Tangier

The Last Column

"Really, you look terrible," said Hamid. "Worse than I've ever seen you."

It was eleven o'clock in the morning, two days after the murder of Herve Beaumont. They were sitting in Haifa Cafe, Robin with his back to the Straits of Gibraltar, Hamid facing the coast of Spain, cut off from sight by haze. A pregnant cat under the little iron table licked softly at Hamid's moccasins. Ramadan was due to end in one more day; then the new moon would come, and the feast of Aid es Seghir.

"Actually," said Hamid, still appalled by Robin's bloodshot eyes and the drained pallor of his face, "he was passive when we caught him. He made no attempt to struggle, and within five minutes he confessed. He took us to the place where he'd hidden the knife, under a rock in a cliff on the way to Cap Spartel. He was going to hide out in the mountains and then try to slip over the frontier. Inigo came around last night and asked to visit him in his cell. I refused, with mixed feelings I admit. There's something likable about the boy, though of course he's dangerous and mad."

Robin nodded. "I knew he was both those things. Inigo called him 'schizophrenic.' Last year he nearly cut off my balls. "

"You're still blaming yourself-"

"Of course, Hamid. I introduced them, encouraged Herve. Told him it would be good for him, would clear up his confusion and straighten out his head."

"Well, Robin, you couldn't have known-"

"I did know. If I'd thought about it, just taken a minute and thought, I might have predicted the whole thing. I certainly knew that Herve was in trouble, and that Pumpkin Pie was violent. I'm responsible, Hamid. I feel that I am. I knew what I was doing. Subconsciously I knew."

Robin thrust his head down on the table and began silently to sob. His body quivered and made the table shake. Hamid watched for a moment, then reached out and placed his hand on Robin's hair.

"Really, Robin, there's no point in assigning blame. I had this boy in my office on a vice charge last month. I could have locked him up. But I didn't. I was tired and let him go. Does that make me an accomplice? I really don't think it does."

Hamid wanted very much to comfort Robin, relieve his terrible distress. He didn't think he was responsible for the Beaumont murder-he put the blame on something else.

"It's not you, Robin," he said. "You're judging yourself too harshly now. This comes from something a lot deeper than your little immoralities, something sick, even evil, that exists in the expatriate milieu. People using people. Europeans and Moroccans competing for advantage. That sort of thing breeds rage, and when unstable personalities are involved we get violence just like this."

Robin calmed down after a while, stopped his weeping and raised his head. "I hate myself, Hamid. I detest what I've become. Ridiculous hustler. Phony poet. Trashy gossip. Despicable queer. The only thing I don't regret is that I've been your snitch all these years."

"Yes, that's something to be proud of-"

"I've been helpful to you, haven't I, Hamid? Devoted? I even helped you crack this case. I fingered Pie the moment that I heard."

"Oh, yes, you've been helpful from time to time. Certainly you're my favorite informer, though perhaps not the most reliable one I've ever had."

"Have you felt grateful toward me at times? Happy you let me stay?"

Hamid laughed. "I'm not sure grateful is the word. But yes-I'm happy I didn't throw you out years ago when I had the chance."

"Good. I'm glad." Robin looked into his eyes. "Will you do me a favor, Hamid? Something for old time's sake?"

"That depends. Tell me what you want."

"I want you to expel me from Tangier."

Hamid smiled. "Don't be ridiculous. You're not a prisoner here. If you really want to go, all you have to do is leave."

"That's the problem, damn it, Hamid. It's not so easy just 'to go.' "

"I don't see any difficulty about it. In fact, I think it's a fine idea."

"You don't understand. I've tried. For years I've tried. I've wanted to go for a long time. But I can't. My life here is too easy and set. If I go somewhere else I'm sure to have difficulties. The only way I'm ever going to leave is if you kick my ass."

Robin fixed Hamid with his most sincere and anguished gaze. Hamid searched his eyes for irony, and finding none looked closely at him and raised his brows.

"Let's be serious, Robin. I understand you, but you're not saying what you mean. You're perfectly capable of leaving Tangier on your own. What you want from me is something else. Not an order of expulsion. You want punishment. You want me to expel you as a punishment, to help relieve a little of your guilt."

