The Happy Marriage (16 page)

He’d acquired the habit of calling Ava every morning at the same hour, just before she left to go to work. He would wish her a wonderful day and spend the rest of his time waiting for her.

Sneaking around made their encounters more pleasurable. They would say: “We’re like thieves! Our happiness is our secret and our love is how we survive! We refuse to be thwarted! We live this love and know that we’ll one day be inconsolable creatures!” Then came the break. It was brutal, definitive, and cruel. She finally left him because she knew he would never leave his wife to go live with her. She’d guessed right. He was afraid of how his wife would retaliate. It was an insurmountable fear. He was stuck, unable to move, unable to turn his back on a miserable life and go somewhere else with the woman he loved. That was when he’d accepted a suggestion that a friend of his who was well versed in stories of witchcraft had made him. The friend had said: “Leave it to me and please let me know what happens. Give me leave to go consult an old man who lives in the mountains far from the cities, a man who is blessed with extraordinary powers and knows what happens between people, he has a gift for that. He’s a holy man who only uses the Qur’an—he doesn’t use any gris-gris or black magic. He just reads the Qur’an and uses numbers!”

He let his friend go ahead. After all, what did he have to lose?

The old man’s assessment of the situation had been impressive!
“This man has been manipulated by his wife for a long time, she’s trying to obstruct his path and tighten her grip on him so that she can control him. He is surrounded by many kinds of talismans; he is an artist, someone who is successful; she is jealous of that and is being advised by people from her bled. He must leave. We are not usually in favor of separating a man from his wife, but in this case he’s at risk. I don’t know what exactly, but she’ll never give him peace. Here, take this talisman, tell him to wear it and to read a page of the Qur’an every night before going to bed. This will help soothe him since he is so restless. If he wants to stay with his wife and children, then he will have to submit, otherwise his life will become a living hell because she is in cahoots with men who will impede him from achieving anything. Every time he meets a woman, they will make all the necessary efforts to ensure that this relationship fails. He will always find it difficult to sleep. A curse hangs around this man. May God fill our hearts with His kindness! She’ll never give him peace!”

The painter had been left speechless and openmouthed and he’d started to look around his studio for any gris-gris his wife might have planted there. He found a few hidden under the couch where he occasionally slept, while he found others in the bathroom, the kitchen, and even at the bottom of his bag. He was surrounded by them. Even though he’d never believed in these things, he changed his mind and became suspicious. He realized that the spells they’d cast on Ava had worked. He told himself: “Now that I know what’s going on, I’ll do everything I can to get back together with the woman I love!” He made several attempts, but they were all in vain. Ava had moved, changed her telephone number, and he’d been unable to find any trace of her. He spent the following couple of years without any news of her, continuing to live with his wife while hoping to make the necessary preparations to leave her for good. But he never had the time to do so. His stroke happened right after their terrible fight.

XVI

Casablanca

September 12, 2000

You’re a selfish old man. You’re utterly ruthless and never listen to anyone but yourself. But you hide it all behind your old-world manners and charm. Beneath your benevolent exterior, you’re as hard as nails.

—the daughter-in-law to her father-in-law

INGMAR BERGMAN
,
Wild Strawberries

Sometimes he would remember seemingly insignificant episodes from his childhood right in the middle of the day. They would dance before his eyes, like puppets at a funfair. It surprised him each time it happened. That was how he’d been able to once again see the wooden bucket his father used to take to the hammam with him. It was an old bucket, nothing special about it, it used to be brown before it had blackened with age. Before leaving for the hammam, his father would fill it with a bar of soap, a towel, and a pumice stone to scrape
away dead skin. Why had that bucket appeared in his mind half a century later? On another day, he’d suddenly seen the old straw mat that his parents used to perform their daily prayers on just as clearly as he’d seen the bucket. There was nothing unique about the mat either. Still, there it was, right next to the bucket. A beggar woman whom he’d once given a piece of bread, and received a cube of sugar in exchange, also appeared before him in the same manner, complete with her wrinkly face, her toothless smile, and that star-shaped cube of sugar that she’d held in the palm of her hand.

