The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

Inside the cupboard I found an immense, old-fashioned picture-hat of the 1912 variety, trimmed with a bunch of faded osprey feathers and secured by a thick hatpin with a large blue stone head. ‘This?’ I said incredulously, and he chuckled complacently as he nodded. ‘Who will ever recognize me in this? Give it here….’

He looked so funny with it on that I was forced to sit down and laugh. He reminded me of Scobie in his own absurd Dolly Varden. Pombal looked … it is quite indescribable what this ridiculous creation did to his fat face. He began to laugh too as he said ‘Wonderful, no? My bloody colleagues will never know who the drunk woman was. And if the Consul General isn’t in domino I shall … make advances to him. I shall drive him out of his mind with passionate kisses. The swine!’ His face set in a grimace of hate looked even more ludicrous. As with Scobie, I was forced to plead: ‘Take it off, for God’s sake!’

He did so and sat grinning at me, consumed by the brilliance of his plan. At least, he thought, such indiscretions as he might commit would not be attributable to him. ‘I have a whole costume’ he added proudly. ‘So look out for me, will you? You are going, aren’t you? I hear that there are two full-scale balls going so we shall weave about from one to the other, eh? Good. I am a bit relieved, aren’t you?’

But it was this fatal hat of Pombal’s which led directly to Toto de Brunel’s mysterious death next evening at the Cervonis’ — the death which Justine believed her husband had reserved for her and which I… But I must follow the Interlinear back upon my tracks.

‘The question of the watch-key’ writes Balthazar ‘— the one you helped me hunt for among the crevices of the Grande Corniche on that winter day — turned out oddly. As you know, my time-piece stopped and I had to order another little gold ankh to be made for it. But in the interval the key was returned under strange circumstances. One day Justine came into the clinic and, kissing me warmly, produced it from her handbag. “Do you recognize this?” she asked me smiling, and then went on apologetically “I am so sorry for your concern, my dear Balthazar. It is the first time in my life that I have been forced to turn pickpocket. You see, there is a wall-safe in the house to which I was determined to gain access. At first glance the keys seemed similar and I wanted to see whether your watch-key fitted the lock. I had intended to return it next morning before you had time to worry, but I found that someone had removed it from my dressing-table. You won’t repeat this. I thought that perhaps Nessim himself had caught sight of it, and had suspected my motive, and had therefore confiscated it in order to try it in the lock of his safe himself. Fortunately (or unfortunately) it does not fit, and I could not open the little safe. But, nor could I make a fuss about the thing for fear that he had not in fact seen it; I did not want to draw his attention to its existence and its similarity to his own. I asked Fatma discreetly and went through my jewel-cases. No luck. Then two days later Nessim himself produced it and said he had found it in his stud-box; he recognized its similarity to his own but did not mention the safe. He simply asked me to give it back to you, which I herewith do, with genuine apologies for the delay.”

‘I was of course annoyed, and told her so. “And anyway, why should you wish to poke about in Nessim’s private safe?” I said. “It seems to me unlike your normal behaviour, and I must say I feel a good deal of contempt for you after the way Nessim has treated you.” She hung her head and said “I only hoped to discover something about the child — something which I think he is hiding from me.”’

* * * * *

PART III

X

‘I suppose (writes Balthazar) that if you wished somehow to incorporate all I am telling you into your own Justine manuscript now, you would find yourself with a curious sort of book — the story would be told, so to speak, in layers. Unwittingly I may have supplied you with a form, something out of the way! Not unlike Pursewarden’s idea of a series of novels with “sliding panels” as he called them. Or else, perhaps, like some medieval palimpsest where different sorts of truth are thrown down one upon the other, the one obliterating or perhaps supplementing another. Industrious monks scraping away an elegy to make room for a verse of Holy Writ!

‘I don’t suppose such an analogy would be a bad one to apply to the reality of Alexandria, a city at once sacred and profane; between Theocritus, Plotinus, and the Septuagint one moves on intermediate levels which are those of race as much as anything — like saying Copt, Greek and Jew or Moslem, Turk and Armenian. … Am I wrong? These are the slow accretions of time itself on place. Just as life on the individual face lays down, wash by successive wash, the wrinkles of experiences in which laughter and tears are utterly indistinguishable. Wormcasts of experience on the sands of life….’

So writes my friend, and he is right; for the Interlinear now raises for me much more than the problem of objective ‘truth to life’, or if you like ‘to fiction’. It raises, as life itself does — whether one makes or takes it — the harder-grained question of form. How then am I to manipulate this mass of crystallized data in order to work out the meaning of it and so give a coherent picture of this impossible city of love and obscenity?

I wish I knew. I wish I knew. So much has been revealed to me by all this that I feel myself to be, as it were, standing upon the threshold of a new book — a new Alexandria. The old evocative outlines which I drew, intertwining them with the names of the city’s exemplars — Cavafy, Alexander, Cleopatra and the rest — were subjective ones. I had made the image my own jealous personal property, and it was true yet only within the limitations of a truth only partially perceived. Now, in the light of all these new treasures — for truth, though merciless as love, must always be a treasure — what should I do? Extend the frontiers of original truth, filling in with the rubble of this new knowledge the foundations upon which to build a new Alexandria? Or should the dispositions remain the same, the characters remain the same — and is it only truth itself which has changed in contradiction?

All this spring on my lonely island I have been weighed down by this grotesque information, which has so altered my feelings about things — oddly enough even about things past. Can emotions be retrospective, retroactive?

So much I wrote was based upon Justine’s fears of Nessim — genuine fears, genuinely expressed. I have seen with my own eyes that cold speechless jealousy upon his face — and seen the fear written on hers. Yet now Balthazar says that Nessim would never have done her harm. What am I to believe?

We dined so often together, the four of us; and there I sat speechless and drunk upon the memory of her actual kisses, believing (only because she told me so) that the presence of the fourth — Pursewarden — would lull Nessim’s jealous brain and offer us the safety of chaperonage! Yet if now I am to believe Balthazar, it was I who was the decoy. (Do I remember, or only imagine, a special small smile which from time to time would appear at the corner of Pursewarden’s lips, perhaps cynical or perhaps comminatory?) I thought then that I was sheltering behind the presence of the writer while he was in fact sheltering behind mine! I am prevented from fully believing this by … what? The quality of a kiss from the lips of one who could murmur, like a being submitting its body to the rack, the words ‘I love you.’ Of course, of course. I am an expert in love — every man believes himself to be one: but particularly the Englishman. So I am to believe in the kiss rather than in the statements of my friend? Impossible, for Balthazar does not lie….

Is love by its very nature a blindness? Of course, I know I averted my face from the thought that Justine might be unfaithful to me while I possessed her — who does not? It would have been too painful a truth to accept, although in my heart of hearts I knew full well, that she could never be faithful to me for ever. If I ever dared to whisper the thought to myself I hastily added, like every husband, every lover, ‘But of course, whatever she does, I am the one she truly loves!’ The sophistries which console — the lies which keep love going!

Not that she herself ever gave me direct reason to doubt. I do however remember an occasion on which the faintest breath of suspicion roused itself against Pursewarden, only to be immediately stilled. He walked out of the studio one day towards us with some lipstick on his mouth. But almost immediately I caught sight of the cigarette in his hand — he had obviously picked up a cigarette which Justine had left burning in an ashtray (a common habit with her) for the end of it was red. In matters of love everything is easy to explain.

The wicked Interlinear, freighted with these doubts, presses like a blunt thumb, here and here, always in bruised places. I have begun to copy it whole — the whole of it — slowly and painfully; not only to understand more clearly wherein it differs from my own version of reality, but also to catch a glimpse of it as a separate entity — as a manuscript existing in its own right, as the determined view of another eye upon events which I interpreted in my own way, because that was the way in which I lived them — or they lived me. Did I really miss so much that was going on around me — the connotation of smiles, of chance words and gestures, messages scribbled with a finger in wine spilt upon a table-top, addresses written in the corner of newspapers and folded over? Must I now rework my own experiences in order to come to the heart of the truth? ‘Truth has no heart’ writes Pursewarden. ‘Truth is a woman. That is why it is enigmatic. Of women, the most we can say, not being Frenchmen, is that they are burrowing animals.’

According to Balthazar, I have misread the order of Justine’s fears in so far as they concerned Nessim. The incident of the car I have recorded elsewhere; how she was racing towards Cairo one night to meet Pursewarden when the lights of the great moth-coloured Rolls went out. Blinded by darkness she lost control of it and it swarmed off the road, bouncing from dune to dune and throwing up spouts of sand like the spray thrown up by the death-agonies of a whale. Then ‘whistling like an arrow’ it buried itself to the windscreens in a dune and lay trembling and murmuring. Fortunately, she was not hurt and had the presence of mind to switch off the engine. But how had the accident come about? In telling me of it she said that when the car was examined the wiring was found to have been filed down — by whom?

This was, as far as I know, the first time that her fears concerning Nessim, and a possible attempt on her own life, became articulate. She had spoken of his jealousy before, yes; but not of anything like this, not of anything so concrete — so truly Alexandrian. My own alarm may well be imagined.

Yet now Balthazar in his notes says that some ten days before this incident, she had seen Selim from the studio window walk across the lawn towards the car, and there believing himself unobserved, lift the bonnet to take out from under it one of the little wax rollers which she thought she recognized as part of the equipment belonging to the dictaphone which Nessim often used in the office. He had wrapped the object in a cloth and carried it indoors. She sat at the window for a long time, musing and smoking before acting. Then she took the car out on to the desert road to a lonely place the better to examine it. Under the bonnet she found a small apparatus which she did not recognize but which seemed to her to be possibly a recording machine. Presumably a wire lead connected it to a small microphone buried somewhere among the coloured coils of the dashboard wiring, but she could not trace it. With her nail file, however, she cut the wire at several points while leaving the whole contrivance in place and apparently in working order. It was now, according to Balthazar, that she must by accident have disturbed or half-severed one of the leads to the car’s headlights. At least, this is what she told him, though she gave me no such explanation. If I am to believe him, all this time, while she went on and on about the heedless folly of our public behaviour and the risks we were taking, she was really drawing me on — trailing me before the eyes of Nessim like a cape before a bull!

But this was only at first; later, says my friend, came something which really made her feel that some action against her was contemplated by her husband: namely the murder of Toto de Brunel during the carnival ball at the Cervonis’. Why have I never mentioned this? It is true that I was even there at the time, and yet somehow the whole incident though it belonged to the atmosphere of the moment escaped me in the press of other matters. Alexandria had many such unsolved mysteries at that time. And while I knew the interpretation Justine put upon it I did not myself believe it at the time. Nevertheless, it is strange that I should not have mentioned it, even in passing. Of course, the true explanation of the matter was only given to me months later: almost when I myself was on the point of leaving Alexandria for ever as I thought.

The carnival in Alexandria is a purely social affair — having no calendar relationship to the other religious festivals of the city. I suppose it must have been instituted by the three or four great Catholic families in the place — perhaps vicariously they enjoyed through it a sense of identity with the other side of the Mediterranean, with Venice and Athens. Nevertheless, there is today no rich family which does not keep a cupboard full of velvet dominoes against the three days of folly — be it Copt, Moslem or Jewish. After New Year’s Eve it is perhaps the greatest Christian celebration of the year — for the ruling spirit of the three days and nights is — utter anonymity: the anonymity conferred by the grim black velvet domino which shrouds identity and sex, prevents one distinguishing between man and woman, wife and lover, friend and enemy.

The maddest aberrations of the city now come boldly forward under the protection of the invisible lords of Misrule who preside at this season. No sooner has darkness fallen than the maskers begin to appear in the streets — first in ones and twos then in small companies, often with musical instruments or drums, laughing and singing their way to some great house or to somen ight-club where already the frosty air is bathed in the nigger warmth of jazz — the cloying grunting intercourse of saxophones and drums. Everywhere they spring up in the pale moonlight, cowled like monks. The disguise gives them all a gloomy fanatical uniformity of outline which startles the white-robed Egyptians and fills them with alarm — the thrill of a fear which spices the wild laughter pouring out of the houses, carried by the light offshore winds towards the cafés on the sea-front; a gaiety which by its very shrillness seems to tremble always upon the edge of madness.

Slowly the bluish spring moon climbs the houses, sliding up the minarets into the clicking palm-trees, and with it the city seems to uncurl like some hibernating animal dug out of its winter earth, to stretch and begin to drink in the music of the three-day festival.

The jazz pouring up from the cellars displaces the tranquil winter air in the parks and thoroughfares, mingling as it reaches the sealine with the drumming perhaps of a liner’s screws in the deepwater reaches of the estuary. Or you may hear and see for a brief moment the rip and slither of fireworks against a sky which for a moment curls up at the edges and blushes, like a sheet of burning carbon paper: wild laughter which mixes with the hoarse mooing of an old ship outside the harbour bar — like a cow locked outside a gate.

‘The lover fears the carnival’ says the proverb. And with the emergence of these black-robed creatures of the night everywhere, all is subtly altered. The whole temperature of life in the city alters, grows warm with the subtle intimations of spring. Carni vale — the flesh’s farewell to the year, unwinding its mummy wrappings of sex, identity and name, and stepping forward naked into the futurity of the dream.

All the great houses have thrown open their doors upon fabulous interiors warm with a firelight which bristles upon china and marble, brass and copper, and upon the blackleaded faces of the servants as they go about their duties. And down every street now, glittering in the moonlit gloaming, lounge the great limousines of the brokers and gamblers, like liners in dock, the patient and impressive symbols of a wealth which is powerless to bring true leisure or peace of mind for it demands everything of the human soul. They lie webbed in a winter light, expressing only the silence and power of all machinery which waits for the fall of man, looking on at the maskers as they cross and recross the lighted windows of the great houses, clutching each other like black bears, dancing to the throb of nigger music, the white man’s solace.

Snatches of music and laughter must rise to Clea’s window where she sits with a board on her knees, patiently drawing while her little cat sleeps in its basket at her feet. Or perhaps in some sudden lull the chords of a guitar may be plucked to stay and wallow in the darkness of the open street until they are joined by a voice raised in remote song, as if from the bottom of a well. Or screams, cries for help.

But what stamps the carnival with its spirit of pure mischief is the velvet domino — conferring upon its wearers the disguise which each man in his secret heart desires above all. To become anonymous in an anonymous crowd, revealing neither sex nor relationship nor even facial expression — for the mask of this demented friar’s habit leaves only two eyes, glowing like the eyes of a Moslem woman or a bear. Nothing else to distinguish one by; the thick folds of the blackness conceal even the countours of the body. Everyone becomes hipless, breastless, faceless. And concealed beneath the carnival habit (like a criminal desire in the heart, a temptation impossible to resist, an impulse which seems preordained) lie the germs of something: of a freedom which man has seldom dared to imagine for himself. One feels free in this disguise to do whatever one likes without prohibition. All the best murders in the city, all the most tragic cases of mistaken identity, are the fruit of the yearly carnival; while most love affairs begin or end during these three days and nights during which we are delivered from the thrall of personality, from the bondage of ourselves. Once inside that velvet cape and hood, and wife loses husband, husband wife, lover the beloved. The air becomes crisp with the saltpetre of feuds and follies, the fury of battles, of agonizing night-long searches, of despairs. You cannot tell whether you are dancing with a man or a woman. The dark tides of Eros, which demand full secrecy if they are to overflow the human soul, burst out during carnival like something long dammed up and raise the forms of strange primeval creatures — the perversions which are, I suppose, the psyche’s ailment — in forms which you would think belonged to the Brocken or to Eblis. Now hidden satyr and maenad can rediscover each other and unite. Yes, who can help but love carnival when in it all debts are paid, all crimes expiated or committed, all illicit desires sated — without guilt or premeditation, without the penalties which conscience or society exact?

But I am wrong about one thing — for there is one distinguishing mark by which your friend or enemy may still identify you: your hands. Your lover’s hands, if you have ever noticed them at all, will lead you to her in the thickest press of maskers. Or by arrangement she may wear, as Justine does, a familiar ring — the ivory intaglio taken from the tomb of a dead Byzantine youth — worn upon the fore-finger of the right hand. But this is all, and it is only just enough. (Pray that you are not as unlucky as Amaril who found the perfect woman during carnival but could not persuade her to raise her hood and stand identified. They talked all night, lying in the grass by the fountain, making love together with their velvet faces touching, their eyes caressing each other. For a whole year now, he has gone about the city trying to find a pair of human hands, like a madman. But hands are so alike! She swore, this woman of his, that she would come back next year to the same place, wearing the same ring with its small yellow stone. And so tonight he will wait trembling for a pair of hands by the lily-pond — hands which will perhaps never appear again in his life. Perhaps she was after all an afreet or a vampire — who knows? Yet years later, in another book, in another context, he will happen upon her again, almost by accident, but not here, not in these pages too tangled already by the record of ill-starred loves….)

So then you walk the dark streets, serene as a murderer unidentified, all your traces covered by the black cowl, feeling the fresh wintry airs of the city upon your eyelids. The Egyptians you pass look askance at you, not knowing whether to smile or be afraid at your appearance. They hover in an indeterminate state of mind when carnival comes on — wondering how it should be taken. Passing, you give them a burning stare from the depths of your cowl, glad to see them flinch and avert their faces. Other dominoes like yourself emerge from every corner, some in groups laughing and singing as they walk towards some great house or to neighbouring night-clubs.

Walking like this towards the Cervonis, across the network of streets by the Greek Patriarchate you are reminded of other carnivals, perhaps even in other cities, distinguished by the same wildness and gaiety which is the gift of lost identities. Strange adventures which befell you once. At one corner in the Rue Bartout last year the sound of running feet and cries. A man presents a dagger to your throat, crying, like a wounded animal, ‘Helen, if you try and run away tonight I swear I’ll kill …’ but the words die as you raise your mask and show your face, and he stammers an apology as he turns away only to burst into sobs and throw himself against an iron railing. Helen has already disappeared, and he will search for her the whole night through!

At a gate into a yard, weirdly lit by the feeble street-lamps, two figures in black are grappling each other, fighting with a tremendous silent fury. They fall, rolling over and over from darkness into light and then back into darkness. Without a word spoken. At the Etoile there is a man hanging from a beam with his neck broken; but when you get close enough you see that it is only a black domino hanging from a nail. How strange that in order to free oneself from guilt by a disguise one should choose the very symbol of the Inquisitor, the cape and hood of the Spanish Inquisition.

But they are not all in domino — for many people are superstitious about the dress and, besides, it can be hot to wear in a crowded room. So you will see many a harlequin and shepherdess, many an Antony and Cleopatra as you walk the streets of the city, many an Alexander. And as you turn into the great iron gates of the Cervonis’ house to present your card and climb into the warmth and light and drunkenness within, you will see outlined upon the darkness the feared and beloved shapes and outlines of friends and familiars now distorted into the semblances of clowns and zanies, or clothed in the nothingness of black capes and hoods, infernally joined in a rare and disoriented gaiety.

As if under pressure the laughter squirts up to the ceiling or else, like feathers from a torn quilt, drifts about in clumps in that fevered air. The two string bands, muted by the weight of human voices, labour on in the short staggered rhythms of a maniac jazz — like the steady beating of an airpump. Here on the ballroom floor a million squeakers and trumpets squash and distort the sound while already the dense weight of the coloured paper streamers, hanging upon the shoulders of the dancers, sways like tropical seaweed upon rock-surfaces and trails in ankle-high drifts about the polished floors.

