Stewart, Angus (7 page)

Frederick got up, nodding to the pair of silent Moors. '
mañana
.'

Achmed seemed satisfied. He paid Mustafa two hundred and twenty francs for the meal, with a minimum of discussion as to its worth,

As they crossed the square towards the
Pharmacie Centrale
perhaps
fifty people surged out of the narrow street leading to the small market place. They came on in a lurching, disorderly knot. There was someone at its centre, and the crowd seemed to be seeking to honour him, to touch him, or perhaps restrain him. Frederick couldn't be sure whether it was like Christ's entry into Jerusalem; or whether it was more like a stag fighting off hounds. He stood curiously absorbed by the ragged grace of mob movement. The crowd was suddenly all about them; they were become part of it. Then Frederick saw the crazed man at its centre, and the knife, only seconds before the knife entered his body.

There was little pain, and the anger which rose in him became mixed with astonishment at the vulnerability of life. He wondered at having lived so long, when always there must have been no more than this layer of flesh between carelessness and dying. His blood flowed out of the wound like the twisted ribbon from a half-open tap. He let it play on his hand in amazement while his fainting mind sought some secret that might staunch it. He searched for this as after a memory that had eluded him only temporarily. But he was dulled, spent. A sudden terror caused him to try to rise fully upright; only now there was no muscle in his body. To the watching by he seemed to take three aimless paces like a man who is ill with wine before falling on his face.

Achmed still tugged of the arm of the point-policeman, but there were other officers nearer now, the armoured car with the ballot was due, and he kept the traffic flowing.

  *  *  *  *  *

Raphael Bonnington was going crazy. He knew it the moment Maria-Angeles slung the chamber-pot clean through the window. People just had not done that in Philadelphia. Could it have been instinctive knowledge of how to embarrass a man that had made her do it? Raphael thought so. He really did think so. Now he lay on the bed hearing the chamber-pot fall again in his mind; wondering for just how long the people in the little market place down there would stand about scratching their heads; and wondering whether a passing policeman might be feeling officious enough to come right on up the stairs. Maria-Angeles would say he had raped her. That would be it. Then . . . oh boy! Anything . . .
but anything
.
There might well not be any policemen. It was voting day. He remembered now. What the Moroccans were voting for was: 'Should the king continue to have absolute power (answer, "Yes"). Or should the administration, in time of course, consider introducing something just a little bit different (answer, "No").' This, anyway, was what Harley Fowler had said it was about. But Harley was a cynic. Maybe he was lying when he said that.

Now Raphael looked at Maria-Angeles' heaving, naked shoulders, where the stood with her back to him. 'What you want here is a real democracy,' he said. It sounded good. He hadn't stipulated an American one even.

"When Raphael spoke Maria-Angeles shuddered with distaste. In the light of the Koutoubia the American had looked all right. She should have gone with the bald one. He had left a white-topped cap in the cloakroom. He could have had a yacht in the harbour. She fumed round swearing with all the pent pride and bestiality of the Madrid slum where she had had the fortune to have been born beautiful.

Just then the doorbell of the apartment rang. Raphael wiped a bad of spittle from his hair. Americans do not hit women, he told himself. Still, his knees were off the bed now, and his chest was huge with indignation. Harvard line-men had to be huge. The bell came again.

'I'll get it,' Raphael said. 'If he shoots on sight make
The New York Times
.
You know. "One of our Beats bought it".'

Maria-Angeles didn't know. Her English was limited to hours, places, and one or two phrases which help the last seconds of sex, particularly for old men. She stood angrily thinking about the potential customer with the yacht. Raphael Bonnington opened the door to Achmed. 'Jesus,' he said. His chest was trembling with relief where it showed through a loosely tied dressing-gown.

'May I have cigarette?' Achmed asked, walking straight into the room.

'Sure, sure—there's a pack over there,' Raphael said, pointing. He sat down in a chair. He'd give that Koutoubia girl three thousand. He'd chuck her out if she wouldn't take it. 'May I have match?' Achmed asked.

Now it wasn't true of Raphael that Harvard had taken him on because of his football and upper-class connections. He had a good brain. He did. Now he stared at Achmed. 'What did you say just then?'

