Jerusalem Commands

ELEVEN

THE PEOPLE whom you would call heathen or ignorant or merely ‘alien’ have amongst them as many heroes and great men, as many possessed of the finest virtues, as any Christian society; you would recognise as many amongst them as malcontents or evil-doers (the kind who sometimes rise to power over you) as you observe amongst yourselves. So why do you therefore single out and exaggerate these minor differences between you, so that you may feel free to mock and attack them? Is this not a true sin of Pride?

What possible virtue is there in all this terrible competing and quarrelling? You are like a rabble in a maze fighting amongst yourselves rather than pooling your resources to find a way through, to make a common plan. We are all frightened, all desperate for certainty. Not one of us does not secretly yearn to be given a real reason why we should suffer so and then die, perhaps even a reason why some win all life’s rewards, when the equally gifted (or equally ungifted) are allowed to exist in perpetual squalor. We refuse to accept the random qualities of God’s universe, and until we accept them, we shall be forever quarrelling in a maze of our own creation. A political creed is a maze. A religion can be a maze. Even simple faith can create a maze - for we impose simple models upon that which is not simple - as Americans visiting London attempt to impose a grid system upon the tangled streets. Their logic not only fails them at this point - they become fearful. Their inability to cope with the warren of streets encourages them to curse the fools who did not have the sense to simplify and lay a rule upon their city. The simple-minded dinosaur did not survive; he could not cope with change. Only by accepting the world as it is and fulfilling our lives in an unpredictable world can we ever know the universal harmony the majority of us long for. Contrary to what these hippies believe, harmony can be achieved by political and philosophical means; so long as the means are not imposed but are presented as arguments in a natural ‘pluralist’ democracy where humane Reason and uncorrupted Law are commonly respected. This is not too much to hope. The means is there. The only logical means of satisfying all Man’s spiritual, physical and psychological needs under a single idea which accepts plurality as its fundamental faith. I speak of the true church, the Church of Constantine, the First Christian Emperor. Ah, Tsar, remebre vus! The little girls scream in the cathedral. Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison! The ghost is risen and those temples were so cold one might have thought their contents cryogenically preserved and that the entire Dead of Egypt would, thanks to our warming blood, begin to rise and walk the earth again. Die Geschichte ist niemals gleich; doch es kommt vor, das Ereignisse sich wiederholen. Thus did Hannibal command his legions, ‘Rise from the ashes, and fight again!’ So Carthage sleeps; beautiful Carthage stirs; golden, heathen Carthage groans and opens up one hot and greedy eye to behold the Valley of the Nile, the fertile wonder of our world, the verdant birthplace of all we value and the fount of all we ever knew.

Mother Egypt, our universal Mother Egypt! With what great beauty were you dressed, mother; in what rich splendour! And all the vivid colours of Africa and all the subtleties of an English spring harmonise in you. You are forever beautiful, mother. Even your squalor, your vice, your danger, is beautiful. You were half-beast, still, when you began to build your nation. Your very diseases are exotic and beautiful. Mother Egypt! Mother Egypt! I had not expected you to be so beautiful. L’histoire est un perpetuel recommencement. The Greeks understood this. Even the gods must submit to fate.

Carthage opens up her other eye - and there lies Europe, luscious and rich. Sweet Europe, from the wheatlands of Ukraine to the apple trees of Kent, the pine forests of Lapland, the olive groves of Greece and Spain, the rich cities of the Romans. And Carthage blinks and Carthage grins and golden, mighty, wakening Carthage grinds her savage teeth and licks her scarlet lips and her burning breath stinks of roses. She prepares to feast. Soon, we shall all be silenced. Frightened and bribed into perpetual passivity we shall become no more than the domesticated cattle of Carthage. Then Carthage shall have no need of arms. She shall not need to hunt. Great Carthage becomes a financier and feeds the cows and chickens at weekends, a gentleman farmer called Collins or Carter or Green or some such reassuring English name. This is how Carthage, barbaric and devious, shall enslave us without our ever knowing it. Anyone detecting a glimmer of this truth, who attempts to broadcast the news of our imminent conquest and humiliation, is at best shunned as a lunatic, at worst killed in torment as a lesson to the rest never to utter the fact that our very souls are mortgaged to Satan.

