The Storyteller of Casablanca (22)

Zoe – 2010

Tom said he’d be working late this evening – something to do with having to call the company’s Vancouver office – so not to keep supper for him as he’d grab something from one of the takeaway cafés next to the port.

After reading about the tin lantern that Josie used to have beside her bed, I take one of the ones that sit in a row on the sideboard in the sitting room and bring it upstairs with me to Grace’s room. I’m a little anxious about having it too close to the swathes of mosquito netting, so I set it on the chest of drawers against the far wall, alongside my quilting things. I’ve cut the starched fabrics into neat squares now and selected the ones I’ll use to piece my first block, subdividing some of the squares into quarter-triangles. I need fifty for each tree, plus some additional squares to form the trunk. As Kate suggested, for the first one I’ve begun pinning all the pieces together before I sew a single stitch, to get a feel for the pattern.

Grace sleeps soundly, arms flung wide. I light the candle in the lantern and take a seat in the brocade-covered armchair that I’ve set in the corner by the window. It’ll be the perfect place to sit and sew in the daytime with the sunlight streaming in, accompanied by the preoccupied murmuring of the doves on the roof.

This evening, though, I sit and watch the stars from the lantern as they flicker across the wall and then reach for one of the books I bought the other day.

I turn the pages, flipping through Scheherazade’s tales of princes and princesses and djinns until my attention is caught by the title of a short fable tucked away towards the end. It’s called ‘The Dream’.

‘Listen well,’ it begins, ‘it is told that long ago and in a far-off land a wealthy merchant lived in a fine house with a courtyard of white marble and a fountain carved with peacocks. He was foolish, though, and squandered his riches until one day he found himself to be penniless. He lay down to sleep with the heaviest of hearts, not knowing what to do. That night, a man appeared to him in a dream and said, “Your fortune lies in the city beyond the mountains. Go and seek it there.”

‘And so the next day the merchant packed his few remaining rags and set off. After several weeks of travelling, and having encountered many hardships along the way, he finally arrived at the city beyond the mountains. It was late and he had no money, so he lay down in a garden and fell asleep. In the night, a band of thieves came to the garden and from there they broke into a neighbouring house. Hearing the noise, the owners raised the alarm and the police arrived. They arrested the merchant, whom they found lying in the garden, and beat him soundly with their sticks before throwing him into jail.

‘After he’d lain in his cell for several days, the head of the police had the man brought before him, at last, and demanded where he’d come from and what had brought him to the city.

‘The merchant told the policeman about his dream and how a man had appeared telling him to seek his fortune in the city beyond the mountains. “But when I got here, the only things I received were the blows you and your men bestowed upon me with such generosity.”

‘The head of the police burst out laughing. “What a fool you are! I, too, have been told things in my dreams. In fact, three times a man has appeared to me and said that I must travel to a town on the other side of the mountains, where I will find a fine house with a white marble courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard I will find a fountain carved with peacocks and, if I dig beneath that fountain, I will find a casket filled with gold that has been buried there. But am I as great a fool as you? Would I go all the way across the mountains because of words that came to me in a dream? Of course not! What an idiot you have been.”

‘The merchant said nothing, but as soon as he was released from jail he hurried home to his town on the other side of the mountains. In the white marble courtyard, beneath the peacock-carved fountain, he discovered the buried treasure that had lain there all along. Thus were the words of his dream fulfilled.’

I lower the book and watch the stars flicker on the wall by Grace’s bed, mulling over what I’ve just read. It’s a story that’s been told and retold time and time again down the ages in various different forms, the saga of the search for something that turns out to have been hidden within all along. Is that what Tom and I are doing here? Are we searching for answers when really, all this time, we’ve held the key to them within ourselves? I think about our relationship and wonder, fleetingly, where Tom is right now. Is he really still at his desk, making calls beneath the stark fluorescent strip lights of the shipping office? Or is he somewhere else? A restaurant or a bar, maybe, with some of his colleagues, unable to face another silent and awkward dinner here with me. Or with just one of his colleagues, perhaps. When I go through his jacket pockets before I take his suit to the cleaner’s, will I find a receipt for a dinner for two, printed with tonight’s date? It wouldn’t be the first time. We were still living in Bristol and he’d said he’d be working late, just like he had today. The following day I found the receipt. That evening, when he came home, I handed him the slip of paper – a bill for two steaks and an expensive bottle of red wine. I scanned his face carefully, watching for any sign of guilt, but he just thanked me and said he’d be needing it to claim against expenses as it was from a rather tedious business dinner with an insurance broker. I didn’t say anything. I don’t know whether he was telling the truth or not, but either way the seeds of doubt had lodged themselves in my mind, taking root there and beginning to grow, fed by his coldness and the distance that was building between us, their tendrils silently twining their way into my thoughts.