Death of an Effendi Read online

  ‘Perhaps not. But, you see, Captain Owen, if you were really helping Mr. El-Zaki, it would make his task a great deal easier. That is why I asked what was your role in the case.’

  ‘Why are you interested in Tvardovsky?’

  The journalist spread his hands.

  ‘The general good, Captain Owen. The general good. This is a sad loss to Egypt.’

  ‘A sad loss?’

  Es-Rahel caught the note of incredulity and stared.

  ‘Why, yes, Captain Owen. Mr. Tvardovsky was a man who might have done a great deal for Egypt.’

  ‘That was the point of the gathering, certainly.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but you know how these things go. So many people there who were not really interested in Egypt, interested only in how much money they could make out of it. Mr. Tvardovsky was not like that.’

  ‘You knew Tvardovsky?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘We journalists mix in a variety of circles.’

  ‘Including that of millionaire financiers?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not directly,’ the Egyptian admitted. ‘But we do sometimes meet them in other circles.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Émigré ones.’ Mr. es-Rahel smiled. ‘Radical ones, Captain Owen. But then, the Mamur Zapt wouldn’t know about that sort of circle, would he?’

  ***

  Mahmoud joined them.

  ‘Ah, Mr. El-Zaki!’ said the journalist warmly. ‘And how are you getting on with your inquiries? Successfully, I hope. Mr. Tvardovsky was such a sad loss to us all!’

  Mahmoud looked at him distrustfully.

  ‘Mirza es-Rahel,’ said the journalist, shaking hands.

  ‘He works for Al-Liwa,’ said Owen.

  ‘Oh.’

  Mahmoud was not on easy terms with the press. Partly it was his natural caution. As a Parquet lawyer, Mahmoud had had too much experience of journalists not to know that anything he said would be taken down and used in evidence against him. But partly, too, it was a slightly puritanical dislike of their overstatement and distortion. Why couldn’t they just put it down straightforwardly and rationally—like a law report, for instance?

  ‘I was just urging Captain Owen to give you all the help he could,’ said es-Rahel.

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Mahmoud distantly.

  ‘I am afraid you will need it,’ said the journalist, ‘with all there is ranged against you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘You can, of course, count on our support. But in a case like this the Mamur Zapt’s support, if indeed, you have it, will count far more.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said Mahmoud.

  ***

  For Mahmoud, as for most Cairenes, Africa began one mile south of Cairo. In the wilderness that was the provinces, what hope was there for observance of proper procedure? For efficiency and competence of any sort? For rationality itself?

  ‘Be fair!’ remonstrated Owen. ‘He’s only a Mudir. And when he’s up against someone like Prince Fuad—’

  ‘That is true. It is wrong for me to blame the ones lower down when it is those at the top who are at fault. What you said is true. It is not the Mudir who is to blame, it is those who have made him what he is!’

  He brought his fist crashing down on the table. A waiter, misunderstanding, hurried to replenish their coffee pot.

  ‘It is not the man who is at fault, it is the system. The Pashas, with their interest in keeping people ignorant, the Khedive, the British—’

  ‘Quite right!’ said the waiter warmly.

  ‘What?’

  Caught off balance, Mahmoud stared up at him.

  ‘It’s what I always say myself.’

  It was the waiter that Owen knew, the one he had had his long conversation with on the occasion of his previous visit to the hotel, that morning when the financiers had been talking under the trees and he himself had been sitting, then as now, up here on the terrace.

  ‘It’s the rich man that gets syrup on his figs, the poor man has to do without.’

  He poured them some coffee.

  ‘Take this coffee, for instance. Do you think I get coffee like this? Well, I do, as a matter of fact, because I work in the hotel now and we help ourselves. But when I’m at home, do you think I drink like this? No, it’s bitter black tea for me, and that’s the way it is with the world. The rich get what’s going and the poor are left to fend for themselves.’

