The London Embassy

by Paul Theroux

  ‘More of the same,’ I said so as not to frighten her. And I wrapped them and returned them to the innocent-looking pillowcase.

  ‘You’ll help me, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

  I was relieved that she had not seen the contents of that new parcel, for I had always considered myself as being fairly unshockable, and yet when I thought of those yellow bones and teeth and incense burners and camel bells under the bed of the Arab in that wet suburb of London, I got the shudders.

  It was no longer a trivial, speculative matter about a troublesome lodger. The man from Mecca was, quite simply, a grave robber. Mr Wahab was a ghoul. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Though they looked like ecclesiastical items, they could not have come from a church. But tombs, especially the larger ones, were often a kind of underground chapel, and had an altar furnished with candlesticks, and an incense burner and crucifix.

  It was almost certainly a Catholic tomb – the crucifix said that. An old tomb – this stuff had lain undisturbed for a century. A large tomb, big enough to hold an altar, and one that could be entered through a door; if there had been digging, it would have been seen and reported. The tomb was probably above ground. But what sort of a tomb contained camel bells?

  This part of London was full of cemeteries – we had cremated Herbert Fleamarsh in nearby Kew. There were five important cemeteries not far from Miss Gowrie’s house, and every church had a walled-in graveyard beside it. But only one of those churches interested me: it struck me that a grave robber needed darkness to hide him, and if he did not have it he might break the sort of lights I had seen smashed at St Mary Magdalene’s. But no theft had been reported there.

  I did not want to see the caretaker again. He would wonder why I was back; he would be suspicious; he would ask awkward questions. I had no answers. So I let a day pass, and then I waited for the five o’clock darkness, and I entered the churchyard of St Mary’s wearing a black coat and black gloves and looking left and right. I crept toward the vaults, the flat-topped granite huts with iron doors or sealed with stone blocks. They were unmarked; they were sadly neglected and overgrown with high bushes. Some were hidden in grass; others had almost burst from the ground or been yanked aside by the roots of the trees. I was behind the church and fighting my way through a tangle of bushes when I saw the tent.

  It was a sort of Oriental tent, perhaps Arab, with a slanting roof and high steep sides flowing from neatly scalloped eaves. I thought for a moment that I had stumbled upon a group of campers – people often pitched tents by the roadside or in parks (I could see them from the windows of my flat in Battersea) – why not in this graveyard?

  But the tent was made of stone. It was white granite or marble, with carved folds, and it bore a tablet with the legend Captain Sir Richard F. Burton. The explorer’s tomb was the strangest I had ever seen.

  I went close and tried the door. The putty surrounding the door, a marble slab, had been dug away. But a padlock on a rusty hasp remained. I shook the padlock, and it came apart in my hand: it had been sawed through. So he had broken it – I was sure that this was the work of Abdul Wahab Bin Baz. A poem was chiseled into the marble just above the door. I turned my small flashlight on it.

  Farewell, dear friend, dead hero, the great life

  Is ended, the great perils, the great joys;

  And he to whom adventures were as toys,

  Who seemed to bear a charm ’gainst spear or knife

  Or bullet, now lies silent …

  What was that? A sound from the churchyard gate.

  Crouching, I ran around to the back of the vault. It was not easy – trees grew close to it, and I scratched my face on a branch as I squeezed through.

  At the rear of the tomb, overgrown with bushes and partly hidden by the thickness of black branches, was an iron ladder. It was fixed to the stone; it rose to the top of the tentlike roof. More to hide from the caretaker than to see where the ladder went, I climbed the iron rungs, and when I could not go any farther I looked down in amazement. I was looking straight into the chamber of the tomb.

