I would not become a Musselman. Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich. Mein Kampf makes me sick. I could never read it. Yet Adolf Hitler was a brilliant man. He inscribed a copy to Clara Bow, hoping she enjoyed reading it as much as he enjoyed writing it. Poor Clara went mad, I heard, on some remote ranch, with a cowboy. I think Mein Kampf contained a truth I dared not face. Facing that truth drove Hitler mad. I did not wish to suffer the same fate. Let sleeping dogs lie, I said. Perhaps I was young. How could I blame myself? Such guilt is useless. It has no purpose. I, after all, was the one betrayed. Eindee haadha—ma eindee shee—haadha dharooree li-amalee … Wayn shantati—wayn shantati—wayn shantati … They would tell me so little, even when I begged. I asked for my luggage, my plans, my books, my personal goods. They said my things were still in Luxor. They had been put in Sir Ranalf’s care at the Winter Palace. I dared not mention my only valuables, Yermeloff’s black and silver Georgian pistols, symbols of my Cossack heritage. I prayed they would not find them where I had hidden them in the Gladstone’s bottom, beneath work materials, notes and designs, mayn teatrumsketches, and the details of my Desert Liner! They were, I will admit, by then becoming decreasingly important in my mind for they all existed in the world of the living. Esmé and I now inhabited the world of the dead; ordered to mime the functions of life to earn our sleep, our food, the very drugs enabling us still to perform the rape scene. The drugs relieved some of the pain. It was clear we would never earn enough to pay back our debts. Though I could easily wean myself of any craving, I knew it would be impossible for her. Therefore I saw no point in refusing what was offered until such time as escape was possible. So we became the lady and the butler, the newly-weds, the slave-market, the office couple. We played many parts but with a certain sameness of plot. The more elaborate Sir Ranalf’s demands upon us, the closer did al-Habashiya move her couch from the shadows to the set. Every day she watched us with mounting interest. She was a fleshy heavy darkness with burning eyes, gasping weightily, smacking red lips, until soon she was almost within the scene herself, exuding a sense of greedy urgency, then she would fall back and something would be purred in Arabic. Sir Ranalf would suggest a different angle.
They said they needed new backgrounds where we were less likely to be interrupted. They took us to a ruined Coptic chapel in the remote Western Desert. In the shelter of a wind-smoothed crenellated wall, al-Habashiya had pitched her gorgeous tent with all the proud display of a wealthy Bedawi.
The chapel was unknown to archaeologists, Sir Ranalf assured us, because it did not serve a camel route.
There was however a well where two etiolated palm trees stretched high into the arching clarity of the sky. In the distance the desert was broken by a ridge of muddy slate. We sat silently together, Esmé and I, while al-Habashiya shared a glass of sherbet with Quelch and Sir Ranalf. They stretched on couches arranged to enjoy the sunset better. We sat at their feet on the carpeted sand. ‘In Bi’r Tefawi,’ murmured al-Habashiya, ‘I have a villa and a garden. It is more peaceful there. I live in seclusion these days, though once, Professor Quelch, as you know, I ruled Cairo—or at least the Wasa’a and its environs. But then they arrested me.’ She drew lusciously upon her hukah. ‘I was put, eventually, into jail. It was not unpleasant. I was lucky enough to have friends there. But Russell Pasha himself had made up his mind to set an example. I was arrested again. They tried to confiscate my business interests. Russell Pasha was not then prepared to come to any sort of agreement, so I was forced to die in prison. I had no trouble arranging it. But I am used to a city. Exiled to the provinces one grows easily bored. It is very hard to kill so many hours.’
In the first months of my captivity this was one of the longest speeches al-Habashiya was ever to make in my presence.
I recalled Quelch’s stories of a creature who had sat unmoving all day on a bench in the Shari Abd-el-Khaliq, yet had controlled rigidly every aspect of Cairo’s vice. I remembered too that he was a transvestite negro of enormous size, who always dressed as a woman and veiled himself in white and would stretch jewelled fingers to be kissed by some passing servitor. Every Arab of the quarter was owned in some way by that grotesque. A silent, ebony idol, Quelch had said, more powerful than the king himself. Cairo’s most successful brothel-keeper, pimp, drug-dealer and white-slaver, a major partner behind half the ‘theatrical booking agencies’ in the East. And yet beautiful, Quelch told me. Once he had seen the negro’s face. Everyone who knew him agreed he was, despite his bulk, the loveliest transvestite they had ever seen.
