William Bayer - Tangier

He stopped to let Farid off at his store. Farid opened the car door, hesitated, then shut it again.

"About Kalinka, Hamid-"

"Yes."

"I can talk to her if you like."

"Well-"

"We've always gotten on. Perhaps she needs a confidant. I'd be happy to talk with her if you agree."

"Thank you, Farid, but I don't know-"

"Well, anyway let me know if I can help."

He was grateful to Farid for that, but thinking about it through the afternoon, he decided he must continue to try with her himself. But differently than before, along another line.

That evening he waited until they were finished eating dinner and were reclining on banquettes with their cups of tea. Kalinka always prepared Oriental tea, rather than the sweet mint kind that usually followed a Moroccan meal. He'd become used to it, now preferred it, and liked the little wicker basket she'd made, based on a Vietnamese idea, molded inside with silk-covered stuffing so that the pot fit snugly and the tea stayed warm for hours.

"I saw Peter yesterday," he said.

"Oh-" She didn't seem surprised.

"An interesting meeting, Kalinka. He told me a secret about Tangier."

She smiled. "Secrets. Secrets. He has so many secrets. Poor Peter, so many secrets in his head."

"He doesn't follow you anymore, I hope."

"I'm sorry I told you that."

"You had to tell me."

"No, Hamid. You become too angry. Peter's harmless. He follows me, but it isn't what you think."

"What is it then? Tell me. Explain it to me. Please."

A silence. She put down her cup, then placed her hands together on her lap. "We were never married. I told you that. He brought me up. He took care of me. He brought me here to live."

"Yes, you've told me, but you've never told me why. Why did he introduce you as his wife? Why did he pretend?"

"He thought-I don't know. He did it-that's all. When I came here from Poland he just did it. He said something then, but I don't remember. So many years ago. Something-he said that it would be easier that way. I would have more protection. He wanted to protect me. It was so difficult for him to bring me here."

"So people thought-"

"Yes. That was it. He wanted them to think I was his wife. There was his name on my passport. Kalinka Zvegintzov. He arranged that. It was difficult to do. The same name-he showed me that. Put the two passports together, showed me the name was the same. 'We're married now, Kalinka,' he said. I remember now. He laughed. 'That's our secret, Kalinka. That's how we'll protect ourselves.' "

"And you accepted that?"

"Oh, yes. It didn't make any difference. I was only a girl then. When we were alone together he treated me the same. Don't think anything bad, Hamid. Nothing happened in all those years. We slept together in the back room of the shop, in our separate beds on opposite sides of the room. He only touched me as a father would. Kissed me as if I were his child. But he liked the secret. He would become very gay whenever he mentioned it. 'They think you're my wife,' he'd say, laughing, nodding his head. 'Such fools. It's good to have secrets from people, Kalinka. A man should always have secrets. It's a fine feeling when people are fooled.'"

It was so strange. Hamid felt no anger anymore, but lost, lost in a mysterious plot. He'd seen her passport, had examined it many times. It documented a marriage which she claimed did not exist. But why? Why these secrets? What had Peter's motives been?

"Is Peter your father?" he asked, immediately regretting the question, for it had been direct questions such as this which had always made her turn away.

"No," she said. "But he was my father's friend. He took care of mother and me. He loved my mother-I'm sure of that-though they were comrades, nothing more."

"And your real father-do you remember him?"

"I never saw him."

"But Peter told you?"

"Yes."

It occurred to him then that since Peter was so fond of secrets, he might have lied to Kalinka about her father too. "On your passport it says 'Father's name: unknown.' "

"That's not true," she said. "I know my father's name."

"What is it, Kalinka? Why haven't you told me this before?"

"His name was Stephen Zhukovsky. I didn't tell you because I forgot."

"But how could you forget a thing like that?"

"I never knew this man. He died soon after I was born."

"But Peter knew him?"

"Knew him very well. He and Peter were best friends in Hanoi. Peter told me that, and how my father died."

"Tell me."

"It was terrible," she said. Tears formed in her eyes. "In jail. In Hanoi jail. He was tortured by the Japanese. They tortured him-to death."

"Peter told you that?"

"He was there. He told me he was there. Nearby. In a cell nearby. And he heard my father's screams. They tortured him too, he told me, but not so much. My father was a great hero, he told me. And my mother-she was a great heroine too."

She was crying now and trying to smile through her tears. Hamid moved close to her, held her, kissed her, stroked her hair. In the six months he had lived with her she had never told him so much. He knew that now that she'd begun to talk he must press her to tell him more.

"Your mother-tell me about her."

She thought a moment, then she smiled. "Like Achar," she said. "Mama was like Achar."

"But that's ridiculous-"

"No, Hamid. Of course, she didn't look like Achar." She laughed. "Achar is big and hairy. No-mama didn't have a mustache. But she was like him another way. She worried about people, cared for people and the way they hurt. She hated injustice and worked to set things right."

"So you know Achar is interested in that?"

"Oh, yes. I can see it in his face. That's the thing I remember best about mama-her eyes, her concern. She would have loved Achar."

What a curious thing to say, he thought, and he was surprised that she understood Achar so well. It was uncanny the way she grasped the essence of people. She understood them by intuition. His own mind did not work that way. "Tell me more about her, what sort of things she did."

"She was a spy. She and Peter-together they spied upon the French."

"You're not serious."

"Of course I am."

"But how did you know?"

"They talked about it all the time. You see, Peter had a shop in Hanoi, a shop just like La Colombe. And it was filled with French people, officers and their wives. He sold them things, found them servants, stood in line for them with their letters at the Poste. They talked among themselves, and he asked them questions about their lives. Then he would tell mama-they would discuss these people for hours. They would put together what they knew and overheard-things having to do with transfers, movements of troops, boats that might arrive, airplanes, politics. They talked about all that, and then mama would carry the information someplace else. It was dangerous, I know. Peter was always worried when she left. Sometimes she was gone for six or seven days. We were always so happy when she returned."

"Were they married?"

"No, but people thought they were. Like Peter and me, you see. He pretended my mother was his wife. People called her 'Madame Zvegintzov.' We lived with him behind the shop. Mama and I slept in one bed and Peter in another. There was a curtain down the center of the room. Peter pulled it closed when it was time to go to sleep."

She locked her hands together then and threw them, like a lasso, around his neck. Then she lay back upon the banquette, pulled him down upon her, and buried her face against his chest. Later, in bed, they made love in that special way of hers, that strange Asian way which gave him such delight-lying nearly still, barely touching, changing their rhythm again and again, extending their pleasure to the limits of their ability to prolong it, then joining in a climax that left their bodies shuddering from head to toe.