“Of course I talked to him,” said Andrus.
“What about?”
“How can I remember?”
“Did you talk to him about what happened at your father’s tomb?”
“I may have done. I do not know.”
“And what was his response?”
Andrus did not reply. He seemed to be looking into space. Perhaps it was the reference to his father’s tomb. Owen suddenly felt unexpectedly sorry for him. It came home to him for the first time that what had seemed to him a trivial event, a stupid joke, was something genuinely much bigger to Andrus. It had touched him on a raw spot. That harsh, unaccommodating man had clearly loved his father, perhaps had loved him alone. Owen felt a twinge of pity.
“And what was his response?” Mahmoud prompted softly.
Andrus came back from space and looked at him bitterly.
“I do not know why I should tell you,” he said. “However, I will tell you. He was shocked and horrified. He felt for me as would anyone of a right mind. And then he was angry. That this should happen to one he knew and an elder of the church. At first he could not comprehend it. But then he realized. This blow was not aimed at me but at the Church. It was struck not at the weak man who suffered it but at the strong God who was the man’s master. And he said to himself: ‘That man is weak indeed who lets his master suffer such an insult. We looked for redress from the Mamur Zapt and received none. But that was right. We were wrong to look for redress from others when we should be taking the wrong done to our master upon ourselves.’ That was Zoser’s response.”
“That was what you told him,” said Owen.
“That was what he said,” said Andrus.
And almost certainly believed it. When he had finished he sat glaring at them in defiance and pride. Owen could believe that he had poured out all the wound and hurt that was in his heart when he spoke to Zoser. And he could believe that although Zoser might not have said these things he had actually felt them. And if he had felt them, might have done something about them.
Had Andrus intended that Zoser should do something about them?
“You told him these things,” said Owen, “in order to inflame him.”
“I did not.”
“You killed Zoser,” said Owen. “Not I.”
For the barest second Andrus seemed to flinch. Then the moment passed and the certainty returned.
“God is great,” said Andrus, “and will not desert his servant.”
“There is a law of man, too,” said Mahmoud, “and that too must be obeyed.”
He probed on, and Owen was glad, for it gave him time to think. He needed to think, because although he was sure that Andrus had been speaking the truth, and that he had not deliberately incited Zoser to kill, he still felt puzzled. If everything he had projected onto Zoser was true, or a true picture of his own feelings, why had he not taken the action upon himself?
As Mahmoud continued with his patient questions, and Andrus continued with his impatient replies, an answer began to come to him. Andrus, for all his faults, was, politics aside (and no Egyptian would accept that politics had anything to do with morality), a moral man. He would not kill. On the other hand, his wound went so deep and he was such a vengeful man that he had wanted his wounder dead. When he had spoken to Zoser something of this had come across, perhaps not consciously but perhaps not completely unconsciously either. He had said it speaking what he believed to be truth and justice, said it and left it. If Zoser picked it up, then that was God’s will. If Zoser did not pick it up, then that was God’s will. There had been an act but he, Andrus, had not acted. He had done nothing inconsistent with his morality.
Listening to Andrus now, Owen felt again his immense moral rigidity. He had to have absolute certainty. There was no room for doubt, least of all self-doubt. Mahmoud’s barbs, and there were plenty of them now, for Mahmoud was getting irritated, bounced off his massive self-assurance like wooden arrows off a rock of granite.
If they were going to get anywhere with Andrus, not on the Zoser business, Owen was satisfied about that, but on the other, then that granite surface must be undermined. Somehow or other they had to get beneath the certainty and feed the seeds of doubt.
“Tell me, Andrus,” said Owen, “why do you spend all day and every day at the church house?”
“I am doing God’s work,” said Andrus, caught rather off guard.
“Are you sure that God would own it?”
There was a little silence.
“Why should he not own it?”
Owen did not reply, merely waited.
“God loves charity,” said Andrus, with slightly less than his usual self-assurance.
“No doubt, but what is that to do with what you are doing?”
“What are you accusing me of? Why don’t you speak out?” Andrus began to grow angry. “Do you think I am frightened of you?”
Owen took no notice.
“You are spending a lot of time there,” he said almost conversationally. “Have you given up your business?”
“My business is no concern of yours.”
“I thought you might have given it up. You spend so much time at the church house.”
“Have you been spying on me?”
“I would have thought you needed the money.”
“My business is doing well,” said Andrus, “and I have no need of money.”
“For what you are doing at the church house, I mean,” Owen explained.
“I give to charity what I can afford.”
“Yes, but the other things.”
“What other things?”
“The other things you do at the church house.”
“I do not know what you mean,” said Andrus. “I do God’s work.”
“Oh no. God is a god of peace.”
Andrus was brought up short. After a moment he said to Owen:
“You are mistaken. He is a god of war. Ask him.” He pointed to Mahmoud. “He is a Moslem and will tell you.”
Mahmoud looked uncomfortable.
“God is a god of neither peace nor war,” he said. “It is man who makes war and man who makes peace.”
Andrus stood up.
“Are you going to take me?” he said to Owen.
“Perhaps.”
“I am not frightened of you.”
“Why should you be,” asked Owen, “when all you will get is justice?”
“Your justice.”
“Egyptian justice.”
“Does a Copt ever get justice,” asked Andrus, “in Egypt?” He turned impatiently towards the door. “Come! Take me!”
“Sit down!”
If he took Andrus now it would be no good. The Copts would merely regroup without him. And Andrus would be untouched, impregnable behind his rigid simplicities. His world was still certain.
“Why do the British hate the Copts?” asked Andrus.
“We do not hate the Copts. We are neutral between Copts and Moslems.”
“How can a Christian be a Christian and be neutral?”
“We are all servants of the Khedive,” said Owen, correct in form if not in substance, “British as well as Copt, Copt as well as Moslem.”
“I do not understand,” said Andrus, “how a Christian can voluntarily choose to serve a Moslem.”
“Many do,” Owen pointed out, “including many Copts.”
For some reason this seemed to irritate Andrus particularly.
“They are traitors!” he said passionately. “They are traitors to the Coptic cause.”
“To try to provide good government to the people of Egypt is hardly to be a traitor.”
“The people of Egypt! Who are the people of Egypt? We are. The Copts. And for two thousand years we have had a government not our own. And why is that? Because we Copts have let others govern us. We have even helped them to govern. We have worked with the Government when we should have been working against it. For two thousand years we have done that. And for two thousand years every government has been that of an invader.”
Where had he heard that before?
“You are a Moslem,” Andrus said to Mahmoud, “and you are an invader. You are invaders too,” he said to Owen, “but you are Christian. When the British came we thought that they would lift the Moslem yoke from off our backs. But Christian turned against Christian. They supported the Moslems instead of sweeping them away.”