His court already consisted of politicians, poets, actors and personalities from around the world. Our hunting party included Mr A. E. G. Weeks, the Sapper, late of the Royal Engineers, who was here with a tender for a set of new defences to quell any potential power bid from the Sahara Berbers, many of whom still refused to accept El Glaoui as their liege lord, and Count Otto Schmaltz, a serving officer of the Free Corps German Army in Exile, paying a courtesy visit from Constantinople to the Pasha. He was a Captain and a Count of the old, easy-going South German school, with only a veneer of his Prussian military education. He had studied at Heidelberg, he told me later that day, and had some good scars to prove it. El Glaoui, who had been riding in attentive silence nearby, remarked easily how ritual scarification was now only practised amongst the more primitive of his nomad tribes. When did the Germans over there hope to stamp the custom out? Which set the ruddy young Count to roaring, his face a fresh-quartered melon, and swearing what a good fellow the Pasha was, even as his host signalled adieu and rode on to join Miss von Bek, who he had been relieved to find was not Italian. She had refused to speak to me since we began our journey towards the mountains. At first I believed she was letting the little Moor pursue her in order to make me jealous, then I began to guess that she was determined, since I had proven nothing more than a clever imitation, to acquire for herself an authentic Arabian prince. At which point I lost emotional interest in her. My wounds were too fresh. I knew only one means of escaping the pain I had experienced at Esmé’s betrayal. I reconciled myself to relying wholly upon my own resources until I had a chance at least to see Mr Mix alone.
Mr Mix, I now knew, had used his experience and acquaintance with me to find employment with the potentate. He had become El Glaoui’s personal film director and official cameraman to the Court. He was always busy with his camera - the very latest Pathé - which he had lashed in a kind of cradle to his body, enabling him to turn the crank even as we moved. It seemed a shame to me that Mix’s film was only intended for the Pasha’s private viewing. Those reels would have been the most popular travelogues in the world, confirming every Western notion of Arabian opulence and decadent extravagance harnessed to omnipotent power against backgrounds of almost unbelievable romance as we reached the palm groves, streams and pools of the Tafi’lalet oasis. The little thatched villages, the timeworn castles and hills, the brightly-dressed women and simple dignified men, recalled some wonderful novel of Scott, Kipling or F. Marion Crawford, where nobility of soul and selfless courage were recognised, where at any moment Karl May’s Kara ben Nemsi might come galloping on his white camel across the packed sand or Alan Quatermain rise from behind a rock to welcome us. We might be greeted by a chivalrous Saracen from Bohemian romance, some mediaeval French gentleman, honoured by the Moor as a hero. I have seen it in film after film. This is what made Lawrence of Arabia such a laughing-stock in nomad circles, I hear, and Mrs Fezi in Talbot Road merely laughs when I mention it. ‘It is all a joke,’ she says in Arabic. She enjoys speaking to someone who understands her. Even the Egyptians, she says, pretend to be baffled sometimes. She refuses to be shamed, she says, by those Jew-loving bastards, though she grants piously that we should all be tolerant and help one another, even benighted Christians like myself. Because I like her I repeat the prayer with her. It is a comfort to us both. I do not regret my time in the desert. It is not how one worships God but how one obeys Him, I say. But she will not speak the Lord’s Prayer I wrote out for her. I do not blame her. She is a peasant, while I am heir to the blood of kings.
Anyway, I say, where would we be without the Jews in the first place? Whereupon she refuses to listen. She becomes tactful in the way that Russians do when you mention Stalin. Perhaps, after all, Stalin was not only a Georgian warlord but also an Oriental god? Perhaps, after all, Jesus was our first true prophet, in which case I am wasting my time with what I call my counter-missionary work. If these people wish to come to the West to make for themselves an Eastern slum, perhaps I should not try to improve their lot. But are they happy? In their own world, at least, they are not despised for their appearance or their beliefs. We are invaded at every turn by the Middle Ages. There is a War of Time violently taking place all around us and we pretend it is not there. We would rather talk about the quality of the fish and chips. Who are these nomads of the time-streams, bursting over the borders, flooding out of non-existent countries into the glaring realities of Paris and London and Amsterdam? Our values are the very antithesis of their own. It occurs to me that all the crimes committed against the ignorant and the innocent down the years have come home to roost in the nations of the rich. Their spirits are the ghosts haunting the treasury of our inheritance. We cannot enjoy our wealth and not be possessed by them all. War has an infinite price. We are never free of its victims. Generation upon generation is tainted by war. Generation upon generation pays the worst price of all - to watch paradise slowly slipping from its grasp. I remember Munich. I still do not believe the Führer was insincere.
