Jerusalem Commands

TWENTY-THREE

THE ESCAPE of sexual fantasy was no longer open to me. Instead I found more cerebral diversions. E si risuelgo da quel sogno di sangue, con ispavento, con rimorso, e insieme con una specie di gioia . . . Those stripes were white and the bars were black. Ripe stars teased my lips. Yusawit! Yuh’attit! Yuh’attit! Yukhallim. Yehudim. Yukhallim. Ana ‘atsha’an. Bitte, ein Glas Wasser. They refused to understand me. I never became ein Musselman. Dawsat. Walwala. I heard him. It was not me. I heard him betray us. Yermeluff. Yehudim! Yehudim! Gassala. Meyne pas. Meine peitsche. Meyn streifener. Meine Herzenslust. . .

Sometimes, in the desert, I had prayed for Faith. How I had envied my fellow-worshippers. Yet how many of them were also praying merely for social reasons?

I flew. I lived. The world below was washed by a golden tide. Atlantis emerged from the vibrant dust. My stripes were silver. They were ebony. They could not hold me in their cattle-truck. I refused to be identified. He was no Volksgenosse of mine. I said so. My eyes had never known such beauty; my soul had never experienced such tranquil security. We drifted on that desert wind; days and nights of wonder. And she brought me back to the Land of Life and restored my future.

‘You are familiar with Manzoni!’ she declared. I did not admit it was only in the Russian translation. . . . di non aver fatto altro che immaginare ... Be nice, he said, be nice. Be sweet, he said, be sweet. Oh, Dios! Oh, Jesus! Que me occurre? Sperato di diventare famoso. Qualcosa non va? ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that you have given me a privileged insight into the Arab mind.’ Gracefully, I accepted her compliment.

In the mornings and the evenings we sailed high above the pink and ochre Sand Sea, free from concern, but at noon, when we drifted to our lowest point, we had to be alert. The temperature could rise to 140°. More than ever, the landscape below us might have been that of the Red Planet. I imagined gigantic guns buried beneath the sand, ready to hurl their capsules to the sweet air of Earth: the deadly air of Earth. Here, in the desert, all death was honourable, all life was celebrated. Eroded mountain ranges and seas of constantly agitated sand, soft as silk, deadly as cyanide, fell away below us, mile upon mile, glittering lakes of salt, rivers of obsidian. The dreaming desert awaited a miracle that would restore it, tree by tree, animal by animal, river upon river, field upon field, city upon city, to its gorgeous past. Yet, I wondered, what hybrid might arise? How long had these wastes been nourished with Carthage’s blood? A quei tempi c’eramo oceani di luce e citta nei cieli e selvagge bestie volanti di bronzo . . . Por que lo nice? Du bist mein Simplicissimus, she said. But that was much later. Now as we drifted over those timeless landscapes beneath unchanging skies, I became her master and her teacher, her most intimate friend; yet had no desire to penetrate her. We lay entwined while a hard wind drummed against the great canopy and set the ropes and basket to a bass thrumming. An extraordinary noise, it filled the desert like the heartbeat of Arabia. We had no sense of danger as we continued to drift towards the west, towards Algeria and Spanish Morocco. If we did not come down on the mainland, she said, we might have to put down in the Canaries, which were also Spanish. We would be welcomed by the Spaniards. ‘I have several friends in the colonial service. But the Riffians are all over the place since Abd el-Krim capitulated. Some of the outlaw gangs have a thorough hatred of Europeans. Even you, Sheikh Mustafa, would be unable to protect me.’

I reminded her that I had seen her handling the mitrailleuse and did not think she would require much protection! This remark was not received as flattery. Rosie von Bek helped me solve no mysteries of womankind. Rather she presented me with fresh ones.

I came to my senses beneath the bright stare of heaven, in the arms of the one Kolya had called the destroyer and whom I called Rosa. My rose. War’di War’di, ana nafsi. Sarira siri’ya. D’ruba D’ruba. She wondered at my stripes, my whiteness, and I made some mention of prison and the Turkish heel. ‘You have not always known power, sidhi?’ She was sympathetic.

‘A truly faithful man accepts the will of Allah. I am glad to say I have walked the path of humility.’

She murmured that humility did not seem to be my most obvious trait. I smiled at this as I toyed with my full, black beard. ‘You must know our saying - the doe shall always kneel to the stag. Such things are also determined.’

