Hammond Innes - The Strange Land

He shook his head, quickly and emphatically. ‘No. I’ll be all right in a minute.’ He sipped at the cognac. ‘I’m just exhausted physically.’

But it was more than that. It was nervous exhaustion.

‘Can I have a cigarette please?’

I gave him one and when I had lit it for him, he drew on it, quickly, eagerly, like a man whose nerves are crying out for a sedative. I stayed with him whilst he smoked. He didn’t talk and a heavy silence lay over the room. I watched him covertly, wondering how this odd, excitable man would settle into the quiet, lonely life that I had become accustomed to. It wasn’t lonely, of course. There was too much to do, too many demands on one’s time and energy. But for a man who wasn’t accustomed to it, who wasn’t accepting the life voluntarily … I had been so engrossed in the idea of getting a doctor out there that I hadn’t really given much thought to the fact that he would also be a man, with a personality of his own, a past and all the inevitable human complications and peculiarities. I had thought about it only as it would affect me, not as I and the conditions of life down at Enfida would affect him.

‘Have you ever been to Morocco before?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘No. Never.’

I gave him a little more cognac and then I began to talk about Enfida. I told him how the olives were just being gathered and piled in heaps in the open space outside the auberge and how we would soon be thrashing our own trees to harvest the crop that was part of the tiny income of the Mission. I described the mountain villages to him; how they were flat-roofed, like Tibetan villages, and clung precariously to the sides of great ravines that cut back to the base of the peaks that rose twelve and thirteen thousand feet to form the backbone of the Atlas Mountains. And I tried to give him an idea of what it was like, travelling every day from village to village, sometimes on foot, sometimes by mule, living in the Berber huts and sitting around at night, drinking mint tea and listening to their stories and the gossip of the village.

And then, suddenly, his hand fell limp at the edge of the bed and he was asleep. I got up and took the cigarette from between his fingers and picked up the empty tumbler which lay on his chest. His face had more colour in it now, and it was relaxed. The nerve at the corner of his mouth no longer twitched and his features were smoothed out as though his mind were at rest.

I put his arms inside the bedclothes and then I switched out the light and went out to the cafe for some food. When I returned he was still lying exactly as I had left him. His mouth was slightly open and he was snoring gently. I went to bed by the moon’s light that filtered in through the half-drawn curtains and lay there, wondering about him and about his wife and whether I had bitten off more than I could chew financially, for I would have to get her to join us at the Mission.

In thinking about the Mission, I forgot to some extent the strangeness of his arrival and drifted quietly off to sleep.

I awoke to a tap on the door and a shaft of sunlight cutting across my face. ‘Entrez!’ I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was one of the hotel boys to say that the police and the douane had arrived. ‘All right. Show them up.’ I got out of bed and slipped my dressing gown on. Kavan was still fast asleep. He didn’t seem to have moved all night. He still lay on his back, quite motionless, his mouth slightly open and his breathing regular and easy. I looked at my watch. It was almost ten o’clock. He had had more than a dozen hours’ sleep. He should be fit enough now to cope with the immigration formalities.

The door opened and they came in. It was the same sergeant and he had with him one of the Customs officers. I glanced back at the bed, wishing that I’d told them to wait. I’d have to wake him now and he’d be suddenly confronted with them. I hoped he’d be clear in his mind what he was going to tell them. He ought to have mentioned Wade’s death to them the night before.

‘Muy buenas, senor.’

‘Muy buenas.’ I gave the sergeant a chair. The Customs officer sat on the couch. They both stared at Kavan. I felt uneasy and only half awake.

‘So, he is still sleeping, eh?’ The sergeant clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘I am sorry to disturb him, but it is the formalities, you understand.’ He shrugged his shoulders to make it clear that he was not responsible for drawing up the regulations.

‘You want me to wake him?’

‘Si, si — if you please. He is all right, eh?’

‘Yes, he’s all right,’ I said. ‘He was just exhausted. He had a bad trip.’

The sergeant nodded. ‘Of course. And to wreck the ship — terrible. We will be very quick. Then he can sleep again.’

I went over to the bed and shook Kavan gently. His eyelids flicked back almost immediately. ‘What is it?’ And then he saw the police and there was instant panic in his eyes. ‘What do they want? Why are they here?’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It’s about the immigration details. They said they’d come this morning. Remember?’

He nodded, but all the blood seemed to have drained out of his face so that it looked as white as it had done the previous night.

‘Senor Wade.’ The sergeant had got to his feet.

I started to explain that he wasn’t Wade, but Kavan checked me, gripping hold of my arm. I could feel him trembling. His eyes switched from the police sergeant to the door and then back again to the sergeant. ‘What do you want?’ he asked in fair Spanish and his voice shook slightly and I could feel him trying desperately to get control of himself.

The sergeant was standing at the foot of the bed now. ‘You are captain of the boat that is wrecked last night in the Baie des Juifs?’

Kavan hesitated, glancing up at me, and his tongue licked along the sore edges of his lips. ‘Yes.’ His voice was little more than a whisper. But then he added in a firmer tone, ‘Yes, I’m the captain of the boat.’

‘What is the name of the boat please?’

“Gay Juliet.’

The sergeant had his notebook out now. He was leaning over the end of the bed, his round, rather chubby face with its blue jowls puckered in a frown of concentration as he licked his pencil and wrote down the name of the boat. ‘And you are from where?’

‘Falmouth.’

‘You come direct, senor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your name is Senor Roland Wade?’

Again Kavan hesitated and then he nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Just a moment,’ I said, speaking to him in English. ‘This is absurd, you know. You can’t go on trying to pretend you’re Wade.’

‘Why not? Are you going to stop me? Listen.’ He grabbed hold of my arm again. ‘You want a doctor for your Mission, don’t you? It’s important to you. It must be or you wouldn’t be taking somebody you know nothing about.’

‘Yes, it’s important to me.’

‘Well then, you tell these men the truth and you won’t get your doctor. Not me anyway. So you’d better choose. If you want your doctor, don’t interfere. If you do, I’ll get sent back to England and you’ll never see me again.’ Though he was blackmailing me, his face had a desperate, pleading look. ‘It’s only until we get out of Tangier.’ He stared up into my face for a moment and then turned back to the, sergeant. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, reverting to Spanish.

‘You sail here alone?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Yes.’

‘There is nobody with you?’

‘No.’

He looked up from his notebook then and stared at Kavan. ‘Do you know a man called Dr Jan Kavan?’

I heard the slight hissing intake of Kavan’s breath and felt the muscles of his hand tense. ‘Yes.’

‘We were told that he was sailing with you.’