A Cold Touch of Ice

by Michael Pearce

  The onlookers redisposed themselves to get a better view. Children pushed forward right under the linked arms of the policemen. At the point where the soldiers would come closest, the crowd was at its most dense. Amina, having wriggled forward on hands and knees, suddenly appeared at the feet of one of the policemen.

  Selim looked down.

  ‘Since you’re so close to the ground already, my love,’ he said, ‘why don’t you just turn over and lie on your back?’

  ‘You shut up, you big bastard!’ hissed Amina, keeping her eyes fixed intently on the approaching Artillery.

  Selim followed the direction of her gaze.

  ‘Out of your reach, I would have thought,’ he said critically.

  Owen could see now the object of her attention. It was Mahmoud’s friend, Kamal.

  Amina’s eyes drank him in. He passed by, however, without noticing her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Over the next week there was a sharp increase in the number of attacks on foreign persons and property. Stones were thrown, windows broken, walls daubed. It was all, however, satisfactorily minor.

  ‘Unfortunate times,’ he murmured to Nuri Pasha, when he chanced to meet him one day, wishing to play down his satisfaction.

  ‘Unfortunate times indeed,’ said Zeinab’s father, ‘and doubly unfortunate for me.’

  ‘But why? Surely it is at times like this that the Khedive will especially value the advice of an old friend?’

  ‘He has been hurt,’ said Nuri, ‘deeply hurt. And he has kicked out all his advisers.’

  ‘Dear, dear!’

  ‘But that’s not the worst part about it,’ said Nuri. ‘The fact is, I had hopes of personal benefit from this latest scheme of his—the railway, you know. I was hoping to be able to sell some land.’

  ‘But the land the railway is on all belongs to the State. It’s not even the Khedive’s.’

  ‘Well, that’s doubtful, isn’t it?’ said Nuri. ‘It’s the Khedive, after all, and the Khedive, surely, is the State. But, actually, my land isn’t there, it’s on the other side of Alexandria.’

  ‘But there isn’t a railway there at all!’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Nuri. ‘But there will be. At least, there would have been if this had gone through. It’s logical, isn’t it? Connect up the systems. Turkey to Tripolitania. Visionary! That’s what I call it: visionary. And now,’ said Nuri sadly, ‘the vision is not to be realized. And my estate is exactly in the line that an extension would take! It’s a small estate, complete desert, of course, not a chance of anything growing. But strategically placed. Its value, one might say, is all in the vision. And now all chance of realizing the vision has been dashed. I call Lord Kitchener’s action high-handed!’ said Nuri reproachfully. ‘High-handed!’

  He shook his head mournfully.

  ‘And—and short-sighted! Well, isn’t that the truth of it? It is no longer to the West that one must look for vision; not to the bankers of London or’—with a tinge of regret—‘the boulevards of Paris. No, all that belongs to the past. The future lies east. In Constantinople. Those new fellows. Men of vision.’

  It was a view that was coming to be widely shared in Egypt; although, perhaps, not quite in the form it took for Nuri.

  ***

  Nikos came in and laid the latest batch of threatening letters on Owen’s desk. Most recipients had got into the habit now of sending the letters to Owen directly they arrived. Not, as someone tartly pointed out, that that seemed to do much good.

  The latest letters were more or less the same as the earlier ones: all handwritten by a bazaar letter-writer, and usually the same letter-writer. Owen was sure now that the sender of the letters must be illiterate.

  No personality came through the letters. There was something slightly mechanical about them, almost as if they had been composed to a formula. There was never any suggestion that the recipient of the letter was personally known to the sender, even that he was seen as an individual. Each letter could have been sent to anyone on the list.

  Nor did the letters ever seem modified by events. There was no change in this respect between the earlier letters and the more recent ones. Owen found this odd. The latest ones had been written after Kitchener’s brush with the Khedive. No reference was made to it. Owen had had the impression that this was something on which the whole country had a view just at the moment; but nothing of that emerged in the letters. It was as if the sender was somehow cut off from events. A recluse? Or just someone very ignorant.

  He summoned Nikos and asked him if he had found out anything about how the letters were being delivered. As before, said Nikos; by hand. Someone was going round and dropping them in regularly at the government offices. Although he had asked the clerks in the post rooms to keep an eye open for anyone handing them in, no one had so far reported anything. This was not really surprising, for most mail, including all that between offices, was sent by hand. The post rooms were busy places and there were people coming and going all the time.

  Was it just people in government offices who were getting them, asked Owen? Or was it foreigners in other institutions, banks, say, as well? It was confined to the British Administration, Nikos replied. Just the government offices. Oh, and the army as well.

  This raised the question again of how the names of the officials, and their government addresses, had been obtained. They would all be in the Ministry Handbook, which was, of course, available in all the offices; but to get access to it you really had to be in the offices yourself. Now how did that square with the ignorant illiterate that he had been positing?

  An orderly? But how was it that he was able to get around to government offices during working hours? Unless, of course, he was a bearer himself.