  ‘Yes, well—’

  The waiter dropped on to his heels, part of the conversation now.

  ‘Take that foreign effendi, the one who was shot. Did the Mudir want to know? Not a bit of it. In fact, the less he knew about it, the better. But when my sister’s son was caught stealing grapes, the Mudir was on to him in a flash. “It’s you for the caracol,” he said. Caracol! What did he want to put him in the caracal for, for a thing like that? A clip over the ear would have done. Or a touch of the stick, like the old Mudir used to do. “You’re making him a criminal,” I said. “I’m bloody stopping him from becoming one,” the Mudir says. Well, that’s all very well, but what about those rich men who were here the other day? They were stealing grapes if anyone was. But was anybody doing anything about them? Well, maybe someone was, for one of them got shot, didn’t he? Though he was the wrong man and they should have shot someone else—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ interrupted Owen: ‘Why? Why was he the wrong man?’

  ‘Well, he was all right, wasn’t he? A bit lacking in the brain-pan, perhaps, the way he talked sometimes and the way he poked around in places, but harmless. You could see he meant well. When he went into shops or the bazaar he used to talk to people—’

  ‘Shops?’ said Owen. ‘Bazaar? Where was this?’

  ‘Medinet. He used to go there regularly. There was an old woman he used to stay with. As batty as he was. Foreign, of course, like him. Well, you can’t get away from them, they’re everywhere in Egypt. But—’

  ‘He’d been here before?’

  ‘Not here. Medinet. And over at Lahoun. He was always over there at the Labyrinth. Wouldn’t have been surprised if a crocodile had had him one of these days, if half what they say is true.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘They say they haven’t gone, you know.’

  ‘They—?’

  ‘The crocodiles. They say they’re still there somewhere. Tucked away underground in that Labyrinth. And they’ll have you as soon as look at you if you don’t watch out. People wandering around on their own. Like him. Tempting fate. Though fate’s a funny thing, isn’t it? It wasn’t the crocodiles that got him in the end. Although what happened to the body? They say that daft Mudir gave it away. You can never be sure about these things. Maybe the crocodiles did get him after all. A pity, though, it was him and not one of the others. Everybody knew him and—’

  ‘Everybody knew him?’ said Mahmoud later, as they climbed up into the carriage that was taking them back to the train.

  ***

  Medinet spread along both banks of the Bahr-el-Yussuf. If it was a canal, as some argued, it was an unusual one, for the water rushed along it as swiftly as in a river. The current was so powerful that the water-wheels which fed the town were worked directly by it. The houses, too, were interesting, many of them as grand as Cairo Mameluke houses, with stuccoed fronts and graceful balconies trailing roses and figs and vines.

  The house they were looking for was one of these, fronting, or possibly backing, on to the Bahr-el-Yussuf itself. While the porter went off to find out if the Sitt would see them, they waited in a mandar’ah, or reception room, which had a sunken, tessellated floor and a dais at one end with large worn cushions on which they could sit.

  They were taken, though, to the takhtabosh, which was a kind of recess off the small central courtyard, with an
open front and a single column supporting a central arch. There was an open gateway on to the river and the takhtabosh was situated so that it would catch something of the river breeze.

  The Sitt was an old frail lady, who received them with the manner of a grande dame of the previous century, an impression deepened by the fact that she addressed them in French. It was not the French of France, however, nor even the French of Egypt.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I come from Russia. We came here many years ago when my husband’—the voice faltered a little—‘had to leave Russia. It was after Alexander came to the throne. My husband’s family was not popular with the Romanovs. It never had been. One of his forebears took part in the Dekembrist insurrection, a fact of which’—she lifted her head and looked them straight in the eyes—‘I am very proud. Anyway, he had to leave Russia. He set up a business in Alexandria, importing and exporting, and we lived there until he retired. He had always loved this part of Egypt, the water, the birds, the roses, and so we bought this house. And I have lived here ever since.’

