The Last Cut

by Michael Pearce

  ‘He meant something by it.’

  ‘No more than any young boy does.’

  ‘He knew who she was. And you still say he meant nothing by it?’

  ‘He recognized a playmate from his childhood. That was all.’

  ‘And he wanted to play with her again!’

  ‘His heart was as innocent as hers. They were both as children.’

  ‘He knew who she was and she knew who he was and you call that innocent?’

  ‘They wished to put the past behind them. As you should, too.’

  ‘You think he wished to put the past behind him?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Then why did he seek her out?’

  ‘He did not seek her out. He saw her by chance.’

  ‘In the whole of this big city, where no man knows another and there are a million faces, he found her by chance?’

  ‘I think it more likely than that he should seek her out.’

  ‘You do not know him,’ said Ali Khedri with conviction. ‘Nor his father.’

  When Mahmoud had arrived at the water-carrier’s house he had found it empty and the whole quarter in uproar. Shortly before, the police had removed Ali Khedri to the local caracol, a consequence less of his attack on Suleiman’s father—the police took a relaxed view of street brawls—than of his inability to calm down. In the end, the police, exasperated, had been obliged to clip him over the head with a baton; but then, as they had explained to Mahmoud, they could not leave him lying there, ‘lest his adversary return and stab him,’ and so had taken him to the police station.

  Indifferent to finer points of justice, they had taken Suleiman’s father as well, and had been on the point of thrusting him into the cell with Ali Khedri when Mahmoud, fortunately, had arrived.

  He and Owen exchanged glances. They had interrogated many times together and did not need to speak. Mahmoud took over.

  ‘Why should he seek her out?’ he asked.

  ‘To destroy me.’

  ‘You make too much of this,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It was chance that brought them together.’

  ‘Was it chance that brought him to the Gamaliya:’ demanded Ali Khedri. ‘Was it by chance that he was always creeping around? Spying on me, so that I could never go out of my door without him watching?’

  ‘He came but to gaze on your daughter. He was but a love-sick calf.’

  ‘Oh, was that it?’ said Ali Khedri, affecting surprise. ‘Was that all it was? And I thought he was seeking a way to destroy me!’

  ‘This is sick fancy!’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘Well, would that not have been enough?’ whispered Ali Khedri, more to himself than to Mahmoud. ‘Without the other?’

  ‘What other?’

  Ali Khedri took no notice.

  ‘Would that not have been enough to end my hope?’

  ‘Hope?’

  ‘Of escape,’ said Ali Khedri. ‘Of life. Of not ending life like a dog.’

  ‘Through marrying your daughter to Omar Fayoum?’

  ‘It was there,’ whispered Ali Khedri. ‘There in my hand. And she took it from me.’

  ‘She did not take it from you,’ said Mahmoud. ‘You took it from yourself.’

  ‘She betrayed me.’

  ‘She did not betray you. She sent the boy away.’

  Ali Khedri made a gesture of dismissal.

  ‘It was too late,’ he said. ‘By then the whole world knew. Omar Fayoum knew.’

  ‘The boy wished to come to you. He wanted to ask you for her hand. He would have given you more than Omar Fayoum.’

  The water-carrier smiled bitterly.

  ‘You think so?’ he said.

  ‘He would have persuaded his father. His father loves him.’

  ‘Loves him?’ said Ali Khedri, almost as if he were encountering the words for the first time.

  ‘His father came to you,’ Mahmoud reminded him, ‘seeking to make amends.’

  Ali Khedri stared at him for a moment and then, very deliberately, leaned to one side and spat.

  ‘That is what I think of his amends,’ he said.

  ***

  He had not injured Suleiman’s father seriously. The neighbours, alarmed by the shouts, had come running and prised Ali Khedri’s hands from his throat. Mahmoud asked him if he wished to press charges.

  ‘What would be the point?’ he said.

