The Tremor of Forgery Read online

  Back in his bungalow, he read Ina’s letter again, hoping now to read it without caring a damn, without a twinge of resentment He did not quite succeed. He dropped the letter on his table, put his head back, and said:

  ‘God, bring Jensen’s dog back. Please!’

  Then he went to bed. It was not yet midnight.

  Ingham did not know what awakened him, but he pushed himself up suddenly on one elbow and listened. The room was quite dark. His doorknob gave a squeak. Ingham sprang out of bed and instinctively moved behind his work-table, which was in the centre of his room. He faced the door. Yes, it was opening. Ingham crouched. My God, he’d forgotten to lock it, he realized. He saw silhouetted a somewhat stooped figure: a light, the street-light on the bungalow lane, gave a milky luminosity beyond. The figure was coming in.

  Ingham seized his typewriter from the table and hurled it with all his force, shoving it with his right arm in the manner of a basket-ball-player throwing for the basket—but the target in this case was lower. Ingham scored a direct hit against the turbaned head. The typewriter fell with a painful clatter, and there was a yell from the figure which staggered back and fell on the terrace. Ingham sprang to his door, pushed the typewriter aside with one foot, and slammed the door. The key was on the windowsill to the right. He found it, groped with fingertips for the keyhole, and locked the door.

  Then he stood still, listening. He was afraid there might be others.

  Still in the dark, Ingham went to his kitchen, found the Scotch bottle on the draining-board, nearly knocked it over but grabbed it in time, and had a swig. If he had ever needed a drink, it was now. A second small swallow, and he slammed his palm down on the squeaking cork, replaced the bottle on the draining-board, and looked in the darkness towards his door, listening. Ingham knew the man he had hit was Abdullah. At least, he was ninety per cent sure of it.

  There were faint voices, coming closer. The voices were muted, excited, and Ingham could hear that they were speaking in Arabic. A small beam of light swept past his closed shutters and vanished. Ingham braced himself. Were these the man’s chums—or the hotel boys investigating?

  Then he heard bare feet slapping on the terrace, a grunt, the sweeping sound of something being dragged. The damned Arab, of course. They were dragging him away. Whoever they were.

  Ingham heard a whispered ‘Mokta.’

  The sounds of feet faded, disappeared. Ingham stood in the kitchen at least two minutes more. He could not tell if they had spoken about Mokta, or if Mokta, with them, had been addressed. Ingham started to run out to speak to them. But was he sure they were the hotel boys?

  Ingham gave a deep, shuddering sigh. Then he heard again soft footfalls in sand, a sound as soft as cotton. There was another faint slap, different. Someone was wiping the tiles with a rag. Wiping away blood, Ingham knew. He felt slightly sickened. The soft tread went away. Ingham waited, made himself count slowly to twenty. Then he set his reading lamp on the floor, so its light would not show much through the shutters, and turned it on. He was interested in his typewriter.

  The lower front part of the frame was bent. Ingham winced at the sight of it, more for the surprising appearance of the typewriter than for the impact it must have made against the forehead of the old Arab. Even the spacer had been pushed awry, and one end stuck up. A few keys had been bent and jammed together. Ingham flicked them down automatically, but they could not fall into place. The bend in the frame went in about three inches. That was a job for Tunis, all right, the repairing.

  Ingham turned his lamp out and crept between the sheets again, threw the top sheet off because it was hot. He lay for nearly an hour without sleeping, but he heard no more sounds. He put the light on again and carried his typewriter to his closet, and set it on the floor beside his shoes. He did not want Mokta or any of the boys to see it tomorrow morning.

  11

  INGHAM was interested in what Mokta’s attitude would be when he brought his breakfast But it was another boy who brought his breakfast at ten past nine, a boy Ingham had seen a couple of times, but whose name he did not know.

  ‘Merci,’ Ingham said.

  ‘A votre service, m’sieur.’ Calm, inscrutable, the boy went away.

  Ingham dressed to go to Tunis. The typewriter went into its case still. It crossed his mind to bring his car outside the bungalow, then put his typewriter into it, because he felt shy about being seen by one of the boys carrying his typewriter up the lane. But that was absurd, Ingham thought. How would anyone know what the old man had been hit with?

