The Djinn (11 page)

Unfortunately,
she didn’t know which beach, or where it was. Anna and I looked at each other
in resigned patience, climbed back in the car, and went to find him.

After seven
beaches, we saw a brightly colored umbrella amongst the grassy dunes and went
to investigate. It was Professor Qualt, asleep. He was a middle-aged man with
the muscular physique and the dense black body hair of an educated gorilla, He
was lying flat out under the umbrella with a half-empty can of beer in one
hand; the radio was playing Mozart string quartets.

He was wearing
reflecting mirror sunglasses, a voluminous pair of candy-striped bathing
trunks, and those handmade leather sandals you can buy in Key West.

Anna leaned
forward and switched off the radio.
For a while.
Professor Qualt remained deeply asleep, but then his nose began to twitch, his
eyes blinked open, and he sat up.

“Anna Modena,”
he said groggily, in a deep, well-modulated voice. “What in the world are you
doing here? Hey-please excuse me-I was right in the middle of -”

“Writing up
your notes?” said Anna with gentle sarcasm.

Qualt laughed.
He had a bluff, hearty laugh that reminded me of a huge, jolly, and thoroughly
objectionable quarterback I used to know. He sat up, yawned, stretched his
hairy arms, and invited us to sit down on his blanket with him.

“You want a
beer?” he asked me. It was then that I began to think he probably wasn’t such a
bad guy after all. He reached into his lunchbox and brought out a couple of
chilled cans of Old Milwaukee, as well as some crackers and Polish salami.

“I should have
paid more attention in class,” I said wryly. “Maybe I could’ve made it through
college and spent the rest of my life drinking beer on beaches.”

Anna gave me an
irritated little frown, but Qualt thought it was funny. He opened up his can of
beer and swallowed it in great gulps.

“You know
something,” said Qualt, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “If only
more dropouts would stick it out, they’d earn their way through to the ultimate
dropout-the wonderful vacationland of professorship.”

Anna shook her
head. “He’s kidding you, Harry. Professor Qualt here is the most hard-working,
brilliant, and dedicated academic you’re ever likely to meet.”

Qualt laughed
again. “That doesn’t say much for the rest of them, does it?”

We sat in
silence for a moment, then Anna said quietly, “Professor, there’s something we
want to ask you about.”

“Sure. Go
ahead. As long as you don’t want me to translate 200 pages of original
16th-century Persian poetry, which is what Professor Jaminsky wanted me to do.”

“What did you
tell him?” I asked.

Qualt shrugged.
“I just said that two vitally important things were going to suffer in
translation: the poems and me.”

“I’ve found a night-clock,”
said Anna suddenly.

Totally without
warning, Professor Qualt’s locker-room personality seemed to drop from him like
a damp towel. As soon as Anna mentioned the night-clock, he looked alert and
intent. He put down his can of beer and leaned forward. “What?”

“A
night-clock,” said Anna. “In perfect condition and apparently set up for
someone to use.”

Qualt bit his
lip reflectively. “Where is it?” he asked. “Have you actually seen it for
yourselves?”

I nodded. “It’s
set up on an old sundial in my godmother’s garden. She was widowed not long
ago. Her husband was in oil, out in Arabia, and he collected a whole pile of
Middle Eastern relics. I don’t know-maybe he bought the night-clock and never
realized what it was. Maybe he thought it was a fancy Arab sundial.”

Qualt shook his
head slowly. “Nobody will sell you a night-clock in Arabia. You would never be
able to get hold of one unless you knew exactly what it was you were looking
for, and you were also prepared to spend a great deal of money. They’re forbidden,
you know.”

“Yes,” I said.
“Anna told me. I still can’t figure out why.”

Qualt removed
his reflecting sunglasses and looked at me closely with cultured, penetrating
eyes.

He had the same
kind of eyes as James Mason – blasé and wearied by what they had seen, but also
hurt and sensitive at the same time.

“The reason
they’re banned is because they work,’ he said simply. “Nobody has ever been
able to make up their minds as to quite why they work or how, but they have
something of the mystic properties of the Great Pyramids. They were supposed to
have been invented by Egyptian sorcerers thousands of years before the birth of
Christ.”

