Donkey-Vous (2 page)

“That’s what I said.”

“Odd!” He turned to the manager. “I shall need a room.”

“My office.” The manager hesitated. “I hope it won’t be necessary to—to disaccommodate the guests.”

“As little as possible. However, I may have to ask them a few questions.”

The manager looked doubtful. “Of course,” he said. “Of course, I was hoping—would you not prefer to talk to my staff?”

“Them too.”

The manager shrugged but still looked worried. He led them to his office.

“I will send you some coffee,” he said.

“How is it that Mr. McPhee is involved?” asked Mahmoud. “Surely they didn’t send for you directly?”

“They did. A foreigner. They thought it important,” said Owen.

He listened intently while McPhee brought him up to date. Then they went out on to the terrace. The tea things had all gone from the tables now, except for the one table. In their place drinks were appearing. It was already growing dark. Night came quickly and early in Egypt. The short period of twilight, though, when it was still light enough to see and yet the heat had gone out of the sun, was one of the pleasantest parts of the day and lots of people were coming out on to the terrace to enjoy the evening air.

All along the front of the terrace was a thick row of street-vendors pushing their wares through the railings at the tourists above: ostrich feathers, hippopotamus-hide whips, fly switches, fezzes, birds in cages, snakes coiled around the arms of their owners, bunches of brightly colored flowers—roses, carnations, narcissi, hyacinths—trays of Turkish Delight and sticky boiled sweets, souvenirs straight from the tombs of the Pharaohs (astonishingly, some of them were), “interesting” postcards.

The street behind them was thick with people, too. They could not be described as passersby since they had stopped passing. Mostly they gathered around the pastry sellers and sherbet sellers, who stood in the middle of the road for the convenience of trade but to the great inconvenience of the arabeah-drivers, and just looked at the spectacle on the terrace above them.

“With all these people looking,” said Mahmoud, “you would have thought that someone, somewhere, must have seen something.”

He went down the steps into the crowd. Owen hesitated for a moment and then decided to join him. McPhee turned back into the hotel to conduct yet another search.

Mahmoud went straight to the snake charmer and squatted down beside him. The snake charmer had rather lost heart and was trying to find an untenanted patch of wall against which he could rest his back. From time to time he played a few unconvincing notes on his flute, which the snake, now completely inert, ignored.

The snake charmer pushed his bowl automatically in Mahmoud’s direction. Mahmoud dropped in a few millièmes.

“It has been a long day, father,” he said to the charmer. “Even your snake thinks so.”

“It needs a drink,” said the charmer. “I shall have to take it home soon.”

“Has it been a good day?”

“No day is good,” said the charmer, “but some days are less bad than others.”

“You have been here all day?”

“Since dawn. You have to get here early these days or someone else will take your place. Fazal, for instance, only he finds it hard to get up in the morning.”

“And all day you have been here on the steps?”

“It is a good place.”

“They come and go, the great ones,” said Mahmoud. “Yes, they all pass here.”

“My friend—” Mahmoud indicated Owen, who dropped into a sympathetic squat—“cannot find his friend and wonders if he has gone without him. His friend is an old man with sticks.”

“I remember him,” said the snake charmer. “He comes with another, younger, who is not his servant but to whom he gives orders.”

“That would be him,” said Owen. “Have you seen him?”

“No,” said the charmer, “but then, I wouldn’t.”

He turned his face toward Owen and Owen saw that he was blind.

“Nevertheless,” said Mahmoud softly, “you would know if he had passed this way.”

“I would,” the old man agreed.

“And did he?”

For a long time the old man did not reply. Mahmoud waited patiently. Owen knew better than to prompt. Arab conversation has its rhythms and of these Mahmoud was a master.

At last the old man said: “Sometimes it is best not to know.”

“Why?”

“Because knowing may bring trouble.”

“It can bring reward, too.”

Mahmoud took a coin out of his pocket and pressed it into the old man’s hand.

“Feel that,” he said. “That is real. The trouble may never come.” He closed the old man’s fingers around the coin. “The coin stays with you. The words are lost in the wind.”