On the night in question, the first night of carnival, there was a dinner-party at the great house. On the long hall sofas the dominoes waited for their tenants while the candlelight still smouldered upon the faces of a Justine and Nessim now framed among the portraits which lined the ugly but imposing dining-room. Faces painted in oils matched by human faces lined by preoccupations and maladies of the soul — all gathered together, made one in the classical brilliance of candlelight. After dinner Justine and Nessim were to go together to the Cervoni ball according to the yearly custom. According to custom too, Narouz at the last moment had excused himself. He would arrive upon the stroke of ten, just in time to claim a domino before the whole party set off, laughing and chattering, for the ball.

As always, he himself had preferred to ride into the city on his horse and to stable it with his friend the carpenter, but as a concession to the event he had struggled into an ancient suit of blue serge and had knotted a tie at his collar. Undress did not matter, since he too would later be wearing a domino. He walked lightly, swiftly across the ill-lit Arab quarter, drinking in the familiar sights and sounds, yet eager for the first sight of the maskers as he reached the end of Rue Fuad and found himself on the confines of the modern town.

At one corner stood a group of shrill-chattering women in domino bent upon mischief. From their language and accent he could detect at once that they were society women, Greeks. These black harpies caught hold of every passer-by to shout jests at him and to pluck at his hood if he were masked. Narouz too had to run the gauntlet: one caught hold of his hand and pretended to tell his fortune; another whispered a proposition in Arabic, setting his hand upon her thigh; the third cackled like a hen and shouted ‘Your wife has a lover’ and other unkindnesses. He could not tell if they recognized him or not.

Narouz flinched, shook himself and burst smiling through their number, fending them off good-naturedly and roaring with laughter at the sally about his wife. ‘Not tonight, my doves’ he cried hoarsely in Arabic, thinking suddenly of Clea; and as they showed some disposition to capture him for the evening, be began to run. They chased him a little way, shouting and laughing incoherently down the long dark street, but he easily outdistanced them, and so turned the corner to the great house, still smiling but a little out of breath, and flattered by these attentions which seemed to set the key for the evening’s enjoyment. In the silent hall his eye caught the black of dominoes and he put one on before edging open the door of the drawing-room behind which he could hear their voices. It disguised his shabby suit. The cape lay back upon his shoulders.

They were all there by the fire, waiting for him, and he took their cries of welcome greedily and seriously, making his round to kiss Justine on the cheek and to shake hands with the rest in an agony of awkward silence. He put on an artificially sincere expression, looking with distaste into the myopic eyes of Pierre Balbz (he hated him for the goatee and spats) and those of Toto de Brunel (an old lady’s lap-dog); but he liked the overblown rose, Athena Trasha, for she used the same scent as his mother; and he was sorry for Drusilla Banubula because she was so clever that she hardly seemed to be a woman at all. With Pursewarden he shared a smile of easy complicity. ‘Well’ he said, expelling his breath at last in relief. His brother handed him a whisky with mild tenderness, which he drank slowly but all in one draught, like a peasant.

‘We were waiting for you, Narouz.’

‘The Hosnani exile’ glittered Pierre Balbz ingratiatingly.

‘The farmer’ cried little Toto.

The conversation which had been interrupted by his sudden appearance closed smoothly over his head once more and he sat down by the fire until they should be ready to leave for the Cervoni house, folding his strong hands one upon the other in a gesture of finality, as if to lock up once and for all his powers. The skin at Nessim’s temples appeared to be stretched, he noticed, an old sign of anger or strain. The fullness of Justine’s dark beauty in her dress (the colour of hare’s blood) glowed among the ikons, seeming to enjoy the semi-darkness of the candlelight — to feed upon it and give back the glitter of her barbaric jewellery. Narouz felt full of a marvellous sense of detachment, of unconcern; what these small portents of trouble or stress meant, he did not know. It was only Clea who flawed his self-sufficiency, who darkened the edges of his thought. Each year he hoped that when he arrived at his brother’s house he would find she had been included in the party. Yet each year she was not, and in consequence he was forced to drift about all night in the darkness, searching for her as aimlessly as a ghost not even really hoping to encounter her: and yet living upon the attenuated wraith of his fond hope as a soldier upon an iron ration.

They had been talking that night of Amaril and his unhappy passion for a pair of anonymous hands and a carnival voice, and Pursewarden was telling one of his famous stories in that crisp uninflected French of his which was just a shade too perfect.

‘When I was twenty, I went to Venice for the first time at the invitation of an Italian poet with whom I had been corresponding, Carlo Negroponte. For a middle-class English youth this was a great experience, to live virtually by candlelight in this huge tumbledown palazzo on the Grand Canal with a fleet of gondolas at my disposal — not to mention a huge wardrobe of cloaks lined with silk. Negroponte was generous and spared no effort to entertain a fellow-poet in the best style. He was then about fifty, frail and rather beautiful, like a rare kind of mosquito. He was a prince and a diabolist, and his poetry happily married the influences of Byron and Baudelaire. He went in for cloaks and shoes with buckles and silver walking-sticks and encouraged me to do the same. I felt I was living in a Gothic novel. Never have I written worse poetry.

‘That year we went to the carnival together and got separated though we each wore something to distinguish each other by; you know of course that carnival is the one time of the year when vampires walk freely abroad, and those who are wise carry a pig of garlic in their pockets to drive them off — if by chance one were to be encountered. Next morning I went into my host’s room and found him lying pale as death in bed, dressed in the white night-shirt with lace cuffs, with a doctor taking his pulse. When the doctor had gone he said: “I have met the perfect woman, masked; I went home with her and she proved to be a vampire.” Then drawing up his nightshirt he showed me with exhausted pride that his body was covered with great bites, like the marks of a weasel’s teeth. He was utterly exhausted but at the same time excited — and frightening to relate, very much in love. “Until you have experienced it” he said “you have no idea what it is like. To have one’s blood sucked in darkness by someone one adores.” His voice broke. “Sade could not begin to describe it. I did not see her face, but I had the impression she was fair, of a northern fairness; we met in the dark and separated in the dark. I have only the impression of white teeth, and a voice — never have I heard any woman say the things she says. She is the very lover for whom I have been waiting all these years. I am meeting her again tonight by the marble griffin at the Footpads’ Bridge. O my friend, be happy for me. The real world has become more and more meaningless to me. Now at last, with this vampire’s love, I feel I can live again, feel again, write again!” He spent all that day at his papers, and at nightfall set off, cloaked, in his gondola. It was not my business to say anything. The next day once more I found him, pale and deathly tired. He had a high fever, and again these terrible bites. But he could not speak of his experience without weeping — tears of love and exhaustion. And it was now that he had begun his great poem which begins — you all know it ——

“Lips not on lips, but on each other’s wounds

Must suck the envenomed bodies of the loved

And through the tideless blood draw nourishment

To feed the love that feeds upon their deaths….”

‘The following week I left for Ravenna where I had some studies to make for a book I was writing and where I stayed two months. I heard nothing from my host, but I got a letter from his sister to say that he was ill with a wasting disease which the doctors could not diagnose and that the family was much worried because he insisted on going out at night in his gondola on journeys of which he would not speak but from which he returned utterly exhausted. I did not know what to reply to this.

‘From Ravenna, I went down to Greece and it was not until the following autumn that I returned. I had sent a card to Negroponte saying I hoped to stay with him, but had no reply. As I came down the Grand Canal a funeral was setting off in choppy water, by twilight, with the terrible plumes and emblems of death. I saw that they were coming from the Negroponte Palazzo. I landed and ran to the gates just as the last gondola in the procession was filling up with mourners and priests. I recognized the doctor and joined him in the boat, and as we rowed stiffly across the canal, dashed with spray and blinking at the stabs of lightning, he told me what he knew. Negroponte had died the day before. When they came to lay out the body, they found the bites: perhaps of some tropical insect? The doctor was vague. “The only such bites I have seen” he said, “were during the plague of Naples when the rats had been at the bodies. They were so bad we had to dust him down with talcum powder before we could let his sister see the body.”

Pursewarden took a long sip from his glass and went on wickedly. ‘The story does not end there; for I should tell you how I tried to avenge him, and went myself at night to the Bridge of the Footpads — where according to the gondolier this woman always waited in the shadow…. But it is getting late, and anyway, I haven’t made up the rest of the story as yet.’

There was a good deal of laughter and Athena gave a well-bred shudder, drawing her shawl across her shoulders. Narouz had been listening open-mouthed, with reeling senses, to this recital: he was spellbound. ‘But’ he stammered ‘is all this true?’ Fresh laughter greeted his question.

‘Of course it’s true’ said Pursewarden severely, and added: ‘I have never been in Venice in my life.’

And he rose, for it was time for them to be going, and while the impassive black servants waited they put on the velveteen capes and adjusted their masks like the actors they were, comparing their identical reflections as they stood side by side in the two swollen mirrors among the palms. Giggles from Pierre and sallies of wit from Toto de Brunel; and so they stepped laughing into the clear night air, the inquisitors of pleasure and pain, the Alexandrians….

The cars engulfed them while the solicitous domestics and chauffeurs tucked them in, carefully as bales of precious merchandise or spices, tenderly as flowers. ‘I feel fragile’ squeaked Toto at these attentions. ‘This side up with care, eh? Which side up, I ask myself?’ He must have been the only person in the city not to know the answer to his own question.

When they had started, Justine leaned forward in the car and plucked his sleeve. ‘I want to whisper’ she said hoarsely though there was little need for Nessim and Narouz were discussing something in harsh tones (Narouz’ voice with the characteristic boyish break in it) and Athena was squibbling to Pierre like a flute. ‘Toto … listen. One great service tonight, if you will. I have put a chalk-mark on your sleeve, here, at the back. Later on in the evening, I want to give you my ring to wear. Shh. I want to disappear for an hour or so on my own. Hush … don’t giggle.’ But there were squeaks from the velvet hood. ‘You will have adventures in my name, dear Toto, while I am gone. Do you agree?’

He threw back his cape to show a delighted face, dancing eyes and that grim little procurer’s smile. ‘Of course’ he whispered back, enraptured by the idea and full of admiration. The featureless hood at his side from which the voice of Justine had issued like an oracle glowed with a sort of death’s-head beauty of its own, nodding at him in the light from the passing street-lamps. The conversation and laughter around them sealed them in a conspiracy of private silence. ‘Do you agree?’ she said.

‘Darling, of course.’

The two masked men in the front seats of the car might have been abbots of some medieval monastery, discussing theological niceties. Athena, consumed by her own voice, still babbled away to Pierre. ‘But of course.’

Justine took his arm and turned back the sleeve to show him the chalk-mark she had made. ‘I count on you’ she said, with some of the hoarse imperiousness of her speaking-voice, yet still in a whisper. ‘Don’t let me down!’ He took her hand and raised it to his Cupid’s lips, kissing the ring from the dead finger of the Byzantine youth as one might kiss the holy picture which had performed a miracle long desired; he was to be turned from a man into a woman. Then he laughed and cried: ‘And my indiscretions will be on your head. You will spend the rest of your days….’

‘Hush.’

‘What is all this?’ cried Athena Trasha, scenting a joke or a scandal worth repetition. ‘What indiscretions?’

‘My own’ cried Toto triumphantly into the darkness. ‘My very own.’ But Justine lay back in the dark car impassively hooded, and did not speak. ‘I can’t wait to get there’ said Athena, and turned back to Pierre. As the car turned into the gate of the Cervoni house, the light caught the intaglio, throwing into relief (colour of burnt milk) a Pan raping a goat, his hands grasping its horns, his head thrown back in ecstasy. ‘Don’t forget’ Justine said once more, for the last time, allowing him to maul her hand with gratitude for such a wonderful idea. ‘Don’t forget’ allowing her ringed fingers to lie in his, cool and unfeeling as a cow which allows itself to be milked. ‘Only tell me all the interesting conversations you have, won’t you?’ He could only mutter ‘Darling, darling, darling’ as he kissed the ring with the ovarian passion of the sexually dispossessed.

Almost at once, like the Gulf Stream breaking up an iceberg with its warm currents, dispersing it, their party disintegrated as it reached the ballroom and merged with the crowd. Abruptly Athena was dragged screaming into the heart of the press by a giant domino who gobbled and roared incomprehensible blasphemies in his hood. Nessim, Narouz, Pierre, they suddenly found themselves turned to ciphers, expelled into a formless world of adventitious meetings, mask to dark mask, like a new form of insect life. Toto’s chalk-mark gave him a few fugitive moments of identity as he was borne away like a cork on a stream, and Justine’s ring as well (for which I myself was hunting all that evening in vain).

But everything now settled into the mindless chaotic dance-figures of the black jazz supported only by the grinding drums and saxophones, the voices. The spirits of the darkness had taken over you’d think, disinheriting the daylight hearts and minds of the maskers, plunging them ever deeper into the loneliness of their own irrecoverable identities, setting free the polymorphous desires of the city. The tide washed them up now onto the swampy littorals of their own personalities — symbols of Alexandria, a dead brackish lake surrounded by the silent, unjudging, wide-eyed desert which stretches away into Africa under a dead moon.

Locked in our masks now we prowled about despairingly among the company, hunting from room to room, from floor to lighted floor of the great house, for an identifiable object to direct our love: a rose pinned to a sleeve, a ring, a scarf, a coloured bead. Something, anything, to discover our lovers by. The hoods and masks were like the outward symbols of our own secret minds as we walked about — as single-minded and as dispossessed as the desert fathers hunting for their God. And slowly but with irresistible momentum the great carnival ball gathered pace around us. Here and there, like patches of meaning in an obscure text, one touched upon a familiar identity: a bullfighter drinking whisky in a corridor greeted one in the lisping accents of Tony Umbada, or Pozzo di Borgo unmasked for an instant to identify himself to his trembling wife. Outside in the darkness on the grass by the lily pond sat Amaril, also trembling and waiting. He did not dare to remain unmasked lest the sight of his face might disgust or disappoint her, should she return this year to the promised assignation. If one falls in love with a mask when one is masked oneself … which of you will first have the courage to raise it? Perhaps such lovers would go through life together, remaining masked? (Racing thoughts in Amaru’s sentimental brain…. Love rejoices in self-torture.)

An expressive washerwoman dressed in a familiar picture-hat and recognizable boots (Pombal, as ever was), had pinned a meagre-looking Roman centurion to a corner of the mantelpiece and was cursing him in a parrot-voice. I caught the word ‘salaud’. The little figure of the Consul-General managed to mime his annoyance with choppy gestures and struggles, but it was all in vain, for Pombal held him fast in his great paws. It was fascinating to watch. The centurion’s casque fell off, and pushing him to the bandstand Pombal began to beat his behind rhythmically upon the big drum and at the same time to kiss him passionately. He was certainly getting his own back. But as I watched this brief scene, the crowd closed down upon it in a whirl of streamers and confetti and obliterated it. We were packed body to body, cowl to cowl, eye to eye. The music drove us round and round the floor. Still no Justine.

Old Tiresias

No-one half so breezy as,

Half so free and easy as

Old Tiresias.

It must have been about two o’clock that the fire started in one of the chimneys on the first floor, though its results were not serious and it caused more delight than alarm by its appropriateness. Servants scurried officiously everywhere; I caught a glimpse of Cervoni, running unmasked upstairs, and then a telephone rang. There were pleasing clouds of smoke, suggesting whiffs of brimstone from the bottomless pit. Then within minutes a fire-engine arrived with its siren pealing, and the hall was full of fancy-dress figures of pompiers with hatchets and buckets. They were greeted with acclamation as they made their way up to the scene of the fireplace which they virtually demolished with their axes. Others of the tribe had climbed on the roof and were throwing buckets of water down the chimney. This had the effect of filling the first floor with a dense cloud of soot like a London fog. The maskers crowded in shouting with delight, dancing like dervishes. These are the sort of inadvertencies which make a party go. I found myself shouting with them. I suppose I must have been rather drunk by now.

In the great tapestried hall the telephone rang and rang again, needling the uproar. I saw a servant answer it, lay the receiver down, and quest about like a gun-dog until presently he returned with Nessim, smiling and unmasked, who spoke into it quickly and with an air of impatience. Then he too put the receiver down and came to the edge of the dance-floor, staring about him keenly. ‘Is anything wrong?’ I asked, lifting my own hood as I joined him. He smiled and shook his head. ‘I can’t see Justine anywhere. Clea wants to speak to her. Can you?’ Alas! I had been trying to pick up the distinguishing ring all evening without success. We waited, watching the slow rotation of the dancers, keenly as fishermen waiting for a bite. ‘No’ he said and I echoed ‘No.’ Pierre Balbz came up and joined us, lifting his cowl, and said ‘A moment ago I was dancing with her. She went out, perhaps.’

Nessim returned to the telephone and I heard him say. ‘She’s here somewhere. Yes, quite sure. No. Nothing has happened. Pierre had the last dance with her. Such a crowd. She may be in the garden. Any message? Can I ask her to ring you? Very well. No, it was simply a fire in a chimney. It’s out now.’ He put down the receiver and turned back to us. ‘Anyway’ he said ‘we have a rendezvous in the hall unmasked at three.’

And so the great ball rolled on around us, and the firemen who had done their duty now joined the throng of dancers. I caught a glimpse of a large washerwoman being carried, apparently insensible, out into the conservatory by four demons with breasts amid great applause. Pombal had evidently succumbed to his favourite brand of whisky once more. He had lost his hat but had had the forethought to wear under it an immense wig of yellow hair. It is doubtful whether anyone could have recognized him in such a rig.

Punctually at three Justine appeared in the hall from the garden and unmasked herself: Pierre and I had decided not to accept Nessim’s offer of a lift home but to stay on and lend our energy to the ball which was beginning to flag now. Little parties were meeting and leaving, cars were being rallied. Nessim kissed her tenderly and said ‘Where’s your ring?’ a question which I myself had been burning to put to her though I had not dared. She smiled that innocent and captivating smile as she said: ‘Toto pinched it from my finger a few minutes ago, during a dance. Where is the little brute? I want it back.’ We raked the floor for Toto but there was no sign of him and at last Nessim who was tired decided to give him up for lost. But he did not forget to give Justine Clea’s message, and I saw my lover go obediently to the telephone and dial her friend’s number. She spoke quietly and with an air of mystification for a few moments, and I heard her say: ‘Of course I’m all right’ before bidding Clea a belated good night. Then they stepped down together into the waning moonlight arm in arm, and Pierre and I helped to tuck them into the car. Selim, impassive and hawk-featured, sat at the wheel. ‘Good night!’ cried Justine, and her lips brushed my cheek. She whispered ‘Tomorrow’ and the word sang on in my mind like the whistle of a bullet as we turned together into the lighted house. Nessim’s face had been full of a curious impish serenity as of someone resting after a great expenditure of energy.

Someone had heard a ghost murmuring in the conservatory. Much laughter. ‘No, but I assure you’ squealed Athena. ‘We were sitting on the sofa, Jacques and I, weren’t we, Jacques?’ A masked figure appeared, blew a squeaker in her face and retired. Something told me it was Toto. I dragged his cowl back and up bobbed the features of Chloë Martinengo. ‘But I assure you’ said Athena, ‘it moaned a word — something like …’ she set her face in a grim scowl of concentration and after a pause sang out in a lullaby voice the expiring words ‘Justice … Justice.’ Everyone laughed heartily and several voices mimicked her: ‘Justice’ roared a domino rushing away up the stairs. ‘Justice!’