  ***

  Owen and Mahmoud made a tour of the Gamaliya. The quarter was quiet now. In front of Ali Khedri’s house, however, there was still a small knot of people. Mahmoud went across to them.

  ‘Return to your houses!’ he said. ‘There has been enough bad work for one night.’

  ‘What of Ali Khedri?’ someone asked.

  ‘He stays in the caracol for the night.’

  ‘It was not his fault. Why did that man have to come pestering?’

  ‘He came to offer the hand of friendship.’

  One of the men spat derisively into the darkness. Owen thought it was Fatima’s husband. He could see now that the group consisted largely of water-carriers.

  ‘If he means friendship, why is that boy always creeping around?’ said one of them.

  ‘He is but a love-sick calf. His heart had gone to Leila.’

  ‘Leila is dead now,’ said someone, ‘and he still creeps around.’

  ‘Tell him to keep out of the Gamaliya!’ called someone from the back of the group. Again Owen thought it was Fatima’s husband.

  ‘Let there be no trouble!’ said Mahmoud sternly. ‘Or others will find themselves joining Ali Khedri in the caracol!’

  The group dispersed. Two of them crossed to Owen’s side of the road. They had not seen him before. One of the men was Fatima’s husband. He looked at Owen with hate in his face.

  ‘And you, too!’ he said.

  ***

  ‘Effendi,’ said Yussef, Owen’s orderly, diffidently as he came into his office the next morning, ‘I think you may need this.’

  He put a small embroidered pouch on Owen’s desk.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It is a magic charm. My wife has sewn it and inside there is a holy stone that the Sheikh has blessed.’

  ‘Well, thank her very much—thank you very much, but—exactly why do I need it now?’

  ‘If it was just the Jews, that would be nothing. They are cunning and devious, it is true, but then, you are cunning and devious also. But when you are up against this—?’

  ‘One moment,’ said Owen; ‘What am I up against?’

  Yussef laid his forefinger alongside his nose.

  ‘Let us not speak the word. But, Effendi, I am with you. We are all with you. I said to my wife: “Now he is really up against it!” And she said: “Let us pray for him.” And then she thought of the magic amulet. “Let us do what we can,” she said; for we all want the Cut to be saved. Her especially, for, as I have said, she depends on it to have her babies.’

  ‘That is very kind of you, Yussef. But I don’t quite follow…Exactly what—?’

  ‘The regulator was one thing. Bad enough—believe me, Effendi, I know what water means, my family comes from the Delta—but who would have thought it would have gone for the Cut? I said, it must be out of its mind! But the Sheikh said, no, it was not out of its mind, it was just very angry. That’s because there’s a lot wrong with the world, and especially with the dams. We’ve taken things a bit too far, it’s all got out of hand, and that’s what it’s doing, just reminding us. Well, I can understand that with the regulator, but why go for the Cut? It wouldn’t have hurt it, would it, just to have held off for another week.’

  ‘Just a minute, Yussef, who or what is “it”? Who, or what, is going for the Cut?’

  ‘Why, Effendi, you saw for yourself. It was having a go at The Bride. The Liz
ard Man!’

  ***

  The newspapers, too, were giving the Lizard Man a new lease of life. They were full of him. The unfortunate Babikr was quite forgotten as the link was made with the attempt on the Manufiya Regulator. One or two of the papers mentioned him as a junior accomplice or surrogate for the Lizard Man but most of the papers lost sight of him entirely, treating the incident as an unsolved mystery. Or, rather, as a mystery where one knew exactly who had perpetuated the crime but just, somehow, wasn’t able to lay hands on him.

  And here he was popping up again, with vaguely heroic accretions, a sort of Robin Hood perpetually thumbing his nose at the law! And, like Robin Hood, in some strange way a representative of the poor. Owen realized, as he read, that the figure was capturing popular doubt about the new dams, not so much resentment at them as worry and suspicion, the feeling that, as the fiki had said, a balance had been disturbed.