Through her desire I found my manhood again. I found my power. I was restored. She gave herself up to her imagination, free from any restraint, certain she should have no witness save the vultures, the eagles and myself, whom she called her Hawk - al Sakhr. But her escape was denied me; my pleasure came purely from the thrill of my recaptured sense of power, of self. She gave me back my world of dreams, my cities and my soul. This is the gift that Woman offers Man. Only a churlish oaf refuses her. Here is a true union of flesh and spirit, such as St Paul spoke of. And yet I was for her a figure from romance; she saw nothing of the real Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, of Ace Peters, conqueror of Hollywood. Instead she saw in her image of me an altar on which she might sacrifice her selfhood, to be reborn, the Eternal Feminine. I was, in that sense, immaterial.

Often, when she spoke of her childhood and youth in Albania, Italy and Spain (where she attended convent schools), it was as if she mused aloud, content that while I failed to understand some of her words, I would never fully grasp her meaning. In this she was right, for she spoke sometimes in Albanian, sometimes Italian and frequently in English. I was only fluent in English, although I had picked up some Italian during my stay in Rome with Esmé, before we went to Paris. She spoke fondly of a certain Bon-bon. After a time I came to realise that Bon-bon was the present Dictator of Italy. Clearly she still had affection for him, but equally clearly there had been some kind of falling-out. The threat of a public scandal and pressure from close family members had interfered to destroy their idyll. She also believed he had taken an interest in an American heiress, ‘one of the Macraineys’, and was incapable of sustaining a passion for more than one mistress at a time. ‘But then his feelings about women are very clear.’ Turning to me she asked, ‘You have read the novel, The Cardinal’s Mistress?’

I admitted that I had not. I had little time for sensation tales, I said.

‘It is by Mussolini himself,’ she said. ‘I read it before I ever met him. He already displayed in that work everything Italy needed to restore herself to her old pre-eminence. He is a romantic with a strong sense of discipline.’

Save for Fiorelli, I hesitated to speak of friends in Rome. Several had been early converts to the Fascist cause. But I would have to explain too much. I had become fascinated with the character she and I between us had created for me, to our mutual benefit. Kara ben Nesi was my model, I suppose, the great German scholar-adventurer of Karl May’s Durch die Wüste. I had read these as a child, in Kiev, in about 1912. May was one of the few novelists my teacher, Herr Lustgarten, approved. He was properly philosophisch, he said.

The irony only became clear years later. The British claim everything for themselves. They claim universal myths as their personal experience. Is it any wonder Europe became impatient with them? One can accept so much self-proclaimed piety.

To my astonishment, Rosie von Bek had no experience of the benefits and enjoyments of cocaine and I had the privilege of introducing her to this wonderful fruit of nature. She was astonished - Simply flabbergasted! - as she put it, by the way the drug amplified her imagination while it sharpened her senses. Now the subtlety of our intimacies became deeply intricate; we created arabesques of sensation and emotion, of peculiar and intellectual invention, almost abstract. While I gasped in Goethe’s German, she breathed the earth of Florentine Italy, of barbarous peaks moulding the fierce beliefs and desires of Albanian brigand chieftains, warmed me with the flame of limitless passion, driven to greater spiritual and sometimes physical risks by the coolness of my own responses. At least I did not fear flesh any longer. In our different ways we both experienced the same extraordinary spiritual union. We were a single, all-destroying creature - heat and cold, male and female, good and evil. New Homo sapiens, androgynous, omnipotent, eternal.

It was an impossible union and yet a natural one. Bismarck had known the beauty of such equilibrium, the balancing of masculine against feminine. Adolf Hitler, representing proud masculinity, and Benito Mussolini, representing the spiritual, feminine side of the fascist discipline. Left alone, I think they would have made perfection: German practicality married to Italian flair. Had they not been set, one upon the other, by petty rivalries the great dream would have flourished. There were certain personality problems between the two charismatic leaders, I will admit. But this is true of all brilliant marriages. They were on the move - too busy to make virtues of their differences. I think, perhaps, it was the same with me and Rosie von Bek. We were almost too strong for one another. In nature, such forces, such grand and noble opposites, sometimes need only a whisker’s touch to send both spinning helplessly from their orbits. While we remained aloft, without responsibilities or fears, we had our perfect universe. But eventually, the dreamer must look to the commonplace for his sustenance. If he resists his conscience’s demands he resists experience; he resists reality. He loses his grip. I was determined that this would never happen to me. Of course, I blame the Jews. It is in their interests to involve the world in abstractions.

Yet that blissful episode remains forever exquisite.

Many women have loved me. I have made love to many more. But there are only three women who are to me what my organs and my flesh are to me. What my own heart is to me. The first is Esmé, the innocent, wondering Esmé, my sweet sister, my little girl; the second is Mrs Cornelius, whom I loved for her sanity and her deep relish for ordinary life; the third is Rosie von Bek.