A few days after that, he’d seen the legless cripple who used to sing out of tune in front of his school, then that sick dog who used to limp around the old alleyways of Fez that the children used to chase and throw stones at. That poor animal used to find it very difficult to walk around. The painter asked himself: “Why am I suddenly thinking about this dog?”

He could have asked himself the same question about those knickers that he’d torn at the knee after he’d fallen off a swing. That memory dated from when he’d been six years old and had gone on a swing for the first time. His older brother had given him a push and the ropes had snapped while he’d been in mid-flight, at which point he’d found himself on the ground with his face all bloodied up. Strangely enough, the torn trousers had left a deeper impression than his bruised face.

Then an old cardboard suitcase, which his father had used to store old issues of
Life
magazine from the days of the war, appeared before him without any warning. As a child, he’d often pulled out an issue and thumbed through it. Why could he still recall that young American soldier’s face as he cried in front of his dead friend’s body? His name was Solomon. It was a bizarre picture: Solomon on his knees, with his hands covering a face drenched in tears. What had become of that young man? He pictured him on his return home, a car salesman married to a redhead.

On another occasion, he was haunted by a moth-eaten scarf.
Red, worn so thin it had become useless, just like those burned-out lightbulbs his father used to store in a drawer, hoping that they would somehow fix themselves. He also saw a paper bag filled with nails of all sizes that was kept in a corner of the kitchen, and the dirty tie that his Arabic teacher used to wear, which was covered in grease stains. And his primary school teacher, a newlywed girl who used to spread her legs a little whenever she sat down on her chair, who also came to pay him a visit. He’d also inexplicably recalled the license plate number of his uncle’s Chevrolet: 236MA2. His uncle had been the only person in the family to have a car at the time.

One day, he remembered the first time he’d ever ejaculated, which had happened while he’d been playing with his cousin. Like a pleasant electrical shock had just jolted his penis. He’d gotten up and covered the stain on his trousers with his hand. He’d been ashamed, especially since his cousin, who must have been a year older than him, had invited him into her parents’ bedroom while they’d been away on holiday. That powerful strange smell that had wafted up from his groin and the burning desire he’d felt on seeing his cousin waiting for him on the bed came rushing back to him, as intact as the day they had happened. He could see her again all too clearly, surrendering her rosy buttocks to him and saying, “Do it! Put your thingy in my bottom!”

The painter told himself that this barrage of memories had in all likelihood been caused by the paralysis that had affected his arms and legs. One day, the telephone had rung loudly when he’d been right in the middle of one of those visions. One of his assistants who’d been nearby had handed him the phone. It was his agent calling to see how he was doing. He must have been worried about losing his commissions! But the painter reassured him: he was getting better. He had to be patient, very patient.

XVII

Casablanca

October 5, 2000

Lower-class people are simply less sensitive. They look at a wounded bull and their faces are completely emotionless!

—a middle-class lady to her friends before the play

LUIS BUÑUEL
,
The Exterminating Angel

That barrage of insignificant memories was followed by long reveries and terrifying nightmares. The doctor had warned him that this would happen, but the painter hadn’t expected such frenetic cerebral activity. The first dream had allowed him to see his wife back when he’d still been in love with her, as though she’d been standing right in front of him. He’d been very attentive toward her and she’d been gentle and considerate. She never annoyed him or disagreed with him, to the point that he’d feared she lacked self-confidence or was too submissive. He’d thanked the heavens each day that such a woman unlike any other he’d known before had fallen into his lap.
After having been a bachelor for a long time, and never sticking with the women he used to meet, he’d been very moved by that young woman’s eyes. She’d made him want to become serious. Toying with her youth and innocence had been out of the question. They were almost fifteen years apart in age, but he hadn’t thought it would be a problem. Then the dream had taken him through the first two years of marriage, which had been happy. No fights, no arguments, and not a single cloud in the sky. They’d traveled, had fun, laughed, and made plans for the future. It had been marvelous. Too good to last. She’d been irresistible to him with her long brown hair and her impressive height.

