‘O, elle est très jolie,’ exclaims my little lady in her prettiest French. And she claps her hands, a noise which brings a frown from Mrs C., a smile from Quelch and me, a sudden excessive wailing from the town as the dawn muezzim begin noisy admonitions to their grim old God. At which Captain Quelch turns from the rail with the news that he intends to order from the galley a decent English breakfast. ‘Sometimes it’s the only reminder of who and where you are.’ ‘That,’ says Mrs Cornelius in full approval, ‘an’ a reelly ‘earty cup o’ tea.’ With this she links her delicious pink arm in his, the other in mine, and we are forgiven. Only Esmé elects to remain. To let the air, she says, dispel the last traces of her mal-de-mer. We bump into Seaman coming towards us as we make for the dining-saloon. Pressing back to let us pass, he glares at us but will not say a word. ‘Wot’s the matter, Wolfy?’ calls Mrs Cornelius over her shoulder, ‘orl the free luv gettin’ too much fer yer?’ This is a somewhat cruel reference to the Swede’s joyless pantheism, a creed which has replaced religion for so many socialist Scandinavians. Some of them must surely long for the days when Thor could coax at least an occasional lusty laugh from even the Lord of Gloom, the brooding Odin? Months of sunlessness have made that people suspicious of spontaneity, I think. Even Scandinavian hearths are designed to discourage any random flame.
Much as I find their English ritual reassuring, so self-confident is it, I am forced to decline the pans of greasy bacon, eggs, tomatoes and fried bread with which the co-nationalists celebrate their arrival in the Mediterranean. Contenting myself with some bread and a little marmalade, I watch through the portholes the scheduled tourists, many of them day-trippers from France, Spain and Gibraltar. I doubt if tourism has changed much. A quick rush around the main points of interest - sometimes infrequent or pathetic - thirty minutes to see the souk, to savour the squalor and filth of foreign parts and shudder with pleasure at a fleeting whiff of Africa before being steered back to the security and comfort of their P&O or French Line cabins. Whereupon another parlour in Toulouse acquires a camel saddle or a brass hookah and some Guildford sitting-room shall soon sport a set of shoddy Bedouin flintlocks. They brought them in to me in bushels when I still dealt in general goods, before this present interest in old clothes enabled me to become an antiquarian costumier and exploit, I will admit, that folie de nostalgie which reflects youth’s unadmitted yearning for the spiritual values of their forefathers. They think that by wearing those clothes they will somehow restore the Golden Age. I say I would like to see this Golden Age of theirs. I point out into Portobello Road where the chip papers and the Wimpy boxes lie trapped in rotten fruit and animal droppings. Is it here? Or where? Firt mick tsu ahin, ikh bet aykh! I tell them clearly both who and what is to blame - and they laugh at me or swear or even threaten now I am too old to fight. There is nothing wrong with the Old Testament. I know what it is to be a Jeremiah. It is not an insult. They call me ‘anti-Semite’. I tell them they are ignorant fools. Our whole civilisation is Semitic. What is civilised about us is Semitic. Are these the statements of an anti-Semite? You will never hear me say anything against those great Semitic founders of our civilisation who brought about the Golden Ages, the real Golden Ages, of Sumeria, Babylon and, yes, Ancient Israel. But, at some point in the life of their race, noble Semites fell to internal warring and from there, exhausted, slipped into despondent slavery whereupon, for the price of their immortal souls, they bought from Satan a kind of freedom. And still today they fight, this Jew-and-Arab, Arab-and-Jew. As a united people they were great and noble, producers of monumental architecture, sculpture, painting, decoration, literature, philosophy and science. It is as if God punishes them. As if God keeps them perpetually on the very edge of Heaven and is forever devising new means by which to divert them and thwart them from building and keeping for themselves the earthly Paradise He placed around the Middle Sea so that they learned to treasure, not destroy, His gifts to us.