The light fell through the bars of the cattle-truck and made a pattern of black and white against the walls which stank of disinfectant. I am not the only human being alive today who cannot smell disinfectant without immediately fearing for his mortal existence.

Others flinch at the aeroplane’s whine or the car’s backfire. For me it is a public toilet at five in the morning. These stripes pursued me. Even in the basket they fell through ropes and guidelines to form bars across the yellow weave and trace Zion’s stars upon the Moorish carpets she had heaped there; a lattice of portent, it began to seem to me. Sometimes during the long, drifting days, I sat and read her Sexton Blake stories. These taught me about the politics of the Middle East as well as English domestic life. They introduced me to imperial complexities and gave me a quiet respect for those citizens of the Empire who shouldered their moral burdens. Here were the new Knights of the Round Table bringing enlightenment and Christian ethics to the dark places of the world. Rosie also had some old Italian film magazines, one of which showed myself and Gloria Cornish in Ace Among Aces and, in the same issue, advertised The Lost Buckaroo, but of course it was not then in my interest to point the films out. Sometimes I put down my Case of the Roumanian Envoy and merely stared at the patterns made by the sun through a net of lines and basket-work. Sometimes she and I would discuss their meaning. She insisted that I introduce her to the more doubtful pleasures of hashish and morphine. Happily, she did not respond well to the morphine and indulged only occasionally in the hashish, usually with tobacco after a meal. It was extraordinary to lean against the gondola’s brass rail with the sky and the desert at my back, to watch that beautiful woman, softly naked, cooking a delicious Albanian snack over the muttering engine, careless of any danger. I had never known a woman like her. Neither Esmé nor Mrs Cornelius were as careless of their comfort. I can close my eyes and smell the desert now. There is no comparison for that smell; almost sweet, almost alive. The heat of the African beast, the patient monster. I can smell her perfumed sweat, rose and cunt and garlic on her mouth, and I can smell my own cool manhood. I regained my skills and they were now informed with a subtler knowledge. I handled her as a musician his instrument, to celebrate its beauty and its sensual potentiality. Here I became again what I had always been but which I had been made to forget at Bi’r Tefawi. I was Ace Peters, star of the screen; Maxim Pyatnitski, inventor of the Dynamite Automobile, the Flying Wing, the Television. And I was al Sakhr, the Hawk of the Sahara. I was whatever I would wish to be or had ever desired to be. My vision and my future were restored. I saw again my cities, gold and silver, white and ebony, thrusting into the blue pallor of a Saharan evening. I saw an orderly future, where justice and equality were the common expectation. I saw escape from the grey ruins of my Russian homeland, from the squalor of the Constantinople alleys, from the wretched poverty of an Alabama shanty-town or a Cairene slum. I described some of my ideas to Rose and she responded with enthusiasm. I must certainly come back with her to Italy. Her absolute faith was invested in Il Duce. He was a man of the people, a great-hearted poet-politician like his friend D’Annunzio, who had put his own army at the Leader’s disposal. He was also a sensitive, moved only by a hatred of poverty and misery. But he was finally a great realist. He understood that the Italians would never improve on their own initiative. They needed strong, but humane, leadership. She told me of an Italy encouraging the arts and sciences. ‘II Duce calls us all to the service of his noble social experiment - everyone! The greatest writers, engineers, scientists and painters of our day are shoulder to shoulder in modern Rome.’ This was very like the opinion of the only clear-sighted American I ever met. When I knew him he was a journalist, then got a reputation as a poet. I understood nothing of that world. His championing of his fellow-poets was enough to put him in prison. I myself enjoyed the horrors of the Isle of Man. It does no good to speak for fairness and proper credit in this world.

I would, I said to her, very much like to journey some day to that new Renaissance court. She said she was sure I would be more than welcome. Only the best were attracted to Mussolini, recognising in him the same self-confidence, talents and audacity which had made them great in their chosen work. I imagined this marvellous court on a larger scale than Imperial Rome, with tall, airy white marble columns and gleaming floors, like pools, stretching into shadow. There we should all meet, intellectuals, artists, scientists and adventurers from every corner of the world, representing the nations and religions of the Earth, to exchange knowledge and ideas, to discuss in fluent discourse the means by which we should truly civilise the world.

That the experiment came to nothing, I said to the older Cornelius boy, was not the fault of the visionaries who began it. It was the fault of the blind reactionaries who conspired to stop it. There are few people in modern Italy who would not rather go back to the days of Il Duce, when they could be proud of their heritage, certain of their cause. The same could be said for Hitler, but the stories are not completely parallel. I am the first to agree: in some respects the Fuhrer went too far. But were the French completely free from blame? What does ‘fascist’ mean, anyway? It means nothing but ‘law’ and ‘discipline’. Are chaos and licence, such as we have today, to be preferred? A Rolling Stone gathers no responsibility, I told him. It would be wonderful if we could all caper about in Hyde Park and howl like some Sudanese zealot and be given a million pounds for it! He could not reply.

