East of Suez

by Howard Engel

  “Sorry. I’ve been there only in the movies. I’ve been a stay-at-home until this trip came up.”

  “Business?” The question was direct, but he was smiling.

  “Pleasure. Sun, surf, and sky, mostly, with a little sightseeing and gallery-hopping. I’ve put it off too long.”

  “Nonsense, Cooperman! Have yourself a Bunbury.”

  “A what?” I asked the priest.

  “Never mind. It’s never too late,” said O’Mahannay.

  “I’ll show you around a bit, if you like, Mr Cooperman. I’ve attended to most of my business; now I can easily spare the time before getting back to my kip.” Savitt was, I hate to say it, a ratty-looking little man with a sloping jaw and washed-out complexion. He was wearing a loose-fitting single-breasted suit made from lightweight tan polyester, his shirt was dripdry—and I was wool-gathering.

  “That’s very kind of you,” I replied, rather more formally than I intended.

  “Well, that’s settled then,” said O’Mahannay, clapping his small chubby hands together, like a bridge player picking up the last trick.

  “You know, there’s a synagogue off Ex-Charles de Gaulle Avenue, not far from the fish market, just up the hill,” Savitt said, pointing over my shoulder.

  “This whole city seems to be built on a hill.”

  “The mountains are pushing us into the sea, my friend,” observed the priest. I was delighted to find that I’d had a similar thought. At the hotel, maybe. I was a quicker study than I’d ever suspected. “That’s why property in Takot is so dear. There’s not enough of it.”

  “And what’s all this about Ex-Charles de Gaulle and Exwhat-was-it? The main street?”

  “Ex-Charpentier Avenue? Ah, yes, you don’t know about the checkered history of this place, Mr Cooperman. The French clawed it away from both of its neighbors on the peninsula as soon as copper was discovered in the 1850s. It was a French colony until just after the Second World War. That was when the Glorious November Revolution happened, which restored the country to the locals. They renamed all of the streets after the fallen heroes of the War of Independence. Charpentier Avenue became Thong Suksun Street. And so on. But, with time, people relaxed and had to admit to themselves that as far as tourism is concerned, Charpentier is more easily remembered than Thong Suksun. ‘Ex-’ was the compromise that made it work. You’ll find that this is a great town for compromises, Mr Cooperman. Compromise makes the sun rise in the morning and compromise brings out the stars at night.”

  “Who was Thong Suksun?”

  “Hero of the Glorious Revolution, dear boy. Songs have been written about his great deeds. A Robin Hood figure. Rebel raids on the government, then back to the hills. All of that.”

  “Fascinating.” I ordered a beer and it turned into a round. My round, as I discovered when the bill came later.

  “Look at the label on your beer, Mr Cooperman. Does it say COLD?” Billy Savitt was smiling. I turned the cool bottle in my hand.

  “Yes, it does. Why?”

  “It’s a little trick they have out here. If the beer is warm, you can’t see the word COLD. Ha! They don’t prat about, these locals. How’s that for the inscrutable ingenuity of the mysterious East? Ha! I mention it only as an example of these blokes getting the jump on us. We don’t have invisible writing in our adverts yet, do we?” I smiled as I tried to figure out how they did it.

  “You’ll get on to the ways of this place, Mr Cooperman. It only takes time. However illogical it may seem, there’s usually a reason behind everything. The money, for instance.” The priest began to line up his change on the tabletop so I could see the different values. Billy Savitt, on seeing this, began laying out folding money, like a hand of solitaire.

  “You’ll get used to the big numbers, Mr Cooperman. I still feel like a toff whenever I count out the price of a glass of plain.”

  “It’s based on the French franc, except that they’ve divided it into a thousand parts instead of one hundred.” I wasn’t writing any of this down, and I certainly wasn’t taking it all in. My Memory Book remained closed in my pocket.

  “That way, Mr Cooperman,” Savitt continued, “it made for the easy conversion of the old English money with its sixpences and florins and half-crowns. Of course, when the Brits went decimal, we were left with an unneeded virtue. That soured a few stomachs in Takot. Nowadays we have to let the banks figure it out.”

