The Man Who Knew Everything

by Tom Stacey

  He munched slowly through half the plate of dates. Shrunk and bowed, the gnomish skipper descended, like one coming home to his hole in the tree-roots. He smiled congratulation at his passenger’s appetite. Jones asked him his name and he replied it was Nasir. He asked where they were going and Captain Nasir replied with the name of the port on the Arabian mainland.

  Then he remembered what was expected of him, and that he had lost the Emir’s paper. He looked at the captain with distraught eyes and shook his head. It was a pointless voyage, dangerous and pointless. Nasir leaned forward and placed his hand on the Inglisi’s shoulder, but Jones’s eyes were filling with tears. He repeated to the captain several times that he had lost the Emir’s paper, but the Arab could not understand and thought the stroke had made him maudlin.

  Jones burst out at him, ‘It’s no good my filing without the bloody paper,’ and Nasir withdrew his hand.

  ‘Bluddi-paipr,’ Nasir parroted regretfully.

  Jones put his fingers into his shirt pocket and immediately found the Emir’s paper. He drew it out very carefully and looked at it with dull humour. It was as if someone had taken it and returned it: he watched himself as he ceased to wish to die.

  A distance away men have come to his doorway – two soldiers stepping down from a military jeep. First they knock, then they bang, on the strong door of his old house. Now one starts prising at the lock with a bayonet. The door gives.

  They swagger-run down the dark passage as if he could be dangerous to them or make a dash for safety. They thrust open each of the doors – the bedroom, the bathroom, his malodorous kitchen. In the majlis they yank open all the drawers. On the worn rug they make a great heap of all the papers they can find – old dispatches, cuttings, letters, photographs. They lift off from his desk the column of typescript and the labour of notes in their alien script and dump it all on top of the jumbled heap. They roll up this great mess of writing in the rug and begin to carry it out. One of them spots the letter against the amphora: he puts it in his pocket.

  As they pass through the patio with their burden, the parrot watches them from her cage. The first soldier flicks open the door of the cage and the second soldier mocks her with a squawk.

  Jones pushed the fragment of paper towards Captain Nasir. The muscular black man popped another date into his mouth as if he were a baby.

  The wizened skipper took the paper and laid it reverently beside him. He pulled out a bundle from against the ribs of the vessel by the tool-box and unwound it slowly. He took out a pair of spectacles which he fitted in an exact manner on to his nose. Then he stood so that the light from the hatch fell on the tiny paper, the movement of his lips telling the pace of his reading. He read it twice, and in the course of the second reading his head began to nod with a slow vigour. When he had finished he passed the paper back to Jones with both hands like the most destructible of palimpsests, shut his spectacles, ceremoniously wound them up in the old head-cloth and replaced them in their corner against the ship’s ribs. Then he put out his hard, narrow hand and took Jones’s right hand, swollen with prickly heat, and lightly held it for several seconds. When his hand was released, Jones raised his fingers to his lips. Even now, news of the paper in his possession reaching the wrong ears on the quayside might cheat his poor heart of the privilege of ending him.

  He fumbled for his Kensitas and they lit one for him. He peered at his watch. In London it was already 9 a.m. He indicated his wish to go up on deck, and they helped him up the ladder he had no recollection of descending. His left leg had forgotten its function and had lost respect for his will. They brought him a box to sit on under the sailcloth awning. He scanned the horizon. They were steaming south for the mainland, not yet half-way across the straits. Both mainland and the island were visible in the midday haze, each a low dun smudge. Two oil tankers were steaming east, down-Gulf, through this same strait; no other vessels were visible except a small flotilla of fishing boats far ahead between their own boum and the mainland. No one appeared to be in pursuit. It was a paradigm of tranquillity. High sun and shallow waters were in league to blotch and dapple the constant, exquisite changeability. Over the throb of engine a high melisma wove from the throat of the young helmsman. At six or seven knots the drift of air lifted away oppression of heat. Yet how exposed they were, isolated on this ocean, their route as plain as a confession. And now with following thunder three aircraft from the island’s fighter wing streaked out above them, spanning their strait in seconds, seeing all.

