Stewart, Angus (6 page)

'You were born near El Ksar el Kebir, which is a quiet town in the hills. Once when you saw a five-hundred-franc note, the picture of the corn excited you, and it also made you sad. You tell me your mother was good: I believe that. You tell me your father is bad: I believe that too. You left your village and came to this city. At that time you were just twelve years old: of an age when my people would not be so brave. I don't know what you expected to find here. Certainly you cannot have known. Of course there was the sea; and it is hot and waterless in the
bled
in summer.

'You found mostly kindness from Moors. Many Europeans showed you only evil; because those whom you met were nearly all lost people. You were a new toy to them: like
kif
;
like two men and two girls in one bed; Like those purple, heart-shaped pills they swallowed at parties.

'In the police station one of the policemen showed you violence, and the rest disinterest. This was easy for
them to do because you are not registered in the city, and therefore do not exist in the city. In the Juvenile Detention Centre the man with the spectacles showed you kindness. You ran away. But they were busy, and didn't bother to find you. Jay Gadston showed you kindness, and you were happy with him. But he was restless, without money. He lived like a man in a dream, with something unsolved inside him. It does not matter what your relationship with him was. But his friends told him that it was dangerous for him to have you living in his house, since his circumstances did not make it seem reasonable that he should have a servant. When the police were having a clean up of the town, he gave you money and asked you to go home to the hills for a few weeks. You felt abandoned, indignant, angry. Instead of trusting him, and doing as he asked, you complained to the Labour Disputes Tribunal, who delivered him a summons requesting that he appear before them over a question of default of wages! It was a bitter thing to do to a friend. More than that, Jay Gadston could have been in a lot of trouble. You did it, I know, because you felt cheated of all security; because you had nowhere to turn, probably because someone you had seized upon in the street to complain to put you up to it. . . .' Frederick broke off, studying Achmed's reaction to this history, which he had learned about at second hand. It occurred to him that he was emphasising this episode because the petulance and impulsiveness of which Jay Gadston had been victim was still a part of the boy's make up now. And indeed this recapitulation did have its effect on Achmed. He looked uneasy; abashed. He didn't like to recall the incident that, naturally enough even to his own seeming, had caused Jay simply to pack up without telling him, and wander off alone for several months in the interior. At the time Achmed had only dimly sensed that Jay's behaviour might have been motivated more by a shattering sense that their mutual trust had been irrevocably abused, rather than a desire to protect his money from the claims of his 'servant'. The possibility that Jay might have come under more serious suspicion for cohabiting, however nominally, with a minor had not occurred to him at all. His subsequent meetings with Jay, however, and his apprenticeship with Frederick Halliday, who was nothing if not a steadying moral influence, had since inclined him to realise that he had, after all, dealt bitterly and unjustifiably by Jay.

Achmed's thoughts were less coherent than this; but something of their import was evident to Frederick now as watched the boy's face.

'It is just twelve months since you left El Ksar and the hills,' he went on. 'You tell me the bread in the city is no good. But the corn for the bread comes from El Ksar and the hills. You tell me the wine I drink is evil. The people in Ksar do not drink wine. Perhaps tomorrow you will tell me it is not evil to drink wine, and perhaps then you will drink wine yourself.' Frederick paused once more, thinking back to a strange
incident. He realised the homily he was giving might have been not unlike the reasoning Jay Gadston had perhaps offered when urging that the boy return to the country. By invoking the virtues of Achmed's peasant background now he himself was emphasising the solidarity the two of them must show in their attitude towards the confusing city. That such solidarity was threatened at this moment he did not doubt. It was only sane that Achmed observe some obedience, particularly where the issues were as explicit as they were tonight. But the moment Frederick
had just recalled was peculiarly their own, and had a particular, and curious bearing upon Achmed's peasant pride.

