Jerusalem Commands

TWENTY-EIGHT

I HAVE BEEN WITNESS, this century, to the murder of Christian decency. It was surprising how quickly rats began to bother Mrs Cornelius after the Convent of the Poor Clares was pulled down across from her flat. They were attracted first to the rubble and then they sniffed the south side of the street and found her. She had never minded a few, she said, but this was a bloody plague. We both mourned the passing of the Convent. It had been a bastion of Christian wholesomeness in surroundings of pagan squalor. Its brick was mellowed by more rural days, when the meadow ran to the brook not always downwind of the tanneries. Some Georgian manor had doubtless been levelled to provide the Convent with land and no doubt that, for its contemporaries, was the beginning of the end. It is always the beginning of the end, always the best and the worst. No matter how thoroughly attacked, the city shall always triumph. It is folly, as the Nazis did, to try to resist this fundamental condition.

What are you? he said. Some Peradur? Some Gascon rapiero? Nothing so romantic, I told him. You give me too much credit. What else could I say? It was the same with the Jew in Arcadia. I have always admitted I was grateful. But I was no male Venus, born of the sea, as he described. In a poet these fancies are always discounted, so one does not complain. Gascon rapiero? Nothing so courageous, I said. Nothing so blind. I saw Moorcock, the one they all despise and pretend to be friendly with. He is their favourite journalist and swallows their lies. He was picking about in the ruins of the Convent after the demolition people had broken down the walls and most of the buildings, their frozen bulldozers rearing over fruit trees and vegetable gardens, squatting on lawns where the nuns used to play cricket and have picnics in the summer. It was like the War. The Convent, that sturdy Victorian acknowledgement to the needs of the spirit, was one of the first buildings to rise here, in 1860, and one of the first to fall. They are going to be council flats, she says. We need more council flats, do we, and less solace for the soul? And what else to serve them? Betting shops? Burger bars? Off-licences? I have yet to see a bookshop or a flower shop flourish in the shadow of this authoritarian concrete. For years the wall bore the slogan ‘Vietgrove’ and something about Eichmann. We set our watches by that wall, says the Cornelius boy, doubtless enjoying some self-induced high on Ajax and powdered milk. I warned him. It is why he is getting such a nasal accent. People will take him for an American. And yet the fall of the Convent symbolised the fall of Notting Hill. Now there are Liberal MPs and magistrates and worse living in the houses on the other side of Ladbroke Grove. I saw Moorcock putting something in his pocket. It was obvious he was looking for money.

Pretending to take photographs of miscellaneous piles of burning timber and smouldering plaster, of the few trees the machines had left standing, he would stoop and rub the mud from some object, some cracked cup or empty bottle. Most of the time he threw his discoveries away, but clearly he was occasionally lucky. I recalled some old talk of a treasure, of tunnels and secret escapes, but this was a familiar chimera. I for one had learned no longer to pursue them. Noting that Moorcock went back to the ruins every evening after the demolishers had knocked off, I was one day enough ahead of him to leave four old pennies and a threepenny bit on a slab of masonry near the altar below the dramatic crucifixion whose vivid greens, reds and yellows still blazed their message to the world. I left through the wire fence they had put up along Latimer Road and returned via Kensington Park Road to Blenheim Crescent in time to see him digging around in the rubble, taking miscellaneous pictures as usual, pausing to stare almost bewilderedly about him as if he had for a moment lost his bearings. At other moments he seemed physically to be tasting the tragedy of this 20th-century destruction, this proof that Faith had again given way to Speculation. When he had at last left I hurried through the gloomy evening, over the mud and ruins to the altar. The money was gone, of course. I told Mrs Cornelius. She laughed and said he was probably looking for souvenirs. It keeps him happy, she said. ‘Happy?’ I said. ‘Theft is supposed to keep you happy?’

They are all the same, these people.

I can remember no sense of discomfort from my incarceration in El Glaoui’s prison. My mind was too keenly focused, I think, on avoiding the anxieties of what was to come. I already understood that this night was the luxury I would look upon with nostalgia and I tried to make the most of it, but it is difficult to exercise one’s sensibilities in such circumstances, as the air grows staler and the silence of the prison begins to echo with little cries and groans, with whispers and prayers, which means that the jailer is momentarily absent. Some of the wetter, more mutilated sounds, said Mr Mix, were beginning to get on his nerves. He began to tell me a wild tale of how, when he had his cinema seized, the US Consul had offered him work as an agent, getting them, as he said, ‘the goods on the Pasha’. In turn they loaned him a good-quality camera. But they could give him no official help. ‘I guess I was right. The US Consul won’t welcome me back in Casablanca. I hate to imagine what the Pasha’s going to do to us.’