  The black Moor brought him a faded loincoth, and took away his trousers.

  He struggled to hold fast to what he knew he must do. At two o’clock he picked up the BBC news: 11 a.m. London time: in the Post’s newsroom the department heads would be assembling in the Editor’s office for the morning conference. The bulletin carried nothing new on the night before except that a dozen more states had recognised the island’s new regime, including two Western powers, namely Canada and Sweden – thus currying (he perceived) a smidgeon of popularity with the Reds and Third World riff-raff in the UN with typical timely cant. He supposed the report by the Reuters man had had its influence; and once again his stomach tightened at the thought that even now in conference they were provisionally slotting his own ‘interview’ with the Emir, for want of anything better, despite its bizarre annulment. For they always liked to have their own man’s byline up there on top of a column of print when the news was big. And surely, too, the foreign desk would already have been pleading for contact with him by the only line of communication – the palace telex – open to them . . . Meanwhile that Reuters weasel (so quiet, so smug) would be allowed to get away another dispatch today, further confirming the coup as an act of popular revolution. It was the familiar sorry sequence.

  He pictured those upstart journalists at the Darwish, each with his own little plan for moving his copy, each one’s report with its own embellishments and angles on the central half-truths fed them by the usurpers. He knew that Fuad Al-Bakr would permit no other reporter to see the Emir – and most certainly not now that they would have awoken to his deception . . . They would be looking for him now, and finding him gone, order a search. Maybe it was providential the old Packard had got stuck. But it pointed to the creek, and the fisherman there would have seen him, and the boum. No one can hide in empty land. Then they could either send a patrol boat in pursuit, or have people waiting for him at the mainland port on the off-chance.

  He pulled himself to his feet. All three Arabs aboard – Nasir, the Moor, and the helmsman – watched him, and under all their eyes he dragged himself aft along the rail to the thunderbox that hung over the stern on the starboard side. Having done his number one in his trousers, he was not going to disgrace himself with number two. The thunderbox had a little door like a pulpit – from the seaward side it actually resembled a pulpit, being quite finely carved and painted. He squatted there, so tall, shoulders and head sticking out above like a legless preacher ranting at the sea. He squatted on under the flailing sun and when he was done he found he could not drag himself upright. He called weakly to the helmsman who summoned the Moor for’ard from where he had been washing his trousers in a bucket. Draped over them, he was helped by the two men back to his box under the awning while the skipper moved to the tiller.

  He leaned back exhausted. How could he go on with this? His mind was good but his body half-gone. The Moor brought water, soap, a cloth, and half a razorblade held in a stick; he shaved him with extreme care. He declared his name repeatedly, Ismail, and assured Jones he was his servant. Jones could see what an ugly fellow he was and also how gentle and strong. He took out Jones’s Kensitas and lit one cigarette for Jones and one for himself. A little later he returned with an empty dark red Rothman’s box. He made Jones put the Emir’s paper in the Rothman’s box.

  Jones found his spectacles and began to draft his dispatch on the back of McCulloch’s letter. He wrote with difficulty because of his long sight and because there was nothing on
which to rest the paper except the up-turned base of the plastic bucket. He gave the island as his dateline, and began:

  ‘The legitimacy of the new government claiming power here since early yesterday has been categorically repudiated by the Emir himself, Ahmed al-Asnan, in a statement handwritten and signed by himself and passed by him to me as correspondent of the Morning Post.

  ‘The statement specifically refutes the announcement of the “voluntary” abdication disseminated by his son, Hatim, and Fuad Al-Bakr in support of their claim to power.’

  He used Hatim’s gold pen, and, as he wrote, black Ismail on his haunches close beside watched with lips made loose by wonder.

  ‘Misterr.’

  Jones looked at the Moor over his glasses. The man gave him a slow grin and spread his arms, making a scanning swing with his head, like someone reading an open newspaper.

  Jones grinned too. ‘Right, Ismail, right!’

