Dead Men's Hearts

And next to that was their destination, a dingy, six-table cafe packed with men hunched over tea or coffee, arguing over Arabic newspapers, and smoking cigarettes or narghiles. Walking through the entryway produced an immediate reaction: conversations were suspended, heads were raised, every pair of eyes was on the exotically dressed strangers. The waiter, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee, stopped in mid- stride. Gideon’s skin prickled. In the fug of cheap tobacco smoke, the men, who had seemed merely weary a moment ago, suddenly looked like a pack of assassins. Even the two elderly, white-mustachioed constables in mildewed black uniforms, who had interrupted their backgammon game to watch, looked sinister.

Gideon glanced uncomfortably at Phil. “Are you sure we know what we’re doing?”

“Not really, no, now that you mention it. Oh, we’re supposed to go to a room in the back; that much I know.”

They crossed to the far wall under a continuing barrage of silent scrutiny. In passing, Phil said a few words to the waiter, who responded with a nod. Only when they pulled the rickety double-doors shut behind them did the hum of conversation resume.

They found themselves in a bleak, harshly lit room half as large as the outer one, with rough, colorless walls grimed by smoke and oily hands, and two inert, dust-covered ceiling fans. The only furnishings were a single round table and five chairs, with three waiting men seated on them. There were no greetings. One of the men, with a square-cut white skullcap that came down to his eyebrows and a curling black beard that rode up his sweating cheeks almost to his eyes and put Gideon’s prissy little affair to shame, motioned them into the vacant chairs and made a curt let’s-get-on-with-it gesture. He was Fouad el-Hamid, he said through Phil. The old man beside him was his uncle, Atef el-Hamid, and the young man was a cousin, Jalal el-Hamid.

Phil, smiling, launched into the opening speech that he and Gideon had worked out: he, Phil, was there to assist the famous antiquities dealer, John Smith of Cincinnati, who was interested in enlarging his Egyptian inventory. Mr. Smith was quite wealthy, and was willing to pay well for superior objects but did not care to have his time wasted with fakes or cheap trash. Naturally, he carried only a limited amount of money on his person, but if he were shown something that pleased him he could easily enough return to his hotel, where his traveler’s checks were kept.

Gideon used the time to study the el-Hamids. Judging from his interruptions and rambling, self-serving comments, Fouad, who puffed regularly at a narghile, was going to be the spokesman. Atef el-Hamid, seated next to him, was a wizened elder wearing a carelessly bound turban made from a ragged swatch of plaid cloth. An immense, tobacco-stained white mustache—it would have been a handlebar mustache if it had been waxed—hung on either side of his frail chin. The old man smoked with a vengeance. Mustache, fingertips, and lips looked as if they’d been cured. Periodically he would hold two lighted cigarettes, one in each hand: the one he was just finishing, and the one he was about to start.

Jalal, the third member of the party, was about twenty, slim and darkly handsome, with a loose, unpleasant smile and a greased hairstyle last seen in America in West Side Story. He was the only one who wasn’t smoking and the only one in Western dress—a shiny brown suit of eye-catching sleaziness, several sizes too tight and worn with a wilted white shirt and no tie. Once, when he noticed Gideon looking at him, he coolly, showily adjusted something that bulged behind his breast pocket.

As Phil wound up his presentation the waiter entered with coffee for everyone and a tray of flaky, sticky cakes.

Fouad nodded an indifferent thanks at Gideon and made a grab for the largest of the pastries. The other two just grabbed.

“It’s on you,” Phil explained, lifting his cup in salute. “Too kind.”

“My pleasure,” Gideon said, wincing as he sipped his own coffee, sugared as usual to the point of nausea for the American palate. Most American palates, at any rate; beside him Phil smacked his lips.

The preliminaries had been concluded. There was an air of anticipation around the table; time to get started. Gideon put down his cup, took a breath, and threw himself into the role of John Smith of Cincinnati, famous antiquities dealer.

“Do they have something to show me or don’t they?” he asked Phil gruffly. “I have other things to do with my time.”

Earlier they had agreed that they should say nothing in English that they didn’t want the el-Hamids to hear. No secrets, no asides, nothing that wasn’t in character. It was highly possible that they knew more English than they let on.

After Phil translated, the two older men conversed briefly and Atef el-Hamid reached under his chair, brought up a cane-and-rush basket that looked like something the infant Moses might have been found in, and set it on the table. It was full of crumpled wads of Arabic newspaper. The old man picked slowly among the wads, came to a decision, and removed the one he wanted. Squinting against the smoke from the cigarette between his brown teeth he pulled open the paper and took out a flat, crudely carved piece of wood a foot long and two or three inches wide, with a channel down the center and two circular depressions at one end. He gave it to Fouad, who passed it on to Gideon and watched him keenly while gobbling down another cake.

Test-time, Gideon thought. And he’d lucked out; he actually knew what it was.

“Scribe’s palette,” he said to Phil with weary disdain. “The groove was for holding the brush, these depressions were for the cakes of ink, one for red, one for black. Here, you can still see a little red. That would have been ground ocher. The black was carbon. The brush would be dipped in water and then rubbed on the cake of ink, like watercolor.”

Phil translated as he went along. The men’s quick glances at one another told him he had scored. It was a good thing too; he had used up everything he knew about scribal palettes.

“They want to know if you’re interested,” Phil said.

“In this piece of garbage? Be serious.”

That was part of the plan too. He would begin the bargaining in the time-honored fashion, disparaging whatever was offered first. Anything else would have undermined his credibility.

The old man gave no reaction. The palette remained on the table while he pulled open another wrapping of newspaper. A few copper implements spilled out onto the table. One was an adz with an open collar for the haft. The others Gideon wasn’t sure about; chisels, perhaps, or gouging tools.

The older men watched him guardedly. Jalal lay back in his chair, propped on the base of his spine, cocky and contemptuous.