I set this down meo periculo, at my own risk, but I am well aware that no public is likely to see it. Carthage has won not only our bodies but our minds. To her advantage she has learned from English insularity.

Now no one will ever let me tell the truth lest they too enjoy my punishment. They see a great man already humiliated and reduced. The Bishop said so to Mrs Cornelius. Like Abdias in the story, I learned all I know by suffering, by travel and intellectual solitude. Unlike his creator Stifter, I see no special virtue in Abdias’s suffering, solitude or even his travels. I never sought them out. But neither would I let their threat deter me from my course. I once thought I was doomed to wander until Judgement Day, doomed to speak the truth and never be heard.

We should live in harmony with Nature. I am prepared to provide the means by which that is possible. The Gods learned to live with random Nature. Tieck knew that and all the great German writers. We must use our ingenuity to live in accord with Nature, not try to overpower her! My flying cities allow Nature to exist without interference from us and yet remain there to be enjoyed whenever we wish.

Throughout all my vicissitudes this has been my dream. I have a gift for the world. Why would they accept so much dross from those frauds - from Marx and Einstein? What makes Faust a villain and Freud a saviour? There is one obvious answer but of course we are not allowed to give it any more. We have been fully conquered. Already we are refused the basic right to identify our masters. We are fully enslaved. We are even ruled by the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, who as everyone knows bought their titles in Warsaw! I have a leaflet which proves it. It was written by one of those old churchmen from the Polish Club. The Poles of all people know the perfidy of Carthage. They prize Christian chivalry above everything. No wonder the women complain. Chivalry and good manners are a thing of the past. Once a man had to court his woman, prove his wit, his talent and his courage. Today it is all godless, joyless power-coupling - the boy to boast, the girl to feel even a taste of loving a man, her common sisterly dream, virgin or whore. For true love is all, the only dream she is allowed to call her own. Assured that this chimera is theirs to achieve through appropriate acts of obeisance and devotion to men, by appropriate speech and appropriate dress, the women become devious and spiteful. The boys are taught that to fuck and vomit are the two truest tests of status in their community. Their football chants must be a clue. We’re here because we’re here. The desperate call of nihilists down the centuries. We want, ra-ra-ra. We want, ra-ra-ra. We’ll never walk alone! I did it my way. The dumb confidence of the herd. The women I could save. The men are hopeless. They should be sent to the Gold Coast or the Congo or the Andes. One day I shall write about my months in South America following the shipwreck of the John Wesley. I have ever since had a phobia of snakes and alligators which I suspect will stay with me for eternity. We went to The Wandering Jew at the Majestic in Lisbon. It was almost as good as the play, with Matheson Lang recreating his famous rôle. I was deeply moved by the final speech when, refusing to renounce his faith to the Inquisition, Mateus says: ‘The spirit of your Christ is nearer to my heart as I stand here - a Jew - than it could be to those who would so thrust Him between their lips.’ A wonderful speech. I wept. They had a full orchestra. Is this anti-Semitism? The message of the film was clear - we are becoming so far divorced from the virtues of our religion that it takes a noble and envying Jew to show us that what we have is of infinite value. I have pointed this out more than once to that yentzer Barnum, who runs the Festival Novelties in Elgin Crescent, though half of it is toys now. I say his skull is as empty as one of the giant pantomime heads in his window. He says I am just an old Judenhetze. I say this is ridiculous. How can I be? True, he says, it is a miracle to hear such mishegass. Maybe Charlie Chaplin was Adolf Hitler, after all. ‘A split personality, maybe.’

‘It is you who are crazy, my friend,’ I tell him. ‘My God, what nonsense I have to suffer. One of my oldest friends was a Jew. From Odessa. I owe my life to him. Does this make me a likely anti-Semite?’

He cannot answer. They never can, these ‘wise’ guys.

Rabbi Davidson up the street, on the other side of the bridge, claims so much greater an understanding of religion and the world than I. He can never have known the temptations and the terrors of the wilderness, the luxurious pleasures and forbidden tortures of the Orient. I know the East. I have personally experienced the world that gave birth to our common Testament. If I understand nothing else I understand religion. Davidson knows I respect his position and his faith, but I always defeat him in finding Talmudic examples or something from the Apocrypha. He says to me, ‘I believe you must have lived since time began, Colonel Pyatnitski.’

‘No,’ I tell him, ‘I was born when Christ was born.’

