The Donkey-Vous mz-3

by Michael Pearce

  The recital went on for hours, or so it seemed to Owen. The crowd was still as thick, more tightly jammed if anything. For some time he had been conscious of an approaching wail and thump. The wail ceased to approach and continued to sound at intervals forlornly. A wedding must have got stuck in the crowd. The tourists on the terrace above were still disregarding the vendors and following the Balkan display of boots. The vendors, discouraged, turned to the nearer spectacle and formed a little ring around Owen and Mahmoud and the flower-and strawberry-seller and listened rapt to the tale.

  Owen abandoned all hope of getting anywhere. Mahmoud, however, worked patiently on, bent courteously forward to catch the strawberry-seller’s words, offering little suggestions now and then which blocked off a detour or returned after a diversion. And gradually, very gradually, he brought the conversation around.

  Owen came to with a jolt when he realized that they were talking now about Moulin.

  “His wife is here,” said the strawberry-seller.

  “Is she?” said the flower-seller. “I thought she had gone.”

  “Not that one. Another one.”

  “Has he two wives, then?”

  “If he has, this is the senior one. She has gray hair and a straight back.”

  “I have not seen her.”

  “She does not come out on the terrace.”

  “What does she do, then?”

  “Sits inside, I suppose. Perhaps she stays in the harem.”

  “Has he any sons?” someone asked from the outer circle. “If he has, I have not seen them.”

  “There is that young one with the bulging eyes.”

  “Ah yes, but he is not a son.”

  “He is very like a son.”

  “I don’t think the old man has any sons.”

  “No sons! Then there will be no one to mourn for him after he is gone.”

  “Or inherit.”

  “It is very sad if a man has no sons.”

  “The one with the bulging eyes,” said Mahmoud, coming in quickly to cut off a potential diversion, “was he there that day, the day the old man disappeared?”

  “Yes, he was there,” said the flower-seller. “He came out on the terrace.”

  “Ah yes, but that was later. After the old man had disappeared.”

  “He didn’t come out before?” asked Mahmoud.

  “No.” They were quite sure on the point. “He always comes later. The old man sits there first by himself.”

  “All alone.”

  “Yes, all alone.”

  “He has no sons, you see,” offered one of the outer-ring. Mahmoud, foreseeing another diversion, carried on hastily. “He might not have been lonely. He would have spoken to people.”

  “Not many,” said the strawberry-seller doubtfully.

  “He spoke to the dragoman,” said Mahmoud.

  “Yes, but that was only that day.”

  “Perhaps he spoke to him at other times, not on the terrace?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “If the dragoman was a friend of his, he will grieve for him.”

  “That is true,” they assented.

  “I must speak words of comfort to the dragoman,” said Mahmoud. “Which dragoman is it?”

  “Abdul Hafiz,” said the strawberry-seller.

  “No, no,” said the flower-seller. “Osman.”

  “It was definitely Abdul Hafiz. I remember, because I was surprised that he should come and talk to Farkas.”

  “Why should that be surprising?” asked Mahmoud.

  “Because Abdul Hafiz thinks that Farkas is ungodly.”

  There was a general chorus of assent.

  “That’s why I think it was Osman,” persisted the flower-seller. “He talks to Farkas.”

  “I know. If it had been him I would not have been surprised. But I was surprised. That was because it was Abdul Hafiz.”

  “Are you sure that wasn’t another day?”

  “What wasn’t another day?”

  “That-”

  “Where is Farkas?” asked Owen.

  They looked around.

  “He is not here,” they said.

  “I know that.”

  “He hasn’t been here for some time.”

  “Perhaps he’s getting some more stock,” someone suggested. They all laughed.

  “How long has he not been here?” asked Owen. It sounded a flower-sellerish sort of question. Perhaps the disease was catching. They understood, however, without difficulty. “He hasn’t been here for several days.”

  “Can you remember when he was last here?”

  “Was it by any chance,” said Mahmoud, “the day that we last spoke with you? Was that the last day he was here?” They thought before replying, understanding the point of the question. Then they looked at each other.

  “Yes,” they said together.

  A flock of turkeys had been infiltrating its way through the crowd. One of them came to the strawberry-seller’s basket and sampled his wares. The strawberry-seller leaped up with a shout and belabored the turkey, which turned and scuttled off into the crowd. A series of indignant shouts marked its passage. There was a sudden fierce blare of hautboys as it came up against the wedding. Panicking, it turned and rushed back the way it had just come, pecking everything and everyone in its path.

  The crowd broke apart. Somebody fell on to the strawberries. The strawberry-seller started beating him. Another turkey appeared, closely followed by another. Owen jumped for the steps, narrowly missing the snake charmer. Mahmoud leaped up beside him.

  Two frightened turkeys ran past the bottom of the steps. Bedlam broke out as they reached the donkeys.

  There was a sudden fanfare as the wedding minstrels, profiting by the gap the turkeys had made, reached the steps. Behind them, wavering uncertainly between two giant camels, came the bridal palanquin. There was a loud jingle of bells as the first camel went past.