  “You’ll get on to it, dear boy, don’t worry.”

  But Savitt wouldn’t let go. “In the old days, you knew that 250 mils equaled half a crown. And now that they’re on to the new currency, there’s nothing but confusion over here. There’s a bank that still takes the old money!”

  “Is Miranam in or out of an economic union?”

  “They’re waiting. They’ve made changes, but they’re still waiting.”

  “Why bring in the English money? I thought the main influence here was French.”

  “Trade, dear boy,” Father O’Mahannay said, waving his right hand airily. “It’s trade. It spins the globe.”

  “These chaps don’t mess about,” Savitt said.

  In his enthusiasm, Mr Savitt had managed to spill his drink. He mopped it up with a paper handkerchief from his pocket. “Sorry about that, Vicar,” he said, wringing the sopping tissue out on the patio stones. While he was doing this, the good father was telling me that he had learned to tell French money by the famous faces shown on the bills: two Victor Hugos make one Cardinal Richelieu, five cardinals equal one Henri IV. Something like that.

  My head was swimming with all the information about currency, some of it no longer in use. Confusion was rising up my spine and panic was inches away. I would have been glad to welcome an interruption. I took the money from my wallet and laid it on the tabletop. “There!” I said. “Can you arrange this pile of coins and bills in order?” Mr Savitt finished mopping up the table while Father O’Mahannay moved cups and drinks to one side. Talk of money overrides our sense of who we are and reduces us to our essentials.

  “You’ll get the hang of it, with more practice, dear boy,” said the priest, the Irish in his voice smothering the Middle West. “Just remember not to fold your banknotes. The locals don’t like to see the general’s face creased or folded. That’s why they favor European-sized billfolds.” I smiled and so did Savitt, but I could see that the tip had been serious.

  “Seriously, Vicar, they can send you up for it. You don’t want to mess with the courts or the jails in Miranam.”

  I began unfolding my “folding money.”

  “What are the jails like down here?”

  “Unsurvivable. Especially the Central Prison. I can’t be blasphemous enough. Raffles had no way of reforming the practices of local penology. And that was a century before the great flood. God alone knows what they’re like now.”

  “Royt! I reckon they’re the worst in Asia. Horrible, beastly latrines for cells.”

  “I’ll bet there’s a death penalty?”

  “Quite wrong, dear boy. Felons never see the guillotine. There isn’t one. We are dealing with a very subtle lot. The condemned perish in prison. The inquest reports usually say the prisoner died trying to escape.”

  Once the money had been sorted, and O’Mahannay had put me to a test about buying an oke of pistachio nuts and an ell of fine cotton, that got us away from currency and on to weights and measures, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. “What’s an ell and how many of them go to make one oke?”

  “A little under a quarter-kilo. What am I saying? One’s weight, the other’s length. They are leftover measures by some forgotten Cypriot who passed this way in the 1880s. Until he came, there were six or seven competing systems at work in the bazaars. You’re lucky, Mr Cooperman, that we’ve simplified things for you. The upscale places use metric, naturally.”

  “I’ve been reading the guidebook, so I can understand some of that confusion. The French seem to have left a lasting legacy in Takot. All those Ex-street names and
the croissants with my breakfast.”

  “Yes, the French were critical,” the priest observed. “They showed the locals what a real nation was like, then, like so many colonial powers, failed to get out of the way to let the locals have a turn at running things. Still, the French influence around here is strong.”

  “I guess with the Buddhists up north and the Muslims across the border down south, there hasn’t been much room for local initiatives.”

  “You can say that again, Vicar,” Savitt said with enthusiasm. “The locals have been walking a tightrope between rival countries right from the beginning.”

  “But why would the neighbors make a fuss?”

