Michael Pearce - The Mingrelian Conspiracy

‘I come again,’ said Owen. ‘I have brought someone who would like to see your work.’

The man bowed acknowledgement, then lifted the lamp so that Mahmoud could see the ikon better. The gold seemed to stand out in the darkness, to glow with a deep, remarkable light. Mahmoud examined it attentively.

‘This, here…’ he said, pointing.

The workman peered at the spot. His face showed clear in the light of the lamp.

Owen, holding on to Omar, felt him shake his head.

They went downstairs to the workshop.

‘Still at it?’ said Owen.

‘For another week,’ said the workman.

Mahmoud picked up a piece of board with paint on it and stepped out into the sunlight to see it better.

The workman looked up.

‘Just trying out the colours,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get them right.’

‘How do you get this?’ said Mahmoud, pointing.

The man went over to stand beside him. Again, Owen felt Omar shake his head.

As they came out, Georgiades materialized beside them.

‘A leather-worker’s next,’ he said. They followed him through a forest of arches and then into an inner courtyard. Along one wall there was another series of arches, each of which held a small workshop. Several of them were tailors. They sat on the broad counter of their shop sewing by hand. Another was heavy with the smell of spices. As they came to the one at the end there was the smell of burnt leather. Two men were busy at a fire at the back. They looked up as Mahmoud went in. Omar shook his head.

Georgiades led them on.

Towards the end of the morning Owen began to feel that it was a long time since he had seen the sunlight. He sometimes felt like that in the Bab-el-Khalk but there, although the shutters were closed against the heat, the darkness was never quite as absolute and oppressive as it was here. Everyone worked by lamplight. It was as if they were all moles inhabiting some underground gallery.

Omar shook his head to all the Georgians he was shown. Owen began to wonder if this was not after all a wild goose chase, if he had brought Mahmoud and Omar here in pursuit of a mere chimera of coincidence.

Georgiades stopped.

‘What’s this?’

‘A bookbinder’s. It used to be Sorgos’s.’ He looked at Owen. ‘I think you’d better stay outside,’ he said.

Owen shrugged and watched Mahmoud go in with Omar.

‘Why do I have to stay outside?’

‘Because the person in there might recognize you. And wonder.’

It was some little time before the two came out.

‘Interesting books,’ said Mahmoud. ‘They do a lot of work for the Law School Library.’

They walked on round a corner and then up some steps and then, to his surprise, Owen found himself high up on one of the old Roman walls of the fortress and looking down on the small courtyard of the Mo’allaka.

‘Well?’ said Owen.

Mahmoud nodded.

‘Djugashvili,’ he said.

On his way back to the Bab-el-Khalk, cutting through side streets, Owen came upon a riot. The street was jammed with people shaking their fists and shouting. There was a crash of collapsing stalls, agitated shouts, accompanied, strangely enough, by bleating. Two sheep shot out from under the feet of the crowd and ran off distractedly down the road. More agitated shouts and then a small boy shot likewise from under the feet of the crowd and ran off in pursuit. More splintering of woodwork and now some things were being thrown. Small objects, stones? Already red.

Owen came to a halt. He had thought at first that this was merely an ordinary traffic dispute, caused, say, by a man carrying a bed on a donkey, the donkey, small, the bed big and lying flat on the donkey’s back, the ends protruding across the street, the man, again, big, sitting on top of the bed, meeting, say, a forage camel, grumpy, huge loads of berseem slung on either side of its back, so huge that they, too, spread out across the street, both animals unwieldy and neither driver able, or inclined, to go back, the exchange of insults egged on by admiring onlookers, developing partisanship and, in no time at all, tumult. Despite the ferocity of the rhetoric and the postures that the would-be combatants took up, such things usually sorted themselves out peacefully when everybody had had their fun. But this looked different. The blood-

Or was it blood? And were the missiles stones? Or were they-yes, tomatoes! From the upset stall, perhaps. Thrown in rage-was that right? — by the offended stall owner? What was all this about?

At the heart of the dispute there appeared to be two men, held back by supporters but straining to throw themselves on each other, insults streaming through foaming lips.

Owen pushed his way through the throng and came out beside them. He found himself in front of an Arab coffee house, the owner of which, his face perspiring profusely, was trying desperately to pacify the two men.

‘What is all this?’ said Owen sternly.

The proprietor grabbed at him with relief.

‘Effendi! Oh, Effendi, these two men-!’

Owen turned on them.

‘Stop that!’ he barked. ‘Any more nonsense from you and you’ll be in the caracol!’

One of them quietened down. The other went on shouting. Owen caught him by the folds of his galabeeyah.

‘Did you hear me?’ he said threateningly. ‘I said quieten down!’

He lifted the man up on to his toes and shook him.

‘That’s better.’ He released the man. ‘Now, what’s all this about?’

The crowd calmed down. The proprietor pushed forward. ‘Effendi, these two men-scoundrels, rascals, vagabonds! They started it.’

The two men turned on him in unison.

‘Liar! Thief! You started it!’

‘ I started it?’ said the proprietor, stepping back hurriedly.

‘Yes, you started it. Everything was all right until you started mucking about!’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say that-’ began the other man.

‘I just thought it was time for a change, that’s all!’ said the proprietor, sweating.

‘Well, you’ve got change, haven’t you?’ said one of the protagonists belligerently. ‘Him, or me?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’ demanded the other man.

‘Well, no. It’s either him or it’s you. Either Abu Zeyd or Sultan Baybars.’

Owen saw now that both men were storytellers.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘I’m telling you. People would like a change.’

‘In the stories of Abu Zeyd there is inexhaustible variety.’

‘Well, not quite inexhaustible-’

‘I see what you mean,’ said the other man swiftly. ‘They are a bit the same. Whereas the stories of Sultan Baybars-’

‘We’ve heard them all before,’ said the proprietor, wiping his face. ‘We want new ones.’

‘New ones!’

‘Well, yes, new ones. Now, this new fellow-’

‘A charlatan!’

‘A fake!’

‘No art!’

‘No feeling!’

‘Yes, but they’re new. We’ve not heard the stories before. He’s got a bit of imagination, this bloke has.’

‘Imagination!’

‘You don’t want imagination. What you want is tradition. You want to know where you are.’

‘Isn’t there room for you all?’ asked Owen. ‘One of you one day, the other the next?’

‘Ah, that’s how it starts. But then you get somebody else in, and then another, and before you know where you are, your livelihood’s gone. You’ve got to make a stand!’

‘There’s too many coming into the profession, if you ask me. Every time you go to a cafe these days you’ve got competition.’

‘And it’s not from people you know, it’s from these new men!’

‘Upstarts!’

‘No tradition!’

‘No training!’

‘Stories from the gutter!’

‘They undermine the dignity of the profession!’