The Donkey-Vous mz-3

by Michael Pearce

  “That is true,” the boy agreed.

  “That is a heavy responsibility for one so young.”

  “I am nine,” the boy said.

  “Are you?” said Georgiades, affecting surprise. “I would have said thirteen.”

  “I am big for my age.”

  “That is fine, but it means you get taken for a man when there is work about.”

  “I could do a man’s job,” said the boy, “but my father won’t let me. He keeps me on the buffalo.”

  “Well, that is important. And hard! I expect you work all day?”

  “All day and every day. ”

  “And all alone, too. You don’t see many people here.”

  “Only the people in the fields.”

  “And the occasional stranger.”

  “Not many of them.”

  “Are there any?”

  “There were some the other day. They came like you in an arabeah.”

  “And did they come down and talk to you?”

  “No. They stayed with the arabeah.”

  “It was too hot for them, I expect.”

  “It was the afternoon. Still, there was a Sitt with them.”

  “A lady? Then she would not want to walk far. I expect she just wanted to see the fields.”

  “They are good fields,” said the boy with an air of experience.

  “Indeed they are. Lucky the man who owns them. Not your father?”

  “No. They belong to Sidky.”

  “Does he live in the village?”

  “No, no. He’s a rich man. He lives in the city.”

  “And doesn’t come down here very often, I expect.”

  “He was down here the other day. He came with another man and showed him the fields.”

  “They are good fields.”

  “Yes. I think the man liked them, because he came again.”

  “By himself?”

  “No, no. With the others.”

  “Others?”

  “The man I told you about. There was the Sitt and another man.”

  They stood talking with the boy while the buffalo wound ’round and ’round and the sakiya squeaked and the water plopped out from the buckets into the gutter. As the sun began to set, the opal of the sky was reflected in the changing colors of the river, blue then green then yellow then red, and finally white. A man began to come across the fields toward them.

  “That is my father,” said the boy.

  The man came up, unhitched the buffalo and lifted the boy down. They stood exchanging greetings for a while and then man, boy and buffalo set off back across the fields while Owen and Georgiades went back to the arabeah.

  “It is all very beautiful,” said Georgiades, “but I find it hard to believe that Madame Chevenement and Berthelot are interested in taking up market gardening.”

  It was only half past three and the terrace was still deserted, but already the keenest vendors were creeping back to take up strategic positions in front of the railings. The choicest positions were those nearest the steps and the vendors here guarded their privileges jealously. Despite the heat, they had already reassumed their pitches but since there were as yet no customers above they had squatted down in the dust and were engaged in desultory conversation.

  It was a good moment to catch them. Mahmoud had talked to them all separately, but for that it had been necessary to abstract them from their normal setting and converse in privacy. The artificiality had made them uneasy and he felt they might talk more freely in more natural surroundings. Besides, there were some advantages in them hearing what their neighbors said, as soon became apparent.

  Mahmoud was still trying patiently to identify the dragoman who had been on the terrace and soon after he and Owen had joined the squatting circle he brought the topic up. Which of them had the dragoman actually spoken to?

  “Farkas,” said the strawberry-seller definitely.

  The filthy-postcard-seller at once denied it.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  “Yes, it was,” the strawberry-seller insisted. “I was hoping his party wanted some strawberries and he was coming to me but he walked right past me. Mush kider — is that not so?” he appealed to the flower-seller beside him.

  “No,” said the flower-seller. “He wasn’t coming to you, he was coming to me. I thought perhaps the Sitt wanted some flowers.”

  “She wouldn’t have wanted flowers, not if they were going out. She would have had to carry them. On the way in, perhaps.”

  “She certainly wouldn’t have wanted strawberries. It would have made her hands too messy and then she would have had to have gone back to her room to wash them.”

  “She could have just popped them into her mouth,” said the strawberry-seller.

  This kind of batty, circumlocutory conversation ensued whenever you questioned Arab witnesses. When Owen had first come to Egypt it had regularly driven him to fury. It was Garvin, curiously, who had once taken the trouble to explain to him that that was how an Arab conversation worked. On arriving in Egypt and before taking up his duties as Mamur Zapt, Owen had been posted to Alexandria for a spell under Garvin to learn his trade. His duties had involved going round with Garvin to some of the little rural villages along the coast and hearing lawsuits brought by the villagers. Proceedings were always protracted and on one occasion Owen had boiled over.

  Afterward Garvin had taken him aside.

  “Look,” Garvin had said, “for Arabs, truth is not something you know privately and then describe. It is something you work out together.”

  “But, Christ!” said Owen. “If they’re a witness-”

  “It’s the same thing. What you saw is ingredients for a picture and it’s not until the ingredients have been put together, and that has to be done socially, that you know what the picture is.”

  The apparently circumlocutory nature of the discussion was necessary because it was a way of making sure you had all the pieces of the picture that you wanted to fit together. It also allowed each piece to be weighed and tested against a variety of perspectives so that in the end you got something which everyone could agree was a more or less faithful representation of the facts.

  “But it could take hours!”