He recognises symbolism and plays on words, but only on that rather primitive level of the English who gave the world Browning and then refused to understand him. He is famous today for his passing whimsies, the firearms which bear his name and some verses done for children and old friends. And, of course, for his long-standing feud with John Gielgud, the cinema star. It was on the television recently. When I asked her why she was crying, Mrs Cornelius said she felt sorry for the dog. I had just come out of the toilet and didn’t understand her. ‘Flush,’ she said. ‘Flush!’

It is true I have become a little absent-minded about this. My recent memories are sometimes hazy but I can recall the smell of the vast sweet mint fields gathered up to the walls of Fez like a besieging army, and Alexandria where her mint is diffused to form a liquor that is like drinking scented air which brings springtime back to old men. Who knows what real mint is like now? Today it is debased to flavour envelopes, lavatory cleaner, toothpaste and sex-creams. We had to make do with Vaseline in my day and then the only flavour was petroleum! The pilot brought us into busy Alexandria and even from the lanes I could smell the heady breeze of the real Africa brought to us down from the Nile. On that cool Mediterranean morning when with visible breath we ascended to the deck to find the mist not completely lifted off the water, I imagined I would enjoy a view of Greek and Roman grandeur, rising above the lesser architecture of Turk and Arab, for Captain Quelch had entirely failed to impress me with his insistence on Alexandria’s quintessential dullness. Instead I saw the municipal buildings of provincial England, laid out wherever possible with the kind of flower-gardens one finds assembled in Swiss cities (though a little more wilted), with a minaret here and there as a tasteful reminder of our geographical reality. Here, indeed, was the reassuring Gothic granite and Queen Anne brick of some faintly exotic Bradford. Yet she had a reassuring stateliness and I admired the efficiency of her huge harbour. Ships of the British Merchant Navy were around us on all sides, in company with equally smart ships from the major civilised nations. It was to avoid the ‘miscellaneous’ dock, full of unsavoury native tugs, dhows and rusty tramps from the four corners of the earth, that Captain Quelch, flying a prominent Stars and Stripes, announced himself to our pilot as ‘Samuel Goldwyn’s party’, a fact which was quietly relayed to those on shore, and got the usual escort of honour from our culture-starved sailors who knew the secret identities of their film favourites better than they knew their mothers’ Christian names. Today only Hollywood provides that universal glory once the sole privilege of Alexander the Great. And so remote were these Englishmen from the centres of civilisation that they were keenly prepared to believe us the stars of a dozen as yet unseen epics. Some of them did not even know of the Arbuckle scandal! Had we wished, we could have cheated them of everything they valued, just as itinerant relic-sellers and blessing-brokers of the Middle Ages went amongst ignorant villagers far from Rome or Paris. The sense of power was enormous. These people longed for stories, for glamour, just as their ancestors had. And we, of course, could provide it, perhaps in even larger quantities than Norma Talmadge or John Gilbert, for we had seen all aspects of Hollywood - from its lowest vices to its highest aspirations - and between us could give them far more than any film would ever provide. The pilot apologised. There were extremely tedious and meticulous customs and immigration rules for American citizens bringing special equipment, especially photographic equipment, into the country and it would take several hours to clear us. Almost immediately after we had docked a rosy lieutenant presented the Governor’s compliments, together with his regrets that he was not able to welcome us personally, but that our party was invited to a special reception the following evening. Meanwhile all facilities were at our disposal.

Captain Quelch had, that morning, received a couple of wirelesses which he had told the operator to say nothing about. Eager for news of my missing reels, I had been with him in the Radio Room when he had dropped in on his way to the bridge. One wire was from Goldfish and this he showed me, but the other he folded and placed inside his white cotton jacket. He wore civilian clothes, this morning, apart from his cap and had the air of a man going courting, I said. He laughed. I was not far from the truth, he told me, tra-la-la. Was the Goldfish message of any immediate interest?

title change needed try old stop await new star arriving air alex imminent stop do not proceed until you have started stop we have prince of india stop we do one location reel for this stop ignore all previous messages stop confirm egyptian chariot track stop s.g.

