Who is Maud Dixon? Page 12

  “Of course, Madame.” Brahim led them up a spiral staircase to the second floor. “This is a traditional Moroccan riad,” he explained. “It’s built around the open-air garden on the ground floor.” Upstairs, Florence peered over the edge of the wrought-iron railing down to the courtyard below, lit by the late afternoon sun. Their rooms faced each other across the drop. They stopped at Helen’s first. She and Florence agreed to meet downstairs at seven for dinner.

  Brahim then led Florence to her room. As she walked through the arched doorway, she noticed a looped bracket on the wooden door and a matching one on the doorframe. It looked like the kind of thing you could slip a rod or a broom handle through to lock someone in.

  She wondered briefly why anyone would have installed that there, but she was too tired to care. All she wanted was sleep; if someone wanted to shut her in, let them.

  22.

  Florence woke with a headache and a dry, sour mouth. She struggled to emerge from a dense fog. Her sheets were tangled and damp. She felt the aftereffects of adrenaline pulsing through her veins. She tried to remember her dreams, but they darted away like fish. She had been running, she thought. Pursued.

  She forced herself to sit up and rubbed her face roughly. She looked at her phone. It said 6:14 a.m. How was that possible? Had she actually been sleeping for fourteen hours? She heaved herself out of bed and walked to the bathroom on stiff legs. She splashed handful after handful of cold water on her face.

  Gradually the reality of her surroundings became more concrete. She was in Marrakesh. She had been planning to meet Helen for dinner last night, but she must have slept through it. And today they were driving to Semat.

  Florence took a shower and dressed in the first clothes she found at the top of her duffel bag: jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt. In the hallway, she listened at Helen’s door but heard nothing. She looked over the railing into the courtyard below. She spotted Helen at a table under an orange tree, a black coffee in front of her. She was wearing a crisp black linen dress and leather sandals that wound up her ankles.

  Florence sat down heavily across from her.

  “I thought you were dead,” Helen said cheerfully.

  “So did I.”

  “It really would have ruined my plans.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  “Coffee,” Helen said, pointing at the silver urn on a buffet table laid out in the shade.

  Once Florence had returned with a cup, she apologized. “I don’t know what happened. Did you end up getting dinner?”

  Helen ignored her question. “I thought before we leave town today we could hit El Badi. I was talking to Brahim again this morning and it really does sound spectacular. El Badi means ‘the incomparable’—isn’t that fabulous? It’s apparently one of Allah’s ninety-nine names, which makes me feel quite impoverished, having only two. Let’s go right after breakfast, then you can go get the car.”

  When they were planning the trip, Florence had suggested hiring a driver to take them to Semat, but Helen had insisted on renting a car. “Arabs can’t drive,” she’d said in the same matter-of-fact tone someone might say, “I grew up in Boise.”

  After breakfast, they both went back to their rooms to get a few things and then met again in the corridor. Helen held out her wallet, cell phone, and cigarettes to Florence and said, “Do you mind? I don’t feel like carrying a bag.”

  “Oh. Sure.” Florence stuffed them into her already full purse.

  It took some time to find their way out of the dark maze surrounding the hotel. The walls were too high to allow much sunlight in and so close that Florence could touch them both at the same time. Some of the buildings, she noticed when she looked closely, were covered in a synthetic wrapping printed to look like stone.

  Brahim had assured them that El Badi was only a short walk from their hotel, but they hadn’t counted on how long it would take to orient themselves. They eventually came to the large intersection where their driver had dropped them off the day before, which sprouted wider, busier roads. Cars, mopeds, pedestrians, and donkeys all competed for space. The donkeys looked skinny and miserable, pulling nearly identical carts of construction materials—bags of concrete, bricks, and long rods of rebar that hung down and scraped the dusty ground behind them. A few taxis, old ochre-colored Mercedes sedans from the ’80s, stopped for them, but they waved them on and kept walking. It was barely 9 a.m. but it was already hot. Florence wished she hadn’t worn pants.

