R.: Then you’re a fool.
Me: You don’t think van Gogh and Gauguin and Manet and Cezanne had any talent … do you know who I’m talking about even?
R.: The fool always thinks that everybody else is foolish. Of course I know who they are. Those men have genius.
Me: And I don’t?
He shrugs.
Me: And when did you become an art expert?
He shrugs again and nods at a few people. We are sitting outside the Cafe de Paris in the Place de France.
Me: How does a peasant boy from some dusty pueblo outside Almeria get to know the first thing about art?
R.: How does an ex-legionnaire get to be a genius? El Marroqui? Is that how you will sign your work?
Me: Genius is not selective.
R.: But who decides? Were Gauguin and van Gogh celebrated in their time?
Me: What makes you think I want to become celebrated?
He says nothing but looks at me with intensity and I realize that I am sitting in front of someone who has found his milieu, a man who is utterly confident in his substance and who has seen something in me that I haven’t seen in myself.
R.: Why do you keep those journals? Why are you writing out your life?
Me: I only write down what happens and what occurs to me.
R.: But why?
Me: This is not for public consumption.
R.: What is it for?
Me: It is a record, just like your books of accounts.
R.: They just remind you of where you are in the world?
Me: That’s right.
R.: You don’t think people will read them and think, ‘What an extraordinary man!’?
I do think this sometimes but I say nothing to him.
R.: Any man of substance has to have some vanity.
1st April 1944
We have our first rest so that R. can work out how the banks operate. We stay in the Residencial Almeria. All nationalities are here and a lot of single women working in the hundreds of companies that have set up here since the beginning of the war.
R. enjoys his money. He has had a suit made for himself by a French Jew in the Petit Soco. He wears this suit to visit the banks. He dines at a restaurant run by a Spanish family in the Grand Hotel Villa de France. After he’s eaten he takes a short walk down to the Rue Hollande and then back up the hill to the Hotel El Minzah, where he takes his coffee and brandy. His vanity is that he likes to think himself wealthy. It works, because he makes contacts and does business in these places, which are full of black marketeers looking for people like R. to run their goods into Europe.
I like to sit outside in the sunshine by the Cafe Central in the medina and watch the chaos of the Soco Chico. At night I find myself drawn to the sleaziness of the port. There’s a Spanish bar called La Mar Chica with sawdust on the floor and an old slut from Malaga who dances passable flamenco. She smells bad, as if her whole biology is faulty and in sweating she is actually purging her system of all its ills.
26th June 1944
Since the Allies invaded Normandy we have been working non-stop. R. found a drunken Scot who needs money to pay off gambling debts so we ‘re the new owners of the Highland Queen. A Spaniard, Miguel, who used to work the fishing boats out of Almunecar, will run the new vessel.
3rd November 1944
Sitting off Naples at first light we are attacked. They go for the Highland Queen, which has drifted away. By the time I draw near they have M. on the deck with a gun to his head. I do not understand their language. R. radios for me to open fire, which I do and they all drop to the deck, including M. The pirates’ own boat steams away and I use a British Lee Enfield .303, which is very accurate over distance, to shoot the man at the wheel. They are Greeks. We tow the two boats into Naples. M. has a messy wound in his right leg and we have to leave him there. Our fleet becomes four.
15th November 1944, Tangier
R. is working on renting warehouse space in the port and outside in the city. My role is security, which means having trusted men who will prevent outsiders getting in and insiders from stealing. He tells me that people are afraid of me. I’m surprised. They have heard how I dealt with the Greeks. I realize that it is R. who is creating this myth around me and I am powerless to stop it.
17th February 1945, Tangier
R. has acquired warehousing. I go direct to the Legion in Ceuta and recruit veterans who know me. I return with twelve men.
8th May 1945, Tangier
The war ended today. The town has gone wild. Everybody is drunk except me and my legionnaires. The suburbs of the city have been filling up with Berbers, Riffians and Tanjawis who have been drawn from the