The telegram is in my scrapbook. It is what is left of the evidence of my fame. Mrs Cornelius has more things in her boxes, she says, but lately she told me that the rats had got into the paper as the maggots got into the clothes in her cellar, so I suppose my clippings are returning to the slime as maggots crawl across the frozen moments, the rotting stills of long-since-crumbled celluloid. I only have this because, absent-mindedly, I forgot to show it to the others. I was thrown out, I think, by the notion of a rival actor coming to break up our circle just as things were going well again. Was the star a Constance Bennett or a Barrymore? Goldfish was famous for his sudden decisions to introduce ‘quality’ - or more money - into a project. I put this unpleasant idea from my mind and, in doing so, forgot the wire until I found it again, much later. By noon, after the excitement of the British welcoming party, we were receiving yet another visitor who, by his appearance, could be none other than the captain’s brother, Professor Quelch, who came aboard, swinging his way up with a sprightliness which cost him most of his breath by the time he was on deck attempting to apologise. ‘Awfully sorry - dashed train - always late - should have left earlier - my fault - how do you do. Malcolm Quelch.’ And I grasped a bony, weather-beaten hand extending from a body even more angular than his brother’s. ‘Hope you people got my wire. I replied as soon as -’ A sign from Captain Quelch silenced him and he shook my hand with silent, bewildered fury while waiting for his brother to rescue him.

‘How could you have known we were arriving, Malcolm? The papers, I suppose! Something from Casablanca? I say, isn’t it amazing what communications have come to?’ Clearly Captain Quelch had planned for our arrival to coincide with his brother’s, so that a good British guide should at once be available to us. I saw nothing wrong in this. Captain Quelch’s chief concern was for our safety. He knew that he could trust his brother to look after us with the same conscientious good sense as he had. I, for one, was grateful.

‘Keepin’ it in ther family are we, gents?’ Mrs Cornelius grinned at the world in general. ‘Enjoy a drink, do yer, prof?’

Only just recovering himself, the tall academic, whose sallow features resembled ancient papyrus, whose jaw was if anything more lantern, his nose more a predatory beak, than his brother’s, and whose grey-blue eyes had the quality of a faded tomb-painting, turned what became a mild blink upon my friend. ‘Not at all, madam. I am a strict teetotaller born. My family are all TT.’

‘Totally tipsy, wot?’ Laughing, she slapped him on the back. He wore a crumpled European suit which, like his skin, had turned yellow in the Egyptian sun. He had removed his panama as he came aboard. His black, greying hair was stuck thinly against his scalp by sweat which he now attempted to mop with a handkerchief so well-laundered that it was almost startling against that otherwise somewhat weathered figure. He gave up a small, uncertain smile. I shall never know the reason why she accepted one person as readily as she rejected another. For my part I was glad I had purchased, very reasonably from Captain Quelch, a long-term supply of coca. His brother seemed something of a prig and would probably be shocked at any suggestion of his helping me obtain an illicit drug. Egypt was famous for its drug traffic. British-run customs people were forever alert on the seas and in the deserts, where the camel trains brought hashish, opium and heroin along the old trade-routes from Asia. But I did not wish to misjudge Malcolm Quelch. Perhaps one needed such people in Egypt to remind us to maintain at all times our European standards. He was what the Greeks call kalokagathos, the perfect gentleman. And a scholar, as I was to discover very quickly. He asked if we had enjoyed the ‘innumerable laughter of the waves’ - ‘kymaton anerithmon gelasma, as Aeschylus has it?’

‘Sorry, I wosn’t payin’ attention the first time neiver,’ said Mrs Cornelius, offering him a hug around his bony shoulders and causing his mouth to pop open in surprise as she bellowed good-humouredly into his face. ‘You’ll do, prof. Ho! Ho!’

The ill-named Wolf Seaman came pounding around the deck in a running costume which displayed the very hairs of his body, he had grown so plump. The suit alone was tight enough to provide the agony on his face as he came to a florid stop before us and glared through sweat and tears at the newcomer. ‘Good afternoon? Sir.’

‘This is Perfessor Q. - Don Q’s better-educated bruwer.’ Her arm tightly about Quelch’s waist, Mrs Cornelius steered him like a salvager with a new prize towards her would-be Svengali, her surly paramour. ‘Perfessor, this is Sweden’s greatest artist since ‘Ans Andersen. ‘E’s made orl sorts o’ posh pictures. An’ I’ve bin in some of ‘em meself.’ This with one of her smiles at the disconcerted archaeologist who lifted his hat to Seaman and to everyone else, as if he had just stepped by accident into a play in which he was expected to perform a part. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘viva, valeque, I must say.’

