Tangier (32 page)

"Fool!" She nearly spat at him. "Do you want my father to find out?" Then, before he could answer, she smiled, threw her arms around him, and begged him to undress.

He pulled out Robin's column, passed it to her with a trembling hand.

"What's this? 'Burning white hot—an older woman—passionate lovers—
crime passionnel
.' " She threw it on the floor. "Trash!"

Jean flung himself on the bed, and after a while, after she'd paced the room, she sat beside him, lifted his head onto her lap, and ran her fingers through his hair.

"I could kill Robin for this! But don't worry—Joop won't see it. He doesn't read the
Dépêche
. He'll be busy when he gets back."

"What if someone tells him?"

"No one will."

"Your father? Or one of the British? They love to write anonymous notes."

"In that case I'll deny it. I'll say it isn't true. I've tipped a fortune to the servants. He'll have to accept my word."

"What if he doesn't? He'll watch us. He'll be suspicious. Robin found out. Too many people know."

"Never mind," she said. "We'll be careful. Perhaps, at times, we have been indiscreet."

He looked up at her, thinking of all the times she'd flaunted their affection. She loved danger, courted it, used it to enhance her pleasure and provoke his fear.

"What would he do?" he asked.

"Joop? Oh—he'd kill us, I suppose. Or perhaps he'd just kill you." She laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. Then she pulled his ears.

He spent the night in her bed, but at dawn, before the servants were awake, he got up quietly and stole back to his room. He disliked leaving her, often dreamed of lazy early morning bouts of love, breakfast on her terrace facing the sea, the two of them, naked to the morning sun, sipping coffee as they caressed. But that was impossible. Their whole situation was impossible, though Claude seemed to thrive on its risk.

A year earlier, when Jean Tassigny was interviewed in Paris by Joop de Hoag, he wasn't at all certain exactly what he was being hired to do. The Dutchman was vague about the details, and Jean was too excited to inquire. The idea of living in Tangier was more important to him than the job, and besides Monsieur de Hoag had given him assurances that his training would be invaluable to a career in high finance.

A few weeks after the interview Jean received a formal letter. He'd receive fifteen hundred francs a month, and food and lodgings at the de Hoag house. He'd be treated, in Monsieur de Hoag's words, "as a member of my family," for which, in return, he'd act as Joop de Hoag's
homme de confiance
.

He arrived in Tangier on a windless autumn day when the light sparkled off white buildings, etching the town against sky and sea. He was dazzled by this effect, and also by the de Hoag house—a great, square, earth-colored mansion that looked as permanent and stately as a bank. Its gleaming double doors of brass swung slowly open like the entrance to a vault, and on the other side, from a terrace cut into rock, he looked upon the fabled city that guarded the Mediterranean Sea. It spread like gleaming mercury back from the bay, surrounded by forests of wild pine and the mountains of the Rif. But there was more than the wondrous clarity of light and the views that ravished him that day. There was a woman, the most beautiful he'd ever seen—Monsieur de Hoag's young wife, Claude.

Claude. Mysterious as the moonlit Casbah, he thought, guarded as the medina walls. He made up names for her—"Tangier Nightbird," "Aphrodite of the Mountain"—wrote them out on slips of paper, then burned the slips and scattered the ashes upon the sea. Why wasn't he a poet? Why couldn't he discover her in a name? It would take a Rimbaud to do that, he thought, but he became obsessed, and though untalented he tried.

Each morning he and Monsieur de Hoag left early for their office, a shabby building near the port. Here he pored over ledgers, studied reports of Brazilian diamond mines, enciphered de Hoag's orders to buy and sell, and telexed them abroad. He learned leverage and arbitrage, the mechanisms of Liechtenstein corporations and numbered Swiss accounts. De Hoag showed him how to move silver bullion through three markets in a week, take a position in Dutch giders while the Deutschemark fluctuated down, ride the Italian lira, liquidate cocoa futures at the proper time, then move the profits back into gold, the only commodity a man could trust.