  “Well, yes,” Garvin had admitted. “It does.”

  In the villages that was OK. In the cities it sometimes caused problems. Owen had learned the mode and developed patience: but sometimes that patience was put under strain. As now.

  He looked at Mahmoud. Mahmoud so far had not turned a hair.

  “Great, then,” he said calmly, “was the misfortune for both of you when you found that he went not to you but to Farkas.”

  “That was another day,” said the filthy-postcard-seller. “He did not come to me that day.”

  “It was that day,” insisted the strawberry-seller. “Don’t you remember? You were showing someone your cards when you dropped them.”

  “I didn’t drop them. Somebody jogged my elbow.”

  “They fell in the dust and the turkey ate them.”

  “It did not eat them. It slightly chewed one of them.”

  “It was a bit more than a slight chew, though, wasn’t it?” said the flower-seller. “Don’t you remember? It was that card where she-”

  “And this was when the dragoman came over to see you, was it?” Mahmoud intervened.

  “No, before then,” said the flower-seller.

  “He had just picked them up,” said the strawberry-seller. “That was another day,” insisted the filthy-postcard-seller. “No, it wasn’t!” said the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller firmly, both turning on him.

  Farkas was slightly taken aback.

  “I didn’t mean that wasn’t the day when the cards fell in the dust,” he protested. “I meant that the day the cards fell in the dust wasn’t the day the dragoman came over and spoke to me.”

  “What?” said the strawberry-seller, bewildered.

  The flower-seller seemed bemused.

/>   “What day did he come and speak to you?” asked Mahmoud.

  “I forget now.”

  “And what did he want to speak to you about?”

  “I forget.”

  The strawberry-seller and the flower-seller both laughed. “He doesn’t want to say.”

  “It’s a business secret.”

  “Oh?” said Mahmoud.

  The flower-seller took it on himself to explain. “Sometimes,” he said, “the customers don’t like to speak to him directly.”

  “So they send a dragoman.”

  “That’s right. Or the dragoman suggests it. They get a cut, you know.”

  “Is that what happened this day?”

  “I expect so.

  Even Mahmoud could not forbear a sigh.

  “Did you actually hear him?” he asked, with only the faintest hint of exasperation in his voice.

  “They couldn’t have,” said the filthy-postcard-seller, “because it was another day.”

  “Whichever day it was,” said Mahmoud patiently, “did you hear him?”

  The strawberry-seller took one of his strawberries, put it in his mouth and then restored it to the pile glistening with moisture. It looked fresher and more tempting that way.

  “I can’t remember,” he said. He turned to the flower-seller. “Can you remember?”

  “Yes,” said the flower-seller unexpectedly. “But he didn’t really say anything. He just made a sign.”

  “What sign was this?”

  “It was to ward off the evil eye, I expect,” said the strawberry-seller.

  “It wasn’t that sort of sign.”

  “Abdul Hafiz always makes the sign of the evil eye when he sees Farkas.”

  “So does Osman. You wouldn’t think that, would you?”

  “Which of them was it?”

  “Abdul?” said the flower-seller.

  “Osman?” said the strawberry-seller.

  “It was another day,” said the filthy-postcard-seller.

  “I remember now,” said the strawberry-seller, popping another strawberry into his mouth for a few seconds.

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t the sign of the evil eye. It was another sort of sign.”

  “What sort of sign was it?” asked Mahmoud wearily. “Show me!”

  The flower-seller made an unlikely motion with his hand. “And then Farkas went away,” he said.

  “Went away?”

  “It was another day,” said Farkas faintly, as if he had given up hope of convincing anyone. “My supplier had come. He was just pointing him out.”

  “There was no message from the old man on the terrace?”

  “What old man?” asked the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller, turning to Mahmoud with surprise.

  “Jesus,” said Owen under his breath.

  People were coming out on to the terrace above. The vendors gathered their wares.

  “Why!” said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley’s voice suddenly from above. “There’s Captain Owen sitting in the crowd! You do look comfortable, Captain Owen. Can I come down and join you?”

  “For Christ’s sake, no!” said Owen, scrambling hastily to his feet.

  “Then come on up and join us! Please do. Mummy is desperate for someone to talk to. Daddy isn’t saying much today and Gerald is having a fit of the sulks.”

  The vendors had all resumed their places by the railings. There was no point in going on talking to them now. Business was business.

  Owen had got half way up the steps when he remembered Mahmoud and looked around for him. Mahmoud was walking off in the opposite direction.

  “And you, too, Mr. El Zaki!” Lucy hailed him.

  Mahmoud stopped. He half turned and then saw Naylor and Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley.

  “No, thank you,” he said and continued walking.

  “Damn cheek,” said Naylor.

  “Do be quiet, Gerald!” said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. “He just didn’t want to talk to you, and I can understand anyone who feels like that.”

  “Will you have some tea, Captain Owen?” asked her mother. She poured a cup for him. “And how are your investigations getting on?” she inquired.

  The tea had the distinctive, insipid taste of tea drunk the English way with milk.