I looked
anxiously at Anna. “But if they work,”

I said, “that
means that someone is trying to give strength and power to the jar, and if
someone is deliberately trying to do that . . .”

Qualt frowned
at me, then at Anna. “Do you mind enlightening me?” he asked. “What is someone
trying to do deliberately? What jar? What are you talking about?”

Between us,
Anna and I explained everything we knew about Max Greaves and his collection;
about the Jar of the Djinn; and about the mysterious events of the past day.
Professor Qualt didn’t seem to be listening at times, but there was a tension
about his body that betrayed his absorption and interest. He didn’t say a word
until we had finished, and after we had brought him up to date, he sat and
stared at the colored pattern on his beach blanket for a long time, thinking it
all over.

After a while,
he rummaged in his discarded linen jacket and brought out a small briar pipe
and a pouch of tobacco. He tamped the tobacco into the pipe and lit up, his
hands cupped over the bowl. It was only when the tobacco was burning steadily
and evenly that he started to talk, the pipe stem clenched between his teeth.

“I think the
first thing I ought to say is that I believe you,” he remarked. “There are
several things which you couldn’t possibly have known about unless you had
actually seen them for yourself, or unless you were a professor of ancient
Middle Eastern cultures, like me.
The whole business about
the faces, for instance.
That’s an extremely obscure defense against the
resurrection
of a djinn
, known only to a few Persian
sorcerers in the fifth century B.C. They called it-as far as I remember-the Seal
of Banished Faces. As you’ve realized by what has happened at your godmother’s
house, Mr. Erskine, the removal of all pictures and the portraits is acting as
a seal on the reappearance of the djinn.”

“But what about Max?”
I said. “Why did he cut his own face
off, yet leave Marjorie at risk?

Surely the
djinn could have taken Marjorie’s face as well?”

Professor Qualt
shook his head. “You don’t know very much about Arabs, Mr. Erskine. To them, a
woman is a chattel, an inferior. No magical djinn could or would take the face
of a woman. The
djinn is
a powerful spiritual being,
and to have the face of a woman would weaken his strength and lay him open to
ridicule.”

I took a swig
of beer. The afternoon was so hot that the can was warm already, and it was
like drinking thin soup.

“What’s
this djinn
going to do, though?” I asked Professor Qualt “It
obviously terrified Max, but what possible harm can an ancient puff of smoke do
to anyone?”

Professor Qualt
sucked at his pipe. “No one can say-not without knowing which djinn this jar
might contain. But if it really is the Djinn of Ali Babah, then I would say
that you have a considerable amount of trouble on your hands.”

“But what kind of trouble?
That’s what I want to know.”

“It’s almost
impossible to separate fact from legend,” explained the professor, “but roost
of the books and manuscripts that I’ve read on the subject of Ali Babah’s djinn
seem to agree on one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“They agree
that Ali Babah’s djinn had one characteristic which distinguished it from all
the others. It had the ability to change shape, to be whatever it wished to be,
within certain magical limits. It could be a cloud of smoke, or a giant
centipede, or a hooded leper, or a lion-creature, or one of many other magical
varieties of being. Because it was able to change its shape in this way, it was
commonly known as the Forty-Stealers of Life. This became shortened to Forty
Thieves, although it would have been more accurate to call it the Forty
Murderers. Each manifestation of the djinn-each of its forty different
manifestations-could inflict death in a different way.
By
choking, if the djinn became a cloud of smoke.
By
stinging, if it decided to change itself into a giant centipede.
By
contagious disease, if it were a leper.
By fire, by drowning,
by mauling, by suffocation, by disemboweling-forty kinds of death for the
asking.”

Anna was
looking pale. She said to me quietly, “The hooded figure? Could that have
been-the leper?”

“It might have
been,” said Professor Qualt. “But it seems to me that the
djinn
is
not yet free from its jar, and it’s more likely that the hooded
figure you saw was nothing more than a ghostly servant, one of the lesser
beings that the djinn has managed to summon as its helper in its attempt to
escape from its jar. Time and space are crowded with miserable shuffling ghosts
who can be dominated and ruled by the greater and more illustrious spirits from
beyond. Djinns themselves are the servants of the spirits of dead people. It is
said that some spirits keep djinns in the way that you or I would keep a
ferocious dog.”

