Stabs at Happiness (15 page)

He finished his Coke and then walked down into the twisty-turny streets and alleys of the medina, trying to keep track of where he was and to look like he knew where he was going, blasé, like he'd seen it all before. Down here, it was so crowded, he was a little worried about having his pocket picked, but no one troubled him to be his “guide.” No one spoke to him. There was a great deal of activity all around. Patrick lent only the most cursory glances at the merchandise on display. There was no chance he would buy any of these hammered silver teacups, or any of this jewelry, leather goods, ironmongery, brasswork, slippers with pointed toes, or any of these cheap shirts.

Even though he wasn't about to buy anything, he liked the medina. The crazily labyrinthine alleys of the marketplace, filled with souks and all kinds of exotic ware. He felt anonymous in the crowd, walking as if he had some errand to perform, in no hurry, highly aware of all the bustle, voices speaking in Arabic, French, Spanish, the young men in their simply cut takeoffs on Western clothes, many also in djellabas and turbans. Berbers in from the desert. Women in veils, or simply covering their hair, the chador. All the faces that might have come from ancient Carthage or the Moorish invasion of Andalusia. Phoenicians. The original settlers of Morocco came from there, from the city of Tyre, famous for its purple dye.

Patrick felt empty, but it was a satisfying emptiness, as he finally, after more than an hour, made his way back toward the central plaza and the Café de Paris. This time, he sat down outside, at the same table with a black man. There was no place else, and enough space so that he didn't feel imposed upon or pressed. He needed to sit down for a few minutes, he was a little tired. He ordered café au lait, from a different waiter than before—who resembled the other in that he too looked like an assassin in some ancient black and white film.

There were capacities within him, Patrick believed, whole alternate personalities which he had never accessed or known and might in fact never make use of, but that dwelt within him, ready to take over in the right circumstance. This knowledge of his latent otherness, the potential vastness of his inner resources, a turbulent dark sea of possibilities—this knowledge soothed him, and he felt adventurous even while being content just to sit and watch the erratic circulation of the crowd.

The black man said, “Do you have a match?” He was American, tall and good-looking, with a low, resonant, expressive voice. He had glasses on, faintly reminiscent of some handsomer in-carnation of Malcolm X. Maybe he did not resemble Malcolm specifically, but he had something of that, or of someone who might have been a dedicated revolutionary in South Africa, back a few years. A comrade of Mandela. When he smiled, then, you felt somewhat graced. At first Patrick didn't appreciate being interrupted, jarred from his reverie, but as a conversation developed he discovered—it was a surprise, and he was weary, a bit shy – how much he and this black guy seemed to have in common. Just in sensibility, little things, it was easy to linger there together, watching the Moroccans or the red or blond-haired Dutch and German tourists pass on by.

All the constraints and subtle complications of pondering one's own racism, or wondering to what degree one was congratulating oneself on one's lack of racism out of a mere refinement of essentially racist preconceptions—all of this could be forgotten for a little while, or you could pretend it was forgotten… they were just two Americans, discovering each other in a foreign land.

Patrick wasn't very successful describing this to Lauren later on. He had brought her two large heavy cookies, redolent of cardamom, and another large bottle of Sidi Ali. She felt rather better than she had earlier on. She had taken all kinds of medication to this end.

“You told him our names? Where we're staying?”

“Lauren, he's a reporter for the Wall Street Journal… he's not some hustler or something.”

“What's his name?”

“Anthony Pendergraph.”

Lauren was contrary, and cynical, and melting that disdainful expression had always been a challenge. She represented a different kind of sophistication, sexual as well as East Coast and cultural. She had come out to Seattle a year ago to run the local installation of a prestigious New York art gallery, while Patrick was a molecular geneticist, doing research at the University of Washington Medical Center. It was always hard to explain his work to her or anyone else.

Patrick's younger sister was an art student, working on her thesis project; she had talked him into going to an opening one night. One of her teachers, an artist of some regional renown, introduced them to Lauren, and Patrick thought nothing of it, yet for some reason he went back the following afternoon. Lauren talked to him, it interested and somehow amused her that he was a scientist—she wanted to know all about the project he was working on. Lauren was from a rich family in Brooklyn Heights. She had a trust. She'd gone to Sarah Lawrence. Within three years, she would open her own gallery in New York. She knew people. She had friends.

