The Torch of Tangier (5 page)

Chapter Ten

MacAlistair sat at the piano in the salon, his fingers striking the keys, filling the room with furious music, arpeggio after arpeggio fleeing from his hand like frightened doves.

Under the colonnaded archway, Zaid leaned against the carved doors that opened on the courtyard. He had bleached his hair that week and a bright blond curl on his forehead stood out against his swarthy skin.

In the cool autumn dusk, under the open sky, a table had been laid for dinner next to the blue-tiled fountain. Idly, Zaid watched the servant, Faridah, dismantle the table setting, stacking bright earthenware plates into rickety piles, yanking off the white linen tablecloth. Tassels, fringing the scarf that covered Faridah’s head, wavered disapprovingly in the evening breeze.

“Getting too cool to eat outside,” Zaid said and pushed back his strand of yellow hair.

Faridah carried the dishes and cloth into the house toward the dining room. Strident piano chords reverberated against the tiles and quivered in the alcoves. The vibration made the copper lamps weave back and forth on their chains; lacy patterns of light on the walls swayed in dizzying arcs.

The effort made MacAlistair cough and he stopped playing. Sweat dripped from his temples; two flaming crimson patches on his cheeks stood out against the pasty whiteness of his face.

Zaid reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Drury watched Zaid with a bemused smile and dropped into a cushioned chair in the garden, looking away at the rose bushes, studying the mosaic pattern of the pavement.

“What are they angry about?” Lily asked Drury.

“Who?”

“MacAlistair and Faridah.”

“Are they? I didn’t notice.”

A clatter of pots and dishes erupted from the kitchen. The odor of spices and cooking meat drifted out to them, mingling with the sweet perfume of roses, gardenias, and lemon trees in the garden.

“Faridah is making
pastilla
tonight,” Zaid said.

“What’s the matter with her?” Lily asked.

“It’s nothing,” Zaid said. “She’s angry that her husband sends her out to work, doesn’t let her keep the money.”

“I didn’t know she was married,” Lily said.

Drury looked puzzled. He rose, scrutinizing Zaid with narrowed eyes. “Neither did I.”

“Well, then,” Lily said, “why the….”

“Come to the table,” MacAlistair called from inside. “Faridah wants to leave early.”

In spite of the tension in the house, Lily still savored the sensuous details of the room, the polished softness of the cushions, the intricately carved plaster of the walls and ceiling, the silken carpet, the corner vitrine made of burled thuza wood and filled with artifacts—Roman figurines, ancient pottery, bronze oil lamps, gold earrings the peculiar matte yellow of ancient gold.

She remembered the first time she had seen the cabinet.

MacAlistair stood next to her then. “My little collection,” he said. “You see this.” He opened the cabinet door and took out a decorated glass bead with a bearded, bug-eyed face. “The Phoenicians used these as charms to allay danger as they sailed past the Straits into the Atlantic. They stopped here in Tangier, ancient Tingis, to make sacrifices. According to legend, Tingis was founded by the son of Poseidon. Ancient Berbers lived here, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, long before Arabs and Europeans came.”

He put the charm back. “And here,” he reached into the cabinet and took out a marble bust mounted on a plinth of polished wood, “is the bust of a Berber youth from Volubilis.” He looked over at Zaid and smiled, then lovingly ran his fingers along the tangle of curls on the head of the marble youth. “You must go to Volubilis, must dig there someday. It holds the heart of Morocco. The first Sultanate under Moulay Idriss began there. Latinized, Christian Berbers ruled there before the Moslems came. Romans ruled from there, Berbers, Phoenicians, Carthaginians ruled from there. And before that, Neolithic farmers lived there.”

***

Faridah had dumped the forks on top of a stack of paper napkins in the middle of the table, and now she emerged from the kitchen with a tray of silver finger bowls and towels, her eyes steamy with resentment, sweat glistening on her upper lip. The tassels on her scarf bobbed as she plopped the finger bowls and towels in front of the diners and flounced back to the kitchen.

Drury waited until Faridah had left the room. “Tariq came into town today.”

MacAlistair nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “Later,” he said.

