I was now staying as the Pasha’s guest at the only reasonable hotel in Marrakech, Le Transatlantique, in honour, I think, of the Americans who had begun to find the new colony safe at last for a daring fling at the mysterious East. Americans will go anywhere so long as it has familiar toilet facilities. The first action of any nation wishing to attract US dollars is to order its porcelain from Thomas Crapper and Sons, the great originals. Thus Britain, too, benefits from her new master’s psychology. ‘Without the Americans,’ says the plumber in the pub (they call him ‘Flash’ Gordon), ‘the British toilet industry would be down the drain.’ He has no other range of metaphor. ‘Once the Japanese dribble in, it’ll pull the plug on Staffordshire,’ he predicts. His politics are crass. He once said that people like me were blocking the sewer of history. If so, it’s because history can’t afford to call you out, I told him. These plumbers are all the same. They are famous throughout the world. Mention frustration to a Berliner and he will speak of plumbers, mention extortionate bills and the Bombay brahmin will cry ‘plumber’. In Cairo the plumber is a term applied to any bloodsucker or blackmailer while in Sydney to ‘sink a plumber’ means to get your own back. Muscovites, even today, cite the plumber as the example of the vulgar nouveaux riches now rubbing shoulders in the same apartment blocks with academics and engineers! ‘And you have the nerve,’ I cry to Gordon, ‘to accuse me of exploitation!’ The plumbing at Le Transatlantique near the Mammounia Gardens left something to be desired (although it was of the European rather than the Turkish type) since the water frequently had to be turned off for mysterious reasons. However, I was able to take regular showers and use Western soap and this, just then, was luxury enough. Even the most thoroughly hospitable desert peoples tend to be parsimonious around water - unless they are of that type which delights in spectacular waste. Mrs Cornelius had a cleaning job with an Arab once. Everywhere in the house there was a tap, she said, it was running full-blast. He loved the sound of it above all other music, he said, and it was costing him nothing!
Mr Mix came to see me at my suite on the top floor of Le Transatlantique. From my balcony it was possible to look out into the warmth of the summer night, at the natural geometry of palmeries and distant mountains beneath the diamond stars and the golden moon. My valet having gone to bed, I opened the door for Mix myself. My whole suite was furnished in that opulent Moorish style found elsewhere only in restaurants, with a profusion of slippery leather and wood saddles no self-respecting camel would allow on her back and upon which no rider could keep a seat. Mr Mix stepped in and closed the mirrored door behind him. He was wearing his big bush hat and khaki tropical kit. He removed his hat and accepted the sherbet I offered him (I had yet to redevelop my taste for alcohol and only drank it for social reasons). He asked immediately if I had any ‘snow’ and I said I had a little. I could spare him a sniff or two. He was grateful and became immediately human. He apologised. ‘I’ve had to give you the ice, Max. The Pasha doesn’t like his boys having conflicting loyalties. But now you’re on the team I guess it’s okay. I’ll tell you this fast, Max, I’m in a jam and I want to get out of here. I’m in hock to the Pasha and I’m working off my debt to him.’
Now I understood immediately and was overcome with sympathy. ‘Mr Mix! You are buying yourself back! So you were, after all, captured by slavers!’
He seemed embarrassed. ‘Not exactly, Max.’ He leaned forward in his leather settee, found purchase and steadied himself as he lowered his nose to the straw and the straw to the little ribbon of cocaine I had laid out for him.
‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘But after I jumped ship at Casablanca I had this idea of riding the train up as far as here and then seeing what happened.’
‘You were not captured by gypsies?’
‘Those guys. They’re bums. They tried to rob me. No, I bought a ticket and boarded a train, first class, all my stuff in the luggage wagon. A compartment to myself once I got the idea I had to slip the right number of francs to the right people. Only it went to Rabat. I awoke still looking out at the Atlantic Ocean! Then, before I could get off, it went to Fez. Well, on the train to Fez I met an Algerian entertainment promoter. He fixed it for local acts to entertain the tourists, that kind of thing, but he also ran a couple of burlesque theatres in Tangier. He was planning to open two more in Casablanca and another one in Marrakech.’
‘He offered you the chance you’d always wanted to act,’ I said. ‘How could you refuse? What was it - some sort of coon number? Your dancing skills alone - ‘
He lifted a tired hand which begged me not to interrupt. ‘We came to a deal. It seemed good to me since it would give me control of the Marrakech theatre. I’d begun to figure out that Africa wasn’t going to be a whole lot different to America. Nobody welcomed me as a long-lost brother. They just wanted to know why I’d been fool enough to leave and how much dough I’d brought with me. Mainly it was like Valentino said when he got back to the States - “In the world, I was a hero, in Italy, I was just another wop.” Here, I’m just another nigger - and in Tangier that means about what it means in Tennessee. So I’m cheated blind by my business partner who is about to get hold of my stock in the company and I decide to get the hell out of there and come to Marrakech myself where I’d heard the boss was almost a nigger and it was possible for a gentleman of colour to get along better than in the North. So I finally got there, overland, making a little money as I went. By the time I arrived three months ago I had enough to open The Ciné Palace in what used to be an old slaughterhouse off Djema al Fna’a near the Katoubia Mosque. It was all remodelled. Believe me, Max, it’s the ritziest little theatre outside Casablanca. We opened in June and business boomed. I’m not kidding you, Max, we had to have big buck Berber hillmen to keep those boys out. I’ve seen the alternatives. Believe me, Ace Among Aces beats snake-charmers and the two-thousandth re-telling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. These boys’ll pay good money to see a movie. Any movie! It doesn’t matter a damn what the moulas say, they go anyway. All I had to do was square a couple of the big religious guys and make sure we scheduled the programmes between prayers. That’s five shows a day, morning till night, seven days a week, and every one packed. The same guys came back show after show. These people don’t believe they’ve got the best out of a story unless they’ve heard it told a hundred times. They never got tired of the programmes!’
It had begun to dawn on me that the reason for my reception as we entered the city, indeed the alacrity with which the Pasha put his aeroplane scheme to me, all had something to do with Mr Mix’s business venture. But why was my old compañero now forced to work off a debt to the Pasha?
‘What I didn’t know is that T’hami has a financial finger in almost every pie in the city. He’s the managing director of the mining companies, the import and export companies, banks, newspapers, whatever’s lucrative. The smaller businesses he lets his big boys squeeze, while the little ones only have to pay a rake-off to a local official. Me, I wasn’t paying anyone except the guys from the mosque. I guess nobody ever thought the Palace’d catch on. Well, it didn’t take T’hami long - he’s quicker than Al Capone to pick up on a new angle - and one day I get an offer. He’s going to buy me out, he says, and make me manager. Or, he says, he can throw me in jail as an illegal immigrant, or he can send me back to the US, or he can fine me. That’s when I found out he’s not just the Mayor of Marrakech but the whole damn’ Justice Department, judge and jury rolled into one. My case is already tried. I owe him a hundred thousand dirham in fines for my illegal business and The Ciné Palace is confiscated with all its stock. Well, Max, I had fifty thousand francs in my hotel room which his gorillas found and “taxed” and I was flat broke again!’