Arabesque

by Geoffrey Household

  “What’s your reading of it?”

  “The merest conjecture. Armande has contracted an attack of Zionism. Now, Zionism with ignorance is a nuisance—embarrassing to a man like Abu Tisein. He’s a most able politician. He has no patience with patriotism without technique. He doesn’t think in terms of America and Poland; he thinks in terms of Arabs. A dozen of his sort could make a Jewish Palestine.”

  “Whom does he really work for?” asked Prayle.

  “The Jewish Agency first, foremost and all the time. But their interests are often ours. And you mustn’t think the Agency is some sort of sinister secret society. Jews—Zionist Jews, that is—all over the world elect their representatives, and the representatives elect an executive to administer the National Home. That executive is the Jewish Agency. Its constitution is democratic! Its methods are—well, I’ve never decided who does the most harm, the Agency orators or the Palestine Government. Our people, you see, have no patience with hysteria. We show our distaste. We don’t even like having them to lunch in case they make speeches at us. That’s all wrong. Treat a Jew as if he were the Messiah (its amazing how often he thinks in his own heart that he is) and he’ll eat out of your hand. Where does Nachmias come into your problem?”

  “Back door, sir, if at all. Shall I talk to him first?”

  “God forbid!” Captain Fairfather exclaimed. “If it comes to interrogating Abu Tisein, we’ll have to have it done on the highest level.”

  Chapter Six

  Hospitality

  In Jerusalem Armande was happy for the first time since the fall of France. She was back in a tiny apartment of her own: a penthouse on the top of a block of flats in Qatamon. The roof stood high above the modern suburbs, looking east to the scrub and boulders of the barren Judaean hills, and west to the walls and pinnacles of the Old City. She was free to choose her own friends, free of all those cheaply alluring competitors in the St. Georges; and, war or no war, it was pleasant to be back in a civilisation that recalled London. At the King David Hotel there were even dinner jakcets to be seen in the restaurant.

  She had no financial worries. M. Calinot’s money was near its end, but her expenses at Beit Chabab had been lavishly defrayed as if Anton’s inn were a hotel de luxe. She had therefore decided to rid herself of Beirut, its useless life and its useless memories, and to settle in Palestine where there was nothing exceptional in being British and a civilian, and war work of all sorts for the asking. Soon after reaching Jerusalem she had taken a job at Palestine Headquarters which paid her as yet a mere five pounds a week, but gave her security and self-respect. She was at last a useful member of the fortress, not an idle mouth to be fed.

  With all this outward peace she was gay at heart. She had carried out a difficult and secret assignment with such ease and efficiency. One night when she thought of the quiet commendation of David Nachmias she had hugged her pillow and kicked with exhilaration like a month-old infant, until the loneliness of the pillow reminded her that she was a woman, not a child.

  Abu Tisein had not told her very much of the end of the story—simply that at the appointed time and place Sheikh Wadiah had met the detachment of troops and led them to a temporary cache where the arms awaited collection; he had been mildly offended because the party would not stay to a considerable cold supper which lie himself had carried out into the woods.

  She sent Wadiah her Jerusalem address, and at once received a reply from him, written in a magnificent flowing hand on the most expensive paper obtainable in Beit Chabab, which happened to be pale pink and deckle-edged. The letter contained nothing but resounding compliments, yet was delivered confidentially by a Maronite monk. Sheikh Wadiah was too much of an individualist to believe in public services.

  At the end of November the same monk, bowing, smiling and disappearing with ecclesiastical smoothness, delivered another letter. For two pages it expressed Wadiah’s allegiance to her and her country, and then came to the point:

  You will remember my major-domo, Fouad, who, next to myself, was your most devoted servant in Beit Chabab. He has had the misfortune of some slight trouble in his family, and I have thought it best to send him over the frontier into Palestine. He will come to see you in person. His life is in your hands to do with what you will.