Not merely stupefied by a spoon-feeding State, I said, but inarticulate as well. Rhetoric, I discovered, is no longer on the Holland Park syllabus. There is scarcely a school in London that retains it! We are losing the realities and the meaning of the past. Without them we shall never create the future we desire. Why must they always simplify? I told them - I embrace complexity. It is my meat and drink. But they had nothing for me. Shortly afterwards I opened my shop.

‘The desert,’ I told her, ‘teaches us the arts of compromise. Without them, we could not survive.’

‘But you would not compromise on principle, al Sakhr?’

‘The desert makes a principle of compromise.’ I smiled. ‘What can you control there, in the end? The rainfall? The wind?’

She was silent for a few moments after that, standing against the wickerwork, one hand on a rope, the other on the basket’s rail, wearing only her shoes to give her enough height to peer down over the flatness of what looked, from there, like a vast slab of concrete scattered with rubble. I saw it suddenly as the foundation of a gigantic temple and in that vision the scale of Atlantis was revealed to me! Only when I looked upon the monumental buildings of the new dictators would this vision be recreated! They knew the spiritual value of such architecture. This is what they shared with the cathedral-builders. What is wrong with offering hard-working people a little glimpse of perfection?

My aviatrix had lost her calendar and had only her maps and compasses. She knew that it was probably still July and it was certainly 1927. As to our distance travelled, we should soon come upon some good-sized settlement where we would, with proper caution, regain our bearings.

Some evenings, in the twilight, we would dance the Argentinian tango to the tune from the portable gramophone.

We had both grown a little weary and complained of a certain clamminess, doubtless caused by the steam. We longed for cool water, to bathe in and to drink. The heat was into the 120s. I spoke of the hamman and its luxuries; the baths the Moor gave to the Turk. There were certain establishments in Oman, I said, where men and women were encouraged to bathe together. This excited her and it seemed churlish to disappoint her imagination. I described the sensual delights of the steam baths, the nature of their attendants and their pleasures. It gave me a uniquely delicious frisson which had nothing in it of lust. The sensation grew stronger in me as she discovered fresh levels of sexual ecstasy and experiment. Only when we had begun to suffer the effects of the heat and of remaining aloft for so long did I think to ask her if they had put a time-limit on her expedition. I still barely understood the scientific purpose of her flight.

‘My dear sheikh, it becomes whatever I wish it to be. The balloon is a relatively small expense. All I have to do to justify the voyage to the Italian government is make a few notes, a few marks on the map and take a reel or two of film until I have enough for a lecture tour! Another first for Italy! A jolly cheap one, too.’ She had already had some success, she said, with a one-woman dhow voyage from Aden to Bombay. She had signed a contract with a Milan publisher who wanted her book about it. ‘It’s a peculiar way of making a living, but it enables me to travel with some security and to be almost guaranteed an adventure! The publicity I receive ensures my safety. It’s only bad luck that brought me down at Zazara. Anywhere else would have had a newspaper and a wire.’

Thought of that near-disaster brought a frown to her wonderful eyes which deepened as she cocked her head to listen. She sucked her index finger and raised it into the air. She rose suddenly, plucking her compass from its box and checking our position. I grew a little concerned. ‘What’s wrong, Miss von Bek?’ I wrapped my jerd about me and got to my feet. The basket shuddered. There was something unfamiliar about our movement.

‘The wind’s changing,’ she said. ‘We’re beginning to turn south.’ Hurriedly she got out her maps and spread them on the carpet. ‘This could be awkward.’

I saw immediately what she meant. If we were flying between Ghat (which lay some 600 miles inland from Tripoli) and Touat (some 600 miles from Casablanca) and the wind had indeed shifted south then Kolya’s bitter prediction might be about to come true. In fact we would be fortunate to land in Timbuktu, the forbidden city on the far side of the Sahara.

I had grown used to seeing the sun always setting directly ahead of us, of sailing always into the last of the day’s light, but now I saw the sun swelling orange above the horizon off to our right. Below raced a succession of slatey drumlins, too puny to be called hills, while ahead lay the waterless dunes of the deep Southern Sahara.

I became poignantly aware of Kolya’s wisdom and knew a wave of utter self-contempt. ‘Orl roads lead ter Rome, Ivan,’ says Mrs Cornelius, ‘so yer might as well pick a comfy one.’ Unfortunately it seemed to me then that I had chosen the riskiest road of all.

