Tangier

A minute later the film was on, a flickering study, Robin thought, of a family in decline. Florence's voice-over was full of giggles and breathy gasps.

'See-there's Herve in his Maserati! Just like James Bond! And there he is leaving the hospital. After his heroin detoxification in Suisse.'

A cut then from Herve walking out the hospital door to shots of Mexican women dressed in black sitting on mules.

'This is Acapulco, I think. We had Christmas there last year.'

Florence was seen jumping topless into a pool, while a pair of panting Afghans eyed her from the side.

'You're fatter now,' said Claude de Hoag.

'Hmmm. Maybe. There's papa leaving court! See all the photographers. And the mob!'

'The stockholders put them up to that,' said Herve. Robin watched a pan of angry faces-people who'd lost their savings in the Beaumont bank.

'Look! Here we are skiing. That's Jamie Townsend, Guyslene's fiance last year.'

The images went on, shakier and more blurred. There were scenes of the Beaumonts sitting around smoking hash, and barely legible footage of a Djillala party they'd organized the previous summer on the beach at Cap Spartel. They all looked young and rich, and vulnerable too, beneath their smiles. There was a sense of doom in the background-people playing while their fortunes turned unseen. Gone now were the Maserati, the Christmas vacations in Acapulco, the ski chalet in Klosters. Robin had heard that the elder Beaumonts were living on credit in a commercial rightbank hotel, and that their legal fees had mounted to more than a million francs.

Once, when the film broke and Herve worked to splice it up, Martin Townes wandered out of the salon. Robin thought he'd gone to the toilet, but after a while, when he didn't return, Robin excused himself and went out to look. He found Townes, finally, sitting in the garden stretched out on a wicker chaise lounge.

'Couldn't stand it, huh?' Robin asked.

'I got the idea pretty quick.'

'Disgusted?'

'Not really. These people are fascinating, in a macabre sort of way.'

'Why do you think?'

'Their emptiness, their superficiality. In some strange way that film shows them as they are.'

'It'll be over for them soon, you know. This house is on the market. Not that anyone in his right mind would want to buy it, of course.'

'I'm a great admirer of your column,' said Townes, looking suddenly into Robin's eyes.

'Well, thank you very much. I wouldn't have thought you'd like it much.'

'Actually I do. Gossip is what the novel is all about. Men and women, society, news. But there's something special about your work that's attracted me a long time. You don't write particularly well, and most of it's crap, but still, beneath it, there's a voice. A distinct one, I think.'

Robin was caught off guard. He knew his column was 'crap,' but he wasn't particularly happy to be told so to his face. 'Oh?' he said. 'Please tell me more. Just what is this voice you hear?'

'It's the voice of a young man weary with life, and also fascinated by his own despair. He loathes what he does, and revels in it at the same time. The Robin Scott that emerges from a year or so of reading 'About Tangier' is a soul who's found grandeur wallowing in the abyss. He leads a perfectly pointless life, but somehow, despite that, he achieves a kind of sainthood in the end.'

'Like Jean Genet?'

'No. Genet is a thief. Robin Scott is not a criminal, except perhaps in a broader sense. But certainly he's an existential character living on the edge, striding through Tangier's filth with an angelic smile on his face. People say terrible things about you, Robin. They say you inform for the police.'

'That's rubbish, of course.'

'Of course. Anyway, the point is that people apprehend you as a diabolical character. You're sinister in their eyes, and they can't reconcile that with all the fun you seem to have. There must be envy in it too. Everyone, at times, wishes he could embrace immorality.'

'So, I'm an immoralist. What else do people say?'

'Oh, the usual things. Faggot. Pimp. Heroin racketeer. What is this business about putting young boys in woolen shorts?'

Robin blushed. 'It's something I've wanted to do.'

'Tell me about it.'

'I'd rather not.'

'Come on, Robin. It's all the same to me. Besides, I've read your poems.'

'You have? How on earth did you find them?'

'Doyle showed me some things, in a little magazine.'

'What did you think?'

'There were some lines. I remember a pair: 'His face is the triangle of a Berber horse / He has the burning eyes of Moroccan dice.' Something like that. Anyway, what comes through is the voice of a man who has a passion to confess.'

'Perhaps I do, but my woolen shorts fetish is something I don't talk about anymore.'

Townes shrugged. 'As you like, Robin. But please tell me the story about your being nearly castrated last year. I've heard several versions, but not the true saga from the authoritative source.'

'Ah! That was something! I was asleep in my room, my grubby little hole as everyone calls it, when this Moroccan boy I know-not a boy, exactly; he's over twenty-stole in and got into my bed. I didn't lock the door in those days, though I sure as hell do now. Anyway, he snuggled down next to me, and I was quite happy about that until I suddenly felt this rather sharp, cold piece of steel just beneath my balls. Christ, he had a knife down there. He told me not to move or he'd cut the damn things off. Then it began, his tirade, two hours in broken English, French, and then Arabic-so fast I couldn't make much of it out. It was all about Vietnam and U.S. imperialism, and when I protested that I was Canadian he brought the blade up a little tighter and told me to shut my trap. He went on and on then, pouring out his poor, young, angry heart, and I lay there terrified, afraid to say a word, wondering if I was going to be unmanned to expiate America's sins. Finally he grew tired, pulled the knife away, and gave my cock (totally retracted by then) a few smart fondles, which did not bring it back to life. He snitched my wallet, my coins, my watch, even my wretched stamps, and stole back out into the dark. I lay there the rest of the night shaking with fear, and in the morning, when I'd more or less recovered my senses, I thought about going to the police. Anyway, I thought better of it, decided the whole business was a crude but important experience, and so I kept quiet until, a few days later, I ran into him again.'

'How was that?'

'He was simply sitting, sweet as you please, at a front table in the Cafe de Paris. I went up to him, we shook hands, then I sat down and we began to talk. He wasn't wearing my watch, and he said nothing about what he'd done. We chatted about this and that, and he was absolutely normal-as I'd thought he was before. We had such a good time we went out to a couscous joint and continued chatting there. Then, afterward, we shook hands, and he went back to his place and I returned to mine. Why didn't I ask him about it? Or at least ask him to return my things? I don't know. It was very odd, and he was so correct, so charming, that I wondered if I'd dreamed the whole thing up. But there was this thin red line where he'd pressed the blade beneath my balls, and I knew I hadn't done that to myself. Later I told a few people-it was such an extraordinary experience, perhaps the most terrifying and extraordinary of my life.'

'And you never went to the police?'

'No.'

'Did you ever see your things again?'

Robin shook his head. 'Lost. Completely lost. A few weeks later I bought myself a cheap Japanese watch.'

'Was this boy a political type?'

'No. That's the point. None of his political talk made any sense. I think he was just filled with rage-the rage they all have against us every now and then-and he simply expressed it in this strange dual way, the knife (which is pure Moroccan) and this crazy rhetoric he'd heard and half understood from Europeans he'd met around the Socco.'