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was hot, huge and festive. Pigs squealed, donkeys brayed and people shouted in tongues. James stopped before a shy graceful animal like a small deer, in a cage. A gazelle, his Papa said, waiting to be sold. A worldly-looking monkey with a white beard made its way without touching ground, by climbing over the shoulders and heads of whole rows of people.
    Papa kept him by the hand. Maybe he thought he’d be stolen. Maybe he would have been. He dragged behind, caught up by a snake charmer playing on a flageolet who coaxed his cobra halfway up out of the basket only to let him drop again. A scribe sat cross-legged on a straw mat on the sand with a little crowd waiting for him to put some message on paper. He crooked his finger at James, but Papa pulled him past. They ducked under the flaps of a tent draped with coloured carpets. An Arab with a long white headdress and a massive black beard greeted his father with open arms; he looked on James kindly and the boy shrank behind his father’s leg. Papa prised James off and showed him the scales, and the tongs, with which the trader handled the pearls, and weighed them. There were big brass sieves for sizing, a whole set of them, each with a different sized hole for the pearls to slip through, and the corn tongs he knew well because his Papa used them himself.
    The men in line had pearls to sell. As for buyers, the richest of the rich were there, his father said. James was very impressed by how many of these exotic individuals his father knew by name. This one bought for the Sultan of Sarawak and that one represented the rulers of an Indian province. This man bought for the markets of Paris and London, for opera singers, and famous French courtesans. All this Papa told James. He waited while hisfather spoke to them and watched a man at a spindle, making holes in pearls. He had a half coconut sitting beside him, full of water, in which he dipped each pearl before he set to work on it. The pearls gleamed in the dim tent.
    When they went out again, Papa took the boy to where, under the open sheds, rows of half-naked men were prising open the scabrous shells of oysters. They had white cloth wrapped around their heads and sat cross-legged. Only their hands moved, and if one moved too quickly or too far, one of the Malay soldiers came down on him with knife drawn. In front of them were little trays. A man circled briskly around the openers, and as soon as a few pearls appeared in the tray, he carried it off.
    ‘There’s the second best job you can have in the pearling game,’ said Papa. ‘If you’ve got nimble fingers and luck you might get away with a pearl or two.’
    ‘What is the best?’ James asked. He was anxious to impress him, the Papa newly in his life.
    ‘You’ll see.’
    As the afternoon grew hot the breeze died. Papa pointed at a group of naked men behind a fence. ‘Those are divers who were caught swallowing pearls. They’ve been given a herb, and they’ll sit there until they’ve emptied themselves out. Some lucky fellow will have the job of looking for the stolen merchandise.’
    The boy stared at the men. They were sullen and defiant as if determined to hold the contents of their stomachs in for ever. He half hoped they would succeed. The place stank of shit.
    ‘Who thinks of it?’ Papa said. ‘A pearl in a princess’s tiara may have been regurgitated – or worse –’ he said, rolling his eyes significantly ‘– under extreme pressure from that lot –’
    James thought about that. It was ugly to contemplate, but not for Papa. He went on. ‘Isn’t it odd, isn’t itmarvellous? A pearl may go from sinking in the most foul-smelling mass of dead matter you can imagine, straight to the most beautiful neck in the world. It will wash clean and look as innocent as a newborn babe. That is the beauty of pearls. They come up fresh again and again.’
    His father was educating him, you see, as they strode in that sand, and hard work it was. He was a feeble boy