The Man from the 'Turkish Slave'

by Victor Canning

  They used the torch as little as possible. Tereza liked the way he worked, quickly but without hurry, as though there was no excitement in him. She thought of the way he had kissed her. She had been surprised but not displeased. Almost she felt now, she would have been disappointed if it had not happened. She liked him, yes. He was solid, compact, quiet and efficient.

  ‘Torch.’

  He was reading the name on the side of the case. It read, ‘Lopez Miranda, Santos.’

  When he had the case open there was no difficulty in picking out the cans which had been in the Pastori brothers’ house. To anyone looking for it, the sealing of their lids gave them away from the others. He took three of them and then closed the case. From a small shed near the cannery door Tereza fetched a roll of gummed tape and they re-sealed the carton.

  As Peter lifted the case back into place, Tereza said, ‘I have told Quisto. He knows we are here. But I have said nothing about Doctor Jaeger.’

  Peter nodded. They could not keep everything from Quisto.

  ‘I don’t want to open these cans at Grazia’s. We’d better go up to your house.’

  Peter tucked the cans into the front of his shirt.

  Outside the gate he whispered to Tereza, ‘You go on ahead. Better for us not to be seen together. I’ll join you at the house.’

  ‘And my father?’ Her hand was on his, naturally, almost unnoticed as she spoke. The darkness, the excitement which was running high in them, brought them close.

  ‘As I pass Grazia’s I’ll give him a sign.’

  Tereza moved off, sliding away into the shadows. Unseen by her, he blew a kiss after her.

  As he stood there, giving her five minutes’ grace, he fancied he heard a movement from within the yard. He waited, but it did not come again. Cat or a rat, he thought, and dismissed it as he moved off.

  It was no cat, or rat. A few moments after he had gone a figure within the yard moved out from the cover of a pile of timber and stood looking at the Lopez Miranda case.

  The figure turned and moved across the yard. A pair of hands reached up for the top of the gate and a thin figure pulled itself lithely to the top of the fence and dropped into the darkness outside.

  Peter walked slowly by Commere Grazia’s, his arms folded across his front to hide the bulge of the tins. Grazia was at the piano and shouted a greeting to him. He grinned back at her. Quisto was sitting with Guarani and Lesset, drinking. He looked up and saw Peter. No sign passed between them, and there was no need of any. Peter passed on, the darkness swallowing him up.

  Quisto let him go. Slowly he finished his drink, then got up and, after a few moments’ chat with Grazia, went down the steps. He kicked Bobo into a vertical position and mounted. The moment he was out of sight of the place, his heels began to thud into Bobo’s hide harder than they had ever done and that surprised beast found itself for the first time trotting up the path towards the villa.

  A little later they were all three in Tereza’s bedroom with the door locked. Tereza had a can-opener from the kitchen. She held it out towards the two men.

  Quisto took it at once. He grabbed one of the cans and began to open it. Peter and Tereza watched.

  Quisto was so excited that he took a long time opening the can and did it clumsily. Once or twice the opener slipped and he swore to himself in Portuguese impatiently. The top came off, to reveal a layer of cork chippings. With a swift movement, Quisto turned the tin over and shook out its contents on the table. A shower of packing came out and spread in a brown drift across the table.

  They stood there, the three of them, in silence, looking down at the table. The only light in the room came from candles which Tereza had lit and placed in wall brackets. Their flames shifted and swayed in the gentle current of air that came into the room between the drawn curtains of the window opening to the balcony. Soft, wavering shadows flickered about the room, and from the spread of cork on the table the lights struck little fires of brilliance and colour; a rich, adamantine sparkle that held their eyes and for a while kept them silent. Lying loose among the cork chippings were twelve of the largest diamonds Peter had ever seen.

  Tereza gave a sigh of pleasure at the sight and reached out. She picked one up, holding it towards the candles. It burned and shot off swift reflections with the movement. Quisto looked at Peter and then took another can. He was frowning, and worked ponderously. In a little while all three cans were open and the table top was covered with cork. Carefully, his large hands moving clumsily amongst the beauty, Quisto edged aside the cork.

  In all there were the twelve diamonds, two rubies much larger than any of the diamonds, some sapphires and emeralds of various sizes as though they had been separated from carefully-graded necklaces and, from the last can, a four-string collar of pearls held with a broad diamond clasp.