It is not the Semite I fear. It is the ‘Jew’ and the ‘Arab’. All that is barbaric, decadent, immoral, everything which engulfed and drowned that great civilisation as surely as it were Atlantis, can be explained in those two words. They are the creeds of the barbarians who overran Semitic Africa and Mesopotamia, challenging the sublime justice of those Greeks who were themselves the inheritors of the ancient world’s best. And I do not say this Semitic decline was consistent. Until idolatry and war finally divided it, there were times when it seemed halted, when the sanity of the Phoenicians still mediated the lust for conquest best symbolised by haughty Carthage. There were periods when the ages of Solomon and David and Haroun al-Raschid seemed to have come again, before that bizarre will for self-destruction overtook them in quarrels and warfare, even to this very day, where Egypt sides with Syria and Libya sides with Algeria and Algeria sides with Syria against Egypt and Libya or Iraq or Jordan and even the time-bomb that is Israel cannot unite them or, the thought is impossible, persuade them to consider uniting with their fellow Semites to found a common state where religion becomes a matter of spiritual choice, not of politics or of life, or of death. This is the ‘principle’ they would export to the West, to match Voltaire’s or Tom Paine’s? But they have won, anyway. It is no longer even permitted to voice such warnings any more, let alone represent, them in Parliament. More and more we descend to imitating them, our old principles and virtues forgotten. Certainly allow these people to bring back blood-war and the feudal system! They have that ambition in common, at least, with Comrade Stalin. (Nobody in Russia was surprised by this. They know their Georgians. Those people are themselves scarcely a footstep away from Allah.) I am not, you must realise, saying we should do away with those hopeless millions, but at least we might encourage some form of sterilisation? Or, at the minimum, maintain the system which worked so well for everybody in Ukraine, before the Bolsheviks, before the Babi Gorge was anything more than the background of my first great triumph as I ascended into the purity and freedom of the skies. Now infamous smoke obscures that vision, that wonderful memory; yet no single one of us, I think, is to blame for that. If we conspired, we conspired in ignorance. If we all colluded, it was in our determination to believe that there were simple political answers to our ills, in our clinging to old simple virtues, to old securities, as a falling man will innocently cling to a rotten limb, believing himself saved.
Captain Quelch has some business ashore but none of the rest of us wish to go through the complications of passports and bargaining involved in landing so, after we both receive the captain’s assurance that he will enquire for news at the local police station, Mrs Cornelius and I return to our former closeness around the phonograph, singing snatches from the latest records. ‘I’m tellin’ the birds, tellin’ the trees . . .’ murmurs Whispering Jack Smith to Mrs Cornelius’s rudimentary soft-shoe shuffle, while I pretend that my plate is a ukelele. ‘You can bring Pearl, she’s a darned nice girl. . .’
‘I miss my Swiss . . .’
‘I’m the Sheikh of Araby, as all the world can see!’
As we try out the Charleston to the music of the Savoy Orpheans, Esmé enters the saloon and stands at a critical distance until we stop. Mrs Cornelius has the giggles.
I gasp, ‘What is it, my dearest?’
‘I was hoping to go ashore,’ Esmé says. ‘To do some shopping. I need proper clothes. And other things. For women.’
‘No need ter worry there, dear,’ says Mrs C. ‘I’ve a bloody suitcase full o’ stuff. Yer carn’t be too bloody careful in these parts. I know to me corst.’
‘I wish my own.’ Esmé mutters this last in English, staring at the floor.
‘Suit yerself.’ Mrs Cornelius shakes her head and collapses into a cane armchair. My girl receives from me a glance of admonition for rejecting a friendly gesture. I remain mysteriously awkward when both women are present. Perhaps I make them jealous.
‘We shall be disembarking in a few days now.’ I hope to placate her. ‘In Alexandria. Where they have English shops. T
hey have a Whiteley’s, so I’ve heard.’
‘There are French shops in Tangier,’ she declares. ‘There is a Samaritain and a Bazar Nürnberg.’
‘Wot yer want wiv Kraut knickers?’ Mrs Cornelius has risen to change the record. It is noon, now, and seems warmer than the barometer’s guide.
‘I fear that one pair will not last me an entire journey.’ Esmé is sharp but no match for my old friend.
‘I wouldn’ve thort you’ve ‘ad ‘em on for more’n a minnit.’
