The Snake Catcher's Daughter (3 page)

“The Aalima?” prompted Owen.

“A most striking lady, Owen, most striking. Well, at first she absolutely refused. Said it was completely out of the question. And then I said that in that case I would have to arrest them.”

“On what grounds?”

“Causing a disturbance. The sheikhs didn’t like that, I can tell you.”

“The sheikhs? You threatened to arrest the sheikhs?”

Oh Christ, thought Owen.

“It was a bluff. And then I cunningly said that all I wanted to do was make sure that nothing untoward was happening, so I would be quite satisfied if they just brought me a chair and let me watch for a bit and satisfy myself on that score. In the end they agreed, provided I just listened—the music was marvellous, Owen, cymbals, you know, dubertas, timbrels. I agreed, of course, but then—”

He looked shamefaced.

“I peeped.”

“You did?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I did. And, you know, Owen, it was most interesting, for what I saw—”

“How did you come to get drugged?”

“They brought me drink. They brought everyone in the courtyard drink. It was part of it, you see—”

“Who brought you drink?”

“A most charming girl. Dressed in white virginal robes—”

“Yes, yes. Was she part of the, well, witch’s entourage?”

“Yes. She came out with the bowl and took it round.”

“She gave everyone a drink?”

“Yes. Which is why, Owen,” McPhee said with emphasis, “the drug must have been administered on a different occasion.”

“Such as?”

“Well, I can’t actually think—” McPhee admitted.

“Unless, of course, she put something special in just before she got to you.”

“Oh, no, Owen. Really! A girl of integrity.”

Owen was beginning to see an argument for Gavin’s position.

“And then you fell asleep?” he said.

“Yes. You know, Owen—”

“Yes?”

“I
was
very tired that night. You don’t think I could have just fallen asleep in the ordinary way and that afterwards someone administered—?”

“While you were asleep? That strength? No,” said Owen.

“You see, I feel sure the lady was genuine.”

“Well,” said Owen soothingly, “perhaps, in her way, she was.”

McPhee looked pleased.

“You think so? I must say, I’ve had doubts myself. Could it be a genuine survival, I’ve asked myself? Or—”

“I shall want to know about the people in the courtyard,” Owen said.

“Hangers on,” McPhee said, “excluded from the real mysteries.”

“All men?”

“Yes. They’re fascinated, too, of course. Can’t keep away. But frightened! The Aalima is a pretty compelling figure.”

“Could you identify any of them?”

“I might be able to recognize them. They’ll be local, of course.”

“If you could just give me a start…”

McPhee nodded.

“I’ll do my best. But, Owen,” he said sternly, “there must be no messing about with the ladies. The Zzarr is a remarkable institution. It is, I am sure, pre-Islamic. I wouldn’t be surprised if it owed something to the Greek mysteries. I thought I caught some Greek words. Some Roman influence, too, perhaps. After all—”

“Yes?”

“
Bacchantium instar mulieres vidimus
.”

“Quite,” said Owen.

“I protest,” said Sheikh Musa.

“I quite agree,” said Owen heartily, “and I join myself in your protest.”

“Wait a minute,” said the Sheikh, “you’re the man I’m protesting
to
.”

“If the subject of your protest is what I think it is,” said Owen, “the deplorable assault on the Bimbashi a couple of nights ago, then we are on common ground.”

“It’s not the assault I’m bothered about,” said the Sheikh. “It’s his presence there in the first place.

“At the Zzarr?”

The Sheikh winced.

“We don’t like to use that word. The ceremony, you know, is not entirely regular. It’s not something that’s, well, officially recognized. We know it goes on, of course. There are people who, not to put too fine a point on it, are drawn to such things. I dare say you know the kind of people I mean?” Owen, thinking of McPhee, said he did.

“I wouldn’t want to encourage them by letting them think they have my approval. So I would prefer, if you don’t mind, not to use the word. To do so would be to admit that I know about such things.”

“Well, yes, but…then why are you here?”

“I have come to lodge a formal protest at Bimbashi McPhee’s presence.”

“At what?”

“An unspecified event in the Gamaliya district.”

“You can’t protest at his presence if you’re unable to say what he was present at!”

“From my point of view,” said the Sheikh, “the protest is the important thing, not the event.”

“I see.”

“There’s a lot of feeling in the Gamaliya about the incident.”

“I see.”

“Which might boil over.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?”

The Sheikh looked surprised.