  This tomb, this stone tent, had a window! It was of thick glass and I could see in the narrow beam of my flashlight that it had not been tampered with. But I knew at a glance that the tomb had been plundered. A century of sunlight through this window had faded the stone walls in places and also printed on them the shadows of the objects I had seen in the Arab’s room – the lamps, the crucifix, the string of camel bells. Where a thurible had been plucked from the dust, a disk mark remained, of its oval base. Only these shadows were left of what had once been in the tomb, except for the two coffins. They lay on the floor, at either side of a row of footprints. The larger coffin had been opened. Its lid, a fraction lopsided, had a freshly yanked nail at its end and showed a seam of darkness. But if I had not already seen Burton’s bones, if I had not tried the lock that seemed so secure, I doubt that I would have noticed that the coffin lid was ajar or suspected any tampering. Even under the penetrating light of my pocket flashlight the tomb was very murky, and only serious scrutiny told me that it had been broken into. It was a terrible little coffin room; it was dusty; it was cell-like. It gave me a good idea.

  The Arab, Abdul Wahab Bin Baz, had to be stopped. Now I knew how.

  It was no more than a short stroll, using the footbridge over the railway tracks, to a row of shops. In one of these, with a sign saying IRONMONGERS, I bought a large, flat padlock. It was very similar to the one the fanatic from Mecca had cut through in order to enter Burton’s tomb.

  It was now well after six. The church was shut, the gate was locked. I scaled the brick wall of the churchyard and took up my position at the top of the ladder, where I rested against the slanting window of the tomb. I was completely hidden; the graveyard was as dark as the bottom of a deep hole. In a doggedly destructive way, by breaking all the churchyard lights, the Arab had guaranteed that I would not be seen.

  I thought: What if he doesn’t come back?

  And yet, Isabel Burton’s coffin had not been disturbed.

  Later than I expected, after seven, when my knees were about to give out, I heard the thump of feet in the churchyard – someone had come over the wall. There was a swishing sound, of legs moving in brambles and grass. If it was Abdul, and if he entered the tomb, I would see him through the window. I heard nothing for a while, and then there was a slow millstone sound – the marble door being swung open. When he entered the tomb, I ducked, and I did not move again until, some seconds later, I heard the door being eased shut.

  It was not closed entirely. I climbed down the ladder and dashed to the front of the tomb and kicked the door. At that moment there was a cry from the vault, but I was quickly straightening the hasp and clapping the padlock on. There was no sound from inside. The Arab was sealed in. No one would hear him. He had asked for this – and now he was buried alive.

  If you knew he was there and you listened carefully you could hear a faint mewing, which was all that was audible of his wild screams through the thick marble walls of the tomb.

  ‘I thought it was him,’ Miss Gowrie said, opening the door and with a look of apprehension still on her face. Fright takes a while to fade.

  ‘He won’t be back tonight,’ I said. ‘He may not be back at all.’

  ‘He’s out haunting houses, I expect.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘You come in and have a nice cup of tea,’ Miss Gowrie said. ‘Put your feet up. Look at the time! It’s gone eight – you’ve had a long day.’

  My day was not over. I told Miss Gowrie I had discovered where Wahab had stolen his brassware. I gathered up the objects and put them into a sack. I would return them to their rightful place, I said.

  ‘May I sleep in Mr Wubb’s room tonight?’ I said.

  ‘What if he comes back?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ I said.

  ‘You never know with blackies,’ she said.

  In his stale bed, in that small
room that smelled of carpet dust and prayer sweat, I thought about Abdul Wahab and it occurred to me why he had broken into Burton’s tomb. It was simple revenge. Hadn’t Burton, the unbeliever, trampled all over Islam? In this Muslim’s eyes, hadn’t the English explorer violated the sanctity of his religion by dressing up as an Arab and entering Mecca? Burton was no respecter of taboos or traditions – he had plundered the secrets of Islam in his search for adventure.

  This was one Muslim’s reply: the Arab dressed as an English gentleman, prowling undetected in London – as anonymous as Burton had been in holy Mecca. There was a crude justice in what the disguised Arab had done to Burton’s bones in the Mortlake churchyard. This was a civilized country and a different century, but the smell in that bedroom was of dust and bones and the stink of fanatical prayer.

  I had set my wrist alarm to wake me before dawn. It was still dark when I crept out of Miss Gowrie’s house. I liked the thrill – carrying the brassware and camel bells and Richard Burton’s bones through the damp chilly streets to the graveyard where the tomb had been opened.