This bickering was not confined to the women. Virtually everyone aboard not from the South China Seas was suddenly at odds with everyone else. I would be relieved to reach Alexandria where the confines of the ship would no longer force so many temperamental human beings into over-frequent contact. O.K. Radonic, of such usually placid temper, was refusing to take his meals with the rest of the film crew, Chief Kramp had become gloomily reclusive, while Grace had fallen in love with a laskar and was no longer as attentive to Esmé as he had been. Only myself and Captain Quelch, perhaps because we still discovered so much in common, were content. I wished, indeed, that I could please my girl, but most of the time she had little need of what I could offer. The friction between me and Mrs C. at least was over, though she made one or two jibes, demanding to know how much Quelch and I had got for ‘the big buck’. I longed for a telegram from Captain Fromental to say that Mr Mix was safe and sound. I longed still more to hear that my reels were recovered! Recently the Second Officer, Bolsover, had begun to make notes, in an extremely small hand, on a pocket-sized pad of the kind carried by a police constable. He seemed to be starting some sort of account. I had watched him in the evenings when the rest of us were entertaining ourselves. Seated in a corner he wrote down the number of gins the captain had taken with the passengers, how many whiskies the barman had donated to his favoured customers. I think he had some idea of reporting Quelch and the rest of us to the owner, but I was not sure even Goldfish would concern himself with such pettiness. After all, our little picture was not costing a fraction of what had been spent on Ben Hur before the whole thing was recalled to Hollywood and built again in Burbank. Since we were most of us under contract, very little money was being wasted at all, and if the movie play were a success it might compensate for some of the more costly failures at that time alarming the cinema world. Temptress of the Pyramids, as we currently called it, would not merely be a popular success, it would positively impress the jaded critics. Wolf Seaman was, I guessed, staking his future reputation on it. His brand of ‘jazz-baby satire’ had worn a little thin and historical spectacle, especially associated with the Orient, was the taste of the day. In this, at least, we were secure. Goldfish wanted his ship as far from American waters as possible and I think he felt much the same about Seaman, just one more foreign embarrassment like Maurice Maeterlinck. Indeed, it was almost impossible for anyone to like the Swede. He combined Scandinavian high-mindedness with a Teutonic aggressiveness, a blend which no doubt made Catherine the Great the woman she was. Unfortunately he had neither that lady’s looks nor her charm.
I had no trouble in stealing Bolsover’s notebook for a few hours and sharing its contents with Captain Quelch. That astonishing list of crimes even suggested unnatural acts amongst the laskars and members of the film crew - something which I knew Quelch had carefully discouraged. (‘A buggered laskar is a lazy laskar,’ was his familiar motto.)
There came a sudden scent of roses as Esmé flung herself from the saloon while Seaman stared gloomily out towards the bow. I thought to follow her to comfort her, for I knew my refusal to let her go ashore had upset her, but in such moods she preferred to be alone. Mrs Cornelius was singing a duet of Rose Marie with the wonderful Oscar Lavern record as she peered again through the porthole towards the tiered orderliness of distant Tangier and speculated if Captain Quelch had yet heard something about Mr Mix. Although reluctant to touch upon the subject at all, I was forced to disabuse her (for I knew the actual nature of Captain Quelch’s expedition, which was to replenish our supplies of shney). ‘He will not go immediately to police headquarters,’ I said.
‘Buyin’ ‘isself a bum-boy ‘is ‘e? Thass gonna send yer ter ther five-fingered squeezebox ain’t it, Ivan?’
To this day she refuses to tell me what she meant, but she shakes with laughter whenever I bring it up. It confuses me to find her so frank in so many ways, and so ambiguous in others. I think she believes she is saving my feelings, but she must know that I have always preferred the harsh facts to obfuscation, no matter how comforting. If it sometimes makes me less happy than many people, I am also more realistic.
In answer to my question at that moment, she pointed out of the window to a local launch, its varnish flaking like leprosy, which pushed through the busy water traffic towards the Hope Dempsey. At the tiller was the obvious owner, a native in filthy golfing pullover and battered fez, while Captain Quelch was seated amidships side by side with a younger man who wore the latest in exaggerated suit fashions, including a wide-brimmed cream-coloured hat, and had something odd about his left sleeve. Their backs were towards me. I was intrigued. Captain Quelch had said nothing of returning with a visitor.