  “By God!” said the blind snake charmer, alarmed. “There it is again!”

  Mahmoud turned in a flash and ran down the steps.

  “You said that before when I was making them play again the disappearance of the old man with the stick. What do you mean, father? There is what again?”

  Chapter 11

  "The bells,” said the snake charmer.

  “Yes,” said Mahmoud. “I hear them too. Was it like that on the day the old man was taken?”

  “Yes,” said the snake charmer. “Yes. I think so.”

  “He came down the steps. With difficulty-one was assisting him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you heard the bells?”

  “Yes. I cried out to the old man to warn him. I thought he might be knocked down. But one told me to be quiet.”

  “Was it the one who was assisting him, the one from above?”

  “I do not know. I cannot remember.”

  “And then the wedding camel moved on and the old man was no longer there. Is that right?”

  “That is right.”

  From further along the street came a confirming tinkle. “Another man was taken later,” said Mahmoud. “An Englishman.”

  “I know him,” said the snake charmer. “He speaks strangely and is the girl’s father.”

  “That is right.”

  “She gives me a piastre. Every time she goes in, every time she comes out. She did not give me a piastre that day. I did not mind because I knew she was troubled.”

  “She grieves because she has lost her father.”

  “These are evil days,” said the snake charmer, shaking his head.

  “They are indeed,” Mahmoud agreed. “And we must stand out against the evil.”

  The snake charmer did not reply.

  “I remember that day the Englishman was taken,” Mahmoud declared. “He too was sitting at the top of the steps. And then he came down them, I think. Do you remember?”

  “I think he came down.”

  “Was one assisting him?”

  “No. But h
e was talking to one.”

  “They came down the steps together?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then you heard the bells again?”

  “Yes.”

  “And after that, as before, the man was gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Old man,” said Mahmoud gently, “the bells ring many times. The wedding camels go up and down the street, and that is good, for weddings are enjoined in the Book, that Allah might bless with children. Do you not hear the bells many times?”

  “I do.”

  “Then why do you remark on them now?”

  “I heard the bells,” said the old man after a moment.

  “I am sure you heard them.”

  “They came when I was troubled.”

  Mahmoud deliberated. “Is it,” he added, “that usually when you hear them your heart is happy?”

  “That is true. My heart is happy.”

  “But not when the old man with the stick was taken. Then your heart was not happy.”

  “I was confused. I did not know what had happened. I could not understand.”

  “I remember you were confused when I spoke with you.”

  “I was troubled. I knew that bad things were going on. And then the bells! I was confused.”

  Mahmoud looked at Owen.

  “Imagine an old man,” he said softly, in English, “blind. He creates his world and it is orderly. It has to be. And this one day, suddenly, it is not orderly. And he remembers. He remembers especially the discrepant things.”

  “Are the bells discrepant?”

  “They were discrepant with the bad things he knew were happening. And,” said Mahmoud, “they are discrepant to me, too, for if Moulin had come down the steps and was standing right by the wedding procession, the kidnappers would hardly have chosen that moment to kidnap him. Not with all those potential witnesses. Not unless the wedding was part of it.”

  He turned back to the snake charmer.

  “And then it happened again,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The Englishman came down the steps. And again you knew that something bad was happening. And again you heard the bells.”

  “I was confused,” said the old man, “troubled. And then I heard the bells.”

  “It would be possible to check,” said Owen. “Possible, not easy. ”

  “Perhaps you-I have no standing in this case. Officially.”

  “OK. I’ll check.”

  “If I were you,” said Mahmoud, “I wouldn’t check with the donkey-boys.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because,” said Mahmoud, “if anything happened at the foot of the steps, and it did, they must have seen it.”

  “Weddings,” said Owen, “weddings. Do you remember their jokes about weddings? I thought it was because one of them, Daouad, wasn’t it, was getting married?”

  “Cheeky!” said Mahmoud. “It would have been cheeky of them. But typical!”

  “I’ll check,” said Owen.

  “Don’t talk to anyone too closely connected with the front of the terrace!” Mahmoud warned him.

  Owen endured, on this occasion, Mahmoud telling his grandmother how to suck eggs.

  “We don’t want another Farkas,” said Mahmoud, rubbing it in.

  “I’ll look out for the postcard-seller too.”

  They pushed their way back across the street.

  “Even so,” said Owen, “it wouldn’t have been easy.”

  “It would have been easy to take him. The problem was always getting him away.”

  “You reckon they put him in the palanquin?”

  “Yes. Surround him when he gets to the foot of the steps, throw a blanket over his head and bundle him into the palanquin. Then you can take your time.”

  “Might have been seen bundling.”

  “It would have been very quick. The camels would have blocked out anyone seeing from the street side. Mirrors, banners, people everywhere. A small man in the middle of a lot of big men.”

  “Possible,” Owen conceded.

  “Why did they come down the steps? That’s still the question.”

  They parted when they got to the other side of the street. “I’ll get on with that checking,” said Owen.

  “Palanquins are not that easily come by,” said Mahmoud. “You could start there.”

