By now, Kolya, constantly sniffing cocaine and putting himself to sleep with morphine, was red-eyed and pale under his tan. He no longer shaved, or cleaned himself. He defecated quite cheerfully wherever and whenever the urge came, squat-ling in the sand and humming snatches of Gotterdammerung to prove some lunatic point.
‘Thus he sings of a new order, Dimka dearest. How Love, not Power, shall rule the world! Idealism and music combined. We shall worship not some sectarian Old Man, but a universal, all-embracing, all-loving Being! Would you call that genius Pagan? No! His love of God displayed his Senussi heritage! He returned to his desert homeland and found the truth he sought. But he refused Christian piety and rejected Jewish sentimentality as readily as Arab zealotry. That, Dimka sweetheart, is why he looked back to the great gods of a mutual past. Forces which refuse to be limited by modern theology! Dismiss these elements if you will - but they are what informed Wagner’s astonishing subtleties of technique, his extraordinary use of narrative and Leitmotif that made him the unmatched innovator.
‘In the desert Wagner learned the truths our people were in danger of forgetting. He longed to know who his father really was. He became Parsifal, that most pure and holy of knights. He became Saladin, that most godly of leaders. He was Igor as thoroughly as he was Siegfried, Arthur and Charlemagne and El Cid. Our great common heritage, our Mediterranean inheritance, was reborn through Wagner. And why? Because he returned to the womb of our culture. That place where race met race and created the chain-reaction which has not yet stopped. Al Fakhr, they called Wagner. The Wise One. The Old Gods pass away and it is time for Man to rule. But is he ready for the responsibility? Can’t you hear the echo of the Bedouin drum, the Moorish guitar, in Wotan’s final aria? And he knew his Jew. Like his ancestors, Dimka, he knew his Jew. But this did not make him a bigot.’
I refused to argue with him. My friend was obsessed. A more superstitious person might have thought a djinn had taken possession of Prince Nikolai Petroff, but I could recall no moment when this would have been possible.
It was now my turn to weep for my mad friend. Indeed, in that infinity of uncaring sand, with only the pulsing globe of the sun or the cold light of the stars for company, I moaned for him. I shrieked for him. I implored Heaven to bring him back to his senses. I sobbed and I wailed. I begged whatever deity that heard me to answer my prayers. But my imploring wails were addressed to the vast, unhearing heavens. At times like these I envy the atheist. They deny God’s existence. Yet sometimes, as then, it occurs to me that while God most certainly exists, He might not in any way comply with the benign image we have made of Him. We are forbidden to make God in our image - for God is most definitely not Man. God is God. Yet, all the same, God might take no more interest in us, His creation, than a cat who grows bored with her kittens. That God cares for us is our presumption. That is what we call Faith. That is the hope we cling to. Such thoughts did little to relieve my sadness, my anxiety, and my wails grew louder.
One morning Kolya was gone, leaving his camel and all his goods behind. He had, as the Bedouin say, ‘walked into the desert’. I called to him. I knew the folly of leaving this spot where he could at least follow his own footprints back. I waited a day, calling out his name until my own parched throat could summon little more than a croak, even with the kindly sustenance that cocaine, in moderation, can bring. He did not return. Once I thought I heard a snatch of The Flying Dutchman but it was doubtless a trick of the desert. I mourned for him as I stared around at an horizon consisting only of glinting brown dunes, unchanging blue sky and merciless sun. I had never felt so lonely and yet I remained free from fear. Although I was concerned for my friend, who had, after all, saved my life, I was at that moment deeply glad to be free of the Bedouin Wagner.
I had enough water for three days, but Kolya had taken the compass with him. All I could do was arrange my camels so that one followed another, take note of where the sun rose, and head west in the hope that I would stumble at least upon a bi’r, a place in the sand where I could dig for water. I took one of the Lee-Enfields from its oiled paper and fitted in a clip of ammunition. I had always been a good shot, but had little experience of single-handedly fighting off, say, a horde of attacking Gora. As long as I goaded Uncle Tom, using the long camel-whip Kolya had left behind with everything else, the other camels, lacking a dominant male, would follow their herd instinct and fall in behind her. I had little difficulty leading them over the dunes, nor was it difficult to hobble them at night. They seemed as thoroughly aware as I of our danger and our need to keep together. Uncle Tom I rewarded with her favourite treat - a plug of ‘Redman’ chewing tobacco I had purchased in al-Khufra.
An intelligent camel is one of God’s greatest gifts. She is everything a man needs in the desert. And if she is beautiful, as my Uncle Tom, she is a perpetual reminder to us that we are no more nor less important in the sight of God than any of His creatures. As God’s creatures we always have some kind of kinship to the beasts - and they to us. The symbiosis, the deep friendship, between Man and animal is as beautiful as any human relationship, and as mutually useful. This is another thing one learns on one’s own in the desert. God does not forbid these things. The Bible abounds with examples of this love between Man and his cousins. Noah would have understood.
In the desert nothing stands between Man and God save Man’s own self-deceit. Unless you acknowledge God’s dominion, you are destroyed. There are simple parables to be learned in the desert. One loses Self, but one gains the Universe. I pray for all souls, all innocent souls who are slaughtered in War. I pray they find sweet happiness in the presence of Jesus, our Saviour and God, our Father. Let them be released from the terrors and humiliations of this world and all its unjust torments. Let the forces of evil wage war amongst themselves while the Godly remain powerless to affect the cause of peace. What was Munich but the last hope of a good man in an evil world? In the end the British betrayed him.
Kolya said religion was the last resort of rogues. Of course that can also be true. But what I would sacrifice to live in an age when God was our first resort and the Lord of Peace ruled our hearts and minds!
I have almost given up hope of the New Jerusalem, as the English call it. Eventually, no doubt, Karl Marx will conquer the world, Sigmund Freud will re-interpret it, Albert Einstein will provide it with suitable physics, Stefan Zweig will give us its history, Israel Zangwill will furnish its literature and we shall no longer remember a time when Christian chivalry might have recreated Eden. Carthago delenda est. I think not!
A wind brought up burning sand against which I veiled my mouth and eyes, finding it even more difficult to keep to my chosen direction. Her beautiful long lashes and elegant nostrils closed against the razoring wind, Uncle Tom was led up and down the dunes now furious with activity, as if a thousand wakened devils plagued our way. Every so often, through the sighing air, I thought I heard a ghostly Meistersinger or Kundry. I would pause and call, but I was never answered. My exposed skin was flayed. My camels, refusing to move further, folded themselves down into the sand. They would have perished, half-buried, if I had not wrapped their heads in cloth and yelled at them to rise, slashing at them with my whip, pleading with them to think of their own safety as well as mine. Then, unveiled, supremely self-contained, Uncle Tom rose at last to set an example. Soon the camels were placidly following Uncle Tom through the whirling fury of the storm. I think they now accepted that their fate was in God’s hands. There is a Berber saying: The great follow the ways of God. The would-be great follow the ways of Satan. There is considerable truth in this. I came to understand it on the beach at Margate in 1956 when I was, of course, 56 years old. I had just heard the news that the Allied Defence Force had struck to defend a Suez Canal seized by the warlord Nasser. Nasser now has no great support in the Arab world because the Arab wants a just king, not a democracy. Chief of all he wants a successful king he can worship as a manifestation of God on Earth, just as his Sumerian ancestors worshipped their leaders. Unsuccessful leaders, like Abd el-Krim or Raisauli are simply forgotten.