“I’m staying there, in a pension.”
“Really?” said Julie.
“I haven’t found anywhere else that will take me in with the bird. It’s really a bit depressing.”
“Well, then,” said Julie, “you can’t be in much of a hurry to go home. Why don’t we invite him for coffee with us, Christine?”
“Mais oui,” said Mme. Choiseul. Looking in the rearview mirror to see what he would say, she nearly scraped the right side of the car against a wall. “Oh là là!” she cried.
XXIX
Mme. Choiseul’s house, in the upper reaches of the Sidi Mesmudi road, stood on a small plateau surrounded by a large olive garden, a high curtain of eucalypti, and a canebrake.
“Artifo!” she shouted, getting out of the car and letting loose the Pekingese, which ran toward the lower part of the yard.
The garden, descending in small terraces, had a fountain, many narrow flower beds, and, farther down, a black monkey tree that rose up against the sky.
Artifo, an old man with a close-cropped beard and a fisherman’s cap, appeared in a side door.
“Yes, Madame?”
“Tell Fátima we’re going to have tea. And light the fire in the living room and in my room. It has to be done every day,” she explained, turning her back on Artifo.
They came out of the garage. From where they stood the sound of waves could be heard under the murmur of the wind in the branches. But the shore had to be far off, he thought.
They passed through a dark hall into a living room decorated with many potted plants and flowers where the dwindling light came through several small arched windows. The walls were upholstered in red, pink, and violet satin bands, and the floor was spongy, thick with Berber rugs covered with designs suggesting hands and eyes. The little coffee tables were stacked with art books, and the bookshelves were also heavy with old volumes. Julie took the birdcage from his hands and put it on a sideboard between two windows.
As they sat down next to the fireplace, Mme. Choiseul on a small sofa, with the Pekingese on her lap, Julie on a Moroccan pouf, her arms around her knees, and he on a low couch, Artifo covered a heap of dry eucalyptus leaves with sticks of firewood and lit them.
The colors of the room brightened with the first flames and a medicinal smell enveloped them.
“I know it’s not so cold as to need a fire,” said Mme. Choiseul, whose cheeks were turning red in the firelight, “but it’s not too hot to light one either. I worship fire.” She looked at the fireplace. “I get cold easily.”
Artifo left the room.
Now Mme. Choiseul looked at the owl.
“It’s lovely,” she said, and turned toward him. “The Moroccans have a whole repertory of animal stories, did you know? There’s one about an owl.”
An old woman, slightly stooped, with a white kerchief tied around her head, appeared at the door from the kitchen, carrying a large tea service.
XXX
They sipped their tea and talked about trivialities: the situation of Morocco, the possibilities for change, the fate of Pinochet, and the similarities and differences between Pinochet and the Sultan.
“Obviously, everyone ought to be able to express himself about anything, but not on the radio or in the press. There are limits,” Julie was saying.
Mme. Choiseul was more interested in learning how the owl had been injured than in discussing the limits of freedom in a Muslim nation.
He told the story of the thief in the Medina.
“Who would want to steal an owl?” Julie asked. “Are they valuable?”
“I know that they sometimes hunt them,” said Mme. Choiseul. “They’re easy to trap. I don’t think they’re worth a lot, but of course that is relative. Any little boy can catch one.”
“And what do they use them for?” Julie wanted to know.
“God knows,” said Mme. Choiseul, “but clearly they can sell them.”
He told them then how the consul’s friend had offered him a thousand dirhams for the bird.
“Maybe it was a joke,” he said at last.
“But do you suspect him?”
“It seems absurd.”
“The Honorary Consul of Colombia,” said Mme. Choiseul, “does not have the best reputation. If I were you, I wouldn’t try to recover my passport through him. Unless you plan on staying here quite a long time.”
“But then what should he do?” asked Julie.
“He can have it sent directly from his country, through Rabat.”
“Thank you for the advice,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Artifo came in with a tray to pick up the cups and asked if they wanted anything more. It was already dark out, and the red fire blazed in the window panes.
XXXI
Julie was driving Mme. Choiseul’s car down the narrow Monte Viejo road between the curving walls of the European mansions.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.
“No.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
They arrived in silence at the “Jews’ River,” which runs by the foot of Monte Viejo.
“I have a friend in Colombia. We live together, but it’s not going too well. How about you?”
“No, I live alone.”
Now they were driving straight up Dradeb Street, a mill of activity where Muslims dashed nimbly from one curb to the other, dodging cars. The lights of the grocery shops, the foundries, and the bakeries — crowded into the ground floors of the apartment houses — shone the length of the steep street. Julie was saying it was typical of a Southern country that rich people’s houses were surrounded by slums. She asked if it was that way in Cali too.
“Exactly. Can I take you to dinner?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Julie, smiling. “But I had the impression you had no money.”
“That’s true. But with a little luck I can get some cash from one of the ATMs on the Boulevard. None of them were working this morning.”
“Oh, is that all it is? I thought it was more complicated. I have to confess you had me intrigued.”
“Well, then, shall we go out to dinner?”
“If you like. But I have to warn you I hate Moroccan restaurants, and I don’t eat fish.”
“Vietnamese?”
“Why not?” But she seemed doubtful.
“I’ll have to go to the pension first to drop off the owl.”
Julie parked in Portugal Street, near the lower entrance to the Medina.
“Run,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”
XXXII
He didn’t like to lie but sometimes the truth about himself seemed so unacceptable that he let himself, always thinking he’d change things later so the fiction would match the reality. He could have been single, though in the eyes of the law he was married — since he had lived several years with his girlfriend — just as he could have been something other than an ordinary tourist with a mislaid passport. He looked in the mirror. As women were always saying, men were dogs. Smiling uncomfortably, he turned and shut the light off.
The ATM again refused to cooperate.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Julie. “I’ll treat.”
During dinner at “The Pagoda,” they talked more about Moroccan politics, while several decorative carp swam up and down in the small aquarium beside them.
They came out of the restaurant onto the dark street carpeted with plastic garbage.
“Where shall we go?” Julie asked.
“You decide,” he said.