Alone once more, I found that my irresolution and despondency had turned to physical hunger, and I traversed the dance-floor cautiously in the direction of the supper-room from which I could hear the thirsty snap of champagne corks. The ball itself was still in full swing, and dancers swaying like wet washing in a high wind, the saxophones wailing like a litter of pigs. In an alcove Drusilla Banubula sat with her dress drawn up to her shapely knees, allowing a pair of contrite harlequins to bandage a sprained ankle. She had fallen down or been knocked down it would seem. An African witch-doctor wearing a monocle lay fast asleep on the couch behind her. In the second room a maudlin woman in evening dress was playing jazz on a grand piano and singing to herself while great tears coursed down her cheeks. An old fat man with hairy legs hung over her, dressed as the Venus de Milo. He was crying too. His belly trembled.

The supper-room however was comparatively quiet, and here I found Pursewarden, uncowled and apparently rather tipsy, talking to Mountolive as the latter walked with his curious gliding, limping walk round the table, loading a plate with slices of cold turkey and salad. Pursewarden was inveighing somewhat incoherently against the Cervonis for serving Spumante instead of champagne. ‘I should watch it’ he called out to me, ‘there’s a headache in every mouthful.’ But he had his glass refilled almost at once, holding it with exaggerated steadiness. Mountolive turned a speculative and gentle eye upon me as I seized a plate, and then greeted me by name with evident relief. ‘Ah, Darley’ he said, ‘for a moment I thought you were one of my secretaries. They’ve been following me around all evening. Spoiling my fun. Errol simply refuses to violate protocol and leave before his Chief of Mission; so I had to hide in the garden until they thought I had left, poor dears. As a junior I have so often cursed my Minister for keeping me up on boring evenings that I made a vow never to make my juniors suffer in the same way if I should ever become Head of Mission.’ His light effortless conversation with its unaffectedness of delivery always made him seem immediately sympathetic, though I realized that his manner was a professional one, the bedside manner of the trained diplomat. He had spent so many years in putting his inferiors at their ease, and in hiding his spirit’s condescension, that he had at last achieved an air of utterly professional sincerity which while seeming true to nature could not, in reality, have been less false. It had all the fidelity of great acting. But it was annoying that I should always find myself liking him so much. We circled the table slowly together, talking and filling our plates.

‘What did you see in the garden, David?’ said Pursewarden in a teasing tone, and the Minister’s eye rested speculatively on him for a minute, as if to warn him against saying something which would be indiscreet or out of place. ‘I saw’ said Mountolive smiling and reaching for a glass, ‘I saw the amorous Amaril by the lake — talking to a woman in a domino. Perhaps his dreams have come true?’ Amaru’s passion was well-known to everyone. ‘I do hope so.’

‘And what else?’ said Pursewarden in a challenging, rather vulgar tone, as if he shared a private secret with him. ‘What else, who else did you see, David?’ He was slightly tipsy and his voice, though friendly, had a bullying note. Mountolive flushed and looked down at his plate.

At this I left them and made my way back, equipped with loaded plate and glass. I felt a certain scorn in my heart for Pursewarden, and a rush of sympathy for Mountolive at the thought of him being put out of countenance. I wanted to be alone, to eat in silence and think about Justine. My cargo of food was nearly upset by three heavily-rouged Graces, all of them men to judge by the deep voices, who were scuffling in the hall. They were attacking each others’ private parts with jocular growls, like dogs. I had the sudden idea of going up to the library which would surely be empty at this time. I wondered if the new Cavafy manuscripts would be there, and whether the collection was unlocked, for Cervoni was a great collector of books.

On the first floor, a fat man with spindly legs, dressed in the costume of Red Riding Hood, was hammering on a lavatory door; servants were sucking the soot from the carpets of the rooms with Hoovers and talking in undertones. The library was on the floor above. There was a noise in one of the bedrooms, and from the bathroom below I could hear someone being chromatically sick. I reached the landing and pressed the airtight door with my foot, and it sucked open to admit me. The long room with its gleaming shelves of books was empty save for a Mephistopheles sitting in an armchair by the fire with a book on his knees. He took his spectacles off in order to identify me and I saw that it was Capodistria. He could not have chosen a more suitable costume. It suited his great ravening beak of a nose and those small, keen eyes, set so close together. ‘Come in’ he cried. ‘I was afraid it might be someone wanting to make love in which case … toujours la politesse, I should have felt bound…. What are you eating? The fire is lovely. I was just looking up a quotation which has been worrying me all evening.’

I joined him and placed my loaded plate as an offering between us to be shared. ‘I came to see the new Cavafy manuscript’ I said.

‘All locked up, the manuscripts’ he said.

‘Well.’

The fire crackled brightly and the room was silent and welcoming with its lining of fine books. I took off my cape and sat down after a preliminary quest along the walls, during which Da Capo finished copying something out on to a piece of paper. ‘Curious thing about Mountolive’s father’ he said absently. ‘This huge eight-volume edition of Buddhist texts. Did you know?’

‘I had heard’ I said vaguely.

‘The old man was a judge in India. When he retired he stayed on there, is still there; foremost European scholar on Pali texts. I must say…. Mountolive hasn’t seen him for years. He dresses like a saddhu he says. You English are eccentrics through and through. Why shouldn’t the old man work on his texts in Oxford, eh?’

‘Climate, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps.’ He agreed. ‘There. That’s what I was hunting for — I knew it was somewhere in the fourth volume.’ He banged his book shut.

‘What is it?’

He held his paper out to the fire and read slowly with an air of puzzled pleasure the quotation he had copied out: ‘The fruit of the tree of good and evil is itself but flesh; yes, and the apple itself is but an apple of the dust.’

‘That’s not Buddhist, surely’ I said.

‘No, it’s Mountolive père himself, from the introduction.’

‘I think that….’

But now there came a confused screaming from somewhere near at hand, and Capodistria sighed. ‘I don’t know why the devil I take part in this damned carnival year after year’ he said peevishly, draining his whisky. ‘It is an unlucky time astrologically. For me, I mean. And every year there are ugly accidents. It makes one uneasy. Two years ago Arnelh was found hanging in the musicians’ gallery at the Fontanas’ house. Funny eh? Damned inconsiderate if he did it himself. And then Martin Fery fought that duel with Jacomo Forte…. It brings out the devil. That is why I am dressed as the devil. I hang about waiting for people to come and sell me their souls. Aha!’ He sniffed and rubbed his hands with a parchment sound and gave his little dry cachinnation. And then, standing up and finishing the last slice of turkey, ‘God, have you seen the time? I must be going home. Beelzebub’s bedtime.’

‘So should I’ I said, disappointed that I could not get a look at the handwriting of the old poet. ‘So should I.’

‘Can I lift you?’ he said, as the sucking door expelled us once more into the trampled musical air of the landing. ‘Useless to expect to say good-bye to our hosts. Cervoni is probably in bed by now.’

We went down slowly chatting into the great hall where the music rolled on in an unbroken stream of syncopated sound. Da Capo had adjusted his mask now and looked like some weird bird-like demon. We stood for a moment watching the dancers, and then yawning he said: ‘Well, this is where to quote Cavafy the God abandons Antony. Good night. I can’t stay awake any longer, though I am afraid the evening will be full of surprises yet. It always is.’

Nor was he to be proved wrong. I hovered for a while, watching the dance, and then walked down the stairs into the dark coolness of the night. There were a few limousines and sleepy servants waiting by the gates, but the streets had begun to empty and my own footfalls sounded harsh and exotic as they smacked up from the pavements. At the corner of Fuad there were a couple of European whores leaning dispiritedly against a wall and smoking. They called once hoarsely after me. They wore magnolia blossoms in their hair.

Yawning, I passed the Etoile to see if perhaps Melissa was still working, but the place was empty except for a drunk family which had refused to go home despite die fact that Zoltan had stacked up the chairs and tables around them on the dance-floor. ‘She went off early’ the little man explained. ‘Band gone. Girls gone. Everyone gone. Only these canaille from Assuan. His brother is a policeman; we dare not close.’ A fat man began to belly-dance with sugary movements of the hips and pelvis and the company began to mark the time. I left and walked past Melissa’s shabby lodgings in the vague hope that she might still be awake. I felt I wanted to talk to someone; no, I wanted to borrow a cigarette. That was all. Afterwards would come the desire to sleep with her, to hold that slender cherished body in my arms, inhaling its sour flavours of alcohol and tobacco-smoke, thinking all the time of Justine. But her window was dark; either she was asleep or was not yet home. Zoltan had said that she left with a party of business-men disguised as admirals. ‘Des petits commerçants quelconques’ he had added contemptuously, and then turned at once apologetic.

No, it was to be an empty night, with the frail subfusc moonlight glancing along the waves of the outer harbour, the sea licking and relicking the piers, the coastline thinning away in whiteness, glittering away into the greyness like mica. I stood for a while on the Corniche snapping a paper streamer in my fingers, bit by bit, each fragment breaking off with a hard dry finality, like a human relationship. Then I turned sleepily home, repeating in my mind the words of Da Capo: ‘The evening will be full of surprises.’

Indeed, they were already beginning in the house which I had just left, though of course I was not to learn about them until the following day. And yet, surprises though they were, their reception was perfectly in keeping with the city — a city of resignation so deep as almost to be Moslem. For nobody in Alexandria can ever be shocked deeply; among us tragedy exists only to flavour conversation. Death and life are both simply the hazards of a chance which cannot be averted, and merit only smiles and conversations made more animated by the consciousness of their intrusion. No sooner do you tell an Alexandrian a piece of bad news than the words come out of his mouth: ‘I knew. Something like this was bound to happen. It always does.’ This, then, is what happened.

In the conservatory of the Cervoni house there were several old-fashioned chaises-longues on which a mountain of overcoats and evening-wraps had been piled; as the dancers began to go home there came the usual shedding of dominoes and the hunt for furs and capes. I think it was Pierre who must have made the discovery while hunting in this great tumulus of coats for the velvet smoking-jacket which he had shed earlier in the evening. At any rate, I myself had already left and started to walk home by this time.

Toto de Brunel was discovered, still warm in his velvet domino, with his paws raised like two neat little cutlets, in the attitude of a dog which had rolled over to have its belly scratched. He was buried deep in the drift of coats. One hand had half-tried to move towards the fatal temple but the impulse had been cut off at source before the action was complete, and it had stayed there raised a little higher than the other, as if wielding an invisible baton. The hatpin from Pombal’s picture hat had been driven sideways into his head with terrific force, pinning him like a moth into his velvet headpiece. Athena had been making love to Jacques while she was literally lying upon his body — a fact which would under normal circumstances have delighted him thoroughly. But he was dead, le pauvre Toto, and what is more he was still wearing the ring of my lover. “Justice!”

‘Of course, something like this happens every year.’

‘Of course.’ I was still dazed.

‘But Toto — that is rather unexpected, really.’

Balthazar rang me up about eleven o’clock the next morning to tell me the whole story. In my stupefied and sleepy condition it sounded not merely improbable, but utterly incomprehensible. ‘There will be the procès-verbal — that’s why I’m ringing. Nimrod is making it as easy as he can. One dinner-party witness only — Justine thought perhaps you if you don’t mind? Good. Of course. No, I was got out of bed at a quarter to four by the Cervonis. They were in rather a state about it. I went along to … do the needful. I’m afraid they can’t quite sort it all out as yet. The pin belonged to the hat — yes, your friend Pombal … diplomatic immunity, naturally. Nevertheless, he was very drunk too…. Of course it is inconceivable that he did it, but you know what the Police are like. Is he up yet?’ I had not dared to try and wake him at such an early hour, and I said so. ‘Well anyway’ said Balthazar ‘his death has fluttered a lot of dovecotes, not least at the French Legation.’

‘But he was wearing Justine’s ring’ I said thickly, and all the premonitions of the last few months gathered in force at my elbow, crowding in upon me. I felt quite ill and feverish and had to lean for a moment against the wall by the telephone. Balthazar’s measured tone and cheerful voice sounded to me like an obscenity. There was a long silence. ‘Yes, I know about the ring’ he said, and added with a quiet chuckle ‘but that too is hard to think of as a possible reason. Toto was also the lover of the jealous Amar, you know. Any number of reasons….’

‘Balthazar’ I said, and my voice broke.

‘I’ll ring you if there’s anything else. The procès is at seven down in Nimrod’s office. See you there, eh?’

‘Very well.’

I put down the phone and burst like a bomb into Pombal’s bedroom. The curtains were still drawn and the bed was in a terrible mess suggesting a recent occupancy, but there was no other sign of him. His boots and various items from the washerwoman’s fancy dress lay about the room in various places, enabling me to discern that he had in fact got home the night before. Actually his wig lay on the landing outside the front door: I know this because much later, towards midday, I heard his heavy step climbing the stairs and he entered the flat holding it in his hand.

‘I am quite finished’ he said briefly, at once. ‘Finished, mon ami.’ He looked more plethoric than ever as he made for his gout chair as if anticipating a sudden attack of his special and private malady. ‘Finished’ he repeated, sinking into it with a sigh and distending. I was confused and bewildered, standing there in my pyjamas. Pombal sighed heavily.

‘My Chancery has discovered everything’ he said grimly setting his jaw. ‘I first behaved very badly … yes … the Consul General is having a nervous breakdown today….’ And then all of a sudden real tears of mixed rage, confusion and hysteria sprang up in his eyes. ‘Do you know what?’ he sneezed. ‘The Deuxième think I went specially to the ball to stick a pin in de Brunel, the best and most trusted agent we have ever had here!’

He burst out sobbing like a donkey now, and in some fantastic way his tears kept running into laughter; he mopped his streaming eyes and panted as he sobbed and laughed at one and the same time. Then, still blown up by these overmastering paroxysms he rolled out of his chair like a hedgehog on to the carpet and lay there for a while still shaking; and then began to roll slowly to the wainscot where, shaken still with tears and laughter, he began to bang his head rhythmically against the wall, shouting at every bang the pregnant and magnificent word — the summa of all despair: ‘Merde. Merde. Merde. Merde, Merde.’

‘Pombal’ I said weakly, ‘for God’s sake!’

‘Go away’ he cried from the floor. ‘I shall never stop unless you go away. Please go away.’ And so taking pity on him I left the room and ran myself a cold bath in which I lay until I heard him helping himself to bread and butter from the larder. He came to the bathroom door and tapped. ‘Are you there?’ he said. ‘Yes.’ ‘Then forget every word I said’ he shouted through the panel. ‘Please, eh?’

‘I have forgotten already.’

‘Good. Thank you, mon ami.’

And I heard his heavy footfalls retreating in the direction of his room. We lay in bed until lunch-time that day, both of us, silent. At one-thirty, Hamid arrived and set out a lunch which neither of us had the appetite to eat. In the middle of it, the telephone rang and I went to answer it. It was Justine. She must have assumed that I had heard about Toto de Brunel for she made no direct mention of the business. ‘I want’ she said ‘my dreadful ring back. Balthazar has reclaimed it from the Police. The one Toto took, yes. But apparently someone has to identify and sign for it. At the procés. A thousand thanks for offering to go. As you can imagine, Nessim and I … it’s a question of witnessing only. And then perhaps my darling we could meet and you could give it back to me. Nessim has to fly to Cairo this afternoon on business. Shall we say in the garden of the Aurore at nine? That will give you time. I’ll wait in the car. So much want to speak to you. Yes. I must go now. Thank you again. Thank you.’

We sat once more to our meal, fellow bondsmen, heavy with a sense of guilt and exhaustion. Hamid waited upon us with solicitude and in complete silence. Did he know what was preoccupying us both? It was impossible to read anything on those gentle pock-marked features, in that squinting single eye.

* * * * *

XI

It was already dark when I dismissed my taxi at Mohammed Ali Square and set out to walk to the sub-department of the Prefecture where Nimrod’s office was. I was still dazed by the turn events had taken, and weighed down by the dispiriting possibilities they had raised in my mind — the warnings and threatenings of the last few months during which I had lived only for one person — Justine. I burned with impatience to see her again.

The shops were already lit up and the money-changers’ counters were crowded with French sailors turning their francs into food and wine, silks, women, boys or opium — every kind of understandable forgetfulness. Nimrod’s office was at the back of a grey old-fashioned building set back at an angle to the road. It seemed deserted now, full of empty corridors and open offices. All the clerks had gone off duty at six. My lagging footfalls echoed past the empty porter’s lodge and the open doors. It seemed strange to walk about so freely in a Police building unchallenged. At the end of the third long corridor I came to Nimrod’s own door and knocked. There were voices inside. His office was a large, indeed rather grandiose room befitting his rank, whose windows gave out on to a bare courtyard where some chickens clucked and picked all day in the dried mud floor. A single tattered palm stood in the middle offering some summer shade.

There was no sign from within the room so I opened the door and stepped in — only to stop short; for the brilliant light and darkness suggested that a cinema-show was taking place. But it was only the huge epidiascope which threw upon the farther wall the blazing and magnified images of the photographs which Nimrod himself was feeding into it one by one from an envelope. Dazzled, I stepped forward and identified Balthazar and Keats in that phosphorescent penumbra around the machine, their profiles magnetically lighted by the powerful bulb.

‘Good’ said Nimrod, half-turning, and ‘sit you down’ as he abstractedly pushed out a chair for me. Keats smiled at me, full of a mysterious self-satisfaction and excitement. The photographs which they were studying with such care were his own flashlight pictures of the Cervoni ball. At such magnification they looked like grotesque frescoes materializing and vanishing again upon the white wall. ‘See if you can help on identification’ said Nimrod, and I sat down and obediently turned my face to the blaze in which sprawled the silhouettes of a dozen demented monks dancing together. ‘Not that one’ said Keats. The white light of the magnesium had set fire to the outlines of the robed figures.

Blown up to such enormous size the pictures suggested a new art-form, more macabre than anything a Goya could imagine. This was a new iconography — painted in smoke and lightning flashes. Nimrod changed them slowly, dwelling upon each one. ‘No comment?’ he would ask before passing another bloated facsimile of real life before our eyes. ‘No comment?’

For identification purposes they were quite useless. There were eight in all — each a fearful simulacrum of a death-feast celebrated by satyr-monks in some medieval crypt, each imagined by Sade! ‘There’s the one with the ring’ said Balthazar as the fifth picture came up and hovered before us on the wall. A group of hooded figures, frenziedly swaying with linked arms, wallowed before us, expressionless as cuttlefish, or those other grotesque monsters one sometimes sees lurking in the glooms of aquaria. Their eyes were slits devoid of meaning, their gaiety a travesty of everything human. So this is how Inquisitors behave when they are off duty! Keats sighed in despair. One of the figures had a hand upon another’s black-robed arm. The hand bore a just recognizable dash of white to indicate Justine’s unlucky ring. Nimrod described it all carefully to himself with the air of a man reading a gauge. ‘Five maskers … somewhere near the buffet, you can see the corner…. But the hand. Is it de Brunel’s? What do you think?’ I stared at it. ‘I think it must be’ I said. ‘Justine wears the ring on another finger.’

Nimrod said ‘Hah’ triumphantly and added ‘A good point there.’ Yes, but who were the other figures, snatched thus fortuitously out of nothingness by the flash-bulb? We stared at them and they stared expressionlessly back at us through their velvet slits like snipers.

