He saw one foreigner walking there, by the wall beside the municipal soccer field. It was the writer Darryl Kranker coming from the love nests near the Phoenician tombs. He was followed by three small boys who imitated his gait and made obscene gestures behind his back. Kranker was unshaven and in disarray. Another pederast, Hamid thought, another one who likes small boys.
He paused for a moment, watched as the boys passed his car. Kranker paid no attention to them, though they called to him in Arabic and wiggled their behinds. It was pathetic that so many people-painters, writers, British aristocrats-had found their way to Tangier in order to satisfy perverse needs. Hamid disliked nearly all of them, not for their sexual tastes, but for the way these tastes corrupted them and in turn corrupted the town. People had begun to say that it was the Europeans who had brought homosexuality to Tangier. Hamid knew this wasn't true-its existence had attracted the Europeans. Still their exploitation of the Arab vice offended him when it was coarsely and publicly displayed.
He'd had his own experiences with loving men when he was fourteen years old. He and his friends used to go fishing along the beach below the villas on the Mountain Road. Then they'd go into the bushes and play with each other for release. In those days all girls were kept at home, and women never walked the streets unveiled. There was no shame connected with having sex with one's friends-one grew out of it in time. But as he grew up he began to see it in a different way. It was something that made the Europeans leer as they tried to lure boys into their cars. He'd told his brother, Farid, who was beautiful and four years younger than himself, that if he had sex with a foreigner he would beat him up. Farid had done it anyway, and Hamid had forgotten the threat. Farid's affair had been with a notable, no less a personage than Patrick Wax. Out of that relationship, which had lasted three years, he'd earned enough to open up his shop. That was the way it was in Tangier, a good means for a handsome boy to advance. Perhaps Farid had been fortunate. He'd traveled to Europe, owned fine clothes, met princesses, been a guest aboard a yacht. A luxurious if degrading life for a time, but at least now he had his shop to show for all his pains. Would Pumpkin Pie be as lucky, or would he end up without a cent? Hamid could imagine him ten years older driving a taxi in Tangier.
He drove to Rue Haffa, parked his car, then walked down the narrow street. He loved the Haffa Cafe — the best of the traditional ones in Tangier. The mint tea there was flavored with orange blossoms in the spring, and with shiba all year around. Hamid liked to come here by himself at odd times, particularly in the autumn, when the hawks hung above the Straits and the air was so clear he felt he could touch Spain if he reached out. And, too, here he had his regular Monday meeting with Robin Scott, between eleven and noon, when no one else was around.
As he entered the cafe, mewing kittens ran between his legs. He found Robin in the garden in the back, seated at a small iron table scribbling in his notebook and sipping from a glass. He liked Robin. There was something endearing about his full, round face, dominated by the huge mop of heavily curled reddish hair. He sprang up when Hamid came into sight, making an elaborate flourish with his arm.
Robin looked healthy, and for the hundredth time Hamid wondered how he managed to survive. His needs were simple-he had a room in a fleabag medina hotel-but still Tangier was becoming expensive, and Robin's fortunes did not increase. The poems he wrote were infrequently published in obscure Canadian magazines, and he received only a stipend for his weekly column in the Depeche de Tanger.
It was a gossip column, written in English and devoured by the Mountain crowd. They admired him for his well-aimed barbs but deplored him behind his back. He was too witty for them, dressed in shabby clothes, and was dangerous on account of his outspokenness and his unpredictable beaux gestes. Francoise de Lauzon had once told him that she didn't like his beard. He'd shaved it off the following day, then sent her the bristling hairs by express.
"Ah, Hamid, have you heard about the blowup at the English church?" Robin liked to begin their talks with bits of shocking news.
"The Vicar was in to see me this morning, in the strictest confidence, of course. He wanted a full investigation, which I refused. But I see the story's all over town."
Robin laughed, then pounded the little table with his fists. "Oh, the English, the English!" he said. "They're so antiseptic and they have such complicated lives." He laughed more, and then began to cough. He was fascinated by gossip, excited by it, collecting it the way other men collected stamps.
"We're holding a quintet of British ballet dancers on account of you."
Robin beamed. "Oh, Hamid. I loathed those nelly queens. They were rude to me-nasty little snobs." He did a quick imitation with a free-flowing limp wrist. "Wanted me to drink their sherry, share their Russian cigarettes, then thought I was a Philistine when I ordered beer and lit a cheap cigar. But I could tell at once they shared my vice. Mind you-with me it's all mental now, ever since my arrest."
"Yes," said Hamid. "Of course."
"Anyway, I heard around the Socco they were on the lookout for little boys. And I said to myself: 'My friend Hamid hates anything that smacks of the corruption of Moroccan youth.' Thought I'd do you a service and turn them in. A sweet revenge when I saw them taken away."
"Were they caught in the act? I didn't read the dossier."
"Caught with their pants down. A veritable orgy at the hotel. I could hear their squeals even in my room, though they were three floors above."
Their relationship had begun ten years before when Robin was twenty-five, and Hamid a mere detective in the foreign branch. When Hamid first saw Robin he was lying nude on a great, old, sagging bed with two boys working him over and another four looking on. Hamid had been furious, determined to see him expelled, but in their interviews something about the Canadian boy mitigated his disgust. Maybe it was his honesty, and his irony about himself. Whatever it was, Hamid had been touched, and when he'd discovered how much it meant to Robin to live in Tangier, how much he loved the town and wanted to stay, he'd offered him a bargain which in the decade that had passed he'd found no reason to regret. Robin would be allowed to stay on providing he kept clear of younger boys. In return he had to become an informer and turn in others indulging in his vice. To Hamid's great surprise, Robin had leaped at the chance. He loved to pry into people's lives and felt no scruples about being a traitor to his kind.
"What's going on with the Americans and Zvegintzov?" Hamid asked. "First it was Knowles, now it's Lake hanging around the shop."
"Yeah. Someone told me he and Lake have gotten thick, that Lake's in there a couple times a day."
"What's it all about?"
"Beats me. But the American's a curious bastard. Does his work all right, but his eyes are strange. He thinks he's some kind of mechanical genius. Always working on his car or down in the cellar fixing the water heater."
"I saw Luscombe on the way up. Looked awful. What's happening with him?"
"Poor Larry." Robin lit up one of his cigars. "Big brouhaha at the theater club. They're all ganging up on him, especially Kelly, who wants to take over the stupid group. There's a play Saturday. You ought to come. Even if it's lousy I'm going to give it a good review. Pathetic, isn't it, the way people take things so seriously here? These theater people, Larry excluded, are the worst trash in town. Mountain crowd's what interests me. Have you heard the latest on the Codds?"
Before Hamid could say he hadn't, Robin began his tale, twinkles embellishing his face as he came to the juiciest bits.