  He resumed writing, quoting the text of the Emir’s paper in English translation, and then relating exactly how it reached him. Any such exposure of facts jeopardised the old man’s safety: that he recognised. Yet a public announcement was what the Emir must have wanted, and the details that authenticated the handwritten message were essential. He knew well just what impact this exclusive would have internationally; the cold sweat in the palms of his hands told him the urgency of it. He would make it clean and strong and factual. If the whippersnappers in the Darwish had the story they would editorialise in the very first paragraph – ‘In a move that will further heighten Middle East instability, the Emir Ahmed al-Asnan has today released a message openly defying . . .’ and so on, brazenly mushing up the facts with comment of their own. When he was in Fleet Street, if you wanted to include comment on an event you bloody well had to find someone to make it and then quote him, or the subs would have it out.

  He kept glancing at his watch. He and the old hulk were as one, straining through the water at a handful of knots. He saw his trousers drying on the deck. The sun already leaned to the west. He felt in himself the throb and purpose of the diesel, yet still could not quite gather himself; fragments were unresolved, pieces of his past life, like tendrils of weed reaching up from the opaline seabed. Their own sunlight freely entered and illuminated this marine territory, making perpetual play of opalescence, and it was all so close beneath them, so very close that they must sometimes throttle back to two or three knots to navigate over it safely. Moreover, it was exquisitely beautiful. Yet however close, it was of a quite different order from their own airy, surface order; and those who belonged to it like Romy could not be reached even though their tendrils floated upwards as if to clutch at them.

  They throbbed and pushed on across this sea-veil cast down immemorially between the island he had escaped from and the greater land he must at all costs gain, until at last one smudge had all but dissolved into the horizon and the smudge ahead grew strong and sharp and filled their eyes.

  As this new land drew them in, they curved through a small flotilla of fishing boats and were an object of curiosity. Ismail brought him his laundered trousers which were stiff and dry.

  In the distant Darwish, Lou Rivers, agitated, is searching for someone in the lobby. Rivers has been agitated for fully one and a half days, but his agitation at this moment has a quality of peculiar urgency. He has in his hand a single sheet of paper. Soldiers still guard the hotel entrance, and every guest that wishes to leave the premises must show his documents and write down where he intends to go, and why, and when he intends to return.

  Rivers hurries into the atrium. There he encounters Carew of Reuters, evidently his quarry, briskly leaving the bar-room.

  ‘Hey, Shaun. I was looking for you. Just look at this.’

  He hands him the piece of paper. It is a photostat of a brief and tightly penned piece of Arabic handwriting and a crude English translation, in handwritten capitals, appended beneath.

  Carew shoots his fellow journalist a glance of weasel wariness. He hands back the paper. ‘It’s not going to help any of us, that message,’ he says. ‘Trying to send that out won’t assist us at all.’

  Rivers is affronted. ‘It’s central to the story,’ he declares. ‘It discredits the coup.’

  ‘It’ll be the last time they let you back on the island.’

  ‘If they hang on to it,’ Rivers ripostes with a snuff. He has met this before, news agency men putting it across television reporters, making them look like amateurs at gathering news.

  ‘I thought you fancied the rebels,’ Carew says.

  ‘It’s not my job to fancy anybody,’ Rivers informs him. He’s not going to have a Reuters man teaching him his business. Ever since the coup occurred, Carew had been scurrying about with a knowing look on his face.

  ‘Look, chum,’ Carew says. ‘It’s not even authenticated, that Arabic. Anybody could have written it.’

  ‘That’s the first step, obviously,’ Rivers says, reasserting his professionalism. ‘Authenticate. McCulloch could do that.’

  ‘You’re on your own, chum.’

  Rivers admits he doesn’t know how to find McCulloch. His newspaper is shut down: he lives somewhere in the town, and his telephone is cut off.

  Carew gives him one of his knowing looks. ‘Tough shit,’ he says, and hurries on.

  They tied up at the Arabian mainland port’s small boats’ quay at a quarter to one London time. It was still high afternoon locally and a good period to handle officials: at that hour most were absent and the sleepy remnant had no wish to prolong their duties. Jones came ashore leaning on Ismail, left leg dragging. It was rare enough for a European to come in by boum, but the immigration officer at a desk littered with red Vimto cans seemed to accept the validity of Jones’s multiple visa and health documents without a quaver.

