Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

For Ali Khedri, as for Suleiman, things were falling into place. Babikr might demur, but he was bound. Ali Khedri thanked God or Shaitun for the terms of the oath on which he had insisted. About the effect on others of his taking revenge in this way on his old adversary, he did not care. All else was consumed in the bitterness he felt for Al-Sayyid Hannam.

And then it did not work. Babikr planted the bomb, the Manufiya Regulator was blown, but Al-Sayyid Hannam, though damaged, was not broken.

He even had the gall to come to him, him, Ali Khedri, whom he had wronged so badly, asking-this was rich, so rich that it could not be chance, it must be cunning-for forgiveness.

So back they were to things as they had been, with his old enemy triumphant, even, it seemed, on the verge of a greater triumph. For there could be no mistake about it now. The boy had found out. He had attached his infernal devices to the pipes on either side of the tap and that meant, Omar Fayoum said, that he would be able to show that there was no doubt about it. Unless, of course, he was stopped.

And then they heard that the boy was again in the Gamaliya, there, at the very spot!

It was their last chance to save themselves. More than that; for Ali Khedri it was another chance, and, yes, again, probably his last chance, to get even with his old adversary. For Al-Sayyid Hannam loved his boy. The man from the Parquet had said so. Loved him. Perhaps this, not the water, was the way to find revenge.

‘You sought revenge,’ said Owen coldly, ‘through harming innocence.’

‘Innocence? You call the boy innocent?’

‘He was but doing his job.’

Ali Khedri was unconvinced.

‘He was put up to it,’ he said, ‘by his father.’

And what of those others whom you would have harmed along with Al-Sayyid Hannam?’

The water-carrier shrugged.

‘Some of them came from your village. They remembered you in friendship. They will not do that now. They will think of you with anger. As a man who would have hurt his friends. And as a man who killed his daughter.’

Ali Khedri started up.

‘I did not kill her!’ he cried.

‘No,’ said Mahmoud, speaking for the first time. Up till now he had been sitting there quietly, for the attack on the regulator was Owen’s business. Leila, however, was his. ‘No, you did not kill her. But I think you know who did.’

Ali Khedri started to say something, stopped and looked at the ground.

‘You must have guessed,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Even if he did not speak of it when you left the meeting together, you must have guessed when you heard that Leila had not come back.’

‘She was nothing to do with me,’ said Ali Khedri defiantly. ‘She was your daughter. Even though others had taken her in. And that was sad, that Um Fatima, who in the goodness of her heart had taken her in, should by that same act make it possible for her to be killed. For surely she would not have gone with Ahmed Uthman if she had not come from his house and trusted him.’

‘She would have gone with any man,’ said Ali Khedri.

‘Not so. For she was pure in heart. She would not have gone with the boy. There were two men only that she would have gone with: her father and the man who in her trustfulness she thought was acting as her father. He had taken her in and had a right to tell her to come with him.’

The water-carrier was silent.

‘Let me take you back, Ali Khedri,’ said Mahmoud, ‘to the afternoon of the day that Leila died, when you and Ahmed Uthman and Omar Fayoum talked for so long in the place where Omar Fayoum kept his cart; when all that you knew was that the boy might be close to discovering your secret about the water and that he loved the girl; and when you were still brooding in your heart upon the fresh wrong that you fancied your old adversary, Al-Sayyid Hannam, had done you and meditating your revenge by water. What I want to know is this: when you and Ahmed Uthman and Omar Fayoum talked for so long, did you talk about killing Leila?’

He waited, but the water-carrier did not reply.

‘You were, I think, talking about the boy and what he had found out. And I suspect you talked about what you might do. Did that include killing your daughter?’

Ali Khedri remained mute.

‘You would have feared that she would tell what she knew.’

‘She knew nothing,’ said Ali Khedri, speaking at last.

‘Why, then, was the marriage with Omar Fayoum broken off?’

‘Because of what she might find out.’

‘Yet she had not found it out when she was living with you?’

‘A daughter’s duty is to obey,’ said Ali Khedri.

‘And you thought a wife might not?’

‘Her heart was with the boy.’

‘You thought she would betray you?’

‘I do not know,’ muttered Ali Khedri.

‘Did you talk about that?’

‘I don’t know what we talked about.’

‘I ask,’ said Mahmoud, ‘for this reason: Uthman will die. You probably will die, too. Shall Omar Fayoum escape? Do the rich always go free in this world?’

One thing remained: to see that on the great day there was no trouble between Jews and gravediggers. Owen found the gravediggers sitting disconsolately in the shade of a tomb.

‘The Jews are doing it,’ they said.

‘It was their turn,’ said Owen. ‘And, besides, you have brought it on your own heads.’

‘It was his idea,’ one of them tried. ‘Why are you taking it out on us?’

‘You knew about it,’ said Owen.

They did not really demur.

‘However,’ said Owen, ‘I am a man of mercy.’

‘You are?’

They looked up hopefully.

‘Yes. And therefore although the Jews will still do it-’ Gravedigger faces fell.

‘-I will put in a word for you on a job that will be more than equivalent.’

‘What is that?’ asked the gravediggers cautiously.

‘You know that after the Cut, the canal is to be filled in. For that, diggers will be required. It is a good job and will last many days. Now, I will see that you get the chance to do half; provided that I have no more trouble from you.’

‘Half the canal? That will take a bit of time. The usual rates?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Well, that’s not bad!’ said one of them.

‘In fact, it’s very good,’ said another.

The gravediggers brightened.

‘Remember, only if I have no trouble!’ Owen cautioned. ‘Who is doing the other half?’

‘The Jews.’

There was a long silence. Then one of the men said:

‘It would be the other end from us, wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’d have to see that they didn’t do a bit of our half sneakily and then claim for it.’

‘I would see to that,’ Owen promised. ‘I will get the Effendi from the barrage to measure-he measures like the Prophet himself! — and determine the mid-point, so that there will be no arguing. And then I shall watch like a hawk to see that neither half-neither half! — is exceeded.’

‘We-ell…’ said the gravediggers, looking at each other. ‘We’ll have to think about it.’

‘Don’t think too long!’

‘Are you talking to the Jews too?’

Owen nodded.

‘We’re on!’ said the gravediggers instantaneously.

‘But will the Lizard Man strike?’ asked the man from the Khedive’s Office worriedly.

‘There is no such thing as the Lizard Man,’ said Owen wearily, very wearily because on top of the excitements of the previous day he had been up most of the night checking last minute arrangements for the Cut, marshalling boats, reinforcing the police cordon, making sure that the canal bed was clear of idiots who were determined to drown themselves, and pacifying the Kadi, the Khedive, the Consul-General’s wife, and Zeinab, who had decided after a couple of hours that there were better things to do with one’s nights than standing around on a dam and wanted Owen to do them with her.