The Forgiven: A Novel Read online

  The Gnawa put on a wild performance. It could easily have been music from the African hinterland, with its furious, hypnotic drums, but after all, it was already known from the CD floor of every Virgin Megastore, and half the people there had dutifully read their Paul Bowles. The hosts led the applause, standing before their guests for a few moments to express their gratitude that everyone had traveled so far. They spoke before their guests like a couple of Roman senators addressing the floor. They were dressed in matching dark cream djellabas, and their hair was wet from a dip in the pool. There were a few ovations and obscene wisecracks. Dally, looking very bronzed and boyish, invited everyone to spoon into the bowls of Midelt honey—locally sourced, he pointed out—and the figs, explaining that they would start dinner at eleven. They were still waiting for a few guests who had not yet shown up. At this, the group dispersed and a few women got into swimsuits and headed for the pool. It was still over a hundred and four degrees an hour past sunset.

  Day went over, too, hoping for a flirtation. It wasn’t a bad vantage from which to survey the weekend’s offerings. Around the palms that enclosed the pool there were others, all suffering slightly in the heat. An English accent here, an American there. They had all been drawn to a remote house in Morocco by the promise of adventure, of wealthy men. They didn’t like to admit it, but that was how it worked. Some of them, however, had been driven there by their lovers, who wanted to show them off, and these “jewels” had the busiest eyes of all. Their men were not unlike himself, but they were not really his sort of people, for all the communality with them he had admitted to himself a few minutes earlier. He had a sense that they would look down on him. Bored at last, he went into the house.

  THE KASBAH WAS ENTERED THROUGH SPECTACULAR HAND-CARVED doors with iron studs. The vestibule was a bit like a Scottish castle, with Berber armor, swords, and firearms slung along its stone walls and paintings of ponderous battle scenes posted between them. He spied The Battle of the Three Kings, a sixteenth-century battle loved by Moroccans because they were the winners and the king of Portugal was killed during it. The floors were brightly polished and embellished with menacing handmade nail heads. To one side lay the enormous dining room, where the tables were set and the AC units were already cooling the air. To the other lay a library and a games room. The dry British Richard had been at Christie’s, fine wines division; he had an eye for Islamic art.

  As Day was murmuring “total shit” to himself, he saw a large dog asleep on one of the horsehair sofas. It was a Great Dane, and it was flopped all over the cushions, its tongue hanging out as its chest heaved up and down. He went up to it and was about to pat it when he heard footsteps and Richard walked into the library distractedly, holding a painted paper lamp and a pair of electrical pliers. Startlingly, he had changed into a tuxedo, and he had been drinking pretty steadily. He didn’t execute a straight line as he swept into the library as if looking for something. He saw the dog first, sighed, and then realized it was Day standing there next to it. The English voice started up like a puff-puff train.

  “So it’s you. I didn’t see you earlier.” The English face tensed as the mind behind it located his name and importance. “Did Fatima get you a drink? You can’t be in a library without a drink.”

  “I didn’t see Fatima.”

  “I’ll call her if you want.”

  Day shook his head. He sat next to the shaggy dog. Was it snoring?

  “Did you bring a girlfriend?” Richard asked, looking through one of his desks. He found a cell phone and flipped it open.

  “Not this time. The girls won’t touch me.”

  “Oh? Have you been a rascal? Dally tells me you have a thousand girlfriends and they all get on with each other.”

  “I have three, and they all hate me.”

  “Then you should get down to the pool. Did you see those Russians? Oh la la.”

  Richard dialed into his phone and waited. It rang, but no one answered. He left a message.

  “Wondering where you are. Call me. We’re eating at eleven. Drive safely.”

  He shrugged and looked the American in the eye. There was something insolent about him.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Two English friends. The man’s an alcoholic, so I shouldn’t have let them drive.”

  They walked into the games room and then into a gallery of small mirhabs painted black and white. Long windows showed the ghorfas lit up orange, and fruit trees in cherry red boxes. Richard talked into his phone again.

  “Fatima? Are the quails ready? The Santenay should be on ice. Oui, sur glace.”

  “You have an impressive house,” Day said. “I can’t believe you don’t live here.”

  “We will live here. One has to get a little older before moving to the desert. One has to give up cities. Dally’s not ready yet. I am, I must say. I’m staying on for a few weeks. The fourth tower has to be dealt with.”

  “Do people ever get lost driving here?”

  “All the time. We say it’s part of the charm. The Moroccans leave them alone.”

  “That’s nice to know.”

  “Shall we get some honey? The honey here is the best in the world. Dally and I eat it raw for breakfast with cannabis. It makes your day.”

  “In that case, can I have it in bed tomorrow?”

  “I’ll see to it personally. With strong black coffee.”

  “Insha’Allah.”

  “I’m glad you’re game, Tom. Some people aren’t. We don’t invite them back.”

