The Mingrelian Conspiracy

by Michael Pearce

  Owen piloted him gently out of the square. The old man was still buoyant with excitement and Owen knew that his words were getting nowhere. He would have to talk with him again tomorrow. And with the others. The old man was in many respects the key, however. He seemed to have a bit of a following and they couldn’t all be Mingrelians, either, if what Katarina had said was true, that there were only sixty families left. Perhaps the fact that he was an elder was something to do with it. He was looked to generally for leadership. Or, perhaps, of course, he was being used.

  A man came running out of the square after them. He came up to them and threw his arms around Sorgos.

  ‘I wanted to catch you before you left,’ he said. ‘A wonderful speech! The fire! That’s what was missing until you spoke. I was in despair. And then you came forward—’

  ‘I spoke as a man should.’

  ‘They don’t speak like that nowadays.’

  ‘Then they should!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said the man; ‘they should!’

  He saw that Owen was supporting the old man and looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘I’d come with you myself, only—’

  ‘I’ll see him home,’ said Owen.

  The man shook hands with them both and dashed off back into the square. Owen saw that beneath his galabeeyah he was wearing boots.

  ‘A Mingrelian?’ he asked.

  ‘Mingrelian?’ said Sorgos, surprised. ‘No, Georgian.’

  He seemed suddenly very tired. The excitement had ebbed. He was barely able to stumble along. Owen offered him an arm, which he accepted gratefully. ‘Like a son,’ he murmured.

  ‘Like a son.’

  He recovered briefly when they reached his house.

  ‘Like a son!’ he roared, as Katarina came running to the door.

  ‘What?’ said Katarina.

  ‘He’s been like a son to me,’ said Sorgos, gesturing in Owen’s direction.

  ‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Katarina.

  ‘I needed a bit of help to get home.’

  ‘I told you you would,’ said Katarina, annoyed. ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘There was work to be done. Work for men.’

  ‘You leave it to the men, then. You’ve had your turn. Just help me a moment, would you?’ she said to Owen.

  Together they got Sorgos to a divan. Katarina lifted his legs up and gently pushed him back. He fell asleep immediately.

  ‘He’s going to overdo it one of these days,’ she said.

  ‘He’s overdone it tonight,’ said Owen.

  ‘What’s he been saying?’

  ‘It isn’t the saying,’ said Owen. ‘It’s what might follow on from the saying.’

  ‘It’s only words now,’ said Katarina reassuringly. ‘He won’t be able to do anything.’

  ‘Only words?’ said Owen. ‘In a situation like this, words are enough.’

  ‘What is the situation?’ Owen told her.

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘He shouldn’t come.’

  ‘Duke Nicholas?’

  ‘Duke Nicholas or any other Russian. He’s only doing it to provoke us.’

  ‘The Mingrelians? For God’s sake, he’s probably never heard of the Mingrelians.’

  ‘That may well be true. It’s easier to crush a people if you’ve never heard of them. He ought to have heard of us. We were a people. We had lives.’

  ‘Look, I’m not exactly in favour of him coming—’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said; ‘suppose you are right, and suppose he has never heard of the Mingrelians; and now suppose you tell him they are here, in Cairo, these people whom he crushed. What do you think he will say? Do you think he will be ashamed, do you think he will postpone his visit? I don’t think so. I think he will say, let the visit go on. What do we care for these Mingrelians? If they cause trouble, put them down! That is what he will say, won’t he?’

  ‘Something like it,’ said Owen, remembering the Chargé.

  ‘Very well, then. In that case I am with my grandfather. I think we should stand up. To show that we cannot be put down. We can be knocked down but we will never stay down.’

  ‘Well, I have some sympathy with that,’ said Owen. ‘But standing up is one thing and throwing a bomb is another.’

  The Russians should have thought of that,’ said Katarina, ‘when they threw the first bomb.’

  ‘That is all in the past.’