“This is perfect,” Lauren said now, beginning to slowly eat one of the cardamom cookies, washing it down with the Sidi Ali mineral water, the most popular local brand. The label on the bottle was appealing. “I'm so full of pills,” she said. “I just want to go back to sleep, and hope by tomorrow I'm cured.”

Patrick caressed her shoulder, up under her dark hair to the nape of the neck. Lauren tolerated this, adjusting herself in a feline manner to his touch.

The next morning, she was still sleeping at 10:00, so he left her a note and went for a walk downtown, to have café au lait on the Grand Socco Square. Anthony was there, his glasses on, looking refreshed, along with some others who spoke English: a British couple, and two American males who seemed to be gay.

The conversation, led by Ian, with his British accent, concerned a certain psychoanalyst who would do such things as count money at his desk while the patient spoke, and who had introduced the “short session,” sometimes cutting patients off after only ten or fifteen minutes, showing them the door.

“That sounds simply sadistic,” said Jay, and Ian faintly nodded, but then said: “Some people found it concentrated their minds wonderfully, so that if they wanted his attention they would seek to tell the truth directly, without the usual evasions, swiftly get to what was really bothering them rather than dancing around it with idle chat.”

“Well,” Jay's friend said, smiling, “I can see how it would cut down on the transference.”

Ian nodded, and drank more café au lait. Fiona, his wife, began to talk about her own analysis. Jay seemed fascinated, leading her on. As soon as it was reasonably polite, Anthony leaned over to Patrick, murmured, “Wanna split?,” and upon receiving an assent, Anthony announced to the others that they had to leave, they were going up to see a certain half-completed mosque. Once it had been blessed, the infidels would no longer be allowed in.

As they walked away from downtown, Anthony said, “Did I tell you, yesterday, why I'm hanging out here? No, I don't think so. It's my fucking brother Eric, man. We came over together, parted company in Paris. He said he was going to Rome, he'd meet me in Cadiz, then we'd cross at Gibraltar, spend a few days here then go on to Marrakesh. That was the plan. So now, he sends me a postcard from Milan, says he ran into some babe he knew in the States. She's a model. He'll be along when he can. He'll catch up. Like hell he will. My brother and some fucking airhead model. Can you believe that? He's just about to enter med school. It's unbelievable.” Anthony didn't really seem all that outraged. It was more like he was ironically amused.

“Do you think he'll ever show up then?” Patrick asked, and Anthony laughed and said, “Fuck no. I'll see him back in New York. What do they say?
Poorer but wiser,
right? Except forget the second part in his case.”

The sky above was magnificently blue, huge, without a single cloud. This sky, it struck Patrick, had a different flavor, it was different somehow from the sky over the U.S. There was no barbarity you could perpetrate that would amaze it, no grand philosophy that would engage it, no emotion that could ever move its cerulean expanse. It was older, more jaded, it reminded you of how unknowable everything was.

“The sky looks different here,” he said to Anthony.

“What do you mean? Different than in America?” Anthony stopped to contemplate it for a few moments. “I don't know. Maybe you're right. Supposedly… I can't remember where I read this, where it comes from… some commentary on Xenophon or something… but it's possible the sky used to be more violet than it is now.”

“Really?”

“That—or our idea of what is blue has changed.”

They explored the unfinished mosque. Nobody was working today. There was a guard, however, a young man with a rifle, similar to the soldiers who had stared at Patrick and Lauren when they came through customs.

Blue tiles in an intricate pattern, then white flowing Arabic calligraphy on the same perfect blue. The effect of the light made Patrick feel something, he couldn't deny it, but he was impatient, he didn't want to feel it, whatever it was it was foreign, it wasn't a part of him, it had no sympathy with his rational life.

Out on the street again, Anthony said, “You play ball?”

“What kind of ball?”

