Tangier (23 page)

Robin was irritated when Vincent Doyle arrived alone. The old exemplar, the literary lion, gaunt and bony, his hair shaved nearly to his skull, explained that his friend Achmed was indisposed. Doyle was excessively polite, but Robin sensed he was on edge. He settled on a rock and immediately lit up a pipe of kif.

Doyle always carried his manuscript with him, packed in a burlap sack. He was known for his paranoia, his fear of Moroccans, particularly servants and police, and his belief that a revolution might break out at any moment, making it necessary for him to leave the country without his work. Doyle was almost as well known as Ashton Codd, but he hadn't published anything in years. The manuscript he carried was to be his swan song, a huge novel into which he was pouring everything he knew and by which he hoped to remind the world that he was still alive.

Robin offered to store the sack in the tent, and actually had his hands on it when Doyle suddenly grabbed it back.

"Christ's sake, Vincent. What's the matter? This thing's as heavy as bricks."

Doyle, upset, stashed the sack beneath his knees. "I'm most particular about my manuscript," he said. "I'm a mother you see. I must keep my baby in my sight."

"Yes, of course." Robin nodded, though it saddened him that Doyle, once such a famous hipster, had become an old lady about his goods.

Sven Lundgren arrived next, with his Mohammed, thank God. Immediately they stripped to bikinis and ran hand in hand into the surf. Mohammed was delicate as a willow branch, his smooth, bronze flesh marred by adolescent pimples along his jaw. Robin was entranced, for he was truly a chicken, his innocence set off by contrast with the dentist, whose torso was covered with a pelt of thick blond hair.

Kranker arrived then with Nordeen, a sulky boy whom Robin knew from around the Socco. Kranker liked professional hustlers; he had no interest in finding and courting a lover, preferring to pay for sex and keep himself detached. This had its advantages, and dangers too, since most of the hustlers Robin had known were capable of exhibiting psychotic rage. Kranker, Robin thought, must be excited by the danger, the possibility of being suddenly turned upon with fists and knife. He lay down beside Doyle, leaving Nordeen to his own devices. The boy drifted down to the tidewater and began to build a castle in the sand.

So far the picnic was shaping up with a lot less style than Robin had hoped. Hervé
 
was literally sulking in his tent, Lundgren was in the ocean, Bainbridge and the poodle clipper were lying in the sun, and Doyle and Kranker were whispering together by the rocks. But then suddenly and simultaneously Inigo and Patrick Wax appeared, and at the sight of them Robin knew everything would be all right.

Inigo, wearing nothing but a white panama hat and green silk slacks, walked across the sand with the panache of a South American millionaire, stalked by Pumpkin Pie bearing a great plate of salad, with Inigo's sketching kit strapped across his back.

Wax arrived from the opposite direction in a flowing white djellaba and gold-trimmed Arabian headdress, his riding crop in his hand. His Kalem followed, bearing salad and a folding beach chair—a marvelous, tough-looking Arab boy, Robin thought, with bulging muscles and a cruel face. This Kalem was only the latest in a long line of chickens whom Wax had ferreted out, instructed in interior decoration, introduced into society, then dropped when the youths became twenty years old.

"Oh, Patrick," Robin yelled. "You look just like T. E. Lawrence."

"Florence of Arabia, dear boy," Wax replied. "I see Mother Barclay hasn't arrived."

"She will," said Bainbridge.

"He'd better," said Wax. "I want to arrange a wrestling match between his Mustapha and my Kalem." Then,
sotto voce
: "I've been teaching this beauty the manly art of self-defense. He'll pin Barclay's chicken in the dirt."

Robin was elated. This was just the sort of thing he'd hoped to see. He helped Wax arrange himself, then hurried to Inigo on the other side.

"My salad and my friend," the artist said, snapping his fingers at Pumpkin Pie. "You must come see his portrait before I ship it off to New York."

Pumpkin Pie grinned.

"Oh, he's very pleased," said Inigo. "I've flattered him a lot. He's being good to me this week—I've promised to take him to Madrid. Well—first we're going to swim, and then we're going to draw."