Zaid, watching silently, dipped his fingers in the bowl and dried them on the towel.

“By the way,” MacAlistair said to Lily. “You’re invited to tea tomorrow. At my aunt’s—Emily Keane Shereefa of Ouzzane.”

Her Highness, Emily Keane Shereefa, the duenna of British-Tangier society, was a legend, famous for her charities and good works.

Lily was impressed.

“She’s your aunt?” Lily had seen her once, at a tea of the British Women’s Association in the El Minzah. A small, frail woman in rustling taffeta, she had moved slowly and carefully through the reception area, leaning on the arm of her grandson Phillipe.

“My great-aunt. My grandmother was her sister. My mother brought me to see her when I was a child. She was beautiful and had a special way with children. I couldn’t forget her. I fell in love with Morocco then—with everything Moroccan.” He looked over at Zaid and smiled. “I returned for a visit after my mother died, and I’ve been coming back ever since.”

Lily had heard that after Emily Keane’s arrival in Morocco in the nineteenth century as governess for the children of the British consul, she had married Moulay Abdulsalam es Shereef, descendant of the Prophet, nephew of the Sultan, leader of the religious brotherhood of Ouzzane.

“She must be very old,” Lily said. “Your aunt, I mean.”

“Almost ninety.”

Faridah cleared away the finger bowls and returned with a tureen of lentil soup. She plunked the tureen in front of MacAlistair and stomped back to the kitchen.

“Quite an honor to be invited to tea with Emily Shereefa,” Drury said, while MacAlistair ladled the soup.

“Will you be there?” Lily asked.

“Not tomorrow.” Drury took a spoonful of soup. He turned to MacAlistair. “Tariq said he saw German U-boats near Cape Spartel.”

MacAlistair put down his spoon and wiped his face with the napkin. “Inside the Straits? On the Mediterranean side?”

“He said they were…” Drury began. His voice trailed off as Faridah came into the dining room carrying a steaming dish almost as large as the table.

Drury waved his hand toward her in a gesture of approval and made a show of breathing in the aroma of the pastilla. “Magnificent,” he said to Faridah.

She paraded out. They waited until the clatter of pots came from the kitchen before anyone spoke.

“You can talk in front of her,” Zaid said.

“No,” MacAlistair said. “We can’t.” He dished the layers of filo dough, stuffed with pigeon and almonds, olives and sweet fruits, onto plates and passed them around.

“What happened today?” Drury asked.

“It’s nothing,” Zaid said. “She was looking at a book.”

“What book?”

“Just a popular British novel,” Zaid said. “One of those love stories women like.”

MacAlistair picked up his napkin and threw it down again. “
Rebecca
. She found it at the bottom of a drawer in my wardrobe.”

Drury frowned. “She reads English?”

Zaid leaned forward. “She doesn’t read at all. She stole nothing.”

The argument had a hidden significance that Lily couldn’t fathom. She looked away and noticed movement behind the lattice that lined the shaded gallery of the upper floor. Drury followed her gaze as she watched the shadow pass from room to room.

“Get rid of Faridah,” Drury said to MacAlistair. “Tonight.”

MacAlistair sighed. “Go tell her she’s fired,” he said to Zaid.

Zaid scowled. “Who’s going to wash the dishes?”

MacAlistair sighed again and held out his hands in entreaty.

Zaid stood up, slammed down his napkin, and strode out toward the kitchen.

“How long have you known him?” Lily asked after he was gone.

MacAlistair’s face took on a dreamy expression. “I met him the first time I came to Morocco, a long time ago. He was working at the British Legation.” His eyes seemed to smile at some secret memory. “He was so beautiful then. So graceful. When he danced, he seemed to float on a cloud, his feet just glancing the floor, his arms and hands tapering and elegant, moving like the wings of a magnificent butterfly.”

MacAlistair paused, absorbed in memory, his eyes closed, his head swaying gently to the rhythm of a half-remembered tune.

“And he’s been with you ever since?” Lily asked.

“We quarreled once, some silly thing, I can’t remember now. He went to stay with his mother’s family in Meknes, just south of Volubilis.”

