'Yes, Hamid, she's come by several times. Thank you for sending her, but I don't think I can help. The sort of horn she wants-copper and very long-I haven't seen one like that in years.'
'She said I sent her?'
Farid narrowed his eyes. 'You did, didn't you? I'm sure she said you did.'
He turned away, his hands trembling. She'd sought out his brother, used his name. What did she want with a long old-warrior's horn? Perhaps she wanted to convert it into a lamp.
After that she was fixed firmly in his brain. Her implacable gaze, her masklike face-he saw it everywhere, even when he closed his eyes. What was happening? He was in love with her. Yes, he loved her-he realized it then. But what to do? Was she playing a game? He must find out, must corner her somewhere, force her to speak. Where? She was always moving, slipping away. In the shop? Impossible! With Peter watching? No!
He began to lose interest in his work, to wander about by himself at night, hoping to run into her, to find a situation where they could talk. He went to the dark place by the Casbah wall, but she did not appear. He stood gazing down at Tangier and its bay, watching the night pour over the Mountain like thick, black ink, watching until he could no longer see the towers of the mosques.
He became obsessed, and during the day at unexpected times he would think of her, imagine her coming toward him down a street, smiling, stooping every so often to pick a wild herb or rip a flower from a hedge. Yes, she was tracking him, tracking him inside his mind. At the shop their eyes would lock and she would smile. As he stood talking to Peter he felt tense, certain she was watching his back. Afterward he would go to his car, or move to the shadow of some doorway, and rub away the moisture from his palms.
He thought only of her and whispered her name over and over to himself:
One day he went to Farid's bazaar, prowled for an hour among the antiques. Finally he couldn't contain himself-the words pulsed with passion as they escaped his chest. 'Find me the sort of horn she wants,' he panted. 'Find it and sell it to me.'
'Oh, Hamid, she has cast a spell on you. I can see it in your eyes-she has made you mad.'
'Find me this horn, Farid,' he begged. 'I will pay anything, but find it. Find it soon.'
He found a chicken's foot in his mailbox.
The next night it was cold. The wind was blowing hard, and he could barely sleep. Suddenly a knock on his door. He was living on Rue Dante then, in a small apartment on the top floor of a building full of Spaniards. He stumbled out of bed, tried to turn on the light. Nothing. The electricity had failed.
He opened the door. Peter Zvegintzov stood in the dark hallway, a thick, black overcoat hanging from his arm. Hamid could feel tension. The taste of brass filled his mouth.
'Why do you come here, Peter?' he asked.
'My wife wants to leave me. She tells me she's in love with you.'
They stood facing each other in the darkness. He could feel menace in the Russian, and also great despair.
'I know nothing of that,' he said. But at the same time he felt joy.
'What has happened, Hamid? What has passed between you?'
'I don't know anything about it. I doubt we've exchanged a dozen words.'
'But she says-'
'Yes! Yes! Tell me what she says.'
Zvegintzov was silent. Had he betrayed himself? Hamid stepped back.
'She says you meet all the time, everywhere in the city. She says she's been lying to me, that when she goes out it is never to the places she has said. She says she follows you, and that when you come into my shop you pretend to listen to me but use your eyes to speak with her.'
Zvegintzov stepped into the doorway. A bit of light from the street cut a triangle across his face. There was anger in his face. Down the hall someone yelled 'Quiet!' in Spanish. Hamid took another step back.
'I don't understand why you've come here in the middle of the night.'
'How can you say a thing like that? My wife tells me she's leaving. Of course I've come to you. What difference the time of night? I have come for an explanation. I'm the husband. I have certain rights.'
Hamid stared.
'For a long time I have helped you, Hamid-invited you into my place of business, told you things that have helped you with your work. You could not force me to do this. There is no pressure you could bring against me. I talked to you of my own free will. Now I learn that you will take away my wife. I confront you and you deny it. Is Kalinka a liar then? Tell me, tell me to my face.'
He stood blocking the door, defiant, enraged. Finally Hamid answered him, but not without exerting an enormous effort to meet his eyes.
'Yes, I love her. But I never knew she loved me until you told me so tonight.'
'Ah-then it's true.' His voice was filled with resignation, all the anger drained away. He brushed past Hamid, walked to the center of the room. 'I'm a fool,' he said. 'A fool. You're an inspector of police and I'm a fool.'
From a sleeve of his coat he drew a short, stiff riding crop. Then he dropped it on the floor. 'I brought this so I could slash your face. She does this to me, you see. Drives me mad, makes me miserable, makes me act the fool.'
He stood for a time, his head bowed. Hamid watched him, unable to tear away his eyes. Zvegintzov began to gasp and then to weep-strange sounds, whimpers of agony stifled finally by his heavy Russian cough.
'Forgive me for coming. I can't control myself. I am helpless. You see that.'
He wept some more, then left. Hamid watched him from the window, watched him move slowly down the street. The wind was blowing hard, the street lights flickered. Then a hailstorm began. Pellets the size of marbles were falling upon Tangier.
He and Peter did not speak again. The next day he sent Farid to fetch Kalinka and bring her to Farid's bazaar. In the back room she told him she was in love with him, and that if he wouldn't take her to live with him she would leave the town.
'For years I saw you,' she said. 'Sometimes I waited the whole day thinking of nothing but that soon, perhaps within the hour, you would come to see Peter in our shop. I wanted to see your eyes, hear your voice. I trembled when I saw you watching me on the street.'
He asked her about Peter, and she swore to him then that she was not his wife, had never been, either in law or in deed. He was amazed, and his policeman's temperament, his skepticism, all his control ebbed away. He felt helpless in the face of her passion, her strange inflections, her enigmatic eyes. He took her hand. They kissed and moaned. She lay her fingers upon the high bones of his cheeks.
Later he went to see his mother in Dradeb. She was ironing when he came into the house.
'Ah, Hamid, you have always been in love with foreigners. Ever since you were a boy. Now the foreigners will dislike you. It's bad for a Moroccan to steal a Nasrani's wife.'
'No, mother,' he said. 'I'm an inspector of police. Now it doesn't matter what the foreigners think. It only matters what I think of them.'
She nodded, but she didn't understand. To her Tangier would always be a city which the infidels controlled. Later, when he brought Kalinka, his mother looked into her eyes.
'This woman smokes hashish.'
'I know. I know.'
It had bothered him at first, but he came to realize that the smoke was a part of her, part of the aura of dreaminess and mystery that he loved.
'Perhaps,' his mother said, 'she will cause you pain.'
She hadn't yet. She served him, cooked for him. She polished his moccasins and arranged them on the floor in pairs. Farid finally found the horn and gave it to them as a gift. They kept it standing straight on the floor beside their bed. It was as tall as Kalinka, and its end, shaped like a bell, reminded him of her name.
At the Surete they said she was the best thing ever to happen to him. Once he overheard Aziz speaking to a colleague in the police canteen. 'Of course Hamid understands the foreigners,' he said. 'He lives with a Chinese woman now, has learned all their secrets from her.'
A Chinese woman-she was not that, but he understood why they thought she was. Just as all foreigners were
