He smiled as he shook his handsome head. “No, Mr. Pappenheim, I don’t. I think an elaborate dig would not escape my notice.” He paused, asking me if he might smoke. I told him I was allergic to cigarette smoke and he put his case away. Regretfully, he said: “I should tell you that your sister is a little disturbed. She was arrested by us about a year ago. There was something we had to follow up. An outbreak of black magic amongst the local people. We don’t take such things very seriously until it’s possible to detect a cult growing. Then we have to move to break it up as best we can. Such things are not a serious problem in London, but for a policeman in Aswan they are fairly important. We arrested a known witch, a Somali woman they call Madame Zenobia, and with her an Englishwoman, also rumoured to be practising. That was your sister, Mr. Pappenheim. She was deranged and had to be given a sedative. Eventually, we decided against charging her and released her into the custody of Lady Roper.”
“The Consul’s wife?”
“He’s the Honorary Consul here in Aswan now. They have a large house on the West Bank, not far from the Ali Khan’s tomb. You can’t see it from this side. It is our miracle. Locally, it’s called the English House. More recently they’ve called it the Rose House. You’ll find no mysteries there!”
“That’s where my sister’s staying?”
“No longer. She left Aswan for a while. When she came back she joined the community around Sheikh Abu Halil and I understand her to be living in the old holiday villas on the Edfu road, near the race course. I’ll gladly put a man to work on the matter. We tend not to pursue people too much in Aswan. Your sister is a good woman. An honest woman. I hope she has recovered herself.”
Thanking him I said I hoped my search would not involve the time of a hardworking police officer. I got up to leave. “And what happened to Madame Zenobia?”
“Oh, the courts were pretty lenient. She got a year, doing quarry work for the Restoration Department in Cairo. She was a fit woman. She’ll be even fitter now. Hard labour is a wonderful cure for neurosis! And far more socially useful than concocting love potions or aborting cattle.”
He sounded like my old headmaster. As an afterthought, I said, “I gather Sheikh Abu Halil took an interest in my sister’s case.”
He flashed me a look of intelligent humour. “Yes, he did. He is much respected here. Your sister is a healer. The Sufi is a healer. He sometimes makes an accurate prophecy. He has a following all over the world, I believe.”
I appreciated his attempt at a neutral tone, given his evident distaste for matters psychic and mystical. We shared, I think, a similar outlook.
I found myself asking him another question. “What was the evidence against my sister, Inspector?”
He had hoped I would not raise the matter, but was prepared for it. “Well,” he began slowly, “for instance, we had a witness who saw her passing a large bag of money to the woman. The assumption was that she was paying for a spell. A powerful one. A love philtre, possibly, but it was also said that she wanted a man dead. He was the only other member of her team who had remained behind. There was some suggestion, Mr. Pappenheim,” he paused again, “that he made her pregnant. But this was all the wildest gossip. He did in fact die of a heart attack shortly after the reported incident. Sometimes we must treat such cases as murder. But we only had circumstantial evidence. The man was a drug addict and apparently had tried to force your sister to give him money. There was just a hint of blackmail involved in the case, you see. These are all, of course, the interpretations of a policeman. Maybe the man had been an ex-lover, no more. Maybe she wanted him to love her again?”
“It wasn’t Noone, was it?”
“It was not her estranged husband. He is, I believe, still in New Zealand.”
“You really think she got tangled up in black magic?”
“When confused, men turn to war and women to magic. She was not, as the Marrakshim say, with the caravan.” He was just a little sardonic now. “But she was adamant that she did not wish to go home.”
“What did she tell you?”
“She denied employing the witch. She claimed the Somali woman was her only friend. Otherwise she said little. But her manner was all the time distracted, as if she imagined herself to be surrounded by invisible witnesses. We were not unsympathetic. The psychiatrist from the German hospital came to see her. Your sister is a saintly woman who helped the poor and the sick and asked for no reward. She enriched us. We were trying to help her, you know.”
He had lost his insouciance altogether now and spoke with controlled passion. “It could be that your sister had an ordinary breakdown. Too much excitement in her work, too much sun. Caring too much for the hardships of others. She tried to cure the whole town’s ills and that task is impossible for any individual. Her burden was too heavy. You could see it written in every line of her face, every movement of her body. We wanted her to recover. Some suspected she was in the witch’s power, but in my own view she carried a personal weight of guilt, perhaps. Probably pointlessly, too. You know how women are. They are kinder, more feeling creatures than men.”
5 The Seasons of Home—Aye, Now They Are Remembered!
That evening, while there was still light, I took the felucca across the Nile, to the West Bank. The ferryman, clambering down from his high mast where he had been reefing his sail, directed me through the village to a dirt road winding up the hillside a hundred yards or so from the almost austere resting place of the Ali Khan. “You will see it,” he assured me. “But get a boy.”
