Free The Mingrelian Conspiracy by Michael Pearce Page A

until you spoke. I was in despair. And then you came forward—’
    ‘I spoke as a man should.’
    ‘They don’t speak like that nowadays.’
    ‘Then they should!’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said the man; ‘they should!’
    He saw that Owen was supporting the old man and looked at him enquiringly.
    ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘I’d come with you myself, only—’
    ‘I’ll see him home,’ said Owen.
    The man shook hands with them both and dashed off back into the square. Owen saw that beneath his galabeeyah he was wearing boots.
    ‘A Mingrelian?’ he asked.
    ‘Mingrelian?’ said Sorgos, surprised. ‘No, Georgian.’
    He seemed suddenly very tired. The excitement had ebbed. He was barely able to stumble along. Owen offered him an arm, which he accepted gratefully. ‘Like a son,’ he murmured. ‘Like a son.’
    He recovered briefly when they reached his house.
    ‘Like a son!’ he roared, as Katarina came running to the door.
    ‘What?’ said Katarina.
    ‘He’s been like a son to me,’ said Sorgos, gesturing in Owen’s direction.
    ‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Katarina.
    ‘I needed a bit of help to get home.’
    ‘I told you you would,’ said Katarina, annoyed. ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’
    ‘There was work to be done. Work for men.’
    ‘You leave it to the men, then. You’ve had your turn. Just help me a moment, would you?’ she said to Owen.
    Together they got Sorgos to a divan. Katarina lifted his legs up and gently pushed him back. He fell asleep immediately.
    ‘He’s going to overdo it one of these days,’ she said.
    ‘He’s overdone it tonight,’ said Owen.
    ‘What’s he been saying?’
    ‘It isn’t the saying,’ said Owen. ‘It’s what might follow on from the saying.’
    ‘It’s only words now,’ said Katarina reassuringly. ‘He won’t be able to do anything.’
    ‘Only words?’ said Owen. ‘In a situation like this, words are enough.’
    ‘What is the situation?’
    Owen told her.
    She was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘He shouldn’t come.’
    ‘Duke Nicholas?’
    ‘Duke Nicholas or any other Russian. He’s only doing it to provoke us.’
    ‘The Mingrelians? For God’s sake, he’s probably never heard of the Mingrelians.’
    ‘That may well be true. It’s easier to crush a people if you’ve never heard of them. He
ought
to have heard of us. We were a people. We had lives.’
    ‘Look, I’m not exactly in favour of him coming—’
    ‘Tell me,’ she said; ‘suppose you are right, and suppose he has never heard of the Mingrelians; and now suppose you tell him they are here, in Cairo, these people whom he crushed. What do you think he will say? Do you think he will be ashamed, do you think he will postpone his visit? I don’t think so. I think he will say, let the visit go on. What do we care for these Mingrelians? If they cause trouble, put them down! That is what he will say, won’t he?’
    ‘Something like it,’ said Owen, remembering the Chargé.
    ‘Very well, then. In that case I am with my grandfather. I think we should stand up. To show that we cannot be put down. We can be knocked down but we will never stay down.’
    ‘Well, I have some sympathy with that,’ said Owen. ‘But standing up is one thing and throwing a bomb is another.’
    ‘The Russians should have thought of that,’ said Katarina, ‘when they threw the first bomb.’
    ‘That is all in the past.’
    ‘The past is never all in the past. You always carry some of it with you.’
    ‘You can’t do it forever. Where do you think we’d have been in Wales if we’d gone on thinking like that?’
    Sorgos stirred in his sleep.
    ‘The Welsh,’ he said drowsily. ‘A mountain people.’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Owen. ‘We’d still be in the bloody hills, that’s where!’
     
    ‘—and so the dog dropped the sack and ran away,’ said the storyteller, ‘and all the names were just left lying there in the street. Now, the trouble was that in all the