  For a moment none of them were thinking about smuggling or where the jewels came from. They just looked at them, reluctant almost to touch them, held by their beauty.

  Then Tereza picked up the pearl collar and put it round her neck. She swung towards a mirror and admired herself. Peter saw her face, perfectly shaped, lovely and, at this moment, touched with a regality unconsciously adopted to match the queenly splendour of the pearls about her neck that took the warmth from her skin, glowing softly against its duskiness.

  She came back and put the collar on the table. Peter sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. He felt a little overawed.

  ‘How much do you think that lot’s worth, Quisto?’

  His words touched Quisto off. He threw up his hands and shook his head, the great mane of white hair flying around his ears.

  ‘A fortune! A king’s ransom! It could buy up this island and a hundred like it and still leave enough for a lifetime of royal squandering. Olé senhor! The beauty of the splendour of them—and the evil. For a moment I was saying to myself “ Put them in your pocket, Quisto. Take them. Enjoy yourself”.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about jewels,’ Peter said soberly, ‘ but those diamonds are bigger than anything I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Oh, Assis, the rogue!’ Quisto stirred angrily, but Peter stood up and went to him.

  ‘Listen, Quisto, you’ve got to forget Assis and the Pastori brothers. They’re nothing. Just links in a long chain. If we give ourselves away, then we shall be in trouble.’ He was ramming each word home vigorously. Quisto had got to understand the danger. Seeing these jewels had made it clear to him in a way he had not appreciated until now just how big this affair was. Men who worked outside the law for this, kind of money weren’t going to be squeamish if anyone got in their way. Without any wish on his part, innocently, he had involved Quisto and Tereza in this … and he felt responsible for them. It was up to him to keep them clear of danger. They had been good to him. They were his friends and he did not want them hurt.

  ‘I understand perfectly,’ said Quisto gravely. ‘Also my anger is not for Assis and the others, I think of the man you saw in the Pastori house. It is a pity you could not recognise him, Peter.’

  ‘He may be anyone.’ Peter looked at Tereza. It was even more important now to keep Jaeger’s name from Quisto. ‘But we know enough … how the thing is done, and who it goes to on the mainland. We’ve got to decide here and now what we’re going to do about this and then stick to it. But whatever we do we mustn’t make anyone suspicious.’

  He should not have been surprised, but it exasperated him when Quisto suddenly put his hands on his shoulders and beamed.

  ‘Peter … I was forgetting.’ It was clear that he had paid little attention to what Peter had said. ‘The reward. We know so much now.’ He shook Peter gently. ‘ We have found them. We have uncovered the whole game. The reward will now be bigger.’

  ‘Quisto.’ Peter’s voice was heavy with forced patience.

  Quisto ignored him, running on. ‘ We share the reward, naturally. Though, may be, Tereza’s part will be a little smaller than yours and mine.’

  Peter looked at Terez
a, raising his eyes. Momentarily a smile moved about her lips.

  Quisto went on happily, ‘To-morrow morning I shall take one of the boats and go to the mainland and inform the police. The jewels I shall take with me.’

  ‘No.’ It was Tereza. ‘That would at once start people talking and wondering. You have never done such a thing in your life. Everyone knows you always go to Santos on the fortnightly boat. Why could you not wait, they will ask? That is just what we must avoid.’

  ‘True,’ Quisto nodded. ‘Anyway, I have remembered. I cannot go. In a few days’ time there is the Blessing of the Boats. Not for thirty years have I missed it. It is a wonderful ceremony, Senhor Peter. You will be impressed.’

  ‘I’m sure I will. Now listen to me, Quisto.’ There was only one line of action and Peter meant to have it that way. He could guess that he had Tereza’s backing. ‘We shall all carry on as usual. We shall say and do nothing to rouse suspicion. If we find out anything more, so much to the good. When the fortnightly boat arrives, you and I will go off on it. No one will think that’s strange. When we get to Santos, we can stop the consignment of cans and we will inform my man in Sao Paulo. It‘s simple and there will be no trouble. But we must all go on acting normally. Is that clear?’