  Owen put Nikos to work on the palanquin, Georgiades to work on the weddings. They operated in complementary ways. Georgiades would shamble through the crowd, chatting to all and sundry, young and old, beggar and businessman, inviting confidence with his soulful eyes and sympathetic manner. Nikos shrank from the messy business of individuals and pursued the abstract and organizational. Whereas Georgiades would have set about tracing the palanquin by going first to the user and then deciding where a person like that was likely to go to get his hands on a palanquin, Nikos immediately went through a list of palanquin suppliers.

  The Georgiades way would probably have worked better in the present situation but they did not have a known person to start from. Owen hoped that if he picked up the “wedding” the other might follow. Cairo was a personal city. Set any group to walk along the street and at least one of its members was sure to be recognized by at least one of those who witnessed it.

  Nikos, confronted with what he regarded as a simple organization problem, was ticking along happily. Once he had taken on a problem, however, his mind refused to let it go and he was still thinking about Zawia and the Senussi.

  Midway through the morning, and through his pursuit of the palanquin, he stuck his head in at Owen’s door.

  “It might not be Senussi,” he said.

  “Might not be Senussi!” Owen was enraged. “Christ, you tell me now, when the whole place has got itself in an uproar about the Senussi.”

  “What I was thinking,” said Nikos equably, “was that it might not be the Senussi themselves but an associated sect. Other sects have religious centers too which they call by the same name.”

  “Like what sect?”

  “The Wahabbi. There has always been a link between the Wahabbi and the Senussi. They are very similar. Both are extremely fundamentalist. And that brings me,” said Nikos, “to another point. I was going through the files of the dragomans yesterday.”

  “Mahmoud and I went through them.”

  “Yes,” said Nikos, unimpressed. “And what I found was that Abdul Hafiz is a Wahabbi.”

  “I think we noted that too,” said Owen.

  “Yes. Well, it fits, doesn’t it? The Wahabbis are very fundamentalist, just the sort of people to be infuriated by anything to do with gambling. And all the more so if the gambling is anything to do with foreigners, since, like the Senussi, they object strongly to foreigners. Suppose Berthelot was right, and the reason why they picked Moulin was that they had learned that the Khedive intended to build a gambling salon and wanted to frighten him off? Abdul Hafiz might have been the way they learned.”

  “Berthelot swears he kept things very quiet.”

  “OK. Suppose they heard about it another way. Quite possible, because there are Wahabbis close to the Khedive. Abdul Hafiz might have been the man they put in to keep an eye on things. Also to take a hand. Remember what the strawberry-seller said. Either Abdul Hafiz or Osman was on the terrace at the time Moulin disappeared.”

  “The flower-seller thought it was Osman.”

  “I think it was Abdul Hafiz. The strawberry-seller remembered it because it surprised him. That rings true to me. He was surprised because Abdul Hafiz was not the sort of man who normally talked to people like the postcard-seller. That was because he was a Wahabbi. Strict people like that object to profane images, all the more if they’re the sort of images the postcard-seller was carrying around.”

  “I don’t see how the postcard-seller fits in.”

  “Nor do I. A minor figure, I should think. Perhaps he was the link with the men who were actually going to do the kidnapping. Perhaps what Abdul Hafiz was doing was te
lling him to give them the go-ahead.”

  “If it was Abdul Hafiz. Mahmoud thought it was more likely to be Osman. Osman is more Western, more the sort of man you would expect to be au fait with internal arrangements at Anton’s. And he’s got the religious background, if that’s significant. He was at El Azhar.”

  Nikos was not the only one who could pick things up from files.

  “Yes,” said Nikos. “I saw that too. But that was a long time ago and there’s nothing on the files to suggest either that he’s had anything to do with El Azhar since or that he is strongly religious. From what you say he’s the other way around, if anything. Westernized and secular. That doesn’t fit.”

  “It fits with what Mahmoud thinks. He thinks it was done just for the money.”

  “Osman does very nicely out of the tourist trade. He wouldn’t want to damage that.”

  “It was Berthelot who thought there might be a religious or moral explanation.”

  “I think that’s more likely. If it was just a straight money job they’d want to do it the easy way. Why go to the trouble of picking somebody off the terrace at Shepheard’s? More risky, much more likely to go wrong. You’d do that only if you wanted to be conspicuous, to strike a blow which you wanted everyone to see. That makes the religious explanation more likely.”

  “Or the nationalist one,” said Owen.

  Nikos went back to the palanquins. Georgiades now appeared. He, too, had been thinking of other things.

  “Are you going to leave it?” he asked.

  “Leave what?”

  “The Tsakatellis business. Do what the girl said. Keep out of it.”

  “I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “You see,” said Georgiades, settling down comfortably- Owen suspected he just wanted to come in out of the heat- “there are two views. Either we can do as the girl said, stay out of it, on the grounds that we’ll only make matters worse. Or else we might feel that matters were coming to a head anyway, that the mother’s money will soon run out, that they’ll have to bring the old lady in, and that she’s likely to put the stopper on the whole business.”