“Don’t let him bug you,” Jim told Plum, ignoring the
irksome Iraqi,
“Thanks. I’ll try not.”
“—Because when we have fights here, sometimes the guards execute everybody involved. I’ve seen it.”
Plum made a face, but bad news or no, Jim’s helpfulness deserved a reward. “Do you smoke? Would you share a bowl of shag with me?”
Jim smiled assent. Once in his hut and away from princely ears, Plum asked: “Er, about that broken twig business…”
“Maria’s visit last night? I know nothing about it. There’s a stone that pivots open, but I don’t know about that either. Third on the left, this side of the pool.”
Plum puffed and passed over his pipe. “I owe you. Concerning that woman—well, I’ve been pondering the archetypes. Tyrant, vamp, and fool. Publisher, editor, and writer. It’s no different than in New York or London. The Doubleday gang didn’t fling spears so enthusiastically, but you have to make allowances for local customs.”
Plum sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Our Iraqi seems keen to take another “cheap trip.” I could speed us both on our way.”
Jim smiled, his brown face wreathed in smoke. “Hakim’s spearmen have been practicing. They’ve gotten good. If
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it’s true about people who get killed the same time, you and him could end up resurrecting side by side.”
“I don’t want that!” Plum laughed. He took another draw on the pipe, then traded it back. After five minutes of nicotine-tinged meditation, the Apache nodded thanks and left. Plum turned his hand to writing, and began chapter three.
Chapter four took shape. “Snookers” Van Doorp left his bedroom with the dead cat under his smoking jacket and bumped into the housemaid. Just then, a work-gang invaded Plum’s hut, dismantled his bed, and began stringing a larger one “because you’re so tall.”
It was longer, and wider. Maria visited again that night, and left two hours later with chapters one to three. “You’ll see,” she whispered. “Ironwood is strong. We carve it into type for our printing press. This will look wonderful.”
Plum instructed her in the publishing business. “First you frolic in the margins. Then I rewrite. Then your side sets type and runs off a proof. I look, and fuss, and fix all the mistakes that have crept in. Only after all that do you chug out the copies.”
“I was an author in my day,” Maria assured him. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”
She left. Plum heard the familiar sneers of the Iraqi prince just outside the door: “Oh, gua-a-a-ards! Look what we have here—ugh!”
Silence. Plum poked his head out of the hut and saw a body clutching itself in the grass. He scratched his head. Hadn’t Maria Montessori been a pacifist in former times? There she was, twinkling off in utter haste….
“Ugh!” Another figure was doing the damage; a
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second riposte from the bushes and back again. The Iraqi bubbled a bit, and Plum withdrew to let the night shroud its secrets. In Hakim’s gardens, this was ever the wisest course.
Plum was troubled to discover that murders no longer impeded his writing. His sleep, yes, but despite insomnia he insinuated Reverend Pancroft into chapter six, no matter that he had to fly the blighter home from France. The Toby Winkleman urchin insulted the cook, who quit the day of the Important Dinner….
Maria Montessori edited with a light hand. On her third visit, she whispered about Sijill magazine, issue one, a Druze tract with news, views, a sermonette about the glories of Hakim—and Wodehouse’s serialized book. “We’ll send it down-River and up, to the Malagasies, the Rastafarians, the Phrygians, and the Shang. English, Esperanto, and French. Hakim needs food for his hordes. He’ll put it to his neighbors—subscribe and pay in rations, or we attack.”
“The tyrant publisher!” Plum sighed. “Didn’t you write essays for peace? Didn’t you sponsor a pacifist conference before World War Two?”
“Yes. And if I can make this work, we’ll have peace,” Maria Montessori answered.
A few days afterward, a guard delivered another pouch of tobacco and a proof of Plum’s soon-to-be published pages. Perhaps because Fatima the copy editor knew little English, she did nothing to “correct” Wodehouse’s immortal prose. All the errors had to do with commas, capitals, and italics. Plum fixed them, and swung his attention to chapter eight. Good old “Snookers” hid on the balcony, with no escape but to slide down the water pipe….