That night we attempted to read the map by torchlight, from time to time peering over the side at the dunes or at the magnificent stars as we tried desperately to determine our position. The stars were displayed as sharply as an astrologer’s chart with every pin-point an identifiable individual, every configuration perfectly defined, but neither of us could navigate by them. We were hoping to see a good-sized settlement where we could land and risk someone taking another potshot at us. Such problems beset the first balloonists in Europe, who whenever they landed were set upon by local peasants. We at least had the advantage of our Gatling and a couple of loaded Webleys as well as my Lee-Enfield. I felt a pang when I thought of my friend. He had been a fool not to come with us, yet, just as he was suffering the consequences of his decision, I would soon no doubt be suffering the consequences of mine. At Rosie von Bek’s persistent prompting, and with the help of some sustaining sneg, there was nothing to do but return to our habitual pursuits, praying that God was sufficiently well-disposed towards us not to let us perish in that blazing waste.

I had taken to telling her strange tales of the desert. She demanded the most complicated details, forcing me to draw more than I should have liked on my Egyptian experiences. Yet, by turning those horrors into a form of fiction, I managed further to restore myself. The knowledge I had gained at Bi’r Tefawi could, by some odd alchemy, be put to my advantage. Her own motives were purely sensual, yet she enjoyed a fantasy which she might never have dared bring to reality if we had not drifted unremarked above the surface of the earth. Yet over the next two days the raw truth of our predicament grew harder to avoid. Rosie von Bek’s manner became increasingly nervous as she darted from side to side of the basket, checking the balloon’s functions, making certain that the engine was working. Unable to be of assistance, I continued, when not at her disposal, to absorb myself in the adventures of Sexton Blake, Detective. She chose to see my fascination as part of the stoic nature of the Bedouin, but since there was no action I could take The Union Jack soothed my mind, helping me ignore the unpleasant likelihood of our deaths in the desert. I was surprised that she saw no parallels between my anodyne and her own addiction to my verbal confections. It was not surprising that I should seek the consolations of Zenith the Albino or The Master Mummer after my surfeit of sensuality and terror, just as she had doubtless meanwhile satisfied her appetite for the adventures of the famous detective, his plucky assistant Tinker and their bloodhound Pedro pitted against a thousand deadly villains. Upholding the high standards of a benign imperialism, wherever his cases led him, even Blake could not live by idealism and romance alone, though I should make it clear there was not a trace of smut in those stories.

My refusal to let anxiety take control of me was, it seemed, soon justified. I was about to begin Chapter Five of The Clue of the Cracked Footprint, featuring the international adventurer Dr Huxton Rymer at large in the Orient, when my companion raised a cheer like a schoolgirl at a hockey match. ‘The wind, my Sheikh! Al rih! It’s turning! We’re saved! Hurrah!’

Carefully, I replaced my Union Jack magazine in its locker and went to stand beside her. The wind had indeed changed, but had become erratic. The balloon was buffeted violently, then struck again and again. I noted the colour of the sky, the agitated sand below us. We were on the edge of some kind of storm. There came thunder from below the horizon and the sun turned a sickly yellow. The sand ran like mud. From where we looked, it might have been a flood. Rosie moved closer to me, her eyes agitated, her manner uncertain. ‘Is this something we should fear, my Hawk?’

‘We are always in the hands of Allah, sweet child.’ I had no notion of the cause of this phenomenon. For a while the basket began to swing like a pendulum, as if far above us somewhere was the face of an enormous clock. Then I realised we were not moving at all. We appeared to be frozen at the centre of a small whirlwind. Even as we watched, a spiral of sand rose around us and the breath was dragged from our bodies. The temperature dropped radically. We were both shivering. It was as if we were in the power of some fierce desert djinn furious at our invasion of his land. We found ourselves at the very Heart of Chaos.

Then, suddenly, it was as if we were being propelled through the muzzle of Verne’s gigantic cannon which fired the explorers from Earth to the Moon! Now the balloon was travelling rapidly upward, the warm air of our canopy acting, in the falling barometer, to draw us out of the storm like dew to the sun. We were all at once drifting in the safety of the upper atmosphere where, we discovered from our hastily consulted compass, we were travelling north. It was my turn to exclaim with pleasure! To the north lay Tangier, Algiers or Tunis! And north of these, on busy sea-routes, were the ports of Italy! We had been miraculously saved, as Rosie remarked, by nothing more than balloonist’s luck. So little was known in those days. The mapping of currents and pressures, examination of lighter-than-air crafts’ behaviour was scarcely a science then. Though we were the first to experience that desert phenomenon, we were by no means the last!