I knew all too well what was in store for us. I was tempted to share vicariously in the Pasha’s forthcoming pleasure and tell Mr Mix what parts of his body would be altered first, but in the end my ordinary humanity stilled my tongue. There was no point in panicking the poor negro. It would only make him sweat, and the air was bad enough already. So I let him continue with his elaborate tale of spies and international intrigue. He described a vast complex of rivalries, in which Italy played an increasingly dominant part. This, said Mr Mix, was not wholly to the United States’ taste. His job was to get a detailed plan of the Pasha’s strengths as well as his financial needs and sexual predilections. It was a story I could believe of some Hungarian Secret Service plot, but not of the United States Government. Once, my irritation got the better of me and I told him the whole thing sounded as if he had been reading too many dime novels. In turn this brought me to recalling my idyll with Miss von Bek over the Sahara and I began to pass my time by resurrecting those moments until I had remembered virtually the entire action and some of the dialogue of The Tyneside Leopard Men up to those final scenes where Blake, that exemplary Englishman, clambers from the wreckage of the glider and addresses the remains of the evil Cult as they advance towards him. ‘I warn you, my dear baroness, gentlemen, I have a Smith and Wesson in my hand and I know how to use it.’ If Sexton Blake were at this moment in Morocco it would not be long before I were free. But it seemed I must reconcile myself to an eternity of torment. My night was spent in humble prayer.

In the morning Hadj Idder personally brought us fruit and coffee. He seemed to feel a certain remote concern for us. He had our upper bodies released but our legs remained manacled. As we ate he read to us from the French newspaper. Mr Noel Coward and his people were staying at the Transatlantique and that evening were to be El Glaoui’s guests before the Pasha was called away on military business in the south. ‘What a pity you will miss him. Mustafa will be working on your feet about then. He is a very witty man in French and even more in English, they say.’ He lost interest in the paper and stood idly looking about the cell as we ate, turning what was left of the Jew’s skull with his slippered foot. “They did this themselves,’ he offered. ‘They sent the head here. They did not wish the Pasha to relax his protection of the mellah.’ He looked at us with sudden enquiry as if it were important to him to be believed. His beloved master’s reputation was as ever his chief concern.

He asked us if we had eaten and drunk enough. We said that we had. ‘This is a matter of state security,’ he explained. ‘It is unfortunate. There are forces amongst the French that are inimical to my master’s desires. If there was some way of releasing you, believe me, I would do so. But you have nothing with which to bargain.’ I had the impression that he had been put up to this by the Pasha, perhaps to sweeten our torment. I quelled the hope that the visit had a different purpose. ‘Normally Europeans are not treated in this way, especially celebrities. But there is a certain amount of overcrowding at the moment due to the various rebellions and the Pasha’s family problems.’ He had grown a little apologetic. He was hesitating, as if he had some secret he wished to share. I looked up at him enquiringly.

‘Si Peters,’ he said, ‘I have as you know admired several of your cinema adventures and especially enjoyed your cowboy roles. I would feel privileged if I could have your autograph before the Pasha returns from Tafouelt. Perhaps on a small poster I was lucky enough to come by?’

He did not appear upset by Mr Mix’s poorly suppressed sniggering and spluttered congratulations that with such fans I might never need enemies.

I told Hadj Idder I would be honoured to oblige and perhaps he in return would see that a note was sent to a friend of mine currently staying in Tangier. His name was Mr Sexton Blake.

This impressed him as I had hoped. He frowned and said that he believed something could be arranged to suit everyone’s honour.

He came back a few minutes later with the show-card for The Buckaroo’s Code and presented it to me, together with a large silver fountain pen, so that I might sign upon my own veiled face and recollect, too poignantly, my happy days in Hollywood with Esmé and Mrs Cornelius. How I wished now that I had been content and weathered Hever’s blackmail until another studio recognised my talents, but it was too late. I had let that terror the shtetl had put into my womb determine my actions. Now I must make my intellect rule or I would almost certainly die, and my dusky comrade with me. I wrote across my face in Arabic Hadj Idder - May God help us all - Your brother ‘Ace’ - and then in English, Happy Trails, Pardner - Yore pal, The Masked Buckaroo! The portly African seemed genuinely touched by the sentiments and kissed me several times on both cheeks, murmuring that God must surely help the faithful, and it was then I began to understand how he would dearly love to see us go free. But if we escaped, surely even Hadj Idder would have to forfeit his life? I told myself hopelessly that I was, as the Swiss say, clutching at feathers.

Hadj Idder did not carry away his trophy, but stood in deep thought before at last saying what was on his mind. ‘I think my master might bury his pride in this case,’ he said, ‘if you were, for instance, to undertake some small service for him.’ I remained suspicious. Cat-and-mouse was T’hami’s favourite game.

