The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel
Page 8
I couldn’t see any more and I didn’t know what was happening. Then it seemed that many hands grasped me and lifted me off my feet, and I felt as though I were in the grip of giants, because I knew I was being lifted easily into the air and whisked away. And Joe P. Heggy is no lightweight.
I don’t know what I thought being carried along like that. I don’t even know whether I was thinking at all. I was blinded by mud in my eyes and darkness, and I had no strength left following that appalling drop into that breath-taking mud. I suppose if I thought at all I merely thought that I’d been picked up by Turkish troglodytes or their equivalent. For I could sense in some way that I was being taken rapidly underground.
Then my head ran into something that caught in my muddy hair and I could feel it was some sort of hessian, perhaps a curtain of sacking. At the same time I got the smell of wood-smoke in my nostrils, and I began to see through the mud over my eyes. I could see the leaping gleams of firelight.
I was put down then, and fairly gently, too. I lay where I was for a few seconds, and then I groaned and rolled on to my back and dug the dirt out of my eyes.
When I could see, I thought of the pep talks that our coach had given us in our darkest hours against Yale or the Navy in college football games, and I went over them to myself and that gave me strength enough to sit up and look around me.
There wasn’t much to see at all. I was in some sort of recess, probably at the back of the wharf, high above the water line. A shelf had been dug into the rocky shore, and over the entrance to it hung that curtain of sackcloth. My guess is that that curtain was intended to prevent the firelight from being seen by water police travelling along the Horn in their launches. I looked at the troglodytes, and I found myself gazing upon barbarian folk.
There were about eight of them, crouched round the red, leaping fire, and they looked a savage, unkempt people. Their hair was long and coarse and matted so that it came down over eyes that gleamed redly in that firelight and never left my face. They were in rags, as ragged a bunch of men as I’ve ever seen. And they were without boots or shoes to their feet and their pants’ legs were ragged up to their knees.
But they were men, mighty men. Men filled with a strength such as rarely comes to most of mankind. They weren’t any bigger than the average man, but their muscles were mighty in every part of their limbs and body.
For I knew them at a glance. I had seen these troglodytes many a time before. They were some of the porters of Istanbul.
If you wish to have goods moved, even today in Istanbul, it is generally cheaper to have them carried on the backs and heads of men than it is to employ motor transport. Labour is that cheap in Turkey, even today. You see them struggling up the hillsides carrying fantastic weights, sometimes with a head rope to support mighty loads on their backs, other times staggering with the full weight upon their solid-looking skulls. There is a story that any one of these porters can lift a grand piano onto his head and carry it from Galata Bridge right up to the heights of Pera without once stopping to have a rest. It is probably exaggeration. Probably they do rest—for quite half a minute.
They work as men were never intended to work, straining their lives away in the heat of a Turkish summer, and I have pitied them always because in the end it would be more efficient to use a few horse-power, as we do in the States. And I know that the lives of these men must be short because no man can survive a youth spent in this killing occupation.
I sat up as strength came back to me, and I even tried to scrape the mud off my clothes. It wasn’t successful and I gave up the attempt. The fierce-looking porters were watching me, probably not knowing what manner of man I was because of my mud disguise. For all they knew I might even be one of them.
Then I spoke, and though probably none of them spoke English, they would recognize me for a foreigner immediately.
I said: “Boys, I sure owe you a lot for what you just did for me. Let me get my breath back and we’ll talk about throwing a party, shall we?”
The sound of my American voice seemed to fill them with suppressed excitement. I saw those troglodytes, their faces illuminated by the hot coals of that smouldering fire, turn and talk to each other in that quick succession of guttural sounds which is Turkish. And then one of them got up off his mighty haunches and came padding on work-calloused feet towards me.
He bent over me, and he wasn’t fastidious in the least. He showed no revulsion at grabbing the slimy object that was Joe P. Heggy, and hoisting him roughly to his feet. I wouldn’t have had the strength to resist even in my normal condition, because these were trained weightlifters, and you don’t stand much chance against the professional in any branch of life. I felt his huge hand dig into my pocket, and he came out immediately with my pocketbook.
He knew at once that he was in the money and he went back to the fireside and I saw the boys gather round excitedly to examine the contents of that wallet. It hadn’t suffered at all in the mud-bath, unlike its owner, and the currency was readily identifiable. To me it didn’t amount to much. Maybe the equivalent of a couple of hundred bucks in Turkish money, and a few bits of paper representing change from visits to Greece and Cyprus and other territories. But to these ragged men it must have been wealth beyond their dreams.
I stood there, swaying, watching them, and I didn’t give a damn even if they were robbing me. The hell, I would have given it to them for hoicking me out of that mud! I even said so.
I went a little uncertainly in amongst them, and reached down for my pocketbook. The papers inside were valuable to me and of no use to the porters, so I wanted to take it.
But they got the wrong idea. They thought I was trying to get my money back, and one of them grabbed me by the wrist and did painful things to it and shoved me back against the rocky wall, and his face was savage and the glare in his eyes was murderous. These men lived such a hard life that a killing in order to give themselves a tiny, unaccustomed comfort would not trouble their consciences at all.
