Red Hills of Africa:
A novella by Matthew Asprey
Copyright c 2009 Matthew Asprey.
This story was originally published in Sydney Samizdat #1 (November, 2009)
SMASHWORDS EDITION JUNE 2011
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I.
ARCHER FLEW IN FROM GREECE in time to make the last day of the ‘Fiction And Ethics’ conference in Madrid. A slideshow malfunction, probably Archer’s fault, wasted ten of his allotted twenty-five minutes; he was only able to cover a few points of his thesis chapter ‘Life in the Afternoon: Reconciling Hunter and Secret Herbivore in Late Hemingway.’ The eight people who had stayed for the final session applauded. At sunset fifty-nine name-badged strangers appeared on the balcony of the Hotel Imperio for the post-conference cocktail party. Archer wondered, well aware of his hypocrisy, where these people had been during his presentation. He refused anchovies, torta al casar, roast peppers stuffed with cod, and other inedible canapés. He drank six cups of sangría. He was upset. He had wasted another opportunity. He had not had confidence in his paper, had not yet read enough, had not had time to reflect. Nevertheless he felt he was on the verge of the great reconciliation that would transform Hemingway studies for decades to come.
The dark mood passed. After all, Madrid was Hemingway territory, and Archer was free now to explore. Hotel security broke up the cocktail party at eight o’clock. A large group departed towards the Puerta del Sol, another to the Gran Vía. Archer, swept into an inclusive and fraternal mood by the wave of sangría, gathered seven other conference strays – three middle-aged Canadian women, an Argentinian with the broken face of a boxer, a pink-skinned Swede, and an American couple – and led them through Plaza Mayor to Botín’s on Calle de los Cuchilleros.
“Botín’s appears at the end of The Sun Also Rises as ‘one of the best restaurants in the world,’” Archer told them. “It is also the world’s oldest surviving restaurant, having opened in 1725. Goya used to be the dishpig. Hemingway used to eat pig piggishly upstairs.”
A waiter led the party upstairs where the patrons were clapping along with the flamenco band’s tanguillo. The academics were given a long table. Dr Alejo Tomás Delgado scanned the menu. He settled on the Cantabrian hake.
“Won’t be as good as my wife’s patio-grilled Muskegon trout,” said Jack Donovan, whose wife, Eloise, an academic from the University of Pataskala, sat across the table. “Comes wrapped in a strip of bacon. Ever tried that?”
“No,” said Delgado.
“Man, I gotta turn her loose in your kitchen.”
The waiter handed a menu to Archer, who was already imagining Jake Barnes and Lady Brett in conversation at an empty table by the window. He ordered the big mushrooms from the vegetables menu and was served a pile of steaming swine flesh with sautéed mushrooms at the crest. He sent it back to the kitchen.
Georg Ingborg from Uppsala leaned across the table. “You’re the ‘vegan’ Hemingway scholar?”
“Yes.”
“That is odd.”
“I’m trying to reconcile the paradox of ideologies in late Hemingway.”
“Why? Are you allergic to meat?”
“Of course not. This is about ethics. Living by benevolent principles. I believe that Hemingway was secretly conflicted.”
“How old are you?”
“Why? I’m twenty-two.”
“You’ll grow out of it.”
“I bloody well won’t.”
Ingborg shrugged and grabbed a waiter’s elbow. “We’ll have two bottles of Valdepeñas.”
Eloise Donovan sliced into her grilled filet mignon. She was in her late thirties and wore big round spectacle frames. Her face seemed somehow off-colour, even a little jaundiced: a commuter’s complexion from the cold polluted mid-west of the U.S.A.. She was repeating her conference paper on ‘The Pleasure of Transgression: Sexually Remapping the Orient through Burroughs, Bowles and Kell’ to the Canadians. Archer listened in and nodded, although he had not yet come to terms with the Sexual Preconstructionists.
Her husband Jack was built like a bull, broad-chested in his black polo shirt, with a diver’s watch tight on his wrist. A dimple pinched his chin. He smoothed down his black moustache with meaty fingertips and said to Archer, “She likes these writers with their little kasbah boys.”
“You’ve never tried to understand my argument,” said Eloise. She put down a forkful of beef. This was not spousal ribbing but genuine resentment. “And Joseph Kell isn’t even gay.”
“Oh, sure. I read that book of his about the old English homo. What was it called?”
She said nothing. Behind the big round glasses, her eyes darted with heightened nervy awareness. She looked often at Archer, so often that he wondered if she was inviting some sort of sexual conspiracy. He smiled back without commitment. Ten years ago Eloise may have been passably pretty, but now she had a wrinkled mouth and unhealthy skin and that awful middle-American taste for shoulder-pads and rayon. She mentioned two infant children at home in Ohio who were probably the cause of her sagging bottom and breasts. Archer, on the other hand, was young and unattached, a happy way to be in the tipsy atmosphere of a mild winter evening in Madrid. He would try his luck at Chicotes. Hemingway had said it was a good nightclub and you could pick up a girl there. Archer hoped the advice still held true and he had the cojones to seduce a Spanish girl. He devoured his small serve of mushrooms and drank three big glasses of white Valdepeñas. The academics had broken off into half-audible, half-coherent conversations about their research. Archer put some euros on the table and said goodbye.
“Where to now?” said Jack.
“I want to see a bar on the Gran Vía, another Hemingway haunt.”
“Great idea,” said Jack, “We’ll all go.”
Ingborg said he wanted to go back to the hotel to read.
“Oh, come on.” Jack slapped the Swede’s shoulder. “Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they’ve killed the night.”
The eight crossed town, dodged arm-grabbing black whores, and found Chicotes. They squeezed through the revolving doors. Eloise followed Archer to the bar. She was so short Archer had to lean down to yell into her ear. She smelled of something sour and unpleasant: for some reason, perhaps the mention of her infants in Ohio, he imagined it to be breast milk. Waiting for service at the bar, they watched Jack and Delgado initiate conversation with a big-breasted big-haired Spanish woman.
“Hemingway called this the best bar in Spain and one of the best in the world,” Archer said. “Some of his Civil War stories are set here.”
“I’m sure it’s changed a bit,” said Eloise.
A few minutes later Jack came over and wrapped his arm around Eloise’s shoulders. A big erection was cocooned along the thigh of Jack’s tight jeans. “When are you heading back ‘down under’?” he said to Archer.
“I’ve got another three days. I’ll see the Prado and the Reina Sofía. All the Picassos.”
Archer bought a gin and tonic for Eloise and beers for Jack and himself.
