The Heat of Betrayal (10 page)

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.

I became a beach walker, setting off most afternoons after our siesta along the endless strip of sand that fronted the Atlantic. Once past the bathers, there would be the women in hijabs lifting up their all-covering djellabas to wade in the water. Nearby, the camel guides were touting a half-hour on top of one of their haunted beasts for a negotiable fee. Another two kilometres further south all traces of habitation fell away. I was alone. The beach stretched into infinity, the Atlantic mirroring the declining summer sun, its horizon boundless. How I always wanted to live on a strip of beach, with little hint of the twenty-first century in sight, walking it daily, revelling in the way that the rhythmic pounding of the surf always seemed to smooth out, for a time, all the stress and doubt and anxiety that we haul around with us. We're a bit like Bedouins when it comes to the trappings of our lives. No matter where we roam, or how far we venture away from our place of birth, we still haul so much of the past with us.

On an empty beach – especially
this
empty beach – you could almost convince yourself that it might just be possible to detach yourself from your history and all its weight.

Given what a productive place Paul found himself in right now – and how free of shadows he also seemed to be – when I got back from my daily two-hour hike he'd greet me with a smile and a kiss and the suggestion that, after my lesson with Soraya, we watch the sunset from the rooftop of a very elegant hotel just inside the city walls. It was called L'Heure Bleue (of all things); very much an old-style travellers' hotel of the 1920s, redone in subdued, five-star chic style. Totally out of our league, budget-wise, but one glass of Kir at the open-air roof bar wouldn't break the bank. And it did provide the most ravishing panorama of the red globular sun slowly liquidising into a tranquil ocean.

‘Interesting, isn't it, how the Atlantic is so becalmed here,' Paul noted one evening as we sipped our drinks, both fixated on the wide-screen sunset.

‘Especially when compared to Maine.'

‘We'll be there in a couple of weeks.'

‘I know,' I said.

‘You sound less than enthusiastic about that prospect.'

‘You know how much I love Maine. It's just . . . well, it's home, right?'

‘My thoughts entirely. So why don't we extend here for another two weeks?'

‘But that means losing Maine – and our deposit for the fourteen days there. Our plane tickets are non-exchangeable and non-refundable . . . and, yes, I know I'm sounding like an accountant.'

‘You're right to do so, especially given my behaviour in that department.'

I reached out and took his hand.

‘That's all behind us now,' I said.

‘Because you forced me to grow up.'

‘It wasn't about you “growing up”. It was about just exercising a bit of restraint.'

‘I know I have this compulsion to spend,' he said. ‘And I know that the compulsion is rooted in the fact that I allowed life to turn out in a way I never wanted. Until, that is, I met you. You saved me from myself.'

‘Happy to be of service,' I said, kissing him lightly on the lips.

Just beyond us the sun had been rendered fluid; thawed orange coalescing like spilled paint on the surface of the Atlantic. I shut my eyes and felt tears. Because I sensed a real breaking down of a barrier here; an honesty and complicity between us that had been overshadowed by manifold demons.

The next morning was pitch perfect. An aquamarine sky, cloud-free, faultless. We awoke from a late carnal sleep to a knock at the door. Glancing at the bedside clock I noticed it was High Noon. Damn, damn, damn. Soraya had asked if she could organise the lesson earlier today (it was a Friday – the Sabbath day in Morocco), and if it could only last one hour. She was catching a two p.m. bus to Marrakesh and a weekend with a friend from university.

‘I had to have my friend's mother phone my mother and vouch that she would keep an eye on me over the weekend. I am twenty-nine years old and am still having to check in like an adolescent,' she told me in a low, confessional whisper.

I had agreed to that midday Friday lesson. And now it was . . . two minutes past twelve. Soraya was always punctual. Damn. Damn. Damn.

As I jumped out of bed and scrambled for some clothes, Paul groaned awake.

‘What time is it?' he asked, half-asleep. When I told him he smiled and said:

‘I'm glad you're succumbing to my bohemian ways.'

Actually it was the first time we'd overslept since arriving here; Paul always wanted to get to the café by eleven to capture the souk at its most manic.

‘That's Soraya,' I said. ‘I'll do the lesson downstairs.'

‘No need. Do it in the front room and I'll slip out in around twenty minutes.'