  At 9.35 a.m., Ingham locked his bungalow and left it He had put his car far up the lane, almost at Adams’s bungalow, because last night he had thought to knock on Adams’s door, if he had seen a light, but Adams’s lights had been off. Ingham’s car was on the extreme left, under a tree, and there were two other cars to the right of him, and parallel. Ingham wondered if the old Arab, not perhaps seeing his car, had assumed he was out? But how would the Arab have known what bungalow was his? Unless one of the boys told him? and that was unlikely, Ingham thought The Arab had probably gently tried the door of every bungalow where he saw no light.

  Mokta was not around.

  Ingham flinched a little at the sight of Adams, coming barefoot, spear and flippers in hand, up from the beach towards his bungalow.

  ‘Morning!’ Adams called.

  ‘Morning, Francis!’ Ingham had put his typewriter in the back of his car on the floor. Now he closed the door.

  ‘Taking off somewhere?’ Adams was coming closer.

  ‘I thought I’d go to Tunis to get a couple of typewriter ribbons and some paper.’ He hoped Adams wouldn’t want to come along.

  ‘Did you hear that scream last night?’ Adams asked. ‘Around two? Woke me up.’

  ‘Yes. I heard something? Ingham suddenly realized, forcibly, that he might have killed the Arab, and that this was what was making him so uneasy.

  ‘It came from your direction. I heard a couple of the boys go out and see what was up. They didn’t come back for an hour. I hear everything they do, being so close.’ He gestured towards his bungalow, ten yards away. ‘There’s a little mystery there. One boy came back to the house here’—a gesture towards the headquarters building—‘then ran out again after a minute.’

  Had he come to get the cloth, Ingham wondered. Or a shovel?

  ‘The funny thing is, the boys won’t say what it was. Maybe a fight, you know, somebody hurt. But why were they gone for an hour, eh?’ Adams’s face was lively with curiosity.

  ‘I dunno what to say,’ Ingham said, opening his car door. ‘I’ll ask Mokta.’

  ‘He won’t tell you anything.—Are you in the mood for a drink and dinner tonight?’

  Ingham was not, but he said, ‘Yes, fine. Come to my place for a drink?’

  ‘Come to mine. Got something I’d like to show you.’ The squirrel face winked.

  ‘All right. At six-thirty,’ Ingham said, and got into his car.

  Ingham had to go through Hammamet to get on to the Tunis road. In Hammamet he glanced around at the post office corner, at the outdoor tables of the Plage, for the old Arab in the red pants. He did not see him.

  It took him forty minutes in Tunis, on foot, to find a repair shop, or the right repair shop. One or two said they could do it, but that it would take at least two weeks, and they did not sound convincing either about the repair or the time. At last, in a busy commercial street, he found a rather efficient-looking shop, where the manager said it could be done in a week. Ingham believed him, but regretted the length of time.

  ‘How did this happen?’ the man asked in French.

  ‘A maid in my hotel knocked it off a windowsill.’ Ingham had thought of this beforehand.

  ‘Bad luck! I hope it didn’t fall on someone’s head!’

  ‘No. On a parapet of stone,’ Ingham replied.

  Ingham left the shop with a receipt. He felt weightless and lost without the typewriter.

  On the Boulevard
Bourguiba, he went to a café to have a beer and to look at the Time he had bought. The Israelis were standing firm with their territorial gains. It was easy to foresee a growing Arab hatred against the Jews, a worse resentment than had existed before. Things would be seething for quite a time.

  He went to have lunch at a ceiling-fan-cooled restaurant on the other side of the Boulevard Bourguiba, one of the two restaurants that John Castlewood had mentioned. His scallopine milanese was well-cooked, he should have welcomed it after Hammamet fare, but he had no appetite. He was wondering if the Arab were possibly dead, if the boys had reported it to the hotel, the hotel to the police—but if so, why hadn’t the police or someone from the hotel arrived early this morning? He was wondering if the boys had become frightened at finding the Arab dead, and had buried him in the sand somewhere? There were quite dense clumps of pine trees on the beach, fifty yards or so from the water. No one walked through those groves of trees. People walked around them. There was good burial ground there. Or was he influenced by Jensen’s fears about his dog?

