The Happy Marriage (10 page)

Despite his wife’s suspicions, the painter told himself that he’d been right to suddenly decide to flee Paris and its grayness to settle in Casablanca. The city’s light had left its mark on him and its effects could be detected in his new style of painting. The place where they lived was quite something. Built by a gay English couple in the 1920s, their house had a beautiful garden that looked out onto the old port and the sea beyond. Yet that splendid house grew somber every time another conflict erupted between him and his wife.

The painter had always had a hunch—or strange intuition—that he would one day fall victim to some sort of seizure or attack, or something like that. He had consulted a cardiologist friend who’d told
him what he should try to avoid: stress, first and foremost, as well as arguments, constant outbursts of anger, and explosive reactions. “Be smart,” he’d told him, “act indifferent, don’t let her overwhelm you or manipulate you. We’re the same age, my friend, so I know what I’m talking about, take a trip, spend some time away, if you feel tensions are rising in the house, then go to your studio, we need you to stick around because you’re our friend, but also because you’re an artist, you’re widely respected and famous, you’re also very talented, and your work has been recognized all over the world, so don’t let her get you down … Good, so your EKG came back fine, and so did the stress test, you’ve got uncontrolled hypertension, so you need to keep an eye on that, get some exercise, be stricter about your diet, and above all, take some time off!”

The painter knew all that. His friend had merely confirmed it. He looked after his hypertension and avoided eating fatty things. He stopped smoking, except the odd cigar now and again, and he went out for a daily walk. Ever since they’d gone back to live in Morocco and had escaped Paris and his bustling life there, he’d had more time to look after his health. Each morning he went walking along the seaside promenade in Ain Diab with a friend whom he’d nicknamed Google because he was so incredibly erudite that you only needed to ask him a question to launch him into a brilliant speech that would last for the entirety of their walk. He would exercise while his friend rambled on, and this would go on for a couple of hours. Afterwards, he would take a dip in the sea and head back to the villa, where he’d set up a studio.

In the spring, his Spanish art dealer came to see him and was particularly adamant that the painter be ready for the big exhibition that he’d been preparing for the beginning of next year. He’d also been visited by two art critics who’d been writing a book on his work. It wasn’t the first book that had been dedicated to his work, but it was
the most important one yet, and it was due to be published in three languages to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. It was going to be a big deal. The painter was modest, but deep down he was proud and so had been flattered by all the attention; yet he betrayed none of these emotions and felt a kind of energy brewing inside him, which would allow him to complete a series of paintings that he’d planned and done some preliminary sketches for. For this series, he had decided to paint the trees in his garden. Each canvas would be both similar and different to the others, but the precision of his lines and the balance he’d struck between the real and the imaginary were truly outstanding—almost perfect, in fact. They were large canvases with neutral backgrounds where the trees were isolated and yet had been reinvented in a singular manner. He hated the expression “still life” because art wasn’t something rigid or fixed. His canvases depicted life itself and there was nothing “still” about them. He’d always been wary of labels and categories. He had nothing to do with realism, that was for sure! One of his writer friends had told him how difficult it had been to write about his work, because the right words he could use to describe it were both rare and vague. So he’d had to rule out all inappropriate expressions.

He went to Madrid for a few days to buy the equipment that he needed, and took the opportunity to go see a few friends. He met up with Lola, a woman he’d been in love with before he’d gotten married. She’d changed, she’d gotten married too and had had a couple of children. He observed her, sometimes unwittingly, and had noticed how often our memories betray us. He’d remembered her as an incredibly sensual young woman with an amazing body and yet the woman he now had before his eyes was a mother who’d let herself go. It was a sad evening. He kissed her goodnight and accompanied her home. It was better never to revisit old memories. When he got back to Casablanca, his driver cum assistant—who handled all the administrative duties, ran all the errands, settled all the bills, and spared him having to cope with any practical problems, which in Morocco tended to be both
numerous and absurd—hadn’t been there waiting for him. Which was strange. Tony—whose name was Tony, although it was in fact Abderrazak, but whose old Italian employer had nicknamed him Tony—had never missed a meeting, was never late, was always meticulous, punctual, and showed up early. The painter decided to call him: “I’m sorry, sir, but your wife took the car keys away from me and fired me. I wanted to call but I didn’t know what time your flight was landing!” The painter called his wife and she told him: “Good riddance! That parasite was stealing money from my children and was taking us for a ride. You’re so naïve, he fools you all the time and you swallow all his lies. Your Tony is gone! Let him steal somewhere else. You don’t really need him, he was just leeching off us, and now he can go back to work for his Italian pedophile … In any case, it’s kind of fishy that you’re so fond of him. Fine, I won’t say anything else, I fired him because I found out he was stealing—your Tony is a thief!”

