She disagrees. She is no feminist. ‘Orl I can say is, Ivan, that you keep yore little John Willy in yore bloody trousers or risk, pardon my French, an ‘undred per cent bollock loss!’ In some ways her views are too conservative for me. My thinking has always tended towards the radical. There is little point in trying to reason with most women when it comes to matters of rational behaviour. They are creatures of impulse and I suppose we would be mad to want them any other way.
Esmé pointed to where a brown-necked raven glided in the sky overhead, searching the debris along the bank for some titbit. ‘Is it an eagle, Maxim?’
Amused, I told her that only she could see such beauty in a carrion bird. She insisted it was still beautiful. I marvelled silently at that ability women have to look upon something ordinary, even lowly, and make of it an object both noble and desired. Valentino is an example. The raven spread his wings to perch for a moment upon our tasselled roof, just above the wheelhouse where the plump Egyptian captain, important in his grubby whites, and his laughing, bare-chested Nubian mate directed our final casting-off, moving us further towards midstream, our paddles slapping against the tide until my view of the city was almost completely obscured by a billowing white spray.
Within half-an-hour we were leaving Cairo behind, looking out across wide fields, an endless game of noughts and crosses produced by dozens of narrow canals. The rural scenery had scarcely changed since the Pharaohs raised their first great pyramids. Beyond the palm groves the fields were a vivid green and yellow patchwork of corn and cotton, while at the wells and locks old camels circled endlessly, moving the water in which all our destinies had been born.
For a while the Egyptian wedding-boat sailed in our wake, its occupants waving and smiling and offering us mysterious salutes, but then a gust of wind caught the tall sail and sent the felucca almost at a complete right-angle, narrowly missing our port wheel which continued its relentless gushing and groaning, sounding for all the world like a camel of the river, ill-tempered and sturdy. The felucca veered away, its occupants roaring with laughter at their close brush with an appalling death!
Mrs Cornelius returned, cocktail in one hand, and in the other a grinning Professor Quelch. She opened her wonderful mouth and screamed hilariously, ‘Yer c’n be a norty littel boy when yer wanna be, carn’t yer, Morry?’ He had her complete drunken approval and was close to winning her sober blessing, too. She had a soft spot for the people she called the ‘walking wounded’ of the world.
We were passing palm-lined levees now, raised against the flood, the date orchards, the figs and the olives French and English managers restored to Egypt, and as I turned to look at the distant shore to port I was surprised to see a native in a very well-cut European suit, a crimson tarboosh on his impeccable head, climbing up the stair to the open deck. He bowed and salaamed to the ladies and advanced towards us with his hand outstretched. I saw Quelch respond as I did, but there was nothing to do but shake it. Quelch became oddly formal and made a bitter to-do of introductions. We were introduced to Ali Pasha Khamsa whom I immediately recognised from several issues of The Times of Egypt as, under a different name, a highly-placed member of the Wafd, the recently ‘independent’ parliament of Egypt!
I realised that he was the better breed of pale, round-faced Egyptian, uncorrupted by Semitic or negro blood. No matter what my opinion of his politics, I felt an immediate respect for him, regretting my hasty judgement. Since those days, I have learned to know a man by his actions, not by the colour of his skin or his creed. There are, for instance, Nile-dwelling fellaheen whose blood is that of those who created the first literary writing, the first temples and tombs. It is scarcely their fault that alien invaders came to rob them of their inheritance and their beloved Christianity and if they have degenerated it has been through the efforts of the Jewish and Arab drug-dealers who have found it profitable to sap these hardy men of their energies, already debilitated from waters poisoned by imperfect British engineering. The British were the first to agree that the dam had unfortunate side-effects. They argued that they were doing their best to control the problem, yet refused to see how they had helped to create it. This was often the genius of the British abroad and at home. Their philosemitism was their particular ruin. I still believe they held the key to the way forward. Even ‘Socialist Herbert’ Wells understood the duties the British began to ignore in those terrible, self-doubting years immediately following the Great War. The spectre of Bolshevism terrified them. Only in England was it unexpected! Wells’s hero in Things to Come proudly predicts a future where Man will conquer Chaos throughout the Universe - and only then will he begin to learn! How close this was to my own frustrated vision. Now I have learned that Chaos is God’s creation and it is our duty merely to order our own part of the universe. Perhaps we were all too slow to accept responsibility. I cannot blame the British Empire, nor the American, nor Hitler, nor Mussolini, without accepting some blame myself.
Ali Pasha Khamsa had been educated in England at a school whose name I did not recognise but which clearly gave Professor Quelch some pause. I received the impression that Quelch’s education, though honourably thorough, lacked the excellence of Mr Khamsa’s. The Egyptian also had a degree from Cambridge. We were therefore a little uncertain how next to proceed but, needless to say, it was Mrs Cornelius who broke the ice, linked her arms in Mr Khamsa’s and Professor Quelch’s and chuckled, ‘Ain’t I a lucky lady, now, ter be entertained by two such brainy and ‘andsome gents.’ She led them off, slightly startled sheep, and again Esmé and I were alone.
