James Munro - The Money That Money Can't Buy

"I should like to go there," he said.

Boris said: "What will they do there?"

"Dancing," said Craig. "And a bloke doing a balancing act. They always do."

"Is this dancing sexual?" Boris asked.

"That's perhaps a little crude," said Craig. "I think erotic would be a better word."

"Then I think we should go," said Boris. "We're tourists after all. It would seem strange if we showed no interest in sexuality."

Istvan risked looking pleased, and this time Boris didn't look angry.

The interior of the club was of the standard pattern that Craig remembered: a marble floor and walls of plaster and tile, fretted and carved into graceful abstractions that at first were very beautiful. It was only their sameness that cloyed at last. They sat on a padded banquette that was like a divan and an Arab in a djibbah placed drinks in front of them. All around European men and women chattered and drank, and danced to taped music—and Arabs in Western clothes sipped Scotch and told each other they didn't like it, but what could one do? When the dance ended, the crowd settled down, and one by one musicians in djibbah and fez squatted on the floor. Their instruments for the most part were European—violin, clarinet, and flute—but the Negro drummer carried hand drums like bongos, and the music they played was pure Arab. The crowd sighed its content; this was what they had paid for.

First it was just the music, then, as Craig had predicted, a man came on and balanced impossible quantities of glasses, jugs, vases of flowers on a tray on his head, finishing up with a series of candles in glass shades, making them spin in a circle of flame as the houselights dimmed. Then it was a singer in an exquisite caftan of blue and silver thread, eyes sparkling with belladonna, face and hands delicately rouged, little feet hung with silver bells. The song was of love, as always, and gazelles and roses and moonlight: the dance that followed, demure, almost shy, yet with the erotic overtones that Boris considered so essential as the hips swayed softly and silver disks tinkled in the slender olive fingers. At the end the singer sank to the floor to a rather bewildered round of applause, though the Arabs shouted their tributes to beauty.

"I enjoyed that," said Boris. "It is not precisely what I expected, but I enjoyed it. The girl was very sexual, but she had a certain modesty also." He looked at Craig, who was smiling. "Don't you agree?"

"I do indeed," said Craig. "Except that it wasn't a girl. It was a boy."

Istvan found it necessary to take a drink.

Thereafter it was girls all the way, one after the other, small, shapely girls, tenderly fleshed, their skins every shade from walnut brown to palest olive. They each had a circlet to hold back their hair, a jeweled bra, and below it were naked to the hips, where a skirt cut to reveal their legs was held in place by a rhinestoned belt. Each one of them did a belly dance that was very erotic indeed, hips writhing, breasts shaking in a frenzy of sexuality. Kamar had danced like that, he remembered, and she had been good to sleep with. As a teacher of Arabic she had been unsurpassed. An American he had worked with had described her beautifully. "Look at that kid go," he had said. "Forty thousand moving parts." But all that was over. Done with. Dead. He looked at Istvan's unwavering stare as the golden bodies swayed, then at Boris's brick-red blush: an even greater tribute to their beauty and promise. And for him it meant nothing. Boris had wanted to go in so they'd gone. He looked at the girl dancing now. She was the third, taller than the others, more rounded, with a pretty and mischievous face. It was all very boring. Then she advanced into the audience, still swaying to the music, but looking round her, searching. Oh God— he'd forgotten about this nonsense. The comedy-sex routine. She came up to their banquette, and stood there, and the drum beats marked the curving movement of her hips. She held out her hand to Boris, who shrank away, then to Istvan, who sweated hot and cold—lust and terror. At last she grabbed at Craig, and tried to draw him on to the floor, and all the time the drums beat, her belly writhed to their rhythm. Somewhere in Craig's mind a neat, angry man moved a pointer across a dial. He looked into the girl's face, and spoke to her, the guttural words snapping like whips. For the only time she missed a beat, then her head came up once more and she went to find another victim.

"I'm very grateful to you," said Boris. "That girl is embarrassing."

"You're very welcome," said Craig.

The girl had found an American, had taken off his coat and tie, and was now removing his shirt.

Then she tied the tie across his chest as a bra. The man was pelted like a monkey. She began to coax him into a belly dance, and the crowd was laughing to see what had been desirable made grotesque. Kamar had done that, too: it had given her great pleasure to degrade a man, any man. She had never liked Craig to praise her for it. ..

The American had been released, and was putting on his shirt while his wife told him how relieved she was that there was no one else there from Sandusky, Ohio. The girl accepted her applause almost casually; her body was already concentrating on the next part of her act. Slyly the music began again, and this time it was, Craig knew, the stuff the tourist doesn't see too often. He remembered a party in Fez, where he had been the guest of honor. He'd delivered a hundred Belgian rifles the day before, and this had been for him. It was the first time he had met Kamar . . . The girl's body moved as if tormented by the music, as if the wailing sounds were an aphrodisiac that drove her on and on, and the slow writhing of her body only intensified her need. One by one the instruments cut out, until the drum beats alone spoke to her and she responded exactly to their rhythm, kneeling in front of the drummer, answering each beat with a responsive and rhythmical shuddering, until at last her body arched backward, legs astride, her pretty belly rippled to the swift-flowing sounds. Then she shuddered, and the drums were still, the lights dimmed, then rose, and she was bowing as the audience roared.

"What an extraordinary thing," said Boris.

"Please, I should like to go home now," said

Istvan. "This is worse than Siberia."

They went back, and Craig marveled at Boris's docility. He had allowed Craig to take them all over Tangier, and be seen. That made him a fool. Craig didn't believe that Boris was a fool. This job was too important.

In the hotel a Negro porter in white robes handed over their keys and spoke to Craig in Arabic. His voice was low and rumbling, and he bowed as the three men went to the lift.

"What was all that about?" Boris asked.

"He hopes we enjoy our stay here," said Craig.

"He wants a tip," said Istvan.

Boris said, far too late: "You shouldn't speak Arabic, Craig. Tourists never do."

The three of them shared a suite. There was a living room and verandah, and opening off it, on either side, a double-bedded room for Boris and Istvan, a single-bedded room for Craig. It was Craig who now unlocked the door to the living room, and stood aside for Boris to enter. He didn't, but Istvan in some way he never understood found himself impelled by the sheer force of Craig's will into stepping over the threshold, and so Boris followed. Then came Craig, last of all. They had left a light burning in the room, and he stood outside its soft, golden pool, tense and ready, the snub-nosed Smith and Wesson no longer in his shoulder holster, but transferred to the waistband of his trousers as he followed Boris. He stood in the half darkness, his hand on his hip. The butt of the gun was only inches away from his fingers.

Inside the lamplight a woman sat. Her hair was very fair, almost white, and her eyes were green as a cold sea. She wore a white dress, and a mink lay at her feet like a trophy. Craig noticed at once her quality of repose. She sat completely at ease, not moving; the position of her body and the chair she sat in were sufficient to make sure that she could watch the door, and the men who came through it. In the silence they could hear the whisper of the air-conditioning, then her hand moved swiftly down to the chair. Craig jumped sideways, and the gun was in his hand as he leaped. "No," he said.