“Someone may throw them back in my face.”

“No one will ever know that you have spoken them. I swear it!”

“On the Book?”

“On the Book.”

The old man still hesitated. “I do not know,” he said. “It is not clear in my mind.”

“The one we spoke of,” said Mahmoud, “the old man with sticks: is he clear in your mind?”

“Yes. He is clear in my mind.”

“Did he come down the steps this afternoon?”

“Yes.” The old man hesitated, though. “Yes, he came down the steps.”

“By himself or with others?”

“With another.”

“The young one you spoke of?”

“No, not him. Another.”

“Known to you?”

There was another pause.

“I do not know,” said the old man. “He does not come down the steps,” he added.

“Ah. He is of the hotel?”

“That may be. He does not come down the steps.”

“But he did this afternoon. With the old man?”

“Yes. But not to the bottom.”

“The other, though, the old one with sticks, did come to the bottom?”

“Yes, yes. I think so.”

“And then?”

The snake charmer made a gesture of bewilderment.

“I—I do not know.”

“He took an arabeah, perhaps?”

“No, no.”

“A donkey? Surely not!”

“No, no. None of those things.”

“Then what happened?”

“I do not know,” said the charmer. “I do not know. I was confused.”

“You know all things that happen on the steps,” said Mahmoud. “How is it that you do not know this?”

“I do not see,” protested the charmer.

“But you hear. What did you hear on the steps this afternoon?”

“I heard nothing.”

“You must have heard something.”

“I could not hear properly,” protested the charmer. “There were people—”

“Was he seized?”

“I do not know. How should I know?”

“Was there a blow? A scuffle, perhaps.”

“I do not know. I was confused.”

“You know all that happens on the steps. You would know this.”

The snake charmer was silent for so long that Owen thought the conversation was at an end. Then he spoke.

“I ought to know,” he said in a troubled voice. “I ought to know. But—but I don’t!”

The donkey-boys were having their evening meal. They were having it on the pavement, the restaurant having come to them, like Mohamet to the mountain, rather than them having gone to the restaurant.

The restaurant was a circular tray, about a yard and a half across, with rings of bread stuck on nails all round the rim and little blue-and-white china bowls filled with various kinds of sauces and pickles taking up most of the middle, the rest being devoted to the unpromising part of meat hashed up in batter. The donkey-boys in fact usually preferred their own bread, which looked like puffed-up muffins, but liked to stuff it out with pieces of pickle or fry. They offered some to Mahmoud as he squatted beside them.

“Try that!” they invited. “You look as if you could do with a good meal.”

Mahmoud accepted politely and dipped his bread in some of the pickle.

“You can have some too if you like,” they said to Owen. “That is, unless you’re eating up there.”

“Not for me. That’s for rich people.”

“You must have a piastre or two. You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Welsh,” said Mahmoud for Owen.

“What’s that?”

“Pays Galles,” said a knowledgeable donkey-boy. Many of them were trilingual.

This sparked off quite a discussion. Several of them had a fair idea of where Wales was but there were a lot of questions about its relation to England.

“They conquered you, did they?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“It’s hard being a subject people,” they commiserated. “We should know! Look at us!”

“The Arabs.”

“The Mamelukes.”

“The Turks.”

“The French.”

“The British.”

“We’ve had a lot of rulers,” someone said thoughtfully. “When’s it going to end?”

“Very soon, if the Nationalists have it their way,” said someone else.

That set off a new round of discussion. Most of the donkey-boys were broadly in sympathy with the Nationalist movement but one and all were sceptical about its chances of success.

“They’re the ones with the power,” said somebody, gesticulating in the direction of the terrace, “and they’re not letting it go.”

“They’ve got the guns.”

“And the money.”

“At least we’re getting some of that,” said someone else. “You’re doing all right, are you?” asked Mahmoud.

“Not at the moment we’re not.”

“When the next ship gets in we’ll be all right,” said someone.