There was an exhausting excitement about these forays in and out of gold, deep, intense pondering up to the moment of the move, terrifying tension during the wild speculative phase, and then relief, vast relief, when once again the money was safe. Five sets of midday tennis did not leave Jean so fatigued.

De Hoag taught much, but there were things he would not reveal: the identities of his clients and his informants in Johannesburg and Geneva—matters too confidential, it seemed, even for an
homme de confiance
. Still Jean was patient, certain he'd learn them in time. And, meanwhile, he thought of Claude.

It was an ecstatic torment to face her over dinner, her dark gleaming lips, her wild turquoise eyes. They'd sit, the three of them, when the de Hoags were not invited out, at the end of a long refectory table laden with china, candelabra, flowers. He and Monsieur de Hoag wore smoking jackets; Claude, in the middle, wore a strapless gown and a diamond necklace that glittered upon her neck. They ate while silent liveried Moroccans served, and talked of Tangier, its society, its vagaries and strife. Often, too, Claude's father would come, and then Jean would be seated at the far end. The retired general and Monsieur de Hoag would speak of world events while he and Claude exchanged smiles through the candle flames.

He wondered what she thought of him then, if she was really conscious that he was there. She often seemed aloof, though there were times when she was kind: she held a reception to introduce him to the young people and gave him permission to use her car.

In those first months, while he explored Tangier, found his way into its low-life bars, discovered the special quality of its intoxicants, the warming, ballooning power of its kif, he was content to regard Claude de Hoag as an untouchable object beyond his reach. But as time passed and he grew weary of the formal rituals of the Mountain, he fell into the habit of retiring to his bedroom after work, facing a window from an armchair, and watching as the sun set behind the house and the city faded slowly from his sight. Then, when it was dark and like magic Tangier took on another shape—redrawn, it seemed, by lines of electric lamps—he'd fall into reveries in which he imagined himself and Claude moving separately through a night maze of streets toward a fog-shrouded square where they embraced. At these moments, when he dreamed of wrapping her in his arms, his fantasies became as real to him as anything in his life. He'd imagine the warmth of her through her clothes, and his body would throb with desire.

It was so difficult then to face her, speak to her of inane little things, use the "
vous
" form, smile in the mornings, refer to her, always, as "Madame."

Once, when he saw her walking her dogs alone along the beach below the cliffs, he sensed that she was lonely and that he might have her if he wished. He even dreamed of how he might declare himself, practiced the gesture by which he would take her hand, kiss it, then return it to her cheek, all the while staring at her with a mixture of longing and tragic obsessiveness in his eyes. There were no words in this fantasy, only glances, gestures that spoke eloquently of his desire, a silent, tranquil ballet by which he asked for her and she accepted him, promising with a smile that in time their silent contract would be sealed.

He imagined this scene taking place in her garden against a backdrop of a flawless sky, with the coast of Spain set hazily behind and the African sun beating upon eucalyptus which dappled the light before it grazed her face. She would be dressed in a flimsy cotton caftan dyed blue by Toureq artisans in the south. A strand of graduated pearls would glow soft against her throat. He was surprised by the compression of this vision, but was wise enough to understand that he obtained more pleasure from the formal contemplation of his passion than from coarse fantasies of its display.

He began then to read romantic novels, to quench an endless thirst for love. He felt like a shopgirl at first, pathetic, deprived, but when he discovered Stendhal's Lucien Leuwen he quickly lost his shame. He read the book slowly, carefully, rereading certain passages many times. He wanted to make the pleasure last, inhale deeply of each lovesick fume. He re-experienced his growing love for Claude as Lucien's love crystallized for Madame de Chasteller, and although he knew he was being foolish, he persisted, seeking escape from the torment of living beside a woman he adored and yet could not possess.

He needed an escape too from Monsieur de Hoag, who was often hard with him and difficult to please. Whenever Jean offered a suggestion at the office, de Hoag turned on him with a sarcastic smile. "Perhaps, Jean," he'd ask, "you have capital of your own to risk? What? No? Well in that case, my boy, may I suggest you conclude your apprenticeship before proposing absurd ventures doomed to fail."