‘No good’ said Balthazar at last with a sigh, and Nimrod switched off the humming machine. After an instant’s darkness the ordinary electric light came up in the room. His desk was stacked up with typed papers for signature — the procés-verbal I had no doubt. On a square of grey silk lay several objects with a direct relationship to our brimming thoughts — the great hatpin with its ugly blue stone head, and the eburnine ring of my lover which I could not see even now without a pang.

‘Sign up’ said Nimrod, indicating the paper ‘when you’ve read your copy, will you?’ He coughed behind his hand and added in a lower tone ‘And you can take the ring.’

Balthazar handed it to me. It felt cold, and it was faintly dusted with fingerprint powder. I cleaned it on my tie and put it in my fob-pocket. ‘Thank you’ I said, and took a seat at the desk to read through the Police formula, while the others lit cigarettes and talked in low voices. Beside the typewritten papers lay another, written in the nervous shallow hand of General Cervoni. It was the invitation list to the carnival ball, still echoing with the majestic poetry of the names which had come to mean so much to me, the names of the Alexandrians. Listen:

Pia dei Tolomei, Benedict Dangeau, Dante Borromeo, Colonel Neguib, Toto de Brunel, Wilmot Pierrefeu, Mehmet Adm, Pozzo di Borgo, Ahmed Hassan Pacha, Delphine de Francueil, Djamboulat Bey, Athena Trasha, Haddad Fahmy Amin, Gaston Phipps, Pierre Balbz, Jacques de Guéry, Count Banubula, Onouphrios Papas, Dmitri Randidi, Paul Capodistria, Claude Amaril, Nessim Hosnani, Tony Umbada, Baldassaro Trivizani, Gilda Ambron….

I murmured the names as I read through the list, mentally adding the word ‘murderer’ after each, simply to see whether it sounded appropriate. Only when I reached the name of Nessim did I pause and raise my eyes to the dark wall — to throw his mental image there and study it as we had studied the pictures. I still saw the expression on his face as I had helped to tuck him into the great car — an expression of curious impish serenity, as of someone resting after a great expenditure of energy.

* * * * *

PART IV

XII

Despite the season the seafront of the city was gay with light — the long sloping lines of the Grande Corniche curving away to a low horizon; a thousand lighted panels of glass in which, like gloriouś tropical fish, the inhabitants of the European city sat at glittering tables stocked with glasses of mastic, aniseed or brandy. Watching them (I had eaten little lunch) my hunger overcame me, and as there was some time in hand before my meeting with Justine, I turned into the glittering doors of the Diamond Sutra and ordered a ham sandwich and a glass of whisky. Once again, as always when the drama of external events altered the emotional pattern of things, I began to see the city through new eyes — to examine the shapes and contours made by human beings with the detachment of an entomologist studying a hitherto unknown species of insect. Here it was, the race, each member of it absorbed in the solution of individual preoccupations, loves, hates and fears. A woman counting money on to a glass table, an old man feeding a dog, an Arab in a red flowerpot drawing a curtain.

Aromatic smoke poured from the small sailor taverns along the seafront where the iron spits loaded with a freight of entrails and spices turned monotonously back and forth, or bellied from under the lids of shining copper cauldrons, giving off hot gusts of squid, cuttlefish and pigeon. Here one drank from the blue cans and ate with one’s fingers as they do in the Cyclades even today.

I picked up a decrepit horse-cab and jogged along by die sighing sea towards the Aurore, drinking in the lighted darkness with regrets and fears so fugitive as to be beyond analysis; but underneath (like a toad under a cool stone, the surface airs of night) I still felt the stirrings of horror at the thought that Justine herself might be endangered by the love which ‘we bore one another’. I turned the thought this way and that in my mind, like a prisoner pressing with all his weight upon doors which denied him an exit from an intolerable bondage, trying to devise an issue from a situation which, it seemed, might as well end in her death as in mine.

The great car was waiting, drawn up off the road in the darkness under the pepper-trees. She opened the door for me silently and I got in, spellbound by my fears.

‘Well’ she said at last, and giving a little groan which expressed everything, sank into my arms and pressed her warm mouth on mine. ‘Did you go? Is it over?’

‘Yes.’

She let in the clutch and the driving wheels spurned the gravel as the car moved out into the pearly nightfall and began to follow the coast road to the outer desert. I studied her harsh Semitic profile in the furry light flung back by the headlights from the common objects of the roadside. It belonged so much to the city which I now saw as a series of symbols stretching away from us on either side — minarets, pigeons, statues, ships, coins, camels and palms; it lived in a heraldic relation to the exhausted landscapes which enclosed it — the loops of the great lake: as proper to the scene as the Sphinx was to the desert.

‘My ring’ she said. ‘You brought it?’

‘Yes.’ I polished it once more on my tie and slipped it back once more on to its appropriate finger. Involuntarily I said now: ‘Justine, what is to become of us?’

She gave me a wild frowning look like a Bedouin woman, and then smiled that warm smile. ‘Why?’

‘Surely you see? We shall have to stop this altogether. I can’t bear to think you might be in danger…. Or else I should go straight to Nessim and confront him with….’ With what? I did not know.

‘No’ she said softly, ‘no. You could not do it. You are an Anglo-Saxon … you couldn’t step outside the law like that, could you? You are not one of us. Besides, you could tell Nessim nothing he does not guess if not actually know…. Darling’ she laid her warm hand upon mine, ‘simply wait … simply love, above all … and we shall see.’

It is astonishing now for me to realize, as I record this scene, that she was carrying within her (invisible as the already conceived foetus of a child) Pursewarden’s death: that her kisses were, for all I know, falling upon the graven image of my friend — the death-mask of the writer who himself did not love her, indeed regarded her with derision. But such a demon is love that I would not be surprised if in a queer sort of way his death actually enriched our own love-making, filling it with the deceits on which the minds of women feed — the compost of secret pleasures and treacheries which are an inseparable part of every human relation.

Yet what have I to complain of? Even this half-love filled my heart to overflowing. It is she, if anyone, who had cause for complaint. It is very hard to understand these things. Was she already planning her flight from Alexandria then? ‘The power of woman is such’ writes Pursewarden ‘that a single kiss can paraphrase the reality of man’s life and turn it …’ but why go on? I was happy sitting beside her, feeling the warmth of her hand as it lay in mine.

The blue night was hoary with stars and the attentive desert stretched away on either side with its grotesque amphitheatres — like the empty rooms in some great cloud-mansion. The moon was late and wan tonight, the air still, the dunes wind-carved. ‘What are you thinking?’ said my lover.

What was I thinking? Of a passage in Proclus which says that Orpheus ruled over the silver race, meaning those who led a ‘silver’ life; on Balthazar’s mantelpiece presumably among the pipe-cleaners and the Indian wood-carving of monkeys which neither saw, spoke nor heard evil, under a magic pentacle from Pythagoras. What was I thinking? The foetus in its waxen wallet, the locust squatting in the horn of the wheat, an Arab quoting a proverb which reverberated in the mind. ‘The memory of man is as old as misfortune.’ The quails from the burst cage spread upon the ground softly like honey, having no idea of escape. In the Scent Bazaar the flavour of Persian lilac.

‘Fourteen thousand years ago’ I said aloud, ‘Vega in Lyra was the Pole Star. Look at her where she burns.’

The beloved head turned with its frowning deep-set eyes and once more I see the long boats drawing in to the Pharos, the tides running, the minarets a-glitter with dew; noise of the blind Hodja crying in the voice of a mole assaulted by sunlight; a shuffle-pad of a camel-train clumping to a festival carrying dark lanterns. An Arab woman makes my bed, beating the pillows till they fluff out like white egg under a whisk; a passage in Pursewarden’s book which reads: ‘They looked at each other, aware that there was neither youth nor strength enough between them to prevent their separation.’ When Melissa was pregnant by Nessim Amaril could not perform the abortion Nessim so much desired because of her illness and her weak heart. ‘She may die anyway’ he said, and Nessim nodded curtly and took up his overcoat. But she did not die then, she bore the child….

Justine is quoting something in Greek which I do not recognize:

Sand, dog-roses and white rocks

Of Alexandria, the mariner’s sea-marks,

Some sprawling dunes falling and pouring

Sand into water, water into sand,

Never into the wine of exile

Which stains the air it is poured through;

Or a voice which stains the mind,

Singing in Arabic: ‘A ship without a sail

Is a woman without breasts.’ Only that. Only that.

We walked hand in hand across the soft sand-dunes, laboriously as insects, until we reached Taposiris with its rumble of shattered columns and capitals among the ancient weather-eroded sea-marks. (‘Reliques of sensation’ says Coleridge ‘may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state in the very same order in which they were impressed.’) Yes, but the order of the imagination is not that of memory. A faint wind blew off the sea from the Grecian archipelago. The sea was smooth as a human cheek. Only at the edges it stirred and sighed. Those warm kisses remain there, amputated from before and after, existing in their own right like the frail transparencies of ferns or roses pressed between the covers of old books — unique and unfading as the memories of the city they exemplified and evoked: a plume of music from a forgotten carnival-guitar echoing on in the dark streets of Alexandria for as long as silence lasts….

I see all of us not as men and women any longer, identities swollen with their acts of forgetfulness, follies, and deceits — but as beings unconsciously made part of place, buried to the waist among the ruins of a single city, steeped in its values; like those creatures of whom Empedocles wrote ‘Solitary limbs wandered, seeking for union with one another,’ or in another place, ‘So it is that sweet lays hold of sweet, bitter rushes to bitter, acid comes to acid, warm couples with warm.’ All members of a city whose actions lay just outside the scope of the plotting or conniving spirit: Alexandrians.

Justine, lying back against a fallen column at Taposiris, dark head upon the darkness of the sighing water, one curl lifted by the sea-winds, saying: ‘In the whole of English only one phrase means something to me, the words “Time Immemorial”.’

Seen across the transforming screens of memory, how remote that forgotten evening seems. There was so much as yet left for us all to live through until we reached the occasion of the great duckshoot which so abruptly, concisely, precipitated the final change — and the disappearance of Justine herself. But all this belongs to another Alexandria — one which I created in my mind and which the great Interlinear of Balthazar has, if not destroyed, changed out of all recognition.

‘To intercalate realities’ writes Balthazar ‘is the only way to be faithful to Time, for at every moment in Time the possibilities are endless in their multiplicity. Life consists in the act of choice. The perpetual reservations of judgement and the perpetual choosing.’

From the vantage-point of this island I can see it all in its doubleness, in the intercalation of fact and fancy, with new eyes; and re-reading, re-working reality in the light of all I now know, I am surprised to find that my feelings themselves have changed, have grown, have deepened even. Perhaps then the destruction of my private Alexandria was necessary (‘the artifact of a true work of art never shows a plane surface’); perhaps buried in all this there lies the germ and substance of a truth — time’s usufruct — which, if I can accommodate it, will carry me a little further in what is really a search for my proper self. We shall see.

* * * * *

XIII

‘Clea and her old father, whom she worships. White-haired, erect, with a sort of haunted pity in his eyes for the young unmarried goddess he has fathered. Once a year, however, on New Year’s eve, they dance at the Cecil, stately, urbanely. He waltzes like a clockwork man.’ Somewhere I once wrote down these words. They bring to mind another scene, another sequence of events.

The old scholar comes to sit at my table. He has a particular weakness for me, I do not know why, but he always talks to me with humorous modesty as we sit and watch his beautiful daughter move around the room in the arms of an admirer, so graceful and so composed. ‘There is so much of the schoolgirl still about her — or the artist. Tonight her cape had some wine on it so she put a mackintosh over her ball gown and ate the toffees which she found in the pockets. I don’t know what her mother would say if she were alive.’ We drank quietly and watched the coloured lights flickering among the dancers. He said ‘I feel like an old procurer. Always looking out for someone to marry her…. Her happiness seems so important, somehow … I am going the right way about to spoil it I know, by meddling … yet I can’t leave it alone … I’ve scraped a dowry together over the years…. The money burns my pocket…. When I see a nice Englishman like you my instinct is to say: “For God’s sake take her and look after her.” … It has been a bitter pleasure bringing her up without a mother. Eh? No fool like an old fool.’ And he walks stiffly away to the bar, smiling.

Presently that evening Clea herself came and sat beside me in the alcove, fanning herself and smiling. ‘Quarter of an hour to midnight. Poor Cinderella. I must get my father home before the clock strikes or he’ll lose his beauty-sleep!’

We spoke then of Amar whose trial for the murder of de Brunel had ended that afternoon with his acquittal due to lack of direct evidence.

‘I know,’ said Clea softly. ‘And I’m glad. It has saved me from a crise de conscience. I would not have known what to do if he had been convicted. You see, I know he didn’t do it. Why? Because, my dear, I know who did and why….’ She narrowed those splendid eyes and went on. ‘A story of Alexandria — shall I tell you? But only if you keep it a secret. Would you promise me? Bury it with the old year — all our misfortunes and follies. You must have had a surfeit of them by now, must you not? All right. Listen. On the night of the carnival I lay in bed thinking about a picture — the big one of Justine. It was all wrong and I didn’t know where. But I suspected the hands — those dark and shapely hands. I had got their position quite faithfully, but, well, something in the composition didn’t go; it had started to trouble me at this time — months after the thing was finished. I can’t think why. Suddenly I said to myself “Those hands want thinking about,” and I had the thing lugged back to my room from the studio where I stood it against a wall. Well, to no effect, really; I’d spent the whole evening smoking over it, and sketching the hands in different positions from memory. Somehow I thought it might be that beastly Byzantine ring which she wears. Anyway, all my thinking was of no avail so about midnight I turned in, and lay smoking in bed with my cat asleep on my feet.

‘From time to time a small group of people passed outside in the street, singing or laughing, but gradually the town was draining itself of life, for it was getting late.

‘Suddenly in the middle of the silence I heard feet running at full speed. I have never heard anyone run so fast, so lightly. Only danger or terror or distress could make someone put on such a mad burst of speed, I thought, as I listened. Down Rue Fuad came the footsteps at the same breakneck pace and turned the corner into St Saba, getting louder all the time. They crossed over, paused, and then crossed back to my side of the street. Then came a wild pealing at my bell.

‘I sat up in some surprise and switched on the light to look at the clock. Who could it be at such a time? While I was still sitting there irresolutely, it came again: a long double peal. Well! The electric switch on the front door is shut off at midnight so there was no help for it but to go down and see who it was. I put on a dressing-gown and slipping my little pistol into the pocket I went down to see. There was a shadow on the glass of the front door which was too thick to challenge anyone through, so I had to open it. I stood back a bit. “Who’s there?”

‘There was a man standing there, hanging in the corner of the door like a bat. He was breathing heavily for I saw his breast rising and falling, but he made no sound. He wore a domino, but the headpiece was turned back so that I could see his face in the light of the street-lamp. I was of course rather frightened for a moment. He looked as if he were about to faint. It took me about ten seconds before I could put a name to the ugly face with its cruel great hare-lip. Then relief flooded me and my feet got pins and needles. Do you know who it was? His hair was matted with sweat and in that queer light his eyes looked enormous — blue and childish. I realized that it was that strange brother of Nessim’s — the one nobody ever sees. Narouz Hosnani. Even this was rather a feat of memory: I only remembered him vaguely from the time when Nessim took me riding on the Hosnani lands. You can imagine my concern to see him like this, unexpectedly, in the middle of the night.

‘I did not know what to say, and he for his part was trying to articulate something, but the words would not come. It seemed he had two sentences jammed together in the front of his mind, like cartridges in the muzzle of a gun, and neither would give place to the other. He leaned inwards upon me with a ghastly incoherence, his hands hanging down almost below his knees which gave him an ape-like silhouette, and croaked something at me. You mustn’t laugh. It was horrifying. Then he drew a great breath and forced his muscles to obey him and said in a small marionette’s voice: “I have come to tell you that I love you because I have killed Justine.” For a moment I almost suspected a joke. “What?” I stammered. He repeated in an even smaller voice, a whisper, but mechanically as a child repeating a lesson: “I have come to tell you that I love you because I have killed Justine.” Then in a deep voice he added “Oh, Clea, if you but knew the agony of it.” And he gave a sob and fell on his knees in the hall, holding the edge of my dressing-gown, his head bowed while the tears trickled down his nose.

‘I didn’t know what to do. I was at once horrified and disgusted, and yet I couldn’t help feeling sorry. From time to time he gave a small harsh cry — the noise of a she-camel crying, or of some dreadful mechanical toy, perhaps. It was unlike anything I have seen or heard before or since. His trembling was communicated to me through the fringe of my gown which he held in two fingers.

‘“Get up” I said at last, and raising his head he croaked: “I swear I did not mean to do it. It happened before I could think. She put her hand upon me, Clea, she made advances to me. Horrible. Nessim’s own wife.”

‘I did not know what to make of all this. Had he really harmed Justine? “You just come upstairs” I said, keeping tight hold of my little pistol, for his expression was pretty frightening. “Get up now.” He got up at once, quite obediently, and followed me back up the stairs, but leaning heavily against the wall and whispering something incoherently to himself, Justine’s name, I think, though it sounded more like “Justice”.

‘“Come in while I telephone” I said, and he followed me slowly, half-blinded by the light. He stood by the door for a moment, accustoming himself to it, and then he saw the portrait. He exclaimed with great force: “This Jewish fox has eaten my life,” and struck his fists against his thighs several times. Then he put his hands over his face and breathed deeply. We waited like this facing one another, while I thought what there was to be done. They had all gone to the Cervoni ball, I knew. I would telephone them to find out if there was any truth in this story.

‘Meanwhile Narouz opened his fingers and peeped at me. He said: “I only came to tell you I loved you before giving myself up to my brother.” Then he spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “That is all.”

‘How disgusting, how unfair love is! Here I had been loved for goodness knows how long by a creature — I cannot say a fellow-creature — of whose very existence I had been unaware. Every breath I drew was unconsciously a form of his suffering, without my ever having been aware of it. How had this disaster come about? You will have to make room in your thoughts for this variety of the animal. I was furious, disgusted and wounded in one and the same moment. I felt almost as if I owed him an apology; and yet I also felt insulted by the intrusiveness of a love which I had never asked him to owe me.

‘Narouz looked now as if he were in a high fever. His teeth chattered in his head and he was shaken by spasms of violent shivering. I gave him a glass of cognac which he drained at one gulp, and then another even larger one. Drinking it he sank slowly down to the carpet and doubled his legs under him like an Arab. “It is better at last” he whispered, and looking sadly round him added: “So this is where you live. I have wanted to see it for years. I have been imagining it all.” Then he frowned and coughed and combed his hair back with his fingers.

‘I rang the Cervoni house and almost at once got hold of Nessim. I questioned him tactfully, without giving anything away. But there seemed nothing wrong, as far as could be judged, though he could not at that moment locate Justine. She was somewhere on the dance-floor. Narouz listened to all this with staring surprised eyes, incredulous. “She is due to meet them in the hall in ten minutes’ time. Finish your drink and wait until she rings up. Then you will know that there has been some mistake.” He closed his eyes and seemed to pray.

‘I sat down opposite him on the sofa, not knowing quite what to say. “What exactly happened?” I asked him. All of a sudden his eyes narrowed and grew small, suspicious-looking. Then he sighed and hung his head, tracing the design of the carpet with his finger. “It is not for you to hear” he whispered, his lips trembling.

