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          The next few days they had remained at Dar Chems negotiating with contractors and architects about designs for a Mosque for Sidi Bou Othman and how to move the mausoleum and reconstruct it at R’hamna. Fortunately, Radouan had saved the plans for the mausoleum so it could be easily taken apart and moved without much damage. Finally, when everything had been settled according to Radouan’s wishes, they had organized a big party down the road at Toni’s old place, and invited all their old friends and all the children’s friends as well.  There, they had feasted and toasted Radouan, resting temporarily in his silver coffin on a platform near a fountain at one end of the courtyard. Champagne flowed. There was dervish dancing, and by the end of the evening half the guests were in the pool. Later, when everyone had gone home or to bed and Delphine had driven back to Marrakech, Hafida and Mokhtar walked back from Toni’s place to Dar Chems along the allee of cypresses Mokhtar had helped plant fifty years before. The moon cast bars of bright light across the way as they marveled at how tall the trees had grown.

How tipsy they had both been, she smiled to herself, supporting each other to keep on the path. She had been staying in the Baroness’ suite and Mokhtar in a bedroom downstairs. When it came time to say goodnight, however, and he had suggested some bed tea to soothe their nerves, she had become suspicious and was about to decline when he revealed he had something important to tell her. Something Radouan had made him promise to tell her privately after he’d read his testament.

          And so a short time later, Mokhtar appeared with a tray, sat down on the floor and poured out the tea. Then he lit a pipe of kif, passed it to her and she asked what was bothering him. Was it seeing Radouan and having him speak to them like that? 

          ‘Yes, it was like that, like a resurrection, but not...’ He shook his head. ‘Since he left us I have awakened each day to the sadness of being alone without him.  At sundown when the muezzins call, I hear his voice, and in the silence of the night he comes to me in dreams... There is something he wants me to tell you, something he told me only last month and made me swear I would never tell any one but you.’

           Hafida smiled inwardly. ‘Now I’m going to get the Scorpion!’ she thought.

          ‘You never knew her,’ Mokhtar said and looked about the room... ‘The Baroness... myself, after Radouan got me a job here, I saw her only once or twice before she died but she had something about her that was impressive. Just after he found me this job, Radouan, for some reason he had to go to Paris to see Delphine. This was at the beginning of her film career. I was getting bored shut up in that small house in the Medina and had been asking him to find some outside work for me to do... He said as he was going away that he needed someone out here to watch over the Baroness because not only was she dying of an incurable disease but she was in danger of being murdered by somebody.’

          ‘Murdered by somebody!  You mean he knew someone wanted to kill her?’

          ‘Yes, and make it look like it was him... you know he always knew everything... Listen and I will tell you.'

'I’d been out here for about two weeks when he came to see her that evening before he left for Paris. Earlier the same day, I had overheard someone in a suit and tie speaking with a Fassi accent to the new server Zouheir and giving him money. He was counting it out, two bricks it was, and he was telling Zouheir the next time Radouan came out he was to kill the Baroness as soon as Radouan left! 

          ‘I reasoned the Fassi knew Radouan was leaving for Paris the next day and would be coming out to say good bye to her.  So I intercepted Radouan on the drive and told him what I’d heard, and that he was facing a dangerous situation. He listened thoughtfully for a few moments, and then asked me to keep the Baroness’ maid Fatima occupied until he left because he didn’t want to be interrupted and to watch the door of the Baroness’ suite. As it happened that wasn’t very hard, because that maid, who later became my wife, had been having an affair with the new server Zouheir, and wanted to revenge herself on him for fooling around with other girls.  So I occupied her for a few hours, in the big linen closet just outside this suite.’ Mokhtar grinned shyly. ‘That was the beginning of our romance.  Then, shortly before midnight, when Radouan left the Baroness he found us in the linen closet and told us to stay there and watch to see if Zouheir came and entered the Baroness’ suite... this very room where we are now sitting.’

          ‘So we watched and Zouheir did come. Just after we heard Radouan’s car drive away, he came with a tray of tea the Baroness always took to make her sleep.  He was inside for a very long time. Finally he came out with the same tray and went downstairs. This is what Fatima and I told the police when they were here questioning Zouheir. This is all I knew until a month ago.

            Hafida found it all very confusing. ‘But you never told the police you overheard Zouheir and the young man in the suit speaking about killing the Baroness, did you?’  

          Mokhtar replied that he had been so frightened he only answered the questions they asked him and they never asked him that.

           ‘Is there more?’ she asked and wondered if it was because he knew so much that Radouan had kept Mokhtar close all those years

           ‘You know I am not a bearer of tales or a gossip,’ Mokhtar replied, ‘and I am telling you this because he ordered me to do so, not because I want to. You must swear you will never repeat it.  Swear!”

           ‘I swear on the earth that covers my father’s head.’

          ‘You were so young at the time, not even married yet, so you could not have known that the Baroness was suffering greatly. She had asked Radouan to help her end her life, yes... wanted to die in his arms; sleeping pills, injections, whatever it took she didn’t care... as long as she was in his arms when she died.  After all, they had been lovers for over twenty years!  Radouan, he told me many times he’d tried to talk her out of it, but she kept insisting... pleading with him.  He told her it was suicide and was forbidden, but she said it wasn’t suicide, it was compassion. 

          ‘So, even though he was against it, Radouan went ahead and found out the easiest way to do it with sleeping pills and whisky.  But he told her he would be accused of murdering her and put in jail if anyone found out.  She said nonsense.  He said not nonsense and then explained to her what he had learned: that the young man who claimed to be her lost son, had seen her Testament in Mlle Saadi’s office. That the two of them, Saadi and the young man, had conspired with Ahmed to hire one Zouheir the new server, to kill her and make it look like he, Radouan, had done it.’

        ‘What was Radouan to do?’ Mokhtar asked. ‘Either the Baroness would die in his arms that very night... he didn’t have the sleeping pills with him... or be murdered by that slippery psychopath Zouheir. So he took a chance, and it was a big chance, because what if Zouheir had not come into this room after Radouan left, and what if he had discovered the maid and me watching from the hall closet?’

‘So my husband helped her end her life in this very room... how did he do it?’  

          ‘Smothered her with kisses,’ Mokhtar said slowly, ‘... that’s what he told me. She just sighed and stopped breathing...’

          For some moments Hafida was speechless. ‘Smothered her with kisses!  That’s what he told you?’

         ‘Yes...’ Mokhtar exhaled and nodded his head thoughtfully ‘So now you know and I’ve followed his instructions.... He also told me he knew he was going to die soon. He didn’t seem to know how or why because he was in good health, but he knew and wanted you to know and promise that you would swear over his body just before they buried him that you would never tell anyone - especially not Delphine, who gossips too much. If this story got out, he thought it could destroy your entire family and As-Sabil as well.  He was sure no one would understand why he had done it, he barely understood himself, but he knew he had done the right thing... Whether he had died for doing it, he cared not at the time, but thanks to God the All Knowing and to Toni and Prospero things had turned out right.’

          ‘Thanks to God and to you, dear Mokhtar,’ she replied. ‘It was you who warned him, you who stood by him all these years. That was very important for us... so many times he went hemq and only you could handle him. Without you he would have landed up in an institution...’

          ‘He found me on the way, starving and cold. I owed him my life,’ Mokhtar replied, his mouth trembling.

          ‘Don’t cry,’ she pleaded, ‘you’ll have us both crying again.’

          ‘I think I’m going to die soon too.’     

          ‘How do you know?’

          ‘I feel it inside...’       

©Elwyn Chamberlain 2006