  ‘The past is never all in the past. You always carry some of it with you.’

  ‘You can’t do it forever. Where do you think we’d have been in Wales if we’d gone on thinking like that?’

  Sorgos stirred in his sleep.

  ‘The Welsh,’ he said drowsily. ‘A mountain people.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Owen. ‘We’d still be in the bloody hills, that’s where!’

  ***

  ‘—and so the dog dropped the sack and ran away,’ said the storyteller, ‘and all the names were just left lying there in the street. Now, the trouble was that in all the confusion, and what with all the shaking and jolting they had received, they had got mixed up. There were bits of men’s names mixed with bits of women’s names. Well, they all began crying out. One would shout, “Who am I?” and the other bit would shout, “you’re not you, you’re me!” So then they all began fighting each other. Well, then the blind man came running along the road and he tripped on the sack and fell right in on top of them—’

  ‘Ho, ho!’ said the big man standing in the doorway. ‘Very good!’

  ‘Selim!’ came a shout from inside.

  ‘Coming!’ called the big man. ‘You old bastard!’ he added sotto voce.

  Owen followed him in.

  ‘Not you again!’ said the café owner, aghast.

  ‘Me again,’ said Owen cheerfully. ‘How are things going?’

  ‘Terribly,’ said the café owner. ‘Your man is useless. He’s big, all right, but he’s got something missing up top. The trouble is, that’s the sort my wife goes for. They’ve only got to be simpletons for her to feel all soft about them.’

  ‘She’d better not feel too soft about this bloke,’ said Owen uneasily.

  ‘That’s just what I’ve told her! Kick the bugger up the backside, I say. That’ll get him moving! Only that’s what I say about all of them and she doesn’t take a blind bit of notice. Here, you idle sod! Fetch some coffee for the effendi! He’s your boss, isn’t he?’ he added more quietly.

  Selim came out of the kitchen looking daggers. He put the coffee before Owen, however, with a flourish.

  ‘Brilliant!’ whispered Owen. ‘You’re doing brilliantly.’

  ‘The next time they beat him up,’ Selim whispered back.

  ‘I’ll join in and help them!’

  ‘Meanwhile, just put up with him. You’re doing very well, and this is important.’

  ‘He just sits there all day giving orders,’ said Selim. ‘He’s worse than a sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, well, don’t mind him. It won’t be for long. It’s just a question of waiting.’

  ‘I don’t mind waiting,’ said Selim. ‘Not if I’ve got my feet up and a pot of coffee in front of me. But this is not like that. The moment I sit down he’s on to me.’

  ‘There are worse things. Just keep it up, that’s all. Now listen: there’s something you can be doing. Try and find out the name of the gang. Talk to the woman.’

  Selim gave a broad smile.

  ‘I’ll talk to the woman, all right,’ he said.

  ***

  Owen and Zeinab had been to the opera; in fact, were still at the opera, only, as this was the interval, and intervals were somewhat protracted in Egypt, they were going for a walk round the nearby Ezbekiyeh Gardens. ‘Gardens’ was perhaps a misnomer. In a
country where, given water, anything will grow, and gardens were usually a riot of lush tropical vegetation, the Ezbekiyeh remained barren. There were various explanations for this. The most popular was that it was a British plot; or, conversely, testimony to Egyptian incapacity. Whatever the reason, the fact was that it consisted of only a few scrubby trees and some equally scrubby grass, tempting only for fornicating in, which was the reason, no doubt, why the gardens were fenced off with high iron railings and closed after dark.