  “Slowly, I’m afraid.”

  “It seems bewildering,” said Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley. “You would have thought-”

  “They’re all in it,” said Naylor. “That’s the trouble.”

  Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley raised eyebrows at him. He took it not as a sign of reproof but as a request for expansion.

  “That’s why it’s hard to get anywhere. They’re all lying through their teeth.”

  “All?”

  “All. Or pretty damned nearly all. Work it out for yourself. That French chap was out here on the terrace, right? Now if he went back into the hotel the staff on Reception would have seen him. If he went down the steps the drivers would have seen him. And if he stayed where he was but someone came and took him the waiters would have seen it. Whichever way it happened, someone would have seen. But no one saw. That can’t be right. So,” Naylor concluded triumphantly, “they must be lying.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes,” said Naylor seriously. “You see, whichever way it happened there was always the risk that someone else would see, someone who wasn’t supposed to, who wasn’t in it. They wouldn’t have risked that. So they must all be in it.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Oh, not to the same extent, I grant you. I expect a lot of them were just bribed to keep their mouths shut. But they must all have known about it.”

  “I find it hard to believe-”

  “That’s because you don’t know these people, Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley. You haven’t had the advantage of being in this country for-”

  “Six months,” said Owen.

  “Over a year. Oh, you think they’re charming and friendly and polite and so they are: to your face. But behind your back they’re very different. Very different indeed, Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley. They resent us being here-”

  “So they should,” said Lucy.

  “Oh no. That’s-well, I was going to say it’s liberal talk, but it’s just that you haven’t been here for very long. They ought not to resent us, they ought to be well and truly grateful that we are here, for before we came they’d got themselves into a most frightful mess. They had to invite us in to get them out of the mess! Don’t forget that, don’t ever forget that: we’re here by invitation.”

  “Yes, but how exactly does that bear upon the present case, Mr. Naylor, the disappearance of this poor Frenchman?”

  “Well, it’s just that you can’t trust them. They resent us, you see, they all resent us. You can see it in their faces. Even that Zaki fellow. They’d have us out of Egypt in an instant if they could. Of course they can’t. We’re too strong for them. They don’t have the guts to face us directly. But behind our backs-well, as I was saying, behind our backs it’s a very different matter. Still, as long as they keep it behind our backs I don’t mind. It’s when they do it to our faces that I object. We call it dumb insolence, you know, in the army, Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley. And we ought to treat it in the same way. If I catch any of my fellows giving me or any of the sergeants a bit of dumb insolence, I give him what-for, I can tell you. And we ought to do the same with these fellows. We’re letting them get out of hand, that’s the trouble. We ought to put them down and keep them down! That’s what I always say.”

  “Always?”

  “In the Mess.”

  “Very rousing, I am sure,” said Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley, who sounded occasionally very like her daughter. “But how exactly would you apply it to poor Monsieur Moulin?”

  “Arrest the lot of them,” said Naylor confidently.

  “But how exactly would that-”

  “They’re all lying, Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley, so we’ve got to get the truth out of them. Well, get them in our barracks for a day or two, Mrs. Colthorpe
Hartley, and I can guarantee we’ll soon have it out of them.”

  “But Captain Owen has been working hard, I am sure, and he-”

  “It’s the difference between a civil administration and a military administration, Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley. The civilians are too soft. There! I’ve said it! It’s not what some of those at home would like to hear when you’re out on the Frontier-”

  “Egypt? The Frontier?” said Owen.

  “The trouble with civilians,” said Naylor, nettled and thinking he was being offensive by using the term, “is that they forget the realities of power.”

  “Gracious!” said Lucy, resting her elbows on the table. “And what are they?”

  “Britain governs Egypt because of her army.”

  “So?”

  “We ought to be allowed to get on with it.”

  It was a staple theme of the Messes, echoed not just by subalterns but by those higher up. The Sudan, to the south, had a purely military administration. There were those who felt that Egypt should have one too.

  Not just in the army.

  “You should talk to Madame Moulin,” Owen said to Naylor. “She had ideas which are not dissimilar.”

  “Madame Moulin?” Lucy looked surprised. “I thought she had-”

  “You’re thinking of Madame Chevenement. This is Monsieur Moulin’s wife. An elderly lady, dressed in black. She has only recently arrived. You may not have seen her.”

  “Poor woman!”

  Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley looked thoughtful. “Lucy, I think perhaps we should leave our cards.”

  “We should certainly do something. But how exactly does one leave cards in a hotel? Push them under the door?”

  “We will leave them at Reception,” said Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley with dignity. “And we will do it now,” she said, getting up from her chair.

  Everyone rose to their feet. Lucy went with her mother. Naylor, after a moment’s hesitation, followed them. Owen was about to depart when Mr. Colthorpe Hartley laid a hand on his sleeve.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Want to talk to you.”

  They sat down again. Having announced his intention, Mr. Colthorpe Hartley seemed a little at a loss how to proceed.

  “It’s this damned dragoman business,” he said at last.

  “Yes?”

  “Bad,” he said. “Can’t remember.”