'May I have match?'

' "
May I
. . ." don't you mean "
give me
"?
Just
who taught you to say "May I"?'

Achmed didn't understand the question. 'Give me match, Raphael please thank you,' he said.

Raphael did. Then he went through to the bedroom. 'Baby, please go,' he said. 'If you make me mad I'll have to take you again, and that'll double up your dollar aid, won't it?'

Maria-Angeles had dressed while Raphael was in the living room. She didn't say a word. Now she walked to the door in her
fine silk coat Raphael began putting thousand notes in her hand. It got to three and she still held her hand out.

'Look,' Raphael said, perplexed. 'Only five minutes ago you spat on my head. You just can't do that sort of thing and then expect infatuation rates.'

Maria-Angeles continued to stand with her hand out A cold wind came through the broken window of the bedroom. It reached the two of them where they stood in the hall; and the girl's fine eyes moved significantly towards it.

'That's blackmail, that really is!' Raphael cried, catching on.

Suddenly Maria-Angeles' attitude changed completely. She kissed the American, slowly, using all she had. When she broke the clinch it was as tenderly as wind divides cloud. Not even her eyes showed that she knew Raphael Bonnington was broken.

'Well,' the footballer said, bemused. 'I guess maybe it's stupid not to part friends. It's a lonely world. Maybe it is for you . . . I dunno.' After that Raphael didn't know what he paid. It was better that way he reckoned. It really was better. In the living room Achmed was smoking with glazed eye. Raphael wondered what the hell he was doing here. He had better try to say something.

'Well, if it's not the Berber Baby!' he exclaimed. 'Classed-up too! I haven't seen you for maybe six months. Who gave you those clothes? Look, you don't want to sleep here, do you? I don't have many parties now. No, wait a minute, Would you like to come Tuesday? You know—maybe play the flute a bit? There's some fellows coming in then. I guess it'd be nice to have you. Party,' Raphael repeated, because the kid didn't seem to follow. 'You know—party. Tuesday.'

Achmed smiled because party was a word he recognised. 'Hey! Raphael! Come here!' he beckoned with his head. Raphael went over to where the boy sat. 'You can still give orders okay!' he said without thinking. He wanted black coffee. He wanted it alone.

'
Esta noche
. . .
in Medina. Frederick finish,' Achmed said.

He slashed at his throat with a finger.

'Sure,' Raphael said. 'Frederick, eh? Why don't you go to a movie now? Get some of those—you know—what is it? Peanuts, isn't it you eat at the movies?'

Raphael gave the boy two hundred francs and walked to the door with him. Achmed was dazed. He shook Raphael, hand, then covered his heart.

'You still do that!' Raphael was pleased.

'Hey, Raphael, may haf' five hundred, please thank you,' Achmed said, intuitively following the advantage. 'Sure, sure,' Raphael said enthusiastically.

After that the boy left.

  *  *  *  *  *

Achmed bought five loose Casa Sports cigarettes. He had them wrapped in paper for him. He walked back to the
European town; let himself in to the shop, and stood there a moment in the darkness. He went over to the cash register and pressed one of the keys. The white teeth flew up like those of the startled rabbits his father killed in the hills. At the same time the bell rang loudly through the empty house and the money drawer sprang open. Achmed counted the money in the half light before returning it and closing the drawer. He crawled into the brightly lit display window. There was no one in the streets, because it was late now, and he stayed there some time looking at the picture books. He found the lions. Without thinking why he did it, he tore out the best photograph of the lioness with her five cubs. He put this under his pullover and went upstairs.

