Free Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth Page A

there was always the justice of the gang to be reckoned with. Once, in a dockside tavern, pretending to pause while he watched a game of dice, he stole a purse from a coat belonging to one of the players, which was hanging over the back of the man’s chair. He was seen, and only flight and the refuge of darkness saved him from serious injury. He went in some fear now of being recognized.
    His consolation, which was also his torment, was that he could see Ninanna every day, for hours on end, from midmorning till nightfall, while she was there at the café. All that was needed was the price of a glass of tea. The café stayed open until midnight and later, but he had no hope of seeing her after dark; the uncle, aware of having a valuable asset, kept her carefully sequestered from view and from the temptations of darkness.
    The sight of her filled him with hope. But all the men there could watch her too, as she moved about with her tray, serving tea and coffee and raki, gathering the empty glasses. Not only were they feasting their eyes on her, but also—in his imagination—nursing schemes similar to his own. He was not capable of distinguishing his own desires from those of others; anyone who set eyes on Ninanna, saw the candidness and beauty of her face, her grace of movement and her shapeliness, would be stricken by love for her just as he had been and would start getting together the gold pounds. He knew that the uncle would not hesitate for a moment if another came to him with the money.
    This uncle, in Jehar’s eyes, had no fidelity in his nature, no sense of right or wrong whatever. He had complained that Jehar sat all day over one glass of tea and how was he to make a profit if everyone behaved like that? Such a shameless and avaricious person was no use to anyone; he simply cluttered up the earth. It had sometimes come to Jehar’s mind that he might put an end to this miserable man if a good chance presented itself, but he was uncertain how the girl would take it, whether she would trust herself to him, whether there were others with whom she might seek refuge . . .
    Meanwhile he found ways of talking to her, though never for long. She came for water to the pump that was near the office of the German engineers, where he had first seen her; sometimes on these occasions she was alone and would have some little while for talking, or listening rather—she said very little. The small kitchen where the coffee and the tea were made had a door that gave onto the outside yard, which had always a dark smell of soot and hot metal and spent steam from the shunting of the engines, but which nevertheless was kept open because of the heat from the stove in that narrow place. Keeping a wary eye out for the uncle, who was generally behind the counter inside, taking the money, Jehar would cross the tracks and come to stand at the open doorway, and by these means he sometimes succeeded in talking to her for a few minutes, with the clangor and hissing of the shunting bays on one side and the voices from the café on the other.
    Such scattered moments did not make for conversation as this is generally understood, and Jehar had seen from the beginning that he must find one single topic, one that could be resumed at every opportunity, which would in effect, in spite of all interruptions, make an unending story. He found it in a vision of their future together. This, with all that it contained of happiness and fulfillment, was situated in the town of Deir ez-Zor, on the right bank of the Great River, which he had seen when working on the rafts that carried the pitch upstream and downstream from the black fields of Hit.
    He described the town to Ninanna, the green islet in the midst of the stream, the permanent bridge that went from one bank to the other, the six white minarets that rose above the roofs of the houses, the great mass of gardens and palm groves and cultivated fields that extended along the river for many miles to the east.