Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

‘He is but a love-sick calf. His heart had gone to Leila.’

‘Leila is dead now,’ said someone, ‘and he still creeps around.’

‘Tell him to keep out of the Gamaliya!’ called someone from the back of the group. Again Owen thought it was Fatima’s husband.

‘Let there be no trouble!’ said Mahmoud sternly. ‘Or others will find themselves joining Ali Khedri in the caracol!’

The group dispersed. Two of them crossed to Owen’s side of the road. They had not seen him before. One of the men was Fatima’s husband. He looked at Owen with hate in his face. And you, too!’ he said.

‘Effendi,’ said Yussef, Owen’s orderly, diffidently as he came into his office the next morning, ‘I think you may need this.’

He put a small embroidered pouch on Owen’s desk.

‘What is it?’

‘It is a magic charm. My wife has sewn it and inside there is a holy stone that the Sheikh has blessed.’

‘Well, thank her very much-thank you very much, but- exactly why do I need it now?’

‘If it was just the Jews, that would be nothing. They are cunning and devious, it is true, but then, you are cunning and devious also. But when you are up against this-?’

‘One moment,’ said Owen; ‘What am I up against?’

Yussef laid his forefinger alongside his nose.

‘Let us not speak the word. But, Effendi, I am with you. We are all with you. I said to my wife: “Now he is really up against it!” And she said: “Let us pray for him.” And then she thought of the magic amulet. “Let us do what we can,” she said; for we all want the Cut to be saved. Her especially, for, as I have said, she depends on it to have her babies.’

‘That is very kind of you, Yussef. But I don’t quite follow… Exactly what-?’

‘The regulator was one thing. Bad enough-believe me, Effendi, I know what water means, my family comes from the Delta-but who would have thought it would have gone for the Cut? I said, it must be out of its mind! But the Sheikh said, no, it was not out of its mind, it was just very angry. That’s because there’s a lot wrong with the world, and especially with the dams. We’ve taken things a bit too far, it’s all got out of hand, and that’s what it’s doing, just reminding us. Well, I can understand that with the regulator, but why go for the Cut? It wouldn’t have hurt it, would it, just to have held off for another week.’

‘Just a minute, Yussef, who or what is “it”? Who, or what, is going for the Cut?’

‘Why, Effendi, you saw for yourself. It was having a go at The Bride. The Lizard Man!’

The newspapers, too, were giving the Lizard Man a new lease of life. They were full of him. The unfortunate Babikr was quite forgotten as the link was made with the attempt on the Manu-fiya Regulator. One or two of the papers mentioned him as a junior accomplice or surrogate for the Lizard Man but most of the papers lost sight of him entirely, treating the incident as an unsolved mystery. Or, rather, as a mystery where one knew exactly who had perpetuated the crime but just, somehow, wasn’t able to lay hands on him.

And here he was popping up again, with vaguely heroic accretions, a sort of Robin Hood perpetually thumbing his nose at the law! And, like Robin Hood, in some strange way a representative of the poor. Owen realized, as he read, that the figure was capturing popular doubt about the new dams, not so much resentment at them as worry and suspicion, the feeling that, as the fiki had said, a balance had been disturbed.

The belief that the Lizard Man had now attacked the Cut had, though, divided as well as aroused public opinion. While there were doubts about the dams, there were none about the Cut; and so with many people the attack‘ on the Cut was transformed into something positive. It did not mean, they held, that the Lizard Man was against the Cut. On the contrary, he was for it. This was just his way of registering his displeasure at the proposal to end it.

Whichever view one took, though, Owen noted with satisfaction, it had the effect of displacing the Jews from the scene. He was half minded to go down to the Muslim gravediggers and tell them that since the Lizard Man was taking a hand, they had better stay out of it!

But there was something else about the newspapers’ responses that Owen found puzzling. Most of the press was strongly Nationalist, which meant that it was normally committed to a progressivist, ‘modern’ line. While it did not dare to turn up its nose at something as popular as the Cut, it usually tried to keep its distance from anything that smacked so strongly of backward-looking superstition. But here it was plunging heavily into popular feeling, embracing the Lizard Man for all it was worth!

What was even stranger was that it was using the situation to make a sharply critical attack on something it usually supported, the new dams and the new extensions of the irrigation system. Why were the Nationalists changing tack?

Owen went down to the Cut to see that all was well. McPhee had had the same thought and when Owen arrived was busy posting constables on top of the temporary dam and round the base of the earth cone.

‘It’s probably overdoing it,’ he said, ‘but-’

‘Are you going to leave them there overnight?’

‘They’re not very happy at the prospect,’ McPhee admitted. ‘This stupid nonsense about the Lizard Man-’

McPhee was discriminating over the ritual and myth that he accepted.

Owen recognized a constable he had worked with.

‘Why don’t you ask Selim?’

Selim beamed when he saw Owen looking at him and waved a hand.

Owen went over to him.

‘Selim, I’d like you to take charge of a few men-’

‘Certainly, Effendi. These thickheads! I know how to handle them. A good kick up the backside-’

‘We want to post a guard overnight and I’d like you to be in charge of it.’

‘Overnight? Here?’

Selim swallowed.

‘Of course, Effendi,’ he said bravely.

He returned to the line, however, perturbed and thinking. Some time later he accosted Owen.

‘Effendi, about that guard duty-’

‘Yes?’

‘I would do it. In fact, I am desperate to do it. Unfortunately, there is a terrible family circumstance that pre-’

‘Oh, come, Selim; there wasn’t one ten minutes ago.’

‘It’s my grandmother, Effendi. She comes from the south, you see. Well, she can’t help that. Someone has to. Only-’

‘What the hell’s that got to do with it?’

‘But, Effendi, I was telling you! She comes from the south, you see. Down in Dinka land. Where there’s nothing but reeds and not a woman in sight. Except my grandmother, of course. Well, it’s very primitive down there. It’s not the place where you’d want to be, believe me, Effendi. Nor me, either.’

‘Selim-’

‘It’s very primitive down there, as I was saying. And each clan has got its totem. Would you believe it, Effendi? The backward buggers! Well, my grandmother’s totem is-you’ll never believe this, Effendi-a lizard! So I’m afraid that rather rules me out.’ ’I don’t see why.’

‘Well, Effendi, it makes it doubly hard for me. I’d see him off, otherwise. What’s a mere Lizard Man to a man like me? Pooh! But, you see, with it being my grandmother’s totem, I’d have to beat him twice. And that, with a Lizard Man, is a bit much!’

‘Well, it would be, Selim, if that were, in fact, your grandmother’s totem. Only I think you may have been misinformed. You see, I know the Dinka totems; and the lizard is not among them. So you’d only have to beat him once. For a man like you.

‘Effendi,’ said Selim, cast down, ‘even a man like me could have problems with a Lizard Man!’

‘I know,’ said Owen, relenting, ‘and therefore I will help you. It so happens that I have a magic amulet here, which, for the sake of our friendship, I am prepared to lend you.’