Chapter Three
The High Places
Beit Chabab was outside the range and interest of troops. The track, which zigzagged up for a thousand feet, through scrub and dwarf oaks, from the bottom of a gorge, led to the village and nowhere else. Beit Chabab lay along the crest of a ridge that pointed seawards from the watershed bluff on which stood the white church and squat tower of the Maronites. At the eastern end of the ridge was a Greek Orthodox monastery, its two domes just showing above powerful walls. Wall of Catholic and wall of Greek were joined together by a line of low cliffs, overhung by the rough, wooded balconies of houses. To the traveller gazing upwards from the gorge, so much rock and masonry gave the impression of a medieval town compactly built for defence.
Beit Chabab, however, was anything but compact—a tribute to the peace of the mountains under French rule. On the top of the ridge, among scattered pines, tiny single-storied stone villas were set wherever a pocket of soil among the rocks lent itself to the creation of orchard and vineyard. The village street itself straggled for half a mile along the side of the ridge, flanked by a few houses of great age, by shops of rough timber and corrugated iron, by Roman buttresses and foundations which continued to support whatever ramshackle buildings succeeded one another through the centuries.
The only house in the street which appeared to have been built at one period and from a single source of material was the inn. It was a simple, one-storied block, set around three sides of a red-tiled terrace, high above the road and approached by a flight of steps. Tall, arched windows gave it a commodious and solid demeanour. The massive platform held it firmly in the mountain air, safe from the chickens, pigs and children who fed and scrambled on the dusty cobbles of the street.
In time of peace the inn had been the favourite summer resort of a few French families, attracted by its cheapness. Even in 1941 Armande’s primitive room and three good meals cost her only some five shillings a day. Nothing was clean but the red tiles which covered the floors of rooms and terrace alike, and were proudly scrubbed every morning by a Lebanese Cinderella, twelve years old and already mature beneath her rags. Beds, wardrobes and chests of drawers held deep pockets of black dust in their old-fashioned curves and mouldings.
Armande’s aversion was overcome by her sense of adventure. An occasional bug could not be allowed to interfere with the equanimity of a secret agent. If sleep were too soon ended, she stood at the great window of her room and watched the sunrise come raiding over the high passes from Damascus and scatter through the valleys to the luminous sea.
When insect life and her initial horror had somewhat abated, she was extremely comfortable. The only other visitors at the inn were a Rumanian cabaret girl and her mother who lived quietly and cautiously in the hope that no one would think it worth while to intern them. The innkeeper, Anton Ghoraib, a humble member of Sheikh Wadiah’s clan, treated all three of his guests with generous hospitality. Armande doubted if he could possibly be making a profit, and determined to ask David Nachmias whether Anton would be reimbursed by Sheikh Wadiah (for whose honour she was being overfed) or whether she herself should give him a lordly and Oriental present.
Sheikh Wadiah Ghoraib paid a formal call at the inn the day after Armande’s arrival, driven in the village car—an immense Renault which was used for weddings, funerals and the more important movements of the chieftain. A rider followed the car, his mount, his tarboosh and his Turkish breeches of neat grey cloth showing him to be a retainer of consequence. He was Fouad, Wadiah’s major-domo. Two humbler retainers, with black scarves round their heads and dusty black cotton trousers, detached themselves from a nearby café and squatted against the wall of the inn as soon as Wadiah had entered. The car and its owner-driver, the horse and its rider, the two poor relations, remained at the foot of the steps in dignified idleness, supporting by the mere fact of their presence the prestige of Sheikh Wadiah in Beit Chabab.
As Wadiah Ghoraib mounted the steps to the terrace, Armande had no doubt who he was; there could be no other person of such distinction in the neighbourhood. He was decently dressed in black, like any comfortable French bourgeois, with a resplendent watch chain across his sleek waistcoat. His face was round and of a healthy red. His blue eyes twinkled between the waxed points of a fair and lusty handlebar moustache. Except for the red tarboosh he might have been a prosperous East Anglian auctioneer. So must have looked his crusader ancestors, she thought, when they retired from carving up Mohammedans and settled down beside the-ex-enemy as landowners and boon companions.
