The interval when Mahmoud might have prepared more coffee came and passed, and eventually the narghiles ceased their burbling and the men took their leave, their loud voices fading slowly into the night. I followed them out of the tent, and stood, staring at the bright sliver of moon in the black sky, surrounded and celebrated by a million sharp stars and the splash of the Milky Way. I was bewitched by the magnificence, enthralled by the utterly alien sky, and would have stood there frozen (and freezing) had Ali not grasped me unexpectedly by the arm and whispered harshly, “Get your coat and come. Silently.”
I got my coat and I came, and I followed Holmes and the two others through the dark night until we came to this villa, and the wall, and finally to my petulant question to Holmes.
“Holmes, will you tell me please what we are doing here?”
His dry voice came back in a breath, inaudible two paces off. “We are waiting to be relieved of duty.”
I lay for a few more minutes, watching the outline of the dark villa and its uninhabited grounds, and spoke again.
“What were they talking about, all the men tonight around the fire?”
“The usual topics of farmers. The lack of rain. The price of wheat. A ghazi —raid—one group of Bedouin carried off against another, that meant trampling two fields and killing a milch cow. And of course the manifold wickednesses of the government. Mahmoud,” he added, “seemed most interested in the last, although equally careful that the others would not see his interest in politics.”
“I see,” I said, not altogether certain that I did. “Is he after evidence about the murder of Yitzak and his two hired men, or something more general?”
“Both, I should say.”
I was rather relieved to hear him say that; for the past two days neither Arab had given the faintest indication that they were anything but itinerant scribes. I was even beginning to think that the two of them were no longer actively involved in Mycroft’s affairs, and that we had been parked with them by mistake. “Then why do I get the feeling that they’re giving us meaningless tasks like mapping that site just to see what we’re going to do?”
“Probably because that is precisely what they are doing,” he replied, sounding sardonic.
“It is becoming very tedious.”
“Mmm.”
Silence again, but for the inevitable night noises of a Palestinian village. Jackals cried in the distance, a donkey brayed below us, and the cockerel that had been crowing with monotonous regularity paused for twice its normal thirty seconds, then resumed. Someone in the house at the foot of the cliff treated us to another round of his tubercular cough, then quieted. My legs were now numb except for the sharp hot points of blisters on the soles of my feet and between the first two toes where the rough strap of the sandals had rubbed the skin raw. It was becoming difficult to breathe, I noticed. It was also extremely cold.
I thought about the two Arabs in the house and about the odd current of humour that had permeated Holmes’ reply to my query— and, now that I stopped to think of it, one I had thought I detected at times over the past days as well. It was not like Holmes merely to follow directions patiently, especially when they were unreasonable directions such as guarding the villa from a single place in the rear. The country and the way of life were foreign to me, but not completely so to Holmes; the distractions that kept me from looking too closely at just what it was Ali and Mahmoud were doing with us would not apply to him. It was as if two people were blindfolded and led around in circles, one of them a stranger who did not know what was happening, the other a person who knew exactly where he was and yet allowed himself to be led about as well, thinking it a great joke. I could not understand it, and I was too cold and uncomfortable to try.
“You’re certain you’d recognise Ali’s jackal noise?” I asked after a while.
“He has not made the signal,” Holmes said firmly. “They are still in the house.”
“Raiding the pantry and having a kip in the soft beds, I don’t doubt.”
“Don’t be peevish, Russell.”
I fell silent. Another twenty minutes passed. In the two hours we had lain there, nothing had changed except that the rooster in the village had been joined by another perhaps a mile off. At two hours and a quarter Holmes breathed again in my ear.
“Something is moving near the house.”
Before I could react I felt more than saw a dark shape moving across the ground towards us.
“Ya walud,” came the now-familiar voice, pitched low.
“Here, Ali,” said Holmes.
The man had the eyes of a cat, and picked his way by starlight over the uneven ground to where we lay.