The shadow of a frown crossed MacAlistair’s face. “He came back a year later, brought Faridah with him. He had changed, but I took him back, hired Faridah.” He shrugged and gave Lily an apologetic smile. “He was still beautiful.”

They could hear snatches of Faridah and Zaid talking in the kitchen, Zaid’s voice a low hum, Faridah’s raised a little, as if she were asking questions, then gushing out in a long spate, interrupted now and then by a grunt from Zaid.

Lily couldn’t make out their words.

MacAlistair looked down at his plate, shaking his head regretfully. An embarrassed silence hung in the room.

“Tell me more about your aunt,” Lily said into the silence. “It couldn’t have been easy for her and the Sultan’s nephew. Was their marriage accepted?”

“No. Her marriage to the prince scandalized both British and Moslem society. To make matters worse, she shocked the Moslem world by appearing in public, taking baskets to the poor, visiting the sick. The prince’s reputation was destroyed and she discovered that children were dying of smallpox.”

“That’s when she began to work on getting them vaccinated?”

MacAlistair nodded and spread his hands on the tablecloth as if he were playing a chord on the piano. “She enlisted the help of the European community and moved to Tangier, hoping to save the reputation of her beloved prince. He died of grief two years after she left Ouzzane. She went on to wipe out smallpox in Morocco. Today, the Moslems regard her as a saint, and the Tangenos think of their marriage as a tragic love story.”

Zaid came back into the room and sat down. “You tell her,” he said to MacAlistair. “I can’t.”

“After she washes the dishes,” MacAlistair said.

Faridah cleared the pastilla and brought tea. MacAlistair followed her into the kitchen. Soon the clatter of pots was drowned by Faridah’s guttural shouts. After a few minutes, MacAlistair returned. They stayed at the table, sipping sweet tea in the cool night air until they heard Faridah leave.

MacAlistair glanced at his watch. “Time for us to look at the stars,” he said to Drury.

Drury and MacAlistair rose from the table and left the room. Zaid took the cups to the sideboard and retrieved a deck of cards, a pad, and a pencil from the drawer. He slapped a package of Gauloises and a glass ashtray on the corner of the table and sat down to deal out cards to Lily and himself.

Scraping sounds of moving chairs came from the roof. The low murmur of voices, mingled with crackling and rasping noises, hovered above their heads.

Zaid fingered the cards, rearranged them, put one on the pile and reached for another.

“What’s wrong with Faridah looking at a book?” Lily asked.

“That was just an excuse. Her brother died and I was comforting her. MacAlistair saw us in the garden with my arm around her. He was jealous.” Zaid’s lips curled around his cigarette, his eyes narrowed against the smoke. “It’s the asthma, you know. Makes him irritable and suspicious of everyone. Sometimes he’s difficult to live with.”

Twittering and squawking noises from the roof filtered down to them.

“They have a short-wave radio up there, don’t they?” Lily said.

Zaid puffed earnestly on his cigarette, picked up a card, breathed out a cloud of smoke, and spread his cards on the table.

“Gin.”

Chapter Eleven

Herr Balloon waited outside, hiding below the steps behind the railing, when Lily left the Legation to go to tea at Lalla Emily’s. This time she was ready for him.

She maneuvered past the vegetable stalls, up the hill in the crowded street, ducked into narrow lanes swarming with mothers and children, bustling with businessmen carrying briefcases and wearing dark djelabas. She reached the seedy confines of the Petit Socco, where gossips lounged in the Spanish cafés, exchanging rumors and sipping aperitifs. All the while, Herr Balloon stayed an interval behind her.

She wove through crowded streets to the Grand Socco, sidestepping storytellers and snake charmers, drugged monkeys and lion cubs, stalls that sold lizard’s feet to cure diseases.

Once, she looked back. She thought she saw Korian and the German standing together. Just a glance exchanged between them, just a glance for a split second, and then Korian disappeared into the throng of milling people.

How could they know each other, she wondered. Maybe it’s just my imagination.

The German hurried to catch up with her, and Lily took off again, plunging into the crowd.

She rushed ahead, until she heard the call, “
Balek
,
balek
,” from behind. It was what she had been waiting for.

