We dismounted and were led into a wide, high hall where T’hami’s slaves ran forward to take our outer clothing and a majordomo led us up narrow, curving staircases to our somewhat chilly rooms. My window looked back over what the Moors called hammada, a pebble desert, and from here, clearly, any attack could be anticipated. My room was furnished with an ornate provincial French bed, a toilet stand in modern bamboo and a table which seemed Spanish in origin. At the glassless windows were heavy shutters and obscuring these were curtains in English chintz. A slave brought me hot water and a full change of clothing. This was far superior to my own desert finery. Soon I knew again the luxury of soap and scented silks. That night our feasting differed only by virtue of being under cover, but the hall amplified the orchestra and especially the livelier wails of the plump ladies who led the choruses and the hand-clapping. The heat of the place, coupled with the smells of half-cured ancient skins, burning garbage and roasting meat, brought on a blazing headache which I cured, at last, with so much morphine that I passed out, to be taken tenderly to bed by a concerned Fromental who carried me easily in his giant’s arms and assured me they were all sympathetic. They had forgotten how desperate had been my desert ordeal.
In the morning, when we left the brooding kasbah and began the long descent into that wonderful valley, Lieutenant Fromental shook his head, wondering what fool would ever want to leave this paradise. ‘I am thinking a man could retire here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps farm a little.’
‘I understood you were planning to follow the great route to Timbuktu when you retired,’ Otto Schmaltz reminded him as he rode to join us on the path.
‘That too, perhaps.’ Fromental frowned. He had little time for the young German. The Frenchman’s father and brother had both been killed at Ypres.
We descended for a while in silence until the trail widened and became easier. We no longer had to concentrate. Soon the trail grew into a mud road leading between date palms and olive trees. I had never, even in Egypt, seen such natural richness. Here, as before, the Berber villagers came from their work and their houses to cheer and sing as we passed by. I might have been part of some boyar’s entourage in Old Russia or participating in a knightly progress through twelfth-century France. Quite clearly El Glaoui was making a discreet display of his power. These lands were by no means secure for the French while they remained, Fromental told me, under the Vulture’s wing.
By that evening we had crossed the great valley and entered the mountains, accepting the hospitality of a local caïd who, incidentally, sold the Pasha several black slaves he had come by in, he said, a special purchase. He seemed oblivious to a disapproving (but diplomatic) Fromental or to the laws forbidding such barbarism. At no time had El Glaoui approached me to continue our conversation. He was clearly preoccupied with Rose von Bek.
On the third day of our journey, we entered the forbidding mountains of the High Atlas proper where the trails turned into steep narrow tracks curving around the sides of those ancient crags and I only became properly aware of my surroundings as I stood to rest on a wide ledge overlooking a series of broad dales running between gentle hills rising to form the sides of great, grey cliffs. I found myself gasping at what I saw! Valley upon valley, in all directions, was a jewelled infinity of wild flowers. In their vivid variety they glowed, reflecting the light of the afternoon sun. They pulsed and undulated like an ocean of rainbows.
I had never in my life been prepared for such intense beauty, coming so suddenly after the loss of the green oases, the stark crags. It was a glimpse of a different heaven, this hidden place of peace and beauty where death was nothing but a wonderful promise, where the miraculous proof of God’s existence was confirmed. And so, when T’hami and his people kneeled to pray, I joined them spontaneously, from that habit of absolute worship one acquires in the desert. I praised God and I thanked Him for all His creations and especially those which were a sign of His absolute benevolence. So overcome was I that I was forced to take an untypical risk and go to steady myself with the use of my cocaine, crouching on one side of my frisky mount as I tried to control the tube which would take the reviving powder to my nose.
