The Blue Hour (19 page)

Two more men with donkey carts came trudging down the road. One of the animals stopped to pee and simultaneously splashed the fender of a Mercedes SUV. Its owner—a portly business type in a black suit, white shirt, smoking a cigarette, a cell phone in each hand—arose from his café table and came waddling over, shouting reproaches and abuse. The donkey driver tried to ameliorate the situation by rubbing the wet fender with a corner of his djellaba. This infuriated its owner even more. My orange juice and croissants arrived just as a policeman showed up on the scene, telling the businessman to calm down and also instructing the driver to stop rubbing more donkey urine into the Mercedes's paintwork.

I bit into my croissant, relieved to be eating something. I stared down at the international
New York Times
, thinking that during our weeks in Essaouira never once did I think about buying a newspaper. Now I was learning about a Wall Street downturn, and another wave of bombings in Beirut, and the death of a onetime dictator in the Caucasus, and . . .

The yelling across the street rose in volume. The businessman was now so frustrated with the donkey driver's mild-mannered reaction to the bestial baptism of his car that he actually pushed him, causing the policeman to restrain him. Then, in a moment beyond stupid, the businessman shoved the cop so hard that he tumbled into the street. Regaining his balance, the officer dodged an oncoming car. It braked wildly, front-ending the Mercedes.

Chaos ensued, as the businessman became nearly deranged, yanking open the door of the car that had just flattened the front of his own, clawing at the driver.

I was grateful to the donkey for having peed on the businessman's German fender. Because it made me look directly across the street at a crucial moment—just when the door to the apartment building opened and a young woman with long, richly curled black hair walked out. She was exceptionally tall—over six feet, long-legged, absurdly thin, dressed in tight blue jeans, chic sandals, a loose white linen shirt. I had Paul's notebook out on the table. I pulled out the photo of Samira. It must have been taken a few years ago, as the woman before me was more mature, but still unbearably beautiful. I threw some money down on the table and raced over. She was standing not far away from the scuffle still in progress—the businessman now being handcuffed—watching the drama unfold. I approached her.

“Are you Samira?” I asked.

She seemed thrown by the question, but still asked me in flawless English, “Who wants to know?”

“Paul's wife.”

Her face tightened.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

She turned and started walking off. I followed her, shouting, “Please, I need to know—”

“Did you just hear what I said to you?”

She kept walking, with me alongside her.

“Is he here, with you?” I asked.

“I am not talking to you.”

“You have to talk to me.”

As I said this I made the mistake of touching her on her arm. She shrugged me off, hissing, “You put a hand on me again . . .”

She stalked off. But I kept pace with her.

“You know where he is,” I said.

“No idea. Now leave me.”

“Don't lie to me.”

Now she stopped and turned on me.

“Lie? Lie? You dare—”

“Tell me where he is.”

“Let him tell you that.”

“So he's upstairs? In your place?”

“I wouldn't let him through the front door.”

“So he came here?”

“I am getting into my car now.”

“You have to help me,” I pleaded.

“No I don't.”

She reached into her bag, pulled out a set of keys, and clicked open the door to a small Citroën parked on the street. As she went to open the driver's door I blocked her path.

“I know who you are. I know that you're involved with him. And if you want him, that's actually fine by me. But I just need to know—”

I was all but yelling. But her voice rose louder than mine.

“Involved with him? I
want
him? Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I doubt that,” she said, suddenly very cold and quiet. “Because if you did know, you wouldn't dare make accusations like that at me.”

“Who are you then?” I demanded.

She met my gaze with a look of ferocious contempt.

“I'm his daughter.”

I STOOD ON
the curb for a long time after she drove off. I was stunned by the revelation just rendered, stopped dead in my tracks. When I glanced up I caught a final glimpse of her face, staring back at me with hardened contempt. Yet her eyes also radiated the saddest sort of despair.

Then she accelerated and the car shot off down the street.

I remained motionless for several moments, not knowing what to do next. Eventually I retreated back to the café. The waiter was keeping an eye on my table, my newspapers, my croissants, my
jus d'orange
. As I approached he handed me the 100-dirham note I had thrown on the table before I got up to pursue Samira.

“You left all this behind,
madame
.”

“I had to speak to someone.”

A small nod of acknowledgment from the waiter. Had he watched that scene unfold? Had he put two and two together and reasoned it was a wife confronting the woman she thought was her husband's mistress? If only he knew the truth. If only I knew the truth.

I sat back down at my table. I shut my eyes, exhausted and confused and flattened by a disclosure that I simply never saw coming.

He has a child. He has a child who is at least thirty years old. Maybe older. He has a daughter. A beautiful daughter. Evidently conceived with a Moroccan woman. Judging by her age, the point of conception was all those decades ago—and the photo Paul kept of her in his notebook must have been ten years old. A secret he kept from me always. A secret that made his other great deceit—promising me a child and then having a vasectomy—even more heartbreaking.

“Would you like your coffee now,
madame
?”

I indicated that would be fine. Hunger forced me to eat the croissants, drink the very good orange juice. I tried reading one of the newspapers. The words swam in front of me. I pushed the newspaper away. In front of me the businessman was now being forcibly pushed into the back of a police car, struggling against the cuffs that were restraining his hands behind his back. Now he was going to be arrested for assaulting a police officer and would have to spend serious money on a lawyer. We really are the architects of our own miseries, aren't we?