She looked back to see a wood-seller leading a donkey overloaded with panniers of firewood. The creature plodded unsteadily among the stalls, the wood shifting from side to side as the ass stumbled through the crowd.

This time, as she knew he would, Herr Balloon did not stop. Lily halted. As Herr Balloon passed alongside the donkey, she ducked behind him, brought her knee up sharply into the back of his leg, and pushed him forward.

He careened into the donkey with a loud cry and fell to the pavement. A profusion of stacked wood cascaded over him. Lily ran, peered over her shoulder once to see a throng gathered around the wood-seller and Herr Balloon, and kept on running.

She hurried on through the crowded streets to tea.

***

“Moroccan houses,” Lalla Emily was saying in a voice as thin as paper, “like hearts, look inward.”

She wore a silk caftan richly embroidered with gold thread. Lily gazed at the elaborate mosaic pattern of the tiles on the wall and floor, the ponderous Venetian mirror, the carved balustrade that ran around the upper floor. Like so much else in the house, the tea was a blend of Moroccan and British traditions.

Lily, surprised to see Adam Pardo, wondered why he was here. The guests—Lily, MacAlistair, and Adam Pardo—sat on a divan that ran the length of the room. At a small table inlaid with mother of pearl, Lalla Emily poured tea into glasses crammed with mint leaves. Her thin hands, laced with veins, shook from the weight of the teapot. Her grandson Phillipe passed the glasses and a platter of pastry, heavy with honey.

The faint sound of the surf from the nearby beach reached them.

“I met my prince charming out there, on the strand,” Lalla Emily said, waving in the direction of the water. “I had come to Morocco as a governess. We would ride along the sand every day, the children and I, to take the fresh sea air.” She paused, the glass of tea in her hand, her eyes focused on some distant memory. “The first time I saw him, I fell madly in love.”

“As did your prince,” Phillipe said.

Lalla Emily put down the glass. “A sad day for both of us.”

“Not so,” MacAlistair said. “A great day for the children of Morocco.”

She folded her hands in her lap. “My beloved Abdulsalam was the leader of the religious brotherhood of Tabiya in Ouzzane.”

“Devout pilgrims flocked to Ouzzane to receive his blessing,” Phillipe added.

Lalla Emily smiled at her grandson and stroked his hand. “I was a parson’s daughter.” She sighed and leaned back. “Like the good wife of an English clergyman, I took baskets to the poor, visited the sick.” She looked down at her hands, shaking her head. “I was new to Morocco and naïve.”

Upper-class Moslem women rarely ventured out in public —not to the markets where they sent their servants to shop, and certainly not to the houses of strangers.

“People in town must have been shocked,” Lily said.

Lalla Emily nodded. “Appalled. But when I saw children and young mothers dying needlessly of diseases that could be prevented….” Her voice, already faint, quavered. “There was a smallpox epidemic, no vaccinations. They called the deaths the will of Allah. I raged against them, chastised them for believing in a cruel God.”

Lily could imagine the scandal among the powerful Tabiya Brotherhood at the behavior of the wife of their hereditary leader. Since it had been established in the eighteenth century by a descendent of the Idrisides—the founding dynasty of Morocco—the brotherhood controlled the north and the district surrounding the remote hilltop town of Ouzzane.

Lalla Emily’s eyes clouded over. “I couldn’t stop. I was determined to inoculate the children of Morocco. I enlisted the help of the leaders of the European community, invited them to the house. The brotherhood was up in arms. I was consorting with nonbelievers in the house of their leader.” She looked down at her hands again, her fingers twisting. “My husband was ruined, and I had ruined him.”

She gazed at Lily as if seeking exoneration. “I had a cruel choice-–between the lives of thousands of children and my love.” She paused again. “I left Ouzzane and came here to Tangier to finish my work.” Her hand brushed against her cheek. “My beloved died two years later. They tell me it was of a broken heart.” She put her hand on Lily’s arm. “Some day, you too may….”

Her voice trailed off with a sigh.

The room was hushed. Lily waited through the silence that hung in the air as grave as mourning.

Lalla Emily reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief and dabbed at the moisture that brimmed in her eyes. She turned to her grandson. “Phillipe, my dear, will you play for us?”