‘A service?’

‘Something to ease his present embarrassment with the French. I understand that you are friendly with Lieutenant Fromental, in spite of his opposition to the air fleet?’

I admitted I had enjoyed the young man’s company from time to time.

‘Yet you were aware he was a spy?’ Hadj Idder looked directly at me suddenly. I was, even in my present position, sceptical of this statement, but I said nothing.

‘If you were to confide in the Pasha,’ Hadj Idder continued, ‘perhaps a little of what this creature Fromental said to you about spying for the French. How he deliberately sabotaged our work and so on. If he were seen by the Quai d’Orsay as, let us say, failing in his duties or exceeding his power, it would be useful to our master. Or possibly he made some sexual advance? You must be aware of something you could put in a letter - ‘

‘That’s one of the lousiest things I’ve ever heard.’ Mr Mix was outraged. ‘We get free if we rat on a friend, is that it?’

‘Fromental will not be harmed - just despatched to another, less sensitive, post. It is all the Pasha wants.’

‘You’re asking him to betray the best friend he has here!’ Mr Mix’s response was understandable but scarcely politic. As Hadj Idder said, Fromental would merely receive orders to return home and from there he would go to the Cameroons or perhaps Mozambique. But I now knew I must agree to nothing without first having practical guarantees. I had learned this in Egypt, from God. I told Hadj Idder that Mr Mix was right. I could not betray my friend.

The majordomo shrugged. ‘It is a shame,’ he said. ‘You would rather betray the Pasha?’

At his tone, rather than his words, I shuddered. ‘And it would have gladdened my heart to have set you free,’ the negro continued, ‘since I am such an admirer. It would be in my power to ensure, with Allah’s grace, that you would make many more movies.’

‘Sadly, the movies I have made will never again be seen here,’ I hinted. ‘Would that I could lift a little of your burden, Si Idder, by taking myself and my films back to America. There, it would give me much pleasure to describe the generosity and wisdom of the Lord of Marrakech.’

‘But it would not reflect well upon my master when you mentioned this unfortunate incarceration.’

‘Neither, dear friend, would it reflect well upon myself, should I be asked why I found myself in jail. There are certain incidents best not spoken of. After a while they become no more than dreams, and their substance can be proven or disproven as readily as the substance of dreams. But let it be said, Si Idder, that I am proud of my achievements with the Pasha and I would use them to increase my own honour. Whose interest would be served by the spreading of lies and distortions about a trusted business colleague?’

Hadj Idder took my point and was quite clearly mulling over the bargain I had proposed while Mr Mix, whose own Arabic was less sophisticated, kept asking who the hell were the two of us selling out between us.

I took this as a joke.

I knew my casual mention of the famous English detective had given Hadj Idder pause and it was equally clear that he might release me if a face-saving formula could be discovered.

I began to hope. Against all the evidence I saw a chance of salvation. I prayed that I might after all go home to Hollywood, to Di Heym, the new Byzantium. Her slender minarets and gentle roofs blend with the outline of cedars, poplars and cypresses in a warm mist that wanders through silver hills and is scented with jasmine and mint and bougainvillea. I walk along her palm boulevards, beside her ocean, secure and tranquil beneath a benign golden sun. And here the great spires and domes which rise above her tall trees shall be dedicated not to the cruel and drooling patriarch who shits upon the world like an ancient losing control of his bowels, but to his Son, his Successor, who is God re-born, God cleansed and whole, God not as our brooding master but as our partner in self-improvement. I speak of the Christian God, no God that Jew or Arab can claim. Their God is the God of Carthage, senile and confused, yet full of the blind brute rage which brought the Minotaur to ruin. He is a God of the bloody past. This is not a God to advise upon the subtle problems of urban living. To call upon such a God in Notting Hill would be tantamount to summoning the Devil. I speak of the God who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ. I speak of that self-regenerated God who proclaimed the Age of Peace and then watched in dismay as He saw what Man made of it. God, says the Cornelius girl, is a woman. Then you do not know God, I say. God is a Presence. God is an Idea. She says it is typical of me to reduce everything to abstractions. But God is an Abstraction, I say. What are we reducing?

