The Ape Who Guards the Balance (8 page)

“Oh, all right. But you are to report to me the instant you get home, is that understood?”

“You will be asleep by then,” Ramses said.

“No, I won’t.”

The coffee shop was not far from the ruined Mosque of Murustan Kalaun. Its shutters were raised, leaving the interior open to the night air. Inside, the flames of small lamps twinkled in the gloom, and coils of blue smoke drifted like lazy djinn. The patrons sat on hassocks or stools around low tables, or on the divan at the rear of the room. Since this was an establishment favored by prosperous merchants, most of those present were well-dressed, their long kaftans silk-striped and their silver seal rings large and ornate. There were no women present.

A man at a table near the front looked up when Ramses and David entered. “Ah, so you have returned. The police have abandoned the search?”

“Very amusing,” said Ramses, in the hoarse tones of Ali the Rat. “You know I always spend the summers at my palace in Alexandria.”

A laugh acknowledged this witticism, and the speaker gestured them to join him. A waiter brought small cups of thick sweetened Turkish coffee and a narghileh. Ramses drew the smoke deep into his lungs and passed the mouthpiece to David. “So, how is business?” he inquired.

After a brief conversation their acquaintance bade them good night, and they were left alone at the table.

“Anything?” David asked. He spoke softly and without moving his lips—a trick Ramses had learned from one of his “less respectable acquaintances,” a stage magician at the Alhambra Music Hall, and passed on to David.

Ramses shook his head. “Not yet. It will take time. But look over there.”

The man he indicated was sitting alone on a bench at the back of the room. David narrowed his eyes. “I can’t see . . . Surely it is not Yussuf Mahmud?”

“It is. Order two more coffees, I’ll be right back.”

He sidled up to a dignified bearded man at another table, who acknowledged his obsequious greeting with a curl of the lip. The conversation was rather one-sided; Ramses did most of the talking. He got only nods and curt answers for his pains, but when he came back he appeared pleased.

“Kyticas doesn’t like me,” he remarked. “But he dislikes Yussuf Mahmud even more. Kyticas thinks he’s got something on his mind. He’s been squatting on that bench every night for a week, but he hasn’t tried to make any of his dirty little deals.”

“Would the Master—uh—you know who I mean—deal with a second-rater like Yussuf Mahmud?”

“Who knows? He’s one of the people I meant to talk with—and I’m beginning to suspect he wants to talk with me. He’s carefully not looking at us. We’ll take the hint and follow him when he leaves.”

Yussuf Mahmud showed no sign of leaving. He sat stolidly drinking coffee and smoking. Unlike most of the others he was shabbily dressed, his feet bare, his turban tattered. His scanty beard did not conceal the scars of smallpox that covered his cheeks.

They passed another hour in not-so-idle gossip with various acquaintances. Ali the Rat was in a generous mood, paying for drinks and food with coins taken from a heavy purse. Yussuf Mahmud was one of the few who did not take advantage of his hospitality, though he was obviously fascinated by the purse. Ramses was about to suggest to David that they leave when a voice boomed out a hearty “Salaam aleikhum!”

Ramses almost fell off his stool, and David doubled over into an anonymous bundle, ducking his head. “Holy Sitt Miriam,” he gasped. “It’s—”

“—Abu Shitaim,” said Ali the Rat, recovering himself in the nick of time. For good measure he added, “Curse the unbeliever!”

His father had advanced into the room with the asssurance of a man who is at home wherever he chooses to be. He glanced incuriously at Ali the Rat, dismissed him with a shrug, and went to join Kyticas. His sleeve over his face, David whispered, “Quick. Let’s get out of here!”

“That would only attract his attention. Sit up, he’s not looking at us.”

“I thought he was at the reception!”

“So did I. He must have crept away while Mother wasn’t looking. He hates those affairs.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“The same thing we are doing, I suspect,” Ramses said thoughtfully. “All right, we can go now. Slowly!”

He tossed a few coins onto the table and rose. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Yussuf Mahmud get to his feet.