Anton Ghoraib strode up to the head of his clan with a more manly and independent approach than he ever allowed himself towards his guests, and then, with a surprising gesture, bent to catch and kiss Sheikh Wadiah’s hand. Wadiah swiftly and gracefully prevented him, his face expressing protest and astonishment. Armande assumed that the innkeeper’s greeting must be quite exceptional; it turned out, however, to be normal. Sheikh Wadiah’s little feudal tableaux never lost their air of spontaneity.
Wadiah introduced himself in perfect French, and, after Armande’s conventional responses, launched himself upon a flowery address which nicely balanced the compliments due to an attractive woman and the habitual tributes due to an inscrutable and possibly dangerous visiting pasha. To the limit of informal eloquence he expressed the loyalty of himself, of all his people and indeed of all the Christian Lebanon to the great British Empire.
“When I heard from our friend, M. Nachmias, that you were coming,” he added, “I wished to place at your disposal a house of your own with women to wait on you. But would that, I wonder, be convenable? You must forgive us, Madame, if in our mountains we have forgotten the finer points of Eastern delicacy. So, till I hear your wishes, I have ordered my good Anton Ghoraib to look after you. If you do not care for Lebanese dishes he will give you French, and if you do not care for French he will give you English, Anton!” he called. “Were you not taught to make an English plum pudding?”
“Yes, Sheikh Wadiah,’ said Anton, appearing instantly upon his terrace.
“Then you will give Madame a plum pudding every day. And whisky. You will give her all the whisky she requires.”
Armande did not like to seem boorish by limiting the quantity of plum puddings—that could be done later in private conversation with Anton—but she felt compelled to enter a mild protest against whisky.
“I am half French, you know, Sheikh Wadiah,” she said. “I drink a little wine, and that is all.”
“Anton,” Wadiah ordered, “you will obtain some of the Archimandrite’s wine from Mlle. Pitescu. And, Anton, Mlle. Pitescu must move elsewhere.”
“Oh, no!” Armande entreated. “She is such a lovely thing. I like to look at her.”
“That, Madame, is truly Parisian! You have a delicacy of thought which one misses in our women of the Lebanon. I must admit that I also like to look at her—as an old man, with benevolent interest, may observe the moon even in the presence of the midday sun.”
“When a man is beyond doubt a man,” replied Armande, plunging boldly into the Arabian Nights, “even a—a heavenly body forgets his age.”
“Charming, Madame!” Sheikh Wadiah chuckled, giving a gallant twist to the ends of his moustache. “Charming! That does not belong to Europe at all. Do you not speak Arabic?”
“Not a word, I am afraid.”
“You must learn. Arabic is the language for a witty woman. I was educated in France and I speak French, they tell me, like a Frenchman; yet I assure you there is no language to compare with Arabic. You can express a shade of meaning so tenuous”—he held up finger and thumb before his eye as if they contained a miscroscopic gem—“or beat your phrases with a hammer out of molten thought. Arabic! I adore my language! The Moslem, Madame, does not understand the richness of his own tongue. It is too free for his narrow mind. He is limited by his religion. To speak Arabic one must be a Christian. For the generous spirit that enters a man with good wine. Madame, there is only Arabic—for the
verse, the eloquence, the flowers of speech which spring into his head. It is the language of the arrow that pierces the target, and the arrow that flies towards the sun. And believe me, Madame, the sententious arrows that the Moslem launches from his cups of water fly very little way.”
Armande responded to enthusiasm. She found herself liking Sheikh Wadiah, and felt a tinge of regret that their relationship was founded on insincerity. She had feared that her victim would be distasteful to her, and deliberate fascination that much the harder; it was now evident that the obstacle to duty would not be his manners or appearance, but her own conscience.
“Will you teach me Arabic?” she asked.
“Willingly, Madame, if you stay here. But I do not think that in wartime you will remain long with us at Beit Chabab.”