“Nothing,” he said. “I just wanted to lodge a protest, that was all.”

Owen understood. The Sheikh was anxious to guard his back in terms of relations with his flock.

He thought for a moment.

“I don’t know that I can accept a formal protest,” he said. “If there wasn’t an event, there can’t have been a presence at it.”

“Oh!”

“I don’t think I could offer an apology. Formal, that is. However, I might be willing to issue a general statement deploring recent events—unspecified, of course,—in the Gamaliya. Would that help?”

“From my point of view, yes.”

“And from my point of view? Would that be enough to head off trouble?”

“I doubt it,” said Sheikh Musa.

Owen felt like kicking McPhee’s backside.

Owen still had hopes it would all quietly fade away. The heat would surely dissuade potential troublemakers from causing a riot and by the time the hot spell was over, with luck they would have forgotten about it. As for Garvin and McPhee, Garvin would soon be departing on leave. He usually liked to return to his old haunts at Alexandria and go duck shooting. With luck, he would return in a less savage frame of mind. Perhaps McPhee, too, could be induced to take a break: go and look at some of the monasteries in Sinai, for example. In heat like this people tended to get things out of perspective.

He had better watch that this didn’t happen in his own case. Perhaps he should take a holiday, too? The trouble was that Zeinab would insist on going to Paris. She regarded everywhere else as boringly provincial. The Government, on the other hand, insisted that its employees take their leave locally. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be best not to take a holiday. Besides, if Garvin and McPhee were away, someone had to look after the shop.

However, he must certainly guard against getting things out of perspective. He ought to take it easy for a bit. Working on this theory, he stepped out of the office midmorning and went to his favourite café, taking the next day’s newspapers or, at least, the Arabic, French and English ones with him. He could always pretend that it was work. One of the Mamur Zapt’s duties was control of the press, a necessary function (in the view of the British) in a city of more than a dozen religions, a score of nationalities, a hundred different ethnic flavours and over a thousand sects, half of which at any given time were at the throats of the other half. To this end, he received advance copies of all publications.

Control, though, was another matter. Debate in the Arab world tended to be conducted at voice top anyway, and in the press the normal temperature was feverish. Cairo had taken to newspapers late but with gusto and there were hundreds of them. Each faction had at least two newspapers (two, because any group in Cairo could be guaranteed to split at least two ways) and they vied with each other in the extremity of their views and the vehemence with which they expressed them. Even the weather reports were fiercely disputed.

How to distinguish the normal incandescent from the potentially explosive? Owen usually did not try. After a year or two’s experience he developed a sixth sense which alerted him to passages likely to bring rival communities to blows.

The rest he left well alone, on the assumption that readers were more interested in the violence of rhetoric than in the violence of action: an approach, however, which his superiors did not always understand.

The real value of the newspapers (to Owen) was that beneath the hyperbole it was sometimes possible to detect new concerns and growth of feeling. They were sometimes, despite everything, a useful source of intelligence. Another, of course, was the gossip of Cairo’s café culture. What better, then, than to combine the two? Where better for the Mamur Zapt, the Head of Political Intelligence, to sit than in a well-populated Arab café with all his intelligence material to hand? So, at least, argued Owen; and turned to the sports pages.

He became aware of someone trying covertly to attract his attention. It was a man at an adjoining table. His face seemed familiar, although it took a little while for Owen to place him. Not one of his agents but a man who sometimes gave his agents useful information. A Greek, with the dark suit and pot-like red tarboosh of the Effendi, or office worker.

“Have you heard about Philipides?” he said.

“Philipides?”

“He’s coming out tomorrow.” Misunderstanding Owen’s puzzlement, he said: “It may not be in the Arab papers. It’s in the Greek ones.”

“What’s special about Philipides?” asked Owen.

The man smiled, obviously thinking Owen was playing with him.

“The Mamur Zapt, of all people, should know that,” he said.

He put some milliemes out for the waiter.

“Garvin ought to be interested,” he said. “Or so they say.”

He went off through the tables. Owen sipped his coffee and searched his memory. The name meant nothing to him.

On the other side of the street he saw someone he knew and waved to him. The man waved back and came across. His name was Georgiades. Another Greek, but this time definitely not an Effendi. No tarboosh, an open-necked shirt, casual, crumpled cotton trousers held up by a belt over which his stomach bulged uncomfortably. He pointed proudly to it.

