Death of an Effendi. Michael Pearce

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