  Owen at last managed to catch up with Zeinab. She had been busy, she said, raising money to send ambulances to Tripolitania. Owen assured her that even Miss Nightingale had had to raise money. Zeinab, however, did not even smile.

  Lately there had seemed something distant about her. Used as he was to her swings of mood, he found this troubling. It was not, now, as if emotion was violently swinging but as if it had been somehow drained away. He challenged her about this.

  ‘What’s the use?’ she said.

  ‘Use?’

  ‘The use of going on like this. You and I.’

  ‘Now, look—’

  She interrupted him.

  ‘The fact is,’ she said, ‘you’re British and I’m Egyptian, and nothing’s going to alter that.’

  ‘Yes, and you’re a woman and I’m a man, and I hope nothing’s going to alter that, either!’

  She regarded him expressionlessly.

  ‘It’s no good,’ she said.

  ‘No good? Look, just because Kitchener and the Khedive get across each other, it doesn’t mean that you and I—’

  ‘It’s not just that,’ she said. ‘Of course, it’s not making it any easier. But if it wasn’t that, it would be something else. There’s always going to be something pulling us apart, and I don’t know that I can go on. Time is no longer on my side and I’m not sure I can wait any more for things to get sorted out.’

  ‘Look, we don’t need to wait for things to get sorted out. We could marry tomorrow!’

  She looked at him again with that dead, expressionless look.

  ‘Could we?’ she said.

  ***

  Mindful of the increasing number of attacks on foreigners, Owen went to see how Rosa was getting on. His route took him along the Nahhasin. As he was walking past a coffee house he saw Mahmoud sitting at a table with some of the men who had been at his wedding. They were talking fiercely; but then, as they saw him coming up to them, there was a sudden silence.

  ‘You are not welcome!’ said Kamal angrily.

  Mahmoud put up his hand. Kamal turned on him.

  ‘I know he i
s your friend, Mahmoud, but he is not welcome!’

  ‘I come at the wrong moment,’ said Owen. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘No moment is the wrong moment for a friend to come,’ said Mahmoud courteously.

  ‘Nevertheless—’

  He prepared to leave.

  ‘No, no!’ Kamal jumped up. ‘It is I who will leave.’

  ‘Kamal—’ began Mahmoud.

  Another man jumped up.

  ‘Habashi—’

  Kamal brushed aside Mahmoud’s protests and stalked off. Several of the men left with him.

  ‘Hothead!’ said Ibrahim Buktari, looking after him affectionately.

  Owen hadn’t noticed at once that Mahmoud’s father-in-law was one of the group. They exchanged embraces. One or two of the other men, who knew Owen from the wedding, also did so, awkwardly.

  Ibrahim pulled him down into a seat.

  ‘At least join us in a coffee,’ he said.

  ‘Ibrahim, I am sorry, but I have to go,’ said another man, getting up. ‘It is not meant discourteously,’ he said apologetically to Owen. ‘I really do have to go. People await me. I am late already. I am sorry I cannot stay to help you resolve your dispute,’ he said to Mahmoud, ‘but I must, I must go!’

  He rushed off.

  ‘I consider the opposition to have abandoned the field,’ announced Ibrahim Buktari.

  Mahmoud smiled.

  ‘I would not have wished to offend my father-in-law, anyway,’ he said.

  ‘What was the dispute?’ asked Owen.

  Ibrahim turned to him.

  ‘Well, in a way it concerns you, too,’ he said, ‘for you brought the gift.’

  ‘Gift?’

  ‘The one from Kitchener,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘They argue it should be sent back,’ said Ibrahim. ‘But I say no. It was a gift between friends; and what has that to do with Khedives or railways or the British government? It was not the British government that gave the gift, it was an old friend; and shall I now send it back saying that friendship is nothing?’

  ‘The trouble is, Mahmoud,’ said one of the other men good-humouredly, ‘that now you’ve acquired a father-in-law, you’ve also got yourself landed with some awkward friends.’

  ‘Ah, but he had some awkward friends before he got married!’ said Owen with a smile.

  Ibrahim Buktari beamed: the others laughed, and the incident passed off smoothly. Owen suspected, however, that similar problems were occurring all over Egypt as a new strain was placed on relationships.

  ***

  The story that Morelli had known about the guns in his warehouse bothered Owen. He didn’t believe it for one moment, but there was no doubt that it was all over the Nahhasin. Where had the story come from? Amina had spoken of a fakir but Mahmoud, who seemed to know everyone in the Nahhasin, couldn’t place him. Did that mean he had come in from outside? Was there an extra agent in all this? It would be helpful to have a word with this fakir, if he existed. Owen put his men to work.

  Meanwhile, his thoughts returned to the porters and to the warehouse. That was where the conversation was supposed to have taken place and where Suleiman claimed that he had first heard the story. Suleiman was not necessarily to be believed, but the other porters had supported his story, in that they agreed that they had been talking about it—they had even been able to identify the day because of Morelli’s strange inquiry about the Box—so it was possible that on this occasion he had been speaking the truth.

  But how had they heard the story? From the fakir? From Amina, carrying it on her travels? Or had it been, as she had suggested, hanging in the general air of the Nahhasin, ready to fall into any open ear?

