“Yiii, leave me be.”
“I swear. Like a naked mole—where’s your beard?”
He patted Elias’s clean-shaven jawline. Elias pulled away. A beard would immediately announce him as a stranger here; removing it was an intentional decision because he wanted this artifact deal done quickly. Nassim looked fashionable; he wore a royal blue Italian linen suit with a burgundy silk cravat, and his beard was still intact, gleaming and expertly trimmed.
Elias flicked Nassim’s golden cravat pin. “And what are you, a catalog model?”
The sound of a throat clearing drew his attention back to the corridor.
A white-haired college porter still stood waiting, stiff and overlooked like a forgotten umbrella. He had a handcart loaded with a wooden crate by his side, and he wore a well-mannered Englishman’s expression of annoyed. Elias thanked him profusely and hoisted the box into his arms. He closed the door behind him with his heel.
Nassim was prowling the length of the room and randomly touching different surfaces. “So are you,” he prodded, “in trouble?” He looked delighted about the prospect. He was too energetic for having left his post at Manchester Port before dawn. “Ah, put it there, put it there.” He waved at the fireplace.
Elias set the crate down with a thump.
Nassim came over to loosen the crimps on the lid. “We have a new import-export at the docks,” he said. “I doubted they have food here. Voilà, they don’t—I stopped at two bakeries on my way here from the railway station, and they don’t have any bread.”
“Grand,” Elias said as familiar jars appeared. Red bell peppers in olive oil; more apricots. A bottle with mulberry juice. At least four pounds of pistachios.
“I’m not sure how you’ll eat any of it without proper bread,” Nassim said while he built a food pyramid on the mantelshelf.
“I’ll manage,” Elias replied.
“But how.”
“I could use this old Roman invention they keep in the college kitchen.”
Nassim paused and frowned. “An invention?”
“They call it—a fork.”
His cousin slapped his arm.
“I can’t accept all of this,” Elias said. “It’s too much; take it back, eat it yourself.”
“Nah, you keep it,” Nassim said, looking mildly offended. “I’ll go home in a month. I restock at the source.”
Restock, and liaise with Uncle Jabbar about business, no doubt. The potential prospects and troubles for the silk trade with Britain in light of the British tussle with Egyptian nationalists and Ottomans over Egypt. Focus on Lyon and let the French deal with the distribution in Europe, Elias would have advised, but his uncle’s ears were rather closed to his opinions. Jabbar liked to keep him on the fringe of the family business, quite literally, by assigning him positions in Britain, in Lyon, in Beirut, important positions, but outside the innermost circle of decision making.
“They’ll find you a wife this time,” he told Nassim instead. “So watch out.”
Nassim jiggled the bag with pistachios. “Listen, I’m ready. How is your French girl?”
Elias shook his head. “I came from Beirut. Francine was in Lyon.”
He also hadn’t seen Francine since leaving Lyon two years ago, but he knew she would have laughed at being called a girl.
“No one in Marseille, then?” Nassim asked, winking so hard it looked like a spasm.
“You’re shameless,” Elias said darkly. “Too nosy.”
Nassim stepped back to admire his handiwork on the shelf. “You may ask me about my sweethearts,” he said, using the English word sweethearts. Despite overseeing their British operations for the past seven years, his accent was still strong.
“As for my business here,” Elias said. “There has been a delay.” In few words, he explained that the Scottish professor would be away for at least a fortnight.
Nassim’s strong brows pulled together. “What will you do in the meantime? Have you learned any more about that Englishman?”
“Mr. Leighton? Not yet.” He knew the collector’s family had made their wealth through textile trade, and he seemed diplomatically well-connected throughout the Levant.
“I tell you what he is,” said Nassim, his lip curling with contempt. “He’s the son of a dog.”
“He may be unaware of what he’s done.”
Nassim scoffed. “Of course. And he’ll just give everything back once he knows. If you believe that, why don’t you write it down, on a sheet of ice.”