  What made the gardens fun to walk round was not their inside but their outside. As in the English tabloid newspapers, all human life was there: from the chestnut sellers roasting their chestnuts on the gratings which covered the roots of the young trees which surrounded the gardens—and perhaps that’s why the trees were scrubby—to the fortunetellers, usually Nubian women, telling fortunes by reading sand spread on a cloth. There were pavement stalls (rags and sweets in promiscuous proximity), pavement restaurants (consisting of large trays with stew in the middle and hunks of bread stuck on nails around the edge), barber shops (the barbers sat on the railings while their customers stood patiently in front of them), hat stands (on the railings), whip stands (ditto), oleographs of Levantine saints (ditto), indecent postcards (ditto and adjacent) and many other treasures. At intervals along the railings were Cleopatra’s Needle-like columns, only they consisted either of tarbooshes piled one on top of the other to an implausible height, or of congealed candy densely spotted with flies.

  At night, however, such detail was lost. Lamps on the railings threw a mysterious, hazy glow and the flames of the chestnut-sellers’ fires created little pockets of moving light and shadow. Owen, impressionable at the best of times and made more so by the music he had just been listening to, loved it.

  They came round on to the Sharia el Genaina, where there was music of a different kind: honky-tonk from the questionable cafés which looked across the street to the houses opposite, where the ladies of the night paraded their charms. In one of the cafés some men were singing mournfully.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ said Owen.

  ‘What language is it?’ asked Zeinab, puzzled.

  ‘Welsh!’

  They could see the singers more clearly now. It was, as Owen had already suspected, his friends, the Welsh Fusiliers.

  ‘ Why don’t they keep those stupid bastards back in barracks?’

  ‘But why?’ demanded Zeinab. ‘They sing so beautifully!’

  ‘Because they’re drunk. And they’ll soon be causing trouble.’

  ‘They are singing because they’re unhappy,’ said Zeinab indignantly. ‘Listen to the music. You can hear!’

  ‘Welshmen always go on like that abroad.’

  ‘They are thinking of their homes. It is in the music,’ said Zeinab, who was also impressionable and had also just been to the opera. ‘They are far from their country and they are very sad. If I was taken away from my country,’ declared Zeinab tragically, turning her great eyes on Owen, ‘I would sing like that!’

  They had with them one of Zeinab’s artistic friends, a musician called Rashid.

  ‘What is interesting,’ he said, ‘is that they are singing in parts. You don’t usually get drunken soldiers doing that!’

  ‘There’s a bit of a tradition of choral singing in Wales.’

  ‘Is that so? But this is not what I would normally think of as choral singing. It is not church music, surely?’

  ‘Some of it. But also folk song.’

  ‘It is the spirit of the people,’ said Zeinab firmly, ‘speaking in music.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Speaking in music,’ said Zeinab, sensing opposition, ‘because that is all they have left. The English have taken everything else from them.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ said the musician.

  ‘In their music their spirit rises up and defies the hated English.’

  ‘Look, I know that song,’ said Owen. ‘It’s about sheep—’

  ‘They were humble shepherds,’ Zeinab told the musician, ‘and the British Army came in, just as it came into Egypt, and seized their country and took everything away from them. Except their songs and their spirit.’

  ‘And only in their music can they be free? But that is sad!’ said the musician, concerned. ‘Sad, but—wonderful! And why is it so sad?’ he cried, becoming excited. ‘That is how music is! That is how it has always been! The expression of a free people! That is how it was in Italy with the opera. Did you know that, Zeinab? The rise of opera is inextricably linked with the rise of Nationalism. It was so in Italy. It will be so in Egypt. Yes!’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Zeinab.

  ‘But where is it now? Where is the Egyptian opera? The true Egyptian opera? It has yet to be written.’ Rashid stopped dead. ‘I know!’ he shouted. ‘I will write it for you, Zeinab! It will have you in it. The spirit of suffering Egyptian woman—’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Zeinab enthusiastically.

  ‘And you, my friend!’ He turned excitedly to Owen. ‘The spirit of nations everywhere, long suppressed and denied! Poor, suffering Wales! I will use some of those soldiers’ rhythms. There will be choral singing. Sheep, too. I could put in a pastoral scene—’

  Owen gently shepherded them back to the Opera House. Paul was standing on the steps.

  ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘What’s going on? Zeinab looks a bit excited.’

  ‘She’s just joined the Welsh Nationalists.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He turned to go in with them but then stopped.

  ‘The Welsh Nationalists? They’re not another bunch with a thing about Russia, are they?’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Effendi,’ declared Selim, ‘this is the good life! Little did I think when I entered upon your service what riches it would lead me to! To sit in a café all day drinking coffee while those other poor bastards are out there walking round in the heat— this is bliss indeed!’

  ‘The man is not always upbraiding you?’

  ‘The man is always upbraiding me,’ conceded Selim, ‘but there are compensations.’

  Owen did not like the sound of this.

  ‘Keep your hands off the woman!’ he said.

  ‘You told me to talk to her!’ protested Selim.

  ‘Talk, not touch.’

  ‘Well, Effendi,’ said Selim with a grin, ‘one thing leads to another.’

  ‘Let it not lead too far! Remember you are here for a purpose!’

  ‘Would I forget, Effendi?’ said Selim in wounded tones.

  ‘They have but to stick their heads in here and I will stamp on them!’

  ‘There were other things, too. Like keeping your eyes and ears open. Has anyone come secretly to Mustapha?’

  ‘One came yesterday and wanted to speak with him.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Effendi, I do not know. I would have listened but Mustapha sent me out to draw water from the pump. A man like me,’ said Selim, injured, ‘drawing water from the pump!’

  ‘Never mind that. Did Mustapha speak to you afterwards?’

  ‘He was a right bastard. He kept on at me all morning. And not just me, Mekhmet, too. He dealt Mekhmet a blow, and I thought he would strike me, too, only I rolled up my sleeves and he thought better of it.’

  ‘He said nothing about the man who had come to see him?’

  ‘No, Effendi. But afterwards he had a face like thunder.’

  ‘It is a pity he would not talk with you. You must be friendlier to him.’

  ‘I would rather be friendly with his wife,’ said Selim.

  ‘This is important. Find out about the man who came. Find out what was said. If Mustapha will not tell you, talk to his wife.’

  ‘Effendi, I will,’ promised Selim. ‘I will lure her with words of honey.’

  ‘No doubt. But let them be to the purpose
. My purpose.’

  ‘You need not fear, Effendi,’ said Selim confidently. ‘I know how to set about it. In fact, I am already four-fifths there. I have told her how closely you and I have worked together against the gangs. Well, I know that is a little bit of an exaggeration, Effendi, since we haven’t worked together against the gangs yet, but the way things are going, it will soon be true. “I know how to handle them,” I said to her. “I am sure you do, Selim,” she said. “You are so big and strong”—’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  ‘“—and have the ear of the Mamur Zapt,”’ continued Selim, unabashed. ‘“You have but to say a thing and he pays heed so if you tell him about this Black Scorpion Gang”—’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Black Scorpion Gang. You told me to find out, Effendi.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you—? That’s what she said? Black Scorpion?’

  ‘Yes, Effendi. And I said—you’ll like this, Effendi—I said, “If we’re talking about scorpions, how about a bit of a nip?” And then she slapped my hands—’

  ‘I just wanted to know which was priority, that was all,’ said Georgiades.

  ‘The Grand Duke is.’

  ‘I thought the cafés were. They were last week.’

  ‘Protection rackets are always with us. Grand Dukes come and go. Or so we hope.’

  ‘ The Grand Duke is obviously priority,’ said Nikos, irritated. ‘He’s got to be, until it’s all over.’

  Nikos was working on the security arrangements for the Duke’s visit. It was the sort of job he liked, abstract, systematic, programmable. His desk was covered with schedules, times down the left-hand side of the page, resources across the top, neatly ruled columns, neat multicoloured ticks. But how did colour fit into Nikos’s bloodless systems, wondered Owen? Sparingly, he decided, looking at the columns.