“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you annoyed?”
“No.”
They walked in silence, casting long shadows on the sand, toward the rock embankment at the end of the beach where they’d left the car.
XXXVII
Failing to find Rashid at the Tingis, he walked down to the port and took a taxi.
“To the Boulevard?”
“No, to Monte Viejo, please,” he said in Maghrebi. “Do you know where it is?”
“Yes,” said the driver and looked at him. “Are you Moroccan?”
“No.”
“Tunisian?”
“No.”
“Egyptian?”
“No.”
“Where are you from?”
“Colombia.”
“But they speak Arabic in Colombia?”
“No. Spanish.”
“We speak Spanish here too,” said the driver in Tangerine Spanish. “What’s it like in your country?”
“More or less like here.”
“Horrible, in other words.”
“That’s about it.”
The radio was broadcasting a Moroccan football game. The driver asked if they bet on sports in Colombia.
“Not as much as they do here.”
“It’s an interesting game. You can win a lot of money.”
“If you’re lucky, I guess.”
“I think you are a lucky man.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Luck comes and goes.”
“You’re right there, my friend.”
The Mercedes turned rather dangerously down the slope toward the California district.
“You are learning Arabic.”
“I’d like to.”
“Do you like Morocco?”
“Very much.”
“There you are. Do you know what Islam is?”
“Of course.”
“No, I’m asking if you know what it really is. Are you a Muslim?”
“No, no. I’m a Christian.”
“How are you going to know what Islam is if you’re not a Muslim?”
“You have a point.”
“Well. If you want to, you can convert to Islam. You only need to say. .”
“Yes, I know. It’s been explained to me.”
“Well, khay—then you will understand. You’re not a Jew, are you?”
“No.”
“Well, then, there is no problem. If you want to, you can become a Muslim.”
They continued along Vasco da Gama toward the Sidi Mesmudi road and passed in front of the country estate of one of the princesses of Kuwait.
“Here only the very rich live,” said the driver with contempt. He felt a strange shame on behalf of the rich.
“Here it is,” he said when they arrived at Mme. Choiseul’s home.
“Here?” The driver stopped the Mercedes in front of the door. “That’s a hundred dirhams,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“Mía dirham. One hundred dirhams.”
“That’s way too much.”
“Too much? Well, give me eighty.”
“Twenty is what I’m used to paying.”
The driver, without looking at him, shook his head. “All right, fifty.”
“Thirty,” he replied, counting his coins, “thirty is all I’m going to give you.”
He stretched out his hand with the money, but the driver would not take it. He stepped out of the taxi, leaving the money on the seat. He was closing the door when the driver screamed furiously:
“Intina yehudi!”
On the Tangier side, thousands of swallows were taking flight in a block against the huge screen of the sky, each one a point in a net that was changing its form, weaving and unweaving at the whim of some natural intelligence.
XXXVIII
The owl opened its eyes onto the hungry, liquid light of the dusk. It turned one ear toward the window, better to hear the sounds that filled the air of the sunset and mixed with the steady murmur of the breeze rising from the sea. A man was shouting, as he did every afternoon at this time. The birds continued scratching the sky or crying from the branches. Several mosquitoes buzzed near the window and some moths began to flutter close, drawn by the sun’s last rays in the window panes. A lizard’s skin scraped as it crawled through a crevice under the window. The dry leaves, the dust, a dead beetle — all were swept up by the wind. A grasshopper flew over the lawn. The old Moroccan who tended the fire carried out the meaningless movements he always made at this hour — you could hear the sound of his feet and knees shifting on the straw mat.
The man who fed it meat was talking with someone — the sound of their voices came through very faintly, drowned in the snore of an automobile engine. The stranger raised his voice, and the sound of the car moved off. The little dog was barking. Someone drew near on the stone path that descended from the upper garden.
The owl recognized the sound of the footsteps of the person approaching: it was the boy who had wakened it from its light sleep earlier in the afternoon by tapping his finger on the window pane. “Yuk, yuk,” was the sound the boy had made, which startled it. It had once heard another boy make the same sound.
That was when the owl lived in the ruins of the old Italian hospital. The cornice where it had made its nest looked over an unkempt garden, with rows of flowers grown into thickets, and creepers hanging from the branches. It had felt safe there, since no one, neither nuns nor monks, had walked in that garden for many years. From the other side of the garden, next to the railing that separated it from the street, there used to be a large kennel where a police dog was kept and where one day a Moroccan boy moved in. He was from the country and had the rustic ways of country people. He must have seen the owl return to its nest one morning, because later he climbed up to the cornice with a ladder to surprise it while it was sleeping. He threw a gunny sack over it and tied its feet with a rope. The owl, quivering at the memory, let out a screech. It was awake now, but it was helpless.
XXXIX
“Yoohoo, up here!” came the voice of Mme. Choiseul from a balcony. “How did it go?”
“Comme ci, comme ça,” he said, looking upward. “Hasn’t Julie come back?”
“Yes, she came back. But she’s gone shopping, something last-minute. We invited some friends to dinner. A Belgian girl married to a Moroccan. If you’d like to join us, you’re most welcome.”
“Yes, delighted. Thanks.”
“They’ll be coming at seven.”
“Can I help you with something?”
“No, no. Everything’s set.”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, if you insist — how would you like to cut some flowers from the garden?”
XL
The night smelled of the jasmine he had cut. He pushed open the door of the guest house and, seeing the window open and the cage empty, felt a sensation of loss which — he told himself — had nothing to do with a mere owl. He looked under the bed, and a current of cold air grazed his head. He went to shut the window, which he was sure he had not left open. He noted the firewood in the basket and thought of Artifo: maybe he could explain it. He looked through the window at the darkness outside, accented by the distant glow of lights on the hilltops on the far side of the Bay of Tangier, which for a moment he had confused with stars.
He left the house and walked around it, looking for some sign of the bird. If it had leapt out the window, it might still be nearby. He walked toward the main house, and, halfway up, stopped to listen: Mme. Choiseul and Julie were discussing something in one of the upstairs rooms, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He walked around the house and ran into Artifo near the room where the wood was stored.