"Thomas M. Disch M - Casablanca" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

Casablanca
by Thomas M. Disch




In the morning the man with the red fez always brought them coffee and toast on a tray. H
would ask them how it goes, and Mrs. Richmond, who had some French, would say it goes
well. The hotel always served the same kind of jam, plum jam. That eventually became so
tiresome that Mrs. Richmond went out and bought their own jar of strawberry jam, but in a
little while that was just as tiresome as the plum jam. Then they alternated, having plum jam
one day, and strawberry jam the next. They wouldn't have taken their breakfasts in the hotel
all, except for the money it saved.
When, on the morning of their second Wednesday at the Belmonte, they came down to th
lobby, there was no mail for them at the desk. "You can't really expect them to think of us
here," Mrs. Richmond said in a piqued tone, for it had been her expectation.
"I suppose not," Fred agreed.
"I think I'm sick again. It was that funny stew we had last night. Didn't I tell you? Why do
you go out and get the newspaper this morning?"
So Fred went, by himself, to the newsstand on the corner. It had neither the Times nor th
Tribune. There weren't even the usual papers from London. Fred went to the magazine stor
nearby the Marhaba, the big luxury hotel. On the way someone tried to sell him a gold watc
seemed to Fred that everyone in Morocco was trying to sell gold watches.
The magazine store still had copies of the Times from last week. Fred had read those pa
already. "Where is today's Times?" he asked loudly, in English.
The middle-aged man behind the counter shook his head sadly, either because he didn't
understand Fred's question or because he didn't know the answer. He asked Fred how it go
"Byen," said Fred, without conviction, "byen."
The local French newspaper, La Vigie Marocaine, had black, portentous headlines, wh
Fred could not decipher. Fred spoke "four languages: English, Irish, Scottish, and American
With only those languages, he insisted, one could be understood anywhere in the free world
At ten o'clock, Bulova watch time, Fred found himself, as though by chance, outside his
favorite ice-cream parlor. Usually, when he was with his wife, he wasn't able to indulge hi
sweet tooth, because Mrs. Richmond, who had a delicate stomach, distrusted Moroccan da
products, unless boiled.
 The waiter smiled and said, "Good morning, Mister Richmon." Foreigners were never a
to pronounce his name right for some reason.
Fred said, "Good morning."
"How are you?"
"I'm just fine, thank you."
"Good, good," the waiter said. Nevertheless, he looked saddened. He seemed to want to
something to Fred, but his English was very limited.
It was amazing, to Fred, that he had had to come halfway around the world to discover t
best damned ice-cream sundaes he'd ever tasted. Instead of going to bars, the young men of
town went to ice-cream parlors, like this, just as they had in Fred's youth, in Iowa, during
Prohibition. It had something to do, here in Casablanca, with the Moslem religion.
A ragged shoeshine boy came in and asked to shine Fred's shoes, which were very well
shined already. Fred looked out the plate-glass window to the travel agency across the stre
The boy hissed monsieur, monsieur, until Fred would have been happy to kick him. The w
policy was to ignore the beggars. They went away quicker if you just didn't look at them. T