I am of that generation which argues ‘there are no victors in war’ and I believe we have proven that contention. Yet T’hami el Glaoui would have thought me mad had I made such a statement as he rode with all the glory of his complicated retinue, its wagons and pack-animals and flags and soldiery, towards the granite seat of his family’s original power. ‘A great laird,’ proclaimed Mr Weeks, whose mother had been a Mackenzie, ‘and a gentleman through and through.’
We camped that night in a village of our own creation rather than suffer the cramped hospitality of the dignitaries who displayed the offerings of the local people, mostly lambs and goats, as daifa in the traditional rituals of welcome. Before our eyes they set to slaughtering an entire herd for our pleasure which was then roasted on spits over pits in the sand. Later, we feasted, as entertainers were brought in to sing those impossibly melancholy Berber love-songs having the substance and effect of the music they now call Cowboy and Western and which springs from similar peasant roots. These celebrations of cosmic self-pity were followed by a troupe of drummers, whose monotony would rival any modern Top of the Pops jungle dancing. Bad taste is truly universal. I sat on one side in the company of Lieutenant Fromental, Mr Weeks and Count Schmaltz while Rose von Bek was decidedly on her own with the Pasha. Both were oblivious to the music and I envied them this. The other local kai’ds and their retainers seemed as discomfited by the entertainment as the rest of us. Only Mr Mix gave every appearance of relishing the whole thing, filming them and us from every angle, his massive cart of batteries powering the floodlights necessary to capture anything but a flickering shadow (as it was he had to ask them to repeat their performances against that impossible background the next morning while the rest of us were packing to leave). Still I had failed to get the negro to one side. I almost wondered if he avoided me until it occurred to me that filming must be a genuine vocation for the intelligent africain.
Since he wished to return home to America, Mr Mix doubtless hoped to direct films for the race market. There was a thriving business in such films, which were sold throughout the African and Oriental world. I contented myself, knowing that sooner or later my old comrade would let me into his confidence.
I was still not entirely at ease with Rose von Bek’s behaviour. It seemed to me that the essential man, not the name he uses, is all that is ever important. But perhaps she had thought me more powerful than I was, while T’hami el Glaoui was certainly everything a potentate should be, even if he lacked my looks and peculiar skills. I suspected that our relative power was something she had weighed up with all the speed of the practised adventuress. Grateful that I had invested little real idealism in her, merely friendship, I made the best of things, taking comfort in the company of those boisterous, manly comrades, their jokes and private conversations. It was no surprise, after the feasting and folklorique were done, that Rose von Bek did not tip-toe from the Pasha’s tent to her own until a little before dawn. I buried all memory of pleasure. It had become
second nature to me. The stiff upper lip is not the Englishman’s prerogative. The next day, as we entered the last phase of the journey to his kasbah, the Pasha made a point of calling out for me to join him at the head of the party. Observed by genuflecting peasants, we rode along an avenue of palms. Rose was nowhere in sight, confined, I was told, to one of the wagons, suffering from the privations of our balloon journey. The balloon itself followed in another of the supply wagons. ‘I gather you are something of an engineer as well as a film star, Mr Beters.’ Like most Arabic speakers he had trouble with the letter ‘p’, but he was charming. His gentle courtesy won me over at once.
‘I am lucky enough to hold a degree or two in the sciences,’ I confirmed. ‘My colleague Lalla von Bek has been betraying my secrets, I fear.’
He appreciated my use of the Arabic title. ‘Lalla von Bek explained the extraordinary nature of your meeting. In disguise, you came out of the desert like a Bedouin legend, Mr Beters, and rescued a fair maiden! Be careful, they will be brinting your adventures in the benny dreadfuls.’ He then launched into some second-hand anecdote he had overheard on the Quai d’Orsay concerning Buffalo Bill’s embarrassment at the fictions perpetrated in his name. ‘Did you ever see a Wild West Show, Mr Beters?’