Such a response to the invitation of her eyes was unexpected. Wadiah had warned her that she was not a child, and that he knew perfectly well she had come to his village for a definite object. His reference to wartime, however, was comforting; it suggested that he had picked up whatever rumours had been laid out for him, and that he did not question her bona fides.
Sheikh Wadiah transferred his whole interest and attention from Mlle. Pitescu to Armande. This, she decided, was due to the romance of her reputation rather than her looks, for Floarea Pitescu had a warm classical beauty with which, on the basis of sheer appeal to the senses, there could not be any competition. Floarea herself showed no jealousy; indeed she welcomed Armande’s influence. She frankly admitted that she was under the temporary and most discreet protection of the Archimandrite of Tarsus and Philadelphia, chief drone of the local Orthodox monastery, and that she had no desire to draw attention to herself by becoming involved with a prominent Lebanese.
“The Church,” explained Floarea apologetically, “is in no way exigent. He is very mild, my Archimandrite.”
“But—but too hairy,” Armande protested.
She was shocked at herself for taking anything but a passive part in so intimate a discussion; yet the Archimandrite’s hair and beard, ritually uncut, were of such an uninviting luxuriance that they compelled remark.
“My dear, he takes a lot more care of it than we can.” Floarea shook back her auburn hair, which was badly in need of a wave and had returned to its original black at the roots. “I tell him that he must lend me his monk.”
“He has a monk to do it?”
“I’m sure he has. He swears he does it all himself. But do you believe it? All those corkscrew curls down to his shoulders? He’s a dear Archimandrite, all the same,” said Floarea sentimentally.
Armande found it hard to admit that any woman whom she liked—and she liked, was interested by, Floarea—could be indifferent to her paramour. Some reserve, even some self-deception, might be demanded by good taste, but the emotions had to be involved. She saw the relationship between this glorious girl and an Arab ecclesiastic as tragedy. Since it could end neither in marriage nor in any real companionship, it must lead to pain and frustration. Thus, being five years older than Floarea, Armande felt protective, and probed tactfully to see if there were a wound of any depth.
“Will you be able to see him often when you leave Beit Chabab?” she asked.
“But he belongs here. And I—to the world,” answered Floarea wonderingly. “It’s most unlikely we shall ever meet again.”
Her tone completely excluded the possibility of any suffering.
“I want to be a great dancer, and I shall,” she went on, trying with her slow, lovely smile to thaw Armande’s frozen expression. “I can love, my dear, but Mama says not yet.”
“Your mother—” began Armande severely.
“She is not my mother really. I just call her Mama. Romanova is my teacher. But for the public we are mother and daughter, and in our hearts.”
To Armande, Romanova was a rotten old woman—a retired dancer who gave herself all the airs of a former star of the Imperial Russian Ballet, but in fact was neither Russian nor had ever risen higher in her profession than the cabarets of Balkan capitals. She was, on Floarea’s admission, nearly a procuress: at any rate she shared any funds her so-called daughter might acquire. She was plastered with layers of dirty powder, and she gave the impression of spending all her leisure in an unmade bed. All that could be said in Romanova’s favour was that she trained Floarea industriously and with faith. For three hours a day she hammered on the evilly resonant piano in Anton Ghoraib’s empty winter dining room and bullied her pupil until the pair were mutually exasperated, the sweat shining on Floarea’s clear skin and forming a pale mud in Romanova’s wrinkles. To Armande dancing was a pure art which she loved and once had practised with the jealousy of the amateur. The professionalism of cabaret seemed to her vulgarity. Romanova was developing Floarea into an acrobat, not a dancer—and all against the girl’s natural instinct for smoothness and grace upon the points.
Even dislike of this Romanova was, however, positive. Armande had lived a year without caring enough to dislike anyone. The mountain air after the sticky heat of Beirut, the sense of useful adventure, the society of two such original characters as Sheikh Wadiah Ghoraib and Floarea Pitescu, snatched her in a week out of the miasma of depression. From mere watching and waiting—which might be virtue for Abu Tisein’s casual Orientals, but for her was shameful—she had returned to the enthusiastic activity of the European. The grapevine of rumour had it that she was recuperating from the agony of internment. In a sense that was true.
