And then the taxi stopped and we were at the Hotel Malabata. It was a small, cheap hotel occupying a part of one of those grey blocks of cracking concrete that cling to the escarpment above the Avenue d’Espagne. I pushed open the taxi door and stumbled out. The police jeep had parked behind us and they came and lifted the unconscious man out and carried him into the hotel. As I paid off the driver, an American car rolled quietly down the cobbled street, paused beside the taxi and then drove on. It was Kostos, and in the gleam of the street lighting I saw the hard, inquisitive stare of his eyes.
The hotel was full, but the patrone agreed to let the man share my room and they carried him up the stairs and laid him on the stiff, horsehair couch at the foot of the bed. The police and Customs officers left then with little bows, each of them shaking me by the hand and commending me for having saved the man’s life. ‘We will return in the morning, senor,’ the sergeant said. ‘For the formalities, you understand.’ The Customs officers nodded. ‘Buenas noches, senor.’
‘Buenas noches.’
They were gone and the door shut behind them and I stood there, shivering and staring down at the man on the couch. His eyes were closed and his body trembled uncontrollably with the cold. His skin had a wax-like transparency and the blue veins of his forehead showed through like the marks of an indelible pencil. I felt deathly tired. All I wanted to do was to get into my bed and sleep, and I wished I had ignored his plea and taken him straight to the French hospital. But he was here now and I was responsible for him. I sent Youssef for hot-water bottles and began to strip off his sodden clothing.
Below his oilskin jacket I found a waterproof bag hung by a line round his neck. It had the hard compactness of documents; the ship’s papers presumably and the log. I tossed it onto the bed, making a mental note to have a look at it later. His sodden clothes I piled on the floor where they formed a little pool of water that trickled away across the bare tiles under the bed.
I was struggling to pull off his blue seaman’s jersey when his eyes flicked open. They were incredibly blue. His hair was lank and his beard all grey with salt. Combined with the marble pallor of his face, it made him look like a corpse given back by the sea. He stared up at me. It was a fixed, glazed stare, without expression. His mouth opened, but no sound emerged from the cracked lips. He wiped his hand across his face, slowly, wearily, and then reached out automatically for something he imagined to be hanging above his head. ‘Is it my watch already? I’m just coming.’ His voice was dead and quite toneless.
Then, suddenly, there was consciousness in his eyes as they stared up at me and his forehead creased in a puzzled frown. He pushed himself up on his elbow with a quick-violent movement and stared wildly around the room. ‘Who are you? What am I doing here?’ His eyes had come back to my face and his voice was hard and urgent.
I started to explain and he nodded as though it were all coming back to him. ‘Have the police gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were down on the beach, waiting for me, weren’t you?’
‘I was waiting for Kavan,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Then you must be Philip Latham.’
‘You know my name?’ I stared at him. And then I caught hold of him, gripping his arm. ‘How do you know my name’s Philip Latham? Did Kavan tell you I’d be waiting here for him?’ I shook him violently. ‘What happened to him? He was on the boat, wasn’t he? What happened to him?’
He stared at me. His eyes had a dazed look and he was frowning as though trying to concentrate his noughts.
‘What happened to Jan Kavan?’ I repeated.
‘Nothing.’ His voice sounded dazed, and then in the same flat tone he added, ‘I am Jan Kavan.’
‘What?’ I didn’t understand for the moment. ‘What was that you said?’
His eyes were suddenly wide open and he fought to ruse himself. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? You are Latham?’
‘Yes. What did you mean just now?’ I shouted at him. ‘You said you were Kavan. What did you mean?’
‘Yes. I am Kavan.’ He said it wearily.
‘But — ‘ I stared at him stupidly. ‘You’re not Wade at ill then,’ I heard myself say.
‘No. I told you. I’m Jan Kavan. I’ve come here to act as a doctor …’
‘But you said you were Wade. Down there on the beach — ‘
‘I never said I was Wade,’ he said quickly.
‘But you let Kostos think — ‘ I stopped there. It was so unbelievable.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I wanted to tell you, but — ‘ He frowned. ‘Who is that man Kostos? What did he want — do you know?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘He was meeting Wade, that’s all.’ It didn’t matter about Kostos. It didn’t matter about anything. Kavan was alive. He was here in my room. ‘Did you check up on trachoma?’ I asked. It was a stupid thing to ask of a man who was so utterly exhausted, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t think of anything but the fact that he was alive, that my dream of a doctor at the Mission was coming true. Eye diseases were the bane of the Berber people in their fly-ridden villages.
‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘I checked up on everything — all the things I have forgotten.’ He sighed and then said, ‘When do we leave for your Mission?’
‘As soon as you’re fit enough to travel,’ I said.
‘Good.’ He nodded and closed his eyes. I thought for a moment that he had lost consciousness again, but then his eyelids flicked back and he was looking up at me again. ‘Is Kasbah Foum anywhere near your Mission?’ he asked.
‘Kasbah Foum?’ It was an Arab name, meaning fort at the entrance. Probably it was somewhere down in the south, in the kasbah country beyond the High Atlas. ‘No,‘I replied. ‘Why?’
‘I have to go there. It’s important. I have to go to Kasbah Foum.’ He spoke in a whisper, his voice urgent. ‘Wade told me that the Caid’s son …” He stopped there and his eyes closed again.
That mention of Wade brought me back to the problems of the moment. ‘What happened to him?’ I demanded. ‘What happened to Wade?’
But he didn’t answer. His eyes remained closed. It was then I began to get uneasy. The police would have be informed that he was Kavan. And then there would be an investigation. It might take some days … Where’s Wade?’ I asked him again. And when he still didn’t answer, I took hold of him and shook him. ‘What happened to Wade?’ I was certain he wasn’t unconscious, and yet… ‘You’ll have to explain to the police,’ I told him.
‘The police?’ His eyes flicked open again and he stared up at me. There was something near to panic in his face.
‘They’re coming here tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow.’ He said it as though it were some distant thing like a mountain peak that had to be faced and overcome.
‘It was Wade’s boat,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t have left England without him. He was the skipper. What happened? You must tell me what happened.’
‘Wade’s dead.’ He said it in a flat, toneless voice. There was a sort of hopelessness in the way he said it.
So Wade was dead. Somehow I wasn’t surprised or even shocked. Maybe I was too tired and my senses were dulled. All I knew was that if this was Kavan, then Wade had to be dead. And then I remembered how he’d said he was alone on the boat, that he’d come single-handed from England and an awful thought came into my mind. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘For God’s sake tell me what happened.’
He stared at me, his eyes clouded as though he were looking back through time to a scene that was indelibly imprinted on his mind. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know how it happened. He just seemed to jump over the guardrail into the sea.’
There was a pause and then he lifted his head and stared up at me and it all came out of him in a rush. ‘It was off Cape St Vincent. It had been blowing. The seas were terrible; great big seas, but not breaking then. It was night and I remember the St Vincent light was winking at us on the port quarter. There had been a bad storm, but the wind had dropped and it was a clear night. The sea was big and confused and there was a lot of movement. And we were tired. I was just coming on watch to relieve him. We were both of us in the cockpit. Then the jib sheet broke. The sail was flapping about and I had hold of the helm. It was difficult to hold the boat. She was yawing wildly and Wade jumped out of the cockpit to get the sail down. He was tired, that was the trouble. We were both of us tired. He jumped out of the cockpit straight into the sea. That was the way it seemed. He just jumped straight over the guardrail.’