Tinderbox (22 page)

At seven, she knocks on Adam’s door. A look of terror washes over his face as she
tells him she won’t be able to attend the funeral.

“You can ask the bellman to arrange a taxi for you. The synagogue is very close.”

“What if he takes me somewhere else?”

“You’re too ugly for anyone to sell you into white slavery.” Her bowels are gurgling
again. “Go. If I could take you I would. But I can’t.”

Back in her room, she lies on the floor, curling her knees to her chest to try to
arrest the cramping. She has shit so many times, there is nothing left inside her.
The last time she was here, she’d also been sick—though not from unpeeled fruit. Then
it was August, deathly hot. She’d been the only Westerner on the third-class bus from
Casablanca. Halfway down the coast, the bus stopped by the side of the road, the call
to prayer coming from some unseen place. While men laid their prayer rugs in the sand,
she stumbled off the bus and vomited a few feet from the road.

She had spent three days in her hotel, in a tiny room with a Juliet balcony overlooking
the Place Prince Moulay Hassan, unable to keep anything down other than a few sips
of bottled water. A young maid with a lovely oval face had brought a tray with a pot
of tea and a small green cactus she cut with a pocket knife. From the maid’s gesturing,
Caro had understood that the cactus was for her ailing stomach. She drank the pungent
tea, but left the cactus untouched.

17

Adam grips the armrest of the taxi as it bumps along the Boulevard Mohammed V. When
they reach the Place Prince Moulay Hassan, the driver slows to accommodate the street
traffic.

“Are you okay, monsieur?” the driver asks in a clipped English. He studies Adam through
the rearview mirror.

“Yes, thank you.”

“You are going to a funeral?”

“My father-in-law.”

“Father-in-law? What is that?”

“My wife’s father.”

The driver nods. “He was Jew?”

A metallic taste fills Adam’s mouth. Should he answer? But it seems absurd not to
since the address he has given is for the synagogue.

“Yes.”

“And you too? You Jew?”

The words seem hostile, but the man’s face in the mirror looks gentle, even friendly.
“My family. I’m not really anything.”

“At one time, there were many Jews in this town. More than one-third the people here
Jews. Jews, Arabs they all got along. Now there are maybe twenty Jews in the entire
town.”

They are passing through the medina, past the clock tower, the mosque, onto the Avenue
de L’Istiqlal.

“Over there, a few meters by foot, is the jewelers’ souk. When I was a boy, two dozen
Jew jewelers had stalls here. They worked in gold and silver. My mother bought all
her jewelry from a Jew man there. Now”—the driver shakes his head—“now only a few
old men there. No gold anymore, just silver.”

“One less now since my father-in-law died.”

“A jeweler?”

Adam nods.

“Lhamdu llah.”

18

In the afternoon, Caro risks a brief trip down to the pool. It is chilly outside,
more from the wind than the air, the pool empty save for two Japanese children giggling
as they splash each other while their mother, dressed in gabardine pants and alligator
pumps, snaps photos.

Caro stretches out on one of the chaise longues, covered by two of the long pool towels,
the weak winter sun warming her face. She wonders if the hotel on the Place Prince
Moulay Hassan, where she stayed fifteen years ago, still exists. There was no air-conditioning,
no pool, no hotel bar, but with the kind maid who brought her the tea and cactus and
bottles of water, it had been a haven. Emerged from her room on the third day, she
discovered the rooftop terrace, where breakfast was served on tile tables, the view
of the ramparts and the Ile de Mogador below.

Then she was obsessed with the question of her sexual experience, which for so long
had been too little, and then in the space of a few months was too much. The pianist’s
husband had left her determined to bring her sexual education in hand, to rid herself
of the embarrassment of naïveté. Camped out on her friend Anne-Marie’s floor, she
had taken her first lover, Francis, whom she’d met in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where
she’d been reading on one of the iron chairs adjacent to the basin where children
launched model sailboats. He had offered her a cigarette, and when she said,
Non, merci, je ne fume pas
, he’d shot back,
Et pourquoi pas un café?
, and when she said,
Je n’ai pas soif
, he stood up and did a handstand on his short muscular arms, landing so close to
the water, the nearby children gasped, thinking he might topple in.

On their first date, Francis, a factory worker during the day and university student
at night, had made her laugh with absurdist quotes from Saint-Exupéry while he picked
bread crumbs from his closely cropped beard. On their second date, he came to get
her in his tiny Renault and took her to his sister’s apartment, where it turned out
no one was home. His beard left a prickly rash across her chest. He made an omelet
for them while she scrubbed blood from the couch cushion.