I admitted that I had only known Cody’s nephew, but I had rubbed shoulders with some fairly rough types ‘out West’. ‘Believe me, Your Highness, there are worse villains in real life than we ever dare show on the screen.’
‘I can believe it, Mr Beters. However, until I again have the bleasure of watching your wonderful film escabades, I must make do with the reality of your combany. What is your sbecial field?’
I quickly explained that I was by profession an inventor. I had to my credit a string of recent experimental machines, from airships to the latest dynamite car. In the pipeline were plans for great ships to carry tourists to the desert where they would learn something of the dignity of the nomad life. This of course would increase the region’s wealth. It was this latter idea that intrigued him. I described further details of my Desert Liner. From there we got on to aeroplanes, for which he was a great enthusiast ‘Do you know anything about building aeroblanes, m’sieu?’
‘I am the first Russian to fly,’ I informed him. ‘I flew a one-man craft over Kiev long before such things were thought possible. It was for my originality in this area that I was awarded my special medal from St Petersburg.’
‘Ah, Betersburg. Your real name, I take it? And yet you gave ub such an exciting career to be an actor?’ He found this a trifle puzzling.
I scarcely knew where to begin his enlightenment. ‘I am not,’ I said, ‘like so many modern Westerners, desperate to slot myself into one narrow groove and roll along it for the rest of my life. I take opportunities where they arise. It is how I have always survived. The medium of the cinema intrigues me. For a while it suited me, I suppose, to make that medium my own. Now my chief pursuits are more intellectual. I possess at present a catalogue of aircraft which I have, over the years, designed. To make it a reality the catalogue only requires an enlightened backer. But, sadly, there are few such visionaries in these troubled times.’
‘I flew in 1913,’ said the Pasha with some pride. ‘It was interesting, though not terrifying. Some of my beoble did not enjoy the exberience, but I made them take it. Ha, ha! Could you berhabs build a small air fleet, m’sieu, if funds were at your disbosal?’
Taken aback, I nodded, silently. I could think of nothing to say. But this response seemed to satisfy him. He told me that we would discuss the idea further, when we got to Tafouelt.
The rest of the morning, as the tracks became steeper and we were sometimes forced to go in single file, I spent in some euphoria. Had Leonardo at last found his Prince? Perhaps this was where I was destined to begin my march back to respectability, to recover all my honours? In time I would be able to travel to Paris and make it evident that I was not some second-rate share-floater but an honest inventor. T’hami had the ear of the most powerful politicians in France. In Marrakech, I thought, I might redeem myself entirely and then, my reputation restored, make my way to Italy where, I was now convinced, I would discover my ultimate destiny. I said nothing of Italy to El Glaoui, whose dislike of that country was an obsession. So optimistic had I become, so full of plans for my improving future, that I hardly noticed as we climbed to the brow of a low hill and was astonished at the sight of the great oasis of Tafi’lalet. This was a vast valley - or series of shallow valleys - some twelve miles long and nine miles wide, where crops of red rock jutted from fertile grazing lands, from fields of wheat and barley, from every shade of green. Green blazed brighter than the valley’s lakes and rivers. Green was the Holy Colour. We paused to honour it.
At length we continued on up a winding trail which took us suddenly to the gates of a large crenellated castle, built of pink piste, with a drawbridge and portcullis and all the trappings of a working mediaeval fortress. Tafi’lalet was one of the Glaoui family’s chief forts, belonging, Fromental whispered, to T’hami’s nephew, whom everyone called The Vulture. Though T’hami was head of the family, Si Hammon held the real power in this region of the High Atlas, controlling half the wealth of Southern Morocco, and T’hami, despising his relative, embarrassed by him, had every reason to keep his peace with him.
Into this gloomy fortress we now filed on weary, still-stumbling horses. When I looked back through the archway I saw a panorama of the whole Tafi’lalet valley and it was easy to understand why the great kasbah had been built there. It controlled the entire area and could never be secretly attacked. As the last gaudy warriors passed over it, the drawbridge was taken back up on a pully and a rope drawn by a complaining donkey. The place stank chiefly of dung while the courtyard was piled with old rags, junk and household waste which black slaves were burning slowly in mouldering heaps.
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 som
e boyar’s entourage in Old Russia or participating in a knightly progress through 12th-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.
Jerusalem Commands - [Between the Wars 03] Page 54