There were a couple of dozen children waiting for me on the quay. I selected a bright-looking lad of about ten. He wore a ragged Japanese T-shirt with the inscription i love sex wax, a pair of cut-off jeans and Adidas trainers. In spite of the firmness with which I singled him out, we were followed by the rest of the children all the way to the edge of the village. I had a couple of packs of old electronic watches which I distributed, to a pantomime of disappointment from the older children. Watches had ceased to be fashionable currency since I had last been in Aswan. Now, from their requests, I learned it was “real” fountain pens. They showed me a couple of Sheaffers some tourist had already exchanged for their services as guides and companions of the road.
I had no fountain pen for the boy who took me to the top of the hill and pointed down into the little valley where, amongst the sand and the rocks, had been erected a large two-storey house, as solidly Edwardian as any early twentieth-century vicarage. Astonishingly, it was planted with cedars, firs and other hardy trees shading a garden to rival anything I had ever seen in Oxfordshire. There were dozens of varieties of roses, of every possible shade, as well as hollyhocks, snapdragons, foxgloves, marigolds and all the flowers one might find in an English July garden. A peculiar wall about a metre high surrounded the entire mirage and I guessed that it disguised some kind of extraordinarily expensive watering and sheltering apparatus which had allowed the owners to do the impossible and bring a little bit of rural England to Upper Egypt. The grounds covered several acres. I saw some stables, a garage, and a woman on the front lawn. She was seated in a faded deckchair watching a fiche-reader or a video which she rested in her left hand. With her right hand she took a glorious drink from the little table beside her and sipped through the straw. As I drew nearer, my vision was obscured by the trees and the wall, but I guessed she was about sixty-five, dressed in a thoroughly unfashionable Marks and Ashley smock, a man’s trilby hat and a pair of rubber-tyre sandals. She looked up as I reached the gate and called “Good afternoon.” Happy with cash, my boy departed.
“Lady Roper?”
She had a quick, intelligent, swarthy face, her curls all grey beneath the hat, her long hands expressive even when still. “I’m Diana Roper.”
“My name’s Paul Pappenheim. I’m Beatrice’s brother.”
“The engineer!” She was full of welcome. “My goodness, you know, I think Bea could foretell the future. She said you’d be turning up here about now.”
&n
bsp; “I wrote and told her!” I was laughing as the woman unlocked the gate and let me in. “I knew about this job months ago.”
“You’re here on business.”
“I’m going through the rituals of sorting out a better dam and trying to do something about the climatic changes. I got sent because I know a couple of people here—and because I asked to come. But there’s little real point to my being here.”
“You don’t sound very hopeful, Mr. Pappenheim.” She led me towards the back of the house, to a white wrought-iron conservatory which was a relatively recent addition to the place and must have been erected by some forgotten imperial dignitary of the last century.
“I’m always hopeful that people will see reason, Lady Roper.”
We went into the sweet-smelling anteroom, whose glass had been treated so that it could admit only a certain amount of light, or indeed reflect all the light to perform some needed function elsewhere. Despite its ancient appearance, I guessed the house to be using up-to-date EE technologies and to be completely self-sufficient. “What an extraordinary garden,” I said.
“Imported Kent clay.” She offered me a white basket chair. “With a fair bit of Kenyan topsoil, I understand. We didn’t have it done. We got it all dirt cheap. It takes such a long time to travel anywhere these days, most people don’t want the place. It belonged to one of the Fayeds, before they all went off to Malaysia. But have you looked carefully at our roses, Mr. Pappenheim? They have a sad air to them, a sense of someone departed, someone mourned. Each bush was planted for a dead relative, they say.” Her voice grew distant. “Of course, the new rain has helped enormously. I’ve survived because I know the rules. Women frequently find their intuition very useful in times of social unrest. But things are better now, aren’t they? We simply refuse to learn. We refuse to learn.”
Grinning as if enjoying a game, a Nubian girl of about sixteen brought us a tray of English cakes and a pot of Assam tea. I wondered how I had lost the thread of Lady Roper’s conversation.
“We do our best,” I said, letting the girl take tongs to an éclair and with a flourish pop it on my plate. “I believe Bea lived here for a while.”
“My husband took quite a fancy to her. As did I. She was a sweetie. And so bright. Is that a family trait? Yes, we shared a great deal. It was a luxury for me, you know, to have such company. Not many people have been privileged as she and I were privileged.” She nodded with gentle mystery, her eyes in the past. “We were friends of your uncle. That was the funny thing we found out. All at Cambridge together in the late ’60s. We thought conservation an important subject then. What? Fifty years ago, almost? Such a jolly boy. He joined up for extremely complicated reasons, we felt. Did you know why?”
I had never really wondered. My picture of my mother’s brother was of the kind of person who would decide on a military career, but evidently they had not been acquainted with that man at all. Finding this disturbing, I attempted to return to my subject. “I was too young to remember him. My sister was more curious than I. Did she seem neurotic to you, while she was here?”
“On the contrary. She was the sanest of us all! Sound as a bell upstairs, as Bernie always said. Sharp intelligence. But, of course, she had been there, you see. And could confirm everything we had been able to piece together at this end.”
“You’re referring to the site they discovered?”
“That, of course, was crucial. Especially at the early stages. Yes, the site was extraordinary. We went out to see it with her, Bernie and I. What a mind-blower, Paul! Amazing experience. Even the small portion they had excavated. Four mechanical sifters just sucking the sand gradually away. It would have taken years in the old days. Unfortunately three of the operators left after the earthquake and the sifters were recalled for some crucial rescue work over in Sinai. And then, of course, everything changed.”