  THE HOST LOOKED GLOWING AND LEAN AS THEY WALKED out into the heat and the amber light of braziers. It was studiously retro, the whole thing, so that one couldn’t quite relax. The swimsuited ones were now reborn in their long dresses and the punch was half finished. Moths danced around the stunned white faces and the lightly tanned limbs that moved near each other like particles swirling in water. The Gnawa were playing again. The players closed their eyes and swayed. At first it was grating, even annoying, and then eventually, through sheer dogged repetition, it got into the blood, into the nerves, and Day found himself swaying internally to it. One might as well give in.

  Soon he was lost in it. He found a surly French girl and chatted her up as they stood not far from the gate, looking down from time to time at the white dust of the road crossed by tire tracks. Her eyes were completely black, like a puppy’s.

  “I can’t believe you’re a friend of these idiots,” she said. “I’m only here because of Mohammed Tarki. Do you know Mohammed? He’s the coolest. He’s only here to fund his film. He’s making a film about nomads.”

  “At least it isn’t gypsies. Or mimes.”

  “The nomads are going to save us,” she said gravely. “They have the right environmental ideas.”

  “Do they? Where is Mohammed?” he asked.

  “He’s over there. The beautiful boy.” She became coquettish. “He says I look like a nomad, too. Pure.”

  AT FIVE TO ELEVEN, THE BELLS WERE SOUNDED AND THE guests were asked to seat themselves according to the name cards posted around the table. Tall Berber lamps of painted animal skin were lit around it and the sprays of lilies gave up an unctuous golden pollen that people tasted on their tongues; a pink-white glow bathed the tablecloth and the walls turned gold.

  Castored ice bowls held the bottles of Santenay and Tempier rosé, and they were rolled around the room by the boys. The doors were closed against the heat, because the desert wind had risen and it tasted like an iron foundry. A man came in and began playing on an oud, bent over it as if these listeners did not exist.

  This quiet, thoughtful music went unsavored, Day thought, and it made him think of the paths that led out of Ubud, among rice paddies and terraces planted with palms so tall that only small children could climb them. A music like moving water because it was improvised, but also a music of great stillness and tenderness. People talked over it because their ears weren’t used to it. The kemia were brought out—preserved lemon salads, marinated feta and fr
ied beet greens flavored with pepper accompanied by almond breewats. Richard hovered by the doors and looked at his watch repeatedly as the kemia were set down. He seemed to give up on his late arrivals and did not draw attention to them as he begged his guests to tuck in. Across from him, Day noticed the two place names that had not been claimed by the English couple. Some part of himself preferred, he had to admit, that the Hennigers had not arrived.

  Plates of pigeon pastilla were brought in. Day found himself talking to an old Irishman in a filthy beret.

  “I was driving along with Maisy when we saw a white couple by the road,” the Irishman said. “They had obviously just had sex, so we left them alone. ‘Never interfere with people who’ve just had sex,’ I said to Maisy. They get violent.”

  “Was that the English couple?” Day said.

  “How would I know? I didn’t stop. They might have been bandits dressed as English people. Or English bandits.”

  The Irish couple laughed, throwing back their heads.

  “Are you a homosexual, too?” the woman asked.

  “That couple,” Day said, ignoring her. “Were they having a row?”

  “Obviously,” the Irishman snorted.

  Rowing couples: they never turned up on time.

  “We thought it best to let them get on with it.”

  Day looked down the table, at the far end of which sat Dally peeling eggs with his fingers. The appetizers had lit it with the wet color of peppers and lemons, of salted olives and tomatoes. The man playing the oud stared back into their gazes with slightly shocked eyes, like someone who has seen a ghost. Day tried to hold his gaze. It was easy enough to see what he was thinking. These were unimaginable human beings, large, glossy, and loud. They didn’t eat with their fingers, and they didn’t believe in God. They had descended from far-off lands with their leggy, terrifying girls, and here they were, entities to be reckoned with. They drank wine. Around the walls, the boys stood like caryatids, their hands folded in front of them, their eyes held quite still and expressionless. They were desert boys, Aït Atta or Glaoua, recruited in Errachidia or Taza and paid with food and lodging. They were paid not to react, but to look formidable in a frozen position.

  As the meal progressed, a gold clock behind the table made its fussy European sounds marking the hours. The bottles emptied. Soon it was one o’clock. The tagines were served, then the pastries. Day talked to a secretive Dutch woman seated to his right, an archaeologist. She had been invited for her expertise and nothing else, and knew no one. Under her breath, she opined that the renovation of the ksour was “a farce.”

  “They are typical infidels,” she said seriously. “They have no taste.”

  He wanted to get to bed. Was no one else tired from the day’s travels? The rosewater ice cream made his mouth tired. Dally made some toasts, drunk on his feet, his complexion burning with alcohol, and in this state he described, with some difficulties of speech, the long labors that had gone into the ksour to make it conform to what he called “our vision of paradise.” A place in which to receive the people they loved.

  “Richard and I never thought it would turn out so well. And we couldn’t have done it without the help of our wonderful Moroccan friends.”

  The Irishman leaned over to Day. “Without their friends in the Ministry of the Interior, he means.”