"Come say hello—"

"No thanks, Robin. I detest homosexuals. Wait—isn't that my dentist in the sea?"

"If you're such a snob, Inigo, you can swim farther down the beach."

"Yes. That's what we'll do." He snapped his fingers at the boy. "Come!"

Pumpkin Pie handed Robin the salad and sketching pack and followed Inigo across the sand. A few minutes later, when Robin came out of the tent, Patrick Wax beckoned with his crop.

"Look," he said. "Do you see Doyle? Now why do you suppose he doesn't undress?"

"The sun's hot today—"

"Rubbish, Robin!" Wax switched him gently around the navel. "There're black-and-blue marks all over him. That Achmed of his beats him up, and of course the man's ashamed."

Now that was something Robin didn't know, and wasn't about to concede. Wax was a marvelous character but he lied all the time and was the most evil man in all Tangier. Though he lived in a palace on the Mountain, he kept a flat for assignations in town, a deteriorating place that Robin had once seen, filled with dusty, rusted mirrors and scores of crucifixes on the walls. The crucifixes, Wax claimed, were part of a valuable collection he'd inherited from his mentor, a Polish cardinal or a Bavarian bishop, depending on which version he was telling at the time. They had, he said, a twofold usage: as religious paraphernalia, and to ream boys in the ass.

Inigo came out of the sea, fetched his sketch pad, then went back to the sand to draw Kranker's Nordeen. Kranker watched with Doyle, a twisted smile on his face, which Pumpkin Pie tried to catch in a crude drawing of his own.

"You see," said Robin to Hervé , whom he'd finally enticed out of the tent, "all the boys are learning from their mentors. Wax is teaching Kalem interior decoration, and Inigo's teaching Pumpkin Pie how to draw. Doyle's got Achmed writing verse, and Barclay's Mustapha is learning how to entertain. We expatriates leave a magnificent heritage. Look at Farid Ouazzani, the Inspector's brother. Wax taught him about antiques, and now he has a shop on the Boulevard."

"Bazaar Marhaba—is that the place?" The poodle clipper had been listening in.

"Yes," said Robin. "Been in there?"

"Uh huh. The other day." He pulled off his T-shirt, exposing a pale, fragile chest. "The young man showed me everything, and then we went upstairs to look at rugs. As soon as we were alone he took my arm and asked if I felt like making love."

"Ha!" said Wax. "That's Farid!"

"Did you do it?"

"Certainly not. I didn't know him, and besides, I didn't come down here to catch a disease. I bought a little bracelet from him, though, so he wouldn't feel hurt." He flashed his wrist. "Sort of cute, don't you think?"

Robin was beginning to take a dislike to this nelly queen, who seemed so ordinary among his Tangier friends. He was about to say something nasty when Wax guffawed.

"Ho, ho! Look who's there. I believe Mother Barclay has arrived."

Barclay had managed to come last, but his entrance, Robin thought, was not the best. He and his Mustapha trudged across the sand, giving identical little waves of the hand. Barclay's hair showed silver in the sun, matching the handle of his cane.

"Hello. Hello. Hello, dear. Vincent. Percy. Robin. Hello."

Barclay waved especially vehemently toward the Moroccans, all helping Nordeen now with his castle in the sand. While Robin assisted him with his towels, Barclay gave instructions to his boy. "Mustapha, look there! What a lovely bit of sandcraft that is! Go on down there and play with the others. Show them how to build!"

When the boy was gone Barclay sat down a decent distance from Patrick Wax. "I feel just like a scout master," he said to Robin, then turned to peer at the sketch of Nordeen that Inigo was passing around.

"I'd like to own that," said Kranker.

"Oh," muttered Wax. "How I bet he would."

"It's yours," said Inigo. "But you must pay my price."

"Certainly," said Kranker. "How much would that be?"

"Oh—a thousand pounds."

Kranker scowled.

"I adore Inigo," whispered Wax. "He knows his worth."

"Yes," said the artist, sitting between him and Barclay. "I think that's an important thing. I'm looking forward to my forties—I see myself becoming very 'Rolls Royce.' "

Robin brought wine to Kranker, but Doyle declined, pointing to his pipe.