Brodmann, of course, wanted me dead. I remembered his gloating expression as Grishenko’s whip fell upon my buttocks. I remember the insults. I remember Brodmann’s filthy eyes darting back and forth from my penis to my arse. Let him think what he likes. I am a victim of Scientific Rationalism, not Religion. My father’s knife was secular. Ni moyle . . . Ikh farshtey nit. . . Mrs Cornelius agrees with me. She says they all do it now in England. It has no connection with religion. And in America, too. All over the West. This is poor consolation. What does it actually proclaim? What else but that Zion has overrun Christendom? Sometimes Mrs Cornelius is so anxious to see good in the world that she is blind to the obvious. At such times she knows my logic has triumphed and she refuses to continue. That is typical of women but I do not care. I have all my life been a willing victim of the fair sex. Your eyes reflect their every fantasy, said the Jew in Arcadia. He wrote down the aphorism Byzantium endures the laughter of Carthage; Jerusalem commands the vengeance of Rome. It means more in Yiddish, I think. He used the Greek models, chiefly, he told me. I reminded myself that Jesus was born a Jew and was spiritually a Greek. Was this why my heart sang to him? I have not known such love since. Your dark eye mirrors my imperfect soul. I embrace your blasphemed body.

I admitted to some embarrassment. It was so quiet that day in Arcadia and not even a tram along the sea-front to Odessa until I had almost given up. War will often bring silence as well as noise. For a while I sold new bicycles in my shop, but there was no market for them. Now, of course, all the city-gents are wanting them. They buy in the West End, but they come to me for repairs. In the West End they would tell them to throw the thing away and get another. Personally I have no special love for these consumer cycles.

What is their bourgeois wealth giving them? I ask Mrs Cornelius. Is their life sweeter? Is their life better? Do they relish it more? Not very much, it seems.

I see them, in the pub on Saturday, these new TV people and their friends, in their identical sweaters with their ill-behaved children, cackling at one another across the bars like so many mad parrots, eyeing one another’s identical wives with leering uncertainty. What are they doing? Their rituals are a mystery to me. The sound they make is not a happy one. Mrs Cornelius says I am reading too much into them. “They’re dead simple, those greedy bastards.’ She finds my analyses amusing. ‘Bastards is bastards and orl yer ‘ave ter know is ‘ow ter stop ‘em. Because bastards has ter be stopped. That’s anower rule.’ When the worse for drink, she is inclined to over-simplify.

Brodmann wanted me dead, but for some reason Hadj Idder did not. That seemed to be the new essence of the situation. Brodmann did not care about any political consequences for the Pasha following my death. Hadj Idder thought of little else. He did not want to see his master shamed. Yet the Pasha’s honour must certainly be satisfied. I could not imagine that for whatever good reasons El Glaoui’s right-hand man would betray him and so I tried to pay no attention to my leaping heart. But then it occurred to me that perhaps there had been a change of policy which he had been entrusted to implement after El Glaoui left for the south.

Evidently Hadj Idder did not want his master embarrassed in Europe and America. Our removal I guessed was proving less simple than they had imagined. People could be making awkward enquiries. Could it be that El Glaoui wished to reverse his reckless verdict but could not do so without losing face? Perhaps the only answer to his problem would be to free us? I grew cautiously hopeful. Was Hadj Idder even now waiting for the appropriate word from me?

‘He might be changing his mind,’ I told Mr Mix.

He was scarcely listening. ‘What about Rosie?’ he wanted to know. ‘Did she get clear?’ He was, I thought, overly concerned about the fate of someone he hardly knew. I could not understand his anxiety, but I too was anxious for news of Rosie. Had El Hadj T’hami let me think she had betrayed me and escaped when actually she had been recaptured and merely been forced to give up my bag?

‘I gather Miss von Bek is no longer a guest of the Pasha,’ I coldly remarked to Hadj Idder who was rubbing at his glossy jowls as if some prison bug had crept amongst the folds and bitten him where he could no longer reach.

‘Miss von Bek is believed to have died in the mountains.’ The black man looked at the floor. ‘Your El Nahla was well named. She flew a little erratically and was unhappy with heights. You both loved her, I know. I respect your grief.’

But he had not told me she was dead. He had told me she was free. I had every faith in my plane. I was delighted. I relayed this to Mr Mix.

‘It means he can’t be sure she won’t tell someone about what’s happening to us here,’ he said. ‘They’re stuck now, Max.’ He seemed rather foolishly delighted. He winked at Hadj Idder. He grinned. And slowly the vizier began to smile back. Then Hadj Idder chuckled. The quality of the tension altered. We all became peculiarly expectant. Hadj Idder said courteously, ‘I was very thrilled by your exploits in Ace of the Aces, Si Peters. Gloria Cornish is a beauty! I envy you.’

‘As a matter of fact she is my wife,’ I said. ‘We were married some years ago in Russia. At present she eagerly awaits my return to our Hollywood mansion. As do our children. I’m glad you enjoyed Ace. My uncle, President Hoover, always told me it was one of his own favourites.’

Rather than surprising or alarming Hadj Idder, my remarks seemed to confirm something he had already guessed.

