‘This is very interesting to me

‘This is very interesting to me,’ Wilson said, catching the eye of a grandmother across the room and nodding and smiling at her. The grandmother obviously thought he wanted more sweets, and called angrily out for her granddaughter. ‘No, no,’ Wilson said vainly, shaking his head and smiling at the centenarian. The centenarian lifted his lip from a toothless gum and signalled with ferocity to Tallit’s younger brother, who hurried forward with yet another dish. ‘That’s quite safe,’ Father Rank shouted. ‘Just sugar and glycerine and a little flour.’ All the time their glasses were charged and recharged with whisky,
‘Wish you’d confess to me where you get this whisky from, Tallit,’ Father Rank called out with roguery, and Tallit beamed and slid agilely from end to end of the room, a word to Wilson, a word to Father Rank. He reminded Wilson of a young ballet dancer in his white trousers, his plaster of black hair and his grey polished alien face, and one glass eye like a puppet’s.
‘So the Esperan?a’s gone out,’ Father Rank shouted across the room. ‘Did they find anything, do you think?’
‘There was a rumour in the office,’ Wilson said, ‘about some diamonds.’
‘Diamonds, my eye,’ Father Rank said. ‘They’ll never find any diamonds. They don’t know where to look, do they, Tallit?’ He explained to Wilson, ‘Diamonds are a sore subject with Tallit. He was taken in by the false ones last year. Yusef humbugged you, eh, Tallit, you young rogue? Not so smart, eh,replica montblanc pens? You a Catholic humbugged by a Mahomedan. I could have wrung your neck.’
‘It was a bad thing to do,’ Tallit said, standing midway between Wilson and the priest.
‘I’ve only been here a few weeks,’ Wilson said, ‘and everyone talks to me about Yusef. They say he passes false diamonds, smuggles real ones, sells bad liquor, hoards cottons against a French invasion, seduces the nursing sisters from the military hospital.
‘He’s a dirty dog,’ Father Rank said with a kind of relish. ‘Not that you can believe a single thing you hear in this place. Otherwise everybody would be living with someone else’s wife, every police officer who wasn’t in Yusef’s pay would be bribed by Tallit here.’
Tallit said,’ Yusef is a very bad man,LINK.’
‘Why don’t the authorities run him in?’
‘I’ve been here for twenty-two years,’ Father Rank said, ‘and I’ve never known anything proved against a Syrian yet. Oh, often I’ve seen the police as pleased as Punch carrying their happy morning faces around, just going to pounce - and I think to myself,fake louis vuitton bags, why bother to ask them what it’s about? they’ll just pounce on air.’
‘You ought to have been a policeman, Father.’
‘Ah,’ Father Rank said, ‘who knows? There are more policemen in this town than meet the eye - or so they say.’
‘Who say?’
‘Careful of those sweets,’ Father Rank said, ‘they are harmless in moderation,moncler jackets men, but you’ve taken four already. Look here, Tallit, Mr Wilson looks hungry. Can’t you bring on the bakemeats?’
‘Bakemeats?’
‘The feast,’ Father Rank said. His joviality filled the room with hollow sound. For twenty-two years that voice had been laughing, joking, urging people humorously on through the rainy and the dry months. Could its cheeriness ever have comforted a single soul? Wilson wondered: had it even comforted itself? It was like the noise one heard rebounding from the tiles in a public baths: the laughs and the splashes of strangers in the steam-heating.