Tangier

Furious over that and the outlandish bill, he'd gone to the desk to complain.

'Your things have been washed,' said the manager, 'so you have to pay.'

'But the point,' Robin protested, 'is that I didn't ask that they be washed. I prefer to take my washing out.'

'Take it out. By all means take it out. But pay this time, or we'll dirty your clothes before we give them back.'

'Dirty them? How will you dirty them?'

'Use them as dust rags, I expect.'

It was absurd and hilarious-a typical situation with the people of Tangier. They'd do anything for money, anything to cheat, but later they'd want to discuss existentialism over sweet mint tea. Robin loved them, and hated them too. Though frequently they drove him to despair, he found them irresistible. What can you do with people, he often wondered, who throw up their hands and say 'God's will' no matter what miserable thing happens in their lives? Their submission to destiny made them passive about everything but money-the one subject about which they were impossible all the time. They'd steal most cleverly, but not blame themselves if they were caught. It was always God's will-Imchalah, as they said, until Robin swore he'd scream the next time he heard that word. Their religion had most certainly destroyed them, but had also made them great. It had set them back centuries, if one counted up all the months they'd lost during their annual Ramadan fast, but it had given them a kind of grandeur-there was nobility in their helplessness in the face of fate. He much preferred their style to the North American one he'd left, but he never failed to be amazed when he gave a few francs to a beggar, then watched the man stare at him and thank Allah instead.

After depositing his sack at a laundry, where it was weighed on a crooked scale, he walked back to the Socco Chico and slid into a table at the Centrale. He loved this dilapidated cafe, which abounded with hustlers day and night. People constantly passed by-Moroccans on their errands, young Europeans in walking shorts lost in the medina maze. Here, for the price of a glass of tea, he could sit for hours and admire all their legs. Boys or girls, it didn't matter-smooth, tanned skin was his delight.

He ordered a coffee and lit his cigar. Two girls with stringy hair sat a table away, their eyes blue and empty from a night of kif and sex.

The season, he thought, is beginning-the parade of the sensuous young. They came, girls like that, proud, independent, with their bedrolls and their cash. Tangier welcomed them and gave them everything they sought: drugs, rape in their hotel rooms, unspeakable penetrations on the beach at night. When they left it would be without regrets, though later, back in Stockholm or Montreal, at the universities where they prepared themselves for wholesome competitive careers, they might find cause to worry about venereal disease.

Oh, he thought, to be young again, tanned and strong and smooth. To have a virgin asshole and be full of hope. To smoke my first pipe of Moroccan kif. He sipped at his coffee and stared out at the street. No cars allowed in the medina-just people walking back and forth. He knew all the regulars-the hustlers, rug merchants, bazaar keepers, and whores.

'Hello, Robin.'

'Good morning, Robin.'

'Hey, Robin-hi!'

He'd been in Tangier a decade, and his face was part of the scene. He was one of the fixtures around the place, like the one-legged fellow who guarded cars in the Casbah or Mustapha, the mailman, who worked the Mountain Road. Everyone read his column too, though he couldn't imagine why. They loved his gossip, though it was about people they didn't know, lives that had nothing to do with theirs.

Pumpkin Pie walked by, pacing the little square like a high-stepping Harlem dude.

'Hello, Robin. Where you been?'

'Around, Pie. Around.'

'Yeah. Around. Always around. Good to see you, Robin babe.'

And then he was gone, disappearing into the crowd. A beautiful specimen, Robin thought, though beginning to lose his looks. Yes, he'd been here ten years-ten years of nothing, he sometimes thought. But he never wanted to exchange that time for a decade anyplace else.

A boy in a faded jeans jacket sat down with the girls, setting his backpack on the terrace floor. Robin closed his eyes and listened to their dialogue, mellifluous counterpoint to the guttural Arabic spoken around.

'Didn't I see you last night?'

'Did we see him, Carol?'

'I don't know. Where was he last night?'

Good, he thought. A classic ritualistic beginning. He'd tried to capture that idiotic tempo once, in a long poem he'd called 'Medina Voices.'

'Hey, where do you get your stuff?'

'Don't tell him, Cynthia.'

'What's the matter with her?'

'She's a slut.'

'Now, look, Carol. I told you not to say that-'

'Who cares anyway.'

'You're really nasty this morning.'

'Shit-why don't the three of us get stoned?'

'Hey-wow!'

'We don't know this creep.'

After a while Robin turned off-he'd heard that conversation a thousand times. The same petty insults, the same probing around, and all it ever came to was a lumpy mattress in a fleabag hotel and a third-rate screw. Still it was life, and there was something to be said for that. Or, he asked himself, is it really a kind of death?

He watched the threesome firming up their deal. In a few minutes they'd be pooling their cash and then the hustlers would crowd around. Someone would have some 'special stuff' to sell; someone else would offer a 'terrific freaky room.' It was all marvelously degrading, but that was what he loved about the town-the crumbling buildings, the seediness, made a perfect backdrop for bringing fantasies to life.

He loved the medina and the Casbah, especially at night, loved to roam the littered streets, loved the stink of excrement, the quarrels, and the slops that were constantly being emptied from windows overhead. The medina had an intricate rhythm, was a slum, but not a serious one, nothing like Dradeb. The same rats, of course, the same ooze and fights and overcrowded Arab life, but with a sort of grim humor that redeemed it in the end. The people of the medina had a cosmopolitan style. They were poor, but they didn't starve. In Dradeb, on the other hand, life was all despair.

Well, he thought, it's time to go to work. He left a coin for the waiter, pocketed some sugar cubes, and nodded to the three Americans, who glanced back curiously at him. Perhaps someone had told them he was a man to see. But long ago he'd decided to deal only to his friends.

At the Oriental he began scrupulously to clean his desk. When everything was dusted off, he stared down at his battered Olivetti and wondered what to write. It hadn't been much of a week, though he had enough material for a column. He rolled in a piece of paper and began to type.

ABOUT TANGIER

by Robin Scott

PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT two parties on the Mountain Tuesday night, at Peter Barclay's and Francoise de Lauzon's. The rivalry between these two hosts has reached the point where their friends don't know what to do. Our informants tell us that at least one of Barclay's guests accepted with Francoise first. Was he right? We hear that Francoise gave a better time. Champagne flowed, and Mr. Patrick Wax gave an imitation of Barclay saying 'Hello.' Then Inigo, our Paraguayan genius, drew OBSCENE pictures with lipstick on the Countess's lavatory mirrors, and the Mesdames Drear, also in attendance, pleased everyone with a dance. At Barclay's the usual crowd, plus the Governor and our esteemed chief of customs, Omar Salah. Madame Joop de Hoag was accompanied by Monsieur de Hoag's confidential assistant, young Jean Tassigny, whose good looks have taken Tangier by storm. Camilla