‘What a meal the papers will make of this!’ declaimed Mr Mix, attempting a chorus of his own. I told him to keep quiet. Statements about newspapers could seem like crude and impolitic threats. I told Hadj Idder that El Glaoui had been a good and generous master. It would hurt me, I told him, if shame were to attach to the Pasha’s name through any action of mine. With the vizier’s permission I reached into my bag and drew out the gold I had put there. Since this, I said, was no longer of any use to me would Hadj Idder please take it and use it for whatever pious work he chose.

He accepted the money with his usual grace. He said that Allah would bless me, and no doubt favour me. It is all I pray for, I said.

‘And I, Si Peters. We would both avoid this embarrassment if we could. Sadly, I do not possess the means of releasing you. That power is entirely in your hands. Naturally, I respect your decision not to use it, just as I would respect your decision to use it. It is a matter of principle and we are, Allah be praised, both men of principle.’

‘Indeed,’ I agreed, ‘and good followers of the Prophet, I hope, who would see justice done in the world.’

‘Indeed.’

A further pause while Mr Mix grunted and fidgeted in his chains saying he would rather go to the electric chair in Sing Sing than hear another minute of our bullshit. He asked what the hell was going on. In the hobo vernacular I told him to button his lip while I sweet-talked our jailer.

I paused.

‘I would see justice done above all,’ I said at last, to Hadj Idder’s visible satisfaction.

‘I will have the materials brought,’ he said and clapped his hands. From somewhere not far away an old servant carried a tray with ink, pens, vellum. I briefly entertained the wild thought that my denunciation of young Fromental was to be illuminated like some monkish manuscript, but all I had to do was write a little essay. I knelt upon the cushion the servant presented and, while he held the salver steady for me, began to write with the soft-nibbed quill. I ignored Mr Mix’s half-animal turmoil behind me. He was cursing and rattling his leg-irons. The poor black was beginning to lose his nerve. Perhaps he thought I was selling him.

When I had finished I left the paper unsigned. ‘It will be signed when my servant and I are released with my luggage and my films,’ I told him. ‘At the station.’

Hadj Idder was beaming with relief and bore the happy air of one who has seen a dear friend reach a sensible decision and save himself from danger.

The vizier had taken his gold and his signed portrait away and I was beginning to suspect a further trick when ten minutes later a somewhat nervous guard in a grubby djellabah entered bearing a large hessian sack which obviously contained the film cans. After he dumped the sack down and turned the big crude keys to unlock our leg-irons, he lit a cigarette. Then he glared at us, as if we were to blame for his predicament, and slouched off, cursing us for dirty infidels. Though the door of the cell had been left open, this was not particularly unusual. There was no way out of the prison without permission and the jailers’ charges were so well disciplined that few dared crawl a further inch towards the door, let alone enter the common corridor.

An hour later, Hadj Idder reappeared. He had brought us heavy djellabahs to put on over our remaining rags. He then gave stern orders to the same guard whose expression changed rapidly from chagrin to terror to reconciliation. Then, with sullen resentment, the Arab led us up the steps before pausing at the door into the warren of passages which had brought us here. In French, Hadj Idder called from below. ‘When my master returns he will be angry. He is obliged to punish those who tamper with his women. Therefore you would be wise, both of you, to remove yourselves from Morocco as soon as possible.’

‘We have no car,’ I said. ‘And the plane is gone. We were supposed to have train tickets, but - ‘

‘How you leave is of no interest to me.’ He spoke casually.

‘Will you not also be punished for helping us?’ I asked the plump negro. ‘Perhaps you had better come too?’

Hadj Idder was amiably reassuring. He indicated our less than knowing guide. ‘What the Glaoui discovers and what he does not care to discover are his concern. But you need not fear for me. Some dog shall have to be punished so that my master’s honour can be satisfied. The dog will be beaten and executed and that will be the end of the matter. Assuming, of course, that you are by then on your way to another country.’ He gave a sharp order to the guard, who gloomily flung the sack onto his back.

Jacob Mix wanted to know if some of the film he himself had shot could be returned to him. Hadj Idder heard this request with appreciative amusement. ‘I hope you enjoy your freedom as much as I have enjoyed your comradeship,’ he said to Mr Mix in what was probably intended for a compliment, but he did not reply to the request.