“See that?” he said. “Another notch! Rosa’s cutting down on the food. It’s been a struggle for her. All Greek women are taught to fatten their husbands up but she’s decided she’s had enough. It’s fattening the goose for killing, she says. She and her grandmother are at loggerheads again over it.”

He sat down at Owen’s table and mopped his brow. There were dark patches of sweat beneath his armpits, on his chest, on his back and even on the thighs of his trousers.

“Does the name Philipides mean anything to you?” said Owen.

The Greek thought for a bit, then nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Owen, “but someone’s just told me the Mamur Zapt, above all, ought to know. Above all. That’s why I’m wondering.”

“Ah, yes,” said Georgiades, “but which Mamur Zapt?”

“What do you mean?”

“You or your predecessor?”

“There was a gap,” said Owen. “McPhee stood in.”

“No,” said Georgiades. “Before.”

“There was something about corruption, wasn’t there?”

“There was.”

“And Philipides was something to do with it?”

“That’s right.”

“Can you give me some details?”

Georgiades considered.

“I think perhaps you ought to ask Garvin,” he said.

Philipides?” said Garvin, musing. “So he’s out, is he?”

“Does it interest you?”

“Not much. They’ve all got to come out sometime.”

“My informant thought it should interest you.”

Garvin shrugged.

“I can’t think why.”

“Is there a chance he might be looking for revenge?”

“I put him inside, certainly. But he can hardly complain about that. He was as crooked as they come.”

“Is there any reason for him to have a particular grudge against you?”

“Not really. The Parquet handled it all. I was just one of the witnesses. Mind you, I set the traps.”

“Perhaps that was it.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. There was nothing special about it.”

“It caught him,” Owen pointed out.

“I’ve caught lots of people,” said Garvin. “That doesn’t mean to say they all want revenge. No, if there was anyone who wanted to get his own back, it wouldn’t be him.”

“Who would it be, then?”

“His boss.”

“Who was?”

Garvin grinned.

“Guess,” he suggested.

“The Mamur Zapt?”

“You’ve been talking to someone.”

“Georgiades. He suggested I talk to you!”

Garvin was amused.

“Prudent fellow,” he said.

“What’s it all about?”

“It’s straightforward, really. It was not long after I moved here from Alexandria. There was a lot to sort out. My God, you’d never believe how much there was, they were back in the last century—”

“McPhee here then?”

“No, that was later. He came
because
of this. Anyway, one day I got home and found a small parcel on the hall table. I opened it and found a pair of diamond earrings. I was a bit surprised, thought my wife had been buying things; hell, we hadn’t got much money in those days, so I asked her about it when she got back. She didn’t know anything about the parcel. Anyway, I asked around and found that it had been brought by one of Philipides’s orderlies. So the next morning I had Philipides in and asked him about it. He said, big mistake, it was meant for someone else, the orderly had got confused. Anyway, I let him have the earrings back and thought no more about it.”

“And what was Philipides at this time?”

“He was a police inspector in the Abdin district and had the name of being the Mamur Zapt’s right-hand man. I didn’t put the two together though till some months later when I heard that one of my own officers had been pawning his wife’s jewellery to raise money to purchase promotion. Well, as you can imagine, I had him in. It took a bit of time but eventually I got from him that Philipides was demanding the money as the price of the Mamur Zapt’s recommendation.”

Garvin looked at Owen.

“It was significant in those days. The Commandant then was Wainwright and he didn’t have a clue. The Mamur Zapt just twisted him round his finger. What the Mamur Zapt said, went. Well, I was pretty shocked, I can tell you. I hadn’t realized things were as bad as that. I made some discreet inquiries and found that it was quite an accepted practice. But what the hell was I to do?”

“If the officer had confessed—”

Garvin gestured impatiently.

“Yes, but, you see, I couldn’t go to Wainwright. I was just a new boy in those days and Deputy Commandant carried no clout. Wainwright took the Mamur Zapt’s word on everything.”

“Yes, but if you had the evidence—”

“It wasn’t enough. If it came to it, the Mamur Zapt could disown Philipides. Say it was nothing to do with him. I had to show there was a connection between the two.”

“So how did you do it?”

“Set a trap. I told the original officer to let Philipides know that he had confessed to me and then I tapped the telephone lines between Philipides and the Mamur Zapt.”

“Telephone?” The telephone system in Cairo was still in its infancy and largely consigned to Government offices; at the time Garvin was referring to, it would have been younger still.

