The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne Read Free Book Online Page B

fist. His brown silk shirt looked self-mocking now and faintly ridiculous.
    The moon lit the rolling intermediate mountains the Moroccans called the dir , “the belt,” and which spanned the desert and the High Atlas. Hamid brought the drinks on a tray and set it on the low wall by the road. They were going to wait for Captain Yassine Benihadd here, apparently, though, in his opinion, it did not show good form in front of the local police. He could sense that they were both panicking. Was their beautiful way of life, their partial exile, so detailed and meticulously planned, now in danger of being destroyed?
    Two pairs of headlights shot up from the road below.
    “Monsieur,” Hamid said gravely, “it is the police. I will take away the drinks.”

Four
    E WERE SAYING YOU MUST HAVE HAD AN ACCIDENT , but Mohammed said it was a flat tire—they always get flats out in the desert—and we all felt sorry for you. A flat tire, and in the dark! What a drag. Was it?”
    “Don’t ask them now,” Day said to the tiresome French girl. “Can’t you see they want to eat?”
    “It’s all right,” Jo said, her mouth trembling. “We just need to recover.”
    “People disappear here.” The girl laughed. “They just vanish. Did the Arabs molest you?”
    “I didn’t catch your name,” David said stonily.
    “Isabelle. I’m taking photographs of villages around here.”
    “She’s a nomad,” Day said. “Her name’s really Fatima Baba.”
    “Je suis photographe.”
    “She says she’s a photograph.”
    “Oh,” said David, not getting the joke.
    The lamb and prune tagine appeared before the Hennigers. They didn’t react, and then the beet salad and some warmed-up bread, and the room was so loud that soon they were almost forgotten, and Jo was relieved. To be forgotten is dinner party bliss. She ate too quickly and then the wine came, the cold, familiar Tempier that brought her back to memories of Europe, and she thought, “I’ll just get drunk, too, it’s a way out.” Gradually her nervousness dulled and her head cleared. The lilies suddenly caught her eye, and then the German crystal, the hard brightness that money buys and taste arranges, like waking up in a place in which you went to sleep but don’t remember.
    A few other guests called down the table. “Welcome!” “Sorry you had a hassle!” “Remember us from Rome?” But she didn’t recognize any of them. They were all remarkably dressed up for a desert dinner, with their buttonholes and linen suits and strapless dresses, and the man across from her, the American, was wearing a poppy in his lapel. He looked at her for long periods, unblinking, concentrating on her. She shot a look back at him and for a second, their suspicions tangled, wrestling each other in midair.
    “Did you pass Beni Mellal?” asked the Dutch lady whom Day had talked to earlier. David tried to be peppy.
    “We came through Midelt. It’s a different road, you see. Very scenic.”
    “But that’s a main road. Did you get lost, then?”
    “We didn’t get lost,” David said determinedly. “It was just a long slog of a drive. It’s through the high mountains.”
    “It’s the road most of us came on,” Day said.
    “Yes, but we didn’t know it.”
    The room mellowed a little, and without anyone noticing, the oud player left the room with his instrument. Jo swung back her head toempty her glass. She didn’t want to lie anymore. She found the women down the table looking at her with humorous disbelief. A marital quarrel, they were thinking; a roadside row that must have looked funny to passers-by. The men looked at her with a different interest. Was she tellingly detached from her glowering husband?
    “Yes,” David agreed, putting pieces of bread into his mouth like a small boy. “But we’re not used to the roads here. And it was dark. There was a sandstorm, too. We didn’t know which turning it was.”
    “So it wasn’t a flat tire?” Isabelle asked. “You were just