“I’m not sure I’m . . .”
“After the ship came and took Bea.”
“A ship? On the Nile?”
She frowned at me for a moment and then her tone changed to one of distant friendliness. “You’ll probably want a word with Bernie. You’ll find him in his playroom. Nadja will take you. And I’m here if you need to know anything.”
She glanced away, through the glass walls of the conservatory and was at once lost in melancholy reflection of the roses and their guardian trees.
6 The Smoke Along the Track
A tape of some antique radio programme was playing as I knocked on the oak door and was admitted by a white-haired old man wearing a pair of overalls and a check shirt, with carpet slippers on his feet. His skin had the healthy sheen of a sun-baked reptile and his blue eyes were brilliant with trust. I was shocked enough to remain where I was, even as he beckoned me in. He turned down his stereo, a replica of some even older audio contraption, and stood proudly to display a room full of books and toys. One wall was lined with glass shelves on which miniature armies battled amidst a wealth of tiny trees and buildings. “You don’t look much like a potential playmate!” His eyes strayed towards the brilliant jackets of his books.
“And you’re not entirely convincing as Mr. Dick, sir.” I stood near the books, which were all well-ordered, and admired his illustrated Dickens. The temperature in the room was, I guessed, thoroughly controlled. Should the power fail for just a few hours the desert would fade and modify this room as if it had been a photograph left for an hour in the sun.
My retort seemed to please him. He grinned and came forward. “I’m Bernie Roper. While I have no immediate enemies, I enjoy in this room the bliss of endless childhood. I have my lead soldiers, my bears and rabbits, my model farm, and I read widely. Treasure Island is very good, as are the ‘William’ books, and Edgar Rice Burroughs and, as you say, Charles Dickens, though he’s a bit on the scary side sometimes. E. Nesbit and H. G. Wells and Shaw. I enjoy so much. For music I have the very best of Children’s Favourites from the BBC—a mixture of comic songs, Gilbert and Sullivan, Puff the Magic Dragon, The Laughing Policeman, popular classics and light opera. Flanders and Swann, Danny Kaye, Sparky’s Magic Piano, Peter and the Wolf and Song of the South. Do you know any of those? But I’m a silly chap! You’re far too young. They’d even scrapped Children’s Hour before you were born. Oh, dear. Never to enjoy Larry the Lamb or Norman and Henry Bones, the Boy Detectives! Oh!” he exclaimed with a knowing grin. “Calamity!” Then he returned his attention to his toys for a moment. “You think I should carry more responsibility?”
“No.” I had always admired him as a diplomat. He deserved the kind of retirement that suited him.
“I feel sorry for the children,” he said. “The pleasures of childhood are denied to more and more of them as their numbers increase. Rajhid and Abu Halil are no real solution, are they? We who remember the Revolution had hoped to have turned the desert green by now. I plan to die here, Mr.—?”
“My name’s Pappenheim. I’m Bea’s brother.”
“My boy! Thank goodness I offered an explanation. I’m not nearly as eccentric as I look! ‘Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me. We shared a carriage, just we two, and Immortality.’ Emily Dickinson, I believe. But I could also be misremembering. ‘The child is Father to the Man,’ you know. And the lost childhood of Judas. Did you read all those poems at school?”
“I was probably too young again,” I said. “We didn’t do poetry as such.”
“I’m so sorry. All computer studies nowadays, I suppose.”
“Not all, sir.” The old-fashioned courtesy surprised us both. Sir Bernard acted as one cheated and I almost apologised. Yet it was probably the first time I had used the form of address without irony. I had, I realised, wanted to show respect. Sir Bernard had come to the same understanding. “Oh, well. You’re a kind boy. But you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I return to my preferred world.”
“I’m looking for my sister, Sir Bernard. Actually, I’m pretty worried about her.”
Without irritation, he sighed
. “She was a sweet woman. It was terrible. And nobody believing her.”
“Believing what, Sir Bernard?”
“About the spaceship, you know. But that’s Di’s field, really. Not my area of enthusiasm at all. I like to make time stand still. We each have a different way of dealing with the fact of our own mortality, don’t we?” He strolled to one of his displays and picked up a charging 17th Lancer. “Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Sir Bernard.”
“Not at all, Paul. She talked about you. I liked her. I think you’ll find her either attending Abu Halil’s peculiar gymnasium or at the holiday homes. Where those Kenyan girls and boys are now living.”
“Thank you. Goodbye, sir.”
“Bye, bye!” Humming some stirring air, the former Director General of the United Nations hovered, contented, over his miniature Death-or-Glory Boys.
7 Another Relay in the Chain of Fire
Lady Roper had remained in her conservatory. She rose as I entered. “Was Bernie able to help?”
“I could be narrowing things down.” I was anxious to get back to the East Bank before dark. “Thank you for your kindness. I tried to find a phone number for you.”
“We’re not on the phone, lovie. We don’t need one.”
The Best of Michael Moorcock Page 40