The Night of the Dog

by Michael Pearce

  ‘It is fortunate for us that you were watching, Miss Postlethwaite,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and that you’re such a good observer.’

  ‘Thank you. I wasn’t really watching him particularly, you know. It was just that I couldn’t help noticing him. He was so striking. So big, and so—rapt.’

  ‘Did you notice him towards the end of the dance? Just before he collapsed?’

  ‘Yes. He was bounding about and I kept thinking: Surely he can’t keep this up, not with all those knives and things sticking in him. But he did. He kept jumping away. Then he seemed to falter. There was a man near him and I thought he had bumped into him, because he, the Zikr, I mean, seemed to stumble. And then all his strength seemed to go out of him and he just slumped down. I think his fatigue had just caught up with him. Other Zikr were collapsing, too, at that point.’

  ‘The man who was standing near him, the one he bumped into or might have bumped into, was he another Zikr?’

  ‘Oh no. He was one of—the audience, I suppose I should say, one of the onlookers, anyway. He had sort of strayed into the ring, been drawn in, I suppose, like so many others. There were lots of them, you know, ordinary people. They pressed forward during the dancing and then they began to join in. It was very infectious. I felt quite like joining in myself. Only I thought Captain Owen would not approve of me.’

  She gave Owen a look which he considered afterwards he could only describe as arch.

  Mahmoud, however, was concentrating.

  ‘This particular onlooker, the one the Zikr nearly bumped into, was he joining in?’

  ‘No. He was just standing there. That is why I noticed him. I thought he was, well, you know, a bit dazed or something, bowled over by it all. I was afraid he would get in the way. And then, when the Zikr stumbled, I thought he had got in the way.’

  ‘Could you describe him for us, Miss Postlethwaite?’ Mahmoud asked. ‘What was he wearing, for instance?’

  ‘Oh, ordinary clothes.’

  ‘Ordinary Western clothes or ordinary Egyptian clothes?’

  ‘How silly I am. Of course. Ordinary Egyptian clothes. A long gown. A—galabeah, is it?’

  ‘You’re picking up our language well, Miss Postle-thwaite,’ said Mahmoud encouragingly. ‘Galabeah is quite right. A blue one?’

  ‘No. Darker than that. Grey? Black?’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Miss Postlethwaite?’ Owen interposed.

  ‘Well, not absolutely. It was dark by then and hard to see in the light. It was just that in comparison with the others his seemed dark.’

  ‘Did you see what kind of turban he was wearing?’

  ‘I am afraid not. I’m sorry. One turban is much like another to me. Darkish, anyway. Like his gown.’

  Owen exchanged surreptitious glances with Mahmoud. It was early yet but he was already beginning to have a sinking feeling.

  ‘Anything else, Miss Postlethwaite?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘Not really. I saw him only fleetingly.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Thirty, forty—’

  ‘You saw his face?’

  ‘I must have,’ said Jane, concentrating. After a moment or two she shook her head. ‘I don’t remember it at all clearly, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Hands?’

  ‘Hands?’ said Jane, startled.

  ‘Sometimes they are distinctive.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane, looking at him with interest. ‘Yes, they are. Well, I did see his hands, but there was nothing distinctive about them. It was just—’

  She broke off and thought for a moment. ‘I don’t remember his hands,’ she said at last, ‘but I do remember hers.’

  ‘Hers?’

  ‘The woman’s.’

  ‘What woman’s?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ said Jane, surprised. ‘Oh, I see, you’re testing me. The woman he was with.’

  Mahmoud recovered first.

  ‘Tell us about this woman, please, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he asked.

  ‘Right,’ said Jane obediently. ‘Well, we were in a sort of enclosure, you know, masked off by ropes. During the dancing this woman came right up beside me, outside the enclosure—I was at the very end of the row, next to the rope, there was a carpet hung over it too, which made it into a sort of wall—and put her hand on the rope just in front of me. That’s why I saw it in the first place. But then, of course, I noticed it. She had such lovely hand painting. Lots of Egyptian women do, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘although it’s going out now, or so my mother says.’

  ‘Does she herself hand-paint?’ asked Jane.