A little later, as we walked back to his own beast, El Glaoui said, with a certain puzzlement, that he praised Allah for he had found a brother in an expected place. He did not speak with any particular warmth. Perhaps he suspected me of attempting to ingratiate myself with Moslems. Miss von Bek, riding by as I climbed into my own unyielding saddle, flicked at pretty hair and observed that there was surely no need for me to maintain my play-acting for their sake. Unless, she added, I intended to take up a collection later. In which case she would be delighted to reward me with a dirham or two for my undoubted talents. She rode on before I could give her my witty reply.
It was clear, however, that she was recovering from her embarrassment and seemed ready enough to continue our friendship. For my part, I bore her no ill-will.
Soon afterwards, El Glaoui retired into the wagon he used when the roads were good and I saw nothing of him or Rose von Bek until we stopped to make camp in a valley so saturated with perfume from the wild flowers that I feared I must faint into some exotic dream from which I would not awake for years. As the sun came down upon the crest of the western hills it spread light like an old glaze across the landscape. The flowers lost none of their glowing vitality. They seemed to have existed since the beginning of time.
We were eating the substantial remains of the previous night’s feast, the smell of couscous and fatty meat at vulgar odds with the surrounding paradise, when I remarked to Count Schmaltz that this scenery made a man understand how civilisation and aesthetics might take many forms. Who, after all, needed to create pictures here when such a magnificent picture appeared without fail every year? But Schmaltz amiably disagreed with me. ‘Only if you judge civilisation by its arts, my dear fellow. I do not. I agree that art can take many forms, some of them alien to our own ideal. But institutions are another matter. Our good old-fashioned Northern European institutions of justice and equality, they are a form of madness to our host. He pretends to understand them, but it is almost impossible for him to imagine a society in which the power is shared between a wide variety of interests and classes. He perceives civilised Europe as nothing more than a subtler, more successful and perhaps more devious example of his own world.’
‘Who is to say he is not right?’ I asked reasonably.
But this irritated Schmaltz. His face became melon-pink again. ‘Oh, do not mistake me.’ He glanced around him as he wiped his fingers on a napkin. We were eating according to local custom, with our right hands only. ‘I have considerable respect for El Glaoui’s Realpolitik as he applies it. But he grows ambitious. Soon he will try to dictate terms to us. It is like the Bolsheviks. Mark my words. Let them get on with their “social experiment” by all means, but they should not try to bully us.’
I agreed with him, though unsure of his point. I asked him what moral superiority the West could claim, when it singularly failed to come to the aid of fellow Christian nations. Were we superior to the Arab in this respect? Or the Bolshevik?
He became more impatient. ‘I see no reason, Herr Peters, why a nation which does not habitually torture and otherwise terrorise its citizens should accept the dictates of one which does. In common morality, my dear sir, we are demonstrably their superiors.’
‘But by how fine a degree?’ It was Mr Mix going by with his film camera. He had passed on before Otto could reply, so the German turned to me again. ‘I still do not take readily to being treated so casually by a nigger,’ he confided. ‘But these Americans are all the same, they say. Do you enjoy Hollywood, Herr Peters?’
It was my second home, I said. A golden dream of the future. He was taken aback by this. I did not know it was then fashionable in German military circles to denigrate everything American, especially if it came from Hollywood or New York, while in France the fascination with the United States was unabated. For them it was a pla
ce where all myth was made reality. I found both points of view rather conventional. Mr Weeks’s tolerant bemusement at the more extravagant aspects of American society was easier to share.