:

T
he following night they met by arrangement, and a short time later they were following Yussuf Mahmud into a part of the city which even Ali the Rat would have preferred to avoid. It bordered the infamous Fish Market, an innocuous name for a district where every variety of vice and perversion was for sale at all hours and, by European standards, at extremely reasonable prices. The narrow alley down which he led them was dark and silent, however, and the house they entered was obviously not his permanent address. The windows were tightly shuttered and the sole article of furniture was a rickety table. Yussuf Mahmud lit a lamp. Opening his robe, he loosened a leather strap.

Bound to his body by the strap was a bundle approximately sixteen inches long and four inches in diameter, wrapped in cloth and supported by splintlike lengths of rough wood.

Ramses knew what it was, and he knew what was going to happen. He dared not protest. Fearing David would let out an involuntary and betraying exclamation, he stamped heavily on his friend’s foot as Yussuf Mahmud removed the wrappings and unrolled the object they had concealed. A few yellowed, brittle flakes sifted onto the table.

It was a funerary papyrus, the collection of magical spells and prayers popularly known as “The Book of the Dead.” The section now visible showed several vertical columns of hieroglyphic writing and a painted vignette that depicted a woman clad in a transparent linen gown hand in hand with the jackal-headed god of cemeteries. Before he could see more, Yussuf Mahmud drew a piece of cloth over the roll.

“Well?” he said in a whisper. “You must decide now. I have other buyers.”

Ramses scratched his ear, detaching a few flakes of a substance that had been designed to resemble encrusted dirt. “Impossible,” he said. “I must know more before I consult my customers. Where did it come from?”

The other man smiled tightly and shook his head.

It was the first stage of a process that often took hours, and few Europeans had the patience to go through the intricate pattern of offer and counteroffer, question and ambiguous answer. In this case Ramses knew he must play the game to the best of his skill. He wanted that papyrus. It was one of the largest he had ever seen, and even that brief glimpse had suggested its quality and condition were extraordinary. How the devil, he wondered, had a petty criminal like Yussuf Mahmud come by something so remarkable?

Feigning disinterest, he turned away from the table. “It is too perfect,” he said. “My buyer is a man of learning. He will know it is a fake. I could get, perhaps, twenty English pounds . . .”

When he and David left after another hour of bargaining, they did not have the papyrus. Ramses had not expected they would. No dealer or thief would part with the merchandise until the payment was in his hand. But they had come to an agreement. They were to meet again the following night.

David had not spoken at all during the discussion. He was not skilled at disguising his voice, so his role was to look large, loyal, and threatening. He was fairly bursting with excitement, however, and as soon as the door of the house closed behind them he exclaimed, “Good God! Did you—”

Ramses cut him off with a curt Arabic expletive, and neither of them spoke again until they reached the river. The small skiff was moored where they had left it. David took first turn at the oars. They were some distance from the shore, hidden by darkness, before Ramses had finished the process that transformed him from a shady-looking Cairene to a comparatively well-groomed young Englishman.

“Your turn,” he said. They changed places. David peeled off his beard and removed his turban.

“Sorry,” he said. “I should not have spoken when I did.”

“Speaking educated English in that part of Cairo at that hour is not a sensible thing to do,” Ramses said dryly. “There’s more to this than meets the eye, David. Yussuf Mahmud doesn’t deal in antiquities of that quality. Either he is acting as middle man for someone who doesn’t want his identity known, or he stole the papyrus from a bigger thief. The original owner may be after him.”

“Ah,” David said. “I thought he was uncommonly edgy.”

“I think you thought right. Marketing stolen antiquities is against the law, but it wasn’t fear of the police that made the sweat pour off him.”

David bundled up his disguise and tucked it away under the seat, then bent over the side to splash water on his face. “The papyrus was genuine, Ramses. I’ve never seen one as beautiful.”

“I thought so too, but I’m glad to have you confirm my opinion. You know more of these things than I. You missed a wart.”

“Where? Oh.” David’s fingers found the protuberance. Softened by water, it peeled off. “The Egyptians are right when they say you can see in the dark, like a cat,” he remarked. “Are you going to tell the Professor about the papyrus?”

“You know how he feels about buying from dealers. I admire his principles, just as I admire the principles of pacificism, but I fear they are equally impractical. In the one case you end up dead. In the other, you lose valuable historical documents to idle collectors who take them home and forget about them. How can the trade be stopped when even the Service des Antiquités buys from such people?”