  Armande discounted this conventionally exaggerated language. Fouad, she supposed, had some private business with army or government, and she was expected to do him a favour—certainly a large and disreputable favour, since Wadiah himself made the request. Friendship in the Middle East always seemed to be a banding together against common enemies or the officials of the state; it was not so sincere or disinterested as in Europe, yet carried greater responsibilities. She hoped that David Nachmias would be able to do whatever was required.

  Abu Tisein kept clear of her in Jerusalem, explaining that there should be no public connection between them. His influence in the background, however, had been of use. He had insured that she met the colonel who was now her employer, and he had opened to her the Zionist circles of Jerusalem.

  She liked the Jews of Palestine. They had the taste but not the conservatism of her husband’s stockbroking friends, the energy but not the vulgarity of the smaller fry of European commerce, and they had made Jerusalem a little capital of the arts and of science. Her sympathies were wholly Zionist. To historical rights of Jew or Arab she was indifferent. The right of the Jews, for her, was that they were proud and happy, hard at work and secure. A joyous and intelligent folk had been re-created, and the world was the richer for it.

  It was a Sunday afternoon in early December. At the special request of her colonel she had spent the morning at work, and had come from the bare maps and tables of the cheerless military office home to her flat. The first heavy winter rain roared out of the windless sky and capered on the roof outside the windows of her living room. Dry and warm amid a veil of water, she idled happily, still savouring her delicious privacy.

  Her bell rang. It was her German-Jewish landlord, Dr. Finkelkraut, who had a habit of calling punctiliously upon his tenants at the most awkward hours in order to announce some meticulous and—humanly speaking—impracticable scheme for the care of the furnace, the use of the water or the hanging out of laundry.

  He bowed with Central European formality, implying that he disturbed her not as a casual caller, but as a responsible landlord acting under the beneficent state.

  “Mrs. Herne,” he said, “it is my duty to alarm the tenants.”

  She supposed the water was about to be cut off again.

  “I am alarmed,” she answered, smiling.

  “You have taken notice, yes?” he insisted, as if asking her to sign a receipt. “It is the police!”

  Armande had developed immunity to the excited noises that occasionally drifted up from the flats below. She now listened. The block was humming with hysterical exclamations.

  “What’s all the fuss about?” she asked.

  “An Arab murderer has been observed to enter my house,” replied Dr. Finkelkraut importantly. “By instantly organising our microcosm I assist the police. They wish to search the flats. I have alarmed my tenants and instructed them not to be afraid.”

  “Well, he wasn’t here and he can’t get in,” said Armande, “but the police can look around if they like.”

  Dr. Finkelkraut trotted across the roof with the heavy steps of a good citizen hurrying from one civic duty to another, and vanished down the stairs.

  Before Armande could shut her door, an Arab sprang from behind the housing of the stairhead and rushed towards her. She let him in. Fouad was Fouad, whatever he had done.

  Fouad fell on his knees and carried her hand to his forehead. He was no longer the spruce, grey-clad rider who had honoured Wadiah by his attendance. The major-domo was wearing the black cotton of the poor. The wet rags clung to his body. His moustache, a black and proud edition of Wadiah’s, was weighed down by rain. Blood dripped from his fingers to the floor.

  Armande caught hi
m by the good arm, dragged him to the bedroom and shut the door. Then she dashed outside. There was no trace of blood on the roof; evidently Fouad had had the sense to keep his hand muffled in his rags. In her room there was blood on the parquet. She flung a rug over it. When she looked up, Dr. Finkelkraut and the police were at her door.

  There were a British sergeant, an Arab and a Jewish constable. The constables began a thorough search of the roof and chimneys, while the sergeant addressed her in Hebrew.

  “Mrs. Herne is English and works for the army,” explained Dr. Finkelkraut officiously—her presence added respectability to his house.

  The sergeant smiled with relief. He was a pleasant, fresh-faced young man. Armande’s excitement, fear, distress—she had no time to realise what she had done, why she did it or what she felt—began to ease in face of this male innocent. Him at last she could handle.