For us all, however, al-Habashiya, if it were the same creature, remained veiled, mysteriously feminine. Those were the early days of our serfdom, when it seemed we must soon be released. They never raised their voices. They always spoke humorously. They merely offered us choices. Certain choices were good ones and we were praised for making them. Certain choices were bad and we were punished.
The injustice of this did not outrage me for long. I came to understand that I had entered a dream-time I must endure until I could wake and return to the reality and security I had known before. It was my only alternative to death. I came to appreciate Goethe’s notions of joyful revelation through pain, hardship and humiliation. I am, moreover, not of a suicidal disposition. Indeed, I am by nature an optimist. Is this Jewish?
The Future is Order, Security, Strength. On this we all agreed. But the Future is Beauty, Tolerance, Liberty, also, I said. Those will come later, they told me. That was when I lost my faith in the Nazis.
I was ‘too much of an idealist’. They still say so. Mrs Cornelius tried to convince me of this, on the Berlin tram, shortly before my arrest. She sent me clotted cream from Cornwall. By then I was on the Isle of Man. When I received it it was rancid. After that the rationing got worse. I was back in London in time for the Blitz. ‘They didn’t wan’cha ter miss nuffink, Ivan,’ yelled Mrs Cornelius on that first weekend together as we huddled outside a crowded makeshift air-raid shelter while the world turned to howling, heaving red and black and from above and all sides of us came the drone of engines, the banging of guns. Britain had expected to lose, you see, like Poland or Czechoslovakia or France. She had prepared London for siege, not for victory. They say Churchill was the last to accept that we survived the Battle of Britain. Even he was infected by that new, corrosive defeatism which comes from only one insidious source!
Even in those days Mrs Cornelius was coughing badly. Her cough was almost terrifying when I first heard it. It brought back the sound of my mother’s coughing, her retching and heaving over the washstand, as I waited patiently for Mrs Cornelius to come out of her bathroom. The rhythm and volume of their coughing fits was identical.
There are some memories which accompany such associations—bad ones, which I will not allow to emerge, because to dwell on them is pointless—and sweet ones, of summer gardens and happy outings, of the flowery fields around Kiev, the distinctive lavender scent of my mother’s best coat; the gorges, the woods, the old yellow streets and sturdy timber houses under gentle trees, of the busy Kreshchatik Boulevard with its scintillating store displays, its window-boxes and decorative baskets, the rich smell of the cafés and the chandlers’ shops; all the nooks and crannies of a true city, long in the building, making little shadowy places, safe places, caves and hollows and enclosures and sharp corners and mysteries in every sidestreet, grown naturally over centuries like a vast, wonderful shrub, thoroughly rooted and profoundly implanted with the pattern of the past, for the memory of Kiev is the memory of the Slavic people, those warriors of the Eastern marches, the bastion of Christ against the ferocious and envying Mongol. This is why we understand so well what is happening today. Yet still you refuse to listen. You think you have a kind of peace? A pact with Carthage? Believe me, you have the Slav to thank for that. When he falls, as he must eventually fall, unless Christ sends a miracle, then it is an end to the old world. I would not wish to live in the mongrel, unruly new. Has Chaos already conquered? My ship is called Novaya Kieva, Novay
a Mira, SHE IS THE Tsargrad, THE CITADEL OF OUR RACE AND OUR FAITH! They tried to make me a Jew, a Musselman, their dog, but I deceived them. I was only acting. I performed the rape scene.
They took us step by step into the Land of the Dead. We licked our lips; then we rolled our eyes; then we grinned at the camera; and then we did everything again. As Sin of the Sheikh reached artistic unity the noble gods of Egypt, in crude replica, peered in alien distaste from alcoves once honouring saints. Step by step they coaxed and threatened us into the Land of the Dead, where in grotesque pantomime of the living, we endlessly performed our rape scene, where al-Habashiya, Queen of the Damned, would laugh and clap as a proud parent applauds her children. And one day she makes us come to her in her perfumed inner pavilion where eunuchs and hermaphrodites wait on all her needs. Would you now become a Musselman? No, I would not become a Musselman. Then you must be a Jew. Sweet little darling Jew-puppy. Soft little Yiddy-widdy dinkums. This was how He rationalised His rape of me. That tide of black fat was never still, it flowed over me, it threatened to suffocate me, and yet there was a terrible hardness in it, as if at some point the tension would burst to reveal razor-sharp steel gashing through bloody flesh, the spring of its overwound energy, to destroy me. To cut me into nameless strips of meat. That fat black tide dragged me into a darkness worse than any pain. Little greasy Jewboy whore, momma’s darling, sweet darling arse. Obedient little cocksucking Jewboy filth garbage muck fuck English Jewboy whore bitch. She said was I a Moslem or a Jew? I said, a Christian. No, she said, a Moslem or a Jew? She told me what a Moslem must eat. She told me what a Jew could eat. A Jew, I said. I will be a Jew. There was a piece of metal in my womb.