"That's it, of course." Robin smiled. "You're so sensitive, Hamid, such a remarkable cop. I'm your Raskolnikov, and you're my Inspector Porfiry. You've read Dostoyevsky, of course."

Hamid shook his head. "I can't even get through our local authors. My reading is confined to dossiers."

"This one's worth the trouble. Crime and Punishment. It deals with subjects you know so well."

"Thank you. I'll try to find a copy. But getting back to your departure, where do you think you'd like to go?"

"Canada. Montreal. I have some friends there. I could probably find a job."

"Any family?"

Robin laughed. "They all disowned me years ago."

"What sort of job then?"

"Oh-journalism. I'd be a good police reporter, don't you think?"

"If you worked at it-maybe. Have you money for the trip?"

"Not now. No. But it wouldn't cost too much. I could catch a freighter out of Lisbon or Algeciras. One-way passage. I could raise it, I suppose."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. I don't know whether it's too late for me, but at least I'd like to try to start again."

"Then do it, Robin."

"Expel me and I will."

Hamid was disgusted. "So, we're back to that-the old Tangier tricks. You'll never have another sort of life, Robin, if you don't start right now and change."

"What?"

"Listen to me! Stop these stupid charades, these little Tangier deals you've been making all these years. 'I'll do this for you, Hamid, if you do this for me.' 'Let me stay and I'll be your snitch.' 'I'll save myself and leave, but you have to expel me first.' Such nonsense! Why don't you just do the thing straight out? I'll help you. I'll drive you to the frontier at Ceuta. I'll even lend you the money for your passage to Montreal. Tell me when and I'll escort you where you like. But I won't issue an order of expulsion or deal with you as a police inspector. Only as Hamid, your friend. How about trying that?"

Robin was startled. "You'd really do that for me, Hamid? I'm grateful. Really I am. That's good. Very very good."

They sat in silence for a while, smiling at each other, pleased.

"Do you want to leave this afternoon?"

"The sooner the better. Why not?"

"What about your stuff? Will you have time to pack it up?"

"I'll leave it. It's worthless anyway. Won't do me any good in Montreal. But there is one chore I have to do. I owe the Depeche a final column."

Hamid nodded. "Three o'clock then? In front of the Poste. But be sure and call me if you change your mind."

Hamid drove to his bank, picked up some money, then went on to his office to complete some work on the Herve Beaumont case. He signed a document that released the body to the sisters, who wanted to take it up to Paris on the evening plane. Then he phoned the prosecutor about Pumpkin Pie. He suggested the boy be taken to the asylum at Beni Makada so that the psychiatrists there could observe him for a week and report on their observations at his trial.

There were a few other small matters that claimed his attention-a velvet and silver-threaded cape stolen during the costume party at Countess de Lauzon's, and the beating of the estate agent Max Durand by a gang on the Mountain Road. Unruly gangs had been terrorizing foreigners for a month, but until now the Mountain had remained secure. Now, it seemed, even that enclave had become fair ground.

He ate no lunch, since the fast was still in effect. The thought that it was nearly finished made the deprivation less intense. At three o'clock he drove over to the main post office on Boulevard Mohammed V. Robin was waiting there with a small leather suitcase, his typewriter, and a tattered musette bag slung across his back.

"Is that all you're taking?"

Robin nodded. "Everything worthwhile," he said, sliding into the car.

Hamid took the coast road at Robin's request, through orchards of olive trees, then along the cliffs that lined the African side of the Straits.

"Write your column?" he asked as they passed Malabata point.

"Oh, yes, and I turned it in. Be sure to read it Saturday. In some ways it may be my best." Robin turned in his seat for a last look at Tangier. "You know," he said after the city disappeared from sight, "I've been away only a quarter of an hour, but already I want to reminisce."

"Well," said Hamid, "when you're settled in Montreal I hope you'll think kindly of the place."

"I'll try, Hamid. But I don't guarantee I will."