I went on deck to greet them as they clambered up the side. The young man’s hat continued to obscure his face until he was actually standing beside me. He wore smoked glasses, which he removed and slipped into his pocket as he grinned at me, holding out a sun-tanned hand. He was as handsome and as full of himself as he had ever been, as large as life! I scarcely believed it. I burst into tears.
‘But your arm!’ I could not avoid noticing the empty sleeve. ‘What’s wrong?’
He knew a few seconds’ sadness. ‘There was shelling in Odessa. I was hit. Then I was shot trying to get to a ship. I’ll never know who got my arm - Reds or Whites! Maybe both.’ And he shrugged in that old insouciant style of his, bringing a flood of wonderful memories.
It was Shura, who they told me was dead, killed by the Red Cossacks. It was my cousin, my old mentor and playmate from Odessa with whom I had quarrelled over nothing more important than the affections of a common little Moldavenka whore. All that bitterness was long since vanished and my soul sang out with joy! I embraced him! Kissed him! Held his strong, arrogant body close to me and wept again! Shura restored to me! It was all I needed to bring my normal optimism flooding back. Shura, my childhood friend! I had such a story to tell him and such a story to hear! ‘How long can you stay?’
‘Until Tripoli!’ Shura was as moved as I. Tears ran down his cheeks and he dashed them from the corners of his full lips with his remaining arm while he laughed at my own tears. ‘Little Max the Hetman. You’re a film star now, I hear. Doing all kinds of wonderful things. You told us you’d be famous. We should have listened, eh? Le plus fameux des chics types! Wanda was your best friend, you know. She predicted a great future for you. You look well, mon joli bagage.’
Realising Captain Quelch had only a little Russian we both slipped into French, to inform him of our gratitude at this extraordinary reunion. ‘What a marvellous, unwitting catalyst you are, captain,’ I said.
‘I’m happy you approve, old boy. Actually Shura’s boss is an old business associate from the Marseilles days. I was hoping to do him a favour. Sure you don’t mind?’
Only Bolsover or Seaman would object to an unauthorised passenger, but Captain Quelch and I were already in the process of concocting a plan which would get Bolsover arrested as soon as we had berthed in Alexandria. Captain Quelch had purchased the necessary morphine when he picked up our sneg. Seaman would grumble. His film was paramount. In the saloon Mrs Cornelius was immediately charmed by Shura, who kissed her hand and introduced himself as my cousin and an old university comrade.
She was not deceived. ‘Yore one o’ them Slobodka mobsmen, ain’t yer? Ya ‘ad style, you fellers. It’s orl that French yer tork, innit?’ Shura was baffled by her English and delighted by her Russian, which he understood scarcely any better but he loved, he said, th
e melody of it. I was pleased that they got on so well at first meeting. Even Captain Quelch seemed charmed by Shura’s company. With two arms he was a winning rogue. With one he was irresistible.
The only cabin available for Shura was Mr Mix’s vacant cubby hole. It took no time to fill the negro’s suitcase with the few books, toilet articles and clothes he had left behind. I was not greatly pleased to see The Martyrdom of Man among those effects and joked to Shura that at this rate we should soon find a copy of Das Kapital under every camel blanket! (I was innocent enough in those days not to believe my own fantasy.) My cousin was swiftly supplied with bed-linen and toiletries, then we spent a few minutes in the cabin sampling the cocaine he had brought with him. I reminded him that it was he who had first introduced me to this natural stimulant. ‘There’s scarcely a sniff goes by that I do not think of you, darling Shura!’
My cousin laughed. I was, he said, the same old Max. He suggested we stroll back up to the saloon. He told me that these days he was in partnership with an Odessa acquaintance, the man who had inadvertently been the cause of my first meeting with Mrs Cornelius. S.A. Stavisky was now in Marseilles and chiefly involved in the importation of cocaine which could be processed cheaply and more or less legally in Tangier where it was not against the law to import South American paste. ‘But he’s branching out, these days, into politics, so I handle most of that drug business. Political stuff and the stock market was never my style. But you know what opportunities there are, now! Millions are being made. One of the people helping Stavisky is an old friend of yours, I gather. Another émigré. Remember a Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff?’
Jerusalem Commands - [Between the Wars 03] Page 17