I had found distasteful Hadj Idder’s hint that Miss von Bek had also been involved with Mr Mix. No doubt he meant me to look on my friend with suspicion, to poison my mind against him. It was impossible to imagine even the wild Rosie von Bek contemplating an affaire with an ordinary American darkie! I was about to confront Hadj Idder on this when the vizier stepped backwards into the shadows and was gone. The muttering Arab, who had been ordained to the rôle of scapegoat in Hadj Idder’s elegant plot, led us at such a snail’s pace through the maze and took so long to reach the end that I began to suspect a further trap, or that he would abandon us to some fresh threat. But at last we were in the dark, listening streets of the mellah, outside the house of the wretched Jew whom Brodmann had betrayed. The guard left the sack at our feet and backed away. Mr Mix hefted the sack and grinned. ‘Here’s The Masked Buckaroo, Max. He’s all yours.’ But when I failed to lift both the sack and the bag, he took pity on me, though his attitude remained cool, and he picked up the bag, striding ahead while I followed with the sack. I remained nervous. I could still not fully determine El Glaoui’s motives for releasing us. But Brodmann would surely be furious when he discovered my escape and would try to involve the French and Spanish authorities. We were still therefore in considerable danger. As we paused in the narrow space between one street wall and another, the archway ahead of us suddenly blazed with light and we heard the sound of an engine turning over. The Arab had already dropped well behind us. Cautiously we advanced up to the archway and the broader road beyond. A modern Buick sat in the shadows with its motor running, a pale, frowning Berber face staring from the cab. ‘Taxi ordered by Monsieur Josef,’ said the driver a little impatiently. ‘To go to the railway depot.’

‘That’s us,’ said Mr Mix and he opened the door for me to enter the comfortable interior and sit there with my bag on my knees desperately wishing that I could void my bowels, which had now been transmuted into water. Mr Mix put the sack of films on the floor as he settled back in the seat. ‘The only problem we have now is that we don’t have Fromental’s tickets and have no way of buying them. It’s not like an ordinary railroad office here. You have to do everything through the military.’

The car had left the mellah and pushed into the busier streets of the city. It crawled along the far edge of the Djema al Fna’a. Even now, as I fled for my life, I felt drawn to the Congress of the Dead, so ironically named. Here was every kind of life being lived at its most intense. Yet we are also the dead. We are also the ghosts of the unborn. We are our own betrayed children. Every evening at sunset these people poured into the square to perform a scene Griffith himself could not have bettered, to present a thousand cameos, a thousand little morality plays, for the benefit of an audience responding with all the spontaneity that once greeted those much-disputed performances first proclaimed across the boards of The Swan and The Globe; an audience frank and tolerant as all good-hearted peasants the world over.

The car pushed through the press of beggars, tumblers, oracles and story-tellers, through snake-charmers holding their dying, disenvenomed cobras high above their heads, through musicians with flute, tambourine and lute. Occasionally the Buick was forced to stop altogether as the bodies refused to part. Against the glass appeared the grinning faces of little boys, while behind them I observed the nosy disapproval of old men, the envious contempt of youths, the intense curiosity of the veiled women, and I had the impulse to cry out to them, to speak of the world I could have given them. Then, for a moment, I wondered if my world was indeed any better than the one they knew. Perhaps it was not right to bring the twentieth century to the fourteenth. Would it not be best to leave them in peace?

But can expansive Carthage ever leave Europe in peace? She sends Turkish and Tunisian guest-workers through the whole of Northern Europe. Now Ali Baba and Sinbad are heroes as familiar in Stockholm as Lohengrin and Tannhäuser once were. But has the musselman in his turn adopted our chivalric epics? Do Lancelot and Parsival thrill the blood of little boys in Baghdad and Bengazi? An honest answer tells the whole story. Carthage forbids anything save her own legend. She is paramount. Carthage conquers inch by inch. Half the slogans on the Ladbroke Grove walls are in unreadable languages. The wall is all that is left to the unheard, the unenfranchised, the silenced of this world. Why has the spray-can replaced the ballot-paper? Perhaps because people are informed by a natural will to evil and chaos, but I think it more likely that they are moved by the knowledge that nowhere in the halls of power is their opinion represented. I do not blame them for losing faith in their constitutions. I do blame them, however, for turning their backs on God.

It was the same in the camps. Half of them ignored the obvious facts of their situation. It was how they had come there in the first place. And then it was too late. Only those who accepted the realities survived. There is little room for sentiment in Camp Freedom, as our old commandant used to remind us. Sentiment is what led us to our present predicament. Ikh bin eyn Luftmeister. Der Flugzeugführer sitzt im Führersitz ... I shall come back to the City of the Golden Dream.

The pain starts in my stomach. It reaches my mouth. I did not become a Musselman. What more could they want from me? I wore their stripes. I wore their star. Even though their punishment was unjust I performed my work. It had been my fate forever to be condemned and identified not through any action of my own, but through the careless decision of a father whom I hardly knew. But that I suppose is what becomes of the child of a free-riding Cossack when left too long in the care of its mother. I do not blame my mother, I hasten to say, but it is probably true she made me a little over-sensitive. Those stripes. Brodmann gloated. Grishenko raised his quirt. So that I should not forget the sacrifice of my friend Yermeloff. Then he gave me my pistols, ebony and silver. Those bars. Nobody blamed me for what I did in Kiev. Those people tear the skins from corpses. They carve their initials in the bodies. Their only sensation of living comes when they are performing some complicated act of cruelty on another wretched soul. And this we were told was to be the century of enlightenment!