  “Bit of luck finding you here!” he explained, as if Jews had neither eyes to see nor tongues to speak. “You can tell me all about it. Mrs. Herne, there must be a man somewhere on this roof.”

  “There might be,” Armande answered. “I’ve been reading.”

  “Could he have got into your flat?”

  “Not without my seeing him. What’s he done?”

  “Committed a very brutal murder in the Lebanon. We’ve been on the lookout for him, and he was recognised while he was asking for this street. Then he ran for it, and the constable is sure he saw him bolt into this house.”

  “Whom did he murder? Was it political?” she asked, sounding, she hoped, the cool and curious Englishwoman.

  “Just one of their blood feuds—and all the usual mutilations with it. Now where can he have got to?”

  “Fire escape?” she suggested.

  “Impossible. I have a man at the bottom of it.”

  “Well, he can’t be here,” said Armande. “But have a look round the flat if you like.”

  She held the sergeant with smiling eyes; she was oddly terrified lest he should watch her throat and see the heavy beating of her heart.

  “I needn’t bother you, Mrs. Herne,” he replied. “I can see you have only these two windows and your door opening on the roof. So if you’ve been here all the time ߪ”

  When the police had left, Armande sprang into the bedroom. Fouad was crouching on his heels in a corner of the room: a wet Arab, pitiable and helpless as a wet kitten. So much of their dignity and grace depended on the free movement of the covering.

  “Merci, Madame! Merci! Merci!” he murmured in halting French.

  “Show me the wound!” she cried anxiously. “Did the police shoot at you?”

  “Yes, yes, Madame. But it is nothing.”

  It was nothing, a mere tear in the fleshy part of the upper arm which she dressed and bandaged. Fouad yelled and moaned as the disinfectant stung him, but held out his arm without wincing. She was sure that any Englishman (or Englishwoman, for that matter, if educated at Bingham Priory) would not have uttered a sound, and yet would have made her amateur surgery twice as difficult by wriggling all over the place with set face. Fouad’s reaction emphasised the frighteningly foreign nature of the world in which she had to act. To act! Thinking, watching, learning—those had been easy, even enjoyable.

  Armande gave him a drink. Dry clothes? Heaven only knew what was the modesty of these feminine and conventional Arabs! At last she thought of a huge coat of rough sheepskin which she had bought in Hebron. He accepted it gratefully.

  Se left him to change, and paced up and down the living-room, giving Sheikh Wadiah a mental dressing-down that would have shattered his self-complacence for a year. Fouad had slight trouble in his family, indeed! His life was in her hands, indeed! Well, it was. That had been no Oriental figure of speech. What power did Wadiah think she had? What absurd picture had he made of her? It was sheer lunacy to saddle her with a common criminal. It was cheating. This had nothing to do with any intrigue or any service to her country.

  She returned to the bedroom. There Fouad could safely stay, and had to stay. The windows looked north to a patch of rocky hillside; the walls were flush with those of the house. So long as he kept to the back of the room, he could not be seen. In the living-room he would be at the mercy of her landlord, or anyone else who should visit the roof and glance casually through her windows.

  Fouad, wrapped in the sheepskin robe, was squatting on the floor, uncomplainingly awaiting the sentence of his judge.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “No, Madame. I eat before I come. But a cigarette—you have?”

  Armande sat on the bed, and tried to extract his story. It was difficult, for Fouad had no English and only a hundred words of French. He told his crime frankly and with a modest pride, though he admitted that Sheikh Wadiah had considered it ill-timed, inconvenient and out of date. He spoke of his chieftain as a boy of his schoolmaster, recognising that Wadiah, as a responsible authority, had to hand out hard words but did not necessarily believe them.

  Twenty years before, in a savage riot between Moslem and Christian, Fouad’s aunt had been raped and murdered, and his father killed while attempting to protect her. The murderer was well known, and wisely disappeared into the Mohammedan world of the Far East. While Fouad was on Sheikh Wadiah’s business at Damascus, the son of the criminal was pointed out to him. He followed his man to a quiet street, killed him, defiled his body and escaped to Beit Chabab. Wadiah could not deny his guilt and could not protect him.