'Do you remember once when you were very angry?' he said. 'You were sulking—cursing Tanja, and all the
Tanjouai
.
You had been delivering books, and had been arrested by a suspicious policeman. I had to go along and attest that you were my delivery boy, and had not stolen the books. Afterwards we decided to dress you more respectably. Do you member how, that afternoon, we walked through Dradeb? In a yard someone was trying to grow a tiny crop of ragged corn. And you sneered at the
Tanjoua
some more, spat on the crop, and declared it was as stupid and useless as all the people in the city. You remember? Then you did and said a strange thing. You asked me for a five dirham note. When I gave it to you, you looked at the corn pictured on it for a moment. Suddenly you were deeply disturbed and angry. Perhaps you didn't really know why. I'm not sure that I did. "Stupid
Tanjoua
!" you swore. "Their corn is dying in the earth! In the
bled
it only dies in the snow! Here, on the money, it's no better: it's blind." You used the French word—
aveugle
. It
was a strange choice.' Frederick paused once more, puzzled now, no less than he had been then, by Achmed's fortuitous excursion into poetry. 'Of course, your grand-father lost his sight,' he went on. 'Perhaps that's how you knew
the word. Before he died he had to ask for alms. But now tell me this: when he asked a stranger for alms did he cling to him, cry out, plead like a woman, or demand? Or did he
ask only once, knowing that if the stranger followed Mohammed, he would give what he could freely?'

The picture of Achmed's whining request caused Frederick to ask this. Now he pushed away the pencil, the spilled matches. Achmed had listened. Once or twice he had spoken. Mostly he had understood. He crossed to the window and smoked a cigarette there. The first ash fell on the floor. The second he dropped into a plastic soap-box. When there was quite a collection of ash in
the box, he blew on it, so that a soft grey cloud rose and covered his face. He turned, blinking, to Frederick.

'Medina!' he said decisively, gesturing with his head towards the stairs. '
Muftah?
'
he added after a moment.

Frederick took the key out of his pocket, turning it in his hands. But you're going now,' he said slowly. 'Alone. This is my house.'

The boy took the key from his hand and made as if to break it in two. This had been the symbol of his adoption.

'Not any more,' Frederick said.

Achmed turned away without speaking. A moment later Frederick heard the elaborate lock of the front door being drawn. He continued to stand in the middle of the floor. He stood for perhaps three minutes, quite still, because something was nagging at his memory. Suddenly he had it He had not heard the lock snap behind Achmed. No Moor leaves a door unlocked carelessly. Silently Frederick turned out the light. He crossed to the window that overlooked the street; knowing what he would see there. Sure enough, where the shop-front splashed light into the roadway, Achmed was sitting in the gutter.

Outside the wind was cold. Achmed snatched at a passing newspaper, caught it, folded it, and sat down upon it. The sounds floating up from the Medina grew wilder, but he no longer wanted to go there. He looked for no explanation of this. Instead he thought about Frederick. If Frederick made him go away it wouldn't matter perhaps because tomorrow was
another day. But he was with Frederick now. Was it not better to stay? He thought that it was. He continued to sit in the gutter.

Frederick had been standing a long time by the window in darkness. He wanted to go down to the boy. Achmed was less problematical than he might have been. He thought of the times when they'd been closest together. There was the picnic—he thought of it as remedial therapy after the run-away—when they'd set out with sandwiches walking towards Ghana. He saw the boy on the great shore, whose sand was coarse and golden. Probably the beach where Hemingway's Old Man's lions played was like this, he remembered thinking at the time. ' "I wish the boy was here",' Frederick muttered ironically. Yes, that day grey rain had gathered over the hills and swept towards them like locusts. Then Achmed, a wise-eyed whore at the age of twelve, wouldn't dry out in a deserted coastguard hut miles from human eyes, because, as he explained, that sort of thing wasn't done in Morocco.

Still Achmed sat in the road, and still Frederick stood by the window. Achmed took out his harmonica, played half a tune, and then held it up to
discover if the wind could make music. The wind whispered around the bright instrument. No musical sound came from it. Achmed blew on it once, sharply, and put it back in his pocket. Then suddenly he was on his feet and coming round to the door.

