Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

Out here on the very rim of the city, all semblance of street plan had been lost. There were gaps everywhere and great stretches of rubble, which the sand, drifting in from the desert, was slowly covering. They stopped uncertainly.

Some men were digging in the graveyard. Mahmoud asked them if they knew the house of Ali Khedri. One of the men nodded and then, glad of the excuse, put down his spade and came out to accompany them.

‘The house of the water-carrier,’ he said, pointing.

It was one of the poorer houses. The walls had caved in so badly that the doorway had almost disappeared. You had to drop on to hands and knees to go in.

Inside, everything was filthy. There were some rags in a corner, some water-skins thrown down carelessly, and over by the rear door some pots and pans. They did the cooking outside, presumably.

‘It needs a womans hand,’ said the water-carrier defensively. He was a short stocky man dressed not in the usual galabeeyah but just in woollen drawers. His skin had been burnt black by years of working in the fields and then walking in the streets. His eyes were reddish and inflamed, the usual ophthalmia of the fellah in the Delta.

‘We lived better than this once,’ he said. ‘I wanted to give it her again.’

‘Through marriage to Omar Fayoum?’

‘Well, why not? I know they said he was too old for her. That’s not the point, I said. It’s not how old you are, it’s how rich you are. And you don’t usually get rich until you get old. It takes time. That’s my experience, anyway. There are advantages, too. All you’ve got to do is hang on and one day he’ll be gone. And then you’ll have it all. That’s what I said. That’s what I said to her, too. Oh, I know he’s not young and handsome. I know he’s a hard old bastard. But that’s not it. The point is, he’s got a piastre or two. He’s got one cart, he’s talking of getting another. That’s real, that is. It’s not just a pair of nice brown eyes.’

He spat on the floor.

‘Brown eyes!’ he said contemptuously. ‘They’re not real.’ Ants were already gathering around the spit. There must be something in it, thought Owen. Sugar? Tobacco? Hashish?

There was another stain just beside it. From it a moving column stretched across the floor and up the wall. Not ants, not cockroaches, either; some other sort of bug.

‘It needs a woman’s hand. I’ve never said she wasn’t good about the house.’

‘And yet you were going to marry her off?’

‘She was getting on. It would soon have been too late. I hung on as long as I could. And then old Omar comes along. “It’s now or never,” he said. “In another year she’ll be over the hill.” Mind you, I think he’d had his eye on her for some time. He was just waiting for the price to drop. “You don’t want them young and skittish,” I said. “Not in a wife, anyway. You want them hardworking and strong.” “I like them a bit skittish,” he said, with a grin. But he was ready to take her, all the same.’

‘But first he wanted her circumcised?’

‘No, no. He didn’t know anything about that. He took it for granted that she was. I took it for granted that she was. Her mother ought to have seen to that. Back at the village. It was only when they were putting the sugar paste on that they found out. Then they came to me fast. She’s not right, they said. Well, then, you’d better make her right, I said. And it was then we got into all this stuff about her being too old and him being too old.’

‘But you went ahead with it?’

‘Well, it would have been off, otherwise, wouldn’t it? Omar Fayoum is not going to want anything that’s not a hundred per cent, is he?’

And now Owen’s ankles were itching. There were almost certainly fleas. They were all three squatting on the floor. There was nowhere else to sit.

‘So it was done?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then it went wrong?’

‘That old bitch! I don’t reckon she knew what she was doing when she did it. And I paid her good money, too! Not all, luckily. Some before, some after. When it came to after, I went to her and said: “You old bitch, you’ve done it wrong. I don’t mind paying good money for a good job, but this isn’t a good job, is it?” So I docked her some. Well, then she set up a great crying and shouting. It wasn’t her fault, she said. She said it was because the girl was too old. But she didn’t say that before, when we were making the deal! “You’ve cost me money,” I said. “Now she’s fit for nothing. She might not even be fit for old Omar when the time comes.’”

‘She was very sick?’

‘Couldn’t lift a finger. Just lay there. “This won’t do,” I said after a while. “You’ve got to pull yourself together, my girl.”’

‘You didn’t call a hakim?’

‘Hakims are for rich people. When you’re poor, you’ve got to get better by yourself.’

‘All the same-’

‘Besides,’ said Ali Khedri, ‘by that time it was too late.’

‘Too late? Why?’

‘Because I’d thrown her out.’

6’tss’t?›

‘Thrown her out?’ said Mahmoud incredulously.

‘Yes. I didn’t have much choice, did I? Not when I found out.’

‘Found out? What did you find out?’

‘About her and this boy. To think that all the time I’d been arranging things with Omar Fayoum, she’d been carrying on with that little bastard! “I love him,” she said. “Love?” I said. “What’s that? How much is that worth? How much does that fetch in the market, then? And how much do spoiled goods fetch? You tell me that! You’ve brought shame and dishonour upon me,” I said.

‘Oh, then she wept and said it had amounted to nothing and it had all come to an end anyway and that she would marry Omar Fayoum if I wished.

‘“Wished?” I said. “What’s that got to do with it? Do you think he’s going to have you now? Or anyone else is, for that matter? You’ve made your bed, my girl, and now you’ve got to lie on it. Only you’re not going to lie on it in my house. Not in the house that you’ve brought disgrace upon!”

‘Well, then she wept and clung to me and begged me to let her stay. She’d work, she said, and find some way of bringing in some money. “I know your sort of work,” I said, “and if you think I’m letting my daughter go out whoring, then you’d better think again, my girl. I may be poor but I’m not that poor. Out on the streets is where you belong and that’s where you’d better go!”’

‘So she went?’ said Mahmoud, tight-lipped and angry.

‘Yes.’

‘And you made no attempt to find out what had happened to her?’

‘I wasn’t going to ask. I thought that maybe she and that boy-But I kept seeing him around, he was always creeping around, and someone told me he was forever asking about her, so I reckoned that couldn’t be it. Then I thought that maybe someone would tell me, but no one did. And then one day I heard about that woman at the Cut, you know, that woman they found buried under The Bride. Well, at first I thought nothing of it, but then-’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I know some of the gravediggers, you see. And one of them has a brother who works at the mortuary. And he told him that he reckoned the girl that was found was my Leila. How he could tell, I don’t know. From what the man said who’d found her. But it set me wondering. And what I asked myself was, how did she get there? There, of all places? Well, someone must have put her there, mustn’t they? And they must have done it for a purpose. And do you know what I reckon?’

He looked at Owen and Mahmoud almost triumphantly.

‘It was the Jews.’

‘Jews!’

‘Yes. They go in for this sort of thing, don’t they? And then there’s the Cut.’