  ‘You kept in touch, however, with some Russian friends, Tvardovsky—’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘poor Tvardovsky! He always came to see me when he was in Alexandria on business. He made a point of it. He said our house was full of beautiful things. Come,’ she said, ‘I will show you them.’

  She stood up, with difficulty, and, supporting herself on a stick, led them through the house: into the mak’ad, the high central hall, with its decorated ceiling and its kamarija windows, consisting of tiny pieces of coloured glass set in panels of pierced plaster taking the shapes of arabesques or flowers, or even a phoenix, which threw a brilliantly coloured reflection on the ground; up into the old harem, with its box-like meshrebiya windows; down into the ka’ah, with its inlaid cupboards and irregular recesses for holding china.

  They did hold china: lots of it. Everywhere there were beautiful bowls and vases, huge, richly decorated plates, some from the time of the Mameluke Sultans, others even older. From classical Greece, perhaps?

  ‘Oh, no! Here. The Fayoum. Not Greek Greek but Egyptian Greek. The Fayoum is a treasure trove of such things and these are some of its treasures.’

  They went into another room with a sunken floor and a fountain playing in the middle of it. A wooden mastaba, or bench, ran along one wall. Leaning against the opposite wall, so that you could sit on the mastaba and study them, were some wooden panels with faces painted on them.

  ‘Mummy portraits,’ said the old lady. ‘The panels were inserted over the mummy wrappings. The portrait was a likeness of the dead person.’

  ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘Near here. Over at Hawara. There was an archaeologist working there. His name was Petrie. He often used to stay at our house and my husband got to know him well. The best ones have gone to museums, but there were some that were damaged or even in pieces. He let us have some of those and my husband had them made good. If you look carefully you can see the joins. But if you are looking that carefully you can also see beyond the joins to what was there in the first place. And what was there was, well—you can see for yourselves.’

  The faces seemed to leap out at you. They hadn’t the stylized, dead look of much classical portraiture but were individual, strong, vivid, as if their subjects might have started up a conversation with you at any moment. The eyes were large and rounded, the eyebrows arched. The hair was short and curly. They were the sort of faces that you might see today at any Mediterranean resort.

  ‘Encaustic on limewood. Some are tempera. I prefer the encaustic. The colours are richer. But what is so nice is that it’s a mixture. Just like Egypt. This one, for instance. It’s obviously Greek in its treatment of the face and the way it poses the figure. But the hairstyle and the jewellery are pure Rome.’ She bent and peered at it. ‘Mid-Antonine, I would say. But the context, the atmosphere—surely, entirely Egyptian!’

  She stepped back.

  ‘My husband loved them. And so did Tvardovsky. He used to sit here for hours looking at them. Funny, that—that he, the son of a serf—’

  She looked at them.

  ‘Did you know that? His father was a serf on our estate. My father freed him when the Emancipation Act went through. He still went on working on the estate, though, and Tvardovsky grew up there. My father paid to have him educated—he was always very clever, you could see it from the start. When he left school he worked for us for a time, not in the fields—that would have been a waste—but in the office. He was often in the house and I think it was there that he acquired his love of beautiful things. My mother used to take him round and tell him about them. Of course, he didn’t stay with us for long. He went away and became rich, and we—’

  She laughed.

  ‘Well, I married Boris. He didn’t exactly become poor but he had to leave Russia in a hurry. We lost touch with Tvardovsky but then, years later, he found us again.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Poor Tvardovsky! He was a lovely man.’

  ‘We are investigating his death.’

  ‘And so you should!’

  ‘It may, of course, have been an accident.’

  ‘It was no accident,’ she said firmly.

  ‘You say that very definitely.’

  ‘I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘But is there any other reason? Had he enemies?’

  ‘For anyone in Russia interested in democracy,’ she said, ‘there is always one enemy: the Tsar.’