Hamid laughed. "It's funny, isn't it-nearly every foreigner who's ever moved here has become disillusioned in the end. The strong ones find the will to leave. The others stay and rot. I like to think that you'd have left sooner or later on your own-that it wasn't just Herve 's murder that showed you that you must, but a sense of waste and self-disgust."

"You've always been after me to leave, Hamid. I think you used to suggest it because you liked to see me get annoyed. Anyway, you were right. Now tell me-you're an observant man. Have I changed very much these past ten years?"

"Oh, yes. You were a beautiful hippie when you came. Mad, of course, but interesting, and so extreme."

"And now?"

"Now you're a gossip."

"A bitch you mean."

"All right-a bitch. You started out here as a person, but after a while you became a 'Tangier character.' Our stock and trade. We have so many 'characters,' many more than a little town like ours is able to support. Now I wonder about Montreal. Whether you'll fit in there. Whether you'll really change."

"I think so. It's a big, sophisticated city."

"Very expensive, I imagine, too. Actually, I was wondering whether you'll be able to do without some of your exquisite pleasures. You know what I mean-your peculiar tastes."

"My homosexuality? Of course not. I am and always shall be gay. You hate that, don't you?"

Hamid shook his head. "If you think I do, you're wrong. But what I don't like, aside from the issue of children, is the preying stance you people take. Rather than sticking together and sleeping with each other, you insist on taking advantage of Moroccans who are ignorant and poor. It's racism, really-exploitation. Our boys are booty to be plundered, animals to be penetrated and used. Have you any idea what this does to us? It's far worse than going into a poor country and exploiting cheap labor, resources-phosphates or oil. We're talking about human beings, after all, people like my own brother, one of the very few who's had the good fortune to escape the business more or less intact. Still he's been affected. I see it in him all the time. By the way, I caught him with Herve one night in the rug room of his shop, stumbled in on them by accident a month or so ago."

Robin, silent, was staring straight ahead. When he finally spoke he did not use his usual bantering style. "To think that all these years I thought it was just a matter of your personal distaste. Well, Hamid, on our last day together I discover a side to you I didn't know before. Too bad in a way, but I agree with everything you've said. My escapades here have been exploitative, and endlessly complicated by sex-something I've never understood or learned how to control. I have to ask myself, you see, why I didn't take better care of Herve. I was his friend, but I sent him to a hustler, one I knew was dangerous besides."

"Oh, stop it, Robin."

"No. It's very important, because it ties in with what you said. Pie was the reluctant chicken, and Herve the incompetent hawk. I've learned a lesson from this, I think. In Montreal, I assure you, I'm going to become a different man. No youngsters, first of all, though that much is obvious, I suppose. No-it's really much more important than that. It's a question of people and who they are. I'll be gay, of course, but when I look for lovers I'll choose them from among my equals, my friends."

Hamid drove on, and after an hour the Mediterranean came into sight. Then they started to descend, by groves of eucalyptus, toward towns with Spanish facades. Down at sea level they passed tourist villages built up along the coast. Hamid finally stopped the car a few feet from the frontier.

"Well," he said, "I'm going to miss you."

Robin nodded. "I shall miss you too. Tell me, Hamid, about yourself. What will your future be?"

"I'm changing too, Robin-just like you."

"Good. Good. A strange ten years it's been. Thanks again for the loan. I'll pay you back when I get a job."

"I'm not worried. I wish you luck."

"Thank you, Hamid. Good luck yourself."

They shook hands, then Robin left the car. Hamid watched as he approached the frontier, set down his bags on the customs rack, had them chalked by the inspector, then moved on to passport control. He emerged a few minutes later. A guard raised the jackknife barricade. Robin stepped out of Morocco, turned, and gave a final wave. Hamid waved back, and when Robin's red mop had finally disappeared into Spain, he turned the car around and drove back to Tangier.

A few days later when the Depeche came out, Hamid bought a copy and opened it on the street. He turned to "About Tangier by Robin Scott" and was surprised by what he found. Most of the space was blank where the column normally appeared. There were only a few lines printed near the top: "Robin Scott announces his permanent departure from Tangier and bids farewell to all his friends."

Indeed, Hamid decided, it was the best column Robin ever wrote.