  The belief that the Lizard Man had now attacked the Cut had, though, divided as well as aroused public opinion. While there were doubts about the dams, there were none about the Cut; and so with many people the ‘attack’ on the Cut was transformed into something positive. It did not mean, they held, that the Lizard Man was against the Cut. On the contrary, he was for it. This was just his way of registering his displeasure at the proposal to end it.

  Whichever view one took, though, Owen noted with satisfaction, it had the effect of displacing the Jews from the scene. He was half minded to go down to the Muslim gravediggers and tell them that since the Lizard Man was taking a hand, they had better stay out of it!

  But there was something else about the newspapers’ responses that Owen found puzzling. Most of the press was strongly Nationalist, which meant that it was normally committed to a progressivist, ‘modern’ line. While it did not dare to turn up its nose at something as popular as the Cut, it usually tried to keep its distance from anything that smacked so strongly of backward-looking superstition. But here it was plunging heavily into popular feeling, embracing the Lizard Man for all it was worth!

  What was even stranger was that it was using the situation to make a sharply critical attack on something it usually supported, the new dams and the new extensions of the irrigation system. Why were the Nationalists changing tack?

  ***

  Owen went down to the Cut to see that all was well. McPhee had had the same thought and when Owen arrived was busy posting constables on top of the temporary dam and round the base of the earth cone.

  ‘It’s probably overdoing it,’ he said, ‘but—’

  ‘Are you going to leave them there overnight?’

  ‘They’re not very happy at the prospect,’ McPhee admitted. ‘This stupid nonsense about the Lizard Man—’

  McPhee was discriminating over the ritual and myth that he accepted.

  Owen recognized a constable he had worked with.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Selim?’

  Selim beamed when he saw Owen looking at him and waved a hand.

  Owen went over to him.

  ‘Selim, I’d like you to take charge of a few men—’

  ‘Certainly, Effendi. These thickheads! I know how to handle them. A good kick up the backside—’

  ‘We want to post a guard overnight and I’d like you to be in charge of it.’

  ‘Overnight? Here?’

  Selim swallowed.

  ‘Of course, Effendi,’ he said bravely.

  He returned to the line, however, perturbed and thinking.

  Some time later he accosted Owen.

  ‘Effendi, about that guard duty—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I would do it. In fact, I am desperate to do it. Unfortunately, there is a terrible family circumstance that pre—’

  ‘Oh, come, Selim; there wasn’t one ten minutes ago.’

  ‘It’s my grandmother, Effendi. She comes from the south, you see. Well, she can’t help that. Someone has to. Only—’

  ‘What the hell’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘But, Effendi, I was telling you! She comes from the south, you see. Down in Dinka land. Where there’s nothing but reeds and not a woman in sight. Except my grandmother, of course. Well, it’s very primitive down there. It’s not the place where you’d want to be, believe me, Effendi. Nor me, either.’

  ‘Selim—’

  ‘It’s very primitive down there, as I was saying. And each clan has got its totem. Would you believe it, Effendi? The backward buggers! Well, my grandmother’s totem is—you’ll never believe this, Effendi—a lizard! So I’m afraid that rather rules me out.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Well, Effendi, it makes it doubly hard for me. I’d see him off, otherwise. What’s a mere Lizard Man to a man like me? Pooh! But, you see, with it being my grandmother’s totem, I’d have to beat him twice. And that, with a Lizard Man, is a bit much!’

  ‘Well, it would be, Selim, if that were, in fact, your grandmother’s totem. Only I think you may have been misinformed. You see, I know the Dinka totems; and the lizard is not among them. So you’d only have to beat him once. For a man like you…’

  ‘Effendi,’ said Selim, cast down, ‘even a man like me could have problems with a Lizard Man!’

  ‘I know,’ said Owen, relenting, ‘and therefore I will help you. It so happens that I have a magic amulet here, which, for the sake of our friendship, I am prepared to lend you.’

