‘You did not seek the aid of the American Consul?’
‘They couldn’t help me,’ was all he would say to that.
‘And The Ciné Palace?’
‘I took some screws out of the projectors and they broke down in a couple of days. I thought I was being clever. I told El Glaoui I could get it running again but I had to take it to Tangier for repair. He said he would send for a new one. It still hasn’t arrived and meanwhile two local engineers had a look at the projectors which now work pretty good except that most of their lenses are missing. I can’t even get to the stock. T’hami’s hidden it somewhere. So here I am. I’d even sent to Casa for some English and Egyptian movies. It would have made a change from White Aces with the middle reels missing and The Lost Buckaroo with a scratch down the middle of the final chapter.’
‘They seem to have a preference for Max Peters movie plays,’ I said with some satisfaction. Realisation had dawned! I saw from Mr Mix’s expression that it had been he who had taken the missing films when he absconded. It was my films, shown over and over again, the length and breadth of Morocco, their titles changed to dramatic Arabic, that had been the basis of the darkie’s lucrative business! I experienced a peculiar stirring in my stomach - the strangest mixture of betrayal and gratitude. This was why we had not been captured as Italian spies. This was why El Glaoui remained so firmly under the impression that we were American moviemakers, why he so solicitously courted me and cunningly trapped the black man.
I remained silent for several moments as Max shrugged his apologies. ‘It was the only way out I had, Max. I knew there were other prints. I guess I was only stealing a little of your vanity while to me it was a way of keeping alive.’
‘Easier to have remained aboard,’ I said at last.
‘I couldn’t, Max. I’d tried to wise you up. My feet was itching. I was bound to go.’
I understood this impulse, though I could hardly sympathise with it.
‘And my films are now the personal property of the Pasha?’
‘I guess so. Maybe we could buy them back.’
I sighed, hardly able to blame the black man for what he had done. One must not judge other races by one’s own high standards. I told him I was glad the mystery was cleared up. I was, I said sadly, still pleased we had been reunited.
‘Believe me, Max,’ he said. ‘I was glad to see you. You don’t know the half of it. My luck’s been worse than a bull’s in a bullock truck. I need to get to Tangier!’
‘But I’m not going to Tangier.’ I hardly knew how to respond.
‘You will, Max,’ he said. ‘And when you do, I’ll be right there with you.’
He thanked me for the cocaine. It would help him, he said, with his official duties. He looked at his pocket watch. ‘I got to fly. Don’t think too badly of me, Max. We’ll get your movies back.’
When he had gone I became, for some reason, increasingly cheerful. Now I knew the cause of my current success and was relieved. What was more, the record of my Hollywood career, if not complete, was at least safe. I decided that part of my price for my services would be the films he held as security against Mr Mix’s absconding. Doubtless it would not be easy to get him to agree and I must bide my time, choose my moment. With this decision firmly made I gave my whole attention to the job before me. I had made all my initial plans and projections, estimates and costings (in dollars and francs) long before the Pasha sent for me. There was trouble, apparently, with the succession, and he had been involved in the enthronement of the new Sultan. I made the most of my time. My normal lusts at last fully restored, and Marrakech famous for her beautiful whores who came to stand at night around the perimeters of the Djema al Fna’a, a short stroll from my hotel, I lost myself in possessing several partners every night.
Save that Marrakech had no coast, the city somehow seemed to be an uncanny echo of Hollywood. She set up astonishing resonances in me. Just as I had felt in Hollywood, I felt now in Marrakech as if I had come home. And still I could not readily identify any real points of similarity between those two very like cities and the very unlike city of Kiev where I spent most of my childhood.
Marrakech might eventually become Carthage’s film-making capital, and spread the ethic of Islam across the Earth, as we tried to distribute the ethic of Christianity. But one ethic is Death and the other is Life. Today Life falls back before Death’s steady gallop. It is time, I said to Mrs Cornelius, we had a miracle. She replied cryptically that she thought I’d had enough of miracles. And she laughed so heartily she began to experience one of her coughing fits, so I never could get her to explain. ‘Your lungs will get you in the hospital,’ I said. ‘You should smoke filters.’ But she is careless of such things. And anyway I think she is sometimes as happy now as she has ever been, sitting in her old armchair in her damp basement full of mildewing magazines, sipping from her gin glass and talking to that little black-and-white cat her son dotes on. It is unfortunate she does not notice the smell. But she insists on doing her own housework. ‘I’ve orlways bin neat but not fussy,’ she says. ‘There’s no point gettin’ upset over a bit o’ catshit on the carpet, is there?’ She laughs and her fat moves like the ruffles on a seaside pierrot, reminding me of her brief return to the stage in the forties, when she entertained the troops and did six straight weeks at the Kilburn Empire with the Miller Brothers - Karl, Jonny and Max - when they were still all comedians.
I think I was happiest with her during our Hollywood days and later in the 50s when she began to seek my company more frequently. I had moved to Notting Hill because it was where she lived. I was still very active and hopeful in those days, although she complained I looked too readily on the gloomy side. Then we began to go on holiday together. At first it was just the occasional trip to Brighton or Margate or Hampton Court, but as time went on she discovered she enjoyed my company and found it amusing to book a boarding-house for a week just to talk, in the evening, about our adventurous past, before the War. ‘Ther Wor sorta sobered us up,’ she thought. ‘But ter tell yer the troof, Ivan, I get as much fun art o’ a charabang to Butlins as I do art o’ swiggin’ champers at Biarritz.’ I must admit I have not been able to share her enthusiasm, though I always did my best to get into the spirit of her fun. We went to Minehead in Somerset two years running in 1949 and 1950 and had very good weather. We went to St Ives in Cornwall in 1952 and spent a miserable day on a boat to the Scilly Isles while she regurgitated (mostly over the side) the accumulated dainties and savouries of the previous twenty-four hours. A veritable cornucopia of half-digested tarts and pies. Arriving at the Scillies we found nothing but sand-dunes and a few unremarkable houses and I had been led to believe these were the remains of the Isle d’Avilion where Arthur came to die. ‘No question abart that bit, Ivan,’ she assured me between gulps of ozone and dramatic bodily eruptions as she plodded helplessly back towards the boat. The Sea of Scilly might have been the Styx.