The Egyptian’s presence had made her uncomfortable. ‘He reminds me of those Turkish officers. They were bastards to all the girls.’
A little sharply I told her to forget her Constantinople life. She would soon be my wife and a film star in her own right. She had been born in Otranto, with Doctor Gastaggagli presiding. Before that, I reminded her, there was only the inchoate miasma of pre-existence. She lowered her eyes, admonished. ‘I’m sorry, Maxim.’ Of course I forgave her at once.
Drawn by a sturdy sailing-boat, a string of barges went by, the sacking tight across their mounded cargo bringing to mind a shoal of primitive river monsters advancing to devour the distant city. Seaman strolled over from the bar where he had been talking to Radonic. ‘It seems we are not to be saved by Ben Hur, after all. Although it has made a considerable profit, it has made none for our former master. He has lost heart, I would guess, for historical subjects, at least temporarily, and has found an excuse to withdraw his support. Thank God for Sir Ranalf! The native gentleman, by the way, is some sort of business colleague of Steeton’s. He’s only going as far as El-Wasta and from there will take the train up to Medinet el-Fayoum where I gather he will address a public meeting. I think he’s going by boat to get a rest from his duties. He’s an important “big-wig”, you know, in the Egyptian government. It’s through him we received permission to film almost anywhere we like. Even the British can’t pull strings like that, as a rule.’
Only then did it occur to me to wonder what kind of compromise Wolf Seaman himself had made in order to secure his own ambitions. While I believed in the ideals expressed by our new producer, it now seemed to me that Seaman’s explanation of our passenger’s presence aboard was somewhat defensive. Was he justifying a secret arrangement with Sir Ranalf? It did not greatly concern me what Seaman gave up or promised, so long as our film was made to the highest standards and we received our salaries. When it was completed I would return to the US with Esmé and challenge Hever to do his worst!
‘You are so clever, Wolfy.’ My darling was an admiring schoolgirl. ‘None of this would be possible without you.’
‘Steeton is an agreeable fellow.’ Smiling down at her he passed a modest hand through his curly hair. ‘And I intend to make our movie, little fawn, never fear.’ With a sigh he stepped up to the rail and stood beside me. Together we looked towards some distant ruin. ‘It will tell the true story of mankind,’ he continued. ‘Ho
w we strive in so many ways to avoid the fact of death. The variety of ways in which we avoid the inevitability of unbearable loss. Unlike ourselves, the Egyptians refused to remove themselves from that central fact. They built their entire civilisation around it. As a result it lasted the longest of them all. Empires like the British, or especially the American, build their culture on the very opposite idea. Their people devote themselves to avoiding and ignoring the fact of death. Well, Death in the Pyramids will force the world to look upon its folly and to bow its head in shame.’
‘They will love it!’ Esmé turned away from where she had been admiring a group of little boys bathing in the shallows. ‘It will pack them in, darling Wolfy.’
And turning again, so that only I could see her this time, she delivered a wink of such ironic intelligence I realised with delight the depths to my darling I had yet to explore.
Separating themselves from Mrs Cornelius and O.K. Radonic (newly nicknamed The Yellow Kid) Professor Quelch and Ali Pasha Khamsa, now getting on like fire-engines, rejoined us.
‘Actum ne agas,’ the Egyptian was saying.
‘But how can we avoid it, my dear sir?’ Professor Quelch moved delicately upwind of Ali Pasha Khamsa’s cigarette.
‘That is what we’re in the process of discovering. The fashion in Europe today is to pamper and adopt the Jews, but there are a few men of vision who see the dangers of that policy. Have you heard of Adolf Hitler? He’s a German very much in the news there. A follower of Mussolini’s, I understand, with a positive approach to his country’s real problems. A genuine intellectual activist. You read German, do you, Professor Quelch?’
‘Only inexpertly.’
‘I’ve seen a lot about these socialists in the Berliner Zeitung,’ Seaman joined in. He had always shown a preference for the German newspapers. ‘It’s rather alarming, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, they are scarcely socialists in the old sense. This new kind is dedicated to the destruction of Zionist Bolshevism. A good many people in Egypt are following this chap’s activities. He could teach us all a thing or two.’
And that was how I came first to hear of Hitler, in the early days of his success, when he still controlled his party. It was painful to see such a fine man brought low by his own hubris. Some day, if there is a future left to us, a playwright will take Hitler’s story as a subject and show Germany’s Führer as the noble, flawed, tragic hero that he was. I mourn my own lost opportunities, but how he must have mourned in those last moments, when Berlin was falling to the Bolshevik guns! It would take a Wagner to do that tragedy justice.
‘You are a Muslim, Ali Pasha?’ Seaman was hesitant.
‘Good heavens, my dear sir, nothing so old-fashioned! I am a secular humanist by persuasion. But it is best to keep one’s religion to oneself in democratic Egypt. We are still in some ways a very backward country. There is much to do. Industrialisation is, of course, of chief importance.’