These were to be the first of several ongoing conversations, all of them refreshingly original, which the four of us (Mr Mix continuously aloof, the Pasha and Miss von Bek generally absent) came to enjoy almost greedily during our various necessary stops. After my first flush of zealotry, I now confined myself to lowering my head and murmuring the prayers where I stood, in the manner of Turkish aristocrats, explaining to my new comrades that I believed it important for diplomatic reasons to acknowledge the Muslim religion here. Though they were never easy with this aspect of my life it did not affect our hearty arguments over a pipe and a discreet glass of brandy at the end of the day (the Pasha also offered hashish) while we gathered around our camp fire, relishing the smell of the wild heather and the carpets of flowers, the wind still carrying the faintest sting of the desert back to us, the flickering light and the comradely warmth, the busy sounds of the camp slowly fading into silence as we sat close to the peaks of the mountains which the Greeks had named for the Titan who held the world upon his back. Perhaps this was also a symbolic union of Christian gentlemen sworn to uphold the name of their redeemer and take upon themselves the responsibilities of their civilisation, for the duties and sacrifices of Empire were frequent topics. Mr Weeks said there was nothing to beat a good chin-wag with a bunch of brainy chaps, each an expert in his own line. It was convenient that we all spoke French, but when the Sapper seemed to be flagging we would lapse into English.
No subject was disallowed and my only regret was that our host and Miss von Bek were not there to join in, since both were first-rate minds. However, this allowed the Pasha himself to become a frequent topic. It was Count Schmaltz’s opinion, for instance, that El Glaoui was consciously creating for himself a romantic legend, well aware of the additional power this gave him, especially in liberal European circles. ‘Those fellows allow you any infamy so long as you represent yourself as some sort of underdog.’ The Pasha received the support of the conservatives with his military actions and his absolute dedication to the French cause, but he welcomed those bohemians whom he knew to have influence in their own countries. It was second nature to a Moslem leader to play such complicated power games. ‘But the whole thing is a fantasy. It is founded upon the most appalling injustice and cruelty, which we are never allowed to witness. Did you find the dungeons in the castle the other night? I did. And saw—and smelled—something of their contents. The burning garbage hides much worse. These people still dismember their living enemies in public. There are slave markets in every village. The family—and consequently the blood feud—are their only law. Yet our great German playwrights and our composers come here to be charmed by a character from the Arabian Nights and return to Berlin to describe the civilised wonders of the Pasha’s court. There are too many people willing to believe in marvels and sentimental folly these days, my friends.’
Puffing upon his narghila, Lieutenant Fromental shook his head in amiable disagreement. ‘Why should we not believe in marvels and miracles and happy endings, m’sieu? It is the same with God. What on earth is the point of not believing?’
‘God is not an escape but a duty,’ said Schmaltz, a little upset. ‘I was not referring to the kinema, Herr Leutnant, but to current urgent social problems. To politics. I am sure we all find it very pleasant to enjoy Herr Peters’s displays. We all, I hope, require a little bit of fun sometimes. But to apply those values to reality—surely you would not argue that the morality of The Masked Buckaroo should be brought to bear on modern society?’
At this point I was forced to interrupt. ‘I would suggest that you view the picture-drama before you judge it, Herr Count. It was made in the same moral tradition as Birth of a Nation.’
He was good enough to blush and offer me a gruff apology. He did not, he added, refer to present company in any of his pronouncements. He had every respect for the professions and the moral values of others. We lived, after all, in a modern world where certain realities had to be accepted. And thus, a model German, he returned to his original point. ‘The world’s predicament is too dangerous for any indulgence in fantasy, certainly not of this present glorious charade which, I admit, we all are enjoying. But we do not personally,’ he added, ‘very often have to overhear the screams from the dungeons.’
Mr Weeks murmured that he thought if there were any irregularities of that sort the French authorities would investigate them and, if necessary, correct them. There were, after all, certain bargains one had to strike with a powerful ally. The French could not—realistically—be seen to be supporting a tyrant.
‘So he makes the tyranny less visible. And we all accept his hospitality and act to help him hide his complex systems of torture, extortion and terror!’ Schmaltz would have none of it. He was of that class of over-sensitive German who made trouble for the Turks during the Armenian crisis. I could only admire him, without necessarily always agreeing with him, or even liking him.
‘What action would you suggest we take?’ enquired Fromental mildly. ‘We cannot employ an army of spies.’
