Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale (20 page)

On the morning of the 18th, we anchored at last at Port Tewfik, in front of the Hygiene Department’s yellow-painted buildings at the entrance to the canal.

It turned out just as well that I had relieved the
boutre
of all her cargo. Native customs agents came and poked into every hole and corner of the
Fat-el-Rahman,
even into the compass. Not that they had the slightest suspicion of anything, but it amused them to rummage, or maybe they hoped I would offer them baksheesh to go away, and not turn everything upside down. I might have saved myself by doing this if I had had anything on board, but the very fact of having paid would have engendered suspicion. The classic trick of the amiable customs officer has been too often played. After settling with him, one can expect a surprise visit.

At last about noon I was able to set foot on Egyptian soil, in order to go into town. Port Tewfik is a town which sprang up when the canal was being pierced. Everything is new and modern in it, and it contains nothing but houses for government employees and garden cities for workmen. These last are quite smart, consisting of gilded cages of barracks in which the men who work on the canal live with their families, with tiny gardens where the women-folk can squabble while the men are working at riveting metal plates or having a drink at the pub. I looked for a restaurant where I could have a real meal with white bread, hors d’oeuvre and a table-napkin, but it was in vain that I strolled up and down avenues bordered with flowers, lawns and bronze statues. I should have to go to Old Suez, about two and a half miles inland.

A local train runs between Port Tewfik and Suez. At the station the platform was crowded with native workmen and clerks coming back from their work at the docks. I looked at the Arabs dressed in long shirts. They were handsome and well built, but very dirty, as was natural in a country where they could not live without clothes. I was deeply absorbed in my meditations, when someone slapped me on the back. I started as if I had been shot, and looking round, recognized Alexandros.

‘I arrived this morning,’ he said in answer to my look of surprised interrogation; ‘
I
came to Port Tewfik to wait for you, since you had made
an appointment with me for the eighteenth. Did you have a pleasant voyage?’

‘Not bad. And you?’

I was disconcerted at the lack of surprise he showed at finding me up to time. Anyone might have thought I had only to take the train. To tell the truth, my punctuality was a matter of chance, but otherwise it would have been a remarkable achievement. This man with his placid smile, his big nose, his sleepy eyes and the slight trembling of his tobacco-stained fingers which constantly played with his amber rosary, brought back vividly to my mind the atmosphere of the cafés I had seen in his company at Port Said. How indeed, I thought pityingly, could this poor devil, already half-dotty, have the slightest idea of what a struggle against wind and waves meant? The train was about to start, and we got in together. We did not speak; I looked out of the window at the lagoons crossed by the railway on the long jetty which connects Port Tewfik with the mainland on which Suez is built.

Everywhere where there is salt water I seem to find a friend, a silent accomplice. I was studying now how I could make use of this lagoon, for I should have to get my hashish in somehow, and all my thoughts were concentrated on finding a vulnerable spot, a breach by which I could enter the fortress. When I have an idea in my head, I examine everything solely from the point of view of utility to further it. It comes between me and the outside world like a kind of filter, and only what can serve it is allowed to come through. It is almost a disease.

On the embankment over which the train was passing there was a road alongside the railway, separated from it by a simple railing. We took only seven or eight minutes to reach Suez.

Suez is an old Arab town, with a European quarter, but it has remained essentially an old city belonging to the times when sailing-ships brought spices and perfumes and the good coffee from Mocha to it. The European streets are round the station. The Rue Colmar, the principal street, is like a provincial high street. Nothing is lacking to complete the illusion: there is the draper’s with all the latest novelties; there is the ‘Parisian Milliner’s’; the tailors’ dummies smile idiotically, and there is a little boy in a Norfolk suit among them; the big clock indicates the watchmaker’s shop; passing the grocer’s one gets a whiff of salted cod; a withered old
maid keeps the haberdashery store, and her cat sleeps in the window. All the shops have little bells that tinkle when you open the door, and pedestrians stroll along the middle of the street.

We went straight to a square in which was situated a café which reminded me very much of those in Port Said, except that the customers here were peaceful tradesmen and clerks waiting till it was time to return to their shops and offices.

Yet they had the same lazy look as if they spent their lives here before a glass of water, a cup of Turkish coffee or a game of tric-trac. Most of them were on the terrace, so Alexandros led me into a dark comer inside, practically deserted. We sat down and he assumed a conspiratorial air I found quite uncalled for, since nobody knew me and in my khaki clothes I passed quite unnoticed. Perhaps it was he who was too well known, but I couldn’t help thinking that he simply took a childish pleasure in playing at conspirators.

The proprietor of the café was a Greek, needless to say. He came and shook hands with Alexandros; they conferred in low tones, then sent off the waiter, also a Greek, on some mysterious errand, making him take off his apron and go out by a side door. When we were once more alone Alexandros plied me with questions.

‘No, I have nothing on board, as you may well suppose – only a madman would be crazy enough for that. But don’t worry, “everything” is where I can lay hands on it, and have it brought into town whenever I wish.’

This statement, my mysterious affirmation that, ‘everything was where I could lay hands on it’, made a great impression on my companion. I spoke to him of the little sailing-ship I had seen in the gulf, then of my encounter with the coastguards, and by the banality and vagueness of his replies I concluded that he did not know much at all about Suez. On the other hand, he chattered constantly about Port Said, which did not interest me in the slightest. I got quite worried and wondered what sort of imbecile this man was, and what possible use he could be to me. At this moment the waiter returned, muttered a few words in Alexandros’ ear, resumed his apron and went bounding off with a trayful of coffees.

I looked inquiringly at Alexandros.

‘Tonight at eight,’ he replied, ‘we are going to see a man who may buy your entire cargo.’

‘So you are taking no further interest in the affair?’ I asked.