  There was no sound at the door of the vault. I went around back and mounted the ladder and shone my flashlight inside.

  Wahab lay on the floor, sleeping on his side. He woke when I turned the light on his eyes. This was the first time I had really seen him.

  His dark face had a stretched look of panic – the expression certain fish have in fishbowls: trapped and pop-eyed, with fat swollen lips. His eyes were red and puffy, and he was at the last stage of terror. He was limp, making pleading faces at me – or rather at the light – and blinking at the brightness of it. He would have confessed at that moment to being Leon Trotsky.

  He clasped his hands and implored me.

  I breathed on the window. The vapor condensed, and with my finger I traced a cross in it and shone my flashlight on it. It is the simplest of symbols, but to the man from Mecca it was strange and unwelcome, and I was sure that it made him more fearful than the darkness he had endured in that tomb all night. It was now safe to remove the padlock: I had announced myself as the avenging Christian.

  As soon as the hasp was released he pushed the door open and gasped – gave a whinny of fright – and then disappeared at the far end of the churchyard.

  It was still dark. I had plenty of time to replace the thuribles, the lamps, the crucifix, and the camel bells, as well as Burton himself in his ornate and rotting coffin. Then I shut the door of the tomb and locked it. I had left everything just where it belonged in the tomb, as anyone could see.

  The Man on the Clapham Omnibus

  If Sir Charles Smallwood had not sent Miss Gowrie to visit me at the Embassy, and if I had not helped rid this Mortlake landlady of her vengeful lodger, I would never have given this gentleman another thought. Miss Gowrie had called him ‘Charlie.’ She made me curious and she allowed me an excuse to see him.

  We knew him vaguely. He was usually invited to our Embassy parties and very often to dinners. He was, somehow, on the permanent guest list. But he was seldom a guest. He invariably turned down the invitations. I had seen him once, but only long enough to shake his hand – a damp, slack, small-boned hand. The only other thing about him that I could remember was that he had been wearing evening dress of an old-fashioned kind – bib and stiff collar, white scooped-out waistcoat, starched cuffs, black trousers, and tails. He should have looked like a prince; in fact, he looked like a headwaiter, though he was not so poised. It was the functionaries, the waiters and doormen in London, who dressed correctly. The rest of us seldom did. Sir Charles wore his evening dress the way an old veteran wears a uniform for a regimental reunion. He looked uncomfortable in this stiff and slightly ill-fitting suit, and it also looked forty years out of date. I could not remember his face.

  His address was in the computer, and his code number – eight digits – explained why he was repeatedly invited to Embassy functions. He was a very high grade of guest, the best English ally, a baronet from an old family.

  Al Sanger, from the Legal Department, had shown me which keys to hit on the computer.

  ‘If the British knew the kind of information we had on them in this thing, they’d deep-six every one of us,’ Sanger said. ‘Greatgrandfather’s birthplace, wife’s maiden name, nanny’s husband’s political preference, criminal record, queerness quotient, shoe size, taste in underwear, magazine subscriptions, credit rating – do me a favor!’

  Smallwood’s name and code had come up, and Sanger was scrutinizing the alignments of file references, the green letters and numbers.

  He said, ‘I don’t even know this guy!’

  He seemed angry with himself, so I said, ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I only met him once.’

  Sanger said, ‘But this is the kind of guy we’re supposed to know. It’s why we’re here!’

  ‘Really?’ I wondered if he believed what he had just said.

  ‘Yeah – to meet the opinion-formers.’

  ‘How do you know he’s an opinion-former?’

  ‘If you see a guy with a long white beard, wearing a red suit and carrying a bag of toys and saying, “Ho-ho-ho,” you’d be pretty stupid if you didn’t call him Santa Claus,’ Sanger said. ‘It’s all in the profile. Look at Smallwood’s. Look at those ratings. That’s a pedigree and a half! Where’d you get his name?’

  ‘From a little old lady.’

  ‘That’s funny, you know? We’re in the business of information-gathering, and you stand there uttering pointless jokes and tiresome evasions. Give me a break. I hate unreliable witnesses.’