  ‘Admirably, Senhor Peter. With the reward money I shall enlarge the cannery and buy an electric light plant for the house. Just think of those beautiful chandeliers blazing with lights. You are in darkness. Do you fumble for a match and a greasy candle? No. Click. Por Deus, the miracle of light! We had it once, but when I started the factory we moved the engine down there.’

  His enthusiasm touched Tereza. The excitement she had held down to help Peter broke through. Her fingers caressed the jewels, and she cried, ‘We must also have new curtains and carpets. Why bring more light into the house to show up its shabbiness?’ Her eyes were shining.

  ‘And clothes, Tereza. You shall have a gown fit for an empress. Ah, she is beautiful, my Tereza, senhor. But she shall be more beautiful.’

  ‘And a refrigerator. With electricity we can have one,’ Tereza ran on.

  Peter laughed. He stood up and gathered the jewels and the pearl collar into his handkerchief. The two stared at him.

  He smiled at them. ‘I’m going to look after these. I love you both, but I don’t want Tereza wearing the collar in public, or you showing off the stones at Grazia’s, Quisto.’

  That night, behind his bolted bedroom door, he slit up his mattress and hid the bulky handkerchief in it.

  Both Quisto and Tereza had walked to the gate of the villa garden with Peter. As they returned, Quisto said seriously: ‘When we talk of the reward, Senhor Peter shows little interest. Has he no feeling for money?’

  Tereza watched a great moth come hawking through the shadowed olives.

  ‘I do not know him very well, but I feel that for him there is something more important than the reward. We should not talk about it so much. It is not to our credit.’

  ‘I talk of it because I do not trust myself to think of the villainy that lies behind it. Also, I begin to feel happy, my child. This evil is soon to be finished. When the island knows about it … then perhaps my people will be more contented with life here. Desire for the outside world and its goods brings only evil.’

  Tereza smiled. ‘It is easy for you to say that. You have known them.’

  Quisto looked across at her and sighed. ‘ So. You, too, would like to go away. You also find this island too small.’

  ‘I would like to see the world, yes.’

  ‘It would be better to marry and settle down here.’

  ‘That, too.’ As she said it she was thinking of Peter and the wife he had had. It was strange, she decided frankly, that she could be jealous of someone she had never seen.

  ‘All these things will come to you in time. You will see the world. You will marry, and you will settle down—maybe not here. I am old, but no fool. The young bird leaves the nest.’ Then with a sudden lift of spirits, Quisto laughed. ‘Ola, when I was young I flew! But you will discover nothing new, no greater happiness in the world than is here on this island.’

  Chapter Eight

  There was the usual little morning tonsure of cloud around the crest of Pae. A turtle had been roped by some boys in a boat out in the middle of the harbour, and their shouts were echoing noisily from the cliffs. Quisto smiled happily. It was a good place Portos Marias. His place.

  Dogs scratched themselves in the sun; Grazia and Anita were scouring pots with sand at the mouth of the culvert below the square wall; Pasquale, tied to his room with a broken leg like a tethered goat, was bleating at his wife who was gossiping under the palms with the other women; the fishing was going well; the petrol engine, at the cannery now worked magnificently, and at the villa—thanks also to Peter—all the water-closets flushed properly. Oh, the brave Peter—he was a genius with his hands. And Portos Marias—no matter about the jewel smuggling—was a good place.

  Quisto was helping Nimo Dinez and his crew finish the painting of the Borrisco. It lay alongside the wooden jetty with the other fishing boats. With long strokes of yellow, red and blue he was re-painting one of the two large eyes which featured on the bows. Every boat in the place carried these eyes, a tradition which had come from Portugal with the first settlers. The Borrisco was being repainted for the Blessing of the Boats which was to take place the next day. Each year a different boat was chosen for this ceremony. It was re-painted, hung with garlands and, in the evening while the people of Portos Marias danced and indulged themselves in eating and drinking and a fine firework display in the open square, the boat sailed out for a night’s fishing. Quisto, as the chief citizen of the island, always went with the chosen crew. When the boat returned in the early hours of the next morning with its catch, it was met on the quay by a procession from the church headed by Father Gordano. The statue of the Virgin from behind the altar was carried aloft under its decorated baldachin by six fishermen. The boats were blessed and then the procession, bearing the catch of the chosen boat, returned to the church for a short service. After this the feasting and dancing carried on throughout the rest of the day. The ceremony itself was not simply concerned with the blessing of the boats and prayer for good fishing in the year to come; it was also a thanksgiving for it took place on the anniversary of the day the first emigrant survivors had struggled ashore from their wreck to the island.

