Helen And Desire

by Alexander Trocchi

  It was on the third day that it happened.

  Youssef appeared to have obtained a horse from somewhere or other, a large white gelding on which he pranced backwards and forwards the length of the caravan. I asked him if he could get me a horse. ‘What for?’ he said. His tone was rather contemptuous.

  ‘Because I want one,’ I said, an element of indignation in my voice.

  ‘No. It’s impossible,’ he said quickly.

  We stopped early at an oasis that day.

  I reopened the subject.

  ‘Why can’t you get me a horse? You got one for yourself!’

  He looked at me with a cold smile.

  ‘You won’t need a horse where you’re going,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You’ll soon find out!’ he said, and he turned to a group of Arabs who were squatting beside a tree. He shouted something in Arabic to them. Two of them dissociated themselves from the group and came towards us. When they were close, he pointed to me and walked off beyond the trees. I felt my arms pinioned by the two Arabs and we followed in his wake. I was frightened, but I couldn’t help feeling that Youssef looked like a circus character with his shining boots and his burnous and the whip he carried in his right hand. He walked a little distance off behind a dune and waited. I was dragged again into his presence.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ I said angrily as soon as I confronted him.

  ‘Shut your damn mouth!’ he said and struck me across the face with the whip.

  ‘You’ll be sorry for that,’ I said.

  He roared with laughter.

  ‘You little fool!’ he said. ‘Don’t you realise that you’re in my country? Don’t you realise that I can do just what I please with you?’

  ‘You’d better be careful!’ I said. I don’t know why I said it. I felt angry and powerless and very afraid. I think I must have been thinking vaguely of Mr Pamandari, although what he could do even I failed to see. In fact, he could do nothing.

  ‘You had better forget all that, Helen,’ Youssef said more quietly. ‘This is the last time I shall see you. I’m going to give myself the pleasure of watching you being raped by these men. After that I’m going to turn you over to them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A favour to a friend,’ Youssef said. ‘Devlin’s brother was a friend of mine. I was educated in America.’

  ‘You damn fool! What has that got to do with me?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ he said with a smile which, when it left his lips, was the signal for the two men to throw themselves upon me, rip off my clothes, and rape me there on the sand.

  In the flurry of dust and grunts and the frantic flailing of my own outraged limbs, I saw Youssef walk away.

  ‘Youssef!’

  But a brown hand was clamped over my mouth and a brutal urgency jabbed at my exposed and twitching loins. I was still lying there and my violators, calmer now, were sitting smoking and watching me, when I saw part of the camel train move off, Youssef on his white horse riding out of sight without once turning his head in my direction.

  How I hated that man!

  There is nothing more to tell. My hatred lost its edge a long time ago. I have became gradually acclimatized. Willingly. But that does not prevent me, intellectually at least, from despising the man who is responsible for my fate. He knew Devlin’s brother! Salved his own conscience by behaving brutally towards me! What a despicable little man! I bear him no malice, but I hope he burns in hell for it!

  This writing, what a bore! How gently, how sweetly tired I am! It is growing dark. Soon the muezzin will cry out to bring the faithful to prayer. What a wonderful religion that a woman is allowed to experience so much and so deeply! But there is a canker of hatred for Youssef which I am unable to eradicate. He didn’t wish me well though I was a good mistress to him. He thought he was punishing me. I would like to be avenged.