‘We waited like this, and all of a sudden, to my intense embarrassment and disgust, he began to talk of his love for me, but in the tone of a man talking to himself. He seemed almost oblivious of me, never once looking up into my face. And I felt all the apologetic horror that comes over me when I am admired or desired and cannot reciprocate the feeling. I was somehow ashamed too, looking at that brutal tear-stained face, simply because I could not feel the slightest stirring of sympathy within my heart. He sat there on the carpet like some great brown toad, talking; like some story-book troglodyte. What the devil was I to do? “When have you seen me?” I asked him. He had only seen me three times in his life, though frequently at night he passed through the street to see if my light was on. I swore under my breath. It was so unfair. I had done nothing to merit this grotesque passion.

‘Then at last came a reprieve. The telephone rang, and he trembled all over like a hound as he heard the unmistakable hoarse tones of the woman he thought he had killed. There was nothing wrong that she knew of, and she was on her way home with Nessim. Everything was as it should be at the Cervoni house and the ball was still going on at full blast. As I said good night I felt Narouz clasp my slippers and begin kissing them with gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you” he repeated over and over again.

‘“Come on. Get up. It’s time to go home.” I was deathly tired by now. I advised him to go straight back home and to confide his story to nobody. “Perhaps you have imagined the whole thing” I said, and he gave me a tired but brilliant smile.

‘He walked slowly and heavily downstairs before me, still shaken by his experience, it was clear, but the hysteria had left him. I opened the front door, and he tried once more to express his incoherent gratitude and affection. He seized my hands and kissed them repeatedly with great wet hairy kisses. Ugh! I can feel them now. And then, before turning into the night, he said in a low voice, smiling: “Clea, this is the happiest day of my life, to have seen and touched you and to have seen your little room.”’

Clea sipped her drink, nodding into the middle distance for a moment with a sad smile on her face. Then she looked at her own brown hands and gave a little shudder. ‘Ugh! The kisses’ she said under her breath and with an involuntary movement began to rub her hands, palms upward, upon the red plush arm of the chair, as if to obliterate the kisses once and for all, to expunge the memory of them.

But now the band had begun to play a Paul Jones (perhaps the very dance in which Arnauti first met Justine?) and the warm lighted gallery of faces began to fan out once more from the centre of the darkness, the brilliance of flesh and cloth and jewels in the huge gaunt ballroom where the palms splintered themselves in the shivering mirrors: leaking through the windows to where the moonlight waited patiently among the deserted public gardens and highways, troubling the uneasy water of the outer harbour with its glittering heartless gestures. ‘Come’ said Clea, ‘why do you never play a part in these things? Why do you prefer to sit apart and study us all?’

But I was thinking as I watched the circle of lovely faces move forward and reverse among the glitter of jewellery and the rustle of silks, of the Alexandrians to whom these great varieties of experience meant only one more addition to the sum of an infinite knowledge husbanded by their world-weariness. Round and round the floor we went, the women unconsciously following the motion of the stars, of the earth as it curved into space; and then suddenly like a declaration of war, like an expulsion from the womb, silence came, and a voice crying: ‘Take your partners please.’ And the lights throbbed down the spectrum to purple and a waltz began. For a brief moment at the far end of the darkness I caught a glimpse of Nessim and Justine dancing together, smiling into each other’s eyes. The shapely hand on his shoulder still wore the great ring taken from the tomb of a Byzantine youth. Life is short, art long.

Clea’s father was dancing with her, stiffly, happily like a clockwork mouse; and he was kissing the gifted hand upon which the unwanted kisses of Narouz had fallen on that forgotten evening. A daughter is closer than a wife.

‘At first’ writes Pursewarden ‘we seek to supplement the emptiness of our individuality through love, and for a brief moment enjoy the illusion of completeness. But it is only an illusion. For this strange creature, which we thought would join us to the body of the world, succeeds at last in separating us most thoroughly from it. Love joins and then divides. How else would we be growing?’

How else indeed? But relieved to find myself once more partnerless I have already groped my way back to my dark corner where the empty chairs of the revellers stand like barren ears of corn.

* * * * *

XIV

In the early summer I received a letter from Clea with which this brief memorial to Alexandria may well be brought to a close. It was unexpected.

‘Tashkent, Syria

‘Your letter, so unexpected after a silence which I feared might endure all through life, followed me out of Persia to this small house perched high on a hillside among the cedars and pines. I have taken it for a few months in order to try my hand and brush on these odd mountains — rocks bursting with fresh water and Mediterranean flowers. Turtle doves by day and nightingales by night. What a relief after the dust. How long is it? Ah, my dear friend, I trembled a little as I slit open the envelope. Why? I was afraid that what you might have to say would drag me back by the hair to old places and scenes long since abandoned; the old stations and sites of the personality which belonged to the Alexandrian Clea you knew — not to me any longer, or at any rate, not wholly. I’ve changed. A new woman, certainly a new painter is emerging, still a bit tender and shy like the horns of a snail — but new. A whole new world of experience stands between us…. How could you know all this? You would perhaps be writing to Clea, the old Clea; what would I find to say to you in reply? I put off reading your letter until tonight. It touched me and reply I must: so here it is — my own letter written at odd times, between painting sessions, or at night when I light the stove and make my dinner. Today is a good day to begin it for it is raining — and the whole mountain side is under the hush of the rain and the noise of swollen springs. The trees are alive with giant snails.

‘So Balthazar has been disturbing you with his troublesome new information? I am not sure that I approve. It may be good for you, but surely not for your book or books which must, I suppose, put us all in a very special position regarding reality. I mean as “characters” rather than human beings. No? And why, you ask me, did I never tell you a tithe of the things you know now? One never does, you know, one never does. As a spectator standing equidistant between two friends or lovers one is always torn by friendship to intervene, to interfere — but one never does. Rightly. How could I tell you what I knew of Justine — or for that matter what I felt about your neglect of Melissa? The very range of my sympathies for the three of you precluded it. As for love, it is so paradoxical a creature and so satisfying in itself that it would not have been much altered by the intervention of truths from outside. I am sure now, if you analyse your feelings, you will find you love Justine better because she betrayed you! The whore is man’s true darling, as I once told you, and we are born to love those who most wound us. Am I wrong? Besides, my own affection for you lay in another quarter. I was jealous of you as a writer — and as a writer I wanted you to myself and did so keep you. Do you see?

‘There is nothing I can do to help you now — I mean help your book. You will either have to ignore the data which Balthazar has so wickedly supplied, or to “rework reality” as you put it.

‘And you say you were unjust to Pursewarden; yes, but it is not important. He was equally unjust to you. Unknown to either of you, you joined hands in me! As writers. My only regret is that he did not manage to finish the last volume of God is a Humorist according to plan. It is a loss — though it cannot detract from his achievement. You, I surmise, will soon be coming into the same degree of self-possession — perhaps through this cursed city of ours, Alexandria, to which we most belong when we most hate it. By the way, I have a letter from Pursewarden about the missing volume which I have carried around with me among my papers for ages, like a talisman. It helps not only to revive the man himself a bit, but to revive me also when I fall into a depression about my work. (I must go to the village to buy eggs. I shall copy it out tonight for you.)

‘Later. Here is the letter I spoke about, harsh and crabbed if you like, but none the less typical of our friend. Don’t take his remarks about you too seriously. He admired you and believed in you — so he once told me. Perhaps he was lying. Anyway.

‘Mount Vulture Hotel

‘Alexandria

‘My dear Clea:

‘A surprise and delight to find your letter waiting for me. Clement reader thank you — not for the blame or praise (one shrinks from both equally) but for being there, devoted and watchful, a true reader between the lines — where all real writing is done! I have just come hotfoot from the Café Al Aktar after listening to a long discursion on “the novel” by old Lineaments and Keats and Pombal. They talk as if every novel wasn’t sui generis — it is as meaningless to me as Pombal generalizing about “les femmes” as a race; for after all it isn’t the family relationship which really matters. Well, Lineaments was saying that Redemption and Original Sin were the new topics and that the writer of today…. Ouf! I fled, feeling like the writer of the day before yesterday, and unwilling to help them build this sort of mud-pie.

‘I’m sure old Lineaments will do a lovely novel about Original Sin and score what I always privately call a suck-eggs d’estime (it means not covering one’s advance). In fact, I was in such despair at the thought of his coming fame that I thought I would go straight off to a brothel and expiate my unoriginal sense of sin right away. But the hour was early, and besides, I felt that I smelt of sweat for it has been a hot day. I therefore returned to the hotel for a shower and a change of shirt and so found your letter. There is a little gin in the bottle and as I don’t know where I shall be later on I think I’ll just sit down and answer you now as best I can until six when the brothels start to open.

‘The questions you ask me, my dear Clea, are the very questions I am putting myself. I must get them a little clearer before I tidy up the last volume in which I want above all to combine, resolve and harmonize the tensions so far created. I feel I want to sound a note of … affirmation — though not in the specific terms of a philosophy or religion. It should have the curvature of an embrace, the wordlessness of a lover’s code. It should convey some feeling that the world we live in is founded in something too simple to be over-described as cosmic law — but as easy to grasp as, say, an act of tenderness, simple tenderness in the primal relation between animal and plant, rain and soil, seed and trees, man and God. A relationship so delicate that it is all too easily broken by the inquiring mind and conscience in the French sense which of course has its own rights and its own field of deployment. I’d like to think of my work simply as a cradle in which philosophy could rock itself to sleep, thumb in mouth. What do you say to this? After all, this is not simply what we most need in the world, but really what describes the state of pure process in it. Keep silent awhile and you feel a comprehension of this act of tenderness — not power or glory: and certainly not Mercy, that vulgarity of the Jewish mind which can only imagine man as crouching under the whip. No, for the sort of tenderness I mean is utterly merciless! “A law unto itself” as we say. Of course, one must always remember that truth itself is always halved in utterance. Yet I must in this last book insist that there is hope for man, scope for man, within the boundaries of a simple law; and I seem to see mankind as gradually appropriating to itself the necessary information through mere attention, not reason, which may one day enable it to live within the terms of such an idea—the true meaning of “joy unconfined”. How could joy be anything else? This new creature we artists are hunting for will not “live” so much as, like time itself, simply “elapse”. Damn, it’s hard to say these things. Perhaps the key lies in laughter, in the Humorous God? It is after all the serious who disturb the peace of the heart with their antics — like Justine. (Wait. I must fix myself a ration of gin.)

‘I think it better for us to steer clear of the big oblong words like Beauty and Truth and so on. Do you mind? We are all so silly and feeble-witted when it comes to living, but giants when it comes to pronouncing on the universe. Sufflaminandus erat. Like you, I have two problems which interconnect: my art and my life. Now in my life I am somewhat irresolute and shabby, but in my art I am free to be what I most desire to seem — someone who might bring resolution and harmony into the dying lives around me. In my art, indeed, through my art, I want really to achieve myself by shedding the work, which is of no importance, as a snake sheds its skin. Perhaps that’s why writers at heart want to be loved for their work rather than for themselves — do you think? But then this presupposes a new order of woman too. Where is she?

‘These, my dear Clea, are some of the perplexities of your omniscient friend, the classical head and romantic heart of Ludwig Pursewarden.

‘Ouf! It is late and the oil in the lamp is low. I must leave this letter for tonight. Tomorrow perhaps, if I am in the mood after my shopping, I shall write a little more; if not, not. Wise one, how much better it would be if we could talk. I feel I have whole conversations stacked inside me, lying unused! I think it is perhaps the only real lack of which one is conscious in living alone; the mediating power of a friend’s thoughts to place beside one’s own, just to see if they match! The lonely become autocratic, as they must, and their judgements ex cathedra in the very nature of things: and perhaps this is not altogether good for the work. But here at least we will be well-matched, you on your island — which is only a sort of metaphor like Descartes’ oven, isn’t it? — and I in my fairy-tale hut among the mountains.

‘Last week a man appeared among the trees, also a painter, and my heart began to beat unwontedly fast. I felt the sudden predisposition to fall in love — reasoning thus, I suppose: “If one has gone so far from the world and one finds a man in that place, must he not be the one person destined to share one’s solitude, brought to this very place by the invisible power of one’s selfless longing and destined specially for oneself?” Dangerous self-delusive tricks the heart plays on itself, always tormented by the desire to be loved! Balthazar claimed once that he could induce love as a control-experiment by a simple action: namely telling each of two people who had never met that the other was dying to meet them, had never seen anyone so attractive, and so on. This was, he claimed infallible as a means of making them fall in love: they always did. What do you say?

‘At any rate, my own misgivings saved me from the youth who was, I will admit, handsome and indeed quite intelligent, and would have done me good, I think, as a lover — perhaps for a single summer. But when I saw his paintings I felt my soul grow hard and strong and separate again; through them I read his whole personality as one can read a handwriting or a face. I saw weakness and poverty of heart and a power to do mischief. So I said good-bye there and then. The poor youth kept repeating: “Have I done anything to offend you, have I said anything?” What could I reply — for there was nothing he could do about the offence except live it out, paint it out; but that presupposed becoming conscious of its very existence within himself.

‘I returned to my hut and locked myself in with real relief. He came at midnight and tried the door. I shouted “Go away,” and he obeyed. This morning I saw him leaving on the bus, but I did not even wave good-bye. I found myself whistling happily, nay, almost dancing, as I walked to town across the forest to get my provisions. It is wonderful whenever one can overcome one’s treacherous heart. Then I went home and was hardly in the door when I picked up a brush and started on the painting which has been holding me up for nearly a month; all the ways were clear, all the relations in play. The mysterious obstacle had vanished. Who can say it was not due to our painter friend and the love affair I did not have? I am still humming a tune as I write these words to you….

‘Later: re-reading your letter, why do you go on so, I wonder, about Pursewarden’s death? It puzzles me, for in a way it is a sort of vulgarity to do so. I mean that surely it is not within your competence or mine to pass an open judgement on it? All we can say is that his art overleaps the barrier. For the rest, it seems to me to be his own private property. We should not only respect his privacy in such matters but help him to defend it against the unfeeling. They are his own secrets, after all, for what we actually saw in him was only the human disguise that the artist wore (as in his own character, old Parr, the hopeless sensualist of volume two who turns out in the end to be the one who painted the disputed fresco of the Last Supper — remember?)

‘In much the same sort of way, Pursewarden carried the secret of his everyday life over into the grave with him, leaving us only his books to marvel at and his epitaph to puzzle over: “Here lies an intruder from the East.”

‘No. No. The death of an artist is quite unassailable. One can only smile and bow.

‘As for Scobie, you are right in what you say. I was terribly upset when Balthazar told me that he had fallen down those stairs at the central Quism and killed himself. Yes, I took his parrot, which by the way was inhabited by the old man’s spirit for a long time afterwards. It reproduced with perfect fidelity the way he got up in the morning singing a snatch of “Taisez-vous, petit babouin’ (do you remember) and even managed to imitate the dismal cracking of the old man’s bones as he got out of bed. But then the memory gradually wore out, like an old disc, and he seemed to do it less often and with less sureness of voice. It was like Scobie himself dying very gradually into silence: this is how I suppose one dies to one’s friends and to the world, wearing out like an old dance tune or a memorable conversation with a philosopher under a cherry-tree. Being refunded into silence. And finally the bird itself went into a decline and died with its head under its wing. I was so sorry, yet so glad.

‘For us, the living, the problem is of a totally different order: how to harness time in the cultivation of a style of heart — something like that? I am only trying to express it. Not to force time, as the weak do, for that spells self-injury and dismay, but to harness its rhythms and put them to our own use. Pursewarden used to say: “God give us artists resolution and tact”; to which I myself would say a very hearty Amen.

‘But by now you will think that I have simply become an opinionated old shrew. Perhaps I have. What does it matter, provided one can get a single idea across to oneself?

‘There is so little time; with the news from Europe becoming worse every day I feel an autumnal quality in the days — as if they were settling towards an unpredictable future. And side by side with this feeling, I also feel the threads tightening in our sleeves, so to speak, drawing us slowly back towards the centre of the stage once more. Where could this be but to Alexandria? But perhaps it will prove to be a new city, different to the one which has for so long imposed itself on our dreams. I would like to think that, for the old one and all it symbolized is, if not dead, at least meaningless to the person I now feel myself to be. Perhaps you too have changed by the same token. Perhaps your book too has changed. Or perhaps you, more than any of us, need to see the city again, need to see us again. We, for our part, very much need to see you again and refresh the friendship which we hope exists the other side of the writing — if indeed an author can ever be just a friend to his “characters”. I say “we”, writing in the Imperial Style as if I were a Queen, but you will guess that I mean, simply, both the old Clea and the new — for both have need of you in a future which….’

There are a few more lines and then the affectionate superscription.

CONSEQUENTIAL DATA

* * *

Some shorthand notes of Keats’s, recording the Obiter Dicta of Pursewarden in fragmentary fashion: (a)

‘I know my prose is touched with plum pudding, but then all the prose belonging to the poetic continuum is; it is intended to give a stereoscopic effect to character. And events aren’t in serial form but collect here and there like quanta, like real life.’ (b)

‘Nessim hasn’t got the resources we Anglo-Saxons have; all our women are nurses at heart. In order to secure the lifelong devotion of an Anglo-Saxon woman one has only to get one’s legs cut off above the waist. I’ve always thought Lady Chatterley weak in symbolism from this point of view. Nothing should have earned the devotion of his wife more surely than Clifford’s illness. Anglo-Saxons may not be interested in love like other Europeans but they can get just as ill. Characteristically, it is to his English Kate that Laforgue cries out: “Une Garde-malade pour l’amour de l’art!”He detected the nurse.’ (c)

‘The classical in art is what marches by intention with the cosmology of the age.’ (d)

‘A state-imposed metaphysic or religion should be opposed, if necessary at pistol-point. We must fight for variety if we fight at all. The uniform is as dull as a sculptured egg.’ (e)

Of Da Capo: ‘Gamblers and lovers really play to lose.’ (f)

‘Art like life is an open secret.’

(g)

‘Science is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart’s affections.’ (h)

‘Truth is independent of fact. It does not mind being disproved. It is already dispossessed in utterance.’ (i)

‘I love the French edition with its uncut pages. I would not want a reader too lazy to use a knife on me.’ (j)

In a book of poems: ‘One to be taken from time to time as needed and allowed to dissolve in the mind.’ (k)

‘We must always defend Plato to Aristotle and vice versa because if they should lose touch with each other we should be lost. The dimorphism of the psyche produced them both.’ (l)

‘To the medieval world-picture of the World, the Flesh and the Devil (each worth a book) we moderns have added Time: a fourth dimension.’ (m)

‘New critical apparatus: le roman bifteck, guignol or cafard.’ (n)

‘The real ruins of Europe are its great men.’ (o)

‘I have always believed in letting my reader sink or skim.’ (p)

On reading a long review of God is a Humorist: ‘Good God! At last they are beginning to take me seriously. This imposes a terrible burden on me. I must redouble my laughter.’ (q)

‘Why do I always choose an epigraph from Sade? Because he demonstrates pure rationalism — the ages of sweet reason we have lived through in Europe since Descartes. He is the final flower of reason, and the typic of European behaviour. I hope to live to see him translated into Chinese. His books would bring the house down and would read as pure humour. But his spirit has already brought the house down around our ears.’ (r)

‘Europe: a Logical Positivist trying to prove to himself by logical deduction that he exists.’ (s)

‘My objects in the novels? To interrogate human values through an honest representation of the human passions. A desirable end, perhaps a hopeless objective.’ (t)

‘My unkindest critics maintain that I am making lampshades out of human skin. This puzzles me. Perhaps at the bottom of the Anglo-Saxon soul there is a still small voice forever whispering: “Is this Quaite Naice?” and my books never seem to pass the test.’