“C'mon man. What else is there? Basketball.”

“Sure.”

“When's the last time you played?”

“I don't know. A few months ago, I guess. Why?”

“These Moroccan cats I met last night want to have a friendly game. How serious they are, I don't know. You up for it?”

“What time?”

“Now. Soon. Tentatively, I'm supposed to come by the American school at noon. I said I'd bring any reinforcements I could round up.”

They kept walking. In a few minutes, the houses thinned out, and they could see more of the residential city across a kind of divide, all the white houses and tan bricks. It was warm out now. The gate to admit them to the campus was open, and there was a yellowing lawn and turnaround. An administrative building, recently built. An old man in a turban muttered something to them, and they asked him where the court was. The old man turned away from them, and they found a curling stairway that took them down to a basketball court, no nets on the metal rims. It was completely silent. Nobody was around.

“Don't ask me,” said Anthony. “I don't know.”

It was funny how much confidence Patrick had in him, how much he trusted him. With anyone else, he might have felt that he was being treated as if he was naive, and he would have resented it, but there was an undercurrent of taken-for-granted mutual understanding and shared, easy affection between Anthony and himself. And so, they could be pals.

Now here came a group of smiling Moroccans, across the scrubby soccer field. How handsome and clean they were, how pleasant and intelligent, how white their teeth. It was friendly, low-key basketball. One guy—not, incidentally, a Moroccan, but a Spaniard – had no hands, yet he played too. He was very fit, and he could make a lay-up, dribble the ball a bit, and play defense. His hands had been amputated at the wrist.

Later on, walking back downtown, Patrick said, “You know, that one guy, did he remind you of anything?”

Anthony said, “You mean the guy with no hands.”

“Yeah.”

“What did he remind you of ?”

“He made me think of how, in Saudi Arabia and Iran, they supposedly do that to thieves.”

“This guy was in some kind of a factory,” Anthony said. “He reached into the wrong machine at the wrong time. What do you think they do to adulterers, if they cut off the hands of thieves?”

“I don't know. What?”

“I'm asking you. I don't know.”

They were becoming better friends, easier with each other all the time. It had been instructive to Patrick to see how Anthony played basketball. Your character can be illuminated by sport in unexpected or uncalculated ways. Anthony seemed to be consciously restraining himself from being a show-off, and he played with a kind of good humor and grace that made these Moroccans—some of whom were in their late 20's, others younger—enjoy themselves, as they seemed predisposed to do.

But beyond the figure of the likeable young black man, friendly and accommodating, Patrick felt more of a friendship developing with Anthony and as he liked this, even as it also made him uneasy, because he didn't want to be too eager to establish a bond, he didn't trust himself not to feel virtuous, having a black friend. In America, that sort of thing was complex. It was hard to get past the self-consciousness—on either side—there was such a long history involved.

Back at the hotel to shower, Patrick realized that Lauren felt much better, for she had gone out. Where his note had been, she had written “meet you at 3:00 at Café de Paris.” She had been to Tangier once before, just in passing, for five or six hours only, on the way to Marrakesh and Fez. She had been having an affair with an older artist, who was married at the time. Lauren had confided all of this with a smile.

She'd said the thing she remembered most was the sight of the dead chickens in the market, plucked naked and unappetizing, next to piles of glistening green olives. And then being shown carpet after carpet, one after the other, rolled onto the floor of an upstairs room. She wasn't buying, so this had been boring to her. Her boyfriend at that time—Mark—had purchased a carpet and had it sent home.

Tonight, they went out to dinner with quite a group of people, as Lauren had made the acquaintance of Ian and Fiona, and a woman dressed in expensive Moroccan garb named Sara, a younger woman named Emily, Jay and Bret, then Anthony— they all went out to dinner together at nine.

Ian and Fiona led the way, down into the darkened medina, taking a right and then a left, another left, continuing arguing with each other about the way, until a 9 or 10 year old Moroccan boy motioned to them and led everyone down into a blind alley. They followed him through a blue door and up some stairs, to the second floor of an innocuous building—and up there, spaciously, the restaurant was revealed.