“Thanks, man.” Jack swigged the beer. “We’re going on a guided tour of the Prado tomorrow afternoon with Dr Fujihara from the University of Maryland. Expert on El Greco. Come along.”
“Maybe. I’ve promised to join Animal Equality to protest the bullfights at Las Ventas.”
“There’s been bullfights in Madrid for centuries. It’s presumptuous to come here and protest.”
“I’m not a cultural relativist.”
“I’m talking about tradition,” Jack said. “All you academics love tearing things down.”
“I think it’s admirable to protest,” said Eloise. “Those poor bulls.”
“I’m glad you feel that way, Eloise,” said Archer with a smile. “Although I’m a bit confused. Didn’t you just eat a filet mignon?”
“It’s hardly the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
Jack laughed and slapped Archer’s shoulder. “You won’t turn my wife vegetarian. She loves meat even more than I do. You’re looking for allies in the wrong places.” He leaned close. “I mean, come on – Ernest Hemingway?”
“If you read the text I quoted–”
“Yeah, I heard your paper. Do you want honesty?”
“Of course.”
“I thought it was problematic.”
“I had problems with the projector.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jack said. “I’ve read that African book you discussed. It’s not my interpretation of it at all.”
“I’m sure you haven’t visited the JFK Library in Boston and seen the unedited holograph.”
“Even so, your argument struck me as pretty illogical,” said Jack. “All that stuff about ‘conflicting masculinity paradigms’ or whatever you call it. Hemingway doesn’t strike me as a closet vegetarian. I think he knew where he stood on that. You’re on a quixotic quest, pal.”
Archer smiled. “What do you do, Jack?”
“Second Trumpet with the Zanesville Phil.”
“Well, you’re not an academic, Jack. You can’t be expected to keep up with developments in critical theory.”
“I do my best for Eli’s sake.”
At that moment a short man tripped and dumped two tall glasses of calimocho down the back of Eloise’s blazer. Jack seized the man’s collar and dragged him to the nearest wall. They argued, broke a glass, tussled in close embrace until Jack thumped the man in the gut. He returned to the bar.
“Some idiot,” he said.
Eloise contorted in an attempt to pat down her wet blazer with a paper serviette. “What did you do that for? You always have to act like a brute, don’t you?”
She went to join the Canadians at a booth. Two black bouncers approached Jack and asked, in English, if he would please leave. He did so without argument. Eloise stayed inside the bar with the Canadians until Delgado forced everybody out in solidarity with their exiled colleague. The academics walked up the Gran Vía in a slow and aimless parade. Archer walked with calimocho-stained Eloise. She shook her head as Jack and Delgado chased each other in circles.
“What an asshole,” she said.
At another bar they all drank tequila shots. Eloise’s jaundiced complexion went ruddy. Jack, with lemon juice dripping down his chin, paid for everybody. He passed around a plate of chorizo sausages, said they were delicious, and leaned close to abstinent Archer to ask where did he get his protein, wasn’t he worried about getting sick?
“Veganism is healthier than meat-eating,” Archer said.
“No good for building muscles.”
“I didn’t have any trouble diving in the Greek Islands, or hiking to the top of Mount Kosciuszko.”
They cleared the ashtrays and empty beer glasses from a little table and prepared to armwrestle. Delgado refereed. The match lasted about twenty seconds. Jack’s tattooed wrist, solid as a brass lock, pinned Archer’s hand to the table. Immediately afterwards, in the spirit of good sportsmanship, he bought Archer another tequila shot. Archer drank it in silence.
Later, despite the rain pattering the pavement, they went walking. The Puerta del Sol was packed with young Spaniards in various modes of intoxication: amorous, nauseous, murderous, unconscious. Jack and Delgado, arm-in-arm, were singing. Archer said nothing for a long time until Eloise asked him about his research, and he was prodded into revoicing his conference presentation. She listened as they dawdled through the square.
“Do you like Hemingway?” he asked.
“Not at all. Why do you like him?”
“Oh, I hate him in some ways. I grew up with his books. I inherited my father’s copies when he died. He was a redneck and probably loved Hemingway’s swagger. They say I look like him. My father, I mean. There was this framed picture of Dad with a deer he’d murdered on the wall of the rumpus room, and when I was fifteen I begged my mother to take it down. But she never would. She thought I was just being difficult, like when I refused to eat her salmon pies and bloody dead sheep.” He turned to Eloise, who was getting damp in the mist, and asked her to remind him of her own area of study. Oh, yes. Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Joseph Kell. The Pleasure of Transgression. She was to interview Kell shortly thanks to a grant from the Isaac M. Liebovitz Foundation. She kept a steadying hand on Archer’s defeated right wrist. He let himself lean on her.
They drank at a number of bars around the square, and then the Canadian women went back to their rooms at the Hotel Imperio. Jack and Delgado disappeared into a discoteca. Archer, Eloise and the Swede wound up in a dusty bar that seemed unchanged since the time of Cervantes. By lantern-light the swarthy bartender handed each a three-pronged fork and sugar cube and glass of absinthe; as instructed they propped the fork across the rim of the glass, placed the sugar cube above the abyss and ignited it. The sugar melted and dripped. They gulped the absinthe down. Eloise, bound for the W.C., had to hold to the backs of chairs for support. The Swede seemed to be falling asleep in his chair.
“Wake up, Ingborg!” Archer said. “Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they’ve killed the night. Did you know I was just in the Greek Islands?”
“Who was?”
“Me. On Katastari. Stopped there for a week for some bullshit university-funded creativity workshop. I was supposed to get in touch with my inner child and write a poem. Want to hear it?”
“No.”
Archer began to recite:
“You know how it is there early in the
Morning in Boston with the postgraduates
Still asleep against the walls of the JFK Library;
Before even the baristas come by
With soy milk for the coffee carts? Well –
I was first that day to pull box 223a:
A m.s. on your African blood sports,
Typed and holograph pages inked in Gulf Stream blue
With marginal red speckled like a kudu blood spoor;
Or like the bloody mary you drank in Cuba in 1955
And dribbled on the carpet,
Broken-backed, when you remembered Africa with ethical ambivalence.”
“There’s no metre,” said Ingborg.
“It’s free verse. You should go to Katastari. What a pretty place. I went diving with a girl from Poland. You ever snorkeled with a caretta caretta turtle at sunrise? I bet you haven’t.”
“I can’t swim,” he said. “But I like turtle soup.”
“Shut the fuck up, Ingborg. They’re a protected species. That was a beautiful bloody moment in my life.”