I checked my watch. Six forty-three. My flight was in just under five hours. I drank my coffee. Having been turned away by his daughter, seeking refuge in the city he once called home, Paul would surely turn to friends. Or to one specific friend. Someone whose name he dropped in both conversation and in the pages of his notebook. Opening Paul's journal I found the entry I was looking for. The entry where he wrote about wanting to reestablish contact with Samira.

Can Romain B.H. aid my cause?

Romain Ben Hassan. Whose address was written just below.

I called the waiter over. I showed him the scrawled address and asked where it might be.

“Two streets from here,” he said, then insisted on drawing me a map on the back of a bar coaster, explaining that I could make it to his front door in around five minutes.

A manic plan began to form in my head. I would leave here in fifteen minutes and walk over to Ben Hassan's place—where, no doubt, my husband was sleeping off the events of last night, which must have involved some sort of confrontation with his daughter. Knowing Paul, the last thing he would have done is try to find a hotel and recuperate alone. Which is why I was pretty sure that he had taken refuge at his friend's apartment. The idea of now crossing the Atlantic, uncertain of his whereabouts or his injuries, would be a refutation of all the responsible rules I lived by. If he was at Ben Hassan's, I could, at least, verify that he was in one physical piece (whatever his mental state), and have a face-to-face with him. Then hit the street. Jump a cab to the airport. And fly out of all this sadness.

The coffee arrived. I drank it quickly, the caffeine a fast antidote to my fatigue. I ordered a second and threw it back. I settled the bill, counted out my remaining dirhams, and asked the waiter how much a taxi would cost from here to the airport.

“You will need to negotiate, but don't pay more than two hundred dirhams. Make sure you agree on the price before he starts driving.”

I thanked him for his kindness and his advice, as well as his impromptu map, which I now used to guide me to 3450 rue Tahia. Though I was too preoccupied to take in much of my immediate surroundings, I did note that this
quartier
—which the waiter told me was known as Gaulthier, after the French architect who designed the layout and many of the 1920s apartment buildings in the area—still evoked the Jazz Era, albeit in a slightly crumbling way.

3450 rue Tahia was a building that looked as if it had seen happier days. Chipped masonry. A broken sequence of pavements in front of its main entrance. A huge water stain above its front doorway. Electrical wires dangling down from a broken entrance light. I scanned the list of names by the front door, spied
Ben Hassan, R., 3ème étage, gauche
. I knew that by ringing his bell, I would be alerting him and Paul of my arrival. To hell with the fact that it was now 7:12 a.m. I had to see my husband. So I loitered in the lobby until a woman around fifty—dressed in a black business suit and big Chanel sunglasses—came out the door. She looked at me askance when I walked in past her, holding the door for her as she exited. I was about to invent some excuse—“I forgot the door code”—but thought better of it and simply headed to the staircase, probably once grand and marbled, now showing signs of the same water damage that marked the ceiling, with wood banisters that bent when I grabbed hold of them.

The spiral staircase tilted upward at a dangerous angle, and—as I noticed when I reached the first and second landings—the space between an apartment doorway and the deteriorating banister was minimal. A misstep or two and over you could go. The lack of sleep, the pressing sense of anxiety, the thought
What am I doing here?
and the sheer dizzy incline all conspired to make me hug the wall on the way up, terrified of losing my balance and encountering what would certainly be a horrifying plunge.

I reached the fourth floor. I turned left. The door in front of me was painted an insane shade of purple, its outer frame glossed black. The choice of color immediately threw me. Too hallucinatory, too out there. I rang the bell. No answer. I waited thirty seconds. I rang it again. No answer. I checked my watch. Almost 7:30. Everybody inside—my husband included—must be asleep.

I leaned on the bell, holding it down for a good thirty seconds. Eventually the door cracked open. I was facing a very short man in his early thirties, a bald head, immaculate skin. He looked like he'd just gotten out of bed. He stared out at me with tired, leery eyes.

“I need to speak with Monsieur Ben Hassan,” I said in French.

“He's sleeping,” the man said in a voice that defined tonelessness.

“It's urgent.”

“Come back later.”

He started to close the door, but I inched my foot into its path.

“I can't come back later. I must see him now.”

“Not now.”

He tried to close the door, but my foot stopped him.

“You see him some other time,” he said.

“No, I am seeing Monsieur Ben Hassan now.”

I barked that last word. I could see the man's eyes grow wide. I grabbed the knob and pushed my left knee up against the door just as he tried to force it closed.

“You go away,” he now hissed.

“I am Monsieur Paul's wife. I know he's inside. I have to talk to him.”

Shoving against his shoves, I began to shout: “Paul? Paul? You have to see me—”

Suddenly the door swung open and I found myself face-to-face with a man who must have weighed at least three hundred pounds. He was in his early sixties, with thin hair that he brushed across his bowling ball of a head. His face was corpulent and treble-chinned. His eyes—vampiric blue—hinted that my entreaties had just roused him into consciousness. But it was his girth that threw me. Encased in a sweaty white caftan, he had the appearance of a monumental block of Camembert cheese that had been left out in the sun and was now oozing. He studied me through squinting, tired eyes.

“Your husband is not here.”

I was thrown by this comment.

“You know who I am.”

A shrug. “Of course I know who you are, Robin. I am Ben Hassan. And, alas, your husband is gone.”

“Gone where?”

As I said this I felt my equilibrium giving way. I leaned against the wall for support. Putting my right hand over my face I wondered if I was about to pass out. I heard Monsieur Ben Hassan say something to his friend in Arabic. That's when he put his hand on my arm. I flinched, pulling away.