‘We’ll go to the saloon, I think, for a confab, shall we?’ says Captain Quelch with firm determination, for some reason wanting his brother off the deck. And we all troop down to the liar, where Captain Quelch himself acts as jerk and serves us our choices. His brother takes a soda-water and Captain Quelch does the same, in deference, no doubt, to their dead parents. And the first thing we do is toast the King of England, the King of Egypt, the President of the United States and Samuel Goldfish. The ice broken, we gather round a rather more relaxed Professor Quelch, who does not seem to mind being entirely surrounded by people with cocktails in their hands, who listen to the phonograph and try to help him join in the choruses of the songs. ‘Vive la bagatelle!’ he pronounces, and proves himself less of a prude than I had at first supposed. But he will not be, I fear, the comrade that Captain Quelch has been to me.

The celebration settled down as lunch was served by our happy laskars, who were no doubt looking forward to their own shore-leave. Professor Quelch was an expert on all things Egyptian. Indeed, the Ancient World seemed more familiar to him than the Modern and it was easy to see that he felt considerably more enthusiasm for problems of hieroglyphic interpretation than for the passing heroes and heroines of the moving-picture theatre, while Romance, I suspected, found fullest expression in the mystery of an oddly-coloured ankh held by one of the less prominent Egyptian deities. He also had a rather confusing narrative style. Nonetheless Malcolm Quelch seemed the man we needed to guide us through both the shadow-realms of the distant past and the alleys and temptations of our immediate present. Certainly as shore beckoned there was much talk of temptation amongst the film-crew. Malcolm Quelch won the approval of our team and displayed his ability to respond to practical needs by recommending a salon des poules which, he guaranteed, was both safe and versatile. Only Esmé did not take to him and went below almost immediately to see, she said, to her packing. Seaman, too, divorced himself early from the happy table, needing solitude, he said, in which to mature his ideas. His absence displeased nobody. There was a noticeably looser atmosphere amongst us when he had gone. Goaded by Mrs Cornelius, the good-natured professor regaled us with a little of the Cairo gossip, which concerned people of whom we had never heard and mostly revolved around buggery and adultery, with a touch of incest for variety. I grew bored with this. I made an excuse to go back to my cabin where my bags were carefully packed, having passed inspection by a customs officer whose curiosity about my Georgian pistols was satisfied when I explained they were for use in the film. Tapping on the connecting door, I called out to Esmé so that she should not be startled. I heard something crash. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I asked if she had hurt herself and, after a moment, she replied that her case had fallen off her bunk. She began to murmur to herself as if embarrassed. I offered to help but she insisted shrilly that she could manage. She was a resourceful little creature, no matter what Mrs Cornelius believed. Reassured, I strolled up on deck and found Captain Quelch enjoying a pipe with the chief immigration officer, a sandy-haired man called Prestagne who handed my passport back to me saying he was honoured to make the acquaintance of such a talented man. (My passport gave my occupation as engineer, but my entry card, of course, explained my current employment.) For me the stamps and visa gave the passport a substance and validity it had never previously possessed. I had the approval of His Majesty’s Government. In those days, of course, such approval also meant complete security. The British Empire took that responsibility for its dominions and protectorates, to maintain the law equally for all. That was why the Empire was the admiration of the world. I have always been contemptuous of those people who drag up a few obscure incidents to indict the British, to prove they were no better than the French, say, or the Dutch, at running an empire. I disagree. While they ran their Empire on Roman lines they knew nothing but success, the spread of a common justice. They had to be stern, both in Egypt as well as India and parts of Africa, in particular, for that was all the natives would recognise as authority. They had no conception of the institutions which protected them. I have often wondered at this notion of nationalism, of freedom. All they ever seem to want, when it comes down to it, is the freedom to slaughter one another in acts of horrible sectarian violence. They were taught about the institutions. They claimed to envy them, to desire them for themselves. But they did not have the appropriate history, experience or intellect to understand them. A few Indians might well have died at Amritsar. How many more died in 1948 when the British were gone? They are greedy for ‘freedom’ the way our ancestors were greedy for the millennium. And, as when the millennium failed to come, they are inclined to riot if disappointed. Yet your fellaheen, your basic descendant of the people who built the pyramids and conquered much of Africa and Asia Minor, is without doubt the salt of the earth, a willing worker and a cheerful servant, if not unmanned by the bilharzia which now infects the whole Nile, thanks to the British dam, or by the hasheesh he smokes to forget his troubles. ‘It is the same in China, with the coolies,’ Professor Quelch told me. He had been on more than one archaeological expedition to the Far East. ‘I was little more than a youth, then. But I can tell you, Mr Peters, that neither Alexandria nor Cairo can compete with the fleshpots of Macao or Shanghai. Such sweet little creatures. You would not think them of this planet at all! I am old-fashioned in my tastes, I’m afraid. The modern girl does nothing for me.’