"I was just telling Darryl," he said, "I think your column is rather Proustian."

"That's very complimentary, Vincent—"

"Oh, I don't mean in quality. In its aggregate, you understand. One can follow all sorts of little stories through the years. If you'd just paste your columns together you'd have some kind of chronicle. Perhaps a book."

"I don't like that Inigo," said Kranker, still annoyed.

"He's very talented," said Robin. "Closest thing we have to a genius in Tangier."

"Genius! Don't be absurd. We have Doyle and our poet, Codd. Anyway, his paintings are too stylish. Too superficial and slick. If Picasso were alive I know precisely what he'd say. 'You draw very well,
mon petit
. But your paintings are only decoration.'"

"I think that's unfair."

"What's the point in being fair? He has a bloody nerve asking a thousand pounds for a sixty-second sketch of a five-dirhan street whore."

"Well," said Doyle, embarrassed by all this, "I think I'll take a walk."

He gathered up his manuscript sack and started down the beach. Robin and Kranker moved to join the others, now polarized into separate groups around Barclay and Wax.

"I'm
devoted
to the Sultan," Wax was saying to the poodle clipper. "And he, of course, is
devoted
to me—"

Barclay had brought out a pair of opera glasses, encased in mother of pearl, and was training them on the Moroccan boys. "You know," he said, "I think Pumpkin Pie just goosed my Mustapha. What the hell is the dentist doing down there?"

"I like Moroccan bodies," said Bainbridge, "but they have such gorillas' heads."

"I love their faces," said Inigo. "Their bodies strike me as Japanese." He got up then, asked Robin for more wine, and followed him into the tent. "Your friends are all so witty," he said. "I'm at a disadvantage. I'm a visual man."

"Nonsense, Inigo. Your English is very good."

"It's difficult. I'm always getting mixed up. In English, it seems, an asp in the grass is a snake. But a grasp in the ass is something called a goose."

Helve was pumping a bellows at the fire he'd built to grill the kebabs. Robin helped him, showed himself clumsy again, and retired when Hervé gave him a mocking look. Returning to the group before the tent, he nearly collided with Sven Lundgren, who'd left the Moroccan boys and had flopped down on the sand to everyone's barely concealed distaste.

"They're building such a castle down there," he said. "Tunnels, alleyways—you ought to see."

"Sounds like the Casbah."

"Yes," said Kranker. "Unconscious replication. It's in their blood. The little beasts are prisoners of the collective unconscious of their nasty, backward race."

"I wonder if it isn't time," said Barclay, "for our little chickens to come home to roost."

"Oh, let's leave them where they are," Robin said. "They're getting acquainted. We'll be eating soon. Anyone seen Doyle?"

"He took a long walk down the beach. I think I see him far away."

"In a minute he'll lie down and let the flies descend upon him. Then he'll count them. He does things like that."

"Strange man," said Robin. "And that sack of his is heavy. I tried to help him with it, but he wouldn't let me. It weighs a ton."

"I'll tell you something about that sack," said Kranker. "But you must all promise you won't tell anybody else."

They all nodded except for Robin, who made a practice of never agreeing when people asked him not to repeat confidential things.

"You too, Robin. I don't want to see this in your column."

"All right, damn it. Go ahead."

Kranker smiled, looked around. "He has a manuscript in there, you can be sure, but it's light and it's very thin. The weight you felt was his silverware. He hauls it around with him because he's afraid to leave it in his flat."

"My God," said Barclay. "The man must be cuckoo mad. How did you find that out?"

"Achmed told me. It's a game they play. Achmed tries to steal the silverware, and Doyle tries to keep it safe. A year or so ago Achmed got hold of some spoons which he immediately sold in the flea market. Doyle never said a word, pretended it didn't happen. That's their relationship. They play psychological chess."

"Is it true that Achmed beats him up?"

Kranker shook his head. "No. They torture each other mentally. That's the trouble with Vincent Doyle—he'd like to be a physical masochist but he has too low a threshold for pain."