They say the icecaps are heating up because of our industry. What an irony should Stephenson’s engine prove the direct linear cause of Alexandria drowning forever beneath the Mediterranean! The science of our Enlightenment drowning all that was ever of value to us. Is this any destiny I should be party to? How much more must I answer ‘guilty’? I am guilty of nothing. Unless I am guilty of wanting to improve the world! This is a crime?
They were offered my new Jerusalem, my new Rome, my new Byzantium, my flying cities of silver filigreed with gold, my glorious towers, my Eden, my independence of thought and movement, the ultimate democracies. But what did they settle for? Harold Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Ho Chi Minh and the Beatles!
Yet in spite of every vicissitude I refuse to forget my true destiny. If I am the light and inspiration of Europe, I am also the secret protector of our civilisation, the scribe of our victories and our honour. I am Thoth. I am Anubis, recorder and guide in these days of our dying. Jane Austen does not impress me since she agreed to the rôle of a slut in that film called after some Dutchman’s surname. I saw it again last week. As Cleopatra she could have ruled my heart forever. But I am a stupid, chivalrous old Slav of a forgotten era. Anything I say is misinterpreted by that filthy-minded scum. I merely held her, after all, as I explained. I said nothing bad. My intentions were perfectly loving. Ach, Esmé, mein liebschen, mayn naches! What could I do to harm you? I was your brother, your father, your husband, your lover, even your mother! I was all these things. I cared for you when you were sick. Only I was all these things. Why would God take you from me? I still blame myself a little for that, but ironically this is not the guilt they would have me bear. They would rather blame me for the genocide! For all those millions of Slavs and Gypsies and Celts and Jews? I think not. If they had listened to me I could have saved every single soul of them.
But they traded with the Bolsheviks, they placated them, they made a friend of Uncle Joe. What did they expect next? That a mad dog should suddenly become a loyal old pal? That you could sleep beside him and not be amazed if your throat was not torn out by morning? I would have brought Light and Peace to our starving darkness. Hitler would have ruled a world of simple decency and benign opportunity, where natural selection would ultimately produce a perfect citizen living in a city worthy of the Nazi dream. But their Final Solution weakened their authority in many eyes. I am the first to admit it. I have seen Alexander’s body in its secret tomb. God showed me where it was hidden. God said Alexander belonged to Him now. That mighty Greek, the great evangelist for Christ, came to Egypt and established the first truly civilised city, which became the greatest in the world. The Greeks took the best from Egypt and Assyria, discarding the cruel barbaric decadence of those first noble Semites whom heartless ambition brought low. It is the fate of the Jew to fall victim to his own marvellous invention. Some call that city the birthplace of our Church, where St Mark converted the first Jew to Christianity in AD 45. Volvitur vota, as Quelch might have said.
I begged the Englishman to get a message to Goldfish. He said it was more than his life was worth. He gave me a dark red volume, a Book of the Dead. I was bitter. I said he had sold me into slavery. He avoided the accusation. ‘You people must be used to that sort of thing by now,’ he said. It was a meaningless remark. He pointed to the low hills. ‘There’s a railway line about a day’s walk that way. You could almost certainly reach it if you went on your own.’ Of course, he knew I would not leave Esmé, that she was still my responsibility. He was taunting me, he was delighting in my downfall. That evening I was whipped. I said I was a Jew. And Esmé was a whore, my sister, my rose. There was metal in my womb. I called an androgynous nigger musselman my mother and I asked it to forgive me. I told my mother that Esmé was a whore, a bad girl. It was one of the games she made us play. Anyway, what would you do if offered a choice between humiliating death and humiliating life? Life or death? Which would you choose? Some in those camps chose death. They wanted it to be over. But that is not my nature. I am more of an optimist. You betrayed me, Esmé. You gave away our child. You sold our little girl. Did you care that you hurt me? When kunte, Esmé? When kunte? Muta-assef jiddan. Bar’d shadeed. That false place of death. What did it matter if I admitted my sins? It was all false; nothing was as it had seemed. Quelch’s pronouncements on Egypt were proven. The world was false, a second-rate fantasy, a faded dream. Dust lay everywhere. We had arrived at dust. Yet the blood in our bodies still circulated. The limbs of our bodies still performed. Al-Habashiya still applauded and praised us and made me lay my head on his thigh while he fondled Esmé and played ecstatic Cairene hymns on his ornate gramophone. He promised he would find some Mozart for us. It was the same in Sachsenhausen. Mozart was supposed to make up for everything. I wore a black triangle, then. I was an engineer, I said. It was a concession, we said. Al-Habashiya stroked my head and cooed. Vögel füllen mayn Brust. Vögel picken innen singen für die Freiheit. Mein Imperium, eine Seele. Vögel sterben in mir. Einer nach dem anderen. Mayn gutten yung yusen. He stroked my head and called me his good little orphan, his sweet little Jewboy. It was better to obey than to endure that prolonged pain or agonising death. Esmé understood this better than I. It is how she too survived.