  Quisto, cigar in mouth, his cummerbund tight and sustaining around his middle, daubed away contentedly. Up on deck he could hear Nimo and his men singing happily as they worked. And Quisto was happy, too. He liked painting, particularly when he was given the small, decorative details to do. Painting a sweep of planking was dull work; but lining in the gay colours of a name or the great eye …

  Ah, that called for an artist.

  He was happy, also, because a wonderful idea had occurred to him. For a long time, on and off, it had worried him that there seemed no man on the island good enough to become the husband of Tereza. But now the difficulty was solved. He had seen the way Peter looked at his daughter and he had guessed what was in his thoughts. He also understood Tereza well enough to know that she liked Peter … He nodded to himself happily. It would have so many advantages. A solid, dependable type, like granite against Tereza’s quicksilver; a man who had an instinct for neatness and order—already he was going round the house repairing stairboards, re-glazing windows and silencing hinges and locks with an oilcan—and a man whom he liked and respected; what more could his daughter ask for? And also, it meant the reward would be kept within the family.

  Nimo leaned over the side and said, ‘You are using too much blue.’

  Quisto waved his brush at him contemptuously. ‘One cannot use too much blue. It is the colour of heaven.’

  ‘You are also dripping it over your clothes.’

  ‘Praise be to God then, for it is the sign of a good workman that you should know him by his clothes. A fisherman carries the scales of bonito on his slee
ves, a shepherd the tags of fleece on his gaiters, and a tailor the ends of thread on his waistcoat. I am an artist—so, I am splashed with paint. And anyway, a little petrol will fetch it out. Go back to your work, piano player.’

  Quisto was left to his painting. He went on thinking about Peter and Tereza and the reward. It would be good to know who the man was whom Peter had seen in the Pastori house, for then they would have so much to tell the man in Sao Paulo … Ah, the blessed reward could not be too big. Once this evil was cleaned from the island there was much to be done with the money. Father Gordano should have the new candlesticks he needed for the altar; they would level a piece of ground on the clifftop for the boys to play football … no more broken windows in the square. It was a pity that Peter would not let him make open enquiries … Still, that was reasonable. One had to be careful. Oh, that devil Assis, and those rogues, the Pastori brothers!

  Father Gordano came along the jetty. Quisto called to him: ‘We are nearly finished, Father. All will be ready for this evening—even if I have to go without my siesta to-day.’

  Father Gordano smiled. ‘ I see you are ready for any sacrifice, Quisto. But, do you not think, my son, that you are using too much blue?’

  On deck Nimo Dinez laughed.

  Peter stood at his window, looking out at the darkening square. Below him, from the pool of light that was the bodega platform, came the chink of glasses and the sound of voices … quick, eager excited voices, sharing the spirit which had hung over the square all day. Suddenly Portos Marias had acquired a new life, feverish, expectant and gay. None of the boats had gone out fishing that afternoon. All the men had been busy hanging flags and garlands about the square, and stringing rows of paper lanterns between the trees and houses. Peter, helping them, felt it would be a miracle if the whole place were not set on fire when the candles were lit.

  This evening and the morrow would mark the crown of the year for Portos Marias. At the foot of the jetty a great wooden structure had been erected under Doctor Jaeger’s supervision to hold the firework display. Seeing Jaeger busy on this as he carried about lanterns and helped with the ladders and garlands, Peter had sensed a remoteness from the man in him. All that was over. All he had to do now was to relax and enjoy himself with the rest of the town. He had been lucky. There was no more he could learn here … Ahead of him now were a bright succession of days until the Bolivar arrived, days which would hold long hours with Tereza, days of lazy contentment … Momentarily, afraid of his own confidence, he crossed his fingers. Out in the square came a shout of happy children’s voices and he saw the first of the lanterns by the jetty being lit up, small firefly points of light. It was time for him to go up to Quisto’s villa.