  Many of the stores they passed had laid out their wares on the ground outside, and these too tumbled into the clogged streets, an odd mix of the exotic and the pedestrian: live turtles, plastic-wrapped socks, children’s umbrellas, sacks of pigment and spices and beans, diapers, sunglasses, glistening piles of raw meat. Everything was overseen by somber men in djellabas. A cat darted past them with a bird’s head in its mouth.

  By the time they reached El Badi, Florence was overheated and on edge. They paid seventy dirhams—around seven US dollars—to enter and found themselves in a large, open-air complex that was shockingly silent and still. The palace had just opened, and they seemed to be the first people there apart from the guards.

  Florence read from a pamphlet they’d been given with their tickets and summarized it for Helen: “The palace was commissioned by the sultan in 1578 and finished fifteen years later. A hundred years after that a new sultan stripped it and used the materials to build his own palace in Menkes—no, wait, sorry, Meknes—in the north.”

  Helen snatched the pamphlet from Florence’s hand and began fanning herself with it. “It’s hot as blue blazes in here,” she said.

  “It’s the chergui,” Florence replied.

  Helen walked away, toward a sunken garden in the center of the courtyard. Florence retreated to the high walls where there was a sliver of shade. She ran her hands along the rough surface, which was pocked with the same large holes as the walls of the medina. Here, though, they were filled with cramped, huddled pigeons—hundreds of them. Their cooing had the aggressively soothing tones of a nursery rhyme in a horror movie. A few pieces of straw floated down to the ground in front of Florence. She looked up. Huge storks stared down impassively from shaggy, shedding nests they had erected on top of the walls. There was bird shit everywhere.

  Florence turned down a set of steep stairs into a series of destroyed, roofless rooms with cracked tiled floors. The birds were even louder in here. She found a recess in the wall that was shaded from the sun and pressed her cheek against the surface. The stone was surprisingly cold. A few moments later, another tourist entered. Florence was not immediately visible to him. When he moved farther into the room he saw her and jumped.

  “Christ,” he exclaimed. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, moving out of the shadows.

  “Hiding?”

  “Just from the sun.”

  “Yes, he’s a bastard today.” The man had the accent and toothy look of an Englishman. “On holiday?”

  “Not really,” Florence said. “Working.”

  “Oh yes? Let me guess.” He looked her up and down slowly. “Archaeology student,” he pronounced, pointing a long, spindly finger in her direction.

  “Novelist,” said Florence. The man raised his eyebrows. “Oh, well done,” he said. “Brilliant.”

  After lying, Florence had the same feeling she got when she stepped past the point in the ocean where you can still run from the waves, so deep that you have to rush headlong into them. She felt, absurdly, that he might begin to quiz her.

  She moved abruptly away from him and climbed back up into the brightness. She crossed the complex, past the sunken gardens of orange trees and the algae-covered pool. On the opposite side, she found another staircase leading downward. She took it and found herself alone in a series of dark passageways. She entered a room with display cases filled with primitive-looking chains and neck shackles. On the wall hung faded black-and-white photographs of prisoners hunched over in despair. She hurried back up into the
sunlight.

  Helen stood peeling a small orange in the shade, her resin bracelets clacking in time with the motion.

  “Where did you get that?” Florence asked.

  Helen nodded her head at the orange trees in the sunken garden.

  “You just took one?”

  Helen shrugged. “Why not? Who’s it for, the storks?”

  Florence looked enviously at the juice running down Helen’s wrist but she lacked the temerity to pick one herself. She glanced at one of the guards, an acne-scarred twenty-something tapping at his phone. He seemed to sense that he was being watched and looked up. Florence abruptly turned away.

  “Are you about ready to go?” she asked.

  Helen ejected an orange seed from her mouth and held it up to the sun between her thumb and forefinger before flicking it away. “Let’s hit it,” she said.