  ‘No!’ said Mahmoud, immensely amused at the thought of his rather Westernized mother engaging in the traditional Egyptian arts. ‘It’s not confined to the poorer classes but it’s certainly most common there. You find it generally where the old customs are strongest.’

  ‘Such beautiful patterns!’ said Jane enthusiastically

  ‘In general?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘Or just in the case of the woman you saw beside the enclosure?’

  ‘Both!’ said Jane. ‘But I noticed the woman because I thought her patterns were especially lovely. She didn’t paint the whole palm, you know, not like they usually do, she just sort of sketched it in and then echoed it around the knuckles and nails. But what really caught my eye were her wrists. She had a most intricate pattern around them, all in delicate blue, not the usual blue of the poorer women, and not that rich orangey-red you often see. It ran round her wrist in a series of hooks and crosses all linked together, like a sort of painted bracelet.’

  ‘Crosses?’ said Owen. He was quite sure about the sinking feeling now.

  ‘Yes. Small square ones. That’s a traditional pattern, too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘especially among some people.’

  Mahmoud was pleased.

  ‘You are a most excellent observer, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he told her warmly.

  ‘I could hardly help noticing, could I?’ said Jane, half apologetically. ‘It was right before my eyes.’

  ‘Yes, but not everyone notices what’s right in front of their eyes.’

  Owen kept his own eyes looking firmly out of the window.

  ‘Can you tell us anything else about this woman, Miss Postlethwaite?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘Not really,’ said Jane. ‘She was dressed from head to foot in one of those black gowns. I suppose I wouldn’t even have seen her hand if she had not put it on the rope. The only thing—’ She hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’ prompted Mahmoud.

  ‘The only thing I remember,’ she said, ‘was the smell.’

  ‘What sort of smell?’

  ‘Scent.’

  ‘She had a lot of perfume on?’

  ‘No. Not exactly. Not in that way.’

  ‘Distinctive? A distinctive perfume? Heavy, perhaps?’

  Again Jane shook her head.

  ‘Not really. I don’t quite know what it was. Perhaps it was where it was that surprised me.’

  ‘Where it was?’

  ‘Yes. It wasn’t on her wrist or on her throat, not where you’d usually put it. In fact, it wasn’t on her at all. It was on her sleeve. And—not just on one part. All over her sleeve.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That means something to you, does it?’ she said, looking at Mahmoud.

  ‘It might. Tell me—can you remember—was it one perfume or different ones?’

  ‘How clever of you. Different ones. She had been trying them on, you think? But on her sleeve?’

  ‘You’ve been very helpful Miss Postlethwaite,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Truly very helpful.’

  ‘Is it important?’ asked Jane. ‘I don’t quite see—’

  ‘It might be,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Now, can we just go back a little. At a certain point you became aware of this lady placing her hand on the rope. When exactly was that?’

  ‘I can’t say exactly. Towards the end of the dancing? Yes, it must have been towards the end beca
use at the start, you know, the woman were at the back, it was the men who were at the front, and then as the dancing went on everyone became sort of drawn in and some of the women came forward, though of course they didn’t actually join in the dancing or anything like that, except to cry out and encourage the dancers.’

  ‘And that was when this woman came forward?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With the man?’

  ‘Oh no. He was already there. So far forward that he was almost part of the dance.’

  ‘When did they meet up, then?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘You spoke of her as being with him.’

  ‘Afterwards. They left together.’

  ‘When the Zikr collapsed?’

  ‘Yes. He stepped back into the crowd. I think he realized that it was partly his fault, that he had bumped into the Zikr. I mean, he shouldn’t really have been there, should he? He was just getting in the way. He stepped back right in front of me, I couldn’t see the dancers for a moment or two, that’s how I remember, but then the crowd let him in and he slipped back along the rope.’

  ‘Where the woman was waiting?’

  ‘Yes. It seemed like that, because as soon as he got to her she turned and left with him. I was aware of it because she had been partly blocking my vision and when she left I could see the little boys bringing fire.’