The Swede lay his head on the tabletop. Archer felt no need to share his experience; he sat back in melancholy drunkenness and remembered Agnieszka, a strong, sunburnt, bright-eyed, devilish backpacker on tour through the Aegean islands. She was drinking a tankard of Mythos in a bar near Archer’s hostel. Her pink bikini top was salt- and sun-faded. She was staying with friends in a house down the road. She waved to a lot of American and English guys in the bar, and also to local shop-keepers and diving instructors. Late that night Agnieszka leaned close – Archer smelled the seasalt in her hair – and asked him if he wanted to see turtles in the morning.
She was waiting outside his hostel with the snorkeling equipment before dawn. They puttered by moped up the coast. She held tight to his waist. The dawn clouds looked like milk flushed through water. Archer could not tell whether the shadows on the golden-green horizon were islands or clouds. Agnieszka directed him down a dirt trail to rock-shrouded Mondraki Cove. Black crags jutted out of the water. There they stepped over sharp rocks and crackling seaweed. Agnieszka stripped to her faded pink bikini. Her body was pale, but her shoulders and cheekbones and the downy topsides of her forearms were honeybrown or scarlet. Archer took off his shirt. He was white and flabby. He affixed his hired snorkel and diving mask and, listening to the amplified suck of his breathing, ploughed his flippered feet through the clear shallows until the seawater reached his knees. The slow-dragging flippers tripped him onwards with a splash. His head and ears ached with submerged coldness but after a few minutes, as he swam away from the shallows in pursuit of Agnieszka’s pink bikini bottoms, he stopped feeling the cold. He was awake. The rocky seafloor dropped deep. He spotted sea urchins in the limpid green water. A few hundred metres offshore they met a loggerhead turtle. The scutes of the shell were densely speckled like the topography of a mountain range. The head was toffee-red below a web of electric yellow lines. The turtle was not alarmed by his visitors, and Archer was allowed to follow him some way into the depths. From down below Agnieszka’s body looked as blue as a shark’s belly.
After a long time they swam back to the cove. The rubber mask had printed a red line across Agnieszka’s brow and cheekbones. She wrung her black hair in her fists. The water hissed as it hit the rocks. He took her hand and pulled her against him and kissed her. His mouth was numb after biting the snorkel for so long.
They packed their equipment into a bag and mounted the moped in damp swimming costumes, with her sunburnt arms locked tight across his belly. The road wound along the coast. Archer admired the farmhouses and hillside churches. He felt that he had never worked up such an appetite.
They ate an open-air breakfast at a restaurant by the beach. A nearby café erupted with bouzouki music and dancing. Archer ordered bread, oily patates tiganites, borlotti beans, dolmades and coca-cola. He spent some time explaining his dietary requirements to the waiter. Agnieszka spent a long time deciding on kalamarakia or deep fried squid. She asked how Archer’s girlfriends handled his veganism. He said he’d never had a vegetarian girlfriend.
“And then guess what? I didn’t make it with that girl,” Archer slurred at the Swede. “It seemed like a sure thing, you know?”
“I don’t understand any woman,” the Swede mumbled. He raised his head. He had one eye shut while the other quivered. “My wife, for instance. Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me!”
“She hooked up with this big Greek dickhead. I saw them making out in the bar and sharing a steak.” Archer fixed his eyes on the Swede. “Can you fucking believe that shit?”
A waiter came by with more drinks; Archer lit the sugar cube on the fork that lay across the rim of his new glass. When Eloise came back Archer no longer thought she smelled like breast milk. Who could tell with all this smoke? She sat beside him on the splintery bench. Archer goaded her into drinking her new glass of absinth. Ingborg slumped again on the tabletop. Eloise spoke of Zanesville and hiking in Manitoba and her two little boys and Jack’s depression since his father had died. Jack spent much of his time hunting in the woods. He drank too much. He watched pornography on the internet. He played old music at night and woke the kids. Her own problems (her domineering mother, rivalry within the university English department, grant application red tape) had faded from Jack’s consideration. She had considered leaving him several times.
All the talking and all the booze made Eloise cry. At some point Archer realised he was kissing her. For a few minutes his fingers wrestled with the hot damp tangle of her panties. Later he remembered making funny banter about his key with the concierge at the Hotel Imperio, and riding the elevator arm-in-arm with Eloise to his room. She tugged off his clothes in the darkness. He ran his hands up and down her slim bare hips. Her body was covered in a filmy sweat. But ultimately his penis was inert and tiny as a worm. She gave up trying to arouse him and passed out.
*
HE WOKE AFTER midday on the armchair by the window. Eloise was still naked and asleep on the bed. Archer showered and, despite vigorous soapy stimulation, failed to raise a reassuring erection. He dressed and went down to the hotel dining room. The lunch menu was uselessly expansive: cordero al chilindrón, cerdo iberico, pollo al ajillo, paella valenciana and so on. He made do with a café americano and a bowl of fruit salad.
Jack Donovan came in, slick-haired and steady as a dray horse, and sat at Archer’s table.
“Seen Eloise, buddy?”
Archer swallowed a cube of apple. “Not since last night.”
“I guess she stayed with one of those Canadian chicks.”
“Yeah. Probably did.”
Jack ordered the lamb stew and a pot of black coffee. “Still good for the Prado this afternoon?”
“Maybe not, Jack. I’m a little tired.”
“Bullshit. The best way to cure a hangover is to ignore it. And Yoshi Fujihara is a world-class El Greco scholar. Once in a lifetime op. We’ll meet you in an hour.”
Archer went back to his room. Eloise now wore yesterday’s panties and blouse, but had fallen back to bed half-dressed. He opened the curtains of the window that looked onto the Plaza de Isabel II.
“Please,” she moaned. “It’s like a nuclear explosion out there!”
He shut the curtains.
“Your husband is downstairs looking for you. You might want to sneak off and concoct an alibi with one of the Canadians.” He lay beside her. “He wants me to come to the Prado today.”
“I feel sick.”
“Too much absinthe and tequila. And gin. And sangría.”
He stroked her broad bottom and the sway of her spine. Her skin was soft, wobbly, and pale pink. Now his cock swelled to its full erected length. Oh, yes. He began to pull down her panties. When they were at her knees she rolled away and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I have to go,” she said. “This was a bad idea.”
“Wait.” He held one arm around her bare waist and slid the other hand between her thighs. His erection pressed against her hip. For a minute she let him touch her, but then she broke away to take a shower. Two minutes later she came out wearing the calimocho-stained blazer and creased rayon skirt and those huge spectacle frames. Her mousy hair hung wet behind her ears.
“Come here,” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” she said, “but you have a weird rash on your ass.”
“It’s eczema.”