  They parted ways at the entrance to the palace and agreed to meet in an hour at the intersection by their hotel.

  “Oh wait, I need my things,” Helen said, turning back.

  Florence pulled Helen’s phone, wallet, and cigarettes from her bag and handed them over. Helen slipped the cigarettes and phone into the pocket of her dress, but opened the wallet and pulled out her driver’s license. She handed it to Florence.

  “What’s this for?”

  “For the car rental place. I assume they’ll need a license in the same name as the credit card the reservation is under.”

  Florence looked at the picture on the driver’s license. She tipped the card and watched the hologram catch and repel the light. “You think I’ll pass?” She and Helen both had blond hair and small builds, but she’d never dared to presume any stronger resemblance.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  23.

  Florence set off westward with the sun at her back. The rental agency was located outside the medina walls. Brahim had told her it was about a twenty-minute walk.

  “Go through Jemaa el-Fnaa square,” he’d suggested, pointing at the map he was marking up for her. “It’s one of the most famous spots in Marrakesh. It’s where they used to shoot prisoners. Afterward, their heads were”—he snapped his fingers a few times—“what is that word? You know? With the hot dogs? You eat them with the hot dogs—they’re long and green and crunchy?”

  “Pickles?” Florence offered doubtfully.

  “Pickles! Their heads were, just as you say, pickled and hung from the city gates. As a warning.”

  “Oh.”

  “Also, you can get henna on your hands, very beautiful.”

  Jemaa El-Fnaa square turned out not to be a square at all, but a large, irregularly shaped plaza, anchored by the Café de France at one end. She and Helen had passed through it early that morning, when it was still empty, without knowing what it was. Now it was just starting to come to life. On tables shaded by tarps and umbrellas, towers of oranges waited to be juiced. An old man speaking in a hoarse voice held an audience of camera-toting tourists captive. Florence assumed he was one of the public storytellers that she’d read about. Still more tourists sat in the shade while their hands and wrists got painted with intricate patterns.

  A man approached Florence holding aloft a skinny black snake and attempted to drape it across her shoulders.

  “No, thank you,” she said, edging away.

  He persisted.

  “No,” she said more forcefully.

  He laughed at her. “Don’t be scared.”

  Florence bristled. She wasn’t afraid. Was that the only acceptable reason for refusing a snake around one’s neck? She veered around him and kept walking. His laughter echoed gratingly behind her.

  Here, finally, was Marrakesh’s exoticism, albeit an exoticism made palatable to tourists, but she was no longer interested. She was hot. She was tired.

  She reached the edge of the medina. A grand building sat in front of one of the gates, flanked by a trio of guards in different colored uniforms. She took out her phone to take a picture of it and they all started shouting at her at once. One of them started to cross the street toward her, still yelling. Several bystanders turned to watch. She felt the blood rush to her face and she put the phone back in her bag. She waved her hands in apology, and the guard retreated. A passerby in a full-body burka inspected her, the light glinting off her glasses. Florence walked away quickly and stepped in a pile of what she guessed was donkey shit.

  It took Florence thirty minutes to find the car rental agency, and by the time she got there she was caked in dust. It clung to her damp skin and trembled on her eyelashes. She felt its grittiness between her teeth.

  “De l’eau?” she asked the skinny teenager at the desk, her college French clunky on her tongue. She made a drinking motion with her hands. “Water?”

  The teenager shook his head somberly. Florence sighed and handed over the printout of her reservation.

  “Un moment,” he said and disappeared behind a splintered plywood door.

  There were two folding chairs against the wall. Florence sat in one and leaned her head back. A fan rattled above her.

  The teenager returned with an older man who greeted her in English. She handed over Helen’s driver’s license. He gave it a cursory glance and slid it back across the counter.

  “Come,” he said. She followed him out through the door to the street. The man’s plastic sandals slapped noisily against the soles of his feet. His heels were riven with deep, dry cracks.