SCOBIE’S COMMON USAGE

Expressions noted from Scobie’s quaint conversation, his use of certain words, as:

Vivid, meaning ‘angry’, ex.: ‘Don’t be so vivid, old man.’

Mauve, meaning ‘silly’, ex.: ‘He was just plain mauve when it came to, etc.’

Spoof, meaning ‘trick’, ex.: ‘Don’t spoof me, old boy.’

Ritual, meaning ‘habit, form’, ex.: ‘We all wear them. It’s ritual for the police.’

Squalid, meaning ‘very elated’, ex.: ‘Toby was squalid with joy when the news came.’

Septic, meaning ‘unspeakable’, ex.: ‘What septic weather today!’

Saffron Walden, meaning ‘male brothel’, ex.: ‘He was caught in a Saffron Walden, old man, covered in jam.’

Cloud Cuckoo, meaning ‘male prostitute’, ex.: ‘Budgie says there’s not a cloud cuckoo in the whole of Horsham. He’s advertised.’

WORKPOINTS

‘How many lovers since Pygmalion have been able to build their beloved’s face out of flesh, as Amaril has?’ asked Clea. The great folio of noses so lovingly copied for him to choose from — Nefertiti to Cleopatra. The readings in a darkened room.

* * *

Narouz always held in the back of his consciousness the memory of the moonlit room; his father sitting in the wheel-chair at the mirror, repeating the one phrase over and over again as he pointed the pistol at the looking-glass.

* * *

Mountolive was swayed by the dangerous illusion that now at last he was free to conceive and act — the one misjudgement which decides the fate of a diplomat.

* * *

Nessim said sadly: ‘All motive is mixed. You see, from the moment I married her, a Jewess, all their reservations disappeared and they ceased to suspect me. I do not say it was the only reason. Love is a wonderfully luxuriant plant, but unclassifiable really, fading as it does into mysticism on the one side and naked cupidity on the other.’

* * *

This now explained something to me which had hitherto puzzled me; namely that after his death Da Capo’s huge library was moved over to Smyrna, book by book. Balthazar did the packing and posting.

NOTE IN THE TEXT

* Page 298

From Eugène Marais’s The Soul of The White Ant.

MOUNTOLIVE

A

CLAUDE

NOTE

All the characters and situations described in this book (a sibling to Justine and Balthazar and the third volume of a quartet) are purely imaginary. I have exercised a novelist’s right in taking a few necessary liberties with modern Middle Eastern history and the staff-structure of the Diplomatic Service.

The dream dissipated, were one to recover one’s commonsense mood, the thing would be of but mediocre import — ’tis the story of mental wrongdoing. Everyone knows very well and it offends no one. But alas! one sometimes carries the thing a little further. What, one dares wonder, what would not be the idea’s realization if its mere abstract shape thus exalted has just so profoundly moved one? The accursed reverie is vivified and its existence is a crime.

D. A. F. DE SADE: Justine

Il faut que le roman raconte.

STENDHAL

I

As a junior of exceptional promise, he had been sent to Egypt for a year in order to improve his Arabic and found himself attached to the High Commission as a sort of scribe to await his first diplomatic posting; but he was already conducting himself as a young secretary of legation, fully aware of the responsibilities of future office. Only somehow today it was rather more difficult than usual to be reserved, so exciting had the fish-drive become.

He had in fact quite forgotten about his once-crisp tennis flannels and college blazer and the fact that the wash of bilge rising through the floor-boards had toe-capped his white plimsolls with a black stain. In Egypt one seemed to forget oneself continually like this. He blessed the chance letter of introduction which had brought him to the Hosnani lands, to the rambling old-fashioned house built upon a network of lakes and embankments near Alexandria. Yes.

The punt which now carried him, thrust by slow thrust across the turbid water, was turning slowly eastward to take up its position in the great semicircle of boats which was being gradually closed in upon a target-area marked out by the black reed spines of fish-pans. And as they closed in, stroke by stroke, the Egyptian night fell — the sudden reduction of all objects to bas-reliefs upon a screen of gold and violet. The land had become dense as tapestry in the lilac afterglow, quivering here and there with water mirages from the rising damps, expanding and contracting horizons, until one thought of the world as being mirrored in a soap-bubble trembling on the edge of disappearance. Voices too across the water sounded now loud, now soft and clear. His own cough fled across the lake in sudden wing-beats. Dusk, yet it was still hot; his shirt stuck to his back. The spokes of darkness which reached out to them only outlined the shapes of the reed-fringed islands, which punctuated the water like great pin-cushions, like paws, like hassocks.

Slowly, at the pace of prayer or meditation, the great arc of boats was forming and closing in, but with the land and the water liquefying at this rate he kept having the illusion that they were travelling across the sky rather than across the alluvial waters of Mareotis. And out of sight he could hear the splatter of geese, and in one corner water and sky split apart as a flight rose, trailing its webs across the estuary like seaplanes, honking crassly. Mountolive sighed and stared down into the brown water, chin on his hands. He was unused to feeling so happy. Youth is the age of despairs.

Behind him he could hear the hare-lipped younger brother Narouz grunting at every thrust of the pole while the lurch of the boat echoed in his loins. The mud, thick as molasses, dripped back into the water with a slow flob flob, and the pole sucked lusciously. It was very beautiful, but it all stank so: yet to his surprise he found he rather enjoyed the rotting smells of the estuary. Draughts of wind from the far sea-line ebbed around them from time to time, refreshing the mind. Choirs of gnats whizzed up there like silver rain in the eye of the dying sun. The cobweb of changing light fired his mind. ‘Narouz’ he said, ‘I am so happy’ as he listened to his own unhurried heart-beats. The youth gave his shy hissing laugh and said: ‘Good, good’ ducking his head. ‘But this is nothing. Wait. We are closing in.’ Mountolive smiled. ‘Egypt’ he said to himself as one might repeat the name of a woman. ‘Egypt.’

‘Over there’ said Narouz in his hoarse, melodious voice ‘the ducks are not rusés, do you know?’ (His English was imperfect and stilted.) ‘For the poaching of them, it is easy (you say ‘poaching’ don’t you?) You dive under them and take them by the legs. Easier than shooting, eh? If you wish, tomorrow we will go.’ He grunted again at the pole and sighed.

‘What about snakes?’ said Mountolive. He had seen several large ones swimming about that afternoon.

Narouz squared his stout shoulders and chuckled. ‘No snakes’ he said and laughed once more.

Mountolive turned sideways to rest his cheek on the wood of the prow. Out of the corner of his eye he could see his companion standing up as he poled, and study the hairy arms and hands, the sturdy braced legs. ‘Shall I take a turn?’ he asked in Arabic. He had already noticed how much pleasure it gave his hosts when he spoke to them in their native tongue. Their answers, smilingly given, were a sort of embrace. ‘Shall I?’

‘Of course not’ said Narouz, smiling his ugly smile which was only redeemed by magnificent eyes and a deep voice. Sweat dripped down from the curly black hair with its widow’s peak. And then lest his refusal might seem impolite, he added: ‘The drive will start with darkness. I know what to do; and you must look and see the fish.’ The two little pink frills of flesh which edged his unbasted lip were wet with spittle. He winked lovingly at the English youth.

The darkness was racing towards them now and the light expiring. Narouz suddenly cried: ‘Now is the moment. Look there.’ He clapped his hands loudly and shouted across the water, startling his companion who followed his pointed finger with raised head. ‘What?’ the dull report of a gun from the furtherest boat shook the air and suddenly the skyline was sliced in half by a new flight, rising more slowly and dividing earth from air in a pink travelling wound; like the heart of a pomegranate staring through its skin. Then, turning from pink to scarlet, flushed back into white and fell to the lake-level like a shower of snow to melt as it touched the water — ‘Flamingo’ they both cried and laughed, and the darkness snapped upon them, extinguishing the visible world.

For a long moment now they rested, breathing deeply, to let their eyes grow accustomed to it. Voices and laughter from the distant boats floating across their path. Someone cried ‘Ya Narouz’ and again ‘Ya Narouz’. He only grunted. And now there came the short syncopated tapping of a finger-drum, music whose rhythms copied themselves instantly in Mountolive’s mind so that he felt his own fingers begin to tap upon the boards. The lake was floorless now, the yellow mud had vanished — the soft cracked mud of prehistoric lake-faults, or the bituminous mud which the Nile drove down before it on its course to the sea. All the darkness still smelt of it. ‘Ya Narouz’ came the cry again, and Mountolive recognized the voice of Nessim the elder brother borne upon a sea-breath as it spaced out the words. ‘Time … to … light … up.’ Narouz yelped an answer and grunted with satisfaction as he fumbled for matches. ‘Now you’ll see’ he said with pride.

The circle of boats had narrowed now to encompass the pans and in the hot dusk matches began to spark, while soon the carbide lamps attached to the prows blossomed into trembling yellow flowers, wobbling up into definition, enabling those who were out of line to correct their trim. Narouz bent over his guest with an apology and groped at the prow. Mountolive smelt the sweat of his strong body as he bent down to test the rubber tube and shake the old bakelite box of the lamp, full of rock-carbide. Then he turned a key, struck a match, and for a moment the dense fumes engulfed them both where they sat, breath held, only to clear swiftly while beneath them also flowered, like some immense coloured crystal, a semicircle of lake water, candent and faithful as a magic lantern to the startled images of fish scattering and reforming with movements of surprise, curiosity, perhaps even pleasure. Narouz expelled his breath sharply and retired to his place. ‘Look down’ he urged, and added ‘But keep your head well down.’ And as Mountolive, who did not understand this last piece of advice, turned to question him, he said ‘Put a coat around your head. The kingfishers go mad with the fish and they are not night-sighted. Last time I had my cheek cut open; and Sobhi lost an eye. Face forwards and down.’

Mountolive did as he was bidden and lay there floating over the nervous pool of lamplight whose floor was now peerless crystal not mud and alive with water-tortoises and frogs and sliding fish—a whole population disturbed by this intrusion from the overworld. The punt lurched again and moved while the cold bilge came up around his toes. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that now the great half-circle of light, the chain of blossoms, was closing more rapidly; and as if to give the boats orientation and measure, there arose a drumming and singing, subdued and melancholy, yet authoritative. He felt the tug of the turning boat echoed again in his backbone. His sensations recalled nothing he had ever known, were completely original.

The water had become dense now, and thick; like an oatmeal soup that is slowly stirred into thickness over a slow fire. But when he looked more closely he saw that the illusion was caused not by the water but by the multiplication of the fish themselves. They had begun to swarm, darting in schools, excited by the very consciousness of their own numbers, yet all sliding and skirmishing one way. The cordon too had tightened like a noose and only twenty feet now separated them from the next boat, the next pool of waxen light. The boatmen had begun to utter hoarse cries and pound the waters around them, themselves excited by the premonition of those fishy swarms which crowded the soft lake bottom, growing more and more excited as the shallows began and they recognized themselves trapped in the shining circle. There was something like delirium in their swarming and circling now. Vague shadows of men began to unwind hand-nets in the boats and the shouting thickened. Mountolive felt his blood beating faster with excitement. ‘In a moment’ cried Narouz. ‘Lie still.’

The waters thickened to glue and silver bodies began to leap into the darkness only to fall back, glittering like coinage, into the shallows. The circles of light touched, overlapped, and the whole ceinture was complete, and from all around it there came the smash and crash of dark bodies leaping into the shallows, furling out the long hand-nets which were joined end to end and whose dark loops were already bulging like Christmas stockings with the squirming bodies of fish. The leapers had taken fright too and their panic-stricken leaps ripped up the whole surface of the pan, flashing back cold water upon the stuttering lamps, falling into the boats, a shuddering harvest of cold scales and drumming tails. Their exciting death-struggles were as contagious as the drumming had been. Laughter shook the air as the nets closed. Mountolive could see Arabs with their long white robes tucked up to the waist pressing forwards with steadying hands held to the dark prows beside them, pushing their linked nets slowly forward. The light gleamed upon their dark thighs. The darkness was full of their barbaric blitheness.

And now came another unexpected phenomenon — for the sky itself began to thicken above them as the water had below. The darkness was suddenly swollen with unidentifiable shapes for the jumpers had alerted the sleepers from the shores of the lakes, and with shrill incoherent cries the new visitants from the sedge-lined outer estuary joined in the hunt — hundreds of pelican, flamingo, crane and kingfisher — coming in on irregular trajectories to careen and swoop and snap at the jumping fish. The waters and the air alike seethed with life as the fishermen aligned their nets and began to scoop the swarming catch into the boats, or turned out their nets to let the rippling cascades of silver pour over the gunwales until the helmsmen were sitting ankle-deep in the squirming bodies. There would be enough and to spare for men and birds, and while the larger waders of the lake folded and unfolded awkward wings like old-fashioned painted parasols, or hovered in ungainly parcels above the snapping, leaping water, the kingfishers and herring-gulls came in from every direction at the speed of thunderbolts, half mad with greed and excitement, flying on suicidal courses, some to break their necks outright upon the decks of the boats, some to flash beak forward into the dark body of a fisherman to split open a cheek or a thigh in their terrifying cupidity. The splash of water, the hoarse cries, the snapping of beaks and wings, and the mad tattoo of the finger-drums gave the whole scene an unforgettable splendour, vaguely recalling to the mind of Mountolive forgotten Pharaonic frescoes of light and darkness.

Here and there too the men began to fight off the birds, striking at the dark air around them with sticks until amid the swarming scrolls of captured fish one could see surprisingly rainbow feathers of magical hue and broken beaks from which blood trickled upon the silver scales of the fish. For three-quarters of an hour the scene continued thus until the dark boats were brimming. Now Nessim was alongside, shouting to them in the darkness. ‘We must go back.’ He pointed to a lantern waving across the water, creating a warm cave of light in which they glimpsed the smooth turning flanks of a horse and the serrated edge of palm-leaves. ‘My mother is waiting for us’ cried Nessim. His flawless head bent down to take the edge of a light-pool as he smiled. His was a Byzantine face such as one might find among the frescoes of Ravenna — almond-shaped, dark-eyed, clear-featured. But Mountolive was looking, so to speak, through the face of Nessim and into that of Leila who was so like him, his mother. ‘Narouz’ he called hoarsely, for the younger brother had jumped into the water to fasten a net. ‘Narouz!’ One could hardly make oneself heard in the commotion. ‘We must go back.’

And so at last the two boats each with its Cyclops-eye of light turned back across the dark water to the far jetty where Leila waited patiently for them with the horses in the mosquito-loud silence. A young moon was up now.

Her voice came laughingly across the variable airs of the lake, chiding them for being late, and Narouz chuckled. ‘We’ve brought lots of fish’ cried Nessim. She stood, slightly darker than the darkness, and their hands met as if guided by some perfected instinct which found no place in their conscious minds. Mountolive’s heart shook as he stood up and climbed on to the jetty with her help. But no sooner were the two brothers ashore than Narouz cried: ‘Race you home, Nessim’ and they dived for their horses which bucked and started at the laughing onslaught. ‘Careful’ she cried sharply, but before a second had passed they were off, hooves drumming on the soft rides of the embankment, Narouz chuckling like a Mephistopheles. ‘What is one to do?’ she said with mock resignation, and now the factor came forward with their own horses.

They mounted and set off for the house. Ordering the servant to ride on before with the lantern, Leila brought her horse close in so that they might ride knee-to-knee, solaced by the touch of each other’s bodies. They had not been lovers for very long — barely ten days — though to the youthful Mountolive it seemed a century, an eternity of despair and delight. He had been formally educated in England, educated not to wish to feel. All the other valuable lessons he had already mastered, despite his youth — to confront the problems of the drawing-room and the street with sang-froid; but towards personal emotions he could only oppose the nervous silence of a national sensibility almost anaesthetized into clumsy taciturnity: an education in selected reticences and shames. Breeding and sensibility seldom march together, though the breach can be carefully disguised in codes of manners, forms of address towards the world. He had heard and read of passion, but had regarded it as something which would never impinge on him, and now here it was, bursting into the secret life which, like every overgrown schoolboy, lived on autonomously behind the indulgent screen of everyday manners and transactions, everyday talk and affections. The social man in him was overripe before the inner man had grown up. Leila had turned him out as one might turn out an old trunk, throwing everything into confusion. He suspected himself now to be only a mawkish and callow youth, his reserves depleted. With indignation almost, he realized that here at last there was something for which he might even be prepared to die — something whose very crudity carried with it a winged message which pierced to the quick of his mind. Even in the darkness he could feel himself wanting to blush. It was absurd. To love was absurd, like being knocked off the mantelpiece. He caught himself wondering what his mother would think if she could picture them riding among the spectres of these palm-trees by a lake which mirrored a young moon, knee touching knee. ‘Are you happy?’ she whispered and he felt her lips brush his wrist. Lovers can find nothing to say to each other that has not been said and unsaid a thousand times over. Kisses were invented to translate such nothings into wounds. ‘Mountolive’ she said again, ‘David darling.’ — ‘Yes.’ — ‘You are so quiet. I thought you must be asleep.’ Mountolive frowned, confronting his own dispersed inner nature. ‘I was thinking’ he said. Once more he felt her lips on his wrist.

‘Darling.’

‘Darling.’

They rode on knee-to-knee until the old house came into view, built four-square upon the network of embankments which carved up the estuary and the sweet-water canals. The air was full of fruit-bats. The upper balconies of the house were brightly lit and here the invalid sat crookedly in his wheel-chair, staring jealously out at the night, waiting for them. Leila’s husband was dying of some obscure disease of the musculature, a progressive atrophy which cruelly emphasized the already great difference in their ages. His infirmity had hollowed him out into a cadaverous shell composed of rugs and shawls from which protruded two long sensitive hands. Saturnine of feature and with an uncouthness of mien which was echoed in his younger son’s face, his head was askew on his shoulders and in some lights resembled those carnival masks which are carried on poles. It only remains to be added that Leila loved him!

‘Leila loved him.’ In the silence of his own mind Mountolive could never think the words without mentally shrieking them like a parrot. How could she? He had asked himself over and over again. How could she?

As he heard the hooves of the horses on the cobbles of the courtyard, the husband urged his wheel-chair forward to the balcony’s edge, calling testily: ‘Leila, is that you?’ in the voice of an old child ready to be hurt by the warmth of her smile thrown upwards to him from the ground and the deep sweet contralto in which she answered him, mixing oriental submissiveness with the kind of comfort which only a child could understand. ‘Darling’. And running up the long wooden flights of stairs to embrace him, calling out ‘We are all safely back.’ Mountolive slowly dismounted in the courtyard, hearing the sick man’s sigh of relief. He busied himself with an unnecessary tightening of a girth rather than see them embrace. He was not jealous, but his incredulity pierced and wounded him. It was hateful to be young, to be maladroit, to feel carried out of one’s depth. How had all this come about? He felt a million miles away from England; his past had sloughed from him like a skin. The warm night was fragrant with jasmine and roses. Later if she came to his room he would become as still as a needle, speechless and thoughtless, taking that strangely youthful body in his arms almost without desire or regrets; his eyes closed then, like a man standing under an icy waterfall. He climbed the stairs slowly; she had made him aware that he was tall, upright and handsome.