  ***

  Among the stalls selling such things as onions, sugar cane and poultry (live) which made up the bazaar at Medinet, Tvardovsky was, as the waiter at the hotel had said, well known; but the most useful information came from the barber, holding court under the trees behind them, his bowls and instruments spread on the ground beside him, his victim sitting apprehensively on a dilapidated, wickerwork chair, and an admiring circle of supporters squatted round. The man to talk to, he said, was the Sheikh of the madrissa.

  ‘Sheikh’ was an honorary title given to religious leaders. The school, however, was not one of the traditional ones, where only the Koran was taught, but one of the new government ones which had a wider range of subjects. The respect that the title suggested became understandable at once when they rounded a corner and saw two boys ahead of them dressed in Eton jackets and turn-down collars.

  ‘This is what English boys wear?’ asked Mahmoud, impressed.

  ‘Not where I was,’ said Owen.

  The madrissa, they said, was on the edge of the town. It had closed now for the day but the Sheikh would still be there, outside on a bed, resting. They offered to show the way.

  As they walked along, one of the boys said to Owen: ‘I know you.’

  ‘I don’t think you do,’ said Owen.

  ‘You are the Mamur Zapt.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ asked Owen, astonished.

  ‘My uncle is a waiter at the hotel where the effendi was shot and he told me that there was one there who stayed behind afterwards and was the Mamur Zapt.’

  ‘Even so, how—?’

  The boy put on an imitation of what even Owen could see was an Englishman, although he could not see how it applied to himself.

  Mahmoud laughed.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Owen, ‘then you must be the boy who was stealing grapes?’

  ‘It’s a lie!’ said the boy. ‘They fell off by themselves. I found them in the road.’

  ‘I thought you were put in the caracol?’

  ‘The Sheikh spoke for me.’

  ‘It is bad,’ remonstrated Mahmoud, ‘that a boy like you, who is evidently high in the Sheikh’s esteem, should be found doing a thing like that.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have been found if the ghaffir had not crept up behind the wall. And he certainly wouldn’t have caught me had it not been for the fiki.
’

  ‘Fiki?’

  ‘He came up the other way through the bushes and when I lingered to exchange words with the ghaffir—’

  ‘The ghaffir should have been treated with respect!’

  ‘He is old and fat.’

  ‘Even so. He was but doing his duty.’

  ‘He does his duty when it comes to boys and grapes. But grapes are a small thing. What when it comes to big things? Then he sits on his big fat behind and does nothing. He is not like the Sheikh, who speaks the same words to big as to small.’

  ‘You think well of the Sheikh, then?’

  ‘When the man comes from the Ministry, I will speak up for him.’

  ‘That, I am sure, he will be grateful for.’

  The boy gave him a sideways look.

  ‘It is not a small thing. The Sheikh’s dues depend on the man from the Ministry. But when he questions the others, they will not speak up. But I will speak up. I will give the right answers and then the man from the Ministry will know that our Sheikh is a good Sheikh.’

  ‘That is highly laudable. Be sure, though, that they are the right answers.’

  ‘There will be no problem about that; for I am at the head of my class. The Sheikh says that great things lie ahead of me. If I do not steal grapes.’

  They walked on a little way in silence. Then the boy said: ‘I am going to be a lawyer when I grow up.’

  ‘My friend is a lawyer,’ said Owen, indicating Mahmoud. ‘He is from the Parquet.’

  The boy looked troubled.

  ‘It was only grapes,’ he said defensively.

  ***

  A man was lying on a rope bed, his bare feet open to the air.

  ‘Ya Sheikh,’ called the boy. ‘Effendis are here to see you.’

  The man sprang up, thrust his feet into shoes, seized a jacket and hurried out to meet them.

  ‘Your pardon!’ he said. ‘I was just taking a rest after teaching.’

  ‘It is we who need pardon,’ said Mahmoud courteously, ‘for disturbing you.’

  ‘Please, please!’

  The man led them into the building.

  ‘You have come to see the school?’ he said hopefully.