  It crossed Ingham’s mind to tell Jensen about last night’s adventure. Jensen, at least, would understand, Ingham thought. Ingham was now regretting that he hadn’t opened the door, when he heard the boys. Or when he had heard the one mopping up the tiles.

  He was back at the Reine by two-forty-five. The interior of his bungalow felt actually cool. He took off his clothes and got under a shower. The cold water was chilling, but it was also blissful. And it could not last long. Two minutes, and one became bored, shut the water off, and stepped out once more into the heat. He might ask Adams tonight how to go about getting an air-conditioner. Ingham got naked between his sheets and slept for an hour.

  He awakened, and immediately thought of where he was in the chapter he was writing, a scene that was unfinished, and sat up and looked towards his typewriter. The table was empty. He had been very soundly asleep. A week with no typewriter. To Ingham, it was like a hand cut off. He disliked even personal letters with a pen. He took another shower, as he was again sweaty.

  Then he dressed in shorts, a cool shirt, sandals, and went out to find Mokta. One of the boys at the headquarters, languidly sweeping sand from the cement before the doorway, said that Mokta had gone on an errand to the main building. Ingham ordered a beer, sat on the terrace in the shade, and waited. Mokta came in about ten minutes, a huge stack of tied-together towels balanced on one shoulder. Mokta saw him from a distance and smiled. He was in shirtsleeves and long dark trousers. A pity, Ingham thought, that the boys weren’t allowed to wear shorts in this heat.

  ‘Mokta!—Bonjour! Can I speak with you a moment, when you have time?’

  ‘Bien sûr, m’sieur!’ There was only a brief flash of alarm in Mokta’s smiling face, but Ingham had seen it. Mokta went into the office with his stack of towels. He was back at once.

  ‘Would you like a beer?’ Ingham asked.

  ‘With pleasure, thank you, m’sieur. But I can’t sit down.’ Mokta ran around the comer of the building to get his beer from the service door. He was back quickly with a bottle.

  ‘I was wondering, how do I hire an air-conditioner?’

  ‘Oh, very simple, m’sieur. I shall speak to the directrice, she will speak to the manager. It may take a couple of days.’ Mokta’s smile was as broad as usual.

  Ingham studied his grey eyes casually. Mokta’s eyes shifted, not in a dishonest way, but simply because Mokta, Ingham thought, was alert to everything around him, even to things that weren’t always there, like a shout from a superior. ‘Well, perhaps you can speak to her. I would like one.’ Ingham hesitated. He did not want to ask outright what they had done with the unconscious or dead Arab. But why wasn’t Mokta bringing it up? Even if Mokta hadn’t come to the bungalow with the others last night, he would have heard all about it.

  Ingham offered Mokta a cigarette, which he accepted.

  Was it too public here for Mokta to talk, Ingham wondered. Mokta’s eyes flickered to Ingham’s and away. Ingham was careful not to stare at him, not wanting to embarrass the boy. And no doubt, Mokta was waiting for him to begin. Ingham couldn’t. Why didn’t Mokta say something like, ‘Oh, m’sieur, what a catastrophe last night! An old beggar who tried to get into your bungalow!’ Ingham could hear Mokta saying it, and yet Mokta wasn’t saying it. After a minute or two, Ingham felt very uncomfortable. ‘It’s warm today. I was in Tunis this morning,’ Ingham said.

  ‘Ah, oui? It is always warmer in Tunis! Mon dieu! I am glad I work here!’

  After accepting another cigarette for the road, Mokta de parted with their two beer bottles, and Ingham went back to his bungalow. He went over his notes for his chapter-in-progress, and made a few notes for the next chapter. He could have been writing an answer to Ina’s last and more explanatory letter, but he did not want to think about Ina just now. It would be a letter that required some thought, unless he dashed off something that he might later regret. Ingham paper-dipped his notes and put them on a comer of his desk.