‘Did you like it, Mountolive?’ croaked the invalid, with a voice in which floated (like oil in water) pride and suspicion. A tall negro servant wheeled a small table forward on which the decanter of whisky stood — a world of anomalies: to drink ‘sundowners’ like colonials in this old rambling house full of magnificent carpets, walls covered with assegais captured at Omdurman, and weird Second Empire furniture of a Turkish cast. ‘Sit’ he said, and Mountolive, smiling at him, sat, noticing that even here in the reception rooms there were books and periodicals lying about — symbols of the unsatisfied hunger for thought which Leila had never allowed to master her. Normally, she kept her books and papers in the harim, but they always overflowed into the house. Her husband had no share of this world. She tried as far as possible not to make him conscious of it, dreading his jealousy which had become troublesome as his physical incapacity increased. His sons were washing — somewhere Mountolive heard the sound of pouring water. Soon he would excuse himself and retire to change into a white suit for dinner. He drank and talked to the crumpled man in the wheel-chair in his low melodious voice. It seemed to him terrifying and improper to be the lover of his wife; and yet he was always breathless with surprise to see how naturally and simply Leila carried off the whole deception. (Her cool honeyed voice, etc.; he should try not to think of her too much.) He frowned and sipped his drink.

It had been quite difficult to find his way out to the lands to present his letter of introduction: the motor road still only ran as far as the ford, after which horses had to be used to reach the house among the canals. He had been marooned for nearly an hour before a kindly passer-by had offered him a horse on which he reached his destination. That day there had been nobody at home save the invalid. Mountolive noticed with some amusement that in reading the letter of introduction, couched in the flowery high style of Arabic, the invalid muttered aloud the conventional politenesses of reciprocity to the compliments he was reading just as if the writer of the letter had himself been present. Then at once he looked up tenderly into the face of the young Englishman and spoke, and Mountolive softly answered. ‘You will come and stay with us — it is the only way to improve your Arabic. For two months if you wish. My sons know English and will be delighted to converse with you; my wife also. It would be a blessing to them to have a new face, a stranger in the house. And my dear Nessim, though still so young, is in his last year at Oxford.’ Pride and pleasure glowed in his sunken eyes for a minute and flickered out to give place to the customary look of pain and chagrin. Illness invites contempt. A sick man knows it.

Mountolive had accepted, and by renouncing both home and local leave had obtained permission to stay for two months in the house of this Coptic squire. It was a complete departure from everything he had known to be thus included in the pattern of a family life based in and nourished by the unconscious pageantry of a feudalism which stretched back certainly as far as the Middle Ages, and perhaps beyond. The world of Burton, Beckford, Lady Hester…. Did they then still exist? But here, seen from the vantage point of someone inside the canvas his own imagination had painted, he had suddenly found the exotic becoming completely normal. Its poetry was irradiated by the unconsciousness with which it was lived. Mountolive who had already found the open sesame of language ready to hand, suddenly began to feel himself really penetrating a foreign country, foreign moeurs, for the first time. He felt as one always feels in such a case, namely the vertiginous pleasure of losing an old self and growing a new one to replace it. He felt he was slipping, losing so to speak the contours of himself. Is this the real meaning of education? He had begun transplanting a whole huge intact world from his imagination into die soil of his new life.

The Hosnani family itself was oddly assorted. The graceful Nessim and his mother were familiars of the spirit, belonging to the same intense world of intelligence and sensibility. He, the eldest son, was always on the watch to serve his mother, should she need a door opened or a handkerchief recovered from the ground. His English and French were perfect, impeccable as his manners, graceful and strong as his physique. Then, facing them across the candle-light, sat the other two: the invalid in his rugs, and the younger son, tough and brutish as a mastiff and with an indefinable air of being ready at any moment to answer a call to arms. Heavily built and ugly, he was nevertheless gentle; but you could see from the loving way he drank in each word uttered by his father where his love-allegiance lay. His simplicity shone in his eyes, and he too was ready to be of service, and indeed, when the work of the lands did not take him from the house, was always quick to dismiss the silent boy-servant who stood behind the wheel-chair and to serve his father with a glowing pride, glad even to pick him up bodily and take him tenderly, almost gloatingly to the lavatory. He regarded his mother with something like the pride and childish sadness which shone in the eyes of the cripple. Yet, though the brothers were divided in this way like twigs of olive, there was no breach between them — they were of the same branch and felt it, and they loved one another dearly, for they were in truth complementaries, the one being strong where the other was weak. Nessim feared bloodshed, manual work and bad manners: Narouz rejoiced in them all. And Leila? Mountolive of course found her a beautiful enigma when he might, had he been more experienced, have recognized in her naturalness a perfect simplicity of spirit and in her extravagant nature a temperament which had been denied its true unfolding, had fallen back with good grace among compromises. This marriage, for example, to a man so much older than herself had been one of arrangement — this was still Egypt. The fortunes of her family had been matched against the fortunes of the Hosnanis — it resembled, as all such unions do, a merger between two great companies. Whether she was happy or unhappy she herself had never thought to consider. She was hungry, that was all, hungry for the world of books and meetings which lay forever outside this old house and the heavy charges of the land which supported their fortunes. She was obedient and pliant, loyal as a finely-bred animal. Only a disorienting monotony beset her. When young she had completed her studies in Cairo brilliantly and for a few years nourished the hope of going to Europe to continue them. She had wanted to be a doctor. But at this time the women of Egypt were lucky if they could escape the black veil — let alone the narrow confines of Egyptian thought and society. Europe for the Egyptians was simply a shopping centre for the rich to visit. Naturally, she went several times to Paris with her parents and indeed fell in love with it as we all do, but when it came to attempting to breach the barriers of Egyptian habit and to escape the parental net altogether — escape into a life which might have nourished a clever brain — there she struck upon the rock of her parents’ conservatism. She must marry and make Egypt her home, they said coldly, and selected for her among the rich men of their acquaintance the kindliest and the most able they could find. Standing upon the cliff edge of these dreams, still beautiful and rich (and indeed, in Alexandrian society she was known as ‘the dark swallow’) Leila found everything becoming shadowy and insubstantial. She must conform. Of course, nobody would mind her visiting Europe with her husband every few years to shop or have a holiday…. But her life must belong to Egypt.

She gave in, responding at first with despair, later with resignation, to the life they had designed for her. Her husband was kind and thoughtful, but mentally something of a dullard. The life sapped her will. Her loyalty was such that she immersed herself in his affairs, living because he wished it far from the only capital which bore the remotest traces of a European way of life — Alexandria. For years now she had surrendered herself to the blunting airs of the Delta, and the monotony of life on the Hosnani lands. She lived mostly through Nessim who was being educated largely abroad and whose rare visits brought some life to the house. But to allay her own active curiosity about the world, she subscribed to books and periodicals in the four languages which she knew as well as her own, perhaps better, for nobody can think or feel only in the dimensionless obsolescence of Arabic. So it had been for many years now, a battle of resignations in which the element of despair only arose in the form of nervous illnesses for which her husband prescribed a not unintelligent specific — a ten-day holiday in Alexandria which always brought the colour back into her cheeks. But even these visits became in time more rare: she had insensibly slipped out of society and found herself less and less practised in the small talk and small ideas upon which it is based. The life of the city bored her. It was shallow as the waters of the great lake itself, derived; her powers of introspection sharpened with the years, and as her friends fell away only a few names and faces remained — Balthazar the doctor, for example, and Amaril and a few others. But Alexandria was soon to belong more fully to Nessim than to herself. When his studies ended he was to be conscripted into the banking house with its rapidly ramifying ancillaries, roots pushing out into shipping and oil and tungsten, roots needing water…. But by this time she would have become virtually a hermit.

This lonely life had made her feel somewhat unprepared for Mountolive, for the arrival of a stranger in their midst. On that first day she came in late from a desert ride and slipped into her place between her husband and his guest with some pleasurable excitement. Mountolive hardly looked at her, for the thrilling voice alone set up odd little vibrations in his heart which he registered but did not wish to study. She wore white jodhpurs and a yellow shirt with a scarf. Her smooth small hands were white and ringless. Neither of her sons appeared at lunch that day, and after the meal it was she who elected to show him round the house and gardens, already pleasantly astonished by the young man’s respectable Arabic and sound French. She treated him with the faintly apprehensive solicitude of a woman towards her only man-child. His genuine interest and desire to learn filled her with the emotions of a gratitude which surprised her. It was absurd; but then never had a stranger shown any desire to study and assess them, their language, religion and habits. And Mountolive’s manners were as perfect as his self-command was weak. They both walked about the rose-garden hearing each other’s voices in a sort of dream. They felt short of breath, almost as if they were suffocating.

When he said good-bye that night and accepted her husband’s invitation to return and stay with them, she was nowhere to be found. A servant brought a message to say that she was feeling indisposed with a headache and was lying down. But she waited for his return with a kind of obstinate and apprehensive attention.

He did, of course, meet both the brothers on the evening of that first day, for Nessim appeared in the afternoon from Alexandria and Mountolive instantly recognized in him a person of his own kind, a person whose life was a code. They responded to each other nervously, like a concord in music.

And Narouz. ‘Where is this old Narouz?’ she asked her husband as if the second son were his concern rather than hers, his stake in the world. ‘He has been locked in the incubators for forty days. Tomorrow he will return.’ Leila looked faintly embarrassed. ‘He is to be the farmer of the family, and Nessim the banker’ she explained to Mountolive, flushing slightly. Then, turning to her husband again, she said ‘May I take Mountolive to see Narouz at work?’ ‘Of course.’ Mountolive was enchanted by her pronunciation of his name. She uttered it with a French intonation, ‘Montolif’, and it sounded to him a most romantic name. This thought also was new. She took his arm and they walked through the rose-gardens and across the palm-plantations to where the incubators were housed in a long low building of earth-brick, constructed well below ground level. They knocked once or twice on a sunken door, but at last Leila impatiently pushed it open and they entered a narrow corridor with ten earthen ovens ranged along each side facing each other.

‘Close the door’ shouted a deep voice as Narouz rose from among a nest of cobwebs and came through the gloom to identify the intruders. Mountolive was somewhat intimidated by his scowl and hare-lip and the harshness of his shout; it was as if, despite his youth, they had intruded upon some tousled anchorite in a cliff-chapel. His skin was yellow and his eyes wrinkled from this long vigil. But when he saw them Narouz apologized and appeared delighted that they had troubled to visit him. He became at once proud and anxious to explain the workings of the incubators, and Leila tactfully left him a clear field. Mountolive already knew that the hatching of eggs by artificial heat was an art for which Egypt had been famous from the remotest antiquity and was delighted to be informed about the process. In this underground fairway full of ancient cobwebs and unswept dirt they talked techniques and temperatures with the equivocal dark eyes of the woman upon them, studying their contrasting physiques and manners, their voices. Narouz’ beautiful eyes were now alive and brilliant with pleasure. His guest’s lively interest seemed to thrill him too, and he explained everything in detail, even the strange technique by which egg-heats are judged in default of the thermometer, simply by placing the egg in the eye-socket.

Later, walking back through the rose-garden with Leila, Mountolive said: ‘How very nice your son is.’ And Leila, unexpectedly, blushed and hung her head. She answered in a low tone, with emotion: ‘It is so much on our conscience that we did not have his hare-lip sewn up in time. And afterwards the village children teased him, calling him a camel, and that hurt him. You know that a camel’s lip is split in two? No? It is. Narouz has had much to contend with.’ The young man walking at her side felt a sudden pang of sympathy for her. But he remained tongue-tied. And then, that evening, she had disappeared.

At the outset his own feelings somewhat confused him, but he was unused to introspection, unfamiliar so to speak with the entail of his own personality — in a word, as he was young he successfully dismissed them. (All this he repeated in his own mind afterwards, recalling every detail gravely to himself as he shaved in the old-fashioned mirror or tied a tie. He went over the whole business obsessively time and again, as if vicariously to provoke and master the whole new range of emotions which Leila had liberated in him. At times he would utter the imprecation ‘Damn’ under his breath, between set teeth, as if he were recalling in his own memory some fearful disaster. It was unpleasant to be forced to grow. It was thrilling to grow. He gravitated between fear and grotesque elation.)

They often rode together in the desert at her husband’s suggestion, and there one night of the full moon, lying together in a dune dusted soft by the wind to the contours of snow or snuff, he found himself confronted by a new version of Leila. They had eaten their dinner and talked by ghost-light. ‘Wait’ she said suddenly. ‘There is a crumb on your lip.’ And leaning forward she took it softly upon her own tongue. He felt the small warm tongue of an Egyptian cat upon his underlip for a moment. (This is where in his mind he always said the word ‘Damn’.) At this he turned pale and felt as if he were about to faint. But she was there so close, harmlessly close, smiling and wrinkling up her nose, that he could only take her in his arms, stumbling forward like a man into a mirror. Their muttering images met now like reflections on a surface of lake-water. His mind dispersed into a thousand pieces, winging away into the desert around them. The act of becoming lovers was so easy and was completed with such apparent lack of premeditation, that for a while he hardly knew himself what had happened. When his mind caught up with him he showed at once how young he was, stammering: ‘But why me, Leila?’ as if there was all the choice in the wide world before her, and was astonished when she lay back and repeated the words after him with what seemed like a musical contempt; the puerility of his question indeed annoyed her. ‘Why you? Because.’ And then, to Mountolive’s amazement, she recited in a low sweet voice a passage from one of her favourite authors.

‘There is a destiny now possible to us — the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy which we must now finally betray or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive.’

Mountolive listened to her voice with astonishment, pity and shame. It was clear that what she saw in him was something like a prototype of a nation which existed now only in her imagination. She was kissing and cherishing a painted image of England. It was for him the oddest experience in the world. He felt the tears come into his eyes as she continued the magnificent peroration, suiting her clear voice to the melody of the prose. ‘Or will you, youths of England, make your country again a royal throne of kings, a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions; a faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour, of goodwill towards men?’ The words began to vibrate in his skull.

‘Stop. Stop’ he cried sharply. ‘We are not like that any longer, Leila.’ It was an absurd book-fed dream this Copt had discovered and translated. He felt as if all those magical embraces had been somehow won under false pretences — as if her absurd thoughts were reducing the whole thing, diminishing the scale of it to something as shadowy and unreal as, say, a transaction with a woman of the streets. Can you fall in love with the stone effigy of a dead crusader?

‘You asked me why’ she said, still with contempt. ‘Because’ with a sigh ‘you are English, I suppose.’ (It surprised him each time he went over this scene in his mind and only an oath could express the astonishment of it. ‘Damn’.)

And then, like all the inexperienced lovers since the world began, he was not content to let things be; he must explore and evaluate them in his conscious mind. None of the answers she gave him was expected. If he mentioned her husband she at once became angry, interrupting him with withering directness: ‘I love him. I will not have him lightly spoken of. He is a noble man and I would never do anything to wound him.’

‘But … but …’ stammered the young Mountolive; and now, laughing at his perplexity, she once more put her arms about him saying ‘Fool. David, fool! It is he who told me to take you for a lover. Think — is he not wise in his way? Fearing to lose me altogether by a mischance? Have you never starved for love? Don’t you know how dangerous love is?’ No, he did not know.

What on earth was an Englishman to make of these strange patterns of thought, these confused and contending loyalties? He was struck dumb. ‘Only I must not fall in love and I won’t.’ Was this why she had elected to love Mountolive’s England through him rather than Mountolive himself? He could find no answer to this. The limitations of his immaturity tongue-tied him. He closed his eyes and felt as if he were falling backwards into black space. And Leila, divining this, found in him an innocence which was itself endearing: in a way she set herself to make a man of him, using every feminine warmth, every candour. He was both a lover to her and a sort of hapless man-child who could be guided by her towards his own growth. Only (she must have made the reservation quite clearly in her own mind) she must beware of any possible resentment which he might feel at this tutelage. So she hid her own experience and became for him almost a companion of his own age, sharing a complicity which somehow seemed so innocent, so beyond reproach, that even his sense of guilt was almost lulled, and he began to drink in through her a new resolution and self-confidence. He told himself with equal resolution that he also must respect her reservations and not fall in love, but this kind of dissociation is impossible for the young. He could not distinguish between his own various emotional needs, between passion-love and the sort of romance fed on narcissism. His desire strangled him. He could not qualify it. And here his English education hampered him at every step. He could not even feel happy without feeling guilty. But all this he did not know very clearly: he only half-guessed that he had discovered more than a lover, more than an accomplice. Leila was not only more experienced; to his utter chagrin he found that she was even better read, in his own language, than he was, and better instructed. But, as a model companion and lover, she never let him feel it. There are so many resources open to a woman of experience. She took refuge always in a tenderness which expressed itself in teasing. She chided his ignorance and provoked his curiosity. And she was amused by the effect of her passion on him — those kisses which fell burning like spittle upon a hot iron. Through her eyes he began to see Egypt once more — but extended through a new dimension. To have a grasp of the language was nothing, he now realized; for Leila exposed the hollowness of the knowledge when pitted against understanding.

An inveterate note-taker by habit, he found his little pocket diary now swollen with the data which emerged from their long rides together, but it was always data which concerned the country, for he did not dare to put down a single word about his feelings or so much as record even Leila’s name. In this manner:

‘Sunday. Riding through a poor fly-blown village my companion points to marks like cuneiform scratched on the walls of houses and asks if I can read them. Like a fool I say no, but perhaps they are Amharic? Laughter. Explanation is that a venerable pedlar who travels through here every six months carries a special henna from Medina, much esteemed here by virtue of its connection with the holy city. People are mostly too poor to pay, so he extends credit, but lest he or they forget, marks his tally on the clay wall with a sherd.

‘Monday. Ali says that shooting stars are stones thrown by the angels in heaven to drive off evil djinns when they try to eavesdrop on the conversations in Paradise and learn the secrets of the future. All Arabs terrified of the desert, even Bedouin. Strange.

‘Also: the pause in conversation which we call “Angels Passing” is greeted another way.After a moment of silence onesays:“Wahed Dhu” or “One is God” and then the whole company repeats fervently in response “LaIllah IllaAllah”or “NoGod but oneGod” before normal conversation is resumed. These little habits are extremely taking.

‘Also: my host uses a curious phrase when he speaks of retiring from business. He calls it “making his soul”.

‘Also: have never before tasted the Yemen coffee with a speck of ambergris to each cup. It is delicious.

‘Also: Mohammed Shebab offered me on meeting a touch of jasmine-scent from a phial with a glass stopper — as we would offer a cigarette in Europe.

‘Also: they love birds. In a tumbledown cemetery I saw graves with little drinking-wells cut in the marble for them which my companion told me were filled on Friday visits by women of the village.

‘Also: Ali, the Negro factor, an immense eunuch, told me that they feared above all blue eyes and red hair as evil signs. Odd that the examining angels in the Koran as their most repulsive features have blueeyes.’

So the young Mountolive noted and pondered upon the strange ways of the people among whom he had come to live, painstakingly as befitted a student of manners so remote from his own; yet also in a kind of ecstasy to find a sort of poetic correspondence between the reality and the dream-picture of the East which he had constructed from his reading. There was less of a disparity here than between the twin images which Leila appeared to nurse — a poetic image of England and its exemplar the shy and in many ways callow youth she had taken for a lover. But he was not altogether a fool; he was learning the two most important lessons in life: to make love honestly and to reflect.

