Driving back toward his apartment through the main street of Dradeb, he thought of the words of Mohammed Achar when he'd come to him with his worries the afternoon before.
"I don't think I can help you, Hamid. I'm a surgeon-not a psychiatrist. But I think maybe this is good for you, to have something in your life you can't easily understand. You look for rationality in foreigners where only irrationality exists. What harm is there in just living with Kalinka, accepting her as she is? You must learn to live with mystery and ambiguity, put aside your compulsion to analyze. . "
Achar had brushed his thick fingers across his mustache and had smiled at Hamid. It was an old issue between them: Hamid's hope that he would someday come to understand the foreigners, and Achar's insistence that there was no logic to their acts. And it amused him to hear Achar promote the virtues of mystery and ambiguity, since he was a man who prided himself on the rigor of his analysis of justice and politics and power. Still, after their conversation, he'd asked himself: Why can't I just accept her as she is?
He knew now why he could not. He loved her too much, wanted to marry her, and yet could not marry a woman he did not understand. It was his life's work to understand people, had been since he'd been a boy and become infatuated with the foreigners who owned and ruled Tangier-those rich men with the fine villas and automobiles whose women went about with uncovered faces and lay nearly naked on the beach. Boulevard Pasteur had been their street then-the medina belonged to the Moroccans, but the European city and the Mountain belonged to the people with the golden hair. They were the ones who bought the bodies of his friends, who'd corrupted Farid, the brother he loved but on whose behalf he'd felt such shame. (He had not been ashamed of Farid, but for him.) And when the time had come for him to decide what he would do, the old cherif who'd coached him so he could enter the Lycee Regnault had talked to him, after Achar had gone off to Cairo to study medicine, and suggested that since he was so interested in people's motives he take the examination for the police.
He'd liked the idea of that, especially when he foresaw the possibility of policing the foreigners of Tangier. Understanding them had become his work, and now, many years later, he was living with Kalinka, a foreigner, who contained all the mystery of all the foreigners he'd stared at and wondered about so long. He lived with her, but holding her in his arms, covering her with his body, kissing her and being kissed by her, loving her and being loved by her, he felt in her the mystery of all of them, close to him, closer than any foreigner had ever been to him, yet apart from him, illogical, incomprehensible-foreign.
It's because of that, he thought, parking his car, walking into his building on Ramon y Cahal, that I must finally understand who and what she is. For if I can unravel her, I shall come to understand them all, their whole world, which has baffled me and repelled me and attracted me so long. And then the mystery will be solved. I will be free of it. I will marry Kalinka. We will be happy. I will be a happy man.
He rode the elevator to his floor, stepped out, walked the corridor to the doorway of his flat. He paused outside, knowing that in a few seconds he would find her waiting for him, lying on the bed, the afternoon light painting her curled body, her pipe set at an angle on the table, a cloud of smoke above her head.
Robin
Harsh insistent knocking woke Robin from his dream-of a boy flying a kite in a meadow, of dazzling sunlight catching his gray woolen shorts, causing them to glow like lustrous pewter.
"Entrez," he growled, semi-comatose. "Come in, whoever you are."
The form of a man appeared at the door. Robin recognized the catlike step. "Inspector Ouazzani. Come in. Come in." He brushed some newspapers off the stool by his bed.
The Inspector advanced through the gloom, then stopped. A moment later he was at the window throwing open the shutters.
"Christ, no, Hamid! You'll wake me up!"
"Can't stand the smell of hash."
He came then and sat down, his black leather jacket gleaming in the light.
"You don't usually call so early. I hope there's nothing wrong."
"There's always something wrong, Robin. You ought to know that." He put his feet up against the side of the bed. "This morning, fortunately, it doesn't have to do with you."
"Well, I'm glad of that." Robin sighed, then pulled up his naked body and arranged a decaying pillow behind his head.
"How can you live in such filth? The poorest Moroccan wouldn't put up with this."
They both gazed around at the mess. Suitcases were piled into a teetering tower, books were scattered everywhere, along with boxes of newspapers and other trash. Broken phonograph records and unwashed laundry littered the floor, ashtrays overflowed, and the little table where Robin worked was piled with dishes and a typewriter covered with dust.
"This place is disgusting-absolutely foul. Even your sheets are filthy. What a hole!"
"It's my lair, Hamid. All my treasures are here."
"At least you could change your sheets."
"I will. Today is washday. On my way to breakfast I'll take them out."
"I smell something. Do you keep a cat?"
"They come and go-come and go."
"Well, I'm disgusted. You live like a pig!"
"This is just my little niche in Tangier."
Hamid offered him a cigarette.
"No thanks. My throat's still raw."
Hamid shrugged and lit up. "Why don't you get an apartment somewhere, get out of this stinking hotel?"
"I should. I keep telling myself that. But I like living day to day. Also, it's nice to have the Socco Chico downstairs. It makes a good salon."
Hamid shook his head. "You're lazy. You need a good kick in the ass."
Robin brushed some crumbs out of his bed-he'd had a picnic the night before. There were some kif seeds too, where his body depressed the mattress. He rolled over and swept them out.
"Ugh!"
"All right, Hamid. Enough about my habits. Please tell me what you want."
"Nazis," the Inspector said.
"Nazis?"
"Ex-Nazis-you know what I mean."
"You mean former Nazis who might be living in Tangier?"
"Yes. That's it."
"Well-what about them?"
"I want their names."
Robin shrugged. "There aren't any since Dr. Keitel left."
"Keitel?"
"Awful little man. He's in Liberia now."
"Well, there must be others. Tangier's filled with scum."
Robin shook his head. "There're plenty of old collaborators. Lanier, the surgeon. Princess Leontieff-they say she had an affair with Von Stuelpnagel. For that matter there's Madame Diplomante, but she was more of a Fascist type. Plenty of those left, but not the real thing. I guess there were a few in the international days."
"Some of them must still be around."
"Of course, Hamid, if you insist."
"Damn it, Robin, think. You know all the seamy types."
Robin shrugged. "There's a German boy who lives in the Casbah, but he must have been an infant during the war. He's writing a book about Himmler, who was 'vastly underrated' he says. I don't know him very well."
Hamid shook his head. "That's not what I mean."
"I'm sorry. I can't help you."
"All right." The Inspector stood up. "Call me if you think of anyone else. And clean this damn place out."