While she was screaming those insanities, the painter had felt an irrepressible rage swelling inside him. He could no longer control himself and people kept starting at him while making their way to the check-in desks. He hurled the bag containing his laptop to the floor and started shouting, too. He walked in circles like a madman around the airport lobby and hung up on his wife while cursing and fulminating against her. He was a wreck, and his saliva had started to taste bitter and unusual. It was a sign that something bad was about to happen. He looked for a glass of water. While drinking it, he swallowed the wrong way and started coughing, went all red in the face, put the glass down and then placed his hand on his chest. Someone had picked up his bag and brought it to him. As he’d been about to thank this person, he began to feel a stabbing pain in his chest. He started feeling really bad and his legs began to tremble, so he sat down. He was shivering, broke out in a sweat, and experienced a headache that was stronger than usual. Some airport employees who knew him rushed to his aid and used the loudspeakers to ask if there were any doctors among the travelers. A Swedish man came over right away and
said: “He must be taken to the hospital right now!” They kept him under observation for twenty-four hours and then a taxi took him home the next day.

It had only been a warning. The children were at school and his wife had gone out, or maybe she’d left altogether. The painter felt greatly relieved since what could they possibly say to one another after what had happened at the airport? Not saying anything would be a way of expressing consent. So it very much suited him that she wasn’t there. It would mean one less fight. She hadn’t even been worried when he hadn’t come home after their argument on the phone. She must have thought he would get on another flight or get himself a hotel room with one of his mistresses. Tony, on the other hand, had come to see him and begged him not to blame his wife, saying that he would continue to work for him anyway. It pained Tony to see his friend and employer in such a sorry state.

X

Casablanca

1995

Cruelty between a man and a woman is essential.

—Matsuko, the killer’s wife

NAGISA OSHIMA
,
Violence at Noon

The painter was surprised to see that his wife had changed her habits since they’d moved to Casablanca. She was often out of the house, and would only come back in the middle of the night. She drank quite heavily and always said that she’d been “out with the girls!” She spent time with a group of embittered, divorced women who’d embraced feminism late in life, who met at the house of a witch whose ugliness betrayed her dark soul. She was short, chubby, had a mane of hair that made her look like a lioness, sharp beady eyes, and a narrow forehead that, according to a physiognomist, was a bad omen. She called herself Lalla, claiming that her mother had been one of Hassan II’s concubines. All Moroccan princesses used the honorific
of “Lalla” before their names. She talked a lot of nonsense, claimed that she’d once been a hippie who’d slept with celebrities, musicians, singers, and even a famous actor, whose photo she carried with her, saying it had been taken outside a villa in Los Angeles even though the décor clearly indicated it had been taken in the Casbah of Zagora. She said she’d spent some time in India under the tutelage of a guru who’d opened her eyes to the mysteries of the soul; thanks to him, she’d discovered the source of all energies, both positive and negative. She would claim that the waves of energy we send out are slow to reach their destination, adding that she’d only just received those emitted by her mother who’d been buried ten years earlier. In a nutshell, she played the part of a mystic with complicated words whose exact meaning eluded her, but which she voiced confidently enough to influence minds that were ready to follow her, people who would obey her deliriums and submit to her manipulations. She basically rehashed old feminist discourses from the 1960s and spliced them with her own unique brand of Eastern-mystical-mythological hocus-pocus, serving it up with a great deal of mass-market, Made in China incense fumes that she purchased in the drugstores of the El Maârif neighborhood in Casablanca. She would pretend that her Indian guru had sent her herbs that he’d picked from his own garden and that he’d laid to dry in his meditation room. She would feed them names of people she’d picked out from the pirated DVDs of Bollywood films that were sold close to the Joutia vegetable market on Derb Ghallef.