By November their relationship had begun to change. Jean had the feeling that de Hoag had been insincere with him, that he was being exploited, used as a clerk, that de Hoag had no intention of handing him responsibilities or ever allowing him to make decisions on his own. Perhaps, he thought, it's because I'm young; perhaps he dislikes me because he's jealous of my strength and looks. Joop de Hoag was an ugly man, small, fat, bald, almost repulsive when he smiled. His eyes were small, squirrelish, unyielding, and his mouth was tight with greed.

Why had Claude married him? How could she bear to share his bed? De Hoag had bought her—Jean was sure of that. General Bresson had sold her to him when she was barely out of school. Now the General was rich, and the Dutchman owned a stunning wife.

There was another thing that bothered him: de Hoag's alliance with Omar Salah. Jean knew the chief of customs from the tennis club, where they'd played together several times. The man's conduct was appalling: he cheated on line calls, served before his opponent was prepared, and cursed in Arabic as he rushed the net. De Hoag was involved with him in shady deals, secret, illegal bullion accounts for Salah's rich Moroccan friends. Jean had no proof of this (the details were locked in Monsieur de Hoag's private safe) but he found the idea odious and used it to justify the adulteries in his dreams.

After Christmas the rains began, great torrential showers. Claude left Tangier to spend the winter with friends in Kenya, and a few weeks later Monsieur de Hoag set off for São Paulo to inspect his holdings there. Jean, alone with the servants in the old villa, wandered from room to room at night. Water slashed upon the roof, mud slid down the Mountain. Tangier was wet and dark, its café s were dreary, full of Moroccans shrouded in hoods that gave off an odor of mildewed wool.

Somehow he got through the winter, consoled by the Hawkins', the Beaumonts, Inigo, Vanessa Bolton, Robin Scott. And then, in spring, Tangier became his mistress—he fell in love with the city once again.

He lavished love upon it as before he'd lavished love on Claude. Its arches, its gardens, its whiteness enchanted him, filled him with tenderness, compelled him to explore. Flowers were bursting out, blossoms on the bougainvillea, lace on the jacaranda trees. He walked the Boulevard, strode through the Socco, discovered the markets, the souks, found places where men beat copper, worked leather, fashioned clay, spun wool. He spent hours in the medina, listening for music that erupted in sudden bursts from shadowed doors. He visited the spice shops, priced ambergris, tasted olives, almonds, dates, then prowled the junk stores looking for Berber jewelry, pausing by fountains to watch women washing clothes. He breathed the rankness of the medina, the dust of the Casbah walls. The beaches, white, untouched, glowed like platinum in the sun. On golden Sundays he sat on Avenue d'Espagne watching the waves thunder against the jetties in the bay. This was a city, he thought, made for lovers, a city built for passion, for long kisses and secret trysts. Its faint putrescence, its architectural decay provided shelter for his lust.

And then Claude came back from Kenya, tanned, aglow. The house was alive again. She worked her garden, cut flowers, placed them everywhere in bowls. She seemed to smile at him more often, and even Monsieur de Hoag was less hard with him than before.

He'd been foolish, he thought, to have dreamed of loving her. Tangier was a city so palpable with romance that it had forced him to invent a lover lest the brilliant setting go to waste.

He decided to concentrate on tennis, in the hope that the discipline of vigorous exercise would clear her from his mind. He began to get up early, run down the Mountain to improve his wind. He played an hour before breakfast with a trainer, and after work returned and played again till dusk. He picked up matches with Spanish businessmen and young, aggressive Moroccans. His game improved. He won a tournament. His body tanned. He became lean and hard.

One afternoon when he returned from the courts Claude stopped him in the hall. She wanted to take up tennis, she said, and asked him if he'd help. He told her that of course he would, and so, with Monsieur de Hoag's approval, they went together to the little tennis shop on Rue Goya and he watched as she was outfitted with a racket, shoes, and clothes.

She was awkward at first, broke her swing at the wrist, but he coached her until she could play a decent game. He ran her about the court, fed her backhands, slices, forehands, serves, and when he noticed an error in her form he crossed to her side of the net, stood behind her, placed his hand beside hers on the racket, and slowly moved her through the strokes.