  Deep in the recess of the hotel a gong sounded and Miss Postlethwaite stirred slightly. A splendid suffragi in a red sash appeared at the door. Mahmoud rose to his feet and put out his hand.

  ‘Thank you very much, Miss Postlethwaite,’ he said. ‘You have been an immense help.’

  ‘I have? Oh, I am so pleased.’

  ‘You are an excellent observer.’

  ‘I just notice what I see.’

  ‘Not everyone does.’

  Mahmoud could not forbear a glance in Owen’s direction.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Jane Postlethwaite, catching the glance and misinterpreting it. ‘You will already know all this. Captain Owen will have told you.’

  ‘Not quite all, Miss Postlethwaite,’ said Mahmoud, ‘not quite all.’

  CHAPTER 4

  It was safe to assume in Cairo that nothing you did would go unobserved. No matter how private the occasion or how secret the place, someone would be bound to be watching. So it was with the matter of the dog. It was not long before Georgiades, Owen’s agent, had found not one but two witnesses. Not only that; the accounts of the witnesses—and this was definitely unusual in Cairo—roughly corresponded.

  The first was an old man, an Arab, who lived in the cemetery. Georgiades showed Owen where he lived. It was in a space between two gravestones beneath the rubble of a collapsed tomb. Peering down between the stones Owen saw a hole about five feet deep and four feet square. It was in there that the old man lived. Apart from a worn rush mat he had no provisions, but the hole at least kept him cool during the hot weather and sheltered him from the wind during the khamsin. He had a short, torn galabeah and thin, birdlike legs. His face was scruffy with grey stubble and his eyes, as they looked up towards the light, were so red with disease that the first question was whether he could have seen what he claimed he had.

  During the night, he said, men had come.

  Men? Yes, he was adamant. Four of five of them, carrying something. They had stopped some way from the tomb. He could show them. No, he had not gone himself to the place, he had been frightened, thinking that perhaps they were carrying a corpse. The Copts would have been angry with him if they had seen him. They would think he had been observing their secret rites. So he had kept well away from them, hidden among the rubble, but he had definitely seen them, a small group of men in the light of the moon.

  Had they gone to the tomb? Did he know which tomb? Yes, he did. It was the Tomb of Andrus. He knew Andrus because the Copt had often chided him when he saw him among the tombs; but he had sometimes given him alms too. He knew the tomb because he had sometimes seen Andrus there, praying. It was a holy place and he, the old man, often liked to sit there, especially when the sun had just moved off the wall, because then he could sit there with his back against the wall and the stone would warm his back. He knew the tomb and he had seen the men going there.

  Did they go in? Yes, but not for long. It was a holy place and perhaps they had been frightened. He had heard the door squeak and then they had all come running down the stairs and made off into the rubble.

  He had seen the men in the moonlight: what sort of men were they? Bad men. Only bad men would do a thing like that. To come at night to the Place of the Dead! And there to do mischief. Bad men. Bad men.

  But what sort of men were they? Were they—and this was the tricky question—were they Copts? Or Moslems? The old man was silent. Owen tried again. How were they dressed? In galabeahs or in trousers? Alas, the old man could not see. He had been far away and it had been dark. Yet he had seen the men in the light of the moon. The old man became confused and fell silent.

  Owen tried a different tack. Did they come as men who knew the necropolis, or did they hesitate, wondering which way to go? The old man thought they knew. But then he thought that they had stopped before going to the tomb because perhaps they had not been quite sure which one it was.

  His attention began to wander and it soon became apparent that there was no point in questioning him further.

  The second witness was a small boy. There were lots of small boys in the necropolis. Not all of them were abandoned orphans. Some of them had loose connections with families in the poor districts which surrounded the cemetery. The families were often unable to sustain too many children and the older ones sometimes drifted away into a kind of semi-independence. The girls became household servants or prostitutes. The boys made for the wilderness of the necropolis. Like the old man, they sustained themselves by begging from the wealthy Copts and fighting for scraps of food among the garbage tossed out into the cemetery from the more well-to-do Moslem houses along its western side. They moved in gangs, like the packs of dogs of which there were plenty in the necropolis, and with which they had a curious relationship, half inimical, half tolerated, sharing a mutual signalling system which alerted them at once to any intruders.