Lalla had a sense of theatrics and a knack for showmanship. Everything about her was an illusion or a trick, but she still pulled it off, despite the obvious stupidity and absurdity of the things she said. The bigger the lie, the less her entourage of groupies suspected her of deceiving them. In her, those women had finally found a soul mate who understood them and who knew how to find the right words to speak to them and show them the way. Lalla had married a cousin of hers who’d inherited a great deal of money. Her cousin was gay
and their marriage had been a means for him to keep up appearances, and he’d paid dearly for that. After a year of so-called married life, she’d separated from him after having extracted a few million dirhams from him, as well as the villa where they’d lived. Without any money worries, she’d had enough time and funds to surround herself with a retinue in order to make herself feel important. She claimed that she translated books for American publishing houses, but she’d never been able to show anyone so much as a single book that bore her name on the cover. Her father, who’d remarried after the death of his first wife, lived far away from her and hardly ever saw her. Lalla had tried to lure her stepmother into her circle, but the latter had quickly seen through her bluff and told her a few home truths. A few days later, Lalla had brought her father some compromising photos of his new wife that she’d digitally altered on her computer. She’d wanted to damage her stepmother’s standing, but the latter had proved stronger and smarter, and she’d disproved the hoax. After Lalla’s pathetic plot had failed, she’d been ostracized by her family and forbidden to set foot in her father’s house. Nevertheless, Lalla had told her “girls” that her father had been bewitched by a sorceress who was robbing him blind of all his property and from whom she hoped she could one day save him. The painter’s wife had taken that surreal story seriously. She claimed that the stepmother hailed from a family in Agadir and was descended from a long line of Southern sorceresses. Whenever her husband had expressed some doubts, she had flown into a rage and screamed because he’d dared to question Lalla’s words.

For a while, the painter had suspected that his wife’s relationship with Lalla could be a cover for a lesbian affair. He knew, of course, that his wife hated homosexuality, and that she couldn’t stand women who got too close to her in order to seduce her. However, she was so enthralled by Lalla that he couldn’t help but wonder. She would
sometimes spend the whole day with her. She must have had some feelings for her because she swore only by her and repeated what she’d said word for word, reeling off her speeches forcefully and determinedly, emphasizing each sentence as though she were holding forth in court. The painter had tried to reason with his wife, tried to show her that Lalla was a bored, overexcited woman who needed to surround herself with an entourage to make herself feel alive, but it had all been in vain. His wife defended Lalla and wouldn’t tolerate the slightest criticism. It was normal for a husband to be jealous of a woman who took up all of his wife’s time, sometimes even twelve hours a day. He’d believed she would be receptive to this line of argument since she could interpret it as proof of his love. Perhaps she wouldn’t break off her ties to Lalla, but it would at least induce her to have a greater awareness of that manipulator’s emotional and mental state.

But no. Instead, she told him: “Finally someone opened my eyes. Lalla is the worthiest, noblest, and most honest woman in this city. She’s a talented artist. It’s thanks to her that I finally realized that I sacrificed my own life; from now on, I refuse to let anything upset me, I won’t put up with any more humiliations from your family, or the tricks your brother and his good wife are fond of pulling, or the schemes of your sisters, who only come to see us so they can wheedle money out of us. I’m a free woman, I can do what I want. I’m going to fulfill myself. I’m going to find a way to live that doesn’t involve being under the heel of a perverse, selfish monster, a coward, a husband who still acts like he’s a bachelor, a hypocrite who doesn’t realize he’s brought children into this world. Yes, thanks to Lalla, my eyes have been opened and I’m finally going to start living my own life, and as for you, you can go fuck yourself, you and your floozies who dance around you and your filthy money … I sent your sister packing the other day, telling her you were traveling in Asia. She believed me and went home. She was very disappointed. I told her that it wasn’t
worth her while to travel all the way from Marrakech because you’ve gone bankrupt and we don’t have any money. I think she even started to cry!”