‘Ah, yes! I should just think I am But here I can do nothing without the man I speak of. He holds all the traffic that goes on in the Gulf of Suez in the hollow of his hand.’

‘So smuggling goes on here?’

‘Yes, but all the merchandise comes down through the Canal. Sailors, stewards, fishermen, firemen, engineers, all kinds of people throw packets of hashish into the sea wrapped in rubber so that they will float and not be spoilt by the salt water. They throw them at given points and a ship goes and picks them up.’

It dawned on me as he spoke that the ship which had so intrigued me had probably been engaged in this sort of fishing. And she had been anchored beside the shifting sands so that she could hand over the spoils to an associate. All this was logically probable but not certain.

As I could do no more business with Alexandros for the moment, I left him and went to pay a visit to the French consul. When I reached the door leading into the courtyard, a servant came and opened to me. He was an old Negro, who had doubtless been in the service of the consul for a long time, to judge from his familiar manners. He wore a chechia with a tricolour cockade and a wide red woollen girdle, and he saluted with the negligent familiarity of the porter of a ministry. All this indicated to me that I was in France; I felt quite at home, and a gentle emotion filled my heart. I went in and the chancellor came to meet me, smiling and amiable, delighted at my visit. He was not a Frenchman, but an Egyptian, a Copt from Tor, a little seaport at the foot of the Sinai mountains, and his name was Spiro. He had been in the consulate from his earliest youth, and the various consuls, who generally come to Suez to wind up a peaceful career, had brought him up,
educated and formed him, so that now he was the perfect chancellor. At the present time, the consul might just as well not have existed; everything would go on just as usual, for Monsieur Spiro knew everything and did everything at every hour of the day.

He was about thirty, but did not look more than eighteen, and was a bachelor. He was so well groomed that he looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox, and the first things one noticed about him were his perfectly cut jacket, his white waistcoat and the sublime crease in his beautiful putty trousers. He had a Jewish cast of features and the bronzed skin of the Arab, in spite of his hatred and avoidance of the sun. His jet-black hair showed an obstinate inclination to curl, but was severely fixed down with some perfumed cream. A bowl of roses stood on his desk, and the room was as scented as a lady’s boudoir. Later on, I had a lot to do with Mr Spiro, and I got to know him very well, and appreciate his good points.

The first of these was that he was infinitely obliging. He would unhesitatingly make use of all his friends in order to do you a service, and he had a host of ‘intimate friends’. He spoke of them in dithyrambic terms, and seemed to find humanity endowed with all the virtues. He never made the smallest disparaging remark about anyone, and if you went so far as to criticize somebody in his presence, or to repeat something not very flattering, Spiro excused him with indulgent smiles and protesting airs, without, however, going so far as to contradict you, for he could not bear not to agree with everybody. This exquisite chancellor spoke all languages, starting with Arabic, French and Greek, which were his mother tongues. He spoke them faultlessly and without accent. Then he also spoke all the languages of the Mediterranean basin, including Turkish. He lived in the Arab fashion, under the care of an old woman whom he called his servant, but who might well have been his mother. He remained a bachelor, nobody understood why; for he was a good-looking and charming fellow and had an excellent position. His intimate friends, of course, hinted all sorts of things, basing their observations on the boudoir-like atmosphere of his office, his love of dress and his feminine daintiness in everything he did. I didn’t believe a word of it, only Spiro was as defenceless and timorous as a woman. He was afraid of everything, and trembled as soon as he could no longer smile.

After a little amiable chat, I asked to see the consul, but Spiro said with an air of great mystery that probably the consul was still having his siesta, as it was only four o’clock.

‘The
Paul-Lecat
came in at eleven o’clock last night,’ he explained; ‘that meant a sleepless night, you understand, for it takes over an hour to go out to the roads with the
Hélène,
the Messageries tug.’

‘Is the consul obliged to go on board all the steamers?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes, it’s very hard,’ replied Spiro, raising his eyes to heaven; ‘just think, to be obliged to go out to the middle of the roads twice a week in all weathers.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ I replied, trying to keep my face straight, ‘I quite understand that if the consul was on the
Paul-Lecat
yesterday he must prolong his siesta. I shall come back tomorrow morning.’

‘Not at all, not at all; wait a minute, the consul will be in at any moment now. Besides, he only nearly went on board the
Paul-Lecat,
for at the last minute the weather was a little threatening and his housekeeper refused to let him go.

‘He is very subject to colds in the head,’ he added, ‘and one has to be so careful in this climate…’

Spiro stopped speaking, and even breathing, put a finger on his lips, and a slow smile overspread his face.

‘Hush… I think I hear him coming…’

Monsieur du Gardier, the French consul, was a man about fifty, wearing enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. He was a distinguished and cultured gentleman, with very pleasant manners, who had entered the consular service in order to shelter himself from the storms of life. He had no ambition, and wherever he was sent, the authorities forgot him, and now he had been forgotten at Suez for I don’t know how many years. He welcomed me with that cordial simplicity which is so valuable an asset to men in his position, as it always flatters equals and encourages inferiors.

Naturally, I spoke of pearl fishing, to explain my long cruise in these little-frequented waters. I recounted the adventures of the voyage, exaggerating my find of pearls in the
bil-bils
of the Gulf. Spiro had been allowed to remain and take part in the conversation, and he listened to my story with appropriate gestures and changes of expression. He smiled blissfully, shook his head gloomily while raising horrified eyes to the ceiling, clasped his hands with so compassionate an air that the tears
came into his eyes, or else shuddered and threw hunted glances all round him. All this mimicry was so expressive that it seemed affected, but poor Spiro was quite incapable of irony. He was simply polite, and seeing his chief following my tale with attentive interest, thought it the correct thing for him to allow his own emotions full play.