‘It is not the barbarism abroad I speak of, Herr Leutnant, but the sleepwalking at home. That’s my main concern.’ The German was friendly. ‘We should all be looking to our domestic problems first, forgetting old differences and harnessing the positive energy which exists in every ordinary person.’
Fromental wanted to know if ordinary decency could be ‘harnessed’ and if so how.
‘Through community and idealism,’ replied the Count, busy with his meerschaum, ‘not through communism and rhetoric. We must all pull together for the common good.’
Lieutenant Fromental did not put his scepticism into words.
That evening the Pasha invited us to his tent. ‘This has become a rare privilege since he met your beautiful colleague.’ Mr Weeks winked at me. He had not detected, any more than the others, that my relationship with Miss von Bek had been other than professional. They had chosen to assume simply that we were engaged upon some joint mission of the Italian and British governments. I think it suited neither of us to make any more of our story than the Berbers would. Stories become very swiftly embroidered when translated, as it were, into literary Arabic. Fromental, my only confidant, agreed. ‘Those who live under tyranny, Mr Peters, make no progress. They learn only how to stay in one place. They learn a form of silence: the banal expressions of bureaucracies and armies, the conventions of the ruling élite, who fear a living, questioning, language. Thus the public language is allowed to say nothing new, though the people make new language every day. This was how Arab literature ceased to be the seminal literature of the mediaeval world, supplying the West with almost all its present story-forms and narrative devices. New Arabic is nothing more than a way of retelling the same myths in different guises. One perceives this effect in the Turkish Empire and everywhere the hammer and sickle crush and cut. There are no advantages to tyranny, save for the tyrant.’
‘And his,’ I counterpointed, ‘is an inefficient method of keeping power, as the financiers of New York will verify!’
El Glaoui was, I must admit, the very model of a modern benevolent tyrant; urbane, expansive, generous and humorous, anxious to understand other points of view than his own, eager to embrace the twentieth century while supremely certain of the superiority of his own way of life. As we seated ourselves on the cushions of his great tent while our hands and faces were washed by his handsome negro slaves (he was rumoured to hide his Caucasians for fear of giving Europeans offence) I was immediately seduced by his hospitality and his charm. Each guest was welcomed and questioned as to his needs. His individual tastes were courteously recollected by the Pasha. Mr Weeks, beside me, murmured that he wouldn’t be surprised if the old boy hadn’t been educated at Eton. Lieutenant Fromental was listening carefully to Count Schmaltz addressing his host on the matter of the rec
ent Riffian wars.
‘But you flew, did you not, Lieutenant Fromental, with the French air force?’ The Pasha signed to include the young man and allow him to speak for his own people.
‘For a few days, Your Highness, yes. As an observer, of course. I’ve never felt any wish to control one of those things!’
Rose von Bek spoke up. ‘I envy you, Lieutenant.’ I had hardly noticed her in the shadows. She wore a long becoming gown, heavily embroidered in the Berber style, and her head was covered by a kind of turban. Berber women frequently went unveiled and frequently only covered their faces in imitation of more sophisticated Arab customs. In the villages, I had been told, it was considered uncouth rather than irreligious to go uncovered. (The cinema, says Mrs Fezi, changed all that. Again, she blames the Egyptians. ‘Now they are all film stars in the country towns,’ she says. ‘But we didn’t wear veils, any of my family. And that was in Meknes.’)
‘Envy me, mademoiselle?’ said my young friend in surprise.
‘You flew at will over this wonderful country. We, on the other hand, scarcely glimpsed its beauty before we crashed.’ (She did not see fit to explain why we had observed so little of the passing landscape!) ‘I wish I could have been your pilot! What an awfully thrilling sight. The Riff massing in all their glory!’
‘Actually, mademoiselle,’ said Lieutenant Fromental in some embarrassment, ‘we were bombing villages. With the Goliaths, you know. They are the very latest heavy bombers. The smoke and the fires tended to obscure our view of the Riff.’
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