“There is a problem with the safe. Mahmoud cannot persuade it to yield, and the dog and the guard will awaken soon.”
“Does he wish me to try?”
“You said you knew modern safes.” It is difficult to express nuances of doubt and disapproval in a whisper, but Ali managed.
“I will come,” said Holmes, and rolled cautiously off the wall, sending a minor shower of stones off the cliff and rousing the dog of the house below, but not, fortunately, the human inhabitants. Holmes made to follow Ali into the blackness, then paused. “By the way, Russell, I meant to wish you many happy returns. Although I suppose by now I am a day late.” He vanished before I could respond, but in truth I had quite forgot that it was my nineteenth birthday. For which I had received a sunburnt nose, a matching set of blisters, a bone-deep bruise on my right heel, a stomach clenched tight with hunger, and whatever bruises my current wall-top position might leave me with. All in all, one of the more interesting collections of birthday presents I had ever received.
Much cheered, I resigned myself for another lengthy wait. To my surprise, less than half an hour later there was another motion of a shadow approaching, and Ali reappeared, much agitated.
“The safe is open, but that foolish man insists on looking at everything it contains. You must tell him to close it so we can leave. There is no more chloroform.”
I followed Holmes’ example and allowed myself to roll off the wall, only to be knocked breathless by a large stone in the belly. Gasping as silently as I could, I got to my feet and staggered after Ali and into the house.
From the outside it had seemed a large building, and moving through the dark rooms—over smooth marble floors and thick carpets, through air scented with cooking spices and sandalwood— confirmed my impression that this was indeed one holy man who did not embrace poverty.
We turned into a corridor towards a dimly lit rectangle and entered the room, Ali closing the door silently behind us. I looked at the two unshaven men in dirty headgear and robes, bent over the papers, then at the man in garish dress beside me, and could only hope that the guard Ali had chloroformed did not wake, because if he had a whit of sense he would shoot before asking any questions.
Holmes sat on a low stool in front of the wall safe, rapidly but methodically sorting through the stack of papers on his knees. As we came in I saw him pause over a letter, open it, glance at it, and slip it with its envelope into the front of his robe. Mahmoud was looking more animated than I had ever seen him, standing over Holmes and clasping his hands together as if to keep from wringing them, or applying them to Holmes’ throat. Ali held out one hand to me, gesturing with the other to the two men.
“Tell him,” he insisted. “Tell him we must go.”
I studied Holmes for a minute, and thought I recognised the disapproving set to his features. I turned to Ali. “What is he looking for?”
“We only wish to retrieve one letter. We have found it. We must be gone.”
“Is it possible that this mullah could be a blackmailer?” I asked. Ali’s eyes slid to one side and Mahmoud growled something about the man in truth not being a mullah, both of which I read as affirmatives. “Holmes doesn’t much care for blackmailers,” I commented, but added to the man himself, “It will be getting light out in another half hour.”
T
he only sign Holmes gave that he had heard me was a slight increase in the speed of his examination. There was no budging him, until twelve long minutes later he had reached the end of the stack, having removed several more papers, and stood to put the remainder back into the safe. In a flurry of activity Ali and Mahmoud returned the furniture to its place, closed and reset the safe, straightened the lithograph of Jerusalem that covered it, and hurried us out the door.
The sky was beginning to lighten. Mahmoud locked the villa’s door and we slipped among the shadowy shapes of fragrant trees towards the front wall (this one high, well maintained, and topped by broken glass) that protected the grounds from the road. Again Mahmoud took out his picklocks and applied them to the gate, unlocking it and relocking it after us. A groggy bark came from the back of the house, but we were away, down the hill, across two switchbacks in the road and the terraces of olive trees they wove through. We retrieved the possessions that we had left there, harmless bundles of provisions and armloads of firewood bound with twine, and finally rejoined the road some distance from the house. When dawn came we were just another quartet of stolid Arab peasants about our business. Half an hour later a lorry of British soldiers passed us without slowing, its dust cloud applying another layer of grime to our clothes and skin.