“Yes,” Garvin replied, “The Mamur Zapt had one of the earliest ones.”

“Did it work?”

“Up to a point, yes. Philipides rang him that afternoon and said enough to incriminate the pair of them. I took it all down and showed it to Wainwright the next morning.”

He walked over to the window and poured himself some water from the earthenware pitcher which stood next to the shutters of all Cairo offices where it would cool.

“Even then it wasn’t simple,” he said. “Wainwright just wouldn’t believe me. I had to go to the Consul-General. Over his head. That made me popular, I can tell you! In the end, I got the C-G to agree but it took three weeks to persuade Wainwright to suspend the two.”

“By which time—”

“No, they couldn’t very well destroy the evidence. They tried intimidation first, put a lot of pressure on the officer. I had to give him an armed guard. I was terrified he would give way. They tried it on me, too.”

Owen smiled.

“Yes, well, that didn’t get them very far,” said Garvin. “But it was pretty unpleasant. I carried a gun with me all the time. Then they tried to discredit me. They dredged up the earrings. Said that I was in the habit of accepting presents and only made a fuss this time because I wanted more. Fortunately, I’d told Judge Willis all about it the day it happened. It just shows you can’t be too careful.”

He pushed the shutters slightly apart to encourage a breeze. Normally they kept the offices dark and cool but the prolonged hot spell had made them like ovens.

“Next, they said it was political.”

“Political!”

“Yes. They said it was all a trick to get Egyptians out and British in. They made great play of that when it came to the trial, and the Parquet was content to let it run because they wanted to make their own political point. They gave me a real grilling. Went on for days. Apart from the officer, and he was my subordinate, I was the chief witness, you see. To the telephone conversation, anyway, and that was crucial, because it was only that, really, that tied the Mamur Zapt in. In the end, though, it suited them to go for a conviction.”

“Which they got.”

“Yes. Well, I say ‘got’. Both were found guilty and sent to jail but the Mamur Zapt was released almost at once on compassionate grounds. He knew too much about all the people involved. The politicians were dead scared that if they didn’t look after him, he would spill all the beans.”

“Where is he now?”

“Enjoying a fat pension in Damascus.”

“It sounds as if he’s got it all worked out,” said Owen. “I’ll bear his example in mind.”

“There are other examples, too, you might bear in mind,” said Garvin. “Wainwright got the push shortly after. I got promotion.”

“Thank you. What about McPhee?”

“That bum!”

“How does he come into it?”

“Well, they needed a replacement as Mamur Zapt. The one thing he had to be, in the circumstances, was honest.”

“Well, he is that,” said Owen.

“I managed to get it made temporary. The price was that when they filled the post he got moved sideways to Deputy Commandant. I’m trying to make that,” said Garvin, “temporary, too.”

In this hot weather, Owen liked to sleep outside. He had a small garden, which the house’s previous occupant, a Greek, had developed in the Mediterranean style rather than the English, more for shade than colour. It was thick with shrubs but there was a little open space beneath a large orange tree and it was here that Owen disposed his bed, not too far in under the branches in case creepy-crawlies dropped on him during the night, but not too far out, either, where the moonlight might prevent him from sleeping.

This morning he awoke with the sun, as he always did, and at once reached his hand down for his slippers, tapping them automatically on the ground to dislodge any scorpion that might have crept in. Then he slipped them on and made for the shower. The water came from a tank in the roof and was still warm from the previous day’s sun. He was just reaching out happily for the soap when he heard the slither behind him and froze. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the tail disappearing into the wall.

“Jesus!” he said, and dispensed with the shower for that morning.

The snake catcher came that afternoon. He was a gnarled, weather-beaten little man with snake bites all over his hands and carrying a leather bag and a cane.

“Another one?” he said. “It’s the hot weather that’s bringing them out.”

“I didn’t see what sort it was,” said Owen, “I just caught a glimpse of the tail.”

He took the snake catcher to the showerhouse and pointed out the hole. The snake catcher sniffed at it and said: “Yes, that’s the way he came, but he doesn’t live there.”

He went round to the back of the showerhouse and showed Owen the hole where the snake had got out. A slight, almost imperceptible track led into the undergrowth.

“Not been doing much gardening, have you?” said the snake catcher. “He’s all right in there.”

He followed the trail in carefully.

“There he is!” he said suddenly. “See him? Down by that root.”

It would be just the head and eyes that were visible. Owen couldn’t see anything.