  “He say to me—escape to Palestine! See Madame Armande. Maybe she use influence. Maybe they not hang you. So I am here.”

  “But, Fouad, I …” began Armande.

  She was going to say that she had no influence at all, but that, she saw, was just a form of words for her own satisfaction. Why alarm him when she intended to do all she could?

  “Madame, I not stay here,” Fouad reassured her. “I come only to speak. Madame not to fear. I not tell police where I was.”

  “You must stay here till I come back,” replied Armande decisively. “I am going out now to try to help you. Keep in the bedroom and do not open the door whoever comes.”

  The Nachmiases’s flat was in Abu Tor, on the edge of the bare Valley of Hinnom. It was a lovely suburb, but by no means to the taste of every Jew. There was nothing at all between David Nachmias and any excited crowd of Arabs that might issue from the Dung Gate of old Jerusalem; on the other hand, there was nothing between him and the ancient City of David, outside the walls, upon Mount Zion. As Armande walked along the edge of the escarpment, the rain cleared; the low evening sun shone upon the walls and towers, and in the water streaming off the rock and rubble down to the dry bed of the Kidron. Jerusalem indeed was golden.

  Mm. Nachmias was at home, languid upon a sofa, with an ivory telephone, a box of expensive chocolates and a French novel by her side. When she rose to greet Armande, the trim bulges under her smart house coat revealed that even in privacy she would not surrender to the lax and corsetless ease of the Levant.

  “But you must wait for my husband!” she cried, when Armande apologised for disturbing her. “He would be desolated to miss you. He is very fond of my naughty Mme. Herne.”

  Mme. Nachmias archly implied that it was good for the uncivilised David to have attractive friends, and that she chose them for him with care.

  “The general wanted to see him,” she added importantly. “But he will not be long. I adore your English officers. They are so precise. Ten minutes, and everything is said.”

  Armande’s experience in an army office had convinced her that British officers talked for the sake of talking, and seldom to the point. Madame’s opinion was an illusion,. She was right, however, in prophesying that her husband would not be long. Half an hour later Abu Tisein entered the flat.

  He showed to Armande the stolid gallantry that Madame expected of him, and then turned to his wife.

  “By the way, chérie, your cousin Susie is back in Jerusalem.”

  “David! I must, I mu
st absolutely speak to her!” declared Mme. Nachmias impetuously. “I will only be a moment,” she added to Armande, “just while David pours a drink for you.”

  She picked up the telephone and began an exclamatory conversation. Abu Tisein carried the drinks to a far corner of the room.

  “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Armande warned him doubtfully.

  “Madame and her cousin,” murmured Abu Tisein, “have equal politeness. On the telephone neither wishes to be the last to speak.”

  Armande showed him Wadiah’s letter, and explained the sudden appearance of Fouad.

  “That is awkward, yes,” he said. “But I assure you, Madame, it is an inevitable consequence of such a friendship as you made. In Wadiah’s mind, you see, you have become the protector of the Ghoraibs. All the same, he had no right at all to ask this of you.”

  “He thought he had,” Armande retorted.

  “Mme. Herne, you romanticise the Arabs! He did not even think he had. It was a last chance for this Fouad, and he tried it,” answered Abu Tisein with the first signs of impatience that she had ever seen in him. “You must send the man away at once. If he were caught with you—well, the complications might be disastrous.”

  “But he ought to see a doctor.”

  “For bullet wounds the police doctors are the best.”

  “I can’t give him up to the police,” Armande cried. “And anyway the police mustn’t know he was with me.”

  “Why should they? Fouad told you he would not talk, and he will not. After all, the police searched your house. They know that Fouad was not in it. He has only to say, for example, that he never entered the house at all, that he crept away through all those geraniums around the door, and they will accept it. Send him away tonight as soon as it is dark! Watch the movements of the police, and see that he is not caught going out! And be careful, Madame—if you fail, I cannot protect you.”