  “Precious natural resources,” O’Mahannay said. “They’ve got just about everything the market wants except oil: diamonds, gold, tungsten, emeralds. You name it. The country has been protected down the years by the fact that it is a buffer between natural enemies and competitors. Miranam has been like the steers the bullfight managers use to calm the bulls on their way into the plaza de toros. The steers get ripped open more often than not for their trouble. Nobody wants to be a steer, Mr Cooperman.” He paused and looked up at a bird that was making a racket under the awning. “Do you need any more help with the local money? Should we go through it once again? Remember that the French franc was the basis …”

  This budding monologue was stopped by the ringing of a telephone. Several patrons at nearby tables groped for their cellphones, as though they had been attacked by a swarm of stinging insects. Billy Savitt was the winner. He reeled in the instrument from the depths of his pockets. “Billy Savitt here. Yes. Yes! He’s sitting right here. Yes, like he’d never gone off.” He cupped a hand over the phone and whispered to Father O’Mahannay: “It’s Thomas! He didn’t know you were back.”

  “Then he had more to drink last night than I did!” He pulled out from his cassock a bent postcard and gave it to Billy, who read it, smiled, and passed it on to me.

  “From Thomas,” Billy whispered, grinning at having Thomas on the line and in his hand at the same time.

  It came from Bergerac and had a picture of the Tobacco Museum, no doubt a leading magnet for tourists. I didn’t read the message on the back.

  The priest took the phone from Billy and moved away from the table, out of earshot. I caught only a loud, friendly greeting and a reference to being back in his old haunts. Meanwhile, Billy quizzed me about the history and size of the Jewish community in Grantham, Ontario, a subject my father often said I wasn’t equipped to speak about. To be brief about it, I had never taken the lure of religion. Of any kind. I should have told Billy this; instead I kept nodding as he told me more than I could absorb about the local Hebraic treasures waiting for me to discover.

  O’Mahannay handed Billy back his phone, saying: “Wonderful fellow, that. You’ll meet him, Mr Cooperman.” He repeated his line about the ants crawling over a rotting melon. He didn’t repeat himself much, but I began to think he was overly fond of that particular aphorism. He then picked up the conversation from where it had been interrupted. Both of them were very helpful on practical matters and on recommending the sights to see. From currency and weights and measures, we moved on to food. The priest recommended the fast foods that could be had at street stalls and in the cafés. He pointed vaguely across the street, announcing that the places along there weren’t bad and the prices were reasonable. Then Mr Savitt began telling me about the Foyer Israelite, in the next street. He told me that all the meals were strictly kosher and that I need have no worries on that account. He even offered to walk around with me and introduce me to the owner. I tried to smile warmly to acknowledge my friend’s thoughtfulness. Father O’Mahannay missed none of this.

  “After a meal in our refectory, Mr Cooperman, you might find the Foyer Israelite a boon after all.” He had unmasked my reluctance to tuck in to a kosher meal in these parts. But the real story was that I had gone off my food altogether. Although I had been drinking bottled water and fizzy pop, I had come down with a slight case of what every careless tourist is told to guard against. Even though I had scarcely been in Takot long enough to have caught a bug, I certainly had one. I’d have to blame it on my last attempt to clear out my refrigerator before I left home. It was too soon to have found local water or cooking responsible. It bothered me for the next couple of days, but I’ll try not to let it hold up the story.

  Mr Savitt guided me to the nearest drugstore, where I bought the suggested pills. “We all begin with a siege of the touristas, Mr Cooperman. Don’t know what you call them where you come from, but they are no respecters of rank or position. You’ll be absolutely top hole in the morning. Trust me on that. You’ll see.”

  My stomach had saved me from a tour of the Jewish quarter. From the little I knew of Savitt, I was sure that my escape was temporary. At this juncture, he went off on his own in search of a couple of kosher chickens. He must have had an apartment, not just a hotel room, because two chickens were a lot of meat to preserve without refrigeration. My deductions would be false, of course, if the local birds were smaller than the ones at home. Further, I was no authority on what was or wasn’t permitted in hotel rooms hereabouts.

  I made a short tour of several shops, finding items I hadn’t had the imagination to pack for the trip, something lighter than my tweed jacket, and odds and ends of toiletries. I accomplished all of this within a tether’s reach of the café. I didn’t get lost and I was proud of it. I even managed to find another café that fed me when I smiled nicely at the manager. But he didn’t seem to know what a chopped-egg sandwich was. Neither did the woman from the kitchen, although I tried to make a stepby-step drawing on the margin of a newspaper. I swallowed down a tablet that promised to settle my stomach and churning bowels—with Coca-Cola. A touch of home.

