A little later, as we walked back to his own beast, El Glaoui said, with a certain puzzlement, that he praised Allah for he had found a brother in an expected place. He did not speak with any particular warmth. Perhaps he suspected me of attempting to ingratiate myself with Moslems. Miss von Bek, riding by as I climbed into my own unyielding saddle, flicked at pretty hair and observed that there was surely no need for me to maintain my play-acting for their sake. Unless, she added, I intended to take up a collection later. In which case she would be delighted to reward me with a dirham or two for my undoubted talents. She rode on before I could give her my witty reply.
It was clear, however, that she was recovering from her embarrassment and seemed ready enough to continue our friendship. For my part, I bore her no ill-will.
Soon afterwards, El Glaoui retired into the wagon he used when the roads were good and I saw nothing of him or Rose von Bek until we stopped to make camp in a valley so saturated with perfume from the wild flowers that I feared I must faint into some exotic dream from which I would not awake for years. As the sun came down upon the crest of the western hills it spread light like an old glaze across the landscape. The flowers lost none of their glowing vitality. They seemed to have existed since the beginning of time.
We were eating the substantial remains of the previous night’s feast, the smell of couscous and fatty meat at vulgar odds with the surrounding paradise, when I remarked to Count Schmaltz that this scenery made a man understand how civilisation and aesthetics might take many forms. Who, after all, needed to create pictures here when such a magnificent picture appeared without fail every year? But Schmaltz amiably disagreed with me. ‘Only if you judge civilisation by its arts, my dear fellow. I do not. I agree that art can take many forms, some of them alien to our own ideal. But institutions are another matter. Our good old-fashioned Northern European institutions of justice and equality, they are a form of madness to our host. He pretends to understand them, but it is almost impossible for him to imagine a society in which the power is shared between a wide variety of interests and classes. He perceives civilised Europe as nothing more than a subtler, more successful and perhaps more devious example of his own world.’
‘Who is to say he is not right?’ I asked reasonably.
But this irritated Schmaltz. His face became melon-pink again. ‘Oh, do not mistake me.’ He glanced around him as he wiped his fingers on a napkin. We were eating according to local custom, with our right hands only. ‘I have considerable respect for El Glaoui’s Realpolitik as he applies it. But he grows ambitious. Soon he will try to dictate terms to us. It is like the Bolsheviks. Mark my words. Let them get on with their “social experiment” by all means, but they should not try to bully us.’
I agreed with him, though unsure of his point. I asked him what moral superiority the West could claim, when it singularly failed to come to the aid of fellow Christian nations. Were we superior to the Arab in this respect? Or the Bolshevik?
He became more impatient. ‘I see no reason, Herr Peters, why a nation which does not habitually torture and otherwise terrorise its citizens should accept the dictates of one which does. In common morality, my dear sir, we are demonstrably their superiors.’
‘But by how fine a degree?’ It was Mr Mix going by with his film camera. He had passed on before Otto could reply, so the German turned to me again. ‘I still do not take readily to being treated so casually by a nigger,’ he confided. ‘But these Americans are all the same, they say. Do you enjoy Hollywood, Herr Peters?’
It was my second home, I said. A golden dream of the future. He was taken aback by this. I did not know it was then fashionable in German military circles to denigrate everything American, especially if it came from Hollywood or New York, while in France the fascination with the United States was unabated. For them it was a place where all myth was made reality. I found both points of view rather conventional. Mr Weeks’s tolerant bemusement at the more extravagant aspects of American society was easier to share.
These were to be the first of several ongoing conversations, all of them refreshingly original, which the four of us (Mr Mix continuously aloof, the Pasha and Miss von Bek generally absent) came to enjoy almost greedily during our various necessary stops. After my first flush of zealotry, I now confined myself to lowering my head and murmuring the prayers where I stood, in the manner of Turkish aristocrats, explaining to my new comrades that I believed it important for diplomatic reasons to acknowledge the Muslim religion here. Though they were never easy with this aspect of my life it did not affect our hearty arguments over a pipe and a discreet glass of brandy at the end of the day (the Pasha also offered hashish) while we gathered around our camp fire, relishing the smell of the wild heather and the carpets of flowers, the wind still carrying the faintest sting of the desert back to us, the flickering light and the comradely warmth, the busy sounds of the camp slowly fading into silence as we sat close to the peaks of the mountains which the Greeks had named for the Titan who held the world upon his back. Perhaps this was also a symbolic union of Christian gentlemen sworn to uphold the name of their redeemer and take upon themselves the responsibilities of their civilisation, for the duties and sacrifices of Empire were frequent topics. Mr Weeks said there was nothing to beat a good chin-wag with a bunch of brainy chaps, each an expert in his own line. It was convenient that we all spoke French, but when the Sapper seemed to be flagging we would lapse into English.
No subject was disallowed and my only regret was that our host and Miss von Bek were not there to join in, since both were first-rate minds. However, this allowed the Pasha himself to become a frequent topic. It was Count Schmaltz’s opinion, for instance, that El Glaoui was consciously creating for himself a romantic legend, well aware of the additional power this gave him, especially in liberal European circles. ‘Those fellows allow you any infamy so long as you represent yourself as some sort of underdog.’ The Pasha received the support of the conservatives with his military actions and his absolute dedication to the French cause, but he welcomed those bohemians whom he knew to have influence in their own countries. It was second nature to a Moslem leader to play such complicated power games. ‘But the whole thing is a fantasy. It is founded upon the most appalling injustice and cruelty, which we are never allowed to witness. Did you find the dungeons in the castle the other night? I did. And saw - and smelled - something of their contents. The burning garbage hides much worse. These people still dismember their living enemies in public. There are slave markets in every village. The family - and consequently the blood feud - are their only law. Yet our great German playwrights and our composers come here to be charmed by a character from the Arabian Nights and return to Berlin to describe the civilised wonders of the Pasha’s court. There are too many people willing to believe in marvels and sentimental folly these days, my friends.’
Puffing upon his narghila, Lieutenant Fromental shook his head in amiable disagreement. ‘Why should we not believe in marvels and miracles and happy endings, m’sieu? It is the same with God. What on earth is the point of not believing?’
‘God is not an escape but a duty,’ said Schmaltz, a little upset. ‘I was not referring to the kinema, Herr Leutnant, but to current urgent social problems. To politics. I am sure we all find it very pleasant to enjoy Herr Peters’s displays. We all, I hope, require a little bit of fun sometimes. But to apply those values to reality - surely you would not argue that the morality of The Masked Buckaroo should be brought to bear on modern society?’