“Oh. Look, you better come along to the Prado or Jack will suspect something’s up. It could be awkward to explain.”
Archer lay back. “What would he do if he found out? I didn’t pack my boxing gloves.”
“I don’t know. He can’t find out. He’s had a terrible year. His father shot himself.” She seemed in a sudden panic, casting her eyes around the carpet for misplaced clothes or earrings, scratching her forearm until it was red. “Shit, Archer, this was a real bad idea. I’m sorry. I’ll see you at the Prado.”
She left his room. Archer lay on the bed for ten minutes. Did she really believe he was going to wait around to put on a show for her swaggering husband? Fuck that. He packed his suitcase, checked out of the hotel, and took the metro to the airport. He surveyed the departures board. London? Steak and kidney pie, bubble and squeak. Frankfurt? Wurst, sauerbraten, inhumane spanferkel. Paris? Unspeakable Gallic cruelties dripping with fromage. He purchased a ticket on a budget flight to Marrakech (tagine, cous cous, mint tea) departing at 5pm. He bought a paperback copy of The Sheltering Sky in the English section of the airport bookshop and read it till boarding time: erotic adventure, madness, and death in North Africa. Something to look forward to, then.
II.
THE AUSTRALIAN GIRL ON THE PLANE was from Wollongong.
“I’m from Sydney,” Archer said. “We’re almost neighbours.”
“A stone’s throw.”
Her name was Melanie. She was nineteen years old. Archer could not ignore her breasts, formless blubbery masses unrestrained by a brassiere. She had blonde hair and hard coarse skin. The ends of her fine blonde moustache hairs were flecked with her bubblegum-pink lipstick. She wore a slopping of vanilla perfume. Archer thought she smelled like a milkshake. A big bottle of vodka sat across her fat bare thighs in a sealed transparent duty-free bag.
“Spanish vodka?” Archer said, squinting at the bottle of Stolchlickoff, a vague sexual leer of a name. “That doesn’t sound like a very good idea.”
“It was only three euros. I hear it’s hard to get drinks in Marrakech. They’re all Muslims or something.”
“I have a bottle of ouzo in my suitcase. But after last night I don’t think I’ll ever touch alcohol again.”
“I’ll take it off your hands.”
“Well, I’m exaggerating. I just need a few days to recover. And the ouzo is a present for my supervisor.”
“Are you staying in the medina?”
“I haven’t made reservations. Maybe we can split a cab. I’ll see if your hotel has a spare room.”
“Yeah, alright.”
The lights of Marrakech were soon in sight. Melanie swigged three miniature bottles of sparkling rosé. The plane landed and the passengers strode across the tarmac. The night was warm and stank of industrial exhaust. Passport control was a drawn-out ordeal under the scrutiny of machine gun-bearing military personnel. The queued children sobbed and eventually fell asleep on the carpet. The terminal had no air conditioning, so Melanie removed her jumper. Now there was nothing to reign in those mammoth breasts except a pink chiffon tank top. Two dozen pairs of Moroccan eyes, military and civilian, swivelled in their direction.
“You might want to cover up a little bit,” Archer said. “After all, we’re in a...you know...you said it yourself. You’re already getting a lot of attention.”
“What - this?” Melanie pinched the belly of the tank top, stretching it forth and letting it snap back. “But I like this shirt!”
Melanie reached the counter first.
“Purpose of visit?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” she said. “Screwdrivers.”
The passport official’s lips were cracked and scabby. He frowned. “What do you mean by ‘screwdrivers’?”
“I mean I’ve got a shitload of duty-free vodka here and I hear you Moroccans make pretty good orange juice.”
He let her pass. It was Archer’s turn.
“Occupation?”
“Academic. And aspiring writer,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m not a pederast.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
They collected their luggage. Melanie’s suitcase was almost a trunk. Its wheels squeaked in pain. They exchanged crisp euros for crumpled dirhams, and outside the terminal were accosted by taxi drivers. Archer bargained for a journey to the medina. The driver who won the tender was young, perhaps only a teenager, though he had a bristly black moustache. He stuffed their suitcases into the boot of his taxi while Archer and Melanie got into the backseat.
“Where are the seatbelts?” said Archer.
“Ah!” said the driver. “Not necessary!” He started the engine and examined Melanie in the rear view mirror. “Belle gazelle!”
“Huh?” said Melanie.
“He says you’re a beautiful gazelle,” Archer whispered as the taxi swung onto the highway. “Like a deer, you know.”
“Is this guy a retard?”
The taxi beeped through a crowd at the medina gates and came to rest outside a tourist café. Archer and Melanie paid the driver and emerged to sniff roast goat, shitty mud, and crushed mint. The Djemaa el Fna was ablaze with light. A pack of teenage boys ran over to harass Melanie. Several came forth to seize her suitcase. Melanie raised her hand in warning and told them to fuck off. She granted an older man in a fez the right to lead her to the Riad Ali Baba. He shuffled ahead with her luggage. Archer held onto his own suitcase and accompanied Melanie through the dark alleys, past stalls selling soft drinks, leather belts, daggers and roasted chestnuts. Melanie walked fast, her breasts bouncing inside the tank top. Cross-legged women, begging with toddlers in their arms, stared through the slits of their purple burqas. The lurking Moroccan men patted Archer on the shoulders.
“Lucky man!”
“Much fun!”
“Rumba zumba!”
A honking dirt bike, pursued by three boys on foot, roared down the alley. The bike clipped the corner of a wagon and threw the young rider forward in a rolling heap until he hit a post. Jumping clear, Melanie banged her transparent bag against a wall and cracked the bottle of Stolchlickoff. “Oh, fuck!” She threw the haemorrhaging bag into the gutter. “It’s all fucked, Archer!” She seized her suitcase from her gentleman guide and entered the riad. Archer paid the guide twenty dirhams, argued he had no more change, and darted into the hotel lobby. Melanie had already collected her key from the desk and was heading up a narrow stone stairwell. A porter followed with her suitcase-cum-trunk. The concierge was able to offer Archer a large room on the ground floor. Bay windows overlooked an open-air courtyard with a stone fountain. The room was floored with zellij tiles. There was a wide double mattress with a finely embroidered quilt and a tiny escritoire. Archer accepted the terms and washed his face in the bathroom. The fittings were bronze and the water obediently hot. He had decided on a restorative bath in the marble tub when Melanie knocked on the door and let herself inside.
“Fuck you, your room is better than mine. I don’t have a bath.”