I knew he didn’t understand me but I kept talking. I kept saying: “Look, brother, I don’t want that goddamned money. You can keep it. Dammit, I’ll come back with a bucketful, if that’s all you need. But I want those papers.”
And after a time I think those porters got the gist of what I was saying. The big, muscular troglodyte who had held me released his grip, and then, as is the way with their kind, he became suddenly friendly in the big expansive way of a schoolboy.
They held out my pocketbook and I took it, and then I looked towards the money and I waved my muddy hand in a way to suggest, the hell, I didn’t want it, anyway!
That made us friends all round. They relaxed and laughed a lot and slapped me on my back, and I just wished then that they’d stopped at laughing. They made coffee in Turkish fashion in a tiny battered copper pan and though there was no sugar to go with it, it tasted good to me and I felt better after the drink. And then I went to one side because I felt that if I didn’t rest I’d collapse, and I lay down on the bare rock and fell asleep.
When I awoke I was a corpse. I was neatly laid out with my hands folded across my stomach and I was entirely nude.
I was also so cold that for minutes I couldn’t move my bruised limbs because of the chill in my muscles. The fire was out, and was just a mound of black ashes to my left. The curtain must have been drawn back because light came reflecting from the distant water and mirrored in moving patterns on the rough rock wall of this small hideout of these porters, probably too poor to pay for better lodgings.
I lay there and watched those moving, dappled sun patterns on the rough-hewn rock roof above me, and I thought that I was never going to move again
Added to my coldness was an intolerable stiffness that came from bruised and tired muscles. I’d been smacked around more than somewhat, then tossed fifty feet into mud, which was only soft when you tried to stand up in it. And that was enough for any man’s body for quite some time, and now I was having to pay for the ill treatment.
And then, somehow, I got to my feet, and stood swaying there while a dizziness passed over me.
I looked at myself and realized that my hands up to my forearms were black with encrusted mud. My hair was solid with dried mud, too, and I guessed that my face and neck were covered with the damned silt. I knew that I looked a sight, with my pretty, pink clean body and my muddied arms and head, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
I was sore, and I’m not meaning just physically, either.
I’d gone to sleep during the night with a feeling of confidence in those rough porter fellows. I felt they were friends and that no harm would come to me.
But in the night, when I was sleeping a sleep so deep that it came close unto unconsciousness, they’d stripped me of everything I had and had gone off, leaving me in my nudity.
It seemed a lousy trick to play on a man, especially after I had so willingly given them all the money I’d possessed. After all, I argued, my clothes wouldn’t be worth a damn to them after the brawling I’d done in them the previous evening. They might at least have left me my rags, I kept growling.
Probably anger helped me to recover quicker than I’d expected. The hot blood came rushing into my veins as I thought of the doggone heels who had left me in this state.
I didn’t wince now as I walked about, and the walking helped to free my muscles.
But swearing under my breath wasn’t helping the situation at all. I felt singularly helpless. I mean, what does a fellow do when he finds himself stranded in the middle of a city—a foreign city at that—without any clothes? I shivered at the thought of finding my way out to a street. This low quarter of Istanbul wouldn’t take to a naked foreigner suddenly appearing and being unable to explain why he went abroad in daylight without any clothes on. There’d be a lot of trouble about it, and in my mind’s eye I pictured angry mobs coming to knock the hell out of the foreigner for offering insults to their womenfolk.
But even more I was afraid of what the boys would say if they had to come and bail me out for an indecent display of manhood here in Istanbul.
Someone giggled.
My head gawked round in an instant.
Two girls had come to the entrance where the sacking curtain had hung and were looking at me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LAVINIA AGAIN
They were two young, broad-thewn young women, clearly of this strong, porter stock. They were what you’d dismiss as a peasant-type, though pleasant enough creatures because youth was still on their side.
Their hair was jet black and coarse and hung in disorder over their shoulders. They had broad, solid faces that were brown in the manner of women who had to work in the sun; but they were rather jolly faces, especially now when they were laughing at me, and there were merry lights in their brown, good-tempered eyes.
They were barefooted, and like their menfolk, constant walking and working in bare feet had made them of unusual size. They would have created a sensation if they had gone into a 5th Avenue shoe shop and asked for the latest footwear. And they wore one simple garment, a kind of Mother Hubbard such as the missionaries used to give out to Tahiti maidens in the old days. One look at those thin cotton dresses told you that that was all they wore.
They were giggling there and looking a bit bashful and coy, and they weren’t making any move to come near me. But Joe P. Heggy wasn’t abashed in the least. I’ve never seen what harm it does a man to be looked on by the other sex as I was then. And I didn’t give a damn if I did look funny.
All I knew was that in those girls’ hands were a pile of neatly-folded clothing. And if those weren’t my pants on top, I was a blue-nosed Hottentot. And my nose isn’t blue.
