taxi and tried to sell us some water. We had got to the Romantic Old Town. So had our quarry, who could be seen disappearing in the distance across a paved area the size of four football pitches filled with buses and tourists.

‘The Assembly of the Dead,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘There they are, walking in file with their guidebooks. Come on.’ He peeled off notes for the driver and got out, spinning some coins in the air, which the water-carriers caught in their cups. Ahead, the old woman got off her bicycle, handed it to a child who seemed to be waiting, and disappeared behind hedges of tourists. We followed.

It was extremely hot. We were cursed in French, German and Japanese and occasionally in French. We ran into, and out of, a raft of professional beggars. We attracted the attention of the proprietors of a row of ramshackle kiosks selling Cartier watches, Adidas sneakers and Lacoste sports gear. We trotted round a circle of rapt men and boys listening to a turbaned storyteller who had learned his trade in Movietone News. We passed another rapt audience around a white-bearded man sitting with one large, bare clean foot round the back of his neck. As we went by, he shot his second foot straight in the air, then crossed it over the other like scissors. Under his rucked-up shirt he wore snow-white neatly pressed trousers. Behind him, to the sound of a drum, a man was charming a snake under a canopy, his motorbike parked just behind him.

There was a circle round two slapstick comedians knocking each other out with plastic mineral bottles, and a bodybuilding stall, and a box of monkeys, and a man selling teeth. We passed the tea-break facility, where nameless stews simmered over charcoal and market punters in robes sat in rows sucking up soups. There were Europeans on one of the benches, playing a board game with several Arabs amid a litter of shish-kebab sticks and orange juice. Among them I saw a couple of women. One of them had bright orange hair and dark glasses under a tall woollen hat clearly bought off a water-carrier. Before I could so much as mention it, Mr. Morgan said, ‘Oh ho.’

Our old lady had come to a halt in one of the few uncrowded spots in the square. We stopped, concealed by the throng, and stood watching her. She sank to her knees.

She wasn’t praying. She was consulting a man sitting cross- legged on a carpet with some lined paper before him. Before him also was a bottle, a ruler, some pens and two unlit candles. Crouching before him she spoke, and he answered. More than that we couldn’t see. Then she scrambled to her feet, and before we could move, darted across the square at full speed and vanished.

This time, she had gone for good. We wasted ten minutes winding round further lines of shuffling tourists, and Mr. Morgan even took himself into a café in case, he said, she had gone to collect some more sugar. When he didn’t come out at once I went in myself, and found him in a room with eighty Moroccans watching football on TV. It turned out to be another tense game in the Africa Cup, with the Elephants of the Ivory Coast teamed against the Hearts of Oak players from Accra. Although the other viewers complained, Mr. Morgan allowed himself to be extracted quite peacefully, announcing ‘Je donne un léger avantage aux Elephants. Haven’t you found her, then?’

I hadn’t, but I’d had a bright idea. I said, ‘That man she stopped and spoke to. Let’s ask him.’

‘Using your Arabic phrasebook?’ said Mr. Morgan. He had delayed for the purpose of trying on round knitted hats.

‘Yes, using my phrasebook,’ I said. I had the page open already. ‘Did you hear that man say
Assalamou AlaiKom
to you? There it is. “
Assalamou AlaiKom,
Hi”.’

‘He said “Hi”?’ said Mo Morgan. He bought the cap, and the man said ‘Hi’ in Arabic again, and Mo said it back. He said, ‘It figures. All Western culture comes from the Arabs, they say. Let’s try your man on the ground.’ We turned back.

I thought at first that the man with the candles had gone, but he was merely surrounded by tourists. A guide with an umbrella was explaining that educated natives like this earned their living as scribes, writing letters for the illiterate. I said, ‘Listen. That’s what he was doing!’

‘Writing?’ said Mr. Morgan. Several tourists hissed to us to shut up.

‘No.
Reading,
of course. Whatever Mr. Johnson had written, she couldn’t read it. Such as, an address.’

Phrases of German annoyance floated over our heads. Mo Morgan said, ‘Now that I call brainy. Let’s ask him.’ And he pushed his way forwards and said, ‘Hi!’ in Arabic. Then we tried to ask, in French and Arabic, what we wanted to know.

We were not popular. The guide wanted to complete his dissertation. The tourists wanted to hear him and take photographs. The scribe wanted to please everybody and get paid in full for doing so. Someone seized Mr. Morgan by the pigtail, and he turned round and swung a fast punch, impeded by his knitted cap, which had been levered over his eyes. The crowd swayed, and someone kicked over the ink. The scribe wailed, and three burly men pushed their way into the circle and stood behind him glaring, as if about to begin the Polovtsian Dances. A voice in beautiful German said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, behind you the acrobats are about to arrive to be photographed. Please come this way.’