‘It depends what you want, dunnit,’ says Mrs Cornelius, ready in Gainsborough hat and blue-trimmed lace, to face the pleasures and the pressures of Alexandria. She winked at her new ‘beau’. I was almost jealous, but I knew there was a deeper bond between Mrs Cornelius and myself than any passing fancy. She was followed at a distance by sailor-suited Esmé, escorted by a somewhat more cheerful Wolf Seaman, no doubt pleased at the prospect of taking charge again. He wore a pale blue suit that looked a size too small for him. He had put on at least a stone since we had left Los Angeles. I wondered, since he had been so frequently sick, how he had managed to hold so much food. Esmé, with a smile to Seaman, whom she was clearly lobbying for a substantial part, took my offered arm. I handed her over the side in Mrs Cornelius’s wake. She fluttered into the swaying launch like a paper doll. Billowing awful black smoke, the boat took us to the passenger dock where a car from the hotel took us to our lodgings. When I saw the round Nubian face behind the car’s wheel I almost thought Mr Mix had come back, to reveal an elaborate trick. But I quickly realised this negro, while handsome and cheerful enough, was nothing like my friend who was an altogether more refined type.

‘I fear you’ll find the people here something of a rudis indigestaque moles,’ called Professor Quelch beside the river brushing back the touts with his malacca. ‘And the city itself is almost completely bereft of archaeological interest. It was torn down by various victors, you know.’ He hid a titter behind his long fingers, as if he had said something rather infra dig.

His brother had come with me to the quay. I shook hands briefly, unsuccessfully trying to stop my tears. ‘Good luck,’ I said.

‘And the same to you, lad. Malcolm’s picked up a lot, don’t you think, since I doctored his soda water with a spot of Gordons?’ He winked and gave me a hearty buffet on the arm. ‘Good luck to you, too, old chum. If I hear about your films and your darkie I’ll find a way to let you know.’

There was a wealth of affection in those few words and gestures. Warmed by this, I saluted and climbed into the car, facing a haughty Herr Seaman and an eager Esmé who was, as always, delighted by the prospect of a new city with new shops. Mrs Cornelius sat beside me. ‘I ‘ope they ‘ave cold beer at this place. It’s not too English, is it?’

When I pointed out that it was only about 65° - a temperature we had come to think of as cool in Los Angeles - she replied that she had always hated warm beer, even in winter.

Before the car started, Captain Quelch leaned through the open window and said, sotto voce to me, ‘Oh, and by the way, old boy, it looks like the law’s caught up with poor Bolsover. I hear he’s to be arrested this afternoon. Drugs, apparently, poor chap.’ He winked and blew me a platonic kiss. And then he was stepping back. ‘Remember, dear boy,’ as the car moved off, ‘put your trust only in God and Anarchy.’