In the small flat over the shop Achmed began to collect things. First he took his towel. It was a big one. Gradually he put together a chromium mouth-organ, a wooden pipe, his spare shoe, a reel of cotton and a needle, some buttons, his Brylcreem and face-flannel, a wooden spinning-top with a length of whip-cord, two orange plastic aeroplanes from Tide packets, an English sheath-knife, and a folding clasp-knife, whose many implements included another spoon and fork. He fetched a suit with creases still in the trousers, a plain red tie, and another with space rockets, a shirt that was still drying over the bath, his best handkerchief with monogram, about a cupful of sugar in a polythene bag, a small piece of bread, and a tin of sardines. He emptied his money box once more, and finally unlocked the strong box and took out a shapeless lump of gold on a fine gold chain. This had been a crucifix presented to Achmed by Frederick's sister who was a missionary in Pretoria. When Achmed wouldn't accept it, he and Frederick had spent an evening melting the lithe figure on its tyrannically symmetrical cross. But having done this they lacked both the tools and the knowledge to create anything else. It was simply a lump of gold on a chain. Its worth was around thirty pounds South African sterling. Frederick's sister had said as much when she sent it; her reason for stating the value of the gold being to impress upon the boy that its spiritual value was incalculably more.

When Achmed had collected these things, he took Frederick's field-glasses, stood as far back from the pile of possessions as the small room would allow, and considered them in close-up. He returned the field-glasses to their drawer, and taking the shop key from his jeans' pocket, laid it on Frederick's desk.

With the bundle tied up in towelling over his shoulder the shop door locked itself behind him automatically.

  *  *  *  *  *

Caroline Adam swallowed a mouthful of coffee and sat back. It was cold in the small market place. At eight o'clock the few people who were still about seemed mostly homeward bound. She had little idea of what Harold Lom was after. He had been idly photographing crowd movements in the emptying square. Now he came back and sat heavily down beside her. Sandy Pherson followed, weaving his way between lottery touts and shoeshines with an inane, friendly grin. Sandy's particular genius was operating camera, sound boom, and lights single handed, which was an achievement redundant in London.

'I'm sure that bloke leaning up against the wall is a dope peddler,' Sandy said.

Lom looked at him sharply. He took up his own hand Bell and Howell, twisted aperture expertly, and sucked a figure towards
him through the zoom lens with a slow gyration of his wrist. It was Achmed, who had just entered the small market place.

'There's a union, you know,' Sandy said, grinning. 'What did you get?'

'Nothing,' Lom said. 'Did you hear film running? Always shoot first takes with just your own eyes.' He had no sooner said this than he knew it to be an illogical rule for candid photography. Tiredness, and the
kif
he had been smoking, had made him irritable and withdrawn.

Sandy sat back abashed, though he got in a wink to Caroline. That's the way Moses spoke when the Lord finally released him from Mount Sinai, Caroline thought, though without really thinking at all. Sandy sat forward again over his coffee. The glass was so hot you had to grab it by the rim, sip it and dump it. A beggar child cruised up for the unused sugar lump. Sandy slid it to her across the plastic table. The square depressed him, though at the moment he was more worried about the van which, by special permission, was the only vehicle in the small market place. Lom, commanding spontaneously in the field, since obviously there was nothing about it in the contract, had made him responsible for guarding it. It had already lost both windscreen wipers. 'Curiosity, rightful envy, or sheer acquisitiveness,' Caroline had said, in her thorough, faintly bolshie way. Then, extraordinarily, a tout, anxious to prove to an unwary tourist that a glass ring was real diamond, had scratched a sweeping scar on a window. That had been in the new town, and the van had just happened to be the nearest convenient vehicle. There were quite a few people gathered round the van now, and Sandy was watching it carefully.

'Ask Rabat,' Caroline said to a beggar who had come round to her side of the table. Her Cairo Arabic was quite lost on him; or perhaps the mental leap was too great.

'What was it that time?' Sandy asked, smiling. They might at least natter while waiting for Godot Lom. But Caroline was now talking to the waiter in Spanish. She turned back to Sandy.

'He says someone was murdered a few yards from here about two hours ago; she said.

'We're not reporters,' Lom interrupted, though without taking his camera from his
eye.
To himself, he seemed to be making a sequence of genius. The
kif
had acted as a catalyst upon the most secret and impressionable areas of his consciousness. What he was seeing through the camera was a ragged corner of humanity. The people and the place were congruous with one another, yet struck no ordinary responses in Harold Lom because he himself, his concern, and his trains of association, had nothing in common, or nothing at least that was explicably so, with this shabby square, and its equally shabby, indigenous occupants. Instead there was bared within him that often hopelessly frustrated or irrelevantly deceived response that sought to trace and evolve a pure aesthetic. He was totally involved through his eyes.