Today on the television they discuss the problem of leisure. What leisure is that? We are all clearly on the brink of a new Dark Age but they discuss the party arrangements in paradise! They say I am mentally disturbed! Is there any aspect of their lives which is actually better than the lives of their forefathers? Their fathers had hope, at least. This generation looks into the future and sees only decay and dissolution.

Cautiously I checked that the sack really did contain only my film canisters, then I glanced back through the car’s window at Djema al Fna’a. As the twilight folded over the people and the yellow radiance of oil and tallow gave the scene the quality of Flemish paint, I wondered at this luscious ordinariness. It was unfortunate, I thought, there were no Arab old masters. An over-literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is the reason for that. These people embrace rules the way most of us embrace life. The more rules they have, the more comfortable they are. I told this to that ill-tempered hysteric in the Post Office, that Pakistanischer. He behaves as if the Postmaster General is some Oriental tyrant who will behead anyone for the slightest use of their own initiative. Or is the man merely exercising his power?

As our car eased its way through the gateway and out onto the Route du Safi, the wide new road that led up to the darkened military train yards beyond the Villa Marjorelle, a big Mercedes tourer swung across our path, forcing the driver to stop. A pistol was waved from the passenger window and then a small man descended from the tourer and crossed to where we were stopped, our engine still running. He held a tray: on it were ink, pen and paper.

I picked up the pen and the Mercedes reversed to allow the taxi to pass. As soon as I had signed and returned the paper the Mercedes turned and was gone. It was only another five minutes to the railroad yards, but, with Mr Mix’s puzzlingly cool company, it seemed longer. There was no great activity in the yards. A few lights blazed in huts on the other side of the fence and the huge black sleeping outlines of military locomotives and goods wagons were everywhere. The place lacked the urgency of a commercial yard. Our car was allowed through the gates on the driver’s presentation of a pass already provided by the unfortunate Fromental. He drove towards the buildings on the other side of the tracks but I tapped him on the shoulder. We would stop here, I said. I gave him my last spare French banknote. Then Jacob Mix and I left the car and found the deeper shadows of the big trains. My bag was proving heavy and the films, loose in the sack, were awkward for Mr Mix, but we kept a firm, almost desperate, grip on my remaining belongings. They were all we had to get us to Tangier and from there to Europe. The Pasha or his vizier could change their minds at any moment and send soldiers in pursuit.

Fromental did not remain in the army, I heard. Someone told me he had made a great success running a radio business in Lyons (home of our Christian Testament) so in fact events were fortunate for him. Apparently he was shot by the Germans in 1943. When I heard this news I could not suppress a pang of sadness, remembering his bright enthusiastic face, his honest idealism. We had much in common. I have always said that the honour the Christian values highest is the honour of honest chivalry above so-called manly courage. Fromental is in honour now, no doubt a martyr. I think when we meet he will want to shake me by the hand.

Once we had got our bearings, we began to examine the trains with our expert eyes. Both of us had learned every trick of the American railroad bum, and the French authorities had never had to contend with a skilled hobo before. It was not long before we had identified the locomotive we wanted. It was already making steam and it was clear from the markings on its trucks that it was bound for Casablanca. From Casablanca we could easily transfer to Tangier, the Free City where neither Moroccan nor French law prevailed. Then we could get any one of a dozen ships to take us to Genoa. From Genoa we would be within easy reach of Rome.

Mr Mix found an unlocked door and slid it smoothly back. As we climbed into the truck we admired the modern rolling-stock, so much better maintained than civilian trains and then, with the security of familiarity we settled down, upon the slats, to sleep until our educated senses detected the first movements of the train. At that point we must be on the alert, in case of examiners finding us. But these trains made few of the sounds we were used to. Every so often a huge gasp of steam would fill the night, to be followed at once by further silence.

I sent up a prayer for Rosie von Bek, hoping she had managed to pilot the Bee all the way to Rome. I remembered Kolya and offered up a small prayer, too, for his safety. I thought of Esmé, my sister, my daughter, and how in the end she had failed to rise to my hopes. Yet I could not entirely condemn her. For a few years her life had been filled with a wonder and luxury, elegance and quality she would never have known had I left her to live out her days as a mere Galata whore. I still celebrated her loveliness, her quality of innocence, her child-like beauty. I still loved her.