When we neared our camp site we could see two figures, squatting like gargoyles just outside the front edge of the black goat’s-hair tent belonging to Mahmoud and Ali. One was a young man, swathed in many layers of dust-coloured fabric; as we approached he stood up to thrust his wide, callused feet into a pair of once-black shoes that lacked laces and were far too big for him, but were the necessary recognition of an Occasion. The woman at his side remained hunched on the ground, a small heap of faded black with the married woman’s red strip of embroidery travelling up the front of her dress. Her head and upper body were wrapped in the loose shawl called a burkah, which she had raised across her face immediately she saw us coming, to supplement the red-and-blue veil decorated with gold coins that she already wore. I wondered, not for the first time, why the women in this country did not suffocate come the heat of summer. Her coal black eyes, the only part of her visible other than an inch of indigo-tattooed forehead and the work-rough fingers of her right hand, were trained on the ground, although when she thought no one was looking, she shot hungry, curious glances at us.
The man greeted Mahmoud as a long-lost brother, hanging on to his hand and talking effusively. We had been through this before, however, and I had read the sign of the borrowed shoes correctly, for rather than removing his guest to the more leisurely depths of the rug-strewn tent, Mahmoud merely dropped to his heels on the ground outside, away from the camel-dung fire that Ali was beginning to rekindle. This was business, then, not friendship.
The rest of us continued as before, ignored completely by the two engaged in their transaction and ignoring the quick glances of the woman (whom of course the man had not bothered to introduce, and who therefore did not quite exist). I took great care not to stare at her, despite my natural curiosity, since I was, after all, to all appearances a male. I had to be content with the occasional furtive glance as I dropped my bundle of twigs and sticks next to the fire and waited for Ali to empty the last of the water from the skin so I could take it half a mile to the well and fill it. Twice my looks caught hers, and on the second occasion she came as close to blushing as a dark-skinned woman can. It was a peculiar feeling, to be thought flirting with a woman, but I decided that if the poor thing took some scrap of pleasure in the idea that a travelling stranger, one who not only had exotic light eyes but flaunted a pair of mysterious and undoubtedly expensive spectacles over them as well, found her a source of secret desire, it could only do her good.
I slung the flaccid water-skin over my shoulder and walked off. It was the third time I had made this particular trip, and the track grew no less rocky, nor did the filled goatskin get any lighter. Similarly, the two camels belonging to the group camped nearer the well were just as surly as they had been before, although the dog did not follow me as far as usual, and the camp children seemed to have accepted the fact that I would not respond to their chatter, merely running out and watching me from under their child-sized kuffiyahs. When the woman before me at the well had filled her Standard Oil tin with water, balancing it easily on her head before swaying off without deigning to glance at this apparent male condemned to perform a woman’s tasks, I found that not only did the track grow no shorter, but the blisters which this and previous well ropes had raised on my palms were as painful as ever. I filled the skin, arranged on my back the obscene, gurgling object (which, even after days of seeing it hanging near the cook fire, still looked to me like an animal putrefied to the point of bursting), and plodded back to the encampment, past the sounds of the invisible women grinding the day’s flour and the visible men in the shade of their tents, talking and smoking and watching me pass.
When I returned, Ali had made tea and was busy whittling—a donkey, it was, small but lively. Holmes was not to be seen, and Mahmoud had his writing table set up and was busy composing a document of some sort for his client, who was still talking, telling Mahmoud something about his brother and a camel, although his speech was far too rapid for me to follow. Twice the young man consulted the woman, who was either a sister or his wife, waiting impatiently for her to answer in her low, intelligent-sounding voice, before resuming his monologue. Mahmoud wrote placidly, the dip of his pen into the brass inkwell a constant rhythm broken only when he paused to trim the quill with his penknife, until finally the page was filled with a beautiful, clean, precise calligraphic script. He signed it with a flourish, the man put his mark on it, and Ali was called over to sign for good measure. Mahmoud sprinkled the document with sand to dry the ink, tapped it clean, folded it in on itself, sealed it with wax, and wrote an address on the front. The man accepted it with effusive thanks and a payment of small coins, and then he and our resident scribe each smoked a black cigarette and drank a glass of water to bring out the full flavour of the powerful tobacco. Eventually Mahmoud’s clients departed, the man still talking, to the woman now, who as she stood up was revealed to be greatly pregnant. She shot me a glance both shy and ardent before following at his heels.