They looked for dinner in the Djemaa el Fna. Carts sold mounds of dried apricots, almonds, green olives, and dates. There were hundreds of European tourists drifting between busking musicians, snake charmers and acrobats. Local waifs chased each other or flogged packets of tissues, secondhand newspapers, toy drums, or wilting flowers. In the centre of the square were the food stalls. The white lights were dazzling. Archer had heard or read about the fantastic cheap food. He urged Melanie, who was skeptical about the hygiene, to sit on a bench opposite a bickering French family and three gaunt Germans with crewcuts. A teenage waiter set out a dish of olives and a basket of bread. Melanie ordered a lamb tagine with orange juice and what were now called patatas frites.
“I’ll have the tagine vegetal,” Archer said. “As long as it doesn’t have cheese in it. Fromage?”
“Non.”
“Good,” said Archer. “I’ve heard very good things about the food in Morocco.”
“It better be clean,” Melanie said to the waiter. “Wash your hands!”
The waiter winked at Archer and walked away.
“Don’t you like fromage?” said Melanie.
“I’m a vegan.”
“What’s that?”
“No animal products.”
“What the fuck do you eat?”
“Everything ethical.”
The tagine vegetal, served in its eponymous terracotta dish, was delicious: soft potatoes and carrot and turnips and sweet potatoes over moist cous cous with sultanas and coconut shavings. Archer had not realised he had been so hungry. During the meal Melanie related how she had abandoned her homeopathy degree in Sydney (she was failing) to work as an au pair for a rich family in Amsterdam, and that her charges were a pair of three year old shits, and that she was bored by Dutch television. Things were much better back home in the ‘Gong, where her boyfriend Jake was an apprentice plumber. Europe hadn’t been fun at all. It was too cold. The Dutch were all perverts and snobs. She told stories of misadventure (parking fines, a lost passport, a mugging) that invariably ended with the explanation “because I’m pretty.” When a snotty-nosed five year old begged for one of Melanie’s sausages she cried, “Bugger off!” Archer offered his remaining cous cous, but the boy was only interested in meat.
Archer in turn told Melanie he was studying Hemingway. She was not familiar with the name. He synopsized a few of the books, the hints of inner ideological conflict towards the end of Hemingway’s life...The waiter came to clear their dishes.
“That lamb wasn’t bad,” said Melanie as she fanned her chest with the greasy menu.
The waiter patted Archer’s shoulder and said with a grin, “Belle gazelle, man. I give you five thousand camels!”
“Six thousand!” said another.
Melanie leaned towards Archer. “This is how backward these people are. Camels!” She leered at the waiter. “It’s the twenty-first century, mate! That kind of comment is very inappropriate!”
One of the gaunt Germans gently suggested to Melanie that the boy was being ironic, sending up Western stereotypes of Arabs.
Melanie laughed. “Well, he’s doing a bloody good job of living up to it.”
After a pot of mint tea Archer and Melanie walked back to the riad.
“Catch you later, Archer.”
“Ah…how about you come in and help me start that bottle of ouzo?”
They sat on the edge of his bed and drank. After the third or fourth shot he squeezed Melanie’s thick bare thigh and pulled her down to the bed. She eagerly smeared his cheeks with her pink lipstick. True, he found it difficult to understand her appeal to the back-alley Moroccans. But his ego needed reassurance that the impotent episode with Eloise was an anomaly. It was: a brutal five minute handjob (“Just like milking a cow back in the ‘Gong”) rendered him purple and engorged. Melanie refused to let him take charge. She applied a condom and mounted his erection. At that moment the ouzo seemed to slap into his brain and dazzle him. There was sweat and hair everywhere. His hands were unable to keep a grip on Melanie’s slippery undulating breasts. Her weight was suffocating. He stared up at the dewy moustache, the blotchy belly, the enormous thighs: this was a direct assault on all established standards. He climaxed immediately. The pleasure of transgression, perhaps. Then Melanie slumped across his chest, ready for sleep, and he hadn’t the sobriety to extricate himself.
*
THEY SLEPT THROUGH the dawn call to prayer. Archer woke in a haze smelling of garlic, aniseed, vanilla essence and vaginal discharge. He was aching and entangled, his arm numb under Melanie’s broad back, his poor worm of a penis pinched in her fist. He yanked himself free and hobbled barefoot across the cold zellij to the mirror. There were bite-bruises on his neck and a smear of calcified semen on his thigh. In the bath he soaped his body head to toe. When he came out Melanie had disappeared. Thank Christ. Archer went to the terrace to eat breakfast and read the International Herald Tribune. The sun was high and there was only a faint breeze to mitigate the heat. He felt nauseous, a little disgusted, but still triumphant. He was back in the game.
Melanie soon joined him at the breakfast table. Her hair was wet from the shower. She was newly doused in vanilla perfume. Her breasts were bunched in a bra behind a tight brown t-shirt. She ordered bacon and eggs. No, said the black maid. Not in Maroc. Melanie grumbled and made do with a sausage. Archer ordered a slice of bread with orange juice and a cup of café americano. It was hardly enough. He would have to seek more food in the Djemaa el Fna. Melanie decided to come along. She wanted a henna tattoo. She displayed neither post-coital affection nor adulterous remorse. Jake the apprentice plumber was far away in the ‘Gong. Archer decided she wasn’t such a bad sport.
In the alley outside the riad a tout with a fez grabbed Archer’s hand. “Français? English? Where you from?”
“Ah...Australia.”
“Kangaroo. Kangaroo.” The tout nodded with vigorous seriousness. “Come into my shop. Come, come!”
Archer emerged with a frayed straw sunhat. Melanie laughed at him. In the square teenage boys, glaring in wonder at Melanie’s chest, offered hashish. Then a man tried to wrap a cobra around Archer’s neck. At an orange juice cart they encountered Jack and Eloise Donovan, who were holding hands in the sunshine.
“Oh, fuck!” said Archer.
“You think you can give us the slip?” Jack Donovan laughed. He wore a frayed straw sunhat. His black moustache was gleaming with sweat. “Here, have a glass of orange juice. It’s only a dime.”
Archer drank it down. The skirt of Eloise’s blue cotton dress flapped in the breeze, her slender hips shown in relief. She was staring in disbelief at Archer and his big-breasted companion, who was fanning herself with his newspaper.
“I’m Melanie,” she said. “From Australia.”
Eloise paid the minimum courtesy and swapped her big round glasses for similarly shaped prescription sunglasses. Jack shook Melanie’s hand and stared at her breasts. “Nice to meet you, Melanie.” Then he smacked Archer on the shoulder - nice work, kid! – and said, “We just arrived. Eloise has a grant to interview Joseph Kell. I don’t care for his work. All those big pretentious words. You familiar with Kell, Archer?”