  There was another thing, though, that made him pause. He had been assuming that the story was false; but suppose it were true? Suppose there really had been a conversation in the warehouse. Then the person most likely to overhear it would be one of the porters. All right, the conversation had taken place at night, when they would all have gone home. But it was far more likely that one of them had been hanging about than that anyone else had. The warehouse was secured at night. And all this stuff about someone sleeping against the door outside—well, it was not impossible, but surely less likely than that a porter, perhaps the last to leave, might have overheard something.

  He took his sun helmet off the peg—these days he had taken to wearing a helmet rather than a tarboosh when he walked about the city during the daytime because it gave greater protection against the sun—and set off for the warehouse.

  He found the Signora and the foreman standing alone in an almost empty warehouse.

  ‘We’re having an auction today,’ said the Signora. ‘Everyone’s up there.’

  ‘And that’s where I must be,’ said the foreman. ‘Pretty quick, too.’

  He touched his breast and made a little bow to the Signora.

  ‘Before you go,’ said Owen, ‘there’s just one thing I’d like to ask you.’

  ‘Effendi?’

  ‘That night, the night of the conversation—or quarrel—in the warehouse: who was the last to leave when the warehouse was locked up?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘You yourself did the locking up?’

  ‘I did. I always do.’

  ‘Was anyone with you?’

  ‘They do not linger,’ said the foreman caustically, ‘when the hour comes for them to go.’

  ‘Abdul is always the last to leave,’ said the Signora, ‘and sometimes he works late.’

  ‘I understand. Was it possible, though, that on that occasion someone was working with him?’

  ‘Would that that were so!’ said the foreman.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said the Signora.

  ‘Because I wondered if by chance someone—one of the porters—had been in the building that night.’

  ‘They don’t work in the day,’ said the foreman. ‘Never mind the night.’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ said the Signora again.

  ‘Because I was wondering who might have been in a position that night to overhear a conversation in the warehouse.’

  ‘Not me,’ said the foreman. ‘I locked up and went home.’

  ‘There was no such conversation,’ said the Signora.

  ***

  She led him through into the little inner courtyard. It was filled with trees: orange trees, lemon, grapefruit. The heavy, half-ripe fruit was bowing down the branches. There were no flowers. It was one of those Southern gardens designed to give shade, not colour.

  There was a table beneath one of the trees. She indicated that he should sit down. Then she stood there for a moment.

  ‘There was no conversation,’ she repeated.

  ‘Probably not,’ Owen agreed.

  She nodded her head as if satisfied and then went off into the house. He heard her calling for the house-boy.

  And yet he was beginning to think now that there could have been a conversation after all; at least of some kind. Not, perhaps, as the foreman had reported it. He had thought then and he thought now that it was inherently improbable that the Signor himself had ‘bespoken’ the guns. But perhaps as Amina had reported it. There was a certain circumstantiality about the reports: a conversation, at night, in the warehouse, the Signor as one of the speakers. He thought it possible that a conversation of some kind had indeed taken place.

  But the two accounts were very different. Amina’s was far more particular. All right, as an accomplished news-teller, Amina had perhaps imparted an extra vividness—the direct, as if verbatim, report of the speech, for instance. But in what was still a predominantly oral culture people did remember speech verbatim and it was not at all unlikely that if someone had heard the words, then he would have been able to reproduce them fairly accurately.

  And the purport of the words, as Amina had reported
them, was very different from that of the conversation as the foreman had reported it. It was only in the foreman’s account that the Signor was alleged to have ‘bespoken’ the guns. Amina’s account was quite different.

  Owen thought it likely that the foreman’s account was further from its source. It smacked to him of popular simplification and distortion, a Nahhasin embroidering. Amina’s account, he thought, could be much nearer the truth.

  Did that mean that Amina herself had heard it? She was always about the place and certainly might have done. Or was she merely reporting pretty exactly what she had heard from the fakir? He would like, he thought again, to have a word with this fakir.

  The Signora returned with a tray on which were two glasses and a jug of lemonade.

  Owen took a sip.

  ‘Your lemons?’

  ‘Last year’s.’

  ‘I now know why the Signor’s friends praised them.’

  He put the glass down.

  ‘Signora, do you know what the Signor is supposed to have said in this conversation?’

  ‘I know only that he is said to have bespoken the guns. And that is nonsense.’

  ‘Yes, that is nonsense,’ Owen agreed. ‘However, that is not what the words, as they are reported, actually say.’

  ‘There were no words.’

  ‘Oh, but I think it possible that there were. But that their meaning was not quite as the popular report has it. Signora, did a conversation of any kind take place that night? Between your husband and another?’

  ‘How should I know what conversations he had?’

  ‘Well, I think you might remember this one: if it was held at night.’

  ‘At night,’ said the Signora; ‘I am in my bed; and so was Morelli.’

  A thought struck Owen.

  ‘Could it have been earlier? The evening, perhaps? Yet when it had become dark?’

  The Signora shrugged.

  ‘Conversations?’ she said. ‘What conversations? He had many conversations.’