Michael Pearce - A dead man in Tangier

‘They are interested, of course, in the likely route the railway would take.’

‘Is that the responsibility of the committee to decide?’

‘No, but what they decide — the scope and nature of the legal powers they decide on — could have a considerable bearing on the route. That is terribly important, of course, because once the route has been decided on, businesses will be jostling to take appropriate action.’

‘Appropriate?’

‘Well, they would be able to plan ahead.’

‘Buy land, you mean?’

‘That sort of thing, yes, sir.’

‘And Bossu being close to the committee’s deliberations…’

‘I must insist, sir, that anything he did would be separate from his work on the committee. The Chairman is a stickler for propriety. But, of course, outside the committee room-’

‘And close as he was not just to the committee’s working but also to the interests of other parties-’

‘He would be well placed,’ said Mr Bahnini.

‘Thank you, Mr Bahnini. I think I understand what you are telling me.’

At one point Seymour heard Mr Bahnini talking to someone in his office. They kept their voices down and he couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they appeared to be having an argument. The other person seemed to be a young man. After a time he went away.

When Mr Bahnini next came in to see how Seymour was getting on, he appeared vexed.

‘An awkward customer?’

‘Very. My son.’

‘The one you were talking about with Macfarlane?’

‘The same.’

‘The one who has just finished his studies and is uncertain what to do?’

‘It is not that he is uncertain. He doesn’t appear to want to do anything. He just sits in the cafe all day with his friends listening to music.’

‘He probably finds it hard to put student life behind him.’

‘They all do. But it’s time they did. They can’t sit around for ever.’

‘You couldn’t tempt him to take up Macfarlane’s offer? As a temporary expedient?’

‘That’s just what I’ve been trying to do. But he will have none of it. The committee is just a cover for the French, he says, and he refuses to have anything to do with it. He won’t work for the Mahzen because he says it’s too corrupt. All right, what about business, then, I say? There are plenty of jobs there if only you could be bothered to look for them. That would be working for foreigners, he says, and he doesn’t want to do that.’

‘What does he want to do?’

‘Sit around in the cafe and chat. And his friends are just the same. They say they will only work for Morocco. Look, this is Morocco, I say: here! No, it’s not, they say. It’s France or Spain or some other rich country.

‘ “It’s all very well for you to talk,” I say to him, “but before you start taking a high-and-mighty line about principle, you’ve got to find a way to live. At the moment you’re living on me!”

‘That always makes him angry, and my wife says I mustn’t say things like that. But it’s true. And it’s true for the others, too.

‘Take young Awad. He spends all his time lolling about in the cafe, too, but he can do it only because his father is rich — his father is a Minister in the Mahzen, Suleiman Fazi. Did you say you had been to see him? I met him once, he’s a nice man and he’s just as worried about Awad as I am about Sadiq.

‘I don’t know what’s come over the young. They have chances we never had. And what do they do? Loll about and complain! Say the world’s all wrong and that it needs to change before they’ll get their hands dirty by working in it!’

Seymour laughed.

‘The young have always been like that,’ he said.

‘But it’s different now. Here. And with the Protectorate being imposed, it’s become worse. They say such wild things!’

‘It’s just talk.’

‘So long as it stops at just talk,’ said Mr Bahnini darkly.

When Seymour left, he saw just such a group of young men as they had been discussing sitting in a cafe across the road. In fact, they were the young men they had been talking about, or some of them were, for as he and Mr Bahnini came out of the bank one of them looked up and saw them and then came running across the road towards them.

‘Your pardon, Father,’ he said. ‘I spoke too warmly.’

‘Like father, like son,’ said Mr Bahnini. ‘I spoke too warmly, too.’

The young man fell in alongside them.

‘This is Monsieur Seymour,’ said Mr Bahnini. ‘From England.’

‘Oh, from England?’

He asked Seymour, as they all did, how he found Morocco: but he asked in a different way from the others. He asked with a fierce interest, as if the answer really mattered. Seymour, who found the question difficult to answer at any depth, replied as best he could. The young man pondered and then said:

‘Do you find us backward?’

‘Different,’ said Seymour. ‘Not backward.’

‘Yes, we are different,’ said the young man. He appeared relieved.

Seymour said that he found Tangier different, too, from other places around the Mediterranean that he had been in; from Istanbul, for example, where he had been the previous year.

‘You have been in Istanbul?’

‘Briefly.’

‘That is somewhere where things are happening!’ said the young man enviously.

There had been a revolution there and the Sultan had been deposed.

‘And how do you think it is working out?’ he asked anxiously.

‘It’s too early to say. Things are changing, certainly. But I have a feeling that the Sultanate is not finished yet.’

‘They won’t go back?’ said the young man, aghast.

‘They might. But if they do it won’t be to quite the way things were before.’

‘Once change starts,’ said Mr Bahnini, ‘it is hard to stop it.’

‘I hope that’s true,’ his son said. ‘For Turkey’s sake, at least.’ He looked at Seymour. ‘We have a strange situation here,’ he said. ‘When the revolution started in Istanbul we all said, “Yes, yes! It is a pattern for what should happen here.” But it hasn’t worked out like that. The French have stepped in and brought all that change to a stop.’

‘Not all that change,’ objected his father. ‘Some of it will continue to go on.’

‘Instead of the Sultan we have the French. That isn’t much of an improvement.’

Seymour called in to see Renaud but he wasn’t in his office. This was the third time Seymour had tried without success and he mentioned it to Chantale when he got back to the hotel.

‘Oh, he won’t be in his office!’ she said.

‘Where will he be, then?’

She looked at his watch.

‘There’s a little bar in the Place Concorde…’

And there indeed was Monsieur Renaud, perched on a stool and chatting to the patronne.

‘Collegue!’

He jumped up.

‘Cher collegue!’

They embraced.

‘Un aperitif?’

‘Allow me…’

And, a little later, ‘Forgive me, cher collegue, for coming to you. It is an imposition, I know.’

‘An imposition? But not at all! A pleasure! A pleasure!’ Renaud repeated. He looked along the bar. The patronne, without saying anything, brought another two Pernods.

They exchanged toasts again.

‘You know,’ said Seymour, as they settled back on their stools, ‘there is one thing in which I regard myself as fortunate. It is to find myself working with you.’

‘Ah, Monsieur-’

‘No, I mean it. It is not always that one finds oneself working with people who are so sympathique. Colleagues who put people first. As you so evidently do. Your solicitude for Madame Bossu! Can I say that I find it admirable? Yes, admirable. Caring, thoughtful, sensitive. One does not always find that in one’s colleagues. I consider myself fortunate.’