  Aware of newcomers though they might be, that did not make them more ready to come forward. Even though they had already made Georgiades’s acquaintance, when he appeared with Owen they remained hidden among the stones, and he had to have recourse to the strategy which had worked before. He settled himself comfortably on the edge of a tomb and began to toss a coin casually into the air.

  He went on tossing for about ten minutes, and only then did the first heads begin to appear. Slowly they moved forward until there was a ring of little boys surrounding them, all keeping at safe fleeing distance. At last Georgiades’s contact came out of hiding. Once he had made his move he came boldly forward; but stopped just beyond arm’s length.

  ‘Who is this man?’ he said, pointing at Owen.

  ‘He’s a friend of mine,’ said Georgiades.

  ‘I know him,’ said the boy. ‘He’s the Mamur Zapt.’

  ‘Like I said. He’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘You have powerful friends.’

  ‘I need them.’

  The boy looked doubtful.

  ‘It is dangerous to have powerful friends,’ he said.

  ‘Worse to have powerful enemies.’

  ‘He couldn’t touch me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to touch you,’ said Owen.

  The boy seemed more than half inclined to retreat back among the stones. Georgiades began to toss his coin speculatively.

  ‘Does he pay you?’ said the boy suddenly.

  ‘Not enough,’ said Georgiades.

  That seemed to reassure the child.

  ‘One never gets enough,’ he said, with the air of an old man.

  ‘One has to live by one’s wits.’

  ‘Will he pay me, too?’

  ‘I will pay you,’ said Owen, ‘if you tell me what I wan
t to know.’

  The boy still did not come forward.

  ‘I am afraid,’ he said.

  ‘I shall not hurt you,’ said Owen.

  ‘It’s not you I’m afraid of.’

  ‘Who are you afraid of?’

  ‘The big man with his knife. Also the holy one.’

  ‘Which one are you afraid of most?’ asked Georgiades.

  The boy considered.

  ‘The holy one,’ he said at last. ‘The other, though big, is slow. He would never catch me. The holy one has many men. He might get one I did not know to seize me and hold me so that he could beat me. Also,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘the holy one might call down great curses on me.’

  ‘If you tell me the truth,’ said Owen, ‘I will give you something which will heal both the beatings and the curses.’

  ‘How much?’ said the boy practically.

  Owen mentioned a sum.

  The boy turned away disappointed.

  ‘It is not worth us talking.’

  ‘It is always worth talking,’ said Georgiades, flipping his coin in the air.

  ‘Not for that it isn’t.’

  ‘No?’

  Georgiades continued to flip.

  After a little while the boy said: ‘For two such coins I might be willing.’

  Georgiades was so shocked by the suggestion that he missed his catch, almost, and had to fumble to stop the coin from falling on the ground, where it might have rolled away to join the lost treasures of the pharaohs; but fortunately he recovered.

  ‘Three piastres I might manage,’ said Georgiades grudgingly, ‘if the information is good. The fourth piastre—well, who knows, you might be able to tell me something later on.’

  The boy accepted three piastres; one paid in advance, one paid when he came close enough for Georgiades to catch hold of him, and one to be paid after he had given his information. The fourth piastre was to be a bonus depending on the extent and quality of the information.

  The story in outline was the same. The men had come into the necropolis late at night and had made their way towards the House of Andrus joking uneasily and talking loudly among themselves. They had quietened down as they approached the tomb and the last part of the journey had been covered in silence. They had stopped when they were some way short of their objective. The boy said it was because several of the men were afraid there might be spirits lingering about the tomb who might be hostile towards them because they weren’t Christian. They had succeeded in infecting the others with their fear and in the end no one had wanted to go on. Then one of them had said that it would be a shame to go back again without having done anything now that they had come so far, and that he was not afraid, especially as the spirits would be bound to be weak ones, being Coptic. He would go by himself if no one would go with him. No one would go with him and the man became angry, saying they were cowards and weaklings and feeble of faith. Still no one would go with him and in the end he had taken the bundle himself. He had gone to the tomb alone.