Phillipe put down his glass and went to a piano in the adjacent room. Lily reached for her glass of tea, then set it back down and listened as the strains of a Chopin nocturne, liquid and eloquent, washed over them.

“Our family always has shown musical talent,” said Lalla Emily, her head bent, intent on the sound. “If you will excuse me, I leave you to your business.”

She rose, lifting herself with the help of a gold-headed cane with an intricate chased pattern. Leaning heavily on the smooth, well-worn handle, she moved slowly into the courtyard and closed the door behind her.

MacAlistair and Pardo looked at each other, then at Lily. She tried another sip of the hot tea.

“First of all,” Pardo said. “What we talk about here must never leave this room.”

“Why so mysterious?” Lily tried the tea again. It burned her throat.

“You’ve heard of the OSS?” Pardo asked Lily.

“It’s a branch of G-2?”

“Office of Strategic Services. Civilians. Technically, it’s under G-3, Organization and Training Division.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“The OSS uses experts, specially trained personnel, university professors-–linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists like Drury—for activities outside regular military channels.”

So that’s what Drury was up to. Lily had heard rumors about some kind of work by Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Rhoda Metraux-–all former students of Franz Boas, who had founded the department of anthropology at Columbia.

Some of this made sense to Lily now. “You and Drury were Boas’ students at Columbia, weren’t you?” She paused and thought some more. “You’re talking about the National Character Studies, Culture at a Distance projects? The kind of thing we’re working on at the Legation?”

“That’s for the Office of War Information, OWI. I’m talking about the OSS.”

“It’s all alphabet soup to me.”

“Archaeologists like Nelson Glueck work for the OSS.”

Lily knew that Nelson Glueck, director of the American School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, was conducting an archaeological survey of Transjordan. “So Glueck’s not just doing a survey?” Lily asked. “He’s mapping out terrain and military installations?”

Pardo nodded. “Right. The job of the OSS is to get ahead of the Army and Navy, lay the groundwork for them. Find out things. Make contacts they can’t.” He spoke slowly, carefully, as if he expected her to take notes. “The thing is, anthropologists, archaeologists can go anywhere. It’s the nature of their work. Before you came, Drury checked you out. And we’ve done some background work on you. For security clearance.”

“You want me to do a survey?” she asked.

“Not exactly. This is more urgent. You’re on the ground here. OSS headquarters for North Africa is here in Tangier.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” MacAlistair said. “Get on with it.” He leaned forward, his hand on his knee. “This spring and summer, our forces broke the German drive to Egypt. Rommel retreated back into Libya, ending the threat to Suez. Now it’s time to attack Rommel from the west, destroy Axis forces in the Western Desert, push him out of Africa.”

“We have to get a foothold in North Africa,” Pardo said. “Secure bases for intensified military operations against the Axis in Europe. It takes a lot of personnel. We need help—people like you who know the Middle East-–to prepare a local underground for backup.”

MacAlistair stood up. “Drury has been working with the Riffians. They’re ready to step in, if needed.”

“We work through the Moroccan Nationalist Party,”
Drury had told her.
“They despise the French.”

“If Drury signals them,” MacAlistair said, “they’ll assemble and seize a few key positions, cut off roads, garrisons, deliver guns. The Americans will handle Morocco and Oran, land troops, drop parachutists. We’ll be further east.” He coughed gently and placed his hands on the small of his back, stretched, and coughed again and waited for the paroxysm to finish. “Our convoy’s already left Glasgow and Liverpool. In a few days it will be poised off the coast of North Africa.”

Lily wondered what her place in this was. “Well then, why—?”

“Here’s the point.” MacAlistair moved an armchair closer to the divan and sat down. “Tangier is going to be communications HQ here in North Africa for Operation Torch, relaying messages between Casablanca and Gibraltar.”

Lily stared at the tea glass and curled her fingers around it. “Operation Torch?”

“That’s the code name for the landings in North Africa,” Pardo said. “I’ll be in Casablanca. You’ll assist Drury in Tangier. Think you can handle it?” He paused. “Think about it. If you agree, there’s no turning back.”