But he also experienced some horrifying nightmares. In particular one in which a short, squat man had snared him in a trap and extorted a large sum of money from him, as well as a few paintings. He’d introduced himself as an art dealer, but had actually turned out to be a failed painter who’d reinvented himself as a businessman or rather a swindler who worked in cahoots with a brother of his who was a gigolo in the villas of the Côte d’Azur. Before his stroke, the painter had managed to forget him and contemptuously consign the memory of him to the trashcan of oblivion. He’d preferred to ignore what had happened instead of spending years stuck in the corridors of the law courts, especially since the only proof he had was a handful of phony receipts with made-up addresses, signed with a stolen signature stamp. But now that little man had come back again to mock him, just as he’d become physically infirm. The painter watched him as he walked around his canvases with a torch that had been soaked in alcohol and was ready to be ignited. The painter had shut his eyes, but the devil himself had appeared and burst out in hysterical laughter. The painter began to think of the ways in which he wanted to butcher him. He pictured him being crushed in a cement mixer and his bowels being spit out onto the mud, choking in the face of death after long agonizing hours.

Then he chased those thoughts of revenge from his mind and
asked God to one day mete out His justice, at which point the stocky scam artist suddenly disappeared, this time for good.

At night, the Twins helped him into the car to go to the studio. Yet since his wife was away on a trip, he asked them to take him back to the house instead and told them to call Imane so that she could come over as soon as possible to recommence his physical therapy sessions. He settled into the room, which he’d long since vacated. It smelled like his wife’s perfume, it was littered with her things, and her clothes had been scattered willy-nilly. There were countless beauty products in the bathroom. He asked the maid to change the sheets and tidy the house.

Over the years, the painter had grown indifferent to how jealous others were of him. He’d come to terms with it and turned his indifference into a philosophical outlook. The most jealous people he’d had to deal with had been the women he’d loved and fellow painters who neither understood nor acknowledged his success. He’d put himself through much self-examination and had reached the conclusion that it was better to be envied than ignored and talentless. Nevertheless, his wife’s jealousy still got to him and he wasn’t able to be indifferent to it. She had to be stronger than he was and more determined than the others, steamrolling ahead without looking back to see just how much damage her repeated bouts of jealousy—which bordered on madness—had caused. There are many different kinds of madness, and his wife’s wasn’t extreme, but it was just enough to make his life a living hell. There was nothing he could do apart from suffer through it or flee, slip away or face more violence and cruelty. He chose to suffer through it, though under protest.

One day he’d told her: “Jealousy is a symptom of one’s weakness of character and a lack of empowerment!” He’d tried to reason with her that men and women had to allow one another enough space and privacy; otherwise, everything would fall apart or blow up. But she’d
refused to listen to him and had instead followed the advice her charlatans gave her to the letter.

Privacy. A notion she knew nothing about. As far as she was concerned, a wife and husband weren’t supposed to have secrets between them. To her, a couple was a union where one plus one equaled one. It reminded him of a Moroccan television show where a journalist had interviewed four women from different age groups and varying backgrounds, all of whom were unmarried. The interviewer had wanted to figure out the causes behind this “anomaly.” One of the women said she’d simply never had the chance to get married, because her boyfriend had been an alcoholic; another said she’d wanted to focus on her career rather than find a husband who would either exploit her or prevent her from working; the third said that she’d decided never to get married after seeing her parents go through a divorce; while the fourth said she was looking for a man with whom she could share everything to the point that their two personalities could merge into one. None of them mentioned the existence of a perfect place where two individuals could work on their relationship while still respecting each other’s differences, not to mention their right to disagree.