"Ha!"
When Hamid was gone, Robin slumped back in his bed. He scratched his chest and then a sore on his rump. The Inspector had looked tired, as if he wasn't getting sufficient sleep. What did he mean-he couldn't stand the smell of hash? With Kalinka he lived in it all the time. Everyone knew she was stoned to the ears.
He pulled himself up, limped over to the mirror above his wash basin, and inspected his unshaven face. His hair was a mess, a halo of tight red curls. He needed a bath and a good combing out. He splashed on some water and scratched at his rear again. Suddenly a burst of laughter spilled into the room. He turned to the window and saw two little Moroccan girls watching from a roof across the way. They were giggling at his nudity, their hands covering their mouths. He made a threatening gesture and slammed the shutters closed.
Oh, the medina, he thought, how I adore this stinking place. There wasn't any privacy, and the Oriental Hotel was one of the seediest around, but at least there was life in the medina, not the sterility of the European town. He cupped his balls and bounced them several times. Good exercise, he thought. He tore a comb through his hair with no result, then brought it to his nose and shrugged.
He struggled into a pair of jeans, pulled on a red turtleneck, and stooped to tie his sneakers. Still bent, he gathered up his laundry: socks, underwear, numerous shirts and pants. When he had everything together he ripped the sheets off the bed and stuffed the whole lot into a burlap sack. He loved this sack, for it was stenciled with a pair of shaking hands and the slogan "A Gift from the People of the United States." He had a scheme to buy up a truckload, then have the sacks converted into hippie clothes. He was sure he'd make a killing if he ever got around to it, and equally sure he never would.
He was a flight and a half from the lobby, the sack on his shoulder and an unlit cigar dangling from his lips, when he remembered it was Thursday, the day his column was due. He'd have to get it in by noon or face his editor's wrath. Damn, he thought. He didn't feel like work.
Out on the street he paused, wondering which way to turn. He'd given up trying to find an honest laundry-whichever one he came to would have to do. All of them stole, either socks or underpants-the Moroccans were short of both, it seemed. But though they all charged outrageous fees, they were far better than the hotel. He'd had a terrible row there the year before, when the maid had taken all his clothes and washed them without his consent. Furious over that and the outlandish bill, he'd gone to the desk to complain.
"Your things have been washed," said the manager, "so you have to pay."
"But the point," Robin protested, "is that I didn't ask that they be washed. I prefer to take my washing out."
"Take it out. By all means take it out. But pay this time, or we'll dirty your clothes before we give them back."
"Dirty them? How will you dirty them?"
"Use them as dust rags, I expect."
It was absurd and hilarious-a typical situation with the people of Tangier. They'd do anything for money, anything to cheat, but later they'd want to discuss existentialism over sweet mint tea. Robin loved them, and hated them too. Though frequently they drove him to despair, he found them irresistible. What can you do with people, he often wondered, who throw up their hands and say "God's will" no matter what miserable thing happens in their lives? Their submission to destiny made them passive about everything but money-the one subject about which they were impossible all the time. They'd steal most cleverly, but not blame themselves if they were caught. It was always God's will-Imchalah, as they said, until Robin swore he'd scream the next time he heard that word. Their religion had most certainly destroyed them, but had also made them great. It had set them back centuries, if one counted up all the months they'd lost during their annual Ramadan fast, but it had given them a kind of grandeur-there was nobility in their helplessness in the face of fate. He much preferred their style to the North American one he'd left, but he never failed to be amazed when he gave a few francs to a beggar, then watched the man stare at him and thank Allah instead.
After depositing his sack at a laundry, where it was weighed on a crooked scale, he walked back to the Socco Chico and slid into a table at the Centrale. He loved this dilapidated cafe, which abounded with hustlers day and night. People constantly passed by-Moroccans on their errands, young Europeans in walking shorts lost in the medina maze. Here, for the price of a glass of tea, he could sit for hours and admire all their legs. Boys or girls, it didn't matter-smooth, tanned skin was his delight.
He ordered a coffee and lit his cigar. Two girls with stringy hair sat a table away, their eyes blue and empty from a night of kif and sex.
The season, he thought, is beginning-the parade of the sensuous young. They came, girls like that, proud, independent, with their bedrolls and their cash. Tangier welcomed them and gave them everything they sought: drugs, rape in their hotel rooms, unspeakable penetrations on the beach at night. When they left it would be without regrets, though later, back in Stockholm or Montreal, at the universities where they prepared themselves for wholesome competitive careers, they might find cause to worry about venereal disease.
Oh, he thought, to be young again, tanned and strong and smooth. To have a virgin asshole and be full of hope. To smoke my first pipe of Moroccan kif. He sipped at his coffee and stared out at the street. No cars allowed in the medina-just people walking back and forth. He knew all the regulars-the hustlers, rug merchants, bazaar keepers, and whores.
"Hello, Robin."
"Good morning, Robin."
"Hey, Robin-hi!"
He'd been in Tangier a decade, and his face was part of the scene. He was one of the fixtures around the place, like the one-legged fellow who guarded cars in the Casbah or Mustapha, the mailman, who worked the Mountain Road. Everyone read his column too, though he couldn't imagine why. They loved his gossip, though it was about people they didn't know, lives that had nothing to do with theirs.
Pumpkin Pie walked by, pacing the little square like a high-stepping Harlem dude.
"Hello, Robin. Where you been?"
"Around, Pie. Around."
"Yeah. Around. Always around. Good to see you, Robin babe."
And then he was gone, disappearing into the crowd. A beautiful specimen, Robin thought, though beginning to lose his looks. Yes, he'd been here ten years-ten years of nothing, he sometimes thought. But he never wanted to exchange that time for a decade anyplace else.
A boy in a faded jeans jacket sat down with the girls, setting his backpack on the terrace floor. Robin closed his eyes and listened to their dialogue, mellifluous counterpoint to the guttural Arabic spoken around.
"Didn't I see you last night?"
"Did we see him, Carol?"
"I don't know. Where was he last night?"
Good, he thought. A classic ritualistic beginning. He'd tried to capture that idiotic tempo once, in a long poem he'd called "Medina Voices."
"Hey, where do you get your stuff?"
"Don't tell him, Cynthia."
"What's the matter with her?"
"She's a slut."
"Now, look, Carol. I told you not to say that-"
"Who cares anyway."
"You're really nasty this morning."
"Shit-why don't the three of us get stoned?"
"Hey-wow!"
"We don't know this creep."
After a while Robin turned off-he'd heard that conversation a thousand times. The same petty insults, the same probing around, and all it ever came to was a lumpy mattress in a fleabag hotel and a third-rate screw. Still it was life, and there was something to be said for that. Or, he asked himself, is it really a kind of death?