Unexpectedly, Frederick was overcome with confusion. He fumbled through the darkness and fell into his chair. He was reaching for a book, and some semblance of preoccupation, when he realised that the light was off, and he had no time to turn it on. Then the light was blinding his eye, and Achmed grinned from the doorway.

'Sleep,' he said.

But Frederick shook his head. 'Medina—both of us! Come on! Let's go!' He felt released, elated by the boy's return. The prospect of walking down into the busy town seemed suddenly exciting.

Achmed wondered whether Frederick had had a lot of
vino
while he had been outside.
'D'accord!
'
he said laughing.
'Frederick bueno
!'
He collected a folding fork and spoon as they made their way out through the shop.

In the back streets the beggars sat where they always sat in the emptying time between sickness and death. They passed one with the sharp mackerel steel peeled back from an old coffee tin. Achmed dropped two francs into it. The beggars reminded Frederick of visions he had had, many years ago now, when he had first come to Africa. Often, upon closing his eyes, he had used to see thousands of faces. They were all strangers, and yet the detail was such that he might have known everything about each one of them. A painter he had known in those days said he would meet them. He never had.

Achmed watched Frederick walking beside him. There were no thoughts in his head. They were going to the Medina together, which was better than his going alone, but he felt no great excitement. Whenever he could he liked to walk a little ahead of Frederick. He quickened his pace now. Frederick watched the boy. His step lacked the enormous pride of the interior. It was flat-footed; a bit urban.

'
Muftah
,'
Frederick said. 'You carry it.'

Achmed took the key and put it in his pocket They met an unveiled girl going home, and a stray dog, which was a rare sight in the city. Then they passed a policeman. Achmed thought suddenly that he would like to be one. He said so to Frederick. Frederick looked at him and smiled. It was the first ambition the boy had over expressed.

'Not a taxi man?'

'
Polizia!
' Achmed said. He spun round, firing an imaginary gun in the darkness.

'Okay!' Frederick said gently. 'Only don't keep that automatic on your belt wrapped in polythene. Some do. It's sinister.'

'D'accord
,'
the boy said. He hadn't understood; and had forgotten about the policeman.

The music grew louder. Frederick thought he could hear cheering in the blasts of wind. Suddenly a rocket arched into the sky and exploded in red fire.

'Bueno!
'
the boy exclaimed, and grinned. He was excited now.

'Let's eat at Mustafa's,' Frederick suggested. 'Don't leave ray sight. The
Rifi
are quite capable of roasting up a little
Fassi
tonight.'

'
Si
,' Achmed replied.

There was chaos in the large market place. Crowds tottered back and forth like teams of dizzy automatons. There was drunkenness—rarely seen among the Moors in public. Men holding bottles stood in the doorways of bars in the lightened temper that may spill into magnanimity or violence. So, at any rate, it seemed to Frederick

'Bar
no bueno
!
Vino no bueno
!'
the boy said severely, so that Frederick had to smile. Imperiously Achmed led him
to the restaurant.

Mustafa's restaurant was an excavation in the old wall. It held a table and four chairs; and a tattered muslin curtain divided it from the street, where the food was cooked over a charcoal brazier. Two old men were already seated. Frederick watched the common water glass pasted from a gnarled hand into the boy's young ones. Achmed rinsed it at the tiny basin.

'
Con patata
, I think
Niño
,' Frederick said, referring, to a variant of a stew the restaurant offered.

Mustafa put the plates down. 'Tonight you
communiste
,'
he
said, winking at Frederick.

'Oh?'

'Much trouble,' Mustafa showed his gold teeth and put his hands on his hips. 'The American tourist begin it. Taking photo, and
les Marocains
not like. Very angry,
señor
. The American taking pistol out his pocket
tu
comprends
?
and he walking backwards into taxi.'

'So?'

Unexpectedly Mustafa slapped his filthy apron and roared with laughter. 'So
marocains
throw the stones at foreigners and
communistes
tonight!
Faites attention
,
eh?'

Achmed was asking Mustafa's son what was on at The Roxy. It was
Hercule.
‘
Cine
?'
he suggested now to Frederick. He cleaned his plate expertly with bread; then washed his hands at the basin.