  He wrote a short letter to his mother, explaining that his typewriter was undergoing a repair in Tunis. He told her that John Castlewood, whom he had not known very well, had killed himself in New York. He said he was working on a novel, and that he was going to try, despite his disappointment at the job’s falling through, to gain what he could from Tunisia. Ingham was an only child. His mother liked to know what he was doing, but she was not a meddler, and did not become upset easily. His father was equally concerned, but a worse correspondent than his mother. His father almost never wrote.

  Ingham still had half an hour before his appointment with OWL. He wanted very much to take a walk on the beach, past Adams’s bungalow and towards Hammamet, in order to look at the sand among the trees there. He longed to find a torn-up patch that resembled a grave, he longed to be sure. But he realized that gentle rakings of sand with feet, with hands, could make a grave in the morning (or even at once) look like all the sand around it. No soil was more traceless than sand after a few minutes, even a slight breeze would smooth things out, and the sun would dry any moisture that the digging might have turned up. And he didn’t care to be seen peering around at the sand. And what was the Arab worth? Next to nothing, probably. That was the un-Christian thought that came to his mind, unfortunately. He locked his bungalow, and walked over to OWL’s.

  Adams’s greeting was, as usual, hearty. ‘Come in! Sit ye down!’

  Ingham appreciated the coolness of the room. It was like a glass of cold water when one was hot and thirsty. One drank this through the skin. What would August be like, Ingham wondered, and reminded himself that he ought to leave soon, Adams brought an iced Scotch and water.

  ‘I got stung by a jelly-fish this afternoon.’ Adams said. ‘Habuki, they call them. July’s the season. You can’t see them in the water, you know, at least not until it’s too late. Ha-ha! Got me on the shoulder. One of the boys got some salve from the office, but it didn’t do any good. I went home and got some baking soda. It’s still the best remedy.’

  ‘Any particular time they come out? Time of day?’

  ‘No. It’s just the season now. By the way —’ Adams sat down on his sofa in his crisp khaki shorts. ‘I found out something more today about that yell last night. It was just outside your door. Of your bungalow.’

  ‘Oh?’

  “That tallish boy—Hassim. He told me. He said Mokta was with them when they went to investigate.—You know the boy I mean?’

  ‘Yes. He cleaned my bungalow at first.’ They had, for some reason, put a new boy on in the last few days.

  ‘Hassim said it was an old Arab prowling around, and he bumped his head on something and knocked himself out. They dragged him off your terrace.’ Adams again chuckled, with the delight of someone who lives in a place where nothing usually ever happened, Ingham thought. ‘What interests me is that Mokta claims they didn’t find anyone, though he said they looked around for an hour. Someone’s lying. Maybe the old Arab did bump himself, but it co
uld be that the boys beat him up and even killed him, and won’t admit it.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Ingham, with genuine feeling, because he was imagining the boys doing just that. ‘By accident, you mean, beating him up too much?’

  ‘Possibly. Because if it was a prowler they found and threw out, why should they be so cagey about it? There’s a mystery there, as I said this morning.—You didn’t hear anything?’

  ‘I heard the yell. I didn’t know it was so near me.’ He was lying like the boys, Ingham realized, and suppose it all came out, through one of the boys, that the bump was a pretty bad fracture, a crush of the bone, and that the man was dead when they found him?

  ‘Another thing,’ Adams said, ‘the hotels always hush up anything about thieves. Bad for business. The boys would hush anything up, because it’s part of their job to keep an eye on the place and not let any prowlers in. Of course there’s the watchman, as you know, but he’s usually asleep and he never walks around patrolling the place.’

  Ingham knew. The watchman was usually asleep in his straight chair, propped against the wall, any time after ten-thirty. ‘How often does this kind of thing happen?’

  ‘Oh—only one other time in the year I’ve been here. They got two Arab boys who were prowling around last November. A lot of the bungalows were empty then, and the staff was smaller. Those boys were after furniture, and they broke a couple of door locks. I didn’t see them, but I heard they were beaten up by the hotel boys and thrown out on the road. The Arabs are merciless with each other in a fight, you know.’ Adams took both their glasses, though Ingham was not quite finished. ‘And what do you hear from your girl?’ Adams asked from the kitchen. ‘Ina, isn’t it?’

  Ingham stood up. ‘She wrote me.—It was she who found John Castlewood’s body. He’d taken sleeping pills.’