“Of course.”
“Well, sure. Everybody knows Skin and Blister because of the movie.”
“Actually, I’ve read a number of his novels,” Archer said. “I remember reading one when I was a teenager, something about an African dictatorship, ah...” He looked to Eloise.
“Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum,” she mumbled.
“Right. And I read A Hope in Hades on the beach at Noosa. And I think I read his book about Keats.”
“Well, he’s still at it,” Jack said with disapproval. “And you can’t open a fucking newspaper without seeing his book reviews. Or else he’s on PBS narrating some documentary.”
“Kell interviewed Hemingway during the dangerous summer of ‘fifty-nine.”
“I say the old man lives here for the little boys,” said Jack. “We’re on our way to lunch at his place. You two should come.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Eloise.
“Come on, Kell won’t mind. Archer can interrogate him about Hemingway’s diet.”
“Wow,” said Archer. “Joseph Kell. What an opportunity.” He looked at Eloise in her dark obscuring glasses. He turned again to Jack. “That would be really great for my research. I just hope I can trouble Mr Kell for something meatless.”
“I was taught to eat what’s put in front of me,” said Melanie.
“That’s not a very thoughtful way to live,” said Archer.
Kell lived in a flat in Gueliz, the modern part of Marrakech. The Donovans were to travel there by taxi. But first Jack wanted to look for a dagger in the souq. They followed him into an alley smelling of cumin, garlic, smoke, muddy shit and methane. Melanie browsed the bootleg DVD stalls. Eloise leaned close to Archer’s ear and said, “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I told you I was coming to Marrakech to interview Kell!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I told you in the Puerta del Sol,” she said, flaring her nostrils. “Remember? I told you how easy it would be for a vegan to eat at the stalls in the Djemaa el Fna. Tagines. Cous cous. Mint tea.”
“Christ. I completely forgot.”
“The best thing you can do is leave us alone. Jack was real puzzled when you disappeared from Madrid. He’ll figure something’s up.”
“But I’ve already accepted the lunch invitation.”
Sweat broke on Eloise’s pale forehead. “Why would you want to bring a girl like that to lunch with Joseph Kell?”
“Melanie? She’s an Australian I met on the plane. A compatriot, you know?”
“Whatever,” said Eloise. “I see how you operate.”
Archer remembered Madrid: the filmy sweat on Eloise’s belly, the howl of pain when her toe clipped the bedstead, the worm that refused to swell and conquer. Well, that alcohol-induced impotence was an anomaly and Eloise should know it.
“Sure,” said Archer. “Something happened last night with this girl. It was pretty wild, actually. But it meant nothing. I mean, you can see she’s a moron. And not my type, either.”
Eloise sighed. “I really don’t care, Archer. I just want you to leave us alone.”
Jack returned daggerless. He hailed a taxi. The quartet climbed inside. Jack sat up front and discussed kangaroos and Aborigines with Melanie. Archer, crammed in the back between his conquests, kept his hands on his knees. They drank apéritifs on the balcony of Kell’s apartment and looked out at the satellite dishes under the blinding blue sky. The amplified calls of the muezzins sounded across the city. Melanie helped herself to a gin and tonic at the drink trolley. Jack slapped Archer on the back and whispered, “What a rack. I can’t believe it. Bet you had some fun last night, bud.”
“Well, it was a casual thing.”
Joseph Kell was a tall elderly Englishman who suffered sciatica and leaned on a stick. He spoke in a Lancastrian accent that was distinguishable even when addressing his obese Moroccan cook Khadijah in Arabic. His hair was an uncut white mess. Despite his forty year self-imposed exile in Lija, Rome, Bracciano, Montalbuccio, and Monaco, his complexion had patriotically remained like chicken loaf. He only vaguely resembled the Jerry Bauer portraits Archer recalled from faded dustjackets.
Archer beckoned Khadijah and explained his dietary requirements: no meat, no dairy, no eggs. She could not be made to understand. Kell leaned over and interjected:
“Végétarien!”
“Ah!”
“The practice of Gandhi but also that of Hitler,” Kell said to Archer. “So it’s no guarantee of good character. But we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, won’t we?”
“Archer is a post-graduate from Australia,” said Jack. “He’s researching Hemingway’s vegetarian tendencies.”
Kell nodded, though not with encouragement. “I saw Hemingway eat meat, I’m afraid. Great stacked plates of the stuff. He was no vegetarian.”
“That’s not what I’m implying,” Archer said. “I think, however, there is an ethical ambivalence-“
“We ate saffron paella and rouget in Valencia,” Kell continued, staring across the cityscape as if across the decades. “I was a correspondent for the Observer, and brought him a copy of my novel Muttering Retreats, which I doubt he read. But I had the pleasure of getting drunk with him. He shot the head off a chicken with a .38. Afterwards we sat in the bullring watching Ordóñez and Dominguín. Bloody mess, of course. He loved it.”
They were shoved by Khadijah into the dining room. Archer’s chair was wedged between the table and an upright piano. The bookshelves were tightly packed with editions of Kell’s own books in sundry translations. Warm air gusted in across the balcony, rifling the pages of scattered bound galleys and toppling the salt cruet. Kell held down the base of his wine glass. All were served agnello casc' e ove or lamb stuffed with eggs and pecorino cheese. Archer was forced to reject his serving. Kell argued with the maid in Lancastrian Arabic. She departed with the dish. Kell served pruneblack red wine to all from a carafe.
“Some think wine tastes better in a Mohammedan country,” he said. “The tang of transgression, you see, which I understand is Dr Donovan’s very subject. Let’s drink to that.”
“Transgression?” said Jack. “That’s why writers come to Morocco, isn’t it?”
“I came here for the sunlight, my friend,” Kell said. “And because it used to be a cheap place to work. But I assume you are implying the practice of third world pederasty, the aging white novelist taking a catamite. That’s not for me. At worst I confess an ephebophilic tug when I see a pulchritudinous brown houri coming out of our local McDonalds.”
“Do you know what all those words mean?” Jack demanded of Eloise.
“But it’s mere fantasy these days,” said Kell. “I console myself with the companionship of the contessa. She’s gone to see her dentist in Switzerland this afternoon. She leaves her apologies.” He drained his wine glass. “I’m more famous anyway for my ephebiphobia. I’m sure you’ve all read my old novelised denunciation of delinquent youth, or at least the filmed travesty which gained me my infamy.”
Melanie, who had not read Skin and Blister, seized the opportunity to denounce Arabs youths. “They’re so dirty and backward. There are guys out there offering camels for me.”