  ‘It’s no joke. The little old lady’s name is Miss Gowrie.’

  ‘Let’s find out her bust size,’ Sanger said and leered at the computer screen. ‘We know everything.’ Then suddenly he shouted, ‘He lives in Clapham!’

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘The man on the Clapham omnibus,’ he said.

  It was the first time I had ever heard this picturesque description. It brought to mind the vivid image of a thinfaced man sitting alone in an old double-decker bus – a bowler hat on his head, and brass rails on the stairwell, and posters advertising Players Weights and beef tea pasted on the freshly painted red sides; the man swaying as the bus rattled on hard rubber wheels down an avenue of brown cobblestones.

  I said, ‘It has a nice sound.’

  ‘It just means “the man in the street” – it’s a legal term here. In American law he’s called the fair and reasonable man. Didn’t you go to law school?’

  ‘I haven’t had your advantages, Al.’

  ‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘Anyway, a lot of Foreign Service people have law degrees. See, they know the subtleties in the law, but how can you expect the man on the Clapham omnibus to know them?’ And he grinned. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘The average man,’ I said.

  ‘Right. A bloke, as they say here. Only this guy’ – he was tapping the display screen of the computer, where Sir Charles Smallwood’s paragraph was illuminated – ‘this guy is no ordinary bloke. One thing’s for sure. The Clapham address is a front. Probably a pied à terre. Baronets don’t live in Clapham.’

  He had no phone, or else it was unlisted. I wrote to him in Clapham, at the address shown on the computer, inviting him for a meal. He was prompt in refusing. I invited him for a drink. He replied saying he was tied up: he was going to be in the country for a few weeks. I liked ‘in the country’ – it meant out of town. I let those weeks pass. I wrote again. Was he interested in a pair of complimentary tickets to the London première of Up North, a black folk-opera performed by the Harlem Arts Collective? No, he was not. There was a practiced politeness in his refusals – he was good, not to say graceful, even lordly, at declining invitations. His handwriting had a black and spattery loveliness. He was a hard man to raise.

  This sharpened my desire to meet him, and in the interval I had discovered something about the Smallwoods. They were English Catholics – it said so on our computer. There is somethin
g faintly exotic about Catholics in England, something spooky and tribal and secretive. They worry people. They are like Jews in the United States, and they are seen in the same way, as outsiders and potential conspirators. They are feared and somewhat disliked, and they are always suspected of not supporting the Protestant monarchy for religious reasons. The Smallwoods traced their ancestry back to the reign of Henry VIII, when they had been recusants – dissenters – and it was their boast that in four hundred years not a single day had passed without holy mass being celebrated in a secret chapel at Smallwood Park, in Hertfordshire. They were like early Christians: they were persecuted, they hid, they clung to their faith, they remained steadfast – and he was one of them.

  He lived within walking distance of my apartment in Battersea – up the road and just on the other side of Lavender Hill, on Parma Crescent. I walked past the house three times before summoning the courage to knock. The house was one in a terrace of twenty, two-up, two-down, with the shades drawn and two trash barrels in the front yard – the other houses had rose bushes or hydrangeas. There was an unwashed milk bottle on the front step. Surely this was the wrong house?

  Not seeing a bell or knocker, I rattled the metal flap on the letter slot and waited. After a moment there was a shadow on the glass of the door. The door opened, but only a crack, and from this a hidden face spoke to me, asking me what I wanted. It was the voice of a man muttering into a blanket.

  ‘I’m looking for Sir Charles Smallwood.’

  ‘No admittance on business,’ the man said.

  What did that mean?

  ‘This isn’t business,’ I said. ‘This is a social call.’

  ‘And you are?’

  I still could not determine whether the man I was speaking to was Sir Charles Smallwood. I had a feeling that he was some sort of manservant. He was tetchy and suspicious and overprotective, and even – like some English servants I’d seen – domineering. I told him who I was and gave him my American Embassy calling card, with the eagle embossed on it in gold. It had been specially designed by a team of psychiatrists to impress foreign nationals.