the car door swung open, the body slithering down the embankment: then she sees, in either case, the skid, the slide, the smashed bone, the spilled petrol, the sand, the sun, the sickening flux of human blood … the story is what you make it. In either case, the young man is dead.
She said to Andrew, “I don’t know, but I feel you are arguing against yourself.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps I am,” he said without emotion. “You have always been better than me at getting hold of the unthinkable.”
“Can’t we go now? Do we have to stay till July?”
He considered. “I think it would be better to do everything calmly. Make our agreed exit. Don’t you?”
Perhaps that was Fairfax’s mistake. His exit had not been agreed. She remembered what Mrs. Parsons had said, months ago, on their first trip to the souk: “It isn’t the roads in town that are dangerous, it’s the roads out.”
Very soon Daphne Parsons was on the telephone. “Imagine,” she said, “what a peculiar thing to do, to take off like that! He planned to leave the car—my car—at the airport! Just dump it there! Of course, I did think when I met him, what a very strange young man. He did seem to be rather … erratic. Is that the word I want? Frances dear, you must be terribly upset. I know you had him over for supper, and you must feel that you got to know him a little. I hope it doesn’t make your medical condition any worse?”
Then it was Rickie Zussman who called: with statistics. “Carla said you sounded rattled when she spoke to you. She says you’re trying to make something of it. Believe me, Frannie, this is just the way it goes. You shouldn’t see any malfeasance here. One in six accidents in the Kingdom involve fatalities. Though Christ knows,” he added, “I feel sorry for the guy.”
Then it was Eric again. “Andrew thought you would want to see the body, Frances, and I don’t suppose it is in my power to keep you away. Someone has to identify it, and we have been trying to find out where it was taken. We have been given various pieces of information, all of them inconsistent, and none of them necessarily accurate.”
“But someone must know.”
“I agree.”
“There is no chance, is there …” She could not continue.
“That it’s some kind of mistake? I think that would be too much to hope for. But I know you don’t believe what you’re told, Frances. I know you won’t take my word for anything.”
She checked the time. They arranged to meet; they would bring their own car, and Eric would collect Hasan, to interpret for them. It would be a long evening, Eric said, even if their first efforts were crowned with success.
She wandered about the flat, dazed, sticky; the air-conditioners did not seem to be working properly. She felt desperately hungry now, weak with hunger, and yet she felt that it would be almost indecent to sit down and eat. At some point she washed, and changed her clothes to go out.
After sunset prayers the young Saudi men go out to visit restaurants and meet up with their friends; they divert themselves at funfairs, which they call Luna Parks. Tonight the neon-lit spokes of the Great Wheels shone between the walls of the mosques. The city had taken on its nightmare life: a green moon, a vitiating heat.
They drove: the freeways, the highways, the roads off the map; the unknown quarters, the alien districts, streets and buildings they had never seen before. Eyes on the road, hour after hour, breathing in the dust and the diesel fumes, their clothes sticking to their flesh, their throats clogged with apprehension, and their minds still numb with shock. Between the concrete pillars of the overpasses, darkness blossomed into darkness, each manmade wilderness as empty of association as the surface of the moon. And their every second thought was of mortality; you could die here, your figure fleeing before the screaming cars, running till you dropped and expiring without a sound, like the sacrificial victims who are buried in bridges. Then you would haunt the freeways, your dead compass swinging, searching for home; until the city expanded, by its usual laws, and they built over your ghost.
Hasan argued with the porters at hospital gates. Eric Parsons stood by their car, in the evening’s stupefying heat, and wrung his hands; she had never seen anyone do it before. “I need papers,” he said. “I need signatures. I need death certificates. I need copies for the airline. I need copies for the Embassy.” He spun slowly on his heel, beseeching. “Tell the man, Hasan. Convey it to him somehow. Tell him I have it from the police that the body is here.”
“He says,” Hasan reported, “not this hospital, Mr. Eric.”
“Will nobody help us? Has nobody any sense? I have formalities to complete. Have you told him that?”
Now it was ten o’clock, and the evening lay behind them, an ordeal by which they would be marked. “When I get out of here in July,” Andrew whispered to her, “I’m not coming back.”
She looked sideways at him; thought of Mr. Smith, of his confident approach to the security guards, his visas in his hand. “Hush,” she said. She nodded toward Eric, who circled aimlessly in the dust, a few yards from their parked car. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Here comes Hasan again. He looks as if he has something to tell us.”
Andrew got out of the car. Hasan said, “I think we have found the place. But we cannot go in.”
“Why not?”
“He says the man who has the key is praying.”
“What, at this time?”
“You must come tomorrow.”
“But we have been driving for hours,” Eric said. He seemed on the verge of weeping; all his experience had not prepared him for tonight. “Tell him we have a lady with us. Tell him we must identify the body.”
“He says you cannot do it,” Hasan said. “To identify, you need four Muslim men. Christian men will not do.”
“And Christian women?” Frances spoke from the passenger seat. Eric leaned down, to the open window. “I suppose,” he said vengefully, “that now you think he was murdered? I suppose you think this fiasco is part of some conspiracy?”
“No. I know a fiasco when I see one. I’ve been around the world enough.”