So I quickly dressed and let Soraya in, apologising for the slight delay. As she set up her books and pens and papers in the small living area I went running downstairs and asked for coffee and bread and preserves to be brought upstairs. When I returned to the room I could hear the shower going in the adjacent bathroom – and Soraya looking just a little uncomfortable with the notion of a naked man in the immediate proximity.

‘Sorry, sorry,' I said. ‘I should have suggested we go elsewhere.'

‘No problem.' She was clearly relieved to have me back in the room. ‘Shall we start?'

We began by discussing the verb ‘
vouloir
' – to want – and variations of its usage. Especially in the conditional.
Would like
. The great aspirational hope. I began to recite:

‘Je voudrais un café . . . voudrais-tu un café aussi? . . . il voudrait réussir . . . nous voudrions un enfant . . .'

At which point the bedroom door swung open and Paul emerged, dressed, his hair still wet from the shower. He greeted us with a big smile.

‘
Tout à fait, nous voudrions un enfant,
' he said, coming over and kissing me on the lips.
We would definitely like a child
.

Then greeting Soraya, he asked her in French:

‘And how is my wife progressing?'

‘She's doing fantastically. Really gifted with the language. And she works so hard.'

‘That she does.'

‘You think too highly of me,' I said.

‘She doesn't think well enough of herself,' Paul said. ‘Maybe you can help her in that department, Soraya.'

I told him that breakfast would be here in a minute, but saw that he had his satchel over his shoulder, stuffed with his sketchbooks and pencils.

‘I'll let Fouad provide that for me. Come find me after the lesson.
Je t'adore.
'

With another kiss on the lips he was gone.

Once the door was closed behind him Soraya looked away as she said:

‘
Je voudrais un homme comme votre mari.
'

‘
Mais plus jeune?
' I added.

‘
L'âge importe moins que la qualité
.'

I would like a man like your husband.

But younger?

The age is less important than the quality.

‘I am sure you will find someone of quality,' I told her.

‘I'm not,' she said in a near-whisper.

And then:

‘All right,
essayer
in the subjunctive. Give me an example in first person singular.'

I considered this for a moment, then said:

‘
Il faut que je voudrais d'être heureux
.'

Soraya did not look professorially pleased by my answer.

‘I must would like happiness,' she said, translating my sentence into her excellent English. ‘You can do better than that.'

‘Sorry. The problem is the use of the subjunctive with “would like”. As you noted you can't “must would like” something.'

‘So if you were to talk about wanting happiness . . .'

‘
Je voudrais le bonheur
.'

‘Fine. And in the subjunctive?'

‘I would sidestep
vouloir
and use
essayer
. To try. As in: “
Il faut que je essaie d'etre heureux
.”
I must try to be happy
.'

Soraya then had another one of her thoughtful pauses.

‘It is all about “trying”, isn't it?' she said.

Breakfast arrived and she shared the coffee with me. We worked on until one p.m. Then I paid her for the week and wished her well in Marrakesh.

‘
Entre nous
there is a man – French – whom my classmate wants me to meet. A banker working at Société Générale. My parents would half-approve – the banker, not the French part. But I am getting ahead of myself here, aren't I?'

Then, telling me she'd see me on Monday at the usual time, she headed off for her weekend and her meeting with the Frenchman who might, or might not, become a conduit into a new life. Travelling hopefully is the key to so much.

When Soraya was gone, I took a long shower and changed into fresh clothes, then checked my watch and thought that, if I moved quickly, I could still join Paul for a late lunch at Chez Fouad. But as Friday was the one day when I read my email I decided to quickly scan this week's dispatches before heading out to the souk.

The first email I saw had been sent just twenty minutes earlier from my ever-scrupulous book-keeper Morton. It read:

Now that we have your husband's audit problems with the IRS out of the way I've been doing his books in an attempt to bring them up to date so we are not in a ‘beat the clock' bind at tax time next year. You know how he throws all his receipts and invoices and credit card statements into that box file you gave him. Well, I started working through it on Wednesday and came across this invoice this morning. I debated about whether I should send it to you now or wait until you got back in a few weeks. But I decided that – as this was something of an ethical/moral call – I should err on the side of immediate transparency
.

I clicked on the attached file and found myself staring at an invoice from a Dr Brian Boyards, MD, Urologist. The invoice was for a patient named Leuen, Paul Edward. His date of birth – 04-11-56 – was the same as my husband's. So too was the home address. And the Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance policy that he used to defray 80 per cent of the $2,031.78 charges for the procedure listed on the invoice.