The little boat came gently to rest against the muddy bank. Ramses shipped the oars and went on, “In this case I can’t see any other way out of what my mother would call a moral dilemma. I want that damned papyrus, and I want to know how Yussuf Mahmud got hold of it. How much money have you?”

“I—er—I’m a bit short,” David admitted.

“So am I. As usual.”

“What about the Professor?”

Ramses shifted uncomfortably. “There’s no use asking him for the money, he wouldn’t give it to me. He’d give me a fatherly lecture instead. I can’t stand it when he does that.”

“Then you’ll have to ask Nefret.”

“Damned if I will.”

“That’s stupid,” David said. “She has more money than she knows what to do with, and she’s eager to share. If she were as good a friend and a
man,
you wouldn’t hesitate.”

“It isn’t that,” Ramses said, knowing he was a liar and knowing that David knew it. “We’d have to tell her why we want the money, and then she’d want to come with us tomorrow night.”

“Well?”

“Take Nefret to el Was’a? Have you lost your mind? Not under any circumstances whatever.”

          
(iv)
    
From Letter Collection B

It surely won’t surprise you to learn I had the devil of a time
persuading
Ramses to let me go with them. The methods I use on the Professor—quivering lips, tear-filled eyes—haven’t the
slightest
effect on that cold-blooded creature; he simply stalks out of the room, radiating disgust. So I was forced to resort to blackmail and intimidation, irrefutable female logic,
and
a gentle reminder that without my signature they couldn’t get the money. (I suppose that’s another form of blackmail, isn’t it? How shocking!)

If I do say so, I made a very pretty boy! We bought the clothing that afternoon, after we had stopped by the banker’s—an elegant pale blue wool galabeeyah, gold embroidered slippers, and a long scarf that covered my head and shadowed my face. Ramses darkened my eyebrows and lashes and painted kohl round my eyes. I thought it altered my appearance amazingly, but Ramses wasn’t pleased.

“There’s no way of changing
that
color,” he muttered. “Keep your head bowed, Nefret, and your eyes modestly lowered. If you look directly at Mahmud or utter a single syllable while we are with him, I will—I will do something both of us might regret.” A fascinating threat, wasn’t it? I was tempted to disobey just to see what he had in mind, but decided not to risk it.

I had never been in that part of the Old City at night. I don’t recommend that you venture there, darling; you are so fastidious you would be put off by the stench of rotting garbage and the rats scuttling past and the intense darkness. The darkness of the countryside is nothing to it; in Upper Egypt there is always starlight, even when the moon is down. Nothing so clean and pure as a star would dare show itself in that place. The tall old houses seemed to lean toward one another, whispering ugly secrets, and their balconies cut off even the clouded night sky. My heart was beating faster than usual, but I wasn’t afraid. I am never frightened when we three are together. It’s when they go off on some harebrained adventure without me that I get into a state of abject panic.

Ramses led the way. He knows every foot of the Old City, including some parts which respectable Egyptians avoid. When we got near the house, Ramses made me stay with him while David went ahead to reconnoiter. When he came back he didn’t speak, but gestured us to go on.

It was a tenement or rooming house of the meanest kind. The hallway smelled of decaying food and hashish and the sweat of too many bodies confined in too small a space. We had to feel our way up the sagging stairs, keeping close to the wall. I couldn’t see a cursed thing, so I followed David as I had been directed to do, my hand on his shoulder for guidance. Ramses was close behind me, gripping my elbow to keep me from falling when I stumbled—which I did do once or twice, because the curly toes of my bee-yoo-tiful slippers kept catching on the splintered boards. I hated this part of it. I could
feel
crawly, slimy things all around me.

Our destination was a room on the first floor, distinguishable only by the slit of pale light at the bottom of the door. Ramses scratched at the panel. It opened at once.

Yussuf Mahmud gestured us to come in and then barred the door behind us. I supposed it was Yussuf Mahmud, though no one introduced us. He gave me a long look and said something in Arabic I didn’t understand. It must have been something
very
rude, because David made growling sounds and drew his knife. Ramses just squinted at the fellow and said something else I didn’t understand. He and the man laughed. David didn’t laugh, but he put the knife back in his belt.