Yet there were other episodes and scenes which touched and excited him in a different way. One day they all rode out across the plantations to visit the old nurse Halima, now living in honourable retirement. She had been the boys’ chief nurse and companion during their infancy. ‘She even suckled them when my milk dried up’ explained Leila.

Narouz gave a hoarse chuckle. ‘She was our “chewer”’ he explained to Mountolive. ‘Do you know the word?’ In Egypt at this time young children were fed by servants whose duty it was to chew the food up first before spoon-feeding them with it.

Halima was a freed black slave from the Sudan, and she too was ‘making her soul’ now in a little wattle house among the fields of sugar-cane, happily surrounded by innumerable children and grandchildren. It was impossible to judge her age. She was delighted out of all measure at the sight of the Hosnani youths, and Mountolive was touched by the way they both dismounted and raced into her embrace. Nor was Leila less affectionate. And when the old negress had recovered herself she insisted on executing a short dance in honour of their visit; oddly it was not without grace. They all stood around her affectionately clapping their hands in time while she turned first upon one heel and then upon the other; and as she ended her song their embraces and laughter were renewed. This unaffected and spontaneous tenderness delighted Mountolive and he looked upon his mistress with shining eyes in which she could read not only his love but a new respect. He was dying now to be alone with her, to embrace her; but he listened patiently while old Halima told him of the family’s qualities and how they had enabled her to visit the holy city twice as a recognition of her services. She kept one hand tenderly upon Narouz’ sleeve as she spoke, gazing into his face from time to time with the affection of an animal. Then when he unpacked from the dusty old game-bag he always carried all the presents they had brought for her, the smiles and dismays played over her old face successively like eclipses of the moon. She wept.

But there were other scenes, less palatable perhaps, but nonetheless representative of the moeurs of Egypt. One morning early he had witnessed a short incident which took place in the courtyard under his window. A dark youth stood uneasily here before a different Narouz, scowling fiercely yet with ebbing courage into those blue eyes. Mountolive had heard the words ‘Master, it Was no lie’ spoken twice in a low clear voice as he lay reading; he rose and walked to the window in time to see Narouz, who was repeating in a low, obstinate voice, pressed between his teeth into a hiss, the words ‘You lied again’, perform an act whose carnal brutality thrilled him; he was in time to see his host take out a knife from his belt and sever a portion of the boy’s ear-lobe, but slowly, and indeed softly, as one might sever a grape from its stalk with a fruit-knife. A wave of blood flowed down the servant’s neck but he stood still. ‘Now go’ said Narouz in the same diabolical hiss, ‘and tell your father that for every lie I will cut a piece of your flesh until we come to the true part, the part which does not lie.’ The boy suddenly broke into a staggering run and disappeared with a gasp. Narouz wiped his knife-blade on his baggy trousers and walked up the stairs into the house, whistling. Mountolive was spellbound!

And then (the variety of these incidents was the most bewildering thing about them) that very afternoon while out riding with Narouz they had reached the boundaries of the property where the desert began, and had here come upon a huge sacred tree hung with every manner of ex-voto by the childless or afflicted villagers; every twig seemed to have sprouted a hundred fluttering rags of cloth. Nearby was the shrine of some old hermit, long since dead, and whose name even had been forgotten except perhaps by a few aged villagers. The tumbledown tomb, however, was still a place of pilgrimage and intercession to Moslem and Copt alike; and it was here that, dismounting, Narouz said in the most natural manner in the world: ‘I always say a prayer here — let us pray together, eh?’ Mountolive felt somewhat abashed, but he dismounted without a word and they stood side by side at the dusty little tomb of the lost saint, Narouz with his eyes raised to the sky and an expression of demonic meekness upon his face. Mountolive imitated his pose exactly, forming his hands into a cup shape and placing them on his breast. Then they both bowed their heads and prayed for a long moment, after which Narouz expelled his breath in a long slow hiss, as if with relief, and made the gesture of drawing his fingers downwards across his face to absorb the blessing which flowed from the prayer. Mountolive imitated him, deeply touched.

‘Good. We have prayed now’ said Narouz with finality as they remounted and set off across the fields which lay silent under the sunlight save where the force-pumps sucked and wheezed as they pumped the lake-water into the irrigation channels. At the end of the long shady plantations, they encountered another, more familiar, sound, in the soughing of the wooden water-wheels, the sakkia of Egypt, and Narouz cocked an appreciative ear to the wind. ‘Listen’ he said, ‘listen to the sakkias. Do you know their story? At least, what the villagers say? Alexander the Great had asses’ ears though only one person knew his secret. That was his barber who was a Greek. Difficult to keep a secret if you are Greek! So the barber to relieve his soul went out into the fields and told it to a sakkia; ever since the sakkias are crying sadly to each other “Alexander has asses’ ears.” Is that not strange? Nessim says that in the museum at Alexandria there is a portrait of Alexander wearing the horns of Ammon and perhaps this tale is a survival. Who can tell?’

They rode in silence for a while. ‘I hate to think I shall be leaving you next week’ said Mountolive. ‘It has been a wonderful time.’ A curious expression appeared on Narouz’ face, compounded of doubt and uneasy pleasure, and somewhere in between them a kind of animal resentment which Mountolive told himself was perhaps jealousy — jealousy of his mother? He watched the stern profile curiously, unsure quite how to interpret these matters to himself. After all, Leila’s affairs were her own concern, were they not? Or perhaps their love-affair had somehow impinged upon the family feeling, so tightly were the duties and affections of the Hosnani family bound? He would have liked to speak freely to the brothers. Nessim at least would understand and sympathize with him, but thinking of Narouz he began to doubt. The younger brother — one could not quite trust him somehow. The early atmosphere of gratitude and delight in the visitor had subtly changed — though he could not trace an open hint of animosity or reserve. No, it was more subtle, less definable. Perhaps, thought Mountolive all at once, he had manufactured this feeling entirely out of his own sense of guilt? He wondered, watching the darkly bitter profile of Narouz. He rode beside him, deeply bemused by the thought.

He could not of course identify what it was that preoccupied the younger brother, for indeed it was a little scene which had taken place without his knowledge one night some weeks previously, while the household slept. At certain times the invalid took it into his head to stay up later than usual, to sit on the balcony in his wheel-chair and read late, usually some manual of estate management, or forestry, or whatnot. At such times the dutiful Narouz would settle himself upon a divan in the next room and wait, patiently as a dog, for the signal to help his father away to bed; he himself never read a book or paper if he could help it. But he enjoyed lying in the yellow lamplight, picking his teeth with a match and brooding until he heard the hoarse waspish voice of his father call his name.

On the night in question he must have dozed off, for when he woke he found to his surprise that all was dark. A brilliant moonlight flooded the room and the balcony, but the lights had been extinguished by an unknown hand. He started up. Astonishingly, the balcony was empty. For a moment, Narouz thought he must be dreaming, for never before had his father gone to bed alone. Yet standing there in the moonlight, battling with this sense of incomprehension and doubt, he thought he heard the sound of the wheel-chair’s rubber tyres rolling upon the wooden boards of the invalid’s bedroom. This was an astonishing departure from accepted routine. He crossed the balcony and tiptoed down the corridor in amazement. The door of his father’s room was open. He peered inside. The room was full of moonlight. He heard the bump of the wheels upon the chest of drawers and a scrabble of fingers groping for a knob. Then he heard a drawer pulled open, and a sense of dismay filled him for he remembered that in it was kept the old Colt revolver which belonged to his father. He suddenly found himself unable to move or speak as he heard the breech snapped open and the unmistakable sound of paper rustling — a sound immediately interpreted by his memory. Then the small precise click of the shells slipping into the chambers. It was as if he were trapped in one of those dreams where one is running with all one’s might and yet unable to move from the same spot. As the breech snapped home and the weapon was assembled, Narouz gathered himself together to walk boldly into the room but found that he could not move. His spine got pins and needles and he felt the hair bristle up on the back of his neck. Overcome by one of the horrifying inhibitions of early childhood he could do no more than take a single slow step forward and halt in the doorway, his teeth clenched to prevent them chattering.

The moonlight shone directly on to the mirror, and by its reflected light he could see his father sitting upright in his chair, confronting his own image with an expression on his face which Narouz had never before seen. It was bleak and impassive, and in that ghostly derived light from the pierglass it looked denuded of all human feeling, picked clean by the emotions which had been steadily sapping it. The younger son watched as if mesmerized. (Once, in early childhood, he had seen something like it — but not quite as stern, not quite as withdrawn as this: yet something like it. That was when his father was describing the death of the evil factor Mahmoud, when he said grimly: So they came and tied him to a tree. Et on lui a coupé les choses and stuffed them into his mouth.’As a child it was enough just to repeat the words and recall the expression on his father’s face to make Narouz feel on the point of fainting. Now this incident came back to him with redoubled terror as he saw the invalid confronting himself in a moonlight image, slowly raising the pistol to point it, not at his temple, but at the mirror, as he repeated in a hoarse croaking voice: ‘And now if she should fall in love, you know what you must do.’)

Presently there was a silence and a single dry weary sob. Narouz felt tears of sympathy come into his eyes but still the spell held him; he could neither move nor speak nor even sob aloud. His father’s head sank down on his breast, and his pistol-hand fell with it until Narouz heard the faint tap of the barrel on the floor. A long thrilling silence fell in the room, in the corridor, on the balcony, the gardens everywhere — the silence of a relief which once more let the imprisoned blood flow in his heart and veins. (Somewhere sighing in her sleep Leila must have turned, pressing her disputed white arms to a cool place among the pillows.) A single mosquito droned. The spell dissolved.

Narouz retired down the corridor to the balcony where he stood for a moment fighting with his tears before calling ‘Father’; his voice was squeaky and nervous — the voice of a schoolboy. At once the light went on in his father’s room, a drawer closed, and he heard the noise of rubber rolling on wood. He waited for a long second and presently came the familiar testy growl ‘Narouz’ which told him that everything was well. He blew his nose in his sleeve and hurried into the bedroom. His father was sitting facing the door with a book upon his knees. ‘Lazy brute’ he said, ‘I could not wake you.’

‘I’m sorry’ said Narouz. He was all of a sudden delighted. So great was his relief that he suddenly wished to abase himself, to be sworn at, to be abused. ‘I am a lazy brute, a thoughtless swine, a grain of salt’ he said eagerly, hoping to provoke his father into still more wounding reproaches. He was smiling. He wanted to bathe voluptuously in the sick man’s fury.

‘Get me to bed’ said the invalid shortly, and his son stooped with lustful tenderness to gather up that wasted body from the wheel-chair, inexpressibly relieved that there was still breath in it….

But how indeed was Mountolive to know all this? He only recognized a reserve in Narouz which was absent from the gently smiling Nessim. As for the father of Narouz, he was quite frankly disturbed by him, by his sick hanging head, and the self-pity which his voice exuded. Unhappily, too, there was another conflict which had to find an issue somehow, and this time Mountolive unwittingly provided an opening by committing one of those gaffes which diplomats, more than any other tribe, fear and dread; the memory of which can keep them awake at nights for years. It was an absurd enough slip, but it gave the sick man an excuse for an outburst which Mountolive recognized as characteristic. It all happened at table, during dinner one evening, and at first the company laughed easily enough over it — and in the expanding circle of their communal amusement there was no bitterness, only the smiling protest of Leila: ‘But my dear David, we are not Moslems, but Christians like yourself.’ Of course he had known this; how could his words have slipped out? It was one of those dreadful remarks which once uttered seem not only inexcusable but also impossible to repair. Nessim, however, appeared delighted rather than offended, and with his usual tact, did not permit himself to laugh aloud without touching his friend’s wrist with his hand, lest by chance Mountolive might think the laughter directed at him rather than at his mistake. Yet, as the laughter itself fell away, he became consciously aware that a wound had been opened from the flinty features of the man in the wheel-chair who alone did not smile. ‘I see nothing to smile at.’ His fingers plucked at the shiny arms of the chair. ‘Nothing at all. The slip exactly expresses the British point of view — the view with which we Copts have always had to contend. There were never any differences between us and the Moslems in Egypt before they came. The British have taught the Moslems to hate the Copts and to discriminate against them. Yes, Mountolive, the British. Pay heed to my words.’

‘I am sorry’ stammered Mountolive, still trying to atone for his gaffe.

‘I am not’ said the invalid. ‘It is good that we should mention these matters openly because we Copts feel them in here, in our deepest hearts. The British have made the Moslems oppress us. Study the Commission. Talk to your compatriots there about the Copts and you will hear their contempt and loathing of us. They have inoculated the Moslems with it.’

‘Oh, surely, Sir!’ said Mountolive, in an agony of apology.

‘Surely’ asseverated the sick man, nodding his head upon that sprained stalk of neck. ‘We know the truth.’ Leila made some small involuntary gesture, almost a signal, as if to stop her husband before he was fully launched into a harangue, but he did not heed her. He sat back chewing a piece of bread and said indistinctly: ‘But then what do you, what does any Englishman know or care of the Copts? An obscure religious heresy, they think, a debased language with a liturgy hopelessly confused by Arabic and Greek. It has always been so. When the first Crusade captured Jerusalem it was expressly ruled that no Copt enter the city — our Holy City. So little could those Western Christians distinguish between Moslems who defeated them at Askelon and the Copts — the only branch of the Christian Church which was thoroughly integrated into the Orient! But then your good Bishop of Salisbury openly said he considered these Oriental Christians as worse than infidels, and your Crusaders massacred them joyfully.’ An expression of bitterness translated into a cruel smile lit up his features for a moment. Then, as his customary morose hangdog expression appeared, licking his lips he plunged once more into an argument the matter of which, Mountolive suddenly realized, had been preying upon his secret mind from the first day of his visit. He had indeed carried the whole of this conversation stacked up inside him, waiting for the moment to launch it. Narouz gazed at his father with sympathetic adoration, his features copying their expression from what was said — pride, at the words ‘Our Holy City’, anger at the words ‘worse than infidels’. Leila sat pale and absorbed, looking out towards the balcony; only Nessim looked serious yet easy in spirit. He watched his father sympathetically and respectfully but without visible emotion. He was still almost smiling.

‘Do you know what they call us — the Moslems?’ Once more his head wagged. ‘I will tell you. Gins Pharoony. Yes, we are genus Pharaonicus — the true descendants of the ancients, the true marrow of Egypt. We call ourselves Gypt — ancient Egyptians. Yet we are Christians like you, only of the oldest and purest strain. And all through we have been the brains of Egypt — even in the time of the Khedive. Despite persecutions we have held an honoured place here; our Christianity has always been respected. Here in Egypt, not there in Europe. Yes, the Moslems who have hated Greek and Jew have recognized in the Copt the true inheritor of the ancient Egyptian strain. When Mohammed Ali came to Egypt he put all the financial affairs of the country into the hands of the Copts. So did Ismail his successor. Again and again you will find that Egypt was to all intents and purposes ruled by us, the despised Copts, because we had more brains and more integrity than the others. Indeed, when Mohammed Ali first arrived he found a Copt in charge of all state affairs and made him his Grand Vizier.’

‘Ibrahim E. Gohari’ said Narouz with the triumphant air of a schoolboy who can recite his lesson correctly.

‘Exactly’ echoed his father, no less triumphantly. ‘He was the only Egyptian permitted to smoke his pipe in the presence of the first of the Khedives. A Copt!’

Mountolive was cursing the slip which had led him to receive this curtain lecture, and yet at the same time listening with great attention. These grievances were obviously deeply felt. ‘And when Gohari died where did Mohammed Ali turn?’

‘To Ghali Doss’ said Narouz again, delightedly.

‘Exactly. As Chancellor of the Exchequer he had full powers over revenue and taxation. A Copt. Another Copt. And his son Basileus was made a Bey and a member of the Privy Council. These men ruled Egypt with honour; and there were many of them given great appointments.’

‘Sedarous Takla in Esneh’ said Narouz, ‘Shehata Hasaballah in Assiout, Girgis Yacoub in Beni Souef.’ His eyes shone as he spoke and he basked like a serpent in the warmth of his father’s approbation. ‘Yes,’ cried the invalid, striking his chair-arm with his hand. ‘Yes. And even under Said and Ismail the Copts played their part. The public prosecutor in every province was a Copt. Do you realize what that means? The reposing of such a trust in a Christian minority? The Moslems knew us, they knew we were Egyptians first and Christians afterwards. Christian Egyptians — have you British with your romantic ideas about Moslems ever thought what the words mean? The only Christian Orientals fully integrated into a Moslem state? It would be the dream of Germans to discover such a key to Egypt, would it not? Everywhere Christians in positions of trust, in key positions as mudirs, Governors, and so on. Under Ismail a Copt held the Ministry of War.’

‘Ayad Bey Hanna’ said Narouz with relish.

‘Yes. Even under Arabi a Coptic Minister of Justice. And a Court Master of Ceremonies. Both Copts. And others, many others.’

‘How did all this change?’ said Mountolive quietly, and the sick man levered himself up in his rugs to point a shaking finger at his guest and say: ‘The British changed it, with their hatred of the Copts. Gorst initiated a diplomatic friendship with Khedive Abbas, and as a result of his schemes not a single Copt was to be found in the entourage of the Court or even in the services of its departments. Indeed, if you spoke to the men who surrounded that corrupt and bestial man, supported by the British, you would have been led to think that the enemy was the Christian part of the nation. At this point, let me read you something.’ Here Narouz, swiftly as a well-rehearsed acolyte, slipped into the next room and returned with a book with a marker in it. He laid it open on the lap of his father and returned in a flash to his seat. Clearing his throat the sick man read harshly: ‘“When the British took control of Egypt the Copts occupied a number of the highest positions in the State. In less than a quarter of a century almost all the Coptic Heads of Departments had disappeared. They were at first fully represented in the bench of judges, but gradually the number was reduced to nil; the process of removing them and shutting the door against fresh appointments has gone on until they have been reduced to a state of discouragement bordering on despair!” These are the words of an Englishman. It is to his honour that he has written them.’ He snapped the book shut and went on. ‘Today, with British rule, the Copt is debarred from holding the position of Governor or even of Mamur — the administrative magistrate of a province. Even those who work for the Government are compelled to work on Sunday because, in deference to the Moslems, Friday has been made a day of prayer. No provision has been made for the Copts to worship. They are not even properly represented on Government Councils and Committees. They pay large taxes for education — but no provision is made that such money goes towards Christian education. It is all Islamic. But I will not weary you with the rest of our grievances. Only that you should understand why we feel that Britain hates us and wishes to stamp us out.’

‘I don’t think that can be so’ said Mountolive feebly, now rendered somewhat breathless by the forthrightness of the criticism but unaware how to deal with it. All this matter was entirely new to him for his studies had consisted only in reading the conventional study by Lane as the true Gospel on Egypt. The sick man nodded again, as if with each nod he drove his point home a little deeper. Narouz, whose face like a mirror had reflected the various feelings of the conversation, nodded too. Then the father pointed at his eldest son. ‘Nessim’ he said, ‘look at him. A true Copt. Brilliant, reserved. What an ornament he would make to the Egyptian diplomatic service. Eh? As a diplomat-to-be you should judge better than I. But no. He will be a businessman because we Copts know that it is useless, useless.’ He banged the arm of his wheel-chair again, and the spittle came up into his mouth.