Flashback

SIX

I lay still for a good half hour, body rigid, ears alert to the slightest sound, some part of me expecting the man to return. When I finally lifted my arm from under the covers and checked my watch, it was just before five. Swinging out of bed, I dressed, slipped the rucksack over my shoulders, and headed into the hallway.

I made my way down through the empty lobby and out onto the veranda, then crossed the courtyard. Outside the Continental’s gates, the medina was bustling with people, alive as I might have imagined it to be at midday. The streets smelled of roasting meat and hot bread, preparations for the predawn feast and the day of fasting ahead.

Backtracking to the spot where Joshi and I had stopped the night before, I found the flag that marked his window. A good fifteen feet of smooth wall separated the little rectangular opening from the roof below it. If I wanted in, I’d have to find a way inside the building. A corner apartment, I told myself, counting up the floors, skirting toward the front of the structure. The heavy wooden door was locked tight, barred by a thick iron strap.

I stepped into the street, contemplating my options. Could there be a back door? A lower window somewhere? As I started back the way I’d come, I caught sight of a woman in a djellaba and a head scarf coming toward me. The crook of her left arm held a shopping bag. In her right hand was a ring of keys. I let her pass me, then turned and followed a few steps behind. Hugging the shadows on the far edge of the narrow street, I watched her turn into the front alcove of Joshi’s building. I flattened myself against the wall and waited. Keys jangled in the lock; then I heard her step inside.

The door creaked closed behind her, and I leaped forward, my fingertips catching the smooth wood before the latch clicked into place. I ducked into the alcove and waited, listening to her footsteps, the opening and closing of an interior door. When I was certain she was in her apartment, I pushed my way inside.

From what little I had been able to discern from the jumbled rooftops and seemingly random placement of windows, my best guess put Joshi’s apartment on the third floor. The woman had switched the timed hallway light on, and a dim bulb illuminated the stairwell. I hit the switch again, buying myself another few minutes of light, then started upward. When I reached the third-floor landing, I found the corner apartment and knocked.

The building was beginning to awaken. From behind the other closed doors came the sounds of children’s voices, the clatter of crockery, the race to eat and drink before the sun came up. Only Joshi’s apartment was quiet. I knocked again, louder this time, and waited.

Finally, something moved in the apartment, bedclothes rustling, feet on bare tiles. I knocked once more, and the door cracked open. Two bleary eyes stared out at me. Jamming my shoulder against the door, I forced my way inside. The little man reeled backward, knocked off balance, and slammed into the wall.

“Who is he?” I demanded, closing the door behind me.

Joshi recovered himself and backed away. He had on striped cotton pajamas, blue bed slippers, and a blue robe. A pink sleep crease ran across the side of his face. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I stepped closer to him and grabbed the front of the pajamas, pulling him toward me. He was smaller than I was, his face collapsing now like a scared child’s. He made a little noise, a weak attempt at a scream.

“I saw you together on the veranda at the Continental,” I said. “How much did he give you?”

Joshi squirmed in my hands. “I don’t know this man,” he insisted. “I only asked him for a light.”

“Bullshit. He paid you to follow me from the beginning.” I raised one fist as if I was going to hit him, and he shrunk back, his eyes pinched shut, his arm flying to protect his face.

“Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.

“Who is he?” I asked again.

“Just an expat, an American,” the little man said. “His name is Brian; that’s all I know.”

“How do you know him?”

Joshi shrugged. “The Continental, the Pub. I’ve seen him around. There aren’t many of us. I ran into him on the ferry. He asked me to keep an eye on you.”

I loosed my grip, and he straightened himself, smoothing the wrinkles from his pajama top. “Where does he live?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Somewhere in the Ville Nouvelle, probably.”

“Where can I find him?” I moved toward him again, and he cringed.

“It’s Wednesday, right?”

I thought for a minute, then nodded.

“The Pub,” Joshi said, “across from the Hotel Ritz. Wednesday’s dart night. Things usually get started early, around the cocktail hour. If he’s not there, you can try the piano bar at the El Minzah later.”

I turned for the door, stopping briefly to look back. Joshi pulled his robe tight around him, and I could see for the first time that the blue cotton had been mended and remended. The hem was frayed with wear.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

With one exception, the rooms at the priory were simple and unadorned. Decades, even centuries, of the same off-white paint covered the hallways, the kitchen, and the sisters’ quarters. But at some point in the long history of the building, someone had decided to distinguish the library with wallpaper. And in the years after, other sisters had added more layers.

The library was a beautiful room and well used, airy and high-ceilinged with a stone fireplace and a view of the priory’s garden. But at the time of my stay it had obviously seen some years of neglect. There were places where the paper had begun to peel away, ragged holes that revealed the old patterns underneath. A form of time travel, Heloise had called it, and sometimes the two of us would contemplate this backward record and its makers.

The upper layer was young enough for Magda to remember its having been hung, though the sister who hung it had long resided in the little cemetery next to the chapel. It was green, faded now, with a pattern of darker green leaves. Beneath the green were other prints, gaudy flowers, gold fleurs-de-lis, and simple stripes. My favorite paper was printed over and over with a Chinese village scene. It was a tiny world of fishermen and farmers, of pagodas and bridges, and a solitary oxen driver on a winding mountain road.

I often wondered at the sister who had picked it. Did she sit in the evenings and contemplate an escape to this strange place? Did she wonder at those static lives, the woman forever fanning herself, the fisherman still without a fish?