  “—I’ve always been skeptical about that phrase, the global village. But when you actually buy a village—”

  AS THE LAUGHTER ROSE, DAY NOTICED RICHARD RISE AND walk to the doors. He looked at his cell phone, then shot a glance across the table at no one in particular. There was a Moroccan servant on the far side of the glass peering in with a noticeable anxiety. Richard quietly opened the door and slipped out. It was one o’clock or thereabouts and there was no sign of the party winding down. Another round of wine was wheeled out, and the desserts went into round two. Day looked over at the two empty place names. He had forgotten all about them.

  Three

  AMID, THE SERVANT, WALKED NEXT TO RICHARD AS they made their way along the flagged path to the main gate. He had been with them for almost seven years and had grown his way into their daily lives with a subtle intuition of the ways of rich foreigners. He had been a cook in a tourist hotel in Madrid before joining their household and from those distant Spanish days he retained an awareness of how to deal with men who had known little hardship. He was an encyclopedia of indigenous proverbs, by which he steered the course of his modest life. Despite his anxiety now, he was controlled in his explanations of the late arrival of les anglais, and he resisted any temptation to overstate. He merely used the word terrible.

  “They arrived five minutes ago, Monsieur. They are in a terrible state. There is something that is terrible in the extreme. There has been an accident down on the main road.”

  I knew it, Richard thought darkly.

  “When the car arrived at the gate, we saw at once that they had a wounded man in the backseat. Now we have verified, Monsieur. And it is a dead man. It is terrible.”

  “Go on.”

  “A Moroccan, Monsieur. The English hit him on the road. It is very unclear.”

  There was nothing to say. They strode across the open space with the fairy lights in the trees spelling out the word Welcome in Arabic, and Richard wondered what he would say to them. He asked Hamid quickly if he recognized the dead man.

  “He’s not from here, Monsieur. Who knows who he is?”

  Richard knew the Hennigers from London. He had been at school with David. They were fun people. They were droll, rich, spirited, but they argued a lot. That was tiresome. And the doctor had a booze issue. At school (one couldn’t remember much), he had been a witty, cruel little prick, but handsome and loyal. There was something crushed about him. He had always reminded Richard of the line from Plato Dr. Amos had drummed into them: “Be kind, because everyone you meet is having a hard struggle.” But was David having a hard struggle? They kept up through the years; they liked each other, and Richard was always interested to see that big, bristling, angry shape of a man barging through a doorway. He enjoyed the crassly honest insults David shot at people at dinner parties and the way he got drunk—always winking at Richard as if he were putting it on. He was a buffoon, but there are useful buffoons and entertaining ones and even buffoons who make us wonder. The moneyed English buffoon is a particular species. It is much cruder than it lets on—it’s a Viking with silverware. Richard smiled. That was Dr. Henniger in a nutshell.

  “Unclear?” he said to Hamid quietly. “Why did you say it was unclear?”

  “They say he was selling fossils by the road. He stepped out, and they struck him by accident. But it is night. The road there is deserted. There has never been a fossil seller on that road at night. Or in day. That is why it is unclear, Monsieur.” He drew himself up silently for the proverb muttered inside his own mind: “Open your door to a good day and prepare yourself for a bad one.”

  The Camry was parked just inside the gate, and the Hennigers had been taken to their house by the staff. The car was empty but for the body sprawled on the backseat. The servants crowded around with stricken looks, muttering quietly to themselves, three and four flashlights dancing around the spots of blood. When Richard came up, they drew back. He had a thunderous look on his face, though he was not aware of it, and he was thinking ahead with intensity and rational directness. He looked down and saw the hands of the body, chalk white now, and noticed a diagonal white scar on the side of the left hand. It was an old scar.

  “Does anyone recognize him?” he barked at the boys.

  They shook their heads. He grabbed a flashlight and leaned into the backseat to look at the young, slightly bearded face that could have been peacefully sleeping. It was a boy of about twenty, slender and quite tall. A handsome boy, with a tattoo on his right hand.

  “He is from the south,” Hamid said at his elbow.

  “Un chien sauvage,” someone said.

  They looked at his feet, with th
e sandals still attached to them though the bones had been broken, and at the robe torn in places and speckled with dried blood. The hands were white with dust. Blood had leaked all over the seat and the back of the front seats, too; a pool of it had formed on the car’s floor. With no idea who to call, lost in a foreign country, the Hennigers had simply taken the victim with them and brought him here. It was the logical thing to have done. And yet it was incredibly awkward. He told the boys to take the body from the car and lay it out somewhere. Perhaps the garages, where none of the guests would wander.

  “Shall we clean the car, Monsieur?”

  “No. We have to call the police in Taza.”

  Their faces fell and there was a moment’s silence. It would take the police an hour to get there, if not more, so there was time for him to talk to the Hennigers. He took Hamid aside as the body was rolled out of the car and laid on a blanket. The hands flopped into the dust, and Richard and Hamid found themselves staring at them uncontrollably. Hamid seemed ashamed of something. He didn’t want to be involved in this remarkable disaster.