Kell patted her wrist. “Not even a thousand camels would persuade me to sell you, my dear.”
“There’s plenty in Amsterdam, too.”
Kell withheld a soft eructation. “Camels?”
“Arabs. And they seem to reckon au pair is Dutch for ‘slut’.”
“What is it Dutch for?” said Jack.
Melanie frowned. “You know, I never even asked the agency.”
Archer was served a peeled apple in honey sauce.
“Ah, very good, Khadijah,” said Kell. “Végétarien!”
Archer had to send it back to the kitchen.
Melanie laughed. “Oh, the poor bees! You’re kidding, Archer.”
“Those are my principles,” said Archer, shifting his chair in the tiny space between table and piano.
Kell adjusted his wine-blackened dentures and turned to Eloise. “Well, Dr Donovan, do tell me how you have dissected or disembowelled my corpus for the international academic community in Madrid.”
Eloise put down her glass and gave her Sexual Preconstructionist reading of Kell’s Unnumbered Sparks, a never-republished novella of Malaya from a mid-sixties issue of the Hudson Review.
“For all the text’s wit and vivid inscription of the locale,” she concluded, “you surely can’t deny its subservience to a reactionary genital dialectic.”
Kell winked. “I deny nothing!”
Seeing that Eloise had finished, Archer jumped in to ask again about Hemingway. Kell happily revived his talk show anecdotes. Melanie was soon coughing up wine in amusement. Then Kell told the guests about the confiscation of his Maltese villa and his friendship with Princess Grace. Eloise remained silent, possibly enraged, chewing lamb and sipping wine and staring across the Marrakech skyline. Archer ate a quartered apple with a slice of bread smeared with beetroot relish. Khadijah continued to deliver carafes of wine that Kell dispersed immediately into the glasses of his guests. Hours later the table was cleared. Khadijah brought out zabaglione with fresh figs. She did not make the mistake of offering a serve to Archer.
“My wife spent years teaching Khadijah the art of Abruzzese cooking,” said Kell. “By now her lamb incaporchiato is magnificent. You would swear her ragù was prepared by an eyetie mountain peasant. If edible fish were procurable in the markets here Khadijah would surely stun us with a brodetto.”
Jack said, “You oughta try Eloise’s famous patio-grilled Muskegon trout with bacon, Kell. We rent a cabin on the river every summer. I can’t wait to get back up there. Love that trout.”
Archer, a wine bubble on his bottom lip, a burp about to implode, said, “And I’m sure the trout loves you, too.”
Jack laughed. “I guess Archer’s not a fisherman.”
“I believe I once lectured at the University of Michigan,” said Kell, “but I never ventured up the Muskegon.”
Archer leered at Jack. “So what do you use then? Dynamite?”
Eloise gazed at her figs in despair.
“Dynamite? To fish?” Jack said. “Afraid not, Archer. Just a rod.”
“You’re all rod, aren’t you?”
“I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
“Nothing.”
“Are you alright? You’re very pale.”
Archer smiled and leaned back against the piano. His supporting elbow stabbed a dissonance in the upper register. “I don’t want to talk about fishing with you, Mr Kell,” he said. “Any idiot can talk about fishing. Let’s be real men. Let’s talk about books.”
Khadijah brought out a bottle of Moscato d'Asti and a quintet of dessert glasses. Kell drew out the cork. “Say ‘when’.” Melanie did not say anything, so Kell filled her glass to the brim. She tossed it down.
“Well, books,” Kell said. “I can recommend young Melanie here explore her adopted country through the novels of Harry Mulisch, the bard of the Amsted.”
Melanie held out her glass and nudged her chin at Kell. “More.”
He obliged.
“Ever read Proust?” said Archer to Kell.
“Certainly,” he said. “Thrice through. Wrote a book about him for a criminal American publisher.”
“I’ve read the whole thing, too.” Archer turned to Jack. “But how about you, Mr Jack Donovan?”
“Sure. I read it in French.”
“Yes, the only way,” declared Kell. “It doesn’t read too badly in German, either.”
Archer squinted into Jack’s face and laughed. “Oh, come on!”
“What? I minored in French literature in college.”
Kell drank off his dessert wine and put down the glass. “I wonder then, Jack, if you’ve read Cendrars’ Moravagine?”
Jack smiled. “Oh, yeah, practically every word he wrote.”
“A neglected master,” Kell said.
“How do you fit in all this reading between fishing and hunting, Jack?” Archer said. “Tell me that.”
Jack laughed and rubbed Archer’s arm. “I love this guy with a few glasses of wine in him. You should have seen him in Madrid, Kell.”
Jack now seemed to be having a good time. Without bothering to consult Eloise, he invited Archer and Melanie on an expedition to the foothills of the Atlas mountains, Berber country. The price of car and driver split four ways would be a pittance. There they would be able to purchase authentic Moroccan pottery, rugs, silver, knives; they would ride camels through the magnificent landscape.
“No, no, I won’t ride some poor camel,” said Archer.
“Stare at the mountains, Archer,” said Jack. “We’ll meet you outside the room at nine.”
The meal concluded. Eloise, fallen into a dark mood, stared at the bookshelves. Kell went onto the balcony to smoke. Archer and Jack accepted his offer of a Schimmelpenninck and glided out to join him. The panatela scorched Archer’s throat. The men watched Melanie sneak to the cocktail trolley and pour herself another gin and tonic.
“Well, well, well,” said Kell to Archer. “No lithe delicate thing she. I take it she’s a holiday romance, a dipping of the wick, yes, very good.” He patted Archer’s shoulder with his cigarette hand, scattering ashes.
“A brief encounter,” said Archer. “She’s not at all my type.”
“She’s perfect until she opens her fucking mouth,” said Jack.
Kell questioned Jack on his work with the Zanesville Phil. What kind of mute did he use? Did he not prefer the flugelhorn? Did the orchestra’s repertoire extend to Purcell? Then Kell claudicated inside to play an LP of The Fairy-Queen which turned out to be a mislabelled Marriage of Figaro. It would do. Kell tapped his stick in time to the overture, which came through distorted by a clod of fluff on the stylus. Then Kell prepared a concoction in tall pint glasses. Archer was barely in a state to keep track of the bottles as they were upended: generously approximated double shots of gin, brandy, rum, scotch, and port. Kell split a brown bottle of Irish stout between the five glasses and then poured champagne until the cocktails were brimming.
“Hangman’s Blood,” he announced. “Drink up.” He did so without flinching.
Archer sniffed the cocktail and began to laugh.