Francis was followed by a Romanian music student, Mikel, whom she met through Anne-Marie.
Mikel lived with two other Romanian music students, the three of them having devised
a schedule so each had the two-room apartment to himself one night a week. Mikel’s
night was Thursday. Every Thursday he would meet her at eight and race her back to
the fourth-floor apartment, where he behaved like a madman who’d had no food or drink
for a week. On Fridays and Saturdays, he would chastely escort her to student recitals
at the homes of various friends who would cook pastries stuffed with meat and breads
filled with dates and nuts.

In June, she and Anne-Marie bought cheap airline tickets to Crete, where Anne-Marie
had a cousin who worked at a bar in Agios Nikolaos. Meeting Caro, Anne-Marie’s cousin
smirked. “Andreas, my boss, will give me a raise for inviting you here. He has a thing
for American college girls. You are all Marilyn Monroe as far as he is concerned.”

The bar was a beach club during the day, with umbrellas and chairs laid out on the
coarse sand and a motorboat that took out water skiers. At night, it was more a nightclub
than a bar. Anne-Marie spread her beach towel on the sand. Belly down, she untied
the back string of her bikini top. She had long angular shoulder blades, a tiny waist,
and a big bottom. Caro read under an umbrella in the only bathing suit she owned,
a navy tank she’d worn for her high school swim class, now stretched out and falling
off her.

The motorboat sputtered onto the sand. The driver had gray hair pulled back into a
ponytail and deeply tanned skin. “You girls want to ski?”

Caro had never been on water skis and was too terrified to try, but Anne-Marie loved
anything fast where the wind would blow in her face. Caro sat in the boat with the
suntanned man while Anne-Marie skied off the back. When Caro hugged her arms, he gave
her his shirt to put over her suit. Wiry gray hair curled on his chest. “You and your
friend come to my club tonight,” he instructed. “You will see the real Greek dances.”

At the club, couples danced on the tables and men threw plates against the stone hearth.
Caro and Anne-Marie drank the raki that Andreas kept sending to their table. When
Caro stumbled outside to be sick, Andreas followed her with a wet dishrag. He led
her to the apartment he kept over the club. When she woke at dawn, he was nuzzled
against her, kissing the nape of her neck. “I love you with every bone in my body,”
he whispered. He guided her hand into his briefs. Afterward, he lay on his back smoking
and asked her name.

In Athens, she saved two baggy outfits but threw out the rest and the old tank suit.
She bought two batik print skirts, one short, one long, and a striped bikini Anne-Marie
picked out for her. In Barcelona, Anne-Marie insisted she have her hair straightened.
A man with rubber gloves brushed Caro’s hair so it fell in soft, chemical-scented
waves over her shoulders. “And where is my ugly duckling?” Anne-Marie asked.

By the time they reached Casablanca, Anne-Marie had had it with third-class hotels.
Using Papa’s Carte Suisse, she took a room for them in a hotel with air-conditioning
and a swimming pool. Tired of the beating sun, Caro remained in the room while Anne-Marie
went to the pool. When Anne-Marie returned, she announced that they were going to
a nightclub with two brothers she had met in the lobby. Very refined men, she declared.
Their mother was a third cousin of the king.

The brothers, Abdu and Yosefa, arrived in golf shirts and khaki pants. They had manicured
hands, each with a long left pinkie nail. Anne-Marie touched Abdu’s nail. He whispered
something in her ear. Her eyes opened wide.

They drove to a club along the corniche where Abdu danced with his hands cupping Anne-Marie’s
butt. At the table, Yosefa told Caro his story: that first Abdu, then, two years later,
he had been sent to boarding school in Switzerland. Abdu, who loved to ski, had gone
to university in Toulouse; Yosefa had attended in Aix. For the sake of propriety,
they lived with their parents and would continue to do so until they were married,
though they shared an apartment as well for … and here Yosefa left the sentence unfinished.

The next evening, the brothers took Anne-Marie and Caro to a restaurant overlooking
the sea. Anne-Marie wore a halter dress that left her back bare. Abdu ordered a sparkling
wine that Anne-Marie drank like soda. When Abdu suggested they return to his and Yosefa’s
apartment so they could listen to some music, Anne-Marie shimmied her shoulders, her
small breasts jiggling beneath the shiny fabric of her dress.