“When a new lot arrive at the hotel,” one of the donkey-boys explained, “the first thing they do is come down to us and have their pictures taken with the donkeys.”

“For which we charge them.”

“It’s better than hiring them out for riding. You don’t tire out the donkeys.”

“Or yourself,” said someone.

There was a general laugh.

“The children are best.”

“It’s a bit late in the year for them, though,” said someone. “Not too busy, then, today?” suggested Mahmoud.

“Busy enough,” they said neutrally. The donkey-boys did not believe in depreciating their craft.

“There’s been a lot of excitement up there today,” one of them said.

“Oh?”

“They’ve lost someone.”

All the donkey-boys laughed.

“It’s easy enough for these foreigners to lose themselves in the bazaars,” said Mahmoud.

“Oh, he didn’t lose himself in the bazaars.”

“No?”

“He lost himself on the terrace.”

There was a renewed burst of laughter.

“Get away!”

“No, really! There he was, sitting up on the terrace as bold as life, and then the next minute, there he wasn’t!”

Again they all laughed.

“You’re making this up.”

“No, we’re not. That’s how it was. One minute he was there, the next he wasn’t.”

“He just walked down the steps?”

“Him? That old chap? He couldn’t even fall down them.”

“He went back into the hotel.”

“They can search all they like,” said someone, “but they won’t find him there.”

“You’ve got me beat,” said Mahmoud. “Where is he, then?”

“Ah!”

“Try the Wagh el Birket,” someone suggested.

They all fell about with laughter. The Sharia Wagh el Birket, which was just ’round the corner, was a street of ill-repute.

“If you don’t find
him
there,” said someone, “you’ll find every other Frenchman in Cairo!”

“And Englishman, too!”

“But not Welshman,” said someone kindly.

“They know something,” said Owen.

“Yes.”

Owen and Mahmoud were sitting wearily at a table on the terrace. It was after eleven and the hotel manager had just sent them out some coffee. The night was still warm and there were plenty of people still at the tables. Across the road they could see the brightly colored lamps of the Ezbekiyeh Gardens but here on the terrace there were fewer lights. There was just the occasional standard lamp, set well back from the tables because it drew the insects, which circled it continuously in a thick halo. Because of the relative darkness, the stars in the yet unpolluted Egyptian sky seemed very close, almost brushed by the fringed tops of the palms. The air was heavy with the heady perfume of jasmine from the trays which the flower sellers held up to the railings for inspection. Some women went past their table and another set of perfumes drifted across the terrace. In the warm air the perfumes gathered and lingered almost overwhelmingly.

Owen watched the light dresses to the end of the terrace. There was a burst of laughter and chatter as they reached their table and the scrape of chairs. Someone called for a waiter, a suffragi came hurrying and a moment later waiters were scurrying past with ice buckets and champagne. A cork popped.

The railings were still crowded with vendors and the crowd in the street seemed as thick as ever. Every so often an arabeah would negotiate its way through and deposit its passenger at the foot of the hotel steps. Then it would join the row of arabeahs standing in the street. The row was growing longer. There were few outward journeys from the hotel now.

The donkey-boys had stopped all pretense of expecting business and were absorbed in the game they played with sticks and a board. They threw the sticks against the wall of the terrace and moved broken bits of pot forward on the board depending on how the sticks fell. The scoring appeared to be related to the number of sticks which fell white side uppermost. The dark sides didn’t seem to count unless all the sticks fell dark side uppermost, which was a winning throw.

“Yes,” said Mahmoud, “they know something. But how much do they know?”

“They know how he disappeared.”

“Yes,” Mahmoud admitted, “they might know that.”

“They said he didn’t come down the steps.”

“They didn’t quite say that. Anyway, I believe the snake charmer.”

“The charmer said the old man had been helped down. We haven’t been able to find anyone who helped him.”

“Not on the hotel staff. It might have been a guest.”

“We could ask around, I suppose. It won’t be popular with the hotel.”

“A crime has been committed,” Mahmoud pointed out. When in pursuit of his duties, he was not disposed to make concessions.

“We don’t know that yet.”