Sheikh Wadiah was continually and delightfully gallant, but showed no signs of falling in love. She suspected that he was explaining both her and himself in terms of the novels of the Second Empire which he had read in youth. He considered her, as indeed she liked to be considered, a brilliantly intellectual woman, and evidently felt himself to be at last the intimate of a creature of salons, of international society, of discreet political power. Fascinated he certainly was, but by a romance and a legend that he himself had supplied.
Day after day she talked politics with Wadiah, or rode or lunched with him—when he had gathered together enough Christian notables of the district to do honour to them, to her and to his house. She dreaded these lunches beforehand, found them an interminable effort for the first half hour and ended by enjoying herself.
Wadiah’s house was an old, untidy building on the main street, presenting, like the inn, a massive and windowless lower story to the road, within which were the stables and storehouses. On the first floor was a tiled entrance hall, thirty feet square, empty except for a long upholstered bench, like that of a theatre foyer, across the far end and half a dozen plain chairs just inside the front door; on these was seated, under the command of a gloriously sashed and trousered Fouad, an ever-changing group of Wadiah’s humbler retainers, whose only duty was to rise at the approach of a guest and exclaim their welcome and compliments.
Wadiah met her at the foot of the steps, and ushered her past the gesticulating retainers into the summer sitting-room. There would be gathered some eight or ten of his rivals, friends or relations with their wives and daughters. The men were intolerably polite; the women drearily arch, all pretty, all badly and heavily painted. They sat on furniture of the eighties, covered with red plush and cushioned in imitation leopard skin. Tinted photographs of Sheikh Wadiah’s parents and uncles stared from the wall in blank disapproval whenever a sentiment was expressed or a response returned which might not be in accord with books of etiquette. Armande, replying brightly to the conventional questions of the women and the tiresome gallantry of the men, felt, to her furious annoyance, like a lady of fashion who had been asked to tea by her former cook.
The chatter lasted half an hour: a desert of time wherein only coffee was served. Then Sheikh Wadiah would give his moustaches a purposeful twist and lead his party across the hall for lunch. The appearance of the table was enough to raise Armande’s spirits. The only vice that remained with her, conscious and admitted, from early days was greed. She could and, in London, often did m
ake do with a diet suited to her soulful eyes and ethereal body, but the Frenchwoman in her frankly liked its lunch.
Sheikh Wadiah’s table was always decorated with a vast cold fish at one end, and a variety of Oriental creams and salds at the other. When those had been eaten, the main dishes were all placed on the table simultaneously: chickens, pigeons, crisp Koubbé made of meat and pine cones, a whole sucking pig or lamb. The men and their wives sipped araq, their daughters, water; but for Armande and himself and any guest who was interested Sheikh Wadiah produced a specially selected local wine. This he would set on the table with a small speech of introduction, deprecating its quality in comparison with the wines of France, but giving the history of the vineyard or shop or family where he had discovered it.
Under the influence of Sheikh Wadiah’s beaming face and of the pleasures his table offered to eye and palate, society manners began to fall away. Men and women forgot to speak their stilted French and settled to the laughing, exaggerated Arabic. Even their daughters occasionally squeaked what they thought rather than what they ought to think. Questioning of Armande became outrageously personal, but merry and sincere. She felt that she was liked and that approval of the lone European woman was no longer merely the admiration accorded to some new arrival at the zoo.
It shocked her that all Sheikh Wadiah’s circle should hate the French. They sensed the French contempt for them, and they responded. They were like the Indians, she supposed. (Oh Lord, those arguments with John in Kensington!) The British had given to India justice, the principles of democracy and the means of independence, yet they were hated as a ruling and superior race. In Syria and the Lebanon the same gifts had been dutifully delivered by the French, with rather less of justice and a deal more of the arts of living, yet hardly was there a Lebanese who did not accuse them of selfishness and chicanery. The Christians were all loud in praises of the British, even of British rule in Palestine. They laid their hands upon their hearts, and desired Armande to accept the Lebanon as a crown colony.
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