The Bell-Boy by James Hamilton-Paterson

might be exploited. Things were looking promising. Had not the missus already called him‘our friend’? And had not the beautiful Zoe asked for him personally – personally! – as their guide?

For the next day or two the Hemonys explored Malomba
    For the next day or two the Hemonys explored Malomba without the help of Mr Bundash, perhaps out of loyalty to Laki who meanwhile lost no opportunity to perform his discreet services. In such matters he showed imagination and tact, knowing that to display too much eagerness would work against him. To be obliging was one thing, but he had learned that Europeans in particular became suspicious of too much solicitude. He supposed this was a sad reflection on the state of affairs at home.
    Zealously he fumigated their rooms, going to some trouble in arranging to be doing it at the very moment his guests returned. He was seen leaving Tessa’s room with a carpenter’s rule and hammer. ‘To fixing window for missus,’ he said gravely, padding away up the corridor with a preoccupied air. Although she looked and found no evidence of repairs, she was touched that he had remembered, especially in a town whose predominating attitude was what she would have described as ‘laid back’.
    She and the children were doing a lot of walking. They bought a map and did the sights, visiting (it seemed to Jason) a hundred and seventy-three temples for each iced Mango Surprise consumed.
    ‘The map must be wrong,’ he said while waiting for one of these rare delicacies to be served. ‘Look, they say there are thirty-nine temples in Malomba. We’ve already been to more than that this morning.’
    ‘How silly you are,’ said Zoe.
    ‘And,’ persisted Jason, looking closely at the legend, ‘it says several of those are shut to visitors. The Vudusumin,for example. The Masonic Lodge – and this Lingasumin thing. I expect they’re the only interesting ones.’
    ‘You liked the Glass Minaret,’ said Tessa.
    ‘It was all right. It wasn’t made of glass, though, was it? Just covered with bits of mirror.’
    ‘And the stuffed man.’
    ‘Yes, the stuffed man was okay.’
    They had found him in the House of Rimmon, a circular building where all male visitors were required to remove their shirts. The entire floor was knee-deep in straw symbolising – according to the printed explanation – the threshing floor on which all human souls will one day be winnowed. Standing in the middle was a small brown man, stark naked and holding a flail in one upraised hand. Around his brow was a circlet of gold from which arose wavy jags like bent spearheads, alternately copper and gold. These were the tongues of fire with which the unrighteous chaff would be burned.
    Until the guide-book told her that the man with the flail was believed to be at least a thousand years old, Zoe had been embarrassed lest he caught her staring. Whatever preservation process he had undergone had resulted in an extraordinarily lifelike skin texture quite different from the dried-parchment look of mummification. He was supposed to be completely stuffed with emmer and barley, and at this very moment university departments in Europe and America were studying minute samples of skin reverently taken from the soles of his feet in order to date him. The Stockholm Institute of Forensic Science had also taken scrapings from under the toenails of one foot, and from their analysis of particles of mud, pollen and camel dung were able to confirm that they were consistent with an Eastern Mediterranean provenance. The Rimmonites of Malomba were already overjoyed and preparing for immense celebrations when the news arrived – as they never doubted it would – proving this figure to be the The GodHimself, immeasurably older than anybody else’s, whose last corporeal manifestation happened to be that of a man who had fled Damascus before the spread of Islam.
    Tessa had tried, as she tried in every temple she visited, to be responsive to the