  ‘Effendi!’ said Selim, overjoyed. ‘I will kick that Lizard Man in the balls!’

  ‘That may not be necessary. You see, I think that if there is any problem, it will come from Muslim gravediggers—’

  ‘Effendi, which shall I break: their backs or their necks?’

  ‘—or the Jews.’

  ‘Or both?’

  ‘Just see they don’t damage anything to do with the Cut, that’s all.’

  Selim saluted and returned, buoyant, to the line.

  ‘Selim, you’ve never agreed!’ Owen heard the men beside him whisper.

  ‘What is a Lizard Man to me?’ said Selim.

  ‘But, Selim, he’ll bite your ass off!’

  ‘I’d like to see him try. Although—’ he inspected his neighbour critically, ‘he may bite yours off.’

  ‘Why mine, Selim?’

  ‘Because you’re going to be with me, Abdul.’

  As Owen was walking along the street a small stone landed almost at his feet. Surprised, he looked up but could see no one. He wondered for a moment if a hawk had dropped it. But it was hardly shiny enough to attract a hawk’s attention. A moment later another stone skittered past him, so close that it almost hit him. He spun round but again could see no one. Children, no doubt, but all the same it was surprising.

  He walked on, turned a corner and then stepped quickly back into a doorway. After a little while he heard the cautious pad of bare feet.

  When the boy came round the corner he grabbed him.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Ow, Effendi! Why you do this to me? I have done nothing!’

  Owen held him firmly by the arm. Not by the galabeeyah—cloth could tear.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Ali, Effendi,’ the boy said sulkily.

  He was about twelve years old.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  The boy made a gesture.

  ‘There, Effendi.’

  At the end of the street the broken-down houses seemed suddenly to open up. He realized that he was near the Canal.

  ‘Which one?’

  He marched the boy down the street.

  ‘On the other side, Effendi.’

  The boy pointed across the dry bed to where a derelict warehouse backed on to the Canal in a fall of rubble.

  ‘That is not a house.’

  ‘I don’t have a house,’ said
the boy.

  ‘Do you have a father or mother?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So who gives you food?’

  ‘The men do. Sometimes.’

  ‘Did the men tell you to throw a stone at me?’

  The boy was silent.

  ‘Why do it, then?’

  ‘You’re not wanted,’ said the boy. ‘Here in the Gamaliya.’

  On an impulse, and in some fury, Owen plunged down into the bed, dragging the boy after him. He walked across and climbed up the rubble to the warehouse. There was a cart inside and men were busy around it. They looked at him in consternation.

  ‘If you want to throw stones at me,’ raged Owen, ‘don’t get a boy to do it!’

  ‘He’s nothing to do with us,’ one of them said after a moment.

  ‘He’d better not be!’ said Owen.

  He saw now that the cart was a water-cart and recognized the driver. It was the one he’d encountered previously.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  ‘I keep my cart here,’ the man said. ‘Anything wrong with that?’

  A man moved out of the shadow.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘anything wrong with that?’

  Owen recognized him, too. It was Ahmed Uthman, Fatima’s husband.

  He went up to the two men.

  ‘Twice,’ he said, ‘I have met you recently. If I have any more trouble from you, it will not be me who is not seen on the streets of the Gamaliya!’

  He stood there until they yielded.

  ‘Come on, Farag,’ called one of the other men. ‘Are you never going to get that horse ready?’

  The driver shrugged and returned to his harnessing. After a moment, Ahmed Uthman turned, too, and walked away. As he went, he spat deliberately into the straw.

  Owen knew he had to do something. His blood boiled. He went after the man and swung him round.

  They stood looking at each other.

  ‘Well?’ said the water-carrier.

  ‘I am just marking your face,’ said Owen.

  He let the man go, gave the other men a look, and then walked away.

  He heard feet scampering behind him, stepped aside and caught the boy again.

  ‘I was just following,’ the boy protested. ‘I wasn’t going to throw any more stones!’