Even the guide with the umbrella looked bemused, and gradually everyone turned and began moving off in the opposite direction. The German speaker, addressing himself to the three burly gentlemen, said, ‘Forgive me, but I think a performance is expected. Be assured. Your friend will come to no harm.’

I was amazed. The three men bent and spoke to the scribe who was lifting dripping papers and moaning. We waved them irritably away. The three acrobats left. The scribe was left alone with me, Mo Morgan and the German speaker, who proved to be a brown, curly haired man in dark glasses wearing a genuine Lacoste T-shirt, baggy shorts and sneakers as dirty as Mr. Morgan’s. I had seen him before. He was one of the row of Europeans who had been sitting eating along with the traders. He said, in English as beautiful as his German, ‘Hallo. I hope you don’t mind. But that sort of nonsense can develop quite quickly. Can I help you? I speak a spot of Arabic and some French.’

Mo Morgan was quicker than I was. He said, ‘Brother, you can help me that way any time. Let me ask this fellow something, and then I’ll stand you a drink.’

‘Perhaps I can ask him?’ said the man. I had thought he was German, but now I wasn’t so sure. ‘What do you want to know?’

I wouldn’t have told him, but Mr. Morgan did. He said, ‘We’re trying to contact a friend. It’s a long story, but he gave his address to an Arab lady, and a few minutes ago, we think that she asked this man to read it. If he could recall what it was, we could go there.’

‘No problem,’ said our rescuer fluently. He spoke fast to the scribe who, muttering, was shaking out several stained letters. At the same time, our chevalier laid on the ground a small but opulent stack of old dirhams. The scribe ceased muttering and spoke, glancing with pleasure at the donor and hatred at us. Our rescuer turned.

‘You’re right. Someone asked him to decipher an address, and he’s written it down. There it is. Do you know how to reach it?’

We didn’t. Mr. Morgan said, ‘We’ll find out, don’t worry. Meanwhile, I owe you.’ He had pulled out some money, and I let him.

The other man said, ‘Not a bit of it. Look. It’s not far. I’ll take you. We can have a drink some other time.’ He smiled and said, ‘You’re English too? My name is Rolly. Here with some chums, trying not to make a film.’

‘Wendy and Mo,’ Mo Morgan said. ‘I’m climbing, she’s here with her mother.
Not
making a film?’ We were walking to the far end of the square.

‘Actually, we are making a film, at Ouarzazate. In the south. If you climb, you probably know it. Nice cheap film studios; snow; mountains; sand. It needs scenes in Marrakesh and the director’s going spare, trying to avoid the dyed wool and the chimps and the snake-charmers. Not my headache: I’m just an accountant. Here’s your place.’

There were several openings off the end of the square, some of them wider than others. He had turned into a street lined with low shops and houses which opened into a small market place, its centre laid with blue plastic and heaped with ordinary things like babies’ bootees and small children’s clothing. He approached a pair of closed doors and banged on them. After a while, Mo Morgan banged too, and they both went round the back and returned.

If this was where the old woman had brought the sugar-lump message, then she hadn’t been able to deliver it. The place was closed. And there was no sign of the old woman anywhere. Rolly, ever courteous said, ‘Your friend isn’t there. I’m so sorry. But at least, now you can come back another time. Look. It’s really bloody hot by this time. We’ve got an awful sort of lodging nearby. Why don’t you come and have a drink there? We’ll send out for the odd bun if you’re hungry. Or Rita’s always got food in the house.’

‘Your wife?’ I asked politely. He wasn’t young, but he had the sort of confident style that Val Dresden would give up his locket for.

‘Rita? I wish she was. No,’ he said. ‘Make-up technician by trade, and a hanger-on otherwise like myself. Natural den-mother to a film crew of hopeless eccentrics. Do come. It’s just along here.’

We had no reason to worry. We went.

For quite a while the alley remained sunny and open, although the nature of the trading had altered. We passed a row of lacquered sheep heads, the flies buzzing about their taut skulls. Then presently, our path narrowed and darkened: the first manifestation of the souks. Here, the crowds were all Arab, and the cubicles lining our passage were workshops. Deep in their recesses men smoked and drank tea and played cards, worked and talked and glanced at us as we passed. There were smells of leather and sawdust and cannabis. A boy, sitting outside his shop, turned the leg of a chair with the help of his hands and his toes; a veiled woman took a jar from a fountain and hurried away; the open door of a mosque, heavy with stucco, afforded a glimpse of prostrate forms and heavy carpets.

A drum beat, half-heard under the noise became insistent and threatening. From round the next bend in the souk approached a slow procession of men, women and children, their faces impassive. They carried, glinting with spangles, life-sized figures on poles. The figures were headless: drooping ferns hung from the neck sockets. The man called Rolly held us back with his arm as the crocodile made its way past, its drums beating. From inside the shop at our backs came a tinny, thunderous roar. The Africa Cup was flickering on.