We turned now onto a palm-lined seafront promenade of white hotels and summer residences looking directly at the sea. With its wrought-iron balconies and its air of calm gentility, it reminded me very much of Yalta in the spring. But I could not have saved those girls if I had tried. They were thoroughly given up to the thrill of the situation. I had no intention of joining in and left them all to it. Along the promenade, a light wind stirred breakers and fronds while the traffic was chiefly horse-cabs, private motors and the occasional tram, all as spick and span and Bristol-fashion as was ever possible in that dusty nation. Even in Alexandria, between the ocean and a lake, one quickly became used to the fine, khaki-coloured dust that settled on newspapers, books, clothing and the well-polished counters of bazaars. Everything turned yellow or brown. Now, as the ochre fog cleared, a soft blue sky appeared above the stately rooftops. Pale, golden light gradually spread over blue waters, white promenade and stern granite institutions, intensifying the delicate colouring of the palms from lemon-yellow to sage-green. The oranges, browns and reds of their trunks, the variety of grasses which grew at their bases, helped the palms soften the severity of authority’s brick and diplomacy’s sandstone, giving a gaiety rather than a dignity to the national flags and blazons, giving the stucco flanks of native palaces the sheen of freshly-woven cotton. In those moments the city seemed to possess the patina of an old mural; it was as if her vivid colours forced themselves through layers of time before they reached us. I grew almost drowsy with the pleasure of the vision alone and, since I had slept very little that night, was dozing by the time the car pulled up outside an edifice that was a cross between a crusader castle and a Mexican bordello. Professor Quelch was amused by my surprise as I dismounted from the running-board and looked up at the hotel’s five magnificent storeys. ‘This is what we should have seen if the Moors had conquered Troon,’ he whispered. His remark came to mean something only twenty or more years later, when I visited Scotland. The British have a habit of taking a local style and turning it into something cheerfully unalarming. The cool interior of the hotel smelled of beeswax and jasmine, her palms were washed and polished to unnatural brilliance, at one with the dark woods and Turkish inlays of the reception hall. We were welcomed by the manager, a Greek with a French name. We had been given an entire floor of the hotel for ourselves. The Christmas holidays had begun and many residents were up-country or visiting relatives in England. The wealthy Egyptians and the British all tended to summer in Alexandria but remained in Cairo during the cooler months. I never did keep the name of the hotel in my mind, but I think it was named after some English lord, perhaps the Hotel Churchill. Its airy rooms looked out to the corniche and harbour where, if you felt a little nervous of the country’s interior, or her natives, you were immediately reassured to see the British flag flying from the masts of half-a-dozen modern ships of war, while from time to time came the well-disciplined riders of the Egyptian Mounted Police, in handsome blue or scarlet, with red fezzes or képis, riding their beautiful Syrian Arabs along the wide roadways, their assured masculinity in contrast to the soft, white ghosts who drifted in and out of the shadows, pausing to murmur to one another or address some disconcerted tourist already in difficulties with his Baedecker or Guide Bleu. Many of these wore the official tarboosh, cream gelabea and red slippers of the official guides, who displayed large bronze discs around their necks as proof of their legality, the self-styled dragomans whose daily ambition was to attach themselves to a party of well-heeled Americans greedy for a certain kind of Romance. Little groups of children, frequently in rags and bearing the signs of disease, scuttled about the beaches and gardens, avoiding the police, running after any carriage which bore a European or an Egyptian of the better class. Strolling native policemen gestured them on their way with stern good humour. Here was the daily bustle of a modern cosmopolitan port. I had returned to civilisation!

Furnished in the ubiquitous Indian colonial style, my rooms did not adjoin Esmé’s. It had not been possible to control the key allocation at the reception desk without raising suspicions. In fact Mrs Cornelius and Esmé shared a suite in the southern corner of the hotel and I was very glad that we were due to stay in Alexandria only for one further night before taking our reserved places on the Cairo Express. I was equally relieved not to be billeted with Wolf Seaman and to find that Malcolm Quelch would be my room-mate for the next thirty or so hours. I looked forward to further intimacy. His brother had not been misled, it seemed, in his enthusiasm for Malcolm’s scholarship and local knowledge.