I went quickly up to the girls, my hands outstretched, and they started to run away from me, so I stopped and hollered at them, because I didn’t want to lose my pants a second time.
I stood there and saw them halt on the mud between the mighty, green-encrusted supports to the wharf overhead. There was water under the wharf now, as if the small tide which creeps into the Horn was at its fullest.
When they saw me beckoning impatiently towards them, they had a quick chatter together, laughing in some sort of feminine hysteria the while, and then slowly they came back into this small rocky cell that was home to their porter friends.
I reached out and grabbed my pants when they came near enough. I was so obviously concerned about getting into my clothes that the girls lost some of their feelings of uncertainty. While I got myself zipped up they chattered and squealed with laughter while they regarded me.
I said: “Go on, gals, give yourselves a good laugh. Sure, I know I look a clown, like this, but I’m alive, aren’t l? So why should I worry?”
And quite truthfully I didn’t seem to have a worry in the world just then. I’d survived the night and my fears in regard to my lost clothing had proved groundless. Relief came with the thought that I wouldn’t have to make an exhibition of myself, and it flooded out any previous thoughts that had been tinged with acrimony.
I said: “And you give the boys my thanks. It sure was mighty thoughtful of ’em to get my clothes washed and dried in time for me to use them today.”
They didn’t understand a darned word I was saying, but you can’t get yourself dressed under the very interested inspection of two sturdy and not uncomely females without saying something.
And then I got a surprise.
I suppose I should have expected it. Women may act like scary sheep most of the time, but when it comes to cases they become more direct than men. You know what I mean. The most modest of girls will shake a man by an unexpected forwardness.
Now, just when I was about to button my shirt, the smaller of the two peasant girls moved forward and pushed away my hand, and then with the back of her knuckles she gently stroked my ribs.
I looked at her and said: “Go on, babe, if you like it.” And I put humour into my tone.
The girl met my eyes and laughed at me. And then she turned to her companion and said something and then they both came and stroked my ribs.
I submitted for a few seconds and then told them the show was over and I finished dressing. I suppose they weren’t used to seeing such soft, pink and white flesh such as we shirted individuals from the pampered West possess. I suppose the only men they knew were those mighty carthorses of creatures, with muscles like board and a skin like leather. They’d never seen a man like Joe P. Heggy, and they were marvelling at me, and I felt inclined to simper then, like some little girl who had got the eye of he-wolves upon her.
I felt smart when I was in my neatly-pressed, newly-cleaned suit. Even my wallet and keys and other pocket impedimenta had been replaced. It was only when I remembered that I was caked in mud all over my head and that my hands didn’t look their usual hygienic whiteness, either, that some of the sense of smartness left me.
I said to the girls: “Go on, gals, get me out of here.”
They got me all right. They turned and went clambering among the rocks under this huge high wharf, and I realized we were following a little pathway which gradually climbed up and round the end of the structure. We came out where some crazy, tumbledown ruins of houses started where the wharf ended. I found myself walking down a narrow cobbled alleyway that was almost white in the hot morning sun.
As soon as my feet were on the street, the two girls scurried away. I understood. There’s a lot of the harem atmosphere about Turkey, in spite of the efforts to put an end to the old religious beliefs, and these girls didn’t dare be seen in public with an infidel.
People came to their doors as I strolled along—mostly women but with children and some old men among them, too. I loo
ked into astonished, brown, wrinkled faces, and I quickly averted my eyes and walked with all the dignity I could muster. I tried, in fact, to give the impression that there was nothing an American liked better than to cake his hands and head in mud and then take a morning stroll in the sunshine.
It didn’t kid the kids, however, and they came after me in their rags and bare feet, with their skulls shorn to the bone almost. And they shouted with delight, and said things that couldn’t have been complimentary.
And then I came out in a square where there was a lot of traffic and I stopped all that traffic because excited people came running across to see me. I could only thank God I’d had my trousers brought back to me!
Fortunately a man with enterprise in charge of a taxi realized I had need of him, and he crashed his way through the crowd and held open the door of his big American limousine invitingly. I went inside so quickly, I nearly went through the far window. I gave the address of my hotel and we lurched away.
We roared majestically up towards the swank quarter of Pera. As we came up the steep, winding hill road under that Turkish sun which was already swelteringly hot, we overtook a column of porters on a removal job.
That’s exactly what it was—a removal job.
Some of the men were carrying heavy, upholstered chairs upturned on their heads, and they were the luckiest. For another barelegged, ragged-trousered porter was staggering under a long, ornate, heavy ottoman. Yet another had a sideboard of early-Victorian design on his thin-shirted shoulders, and then came others bearing enormous bundles of bedding in which doubtless were wrapped family essentials such as pots and pans and other kitchen utensils.
I leaned from the big American-type taxi as we shot past them, intent on recognizing any of my late friends if it were possible. But they all looked alike—they were all unshaven, ragged, barefooted, muscular men, sweating their hearts out under those intolerable burdens under that oppressive sun and up a hillside that made even my taxi driver have to change down.