  The garage was next door. The man led her to a white Ford Fiesta and gestured at it grandly. “Brand new,” he said, patting the roof. She thanked him and he stood aside and watched her climb into the car. She turned on the AC as high as it would go. At first the air was hot and rank, like someone’s breath, but soon it began to cool off and dry the perspiration on her skin. It also started to clear the addled, heat-warped vagueness that had clung to her since she’d woken up. The man from the office was still standing there watching her. She jammed the gearshift into reverse and narrowly avoided hitting an old woman as she maneuvered the car out into the frantic stream of traffic.

  24.

  When Florence finally pulled up, fifteen minutes late, Helen was standing at the intersection next to the same man with the same wheelbarrow, their bags piled inside. She was wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat, which she placed on her lap as she climbed into the car.

  “New?” asked Florence, gesturing to it.

  “Yes, I got it on my walk home. Forty dirhams. Brahim was right—the souk was incredible.”

  Florence nodded and smiled. She leaned her head back against the seat briefly. Her entire body was tense. She hadn’t understood any of the street signs on the drive. She’d nearly collided with a horse-drawn carriage containing two alarmed tourists. The man from the hotel shut the trunk and patted it lightly. Florence didn’t move.

  “Florence, let’s go.” Helen snapped her fingers at her, maybe facetiously but probably not.

  “Sorry,” she said, sitting up. She gripped the steering wheel and shifted the car into gear.

  * * *

  About an hour into the drive, the air conditioner conked out. Helen leaned forward and flicked at the vent a few times then threw herself violently into the back of her seat and closed her eyes. They had another two hours to go.

  Florence shut off the broken AC and rolled down the windows. The wind howled through the car, and their hair spun and whirled as if underwater.

  Florence swerved slightly as a truck passed them.

  “Jesus, Florence—careful,” exhaled Helen.

  Helen’s eyes were still closed, and she wasn’t wearing her seat belt. She never did. Florence wondered what would happen if she were to slam on the brakes. Helen’s head would probably bounce off the dashboard like a soccer ball.

  There weren’t many other cars on the road. She pressed her foot down on the accelerator and watched the needle climb upward. Soon they came to a curve and she had to ease off the gas. The sun had dipped lower, and its rays flickered throug
h the trees. Helen opened her eyes and turned the radio on, then off. She lit a cigarette. She had to hold it inside the car so the wind wouldn’t snatch it from her fingers. The smoke clung to Florence’s throat.

  They drove another hour in silence. The landscape became drier and dustier the farther they went. Marrakesh, Florence had read, was actually an oasis in the desert. Here, on the highway, there was none of the city’s lushness or color. The heat and steady thump-thump of the wheels on the road lured them both into a trance. They started to awaken only after noticing that the air rushing into the car felt different. It had cooled off a few degrees, and it felt fresher and brighter. Florence thought she could smell the sea. The area around them was getting greener too. Florence glanced at the map on her phone. It looked like they were about ten or fifteen kilometers from Semat.

  The road approached a steep drop and continued along the cliff’s edge. Below, the Atlantic foamed and churned. The sun glinted off its surface in the distance. It was hard to believe it was the same body of water Florence had grown up beside. How disappointing the ocean must have found the flat-topped warehouses of Florida, she thought, after the ramparts and minarets of Morocco.

  The cliffside road was barely wide enough for two lanes and every once in a while, when a car or a motorcycle raced toward them from the opposite direction, Florence felt compelled to slow to a near halt. She kept wiping her palms on the upholstery to dry the sweat.

  A truck with canvas flaps closed in on her back bumper and let out a keening moan. It finally swerved around her, barely making it back into the right lane before a car on the other side zipped around a curve. Their competing horns created a distracting din in Florence’s head.

  Finally the road pulled away from the cliff’s edge and soon after that Florence took a left onto a small road whose name matched the one on their rental papers. She breathed deeply through her nostrils as they bounced up the quiet street. It smelled like wet soil.