For months now, he realized, he'd been resisting his policeman's instincts. The memory of the previous winter, the intense, unspoken way they'd fallen in love, the way they'd discovered their love for one another amidst the chaos of Tangier-he'd treasured that time so much he'd been afraid to tarnish it by exploring what had gone on with her before. And then, after she'd moved in, he didn't want to disrupt the quiet of their lives, the special calm with which she surrounded him, the vagueness which was as much a part of her as the aroma of hashish that forever filled their fiat. Better, he'd thought, not to disturb this calm. Kalinka is my refuge. In her stillness I have an oasis in Tangier.
But there was more than this stillness that he savored and feared to disrupt. There was her passion too, which burst out unpredictably, causing her to grasp him, crush her body against his. And, too, there were those times when they loved each other subtly, when she seemed to be still and yet moved, caressing him, drawing him in, extending their lovemaking for hours until he became lost in her body, her embrace. At those times she drew him into a world which he explored in an intoxicated state, a dazed sensuality in which he reveled, her strange world of subtlety and dreams.
And yet, more and more often lately, he'd asked himself how long this magic of theirs could last. It worried him, for he could see no end to her dreaminess, could find no fixed points by which he could relate her to Tangier. And he knew too that the disconnection between their love and his public life must, somehow, be resolved.
He'd begun to ask her questions, but the more he asked, sensitive to her resistance, her unwillingness to talk and to reveal, the more he found himself disturbed by her refusal to respond with facts. She would turn away, busy herself with sketching or cooking or housework, rearrange flowers in a bowl, water the plants she was growing on the balcony, fold laundry, or else take his hand, bring it to her lips, stare back at him with her large, glazed eyes, smiling as if to tell him that she did not want to doubt his love, and then shake her head and dismiss his query from her mind.
What could he do in the face of that? He was not a man accustomed to being evaded. Could there be something terrible hidden behind her smile, something criminal, some awful crime? He knew so little about her, had such a sketchy notion of her life. He knew only that she'd been born in Hanoi and orphaned at a young age, and that Peter Zvegintzov had adopted her, taken her to Poland to escape some cataclysm of Asian politics, and then finally to Tangier where he'd imposed the pretense that she act as if she were his wife.
She was adamant on one point: that she and Peter had never been married; that Peter had never touched her as a man might touch a wife. And yet, despite her assurances, the thought of Zvegintzov living with her so many years, in some strange relationship he could neither define nor understand, preyed upon Hamid. The thought of this obsequious man, this second-rate tattered little man with his vague past and his frayed cuffs and his formless, odorous suits, whose face announced to the world that he was ready to be trampled upon and used, that this awful man had invented the pretense that he'd been a husband to Kalinka, had slept with her-he could hardly bear the thought. It was almost worse than if Peter's claim had been true, for there was no logic to it and something disgusting, something awful, that made his stomach turn. Now all his work at the Surete, his confrontations with smugglers and drunkards and men who'd come to Tangier to misbehave-all of that seemed meaningless in the face of the mystery of Peter and Kalinka and their past.
He thought about it all the time now, tried to recall details, hints from Kalinka, little things Zvegintzov might once have said. He realized, thinking back, that he'd never actually heard Peter say that Kalinka was his wife, not in all the years he had frequented the shop, seen Kalinka there, hardly noticed her, thought of her as a fixture or a pet. Yet everyone in Tangier knew that they were married-it was something that had always been assumed. And then there had come that strange night the previous January when the hailstones had rained down upon a cold and damp Tangier, that night when Zvegintzov had come to his flat on Rue Dante with a riding crop hidden in his sleeve and said: "My wife tells me she's leaving. I am the husband. I have certain rights." It was only then, that one time, that Hamid had actually heard Zvegintzov make the claim. And the next day, when Hamid met her at Farid's shop, when they'd kissed and touched and held each other for the first time-that day she'd looked steadily into his eyes, told him that she loved him, and swore to him she had never been married to Zvegintzov, had never been his wife.
He'd accepted that-another mystery, he'd thought-and yet he knew now he would never have accepted such a statement from any person he suspected of a crime. He would have probed the claim, asked questions, cross-examined, insisted on dates and facts. But after she moved in with him it didn't seem to matter-though, if he were to marry her, it would matter very much.
But now he wondered, waiting outside Zvegintzov's shop, trying to formulate what he would say to him, the cold words which must not reveal the heat of his fury, the warning which would leave no doubt in Peter's mind that he must never follow her again. Yes, now he wondered: Who was she? What mystery lay behind her smile? What strange childhood had she had? Why had Zvegintzov brought her to Tangier?
Her passport told him so little, her old Polish passport, listing the name of her mother, someone called Pham Thi Nha, her father "unknown," and the fact that she'd been born in Hanoi in November 1943. Were there other documents? Adoption papers? Certificates from schools? When he'd asked her she'd shaken her head, perhaps to say she didn't know, or that Peter had them and would never give them up.
Now he would have to find out, no matter how great the risk. If she could not give information like other people, if she was able to communicate with him only by signs and gestures and nods and looks, then he would have to learn to decode these signals too. He thought about her then, the way she watered a plant and fried a fish, the way she undressed, cast aside her clothes, the way she smiled, turned when he called her, kissed him, or lay slightly curled on their bed waiting for him to come home with the late afternoon light, the intense blue light of a Tangier afternoon cutting through the blinds on their bedroom window, striping her body with diagonals, and her hashish pipe set on the bedside table, perfectly angled as if for a photograph in a book about the mysteries of the East-just the thought of her like that stabbed at him with love.
Yes, he loved her, adored her, could not imagine life without her now, and yet he could not help himself, could not hold himself back any longer, even at the risk of destroying this spell of hers, this sense of refuge by which she held him in such thrall.
He looked back into La Colombe. There still were customers inside and he could see Peter too, in silhouette, making those too hasty movements by which he brought requested merchandise to the counter, or used the long stick with the pincers at its end to extract large boxes from the shelves above his reach, and he thought: I can't go in there now and threaten him, tell him not to follow Kalinha on the street. I'll become too angry, ask too many questions, appear too jealous, and lose my dignity as an inspector of police.
He shook his head then and started up his car. He would not go in, and he was amazed at himself for that-that he, Hamid Ouazzani, a chief of section at the Tangier Surete, so cool in his dealings with foreigners, so dignified, such a smooth practitioner of an inspector's manner, that he could not now find the words or the poise to deal with a man who, he knew, could only gape at him in fear.