Meanwhile, it took us some time before we could accept that we were thoroughly secure from the elements. The wind was once again our friend, the sun no longer an implacable enemy.

The entire bizarre episode, from the moment I had put down my Union Jack in response to Rosie von Bek’s cries, had filled four minutes, yet it would be several hours before our nerves were calmed and our spirits restored. Still I gasp at the good fortune that took us towards the coast, to escape forever that anguish of isolation.

Below us the dunes disappeared, to be replaced by red drifts which in turn became orange sarira, the baked rock, sand and pebbles which made up the greater part of the Sahara. But now, here and there, we began to see glimpses of water, the occasional pool or tiny stream. Here too was cultivation; a few poor fields, some animals, huts, or the heavy felt tents of Berber nomads. We viewed these signs of humanity with much the same mixture of excitement and relief a European feels upon entering the suburbs of a new city. Gradually more and more signs of life greeted us. The balloon raced over a terracotta landscape towards far-off mountains. It became easy to make out the faces of those we passed, to note the details of their cottages and shrines. So delighted were we at our change of fortune that it was some time before we realised we were losing height faster than was safe and that we could not possibly regain enough lift to take us over the peaks. The air in our canopy had grown cool while the sun rose to zenith overhead. Hastily, we let loose our water ballast and some of the sandbags we had brought from Zazara. Rosie von Bek restarted the engine for a few seconds, only to discover that she had used the last of the methylated spirits. She could make no more steam.

Our descent became relatively gentle as we desperately tried everything possible to keep the balloon aloft, to continue on towards the Mediterranean coast. Eventually we realised we should have to land, but were unsure whether to aim for the relatively unpopulated semi-desert or head for one of the towns closer to the mountains where we would not necessarily be welcomed.

‘I am beginning to understand,’ declared my Rose, ‘how the arms of Italy, displaying a prominent cross, are not the most diplomatic for these parts.’

I suggested we try to find some relatively isolated spot in which to control our own landfall. We would note the next large township and then bring the balloon down in the desert a half-mile or so away.

Accordingly, Rosie von Bek operated her valves and lines with pretty expertise, gradually slowing the balloon’s momentum while casually whistling some old Cheltenhamian air. She wore black and pink satin pyjamas over which she had thrown a light gelabea. With her dishevelled hair, her wonderful violet eyes staring from that golden skin, she was a goddess of the air. We had reached a place where a wide wadi curved between groves of date palms and opened onto a small lake on the shores of which were built a tumble of houses, seemingly piled one on top of another like so many brick-red children’s blocks, their walls contrasting sharply with the rich greens of the palms, the pale, clear water. This oasis town was quite different in appearance to the ramshackle collection of huts and houses which made up their Egyptian equivalents. I was impressed by the decoration on so many of the mud walls. There were brightly painted patterns, geometrical decorative script, and always the name of God. More surprising were the primitive representations of animals and people. These Berbers practised only a few of the eastern Arabs’ cultural habits. Even from here we saw that all the women went unveiled.

I was craning my neck to make out further details of the town when from behind me came a massive gasp. Signorina von Bek had pulled the ripcord! With a great blossoming of silk our bag was losing its emblazoned outer skin. We fell towards the baked, rusty earth. On our left were mountains and on my right desert. But below us was a huge oasis, with rivers connecting pool to pool, small settlements, even, perhaps, I dared hope, some outpost of white imperialism! As we descended I remarked on the picturesque nature of the scenery. This far better resembled my imagination’s Arabia than the mixture of hovels, religious monuments and ugly European façades which, with the addition of a few miserable palms on dusty boulevards, the Arab so frequently calls ‘civilisation’. Here was the landscape which had inspired E. Mayne Hull and G. H. Teed, which gave us Beau Geste and The Desert Song! And, riding towards us across this romantic tundra, as we came down easily in a shelf of soft red sand, was a party of uniformed horsemen on prancing Arabs who could easily have called themselves the Red Shadow’s men. With their red and gold tunics, blue trousers, dark red cloaks and brilliantly decorated saddles and bridles, they might have been the chorus of some fashionable operetta. I began to wonder again whether nature imitated art or if I were not still somewhere in the Western Desert, dreaming this dream to avoid the truth of death. Yet I had never seen such handsome native riders.

Signorina von Bek was scrambling to her feet and cocking the mitrailleuse. She at least had not forgotten that the Red Shadow’s men were Riffians.

As I climbed up over the basket’s rim I raised my Lee-Enfield high into the air, using the universal peace sign of the Sahara. Lowering myself to the sand I knelt and placed my rifle carefully on the ground before me. Then, with my hand over my heart, I stood up.