  Jones limped out of the shed into the glare, flanked by the gnomish shipmaster Nasir and the swarthy Ismail. An incongruous trio. Two yellow Datsun taxis stood against the wall of the customs building opposite, trying to snuggle in under the bar of the shade. One taxi already contained a driver and two passengers. The driver of the other was asleep under the covered entrance to the building, and Nasir crossed to wake him. Jones was eased into the cramped vehicle and Ismail rode beside him in the back. Jones told the driver to take them to the office of the local newspaper, which he named. At the port area barrier a guard emerged from his box to inspect the car. He spotted the Rothman’s packet in the Englishman’s shirt pocket and motioned that he required a cigarette. Jones offered him his Kensitas; but the man said ‘Rothman’s’ and lifted out the packet deftly with two fingers. Finding it empty of cigarettes he tossed it aside on to the macadam. Nasir ordered Ismail to fetch it, and as he was doing so Jones noticed the other taxi drawing up behind.

  The two taxis went through the barrier in convoy. Jones could see the other taxi behind in the mirror. He changed his instructions and told the driver to take them to the oil company’s regional headquarters. He had not been at this game for fifty-odd years for nothing. The oil company buildings were enclosed in a compound ringed by high mesh-fences: nobody could follow them in there.

  At the main gate barrier they were obliged to get out of their taxi. It was harder getting out than in: Jones as near as anything toppled: only the great strength of Ismail prevented it. The American guard had come out of the gatehouse, a thick sallow man, armed.

  Nothing was going to be easy. It was the sheer primitiveness of his companions that made them so out of place here – dark, weathered men in sun-bleached loincloths, and their feet, though sandalled now, manifestly accustomed to nakedness.

  Across the wide approach, the other taxi had pulled up: no one got out.

  ‘Someone expecting ya?’ the guard said.

  Jones told him who, lying.

  ‘Doubtful he’ll be in right now,’ the guard said, not budging. ‘Everyone gone for the day.’ It was as good as a prohibition. He was a slow man, with feet apart.

  ‘He’s expecting me,
’ Jones assured him, with his every grace, very English. ‘Don’t worry – we have a fixed date.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Five o’clock.’ He was thankful Ismail had shaved him. A harmless old man.

  ‘Okay bud, I’ll ring through.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself. Just let me sign the visitor’s sheet, if you’d be kind enough.’

  ‘Lemme ring through.’ There was an adopted assertiveness about the man’s speech, a caricature American-ness that told Jones his childhood language had not been English but, perhaps, Spanish. He turned towards the gatehouse and Jones indicated to his companions at once that they should follow. An Arab guard, also in company uniform, looked up, puzzled.

  Jones got himself right up beside the American guard’s telephone. There on the desk, sure enough, stood a nameplate of rusticised varnished wood and the name engraved in fancy script and touched up with gold paint, Jim Garcia. The man had the printed directory of company employees in his hand.

  ‘Who ya wanna see, then, mister?’

  ‘Gerry Norbert,’ Jones said. ‘Public Affairs.’ He had his glasses on now. ‘If you’d just remind me of his number, Jim.’ The man was almost certainly baptised Jaime, and his translation to Jim the most important step in his life. ‘Isn’t it four something? . . .’ Jones had his hand on the telephone and was looking down on the man amiably.

  ‘N-o-r-?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Jones congratulated. ‘Norbert.’

  ‘Thirty-seven forty-two.’

  ‘Three, of course.’ It was Jones who raised the telephone. ‘Three-seven-four-two,’ he repeated as he dialled. He held the receiver tight against his ear, and let it ring twice before he spoke. ‘Gerry? It’s Gran Jones here.’ Pause. ‘Hi. I’m right here at the gate. Your efficient gate guard and I wanted to check you’d stayed in for me.’ Pause. ‘I’ll be right up. Cheers.’

  He put the receiver back and smiled at the guard. No one had answered.

  ‘May I sign your visitors’ log?’