“No. N-O,” Caro whispered in Anne-Marie’s ear. “I am not going.”

“Do as you please. I’m going.” Anne-Marie dug her nails into Caro’s upper arm. “Bitch,”
she hissed.

Afraid to leave Anne-Marie alone, still thinking she could convince her to go back
to the hotel, Caro followed Anne-Marie to the brothers’ car. Yosefa stared at Caro
with a silly grin. In the car, he touched her hair. “You are so beautiful. I am in
love with you.”

Caro removed his hand from her straightened hair. “That is impossible. You just met
me yesterday.”

“I know my heart. I want to marry you. I want to be with you forever.”

Abdu turned off the corniche road and began driving away from the ocean.

Caro leaned over the front seat. “I’m not feeling well. I want to go back to our hotel.”

“We will give you something to make you feel better,” Abdu said. “A special Moroccan
tonic.” Anne-Marie snorted and then hiccuped.

They parked in front of a five-story building and climbed the four flights of stairs
to the brothers’ apartment: a large room with a refrigerator and sink in the corner,
a table, and a mattress on the floor with a curtain strung in front.

Anne-Marie and Abdu disappeared behind the curtain. Caro sat with Yosefa at the table.
He handed her a Coca-Cola in a glass bottle. That was the last thing she remembered.

When she woke, she was naked on the mattress with a blanket that smelled like an old
dog over her. There was a red scratch on her abdomen. Yosefa was sleeping next to
her, fully dressed.

Her panties were missing. She found the rest of her clothes and her bag. Yosefa stirred
as she tiptoed to the door, but he did not waken. Using the sun to direct her westward,
she made her way back to the corniche road, where she gave a waiter scrubbing an outdoor
table fifteen dirhams to call her a taxi.

Anne-Marie was not in their room. She was not at the pool. At the front desk, the
clerk said the other young lady had come in earlier, but had left again with a gentleman.
He pursed his lips in disapproval.

Caro returned to their room. She lay on the bed staring at the ceiling until the phone
rang.

“I must see you,” said Yosefa.

“No.”

“I will come now.”

“I never want to see you again. You took advantage of me.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I made love to you. It was from my soul, a beautiful thing.”

Caro hung up the phone. Her heart was beating too fast. She felt scared—of Yosefa,
who she imagined already in his car, speeding to the hotel, but also of herself, that
she’d crossed a line to become someone unrecognizable to herself.

The phone rang again. Hoping it was Anne-Marie, she picked up.

“If I do not see you, my heart will crack into little pieces.”

“If you come here, I will call the police.”

For a moment, she thought she heard Yosefa snicker, but she must have been wrong,
because what he said next was more frightening. “I love you. Allah has chosen you
to be my bride. We must marry immediately. By the end of the week. I will tell my
mother and sisters and they will prepare everything.”

Caro left the phone off the hook. She stuffed her things in her duffel and scribbled
a note to Anne-Marie.

The bus terminal was a ten-minute walk away. The next departing bus was for Essaouira.
She had heard the name, but wasn’t sure where it was. She boarded the bus.

19

Uri’s casket is in the front of the synagogue, adjacent to the cabinet where the Torah
scrolls are stored. Before Adam has a chance to find Rachida and Omar, Esther’s husband
is at his elbow, asking if he will be one of the pallbearers.

“My back,” Adam murmurs, ashamed to decline but unable to bring himself to touch the
casket.

When Rachida arrives with her mother and Omar, she seems oblivious to Adam’s presence.
Not knowing whether he should sit in the front pew with Rachida and Omar, he sits
a row back between Uri’s two cousins. The old men hack so loudly, he can barely hear
the rabbi, not that he would have understood the Hebrew.

Afterward, they walk to the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town, a dusty, downtrodden
place with headstones decimated by the sun and the wind. Adam holds the arm of the
frailer cousin, though whether he is supporting the old man or the old man him, he
cannot say. Three horse-drawn carriages, either commissioned for the occasion or perhaps
simply queued outside the walls, bring them back to Raquel’s house, where Esther and
her maid have prepared a buffet: lamb kebabs, tomato and cucumber salad, merguez,
sweetened mint tea, sticky almond pastries. Omar and the other children sit on Raquel’s
bed watching reruns of
Friends
. Like the other boys, Omar is dressed in a blue embroidered tunic with Western pants
and sneakers beneath.