The dark-skinned riders reined in a few yards from us, controlling their half-wild stallions with economic flicks of wrists and ankles, arguing loudly amongst themselves. Each man had a scabbarded carbine on his saddle and the scabbard bore some sort of arms stamped in gold. These were no ordinary tribesmen. In careful Arabic I told them we came in peace.

We had been abducted by Italian soldiers but with Allah’s blessing had managed to escape from the brutal Nazarin. Turning to Rosie von Bek I translated what I had said into Italian. She took my cue. ‘Those foul swine!’ She gestured melodramatically. ‘They took away my clothes!’ She picked up a jerd and wrapped her pyjama’d body in it. A chiffon scarf improved her modesty. Her sun-darkened skin would not attract their attention, now that her face was veiled.

The dandified riders made no response but continued to grin and talk amongst themselves, frequently pointing at us and either laughing heartily at some speculative joke or making a fierce declaration, probably concerning our origin. If I knew the desert, I guessed that at least half the party was arguing passionately for our supernatural nativity.

‘Brothers,’ I began. ‘By the grace of Allah we have fallen among co-religionists! We are safe at last, my wife!’ And I sent a rather theatrical prayer to Heaven.

But I was ignored. They looked back in the direction from which they had ridden. Another group of horsemen approached, sending pale pink dust into the chalky blue evening. They came over an horizon on which stood a single palm, a ruined kasbah, hooded riders controlling their steeds with that absolute unconscious authority characterising the true desert aristocrat. These were no passing nomads! What if we had strayed into some Berber province forbidden to all strangers? I knew the punishment received by those Europeans who had attempted to invade Timbuktu or Mecca. Our fate remained uncertain. Our lives depended, I decided, on whether or not they accepted us as Bedouin. There was often little love between the two peoples, but we here could expect at least three days’ daifa before they decided to murder us. In that time, no doubt, we should be able to improve our position. With this in mind I drew myself up to display all my Arab dignity.

As the horsemen cantered nearer I realised that some wore only a light riding ras over what appeared to be European dress. There were five of these followed by outriders in the same costume as our first group. They rode superb Arabs. The foremost, in khaki jodhpurs and jacket, wore a green turban. The big man just behind him wore a similar outfit save for the distinctive French képi; on his left rode a man whose cloak flowed back to reveal bright British scarlet; he was protected from the sun by a white solar topee. Behind them came a taller, very lean European in military khaki whose wide-brimmed hat shaded his face; the remaining heavier figure also hid his face within a hood. By the look of the party we must surely have landed in Spanish or French territory, some military or diplomatic concordance. It was in my interest to discover immediately if I was in relatively friendly territory - perhaps Spanish Morocco.

The horsemen now slowed to a trot and eventually came to a spectacular stop only a short distance from us. The leader, in the hooded cloak, was a plump, dapper individual whose antecedents clearly included most of the major African races. He had large, intelligent eyes, a poor skin and a scrawny but well-tended beard. His clothing, a mixture of Oriental and Western, was of perfect cut and evident quality. It had been fashioned, I was sure, not far from the Tour Eiffel. The European officer was equally elegant.

Behind him the two others were obscured in the horses and dust, but doubtless they were as well groomed. ‘Hola muy amigos!’ I had remembered rather too late that my only available passport identified me a Spanish citizen. ‘Habla el Español, señors.’ And prayed profoundly that they did not, after all, have any more Spanish than did I. The native turned and spoke in French to his nearest companion, who replied in cultured Parisian.

Pretending not to understand what was being said, I bared my head. Happily my hair had grown long enough to give me the general appearance of a Bedouin. For their part they were merely determining what language to use to me. Since Turkish seemed to be the Frenchman’s choice and Spanish the natives’, I decided to be audacious and try English, having always preferred to keep a language or two in reserve. ‘I hope we are not inconveniencing you gentlemen,’ I began. ‘We are somewhat off our course, I fear.’ I was about to introduce myself when the huge Frenchman threw back his hood, removed his képi and, grinning widely, wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. It was Lieutenant Fromental, my acquaintance from Casablanca.

‘I know that voice! I thought I recognised you, monsieur. What a wonderful coincidence! We all believed you back in Hollywood, sir!’ He changed from English to French. ‘Your Highness -’ a formal gesture - ‘may I introduce to you the man I have spoken of many times. Mr Max “Ace” Peters, the cinema star. Mr Peters, you are in the presence of His Highness, the Pasha of Marrakech, El Hadj T’hami el Glaoui.’

An impasse. There was nothing I could do but bow.