  Father O’Mahannay was still in his place at the café when I went back that way. I could begin to imagine him as a local landmark, like the carved figure of an Indian outside a Toronto cigar store. He waved me to a seat.

  “Ah, my boy, you’re beginning to find your way about. That’s splendid!”

  We sat for some time watching the pedestrian traffic passing us. Time didn’t add up to much in these latitudes. I was trying to catch a sense of the tempo of the town. When I looked at my watch again, there were more empty bottles on the table. The afternoon had dissolved in drink and platters of salted peanuts. I recognized that this wasn’t my tempo. In Grantham, life moved at a faster pace. Here, I felt like a stone in an old wall, watching the centuries pass by. Many of the people walking in the streets appeared to be just strolling, not heading to the grocer or to the bank. It was a custom, apparently. A promenade following the afternoon siesta, maybe. A chance for casual meetings and schmoozing. I remember hearing years ago that they did something like this in Spain. Half of the town’s elite came out to watch the other half stroll along the main boulevard. Anyway, the priest and I enjoyed the show. Whole families, dressed to the teeth, showed off their sons and daughters. We watched, sipping our drinks, sitting that way for some time without talking.

  At length, he broke the silence. “You’re a curious sort of tourist, Mr Cooperman, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “In what way?”

  “This part of the world attracts people in groups or people with an obsession. You belong to neither group. You don’t carry a camera, you’re not loaded down with guidebooks. This is all very odd.”

  “Maybe I came for the waters.”

  “Ha! Another film buff. Wonderful! Father Graham will be happy to meet you. Father Graham has a film club: a thousand members, but only two dozen films. None of them Casablanca. You’ll find him interesting on the French New Wave and the film noir.” I wasn’t sure what sorts of movies he was talking about, but I wrote down the name, Father Graham, in my book and after it the note: “likes movies.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you dodged my question, Mr Cooperman. I’ll come back to it again when I know you better.”


  “You’ll never succeed in making me into a man of mystery, Father. What I’m looking forward to is a chance to visit one of the reefs offshore. My hobby is underwater swimming. I can’t wait to get out there to see what sort of marine life colonizes the reef. Have you ever done any of that sort of thing?”

  “I am like St Catherine, dear boy: I stay clear of water in all forms. Soon after I arrived out here, I was badly bitten by a piece of septic ice. I nearly died of it. Nowadays I keep to my shower. I may be depended upon to pass out holy water from time to time, but I consume only liquid spirits for pleasure.”

  “Sounds safe enough. But you misunderstand me, Father, if you think I’m some sort of underwater specialist. I just do what the guide tells me and watch my air and depth gauges. But I hope to buy a good underwater camera. Do you know of a reliable store?”

  “Try MacPherson’s, a couple of shops past the Trois Magots. He should be able to fix you up.”

  “Good! I was counting on being able to pick up a good camera here and at a decent price.”

  “Ha! Those days are gone forever. The locals know the value of things today, Mr Cooperman. There’s not much you can buy with cheap tin trays or cowry shells. Do you catch my meaning at all at all?” I couldn’t help laughing at him; his language had wandered so far from Chicago’s Loop.

  “Father, if I may be personal for a moment: you don’t sound like an American most of the time. Am I wrong?”

  “No, dear boy, I’m a bit of a polyglot. True, I was born in Chicago, but my early interests took me to London, where I worked for a few years at Birkbeck College, doing a doctorate in behavioral psychology. I always say that the chief credit for that work belongs to my pigeons. When that was over and done with, I became the apothecary to a group of dropouts on the east coast of Scotland. Quite a famous place for dropouts and ban-the-bombers. I was going through some sort of crisis of faith. I left the colony in a straitjacket. I miss the life on that rocky cliff sometimes, dispensing herbs and simples I collected myself, like Brother Cadfael in those mystery stories.”