Immediately they had disappeared down the track, Ali jabbed his vicious blade back into its scabbard (causing me to wonder fleetingly if Arabs ever disembowelled themselves when putting their knives away in a hurry) and then whipped out the flats of bread that he had cooked the previous evening, and we moved into the tent to break our fast around the fire. I was already very tired of this diet of damp unleavened bread, burnt in spots, which even when hot had no more taste than blotting paper. That morning, however, I was ravenous, and would have eaten the stuff gladly plain, but as recognition of the successful night’s work Ali uncorked a jug of honey and placed it on the carpet between us. He then gave us each a handful of dates and another of almonds, and poured out four tin mugs of the sour goat’s milk called laban that he had bought the day before from our neighbours. Holmes and Mahmoud, I noticed, had their food placed directly before them, whereas my portions were deposited very nearly at arms reach. Ali did not like eating with a woman, and although he submitted to the necessity, he did all he could to demonstrate his dislike. Even Mahmoud put my coffee down on the carpet in front of me, instead of allowing me to take it directly from his fingers as he did with any male. I sighed to myself and stretched forward to retrieve my breakfast, and sat back on my heels to enjoy it.
When we had feasted, Mahmoud reached for the coffee-making accoutrements. Wordlessly, the rest of us settled back into our carpets, Ali with his carving and Holmes taking out pipe and tobacco from the breast of his robe, tucking the ends of his kuffiyah up into the thick black loops of the agahl that held it on his head, and proceeding to fill the pipe and light it with a coal lifted from the fire with the tongs. He had, over the last days, taken to smoking the black leaf of the natives, but this morning’s pipe gave o
ff the familiar smell of his usual blend, a small quantity of which he had brought with him off the ship. The homely smell was a jolt in this foreign and uncomfortable setting, and for the first time I was washed by a wave of homesickness.
He waited until Mahmoud had the coffee beans in the long-handled pan and the luscious burnt-toast smell was beginning to mingle with the pipe smoke before he put the tongs down next to the fire and reached again into his robe. He drew out the letters that he had taken from the villa’s safe. There were five in all, four of which he tossed onto the carpet at Mahmoud’s feet. The fifth he held out to me. Mahmoud’s face went stony and Ali sat upright abruptly, his great knife held out dangerously in his right hand, the carving forgotten in his left.
“That is not for you,” he objected angrily.
“You two may be accustomed to acting blindly under orders,” said Holmes, concentrating on his pipe, “but neither Russell nor I have accepted any such commissions. Speaking for myself, I do not care to put my hand into any crevice I have not examined first. The other papers,” he told me, “are the usual—two incautious love letters from a lady in Cairo, a landowner in Nablus referring to the purchase of illegally seized land, and a police report about—well, never mind that one. And there is this.”
I satisfied myself that Ali was not about to use the knife on us, then took the sheet of paper out of its envelope and unfolded it. Seeing that it was in German, and there was a great deal of it, I lowered my backside to the ground to stretch my legs and give my thigh muscles a rest—and immediately had all three men hissing at me.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I objected. “I can only sit for so many hours with my knees in my armpits. My muscles cramp.”
“It’s your feet,” explained Holmes. “It is extremely bad manners to point the soles of your feet at someone. Almost as bad as eating with your left hand.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, and folded my painful extremities beneath me.
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