‘Ah, Betersburg. Your real name, I take it? And yet you gave ub such an exciting career to be an actor?’ He found this a trifle puzzling.
I scarcely knew where to begin his enlightenment. ‘I am not,’ I said, ‘like so many modern Westerners, desperate to slot myself into one narrow groove and roll along it for the rest of my life. I take opportunities where they arise. It is how I have always survived. The medium of the cinema intrigues me. For a while it suited me, I suppose, to make that medium my own. Now my chief pursuits are more intellectual. I possess at present a catalogue of aircraft which I have, over the years, designed. To make it a reality the catalogue only requires an enlightened backer. But, sadly, there are few such visionaries in these troubled times.’
‘I flew in 1913,’ said the Pasha with some pride. ‘It was interesting, though not terrifying. Some of my beoble did not enjoy the exberience, but I made them take it. Ha, ha! Could you berhabs build a small air fleet, m’sieu, if funds were at your disbosal?’
Taken aback, I nodded, silently. I could think of nothing to say. But this response seemed to satisfy him. He told me that we would discuss the idea further, when we got to Tafouelt.
The rest of the morning, as the tracks became steeper and we were sometimes forced to go in single file, I spent in some euphoria. Had Leonardo at last found his Prince? Perhaps this was where I was destined to begin my march back to respectability, to recover all my honours? In time I would be able to travel to Paris and make it evident that I was not some second-rate share-floater but an honest inventor. T’hami had the ear of the most powerful politicians in France. In Marrakech, I thought, I might redeem myself entirely and then, my reputation restored, make my way to Italy where, I was now convinced, I would discover my ultimate destiny. I said nothing of Italy to El Glaoui, whose dislike of that country was an obsession. So optimistic had I become, so full of plans for my improving future, that I hardly noticed as we climbed to the brow of a low hill and was astonished at the sight of the great oasis of Tafi’lalet. This was a vast valley - or series of shallow valleys - some twelve miles long and nine miles wide, where crops of red rock jutted from fertile grazing lands, from fields of wheat and barley, from every shade of green. Green blazed brighter than the valley’s lakes and rivers. Green was the Holy Colour. We paused to honour it.
At length we continued on up a winding trail which took us suddenly to the gates of a large crenellated castle, built of pink piste, with a drawbridge and portcullis and all the trappings of a working mediaeval fortress. Tafi’lalet was one of the Glaoui family’s chief forts, belonging, Fromental whispered, to T’hami’s nephew, whom everyone called The Vulture. Though T’hami was head of the family, Si Hammon held the real power in this region of the High Atlas, controlling half the wealth of Southern Morocco, and T’hami, despising his relative, embarrassed by him, had every reason to keep his peace with him.
Into this gloomy fortress we now filed on weary, still-stumbling horses. When I looked back through the archway I saw a panorama of the whole Tafi’lalet valley and it was easy to understand why the great kasbah had been built there. It controlled the entire area and could never be secretly attacked. As the last gaudy warriors passed over it, the drawbridge was taken back up on a pully and a rope drawn by a complaining donkey. The place stank chiefly of dung while the courtyard was piled with old rags, junk and household waste which black slaves were burning slowly in mouldering heaps.
We dismounted and were led into a wide, high hall where T’hami’s slaves ran forward to take our outer clothing and a majordomo led us up narrow, curving staircases to our somewhat chilly rooms. My window looked back over what the Moors called hammada, a pebble desert, and from here, clearly, any attack could be anticipated. My room was furnished with an ornate provincial French bed, a toilet stand in modern bamboo and a table which seemed Spanish in origin. At the glassless windows were heavy shutters and obscuring these were curtains in English chintz. A slave brought me hot water and a full change of clothing. This was far superior to my own desert finery. Soon I knew again the luxury of soap and scented silks. That night our feasting differed only by virtue of being under cover, but the hall amplified the orchestra and especially the livelier wails of the plump ladies who led the choruses and the hand-clapping. The heat of the place, coupled with the smells of half-cured ancient skins, burning garbage and roasting meat, brought on a blazing headache which I cured, at last, with so much morphine that I passed out, to be taken tenderly to bed by a concerned Fromental who carried me easily in his giant’s arms and assured me they were all sympathetic. They had forgotten how desperate had been my desert ordeal.
In the morning, when we left the brooding kasbah and began the long descent into that wonderful valley, Lieutenant Fromental shook his head, wondering what fool would ever want to leave this paradise. ‘I am thinking a man could retire here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps farm a little.’
‘I understood you were planning to follow the great route to Timbuktu when you retired,’ Otto Schmaltz reminded him as he rode to join us on the path.
‘That too, perhaps.’ Fromental frowned. He had little time for the young German. The Frenchman’s father and brother had both been killed at Ypres.
We descended for a while in silence until the trail widened and became easier. We no longer had to concentrate. Soon the trail grew into a mud road leading between date palms and olive trees. I had never, even in Egypt, seen such natural richness. Here, as before, the Berber villagers came from their work and their houses to cheer and sing as we passed by. I might have been part of some boyar’s entourage in Old Russia or participating in a knightly progress through 12th-century France. Quite clearly El Glaoui was making a discreet display of his power. These lands were by no means secure for the French while they remained, Fromental told me, under the Vulture’s wing.
By that evening we had crossed the great valley and entered the mountains, accepting the hospitality of a local caïd who, incidentally, sold the Pasha several black slaves he had come by in, he said, a special purchase. He seemed oblivious to a disapproving (but diplomatic) Fromental or to the laws forbidding such barbarism. At no time had El Glaoui approached me to continue our conversation. He was clearly preoccupied with Rose von Bek.
On the third day of our journey, we entered the forbidding mountains of the High Atlas proper where the trails turned into steep narrow tracks curving around the sides of those ancient crags and I only became properly aware of my surroundings as I stood to rest on a wide ledge overlooking a series of broad dales running between gentle hills rising to form the sides of great, grey cliffs. I found myself gasping at what I saw! Valley upon valley, in all directions, was a jewelled infinity of wild flowers. In their vivid variety they glowed, reflecting the light of the afternoon sun. They pulsed and undulated like an ocean of rainbows.
I had never in my life been prepared for such intense beauty, coming so suddenly after the loss of the green oases, the stark crags. It was a glimpse of a different heaven, this hidden place of peace and beauty where death was nothing but a wonderful promise, where the miraculous proof of God’s existence was confirmed. And so, when T’hami and his people kneeled to pray, I joined them spontaneously, from that habit of absolute worship one acquires in the desert. I praised God and I thanked Him for all His creations and especially those which were a sign of His absolute benevolence. So overcome was I that I was forced to take an untypical risk and go to steady myself with the use of my cocaine, crouching on one side of my frisky mount as I tried to control the tube which would take the reviving powder to my nose.