‘And you support land reforms?’ Quelch’s question had a significance I barely understood. Ali Pasha Khamsa was amused. ‘I have nothing against the rich, Professor Quelch, if that’s what you’d like to know. I wish all my people were rich. I respect, as thoroughly as anyone, a hard-working man’s right to do well for himself. There are ways to expand our agriculture so everyone could become a prosperous farmer. I believe this can be achieved through engineering, not social regimentation.’
‘You really are a chap after my own heart.’ Malcolm Quelch raised a salute. ‘Mr Peters, you must tell Ali Pasha all about your inventions and your ideas for “turning the desert green”. This young man, sir, is an engineering genius. He has already built several flying-machines and a dynamite car. Let him describe to you the astonishing marvel of his aerial turbine!’
‘Egypt has great need of engineers.’ The politician looked speculatively at me. ‘Especially American engineers.’
I explained to him that I was only American by adoption. I was actually Russian, forced from my homeland by the Reds. He expressed sympathy and enthusiasm. ‘So much the better. If there is ever a revolution here, Mr Peters, believe me it will not be a Red one!’
Again I was learning not to judge a man by superficial. Ali Pasha Khamsa was anxious to listen to my ideas. I was soon expanding on my dreams of vehicles especially designed to cross vast areas of desert, of others for automatically digging canals for hundreds of miles, irrigating land which had not known fertility since Time was first recorded. I was quick to tell him, however, that I did not share his general distaste for the Jewish race. There were those among them of the most virtuous type. I myself owed my life to a Jew. But there was no persuading him. I lacked, he said, daily experience of the race. His people had had to contend with their cunning for centuries. ‘Islam has been singularly tolerant to the Hebrews. But there is no pleasing them. Zionists are taking over the British parliament, demanding Palestine for themselves. No longer content with milking us of our money, they now demand free land! Land which at no time belonged to them. Soon, we fear, the British will give them Egypt itself! This will be my subject in Medinet el-Fayoum.’
Emphatically I assured him the British could not possibly betray Egypt’s trust.
1948 was to prove how wrong I had been in those days of my innocent idealism.
* * * *
SIXTEEN
I SAW THE GOAT. I saw Him first in Odessa. I saw Him again in Oregon where the dead live in caves hidden amongst the mountains. I saw the Goat. He tempted me. He put a piece of metal in my stomach. Die iron strudel. It was His joke. He showed me my sister Esmé and told me she was my daughter. He said He would make her my wife. He promised power over them all. The Power of the Untrammelled Beast. Where He was not recognised was where He was best employed. The Devil was tired. He had worked long for this day. I met the Goat in Aswan, upon the ruins of a conquered Christianity. The Cow and the Ram came to witness my humiliation and my grief. What justice condemned me to their cruel control? If I could not believe God directed the world, I could only pray Christ remained to guide us. Satan reaches us through our most vulnerable and tenuous idealism; our faith in the future. That is how He conquered Russia and brought down His capering triumphant hooves upon the ruins of Berlin, upon the fallen bastions of our beliefs. Hitler turned his back on Christ, just as Napoleon had done before him. And so Satan, weary and sated as He was, came to sit upon the piled thrones of Europe and watch with grim ambivalence the destruction of what He had once most desired. Those modern Parsifals who took sword against Bolshevism are all dead now. Not one was killed in honest combat. All were betrayed from within. I was betrayed from within. There is a piece of metal in my stomach. Sometimes it feels like an iron Star of David. Was it in the bread the Jew made me swallow? What did I pay him? A Jew will never give you something for nothing. What did he want from me? He saved my life in Odessa, in Arcadia. What did I pay for this service? His hands were gentle. I loved him. Stadt der schlafenden Ziegen; Stadt des Verbrechens; Stadt der meckernden Krähen; die gerissenen Kunden liegen in den Gassen auf der Lauer die kleinen Võgel seinen trügerische Lieder. Die Synagogen brennen. O, Rosie, mi siostra! Zu är meyn zeitmädchen, meyn vor . . . Im der Vatican He lolls in an attitude of bored familiarity while His subjects queue to kiss His gloved paw. This affords Him no further amusement. Must He corrupt and destroy everything in order to escape the fact of His own agonised sundering from Grace? His is the worst torment of all, for He has already known a state of oneness with God. That state is now denied Him, as it is denied no other. We can only guess at the enormity of that loss. Is it any surprise that this fallen Immortal prefers to distract Himself from this unimaginable anguish by devising fresh trials and defeats for mankind? What would any of us do in His place? I thought I had left Him behind me in Odessa, in the bloody streets of Slobodka, where bloated dogs pant, replete, amongst the corpses of slaughtered Jews. There seemed no justice in His pursuit of me. I did not know then that I had been chosen by God to bring a particular gospel to this Age of Scienc
e.
Jerusalem Commands: Between the Wars Vol. 3 Page 29