The snake catcher stood and thought a bit. He was working out where the tail was.

After a while he put down the leather bag beside Owen and circled round behind the snake. This was the tricky part, he had told Owen on a previous occasion. The next bit was more obviously dramatic but this bit was tricky because the tail would often be coiled around roots or undergrowth and it was not always easy to tear it loose.

Owen liked to watch a craftsman at work. He took up a position where he could see.

The snake catcher began to move cautiously into the undergrowth, peering intently before him. He came to a stop and just stood there for a while, looking.

Suddenly, he pounced. The snake came up with his hand, wriggling and twisting. He threw it out into the open. It tried at once to squirm away but he cut off its escape by beating with his cane. The snake came to ground in the middle of the clearing.

The snake catcher crept forward and then suddenly brought the cane down hard on the snake’s neck, pressing it in to the ground. Then, holding the cane down with his left hand, he reached out with his right hand and seized the snake with thumb and forefinger, forcing the jaws open. He dropped the cane and held out the skirts of his galabeah so that the snake could strike at them. He let it strike several times. Yellow beads of venom appeared on the cloth. When he was satisfied that all the poison had been drawn, he opened his bag and dropped the cobra inside. Snake catchers hardly ever killed their snakes.

“What will you do with it?”

“Dispose of it through the trade. Some shops want them. Charmers. Some people buy them for pets.”

“You’d need to know what you’re doing.”

“Most people don’t,” he said. “That’s why there’s always a demand for new ones. They die easy.”

“It’s not the other way round? The owners that die?”

“We take the fangs out first. That makes them safe. The poison flows along the fang, you see. The trouble is, they use the teeth for killing their food. Once they’re gone, they don’t last very long.”

“What about milking?” asked Owen, displaying his newfound knowledge.

“It’s all right if you know what you’re doing. There is a sac behind the fangs where the poison is. You let it strike—that’s what I was doing—until the sac is drained dry. Then you’re all right for about a fortnight.”

“If you had a lot of snakes,” said Owen, thinking about the cistern where they had found McPhee, “you’d have to know each one.”

“Well, you would know each one, wouldn’t you, if it was your job.”

They walked back to the house.

“Do you know a snake catcher over in Gamaliya?”

“There are several. Which one?”

“He’s on the Place of Tombs side.”

“Abu?”

“That’s the one. He’s got a daughter.”

The snake catcher smiled.

“He’s got a right one there!” he said.

“She seems to know a lot about it.”

“Oh, she knows a lot about it, all right. She wants to be one of us. Take on from him after he’s gone, like. But it won’t do. She’s a girl, isn’t she? We’re a special sect, you know. The Rifa’i. You’ve got to be one of us before you’re allowed to do it. It’s very strict. Got to be, hasn’t it? And we don’t have women. It would confuse the snakes. Anyway, it’s not a woman’s job.”

“How come she knows so much about it?”

“Watched her dad. He let her see too much, in my opinion. He wanted a boy, you see, and then when one didn’t come he got in the habit of treating her as one.”

“Well, she seems a lively girl.”

“Yes, but who’d want a daughter like that? What a business when it came to marrying her off! You might have to pay her husband extra.”

When Owen arrived at her
appartement
, Zeinab wasn’t there. She arrived half an hour later.

“Well, what do you expect?” she said. “If you think I’m going to be waiting for you half naked in bed every time you drop in, you’d better think again.”

Zeinab had, unfortunately, not forgotten the business about the girl. It had been a mistake telling her. For some obscure reason she blamed him.

“And, incidentally, what happened to that diamond?” Owen fished in his pocket and took it out. Zeinab inspected it critically.

“Cheap!” she pronounced. “They’ve certainly got you worked out, haven’t they?”

Owen put the stone back in his pocket.

“Is that a good idea?” asked Zeinab. “Going around with it in your pocket?”

“It’s all right,” Owen assured her. “It’s safer there than in the Bab-el-Khalk.”

Zeinab began to feel motherly feelings.

“Yes, I’m sure, darling. But is it a good idea all the same? Oughtn’t you to give it to someone? If you keep it, you see,” she said, pronouncing the words very slowly, as to an idiot, “they may say you’ve deliberately kept it.”

“I’m keeping it as evidence.”

“Yes, but—” said Zeinab, motherliness struggling against exasperation.

“I’ve booked it in,” Owen assured her.

“Did you book the girl in, too, while you were at it?” asked Zeinab tartly.