‘Oh, see!’ Signorina von Bek pointed with excitement towards the east. ‘There they are! How jolly! Those are the Arabs who shot me down! Thank goodness we’re on our way. Will your slave be all right?’
I looked across the dunes of the great Sand Sea. Riding with lordly languor towards Zazara, their elaborately-worked long guns cradled casually in their arms, their cruel eyes only visible from within their veils, came the same Tuareg party we had seen weeks ago near al-Jawf. It was inevitable they would discover Kolya before he could get clear. For a moment I looked towards the Gatling, thinking I might scare them off, but they were hardly in range and I had no idea how the basket would behave in concert with the force of a powerful machine-gun.
They had sighted us now. They raised their rifles to their shoulders, their legs curled tightly around their stuffed leather saddles as they took aim. But their salvo either fell short or missed us and while they reloaded we had gained more than enough height and distance to be safe from their primitive firepower.
Unfortunately for Kolya, however, a few hours of freedom were all God would allow him for the moment. He was about to become a hostage again.
‘What was your man’s name?’ she asked me, busying herself with her lines.
‘Yussef,’ I said.
She came to stand beside me at the rail. ‘And you are Mustafa. I do not think we need to be formal any longer.’
Signorina von Bek put her hand firmly into mine. ‘You must call me Rosie,’ she insisted. ‘I’m so relieved to have the protection of a genuine Bedouin prince. As a matter of fact you do look rather like Rudolf Valentino. Though more refined.’
The Tuareg and Zazara and all our troubles were behind us. As our balloon sailed gracefully into the bloody light of the setting sun I embraced my Rose.
TWENTY-THREE
THE ESCAPE of sexual fantasy was no longer open to me. Instead I found more cerebral diversions. E si risuelgo da quel sogno di sangue, con ispavento, con rimorso, e insieme con una specie di gioia . . . Those stripes were white and the bars were black. Ripe stars teased my lips. Yusawit! Yuh’attit! Yuh’attit! Yukhallim. Yehudim. Yukhallim. Ana ‘atsha’an. Bitte, ein Glas Wasser. They refused to understand me. I never became ein Musselman. Dawsat. Walwala. I heard him. It was not me. I heard him betray us. Yermeluff. Yehudim! Yehudim! Gassala. Meyne pas. Meine peitsche. Meyn streifener. Meine Herzenslust. . .
Sometimes, in the desert, I had prayed for Faith. How I had envied my fellow-worshippers. Yet how many of them were also praying merely for social reasons?
I flew. I lived. The world below was washed by a golden tide. Atlantis emerged from the vibrant dust. My stripes were silver. They were ebony. They could not hold me in their cattle-truck. I refused to be identified. He was no Volksgenosse of mine. I said so. My eyes had never known such beauty; my soul had never experienced such tranquil security. We drifted on that desert wind; days and nights of wonder. And she brought me back to the Land of Life and restored my future.
‘You are familiar with Manzoni!’ she declared. I did not admit it was only in the Russian translation. . . . di non aver fatto altro che immaginare ... Be nice, he said, be nice. Be sweet, he said, be sweet. Oh, Dios! Oh, Jesus! Que me occurre? Sperato di diventare famoso. Qualcosa non va? ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that you have given me a privileged insight into the Arab mind.’ Gracefully, I accepted her compliment.
In the mornings and the evenings we sailed high above the pink and ochre Sand Sea, free from concern, but at noon, when we drifted to our lowest point, we had to be alert. The temperature could rise to 140°. More than ever, the landscape below us might have been that of the Red Planet. I imagined gigantic guns buried beneath the sand, ready to hurl their capsules to the sweet air of Earth: the deadly air of Earth. Here, in the desert, all death was honourable, all life was celebrated. Eroded mountain ranges and seas of constantly agitated sand, soft as silk, deadly as cyanide, fell away below us, mile upon mile, glittering lakes of salt, rivers of obsidian. The dreaming desert awaited a miracle that would restore it, tree by tree, animal by animal, river upon river, field upon field, city upon city, to its gorgeous past. Yet, I wondered, what hybrid might arise? How long had these wastes been nourished with Carthage’s blood? A quei tempi c’eramo oceani di luce e citta nei cieli e selvagge bestie volanti di bronzo . . . Por que lo nice? Du bist mein Simplicissimus, she said. But that was much later. Now as we drifted over those timeless landscapes beneath unchanging skies, I became her master and her teacher, her most intimate friend; yet had no desire to penetrate her. We lay entwined while a hard wind drummed against the great canopy and set the ropes and basket to a bass thrumming. An extraordinary noise, it filled the desert like the heartbeat of Arabia. We had no sense of danger as we continued to drift towards the west, towards Algeria and Spanish Morocco. If we did not come down on the mainland, she said, we might have to put down in the Canaries, which were also Spanish. We would be welcomed by the Spaniards. ‘I have several friends in the colonial service. But the Riffians are all over the place since Abd el-Krim capitulated. Some of the outlaw gangs have a thorough hatred of Europeans. Even you, Sheikh Mustafa, would be unable to protect me.’
I reminded her that I had seen her handling the mitrailleuse and did not think she would require much protection! This remark was not received as flattery. Rosie von Bek helped me solve no mysteries of womankind. Rather she presented me with fresh ones.
I came to my senses beneath the bright stare of heaven, in the arms of the one Kolya had called the destroyer and whom I called Rosa. My rose. War’di War’di, ana nafsi. Sarira siri’ya. D’ruba D’ruba. She wondered at my stripes, my whiteness, and I made some mention of prison and the Turkish heel. ‘You have not always known power, sidhi?’ She was sympathetic.
‘A truly faithful man accepts the will of Allah. I am glad to say I have walked the path of humility.’
She murmured that humility did not seem to be my most obvious trait. I smiled at this as I toyed with my full, black beard. ‘You must know our saying - the doe shall always kneel to the stag. Such things are also determined.’
Through her desire I found my manhood again. I found my power. I was restored. She gave herself up to her imagination, free from any restraint, certain she should have no witness save the vultures, the eagles and myself, whom she called her Hawk - al Sakhr. But her escape was denied me; my pleasure came purely from the thrill of my recaptured sense of power, of self. She gave me back my world of dreams, my cities and my soul. This is the gift that Woman offers Man. Only a churlish oaf refuses her. Here is a true union of flesh and spirit, such as St Paul spoke of. And yet I was for her a figure from romance; she saw nothing of the real Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, of Ace Peters, conqueror of Hollywood. Instead she saw in her image of me an altar on which she might sacrifice her selfhood, to be reborn, the Eternal Feminine. I was, in that sense, immaterial.
Often, when she spoke of her childhood and youth in Albania, Italy and Spain (where she attended convent schools), it was as if she mused aloud, content that while I failed to understand some of her words, I would never fully grasp her meaning. In this she was right, for she spoke sometimes in Albanian, sometimes Italian and frequently in English. I was only fluent in English, although I had picked up some Italian during my stay in Rome with Esmé, before we went to Paris. She spoke fondly of a certain Bon-bon. After a time I came to realise that Bon-bon was the present Dictator of Italy. Clearly she still had affection for him, but equally clearly there had been some kind of falling-out. The threat of a public scandal and pressure from close family members had interfered to destroy their idyll. She also believed he had taken an interest in an American heiress, ‘one of the Macraineys’, and was incapable of sustaining a passion for more than one mistress at a time. ‘But then his feelings about women are very clear.’ Turning to me she asked, ‘You have read the novel, The Cardinal’s Mistress?’