At dawn the wagon rattled forward a few metres. I braced myself. It shuddered to a stop. We heard whistles and yells. The train shunted backwards for several revolutions of her pistons and then subsided, sniffing and hissing in a petulant undertone. We heard the locomotive giving off great masculine snorts and wheezes of impatience, like an old but dignified bulldog full of panting excitement at an outing. Suddenly I knew a moment of regret for all my lost expectations, all the pointless idealism I had invested in this world. Was it not thoroughly ironic we should be on our way to seek refuge in the ancient site of Carthage herself, to Tangier?

But perhaps it is true, and you are always safer in the cage when a lion is on the loose.

At last we were moving. There had been no check of our truck. As it rolled forward, sunlight shone through the slats of the roof and made bars of intense black and white on a floor still carrying recent traces of straw and excrement but now stinking of carbolic. The procession of stripes undulated over my sprawled body, like some ethereal tide, while Mr Mix’s face was thrown alternatively into vivid light and sudden darkness. Through the stink of the disinfectant and the heating engine oil I smelled for the last time the warm mint-flavoured air of Marrakech as the red city faded behind us and the train began its long climb through the gorges of the Atlas. There was a reassuring and familiar rhythm to the bumping of the wheels over the rails and I was able to reach into my bag to find one of my small packets of restorif. I offered Mr Mix a comradely thumbnail of the cheering drug, which he refused, saying he planned to sleep. We should be all day getting to Casablanca. With luck we would arrive at night. Otherwise we should have to wait to disembark at dark. It was October 28, 1929. In a few months I would be thirty. I planned to celebrate the event in Rome.

But soon I had grown melancholy thinking of those wonderful monsters waiting for the engines that would never come. French imperial politics and the Pasha’s failure to control his own emotions meant my beautiful machines must now become museum pieces. I still, however, had a number of my expensive catalogues, though, sadly, only the Arabic version, not the French. I thought of my Desert Liner and what wealth it might have created for the whole region. I would have made their desert green. Now they would have to wait, perhaps for ever. El Glaoui’s loss would be Il Duce’s gain. Within a couple of weeks I would be dining with my old friends at The Wasp. I told Mr Mix he would fall in love with the city. It was the crucible of our finest institutions.

Across the truck, as the train speeded up, I saw his great amiable African face grinning through the flickering stripes of our temporary prison giving our reality the effect of an early kinema film. I remarked on this. The rattle of the bogies might almost have been the clatter of a projector. It was the strangest illusion.

I fumed at those who had conspired to ruin both our careers and condemn us to such unjust humiliation. I was not even sure, I said, if I had enough money to get a decent passage on the ship to Italy, let alone buy some reasonable clothes. Already I was smelling of cow-dung. ‘I hear Rome is very fashion-conscious, these days.’ We could not be expected to parade through the Holy City like evil-smelling extras from The Desert Song. Besides, I did not expect our djellabahs to last the journey.

‘Look at the stitching on this garment,’ I said. ‘It’s of the cheapest quality. Not a double seam on the whole thing. Scarcely a fair exchange for a bag of English gold!’

Slap-happy as ever, the big black suddenly began to roar with laughter. I could not understand this at all. I thought at first he had given in to the hysteria to which his race is prone, but then it seemed he was doing nothing more than trumpet his considerable relief at being free of the Pasha’s torture-chamber. I told him I was proud to see he was taking his hardships so well. Not all his race were so resilient. He need not fear in Europe, I assured him. I would be there to help. If anyone insulted him in the Eternal City they must answer to me!

At this he uttered a further wild burst of mirth, declaring that knowing me made a man believe in miracles. ‘Max, you are the luckiest bastard in the whole damned universe. I never heard of anybody with your kind of luck. From now until we get back to civilisation I’m going to stick to you like a fly to fresh paint.’

I was a little baffled. ‘What “luck” are you talking about, Mr Mix? I think you mean “judgement”, surely! If I hadn’t had the presence of mind to mention the name of one of England’s most powerful and least-known men we should still be languishing in the Glaoui jail, or writhing at the first tender touch of St Paul’s Pincers.’ I felt sick. I could almost smell our burning flesh. ‘Is that “luck”?’ I pulled my Georgian pistols from my bag to make sure no harm had come to them.

He did his best to control himself. He turned his head and let his chin settle upon his chest. But it was clear he had not really understood me.

‘Luck?’ I was still incredulous. From what sort of skewed illusion could the schwartze be suffering? ‘Haven’t you noticed, Mr Mix, that we are once again reduced to the discomforts of a cattle car?’

Clearly the terrors of the past few days had taken their toll. The poor fellow’s mind had snapped. His head flung up, his scarlet mouth gaping, he shook with feverish mirth, and as the locomotive pulled us relentlessly into the High Atlas I became miserably reconciled to the certainty that he would still be roaring even when we passed at last through the golden gates of Rome.