I took out a
cigarette. “You sound as though you believe all this.”

Professor Qualt
shook his head. “I don’t, as a matter of fact. I have never seen a ghost and I
don’t suppose I’d even know what it was if I did. But that’s not important.
Academically speaking, these things that you’ve told me have only one rational
explanation. There is a jar, and it does contain some kind of phantasmic
influence. It appears to be a malevolent influence, and therefore it could be
the Forty Thieves,
If
it is, then the best thing you
can do is to get as far away from that house and that jar as you possibly can.
The Forty Thieves is no joke.”

Anna looked
worried. “Can’t we exorcise it?” she suggested. “Couldn’t a priest get rid of
it?”

Professor Qualt
pressed some more tobacco into his pipe. “The
djinn is
a spirit of Islamic culture. No Christian clergyman is going to be able to make
any kind of impression at all.
Bell, book and candle?
I don’t think so.”

“So what do you
suggest we do?” I asked him.

Professor Qualt
looked up with those hurt, tired eyes. “I’ve told you,” he said. “Get the hell
out.

If
that djinn
ever escapes, all you’ll get for your trouble is
one of forty particularly nasty types of extinction.”

“But I can’t do
that,” I said. “My godmother is there. And so is her hired companion.”

“Take them with
you,” said Qualt. “Take them with you and burn the whole place down to the
ground, just like your godfather suggested.”

“Qualt,” I
said, “you can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m
serious.”

“But it doesn’t
make sense. The thing to do is to get rid of the jar, not commit wholesale
arson on a lovely old seaside house.”

Qualt didn’t
look up. “It’s up to you,” he said. “I believe your story, and that’s what
makes it worse. If you try and tamper with that jar-particularly now, when the
djinn is thirsting to escape -

you’ll
find yourself with more trouble on your hands than
you know how to cope with.”

Anna had a
downcast, disappointed expression. It was obvious that she had expected more
positive help from Professor Qualt. After all, he was supposed to be the great
crusader, dedicated to the cause of returning priceless antiquities to their
mother countries. Now-without even looking at the Jar of the Djinn-he was
telling us to destroy it.

“Professor
Qualt,’ said Anna. “Would you just come and look at the jar? Just give it a
quick once-over, so we know we’re not making any mistakes?”

Professor Qualt
sighed. “Well – I’m supposed to be writing up these notes,” he said
reluctantly.

“Please,
Professor,” begged Anna. “Just look at the night-clock and the jar itself, then
I’ll be satisfied.”

Professor Qualt
thought for a moment. It was plain that he took his leisure time seriously, and
that he didn’t relish the idea of driving all the way back along the Cape in
mid-August heat for the sole purpose of looking at an old jar. But this wasn’t
just any old jar, and there was a night-clock to inspect, and academic
curiosity was struggling hard in the favor of checking them out.

In the end,
Qualt said, “Okay-just give me a chance to pack up my stuff and get dressed.”
Anna and I
both let
out sighs of relief, stood up and
helped him fold up his beach blanket and stow away his lunchbox.

As we drove
toward Winter Sails, Professor Qualt leaned forward from the back of the car
and filled us in with more details of the Ali Babah legend.

“The Arabs used
to say that Ali Babah had made a pact with a strange and evil sect of
necromancers who lived in the hills. These wizards performed extraordinary and
quite obscene rites, one of which was said to involve carrying around a young
girl on top of a long pole which had been pushed through her vagina. This sect
is sometimes known as the N’zwaa or the Unswa, and sometimes by an
unpronounceable name which means Those-Who-Adore-The-Terrible.”

Professor Qualt
opened the rear window and lit up his pipe again.

“The thing was
that Ali Babah was losing his magical influence. A great wizard from Bagdad,
Ali Shama, was becoming a favorite at court, leaving Ali Babah out in the cold.
Ali Shama was said to be able to make carpets fly and dead people come to life.
Ali Babah, although he was a very good sorcerer, could do neither of these
things, nor many o£ Ali Shama’s other tricks, and he was very annoyed.