Once, when we were sitting in the library, I asked Heloise what it was like to remember, and she said it was like the library walls, the present faded green leaves, the past poking through here and there, and always, farther down, another mystery.

When I left Joshi’s that morning and headed back through the Continental’s gates, I felt as if a piece of my own present had begun to peel away. Somewhere beneath the glue-stiff layers lay this city. I was certain of it now. And beneath the faded print of Tangier lay the tattered edges of a far darker pattern, a part of myself I had long expected to find.

I climbed the stairs to the veranda and stood for a moment looking out at the harbor. The sky was an impossible predawn blue, glowing like a jewel above the bay. I knew this place, I thought. It was familiar to me in some deep-down way. But more familiar than Tangier, than the smells of the medina, than the cloaked shapes swaying under djellabas and burnooses, was the risen power of my own anger.

I thought of Joshi in his worn pajamas, his little arm moving to protect his face, and suddenly I was afraid. I would have beaten it out of him, I thought. I would have gotten the information no matter what. I knew how to do that kind of thing.

I slept late, then spent the afternoon wandering the city. It was just before five when I stepped into the Pub, and already the place was packed with expatriates. Bare-shouldered English girls and sunburned Australians flirted with each other over shandies and pints of porter. I ordered a lager and wandered back toward the dartboards and pool table.

Except for the small slice of Tangier that was visible through the front window, I could have been on any London corner. A large television over the bar broadcast Premier League soccer. A blackboard beside it listed the daily specials: scampi and chips, ploughman’s lunch, and kidney pie. Save for a framed operating license, there was not one scrap of Arabic in the establishment. The man Joshi had called Brian was nowhere to be found, so I grabbed a free seat in a back corner of the bar, ordered some scampi and chips, and settled in to wait.

I didn’t have to wait long. I was tucking away the last of my greasy french fries when the front door opened and a group of girls stumbled inside. Pulling off long-sleeved shirts and jackets to reveal half T-shirts and navel rings, shedding their outerwear like crabs ready for mating, they headed for the bar. I was watching them with fascination when the door opened again and a man stepped inside.

He had traded his raincoat for faded jeans, a gray cotton sweater, and running shoes, but it was the same man I’d seen on the Continental’s veranda and in my hotel room early that morning. Yes, I thought, watching him make his way to the bar, he was definitely an American. He ordered a beer and started in my direction, evidently heading for the dartboards. I leaned my elbows on the table and watched him. He was handsome up close, his hair slightly mussed as if he’d just woken from a nap. He passed right by me, his eyes skimming my face, then moved on.

I ordered another pint and let him play a game of darts. When he made his second trip to the bar, I elbowed my way in beside him.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

He signaled for the bartender, then looked over at me nonchalantly. “I don’t think so.”

“No. I’m sure I know you. It’s Brian, right?”

He shrugged. “I’ve got that kind of look.”

“Maybe this’ll jog your memory,” I told him. “Four o’clock this morning. Hotel Continental. Room two-oh-five.”

The bartender came over. Brian ordered another pint and slid a twenty-dirham note across the bar.

“Who the fuck are you?” I demanded. “And what do you want?”

He picked up his glass, took his change, and turned to move away. “Listen, I really think you’ve got the wrong guy.”

I watched him walk back to the dartboards, exchanging brief hellos as he went. Most of the Pub’s patrons seemed to know each other, and Brian was no exception.

A young woman with dreadlocks muscled her way in next to me.

“You a regular?” I asked.

She smiled. “Regular as I can be.”

“You know that guy over there?” I pointed to Brian.

“Sure.”

“His name’s Brian, right?”

“Cute, huh?” She nodded.

“You know anything about him?”

The woman lit a cigarette and waved the smoke away. “American,” she said. “From California, I think. Poor guy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s down here looking for his brother,” she explained. “Disappeared about a year ago.”

“Did you know him? The brother, I mean.”

She shook her head. “Before my time.”

“What happened?”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? No one knows.”

The bartender appeared, and the woman ordered a vodka tonic.

“He was some kind of do-gooder,” she offered. “You know, trying to modernize the medina, bring the Internet to the carpet dealers.”

I watched Brian put his beer down and start for the men’s room.

“Don’t get any ideas,” the dreadlocked woman said wistfully as her drink arrived. “He’s single as they come, and appears to like it that way. Believe me, we’ve all tried.”

I smiled. “Well, then, wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” I heard her say as I started toward the rear of the bar.

The rest rooms were tucked in a small hallway behind the pool table. I set my beer down next to Brian’s, slipped into the little corridor, and leaned against the wall next to the men’s-room door, listening to the sound of the faucets running. Something was wrong. No one took that long to wash his hands. Moving my ear to the door, I knocked lightly and got no answer.

I put my hand on the knob and pushed. The bathroom and its single doorless stall were empty. The one small window was too small and too high to have provided an exit. Stepping back into the hallway, I surveyed my surroundings. Next to the men’s room was the women’s. Across the corridor was a door marked Office and a second, unmarked door. I tried the blank door and felt the knob give way in my hand. The door swung outward to reveal the dank and putrid alley beyond.

Something moved in the darkness. I craned my head out to see a knot of rats swarming on the Pub’s garbage, a tangle of teeth and furless tails. Farther away, near where the alley opened onto the street, a shapeless beggar coughed, the sound hoarse and hollow as a death rattle. There was no sign of Brian.