“No thanks,” said Eloise. “I’m not drinking this.”
Melanie swallowed most of her glass without hesitation. “Come on, you big blokes!”
Jack and Archer stared at each other across the carpet. They drank their cocktails down in steady gulps. When his glass was empty, Archer gagged and reached for the soda water siphon to wash out his mouth. Jack fell, slumped over the sofa armrest like a dead man. Archer, still upright, began to sing the role of Susanna to Kell’s Figaro. Melanie rocked in a chair with an expression of vague pleasure. Eloise stood over Jack to fan his glistening face. She told Kell she would return to interview him on Tuesday. She asked Archer to help take Jack downstairs. Archer gladly hoisted Jack’s right arm over his shoulder. With great effort they squeezed him down the stairwell. Jack drooled and moaned as his head smacked the stone wall.
Archer giggled. “Come on, you pussy!”
“Stop that!” Eloise said. “I think he’s going to be sick.”
Down in the street, as motorcycles wove through the crawling cars, they hailed a taxi. The teenage driver helped them slide Jack into the backseat. Archer slammed the door and took Eloise by the arm. She had refused her Hangman’s Blood, but was nevertheless having trouble standing steady.
“It’s really good we’ve run into each other again,” he said, trying to hold her to his chest. “What happened in Madrid, or didn’t happen rather, was not characteristic. We haven’t got to know each other properly yet. I think we should go to Majorca for a few days. Go snorkeling. See what happens.”
“That’s impossible,” she said.
“Give me a chance. Give us a chance.”
“You’re drunk. You don’t mean this. You’re talking pure shit.”
“I’m not drunk.” He pronounced the words as clearly as possible. “He’s drunk.”
“I’m going back to the hotel to put my husband to bed.”
“Meet me later. Eight o’clock. I’m at the Riad Ali Baba.”
“Stop it. Everything is so fucked up right now. Do you understand? What are you trying to do to me?”
She got into the taxi and ordered the driver to drive. Archer went back upstairs in a buoyant mood. Gounod’s Faust ballet suite was now on the record player. Archer took the unwilling Khadijah in his arms and tried to waltz with her. Then he smoked another foul Schimmelpenninck with Kell. Melanie experimented at the drink trolley. She filled a tumbler with vodka and watched a tipple of grenadine change from red spear to pink cloud. At sunset, after much singing, Kell inscribed to Archer a paperback copy of his six-hundred page bestseller Instruments of Darkness in the Italian translation of Mrs Kell, the only edition at hand. Then he departed to his study to pound out a review of a new history of Frederician Rococo for the Independent on Sunday. Archer put on his frayed straw hat and took a taxi with Melanie back to the Djemaa el Fna. The fast corners jammed the girl’s hot freckly arm fat into his face.
“That old dude is cool,” she said. “But Jack’s wife is a bit of a bitch, don’t you reckon? She hardly said a word at lunch.”
“Well she is or the situation, rather, is complicated, Melanie.”
“What’s complicated?”
“Are not we all complicated? Eloise. Me. Complications. You know what I mean.”
She was skeptical. “You mean you and Eloise...”
“In Madrid,” he slurred. “Things happen, Melanie, as we both know. Things people regret. Not me, though. I don’t regret the experience. Eloise is a beautiful and intelligent woman, yes.”
Melanie laughed. “Fuck. Even with that big handsome husband of hers?”
“The Neanderthal? He can’t even hold his liquor. Anyway, keep it to yourself. It’s not your business.”
“You get around, Archer.”
She opened her handbag. Breathing foul fumes into Archer’s face, she told him she had filched this (clink, clink) bottle of fine Russian vodka from Joseph Kell’s cocktail trolley. Let’s get some blood orange juice from the souq and make fuck-off good screwdrivers. Archer censured her, shaking the inscribed copy of Strumenti della Tenebra in her freckled face, Kell is a major literary figure and a gracious host, you have sullied my reputation with him forever, and how could you possibly contemplate more drinking? She called Archer a weakling. Weakling? Actually he was still standing, well, yes, technically sitting in a taxi, it’s just an expression, but standing, not like that Jack pussy, and if she thought that he, Archer, was a weakling, she could shove that big bottle of Russian vodka up her stinking loose Wollongong twat. She beat his face five or six times and he cowered and giggled like a boy. The taxi driver laughed hard at the white man’s lusty belle gazelle.
In the dusk of the tourist-packed square Melanie set off alone to seek the company of backpackers at the Café Glacier. Archer poked his tongue at her. She wasn’t a tenth of the woman Eloise was. He paid the driver and, spinning around to survey the scene, could not locate the alley that led to the Riad Ali Baba. But a beaming grubby-faced boy of about twelve appeared to offer guidance for fifty dirhams. What a great country this was! Archer stumbled along behind him, singing ‘Cinque, Dieci, Venti, Trenta’ from Figaro to the amusement of the Moroccans.
In his cool room at the riad Archer lay on the bed thinking of Eloise: her pale skin, her slim hips, the filmy sweat on her body. He slept until his alarm buzzed at 7:55, and then slumped at the escritoire waiting for Eloise’s arrival. He dozed and started and dozed and started. By 8:30 he gave up waiting and rolled under the bedclothes in a foetal lump. Well, it didn’t matter. He had drunk Jack Donovan under the table.
III.
ARCHER WOKE WITH the muezzin’s dawn adhan and crawled to the bathroom to purge his bowels in spurts of splintery mush. Then he fell asleep on the toilet. There was a knock on his door at nine. He hoisted his trousers in a daze. They were all waiting for him in the open courtyard: Jack in boy-scout khaki, his chin unshaven below the heavy black moustache; Eloise in a floppy straw hat and blue cotton dress and round prescription sunglasses; Melanie smoking, apparently unscathed by the binge, in tight brown shorts and a sleeveless vest. She looked at Archer as at a tiresome child.
“Ready?” said Jack.
Archer held onto the basin of the stone fountain. “For what?”
“We’re going to the mountains.”
“I’m not well.”
Eloise picked up her camera case. “Come on, he’s not well.”
“He agreed to split the car rental with us,” said Melanie. “Don’t be a softcock, Archer. Are you really this useless with a bit of booze in you?”
They watched Archer vomit into the fountain in a helpless tearful purge, his mouth gaping, his body pumping out the poison. Then he lay his head against the stone rim of the basin.
Jack pumped Archer’s shoulder. “You gotta ignore the pain, kid. I have a headache, too. I don’t remember a fucking thing.” He laughed. “But I’m ex-marine. We party harder than anyone. Come dawn we’re fresh for action.”
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