Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [28]
Angelos was coming down the stair to greet him, followed by his two other housemates, each looking that much more worn than the day before. Mr. Emanetoglu introduced the hodjas to them all.
Angelos bowed himself, as only Scheuch beside him did, saying, “I am most pleased to meet you both,” and, to Mr. Emanetoglu, “Do they speak any English?”
Mr. Emanetoglu replied, “They understand quite well, but speak poorly. I shall translate as necessary.” He watched the old men moving in the vestibule, heard them whispering to each other, saw them raising their heads, just as he had done—only a day ago?—flaring their nostrils to sample the lightning taste of the air. Hodja Abbas turned to look straight at him, and Mr. Emanetoglu felt himself cringe inside, like a schoolboy who knows an answer is wrong even as he gives it. Little Ekrem would never feel like that, but I do. What is the good of being grown?
Hodja Abbas spoke in Turkish, and Angelos looked questioningly at Mr. Emanetoglu. “Was he speaking to me?”
Mr. Emanetoglu nodded. “He wishes to know whether you have had any training in the philosophy of magic. Magic of any sort—even English.” He could not keep from smiling at the expression on Angelos’s face—nor on the ancient shaman’s stern countenance either. “I am of the opinion that Hodja Abbas does not think very much of English magic.”
Angelos almost laughed, but looked over at the tall old Turk and muffled the sound into something like a sneeze. “Tell him no—tell him I’ve no training at all, except in medicine, and not much of that. We English haven’t studied magic since Merlin, tell him. We believe in machinery, just like the Germans. Tell him that.”
Mr. Emanetoglu translated, plainly with a certain trepidation. Hodja Abbas’s lean face lost all color; even his dark eyes seemed to pale. He began to speak very fast, his normally deep voice rising in pitch until the words clattered and rang against each other like swords. Mr. Emanetoglu had trouble keeping up with the right English words, but he did his best.
“He says that you are a magician born . . . and the biggest fool he has ever met. He says that he would kill you here and now and bury you under a lime tree, to protect the world from your—forgive me, Mr. Angelos—from your stupidity”—Angelos was not the only one who had noticed the curved dagger in the old man’s belt—“if it were not that since he went to Mecca he has sworn never again to take a life.”
“Decent of the old boy,” Griffith snickered wearily. “Bet he’s left a few flourishing lime trees behind him in his time. Along with assorted wives and babas.” But the words lacked his usual scornful snap, and he sank down on the stair, leaning his head against the balustrade.
Hodja Abbas appeared to have finished his tirade, but then he burst out again in a further spittle-embroidered rant, which Mr. Emanetoglu did not bother to pretend he was not censoring as he went along. “He says he wants to see your rooms, the place where you do your . . . stupid work. He thinks he knows what you have . . . ah, where you have gone wrong, and there is a chance that he and Hodja Cenghiz may be able to help. But he must see where you . . . did it.” He looked wretchedly apologetic when he finished, saying, “I am sorry, Mr. Angelos. He is a very old man.”
Angelos laughed outright, but it took the remaining strength in his body, and he actually lurched against Mr. Emanetoglu. He said, “Old and tactless he may well be—and downright vulgar, that too—but of course he’s absolutely right. But I do wish he’d tell me exactly what it is I’m supposed to have done, so I can apologize for it. Please ask him that, when he calms down a bit.”
Mr. Emanetoglu did ask, but Hodja Abbas refused to comment