Tangier by William Bayer Read Free Book Online Page A

absolved, but since Pumpkin Pie is your houseboy, it puts the affair in a curious light."
    "Ha!" said Inigo, smoothing his long black hair. "I don't know where you get your information. Pumpkin Pie is my lover and does absolutely nothing around the house."
    Hamid smiled again. "Yes. Of course. But to us, you see, houseboy and lover come to the same thing. What happened? Did you have a quarrel? How did he get hold of the keys?"
    "Stole them, of course. As he's stolen nearly everything else. The boy's a kleptomaniac. There was a time when you would have cut off his hand."
    "Yes. The old Koranic justice. Harsh, merciless, and irrevocable punishments. Sometimes we wish we could still mete them out. But we're trying to be civilized now."
    "A big mistake, if you don't mind my saying so. When this country becomes civilized, it'll be time for me to leave. I came here for the barbarism. I like the feeling of being in a violent land. And the faces—gaunt, strong, primitive—they're the faces I dreamed of in Paraguay. Like yours, Inspector—a classic. Perhaps someday you'll be kind and model for me."
    "I'm flattered, but I don't have the time—"
    "A minute! Let me look closely!" Inigo stood up, leaned over the desk, and carefully inspected Hamid's face. "I swear I've seen this physiognomy before. Perhaps in one of the drawings by Delacroix." He sat down again. "It constantly amazes me—this sense I have that Morocco is still the same. Did you know that when Delacroix came here he spent days in the Socco sketching everyone who passed by? Hundreds of faces. Sometimes fifteen or twenty on a page. I'd swear yours was one of them. Has your family always lived in Tangier?"
    "We're from Ouazzane. But enough about my face. The keys—did Mohammed have access to them? Was he normally allowed to drive your car?"
    Inigo brought his fist up hard against his forehead, then squeezed shut his eyes. "Ah, Inspector, if you only knew—if you only knew the trouble I've had with that boy. He's a sadist, positively a sadist. Every day he tortures me to death. He steals my drawings, takes them to Madrid, and sells them on the street. Then he comes back penniless, makes sweet apologies, and I take him in again. He's not only a thief; he's a liar too. Constantly he lies about where he's been. With friends, he says, at some obscure café , and I nod, though I know perfectly well nothing he says is true. He's been in some shabby hotel with some disgusting British queer, acting the part of the rough street whore, probably beating the faggot up. I've bought him beautiful shirts, silk scarves, a motorcycle, the best perfume. My God, he was dressed in rags when I found him guarding cars in Asilah after a certain countess dismissed him from her staff. But the more I give him the more he takes. We've fought, actually come to blows. He once threw one of my paintings, still wet and unvarnished—threw it down a stairs! I bought a swan for my swimming pool. He captured it, strangled it with his bare hands! The boy's completely schizophrenic, but I need him, so what am I to do? Suffer, I suppose. Suffer! As people say an artist should. But why? Why should I suffer? My paintings have made me rich. I have the finest, absolutely the finest house in Tangier. I live on the Mountain. Museums collect my work. Everything I paint gets snapped up. My prices climb. I get richer. And still my suffering goes on."
    He removed his fist, settled back exhausted in his chair. "I must accept it, I suppose. My destiny. God's will, as you people say. It's written. Mektoub. But why? Why? Here I am, a great painter, perhaps the greatest technician since Velasquez, living with a nasty little street whore who uses me terribly and is way beneath my style."
    Hamid listened, amused at Inigo's antics and the melodrama of his life. The artist, he knew, was fond of monologues, whose effects he always tried to gauge as he went along.
    "I gather," he said finally, "that