Page 10 of The Last Postcard

‘How much do I owe you?’ he mumbled.

Abdelhamid shook his head, already starting on the soup. Sam followed suit. He scooped up half of the egg with the bread and for a minute or two, he forgot everything else.

‘Maybe,’ Abdelhamid said when Sam was mopping up the remaining lentils with the last mouthful of bread, ‘maybe I could offer you one hundred and ten.’

Sam swallowed. It was less than he needed, far less. And yet, what choice did he have?

‘One thirty,’ he said, wiping his mouth.

Abdelhamid gave him a look. ‘One fifteen.’

The bowl was empty. Sam sighed.

‘OK. One fifteen.’

To celebrate their deal, they smoked kif and talked, until it grew dark and the street’s vendors began to pack away, ravelling their wares into the tiny, cave-like shops that lined the Rue de Commerce. Sam helped, lazily handing in old beaten brass lanterns and jugs, paintings dark with time and baskets of metal ornaments that were mostly just shiny new ones scuffed up with boot polish until they looked suitably aged. He watched as the Hermes was tucked on to a shelf.

Abdelhamid caught the look and smiled in sympathy. ‘You are thinking of the great book this machine would write.’

Sam shrugged. ‘In someone else’s hands maybe.’

‘Inshallah. But now you have kif, you have money, you will write again?’

‘Inshallah,’ Sam said, and Abdelhamid laughed. ‘Though I’ll have to write in pencil, or on my walls in charcoal. Madame Sarah would like that.’

‘In years to come she will open your room as a museum. Here is where the great writer Hackett did his work.’ Abdel patted his shoulder, then stopped, holding up a hand. ‘Wait a moment.’

He stepped back into the shop, and began to root through the stacks of old suitcases and cracked trays and framed photographs, blooming with age spots.

‘Ah!’ He straightened his back with a wince. ‘Yes.’

In his hands was a small leather case, not much bigger than a document wallet. The corners were battered, and the clasp that held it shut was thick with rust. ‘Here,’ he said, placing it into Sam’s hands. ‘Look.’

Obediently, he peered down at the case in the fading light. He could make out the indentations of initials tooled into the leather.

A. L.

The kif made everything seem warm and unhurried. He turned the case over and heard something clunk inside. ‘What is it?’

Abdel steadied it in his hands, working at the rusty clasp. A few flakes came away on his fingers, but then it released and the lid creaked open.

A smell wafted out, pungent leather and musty paper. For a brief moment, it reminded him of the attic at his grandparents’ house; a warm-cold cinnamon smell of dust and objects long forgotten. He peered inside.

It was a writing case. At the bottom was a blotter, the corners holding a sheaf of blank pages, yellowed with age. In the lid there was a leather pouch for envelopes, another for cards, and a tiny paper calendar that told him the year was 1928. Alongside the blotter was space for ink, a pencil and a pen. The ink was dry in its glass bottle, the pen crusted with it, like old blood. But it was all there, as if someone had scrawled out a last letter fifty years ago and hastily packed away, intending to return and clean up later.

‘Where did it come from?’

Abdelhamid shrugged. ‘It has been here a long time, that’s all I know. Mouad found it, I think.’

‘Mouad?’

‘My second brother. He used to work the docks. He lives in Casablanca now.’

Sam touched the sheets of paper. This was how people used to write, for themselves, for each other. Not relying on springs or keys or ribbon, not sending brief biro messages on cheap airmail paper. They wrote tangibly, personally; putting themselves into every curl and dot and line.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.

Abdelhamid smiled. ‘It has been lying here waiting for a writer. For someone like you. If you want, I could let you have it for maybe twenty dirhams …’