That afternoon, after a late lunch, Esmé and I went shopping. Her normally cheerful spirits had returned and she was full of interest in the world around us, the well-tended gardens and ornamental trees, the beautifully ordered avenues, the jostling fellaheen who filled the sidestreets, the heavily veiled women, the gaudy Jews and the sober Copts, and all the other myriad creeds of this city, which had welcomed most and persecuted few; and everywhere were casual reassurances to show how the founder of the city was still acknowledged. There were signs in Greek everywhere. There were Greek cafes and bazaars and shops of all kinds. There was a Greek cinema and a Greek theatre, Greek newspapers, Greek churches. Here the two great defenders of our Faith had come together to bring order and renewed life to that old and decadent nation, just as Ptolemy, following in Alexander’s godlike footsteps, brought a refreshing and outgoing new dynasty to the country at its most corrupt moment, when it most needed honourable leaders. Since then Egypt has always sensed when new leadership was needed, from the time of Cleopatra, who so yearned for Mark Antony to rule both her heart and her destiny. Sadly, we were to see little of Ancient Greek nobility. We had struck a bargain with a carriage-driver who elected himself our guide, taking us to those parts of the city he believed to be suitable for Europeans and avoiding most of the Arab quarters. ‘Very dirty,’ he would say. ‘Very bad. Not nedif.’ He was a man of about my age, with large frank brown eyes, a small, neatly trimmed beard, a fez and a European linen jacket worn over the local trousers which, Captain Quelch had told me, were commonly called shitcatchers. There was nothing to do but to give ourselves up to our Oriental Chingachgook, who eventually drew the carriage to a halt in a large and impressive square. ‘Place Mohammed Ali,’ he told us. ‘Good European shops. I will wait for you here.’ He demanded no money and, after helping us down, lit himself a thin cigarette then settled whistling on the steps of his carriage. I was careful to make sure I would find him again, across from a large equestrian statue, presumably of the hero himself, which graced the well-ordered flower gardens. This wide square was flanked by a number of official-looking buildings in the usual European styles, a Gothic church and what I took to be a bank, on the same lines as the church. Elsewhere were glittering cafes whose decor and elegance could rival anything in Paris, where a grand pallor of European ladies and gentlemen took tea and a murmuring interest in other Europeans moving with the grace of so many fine yachts about their business. I became increasingly impressed by the prevailing aura of calm and good taste, and when we entered the Rue Sharif Pasha we were all astonished to find it lined with the shops one might normally encounter in only the greatest of European capitals. I could not help but be taken back to Petersburg and the wonderful months of freedom in the early days of the War. Odessa in her splendid confidence had been rich and happy. When I spoke of these things to Esmé, I was a little disappointed that she gave me a fraction of the attention she gave to the contents of the store windows. By the time the sun was flooding, blood-red, upon the evening roofs, we had visited three dress-shops, a hat-shop and a shoe-shop and Esmé was satiated with silks, beads and ostrich-feathers - at least until we reached Cairo. I could not begrudge my darling these few indulgences. She must still remember my betrayal of her. Yet so naturally gracious was she that she never reminded me of that moment when, arriving on a foreign shore, she had scanned the rows of waiting faces and failed to find mine.

It was almost sunset by the time we returned to our faithful cab-driver. Yacob helped put Esmé’s purchases into the carriage with us and then, chatting the while in a mixture of Arabic, French and English, took us smartly back to our hotel. Esmé had the generalised air of affection of one who has fulfilled her every immediate ambition, and a gentle smile would come to my angel when she recalled some particularly attractive gown she had seen or piece of jewellery she hoped one day to own. I envied her this uncomplicated pleasure. That day, as so often in the past, I imagined myself a parent living through his child. It was marvellous that, with the aid of a few sovereigns, such transcendental happiness could be brought to the girl I loved. The very air we breathed smelled of honey, that evening scent of hyacinths, and stocks, and roses which the British transplanted to so many ancient capitals. We watched the sky turn to deep violet, a houri’s eyes, over a sea turned scarlet as her lips by the setting sun and, when our carriage reined in to allow the passage of a band of kilted Highlanders marching back from some musical performance, Esmé flung her soft little arms around me and kissed me with lips tender and trembling as a baby’s and said I was the only man she could ever truly love. ‘We were born for each other,’ she said. ‘We own each other, you and I, my darling Max, mon cher ami, mein cher papa.’ And she turned her head to the darkening sea to laugh, as if fearful suddenly of the depths of her own emotion. She shivered. It was becoming too cool. ‘Let us go back,’ she said.

I shall always remember Alexandria as the evening loses its heat and a wind begins to stir the palms and cedars of the corniche, when her lights appear, one by one, cluster by cluster, like jewels gracing some mighty dowager, as the scents of the sea and the desert mingle and the carriage trots on through streets grown silent for a moment, perhaps awaiting the transition from day to night, as if that transition is not inevitable, and I remember a moment of exquisite happiness when my darling called me her friend.

I have known only a few such moments in my life. I have learned to value them and not regret their passing. I am so grateful for love.

Birds die within me, one by one.

Vögel füllen meyn Brust. Vögel sterben in mir. Einer nach dem anderen.

What is there to do about it?