‘You are very welcome here, monsieur,’ said the Pasha. At that time I took his odd grin for reluctant hospitality. His frown became expectant. For a second I had forgotten my companion. I turned to introduce her. ‘Mademoiselle von Bek . . .’

Oblivious of the others, she stared at me in horror. ‘Peters?’ Her eyes spoke of betrayal, but her voice was a knife. ‘Peters? You’re not a Bedouin sheikh?’

‘Only by choice,’ I murmured. ‘Please keep this confidence. I am Peters of the English Secret Service. I had no option but to deceive you. I also have something of a career in the cinema. What luck to run into friends! Let me do the talking!’

In an instant my terrors had flown away. I thought surely she must share my delight in this happy turn of events, but instead she interrupted me in a strangled voice and, letting the veil fall away from her frozen face, made her own introduction. ‘Rose von Bek, of the Royal Italian Geographical Expedition.’ She spoke in her formal Arabic. ‘I am so sorry to disturb your peace, Your Highness, and I appreciate your tolerance in permitting me to land in your beautiful realm. Both your courtesy and hospitality are famous throughout the world. I have long wished for the privilege of an audience. I trust you will not consider this unorthodox means of finding you too audacious. I have, of course, letters of introduction from various sponsors including our great Duce, Signor Mussolini, my master.’

El Glaoui seemed to frown at the name of Mussolini but graciously recovered himself. ‘I am flattered and enchanted,’ murmured the Berber prince in husky, thrilling accents. ‘Mr Beters I feel is an old friend, but you, mademoiselle ... are a legendary jewel. Such beauty!’

I was admiring of Rose’s quick wit and would have praised her had it not been clear that she was for some reason disgusted by me at that moment. And then, looking into her eyes, I understood. She had believed that she revealed her deepest desires to an inscrutable Oriental but instead she had shared her longings with a knowing European!

Lieutenant Fromental was delighted. His great broad face was beaming as he strode up to me and flung a comradely arm about me, all but crushing me. ‘My dear friend, this is a most marvellous piece of good fortune.’

‘Do you ride, Mr Peters?’ The red-coated Englishman with the old-fashioned grey walrus moustache and flinty eyes, the most evidently military of all the company, was clearly testing me.

‘Ride!’ Lieutenant Fromental laughed aloud. ‘Why, Mr Peters is an expert horseman!’ He winked at me, sharing a droll secret. ‘Since we last met, sir, I have had the pleasure of viewing The Lost Buckaroo. Even finer than The Buckaroo’s Code, if I may say so. Once your films are seen in France your genius will be given its due credit. The French still honour great artists.’ He became a little embarrassed. ‘Well, sir, that was what I first recognised when I saw you. Those eyes! They are unmistakable! And the voice, when I heard it, from Casablanca! I am honoured, sir!’ He opened his tunic and took out a piece of carefully folded newsprint - a publicity photograph of me raising my masked face to be kissed by Daphne LaCosse as she leans from the rails of a loco’s moving caboose. I, of course, am kneeling on my saddle! It was from The Fighting Buckaroo, one of the last films of any substance I made for Lesser. ‘I’m ashamed to say I’ve also been carrying about with me for weeks a letter I wrote to you. This is the most absurd coincidence! I thought of wiring you at Shepheard’s. Then I decided you would have returned to the United States by now. I was racking my brains to remember the name of your film company when, by magic, you materialised before me!’

‘We saw you descending, sir,’ the redcoat told me. ‘We thought the Italians were invading! The Pasha loathes the Eye-ties. You’re lucky those chaps didn’t shoot on sight!’

Fromental had stumped through the sand to where a restless stallion was offered by one of the Pasha’s guards for my use. The man would ride double, no doubt, with a comrade. Another pony was similarly prepared for Rose but in this case the Pasha took a personal interest in its suitability.

‘Anyway, here you are!’ Fromental went on cheerfully. ‘Large as life. And you’ll be delighted by my news, Mr Peters. We have discovered your missing nigger.’

‘In Morocco?’ Having had rather a swift succession of surprises and reversals I was a little uncomprehending.

‘No, no! Here! In the Tafi’lalet. Today. With us.’ He gestured boisterously towards his companions. At last as the dust settled slowly around us, I gave my attention to the fifth hooded rider whose teeth glittered through the haze like the beam of an approaching loco. ‘Good evening, colonel.’

It was none other than my faithful Mix!

I had turned up, he said, just as he thought his last run of luck was about to go dry. He dismounted and, his face filling with honest pleasure, shook me warmly by the hand. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am you dropped by, colonel! Don’t let us split up again. At least until we’re back home!’

I must admit I was touched almost to tears by this demonstration of my dusky Sancho Panza’s devoted loyalty.