All those human bodies ploughed like bloody chaff into the furrows of barren fields. Was Esmé among them? I have a boy, she said. He’s a soldier. Did they ever understand what they took? Soulless themselves, they did not even recognise what they had stolen. They threw it away. They ploughed it under. But Russians know the truth. Every inch of Russian soil is nurtured by the souls of martyred millions who, down the centuries, defended their homeland. I spoke of this to Dr Jay in the hospital after they had examined my head. What makes the Jews so special, I asked. He agreed with me. He said he could find nothing physically wrong with me. Four days later I was free on the streets of Streatham. But I could no longer fly.
Kites rise from the mountains, from the Totenbergen, and red dust clogs my throat. You must get away from here, Maxim, she said. The people here are not sympatica. I think Brodmann had come to Luxor. I think I had seen him standing below the great clock in the railway station. He said he was English and that his name was Penny, but I guessed it was Brodmann. I was obsessed with Kolya. I was still looking for him. Al-Habashiya gave me some pyjamas. ‘Some stripes
for you,’ she said. They were black and white. I saw Brodmann in Sachsenhausen. I recognised him and shouted at him. He answered with a hesitantly raised hand. What a superb actor that monster was! Binit an-san! But should I blame him? This century demands we join in a charade; it decrees the parts we play. It is only acting, I tell her. It is not really us. The pyjamas make my eyes shudder. The stripes stretch before me, merge and swirl and break open, like fragments of some vast psychic map.
I would not become a Musselman. Negra y bianco, noire et blanc. I lost you in the desert, Esmé. What brute makes use of you? Mrs Cornelius says she doubtless landed on her feet. ‘She was lucky enough for a while, Ivan. She never ‘ad no talent. Still, neiver did I, reelly.’
She was a great actress, I told her. ‘Your talent is recorded for posterity.’ This amused her. ‘Wot? In an ol’ can in a closed-down fleapit somewhere artside Darjeeling? Come orf it, Ive! Not exac’ly wot I corl immortality. I’ll take me chances in ‘eaven, rahver.’ She was too tactful to mention our Egyptian adventure.
My friend pretended to a kind of primitive pantheism, hut she was a Christian at heart. In 1969, moved no doubt by a profound piety she did her best to hide, she took up a position as caretaker in St Andrews, round the corner. But she found that cleaning on a Monday got her down. ‘Pews! Ya c’n tell why they was corled pews, orl right. Some o’ them worshippers must never wipe their arses!’
What do they do to me with their instruments? Those spikes! Those pyramids! My stripes! That golden ship comes to me out of a sky the colour of blue silver. Tomorrow the hawk will fly, I tell her. Oh, this filthy tide flows over me. There is a black sun warming me. Deprived of sleep, I dream most of the time. I dream of a future. They would murder you, Rosie. You are too intelligent for them. Mr Mix always insisted you were too good even for me. But I was better than Franco, you said, though he never took up much of your time. It was the same, you said, with Mussolini. As for Hitler, you kept silent. It was your ambition to sleep with every dictator in Europe, but you were not sure if you had fucked Stalin or just an understudy. ‘They are always so busy with details.’ You were fascinated with their power. You studied it as others study volcanoes, moving further and further towards the rim until directly confronting the destructive heart. You slept with Franco by mistake. At that time he was only a colonel in an obscure garrison. We flew together, Rosie.
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