‘Just a moment,’ said Owen. ‘Pointing out the cafe?’
Nonsense, said the storyteller. He had just been passing the time of day. Alternatively, supposing that they were in search of somewhere they could sit down and have a cup of coffee, he had merely been responding politely to their enquiries. Anyway, that little twit had got it wrong.
‘Would you like to talk to me here?’ asked Owen. ‘Or shall I send you with Selim to the Bab-el-Khalk and talk to you there?’
After one glance at Selim, the storyteller decided that he would prefer to talk to Owen here, so Owen took him to an upstairs room-the room in which Mustapha had been lying when he had first seen him, posted Selim on the stairs to keep out the curious, and told Mustapha to get on with clearing up the cafe.
Then he turned to the storyteller.
‘So, my friend,’ he said, ‘how does it work?’
The storyteller looked around him desperately, swallowed and then decided there was nothing else for it.
‘It works,’ he said, ‘in all sorts of ways. Sometimes they come to us, sometimes we go to them. Usually, they come to us. “Know any good places?” they say. Well, of course, we know all the cafes and, sitting out the front as we do, we see who goes in and have a pretty good idea of how much money the cafe is taking. We might say: “That one’s been doing well lately, it’s come on a bit.” Or we might say: “I wouldn’t try that one, it’s not worth your while.” Or sometimes,’ said the storyteller, waxing, ‘ “Don’t go there, it’s just a poor old woman on her own, lame and suffering, plagued with boils-” ’
‘I weep,’ said Owen.
The storyteller looked hurt.
‘I’m just telling you the way it is,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think we are hard of heart or unjust. We spare the poor and charge the rich. We see some fat man growing fatter, and we say: “Pick on him! He can stand it.” If it wasn’t for us,’ said the storyteller virtuously, ‘they might pick on the wrong people.’
‘All you are doing is making the world a juster place?’
‘Exactly!’ agreed the storyteller, pleased.
‘For a suitable fee, no doubt?’
‘Not much of one. Enough to buy a crust of bread, perhaps. Or a bowl of durra when things go hard and we can’t get a job. Times are often hard,’ said the storyteller sadly, ‘for storytellers.’
‘I weep again. But tell me; you say “we”. Do all storytellers, then, do as you do?’
‘No, no, no. Only those of us who are-’
The storyteller stopped.
‘Organized?’
‘Well-’
‘There is an organization, then, for storytellers?’
‘Only for some storytellers,’ said the man reluctantly.
‘And who are they?’
The storyteller swallowed.
‘If I went to a storyteller who was not organized,’ prompted Owen gently, ‘no doubt he would tell me who were organized. So why don’t you tell me?’
‘We’re trying to break in,’ said the storyteller reluctantly.
‘Ah!’ said Owen. ‘Now I think I begin to understand. You are the storytellers who are telling the new stories?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You tell neither the stories of Abu Zeyd nor the stories of the Sultan Baybars?’
‘That is correct.’
‘I have heard some of your stories,’ said Owen, ‘and like them.’
‘You do?’ said the storyteller, pleased. ‘Well, they are rather good. Take, for instance, the story of-’
‘Well, not just now, perhaps. We are talking of other matters. The stories you telclass="underline" where do they come from?’
‘They are old stories. They are the ones we heard as children, the ones that were on our mother’s lips.’
‘You are remembering them, then?’
‘Well, it’s not always easy to remember them when you are old. You remember pieces of them, fragments.’
‘So what do you do?’
‘Well-’
‘You go to someone, perhaps, who has a store of these old stories?’
‘Well, yes. It’s not quite as simple as that, though. We have a piece of an old story and we give it in, and it may be that another man has a different piece, so that the two pieces can be put together and perhaps fitted into a third-’
‘And then you share the complete story?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which is written out for you?’
‘Well, you can get a copy, and I’m not saying that some storytellers don’t do that. But I don’t like that myself. It’s not the proper way. No, you hear the story, you hear it once or twice, and then you’ve more or less got it. You take it away and, well, you do things with it, you sort of make it your own.’
‘A storyteller of distinction,’ said Owen, ‘always tells his own story.’
‘Absolutely right! That’s what I always say. And that’s why there ought to be different prices for different storytellers. The trouble is,’ said the storyteller, eloquent on this particular subject at least, ‘that there are too many people in the market right now. It brings the prices down. Oh, they’re not bad, some of them, but the worst ones drag the prices down. People are prepared to settle for any old sort of rubbish these days.’
‘And then, of course,’ said Owen, ‘the old storytellers, the Abu Zeyd ones and the Sultan Baybars ones, are so established! It must be hard to break in.’
‘Oh it is! That’s why-’
He stopped.
‘That’s why you have to join together?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘It is like a sort of club, isn’t it? By joining together you can help each other.’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, when you say to a gang: “Such and such a place would be a good one to try,” do they pay you directly or does the money go to the club?’
‘It goes to the club.’
‘And then the club pays you?’
‘Yes. Not all the money. Some is put aside for us to draw on when we are old or sick.’
‘You think that? You think that it will really be there?’
‘Some was given to Faroukh when he was sick.’
‘Ah! So it is really there. At the moment. Tell me who is the master of the club?’
The storyteller was silent.
‘He who keeps the store of stories?’
‘Well-’
‘I marvel,’ said Owen. ‘I had always thought those who lived by story were upright men.’
‘It may have been so,’ said the storyteller, ‘in the time of Sultan Baybars.’
The bookshop was in a small street off the Clot Bey. The street was near the Coptic church and some of the other shops dealt in relics. Owen looked to see and, yes, one or two stocked ikons. The bookshop contained some Coptic books, displayed prominently at the front in an effort to tap the Coptic custom, but since the books were chiefly theological and in Old Coptic, Owen thought it unlikely that sales were prolific. Inside the shop, the books were lined on shelves, as in a European bookshop. There was a musty smell in the air and the books, too, were old and musty: French and Arabic equivalents of the Coptic works seen from outside. European in style the shop might be; nevertheless, it came as something of a shock to see that the assistant was a woman. Despite the veil, Owen recognized Katarina.
He went inside and began to look along the shelves. Katarina came up to him.
‘Why can’t you leave us alone?’ she hissed.
‘I need your help.’
‘I’ve told you-’
‘They’ve got hold of explosives. I thought they would be safe in Suez docks until they were paid for. That’s why I took the gold. I hoped I could stop it all without it coming to anything. But the explosives have slipped through. Someone’s got hold of them. I must find out who that someone is.’
‘Why ask me?’