  Where is Nadya? Where is Mario? What has Mr Pamandari done about them? The questions lose in definition day by day. The answers become of purely academic interest. I must put this manuscript away. My keeper will be here shortly with my beloved potion. After that I will write no more. One last word. I am almost sorry it is over. I feel a certain nostalgia. But that is irrelevant. I cannot put my pencil down. I have the urge to write more. And yet the story is ended. I have a vague feeling that I have left a great deal unsaid. But why am I so certain that it should be said at all? There is no reason for anything to be said. Saying is stupid. A ridiculous waste of time that might otherwise be lived. I think I write because it is a triumph. I feel the need to express that triumph. Of course it wasn’t so at the beginning. Then, I had a reason to write. I vaguely felt, I suppose, that someday this manuscript would lie on a desk behind which a man was sitting. What man? A man, I suppose, who would wish to avenge me. That little piece of dirty business cleaned up and I will be happy. I am happy now. But that righteous fool Youssef! That he should exist is an impertinence. Worse. Sacrilege. What am I doing still wielding this pencil? It seems to have stuck to my fingers. I can’t get rid of it. Shores of experience slide away from me. The sky will be red tonight from my slit of a window. The rooftops and the minaret at sunset will glow softly and noises of beasts and men and perhaps music will drift up to me before – after, oh yes, after my beloved potion!—the door opens for another time and with a rising of my juices a male spine drives me to delirium.

  I must put . . .

  (End of Manuscript)

  COPY OF A LETTER SENT BY MAJOR PIERRE JAVET TO HIS FRIEND, CAPTAIN JACQUES DECOEUR OF THE FRENCH GARRISON AT MASCARA, ALGERIA.

  Ghardaïa,

  1 October 1949.

  Dear Jacques,

  Over two months have passed since that strange manuscript came into our hands.

  Extensive investigations have been made, here, in Algiers, and even in Oran, but little information has come to light.

  Two Arabs confessed to seeing ‘a white woman’ in the camel train of Sheikh X . . . , but when we questioned him about it – he is an influential man in these parts, so we had to move cautiously – he said that there was indeed ‘a white woman,’ a Persian dancer who is now in his harem. He even produced a photograph of her, taken, he says, at Blida. Meanwhile, the two witnesses, wily birds that they are, say that they could not positively identify the woman, and that the Persian woman may well be the woman they saw. We checked the story and were able to confirm that this Persian dancer did actually travel with the caravan. There was no secret about it. On the contrary, for a woman about to go to a harem, it was suspiciously well publicised.

  My own feelings, of course, are that this was ‘the white woman’ whom Helen Smith (or Seferis) said she saw. But there it is. We are at a dead end in our investigations. The woman most certainly did exist. We have confirmation of that from Australia, Singapore, India, and Monte Carlo. Whether she still exists, God knows. My own guess is that she is in some Arab brothel from which it would be devilishly difficult to extricate her.

  This might have been all. But Good God, Jacques, we had reckoned without one of the characters! I didn’t give a second thought to Mr Pamandari – a kindly and rich old Parsee, that was my impression. And because of Miss Smith’s queer attachment to him, because of the fact that she might have been said to have been in his employ, I took the liberty of sending a copy of the manuscript to him. With some misgivings because of the references to his daughter, Nadya, I admit. I didn’t realise precisely what I was stirring up.

  ‘In fact, he could do nothing.’ That is what Helen Smith wrote, if you remember. That, I take it now, is the only untrue assertion in the whole manuscript.

  I had no idea who this Mr Pamandari was. A fortnight after I send the manuscript to him, I received a polite note of thanks in which he said that he would look into the matter. That was all.

  But it turned out that although our sheikh was a powerful man, when compared to the venerable old Mr Pamandari, he was a minnow beside an octopus. We
soldiers sometimes don’t realise what forces go on behind the scenes!

  To be brief, Mr Pamandari brought pressure to bear on the Arab League and in the middle of September Sheikh X . . . was assassinated in Laghouat. Mysteriously, of course, no questions, no evidence. And now, by God, the whole district is in an uproar! There is a team of investigators who pooh-pooh our efforts and who confidently predict that they will discover the whereabouts of the unfortunate woman within a month. If and when they do so, God knows what is going to happen, but we have already received a note from the Governor General that all Mr Pamandari’s wishes are to be respected to the letter! Et voilà, my boy, that is all I know!

  A good-natured member of the Foreign Office who was holidaying here smiled when I mentioned Mr Pamandari. His words were: ‘It’s no use asking what Mr Pamandari has to do with this or that. He owns it.’

  A bientôt.

  Pierrot.

  Endnote

  1. The family name of this personage has been suppressed for official reasons.