I told her mildly that my ambitions were somewhat larger than that.
‘So many of you released into the world,’ she said. ‘The nineteenth century engulfed the twentieth. So many mad birds flying out of Russia to prey upon the fat and unsuspecting pigeons of the West.’ She was joking, I suppose, for she smiled and laughed the whole time. It was she, I thought, who was insane, not I. She had taken a liking to my Georgian pistols, which I had carried all the way from Ukraine when I had ridden with the Cossacks. She was not the first woman who had enjoyed speculating as to their employment, especially on the Jews. I said that all she need know is that I had never fired them at a living soul. ‘They are antiques,’ I told her. ‘They are my birthright.’ I refused to use the pistols in the way she suggested.
The hashish I was eating in larger and larger quantities, to calm my nerves, had begun to affect me. I pulled the pistols from her hands and put them back in their case, back in my bag. That bag had gone with me everywhere. Filthy and patched, it was my only link with the past, the only proof of my achievements. At twenty-nine I was a successful scientist and inventor, star and designer of a score of top-quality Hollywood movies; I had fought a last-ditch action against the Reds in my nation’s Civil War; I had made my mark on American politics and the world of finance. I had achieved far more than any ordinary mortal might expect yet still I was not satisfied. What was more I was increasingly tormented by the inescapable knowledge that somewhere, on the dirty, flickering bedsheets of the world’s walls, in hazy black and white, I performed the rape scene over and over again. I had only a poor memory of what was on all the other Egyptian reels, but I know my face was not always masked. Do my agonised eyes still stare out at masturbating businessmen in Athens and Frankfurt and seem for them to crease in ecstasy? Is this my only immortality? Am I the illusion of truth, confirming an uncomfortable lie? Am I to be remembered by posterity as a mere fake? I try to buy these films, but they are never the right ones. After watching them I can only pray that one pumping bottom is much the same as another to the cognoscenti. It has always struck me as odd, however, that those films, no matter what they show, always stop far short of the miserable actuality. But I hear there are more realistic pictures available in America now.
Increasingly I had begun to long for California again and the life I had made for myself there. Once I had restored my fortunes and reputation in Rome, I would return in style. Meanwhile I consoled myself with the loveliness of Marrakech. I had previously thought California the most intensely vivid place in the world, with her flowering shrubs and great palms, her ocean sunsets and desert sunrises, but first Egypt and then Morocco had surpassed her in everything save civilisation. Here in this barbaric paradise I continued to feel oddly at home, as if I were indeed in the very cradle of our history. All our ancestors swept westwards from the steppe and the desert once, so perhaps that is what my blood recollected. To say that my soul was confused would be closer to the truth, yet the experience was not entirely unpleasant. What great culture had once existed here before those wild tribesmen carried their cruel religion across the deserts from Mecca to the Atlantic and thence to Europe as far as Lyons and Vienna! What had they destroyed? Did my blood recall some Paradise before Islam? Again I saw the ghosts of great cities rising out of the plains. I saw lovely terraced gardens spread across the foothills of the Atlas. I almost heard the murmur of courteous conversation from that savagely demolished past of which scarcely more than a whisper remains. Did Arabia trample the last life from Atlantis?
Only in the Jewish quarter did I feel any real discomfort. Under El Hadj T’hami, Lion of the Atlas, the Black Panther, the Jews were flourishing. Never had the mellah been so merry. Never did the Jews so blatantly flourish their gaudy prosperity, their new security and power, for their relatives were the Pasha’s closest advisers and this put all Jews under his benign protection. There has always been a peculiar touch of philosemitism in the Moorish character, but it is unusual to find it in a Berber warrior. One might as well expect a Cossack hetman to help build a synagogue, brick by brick, with his own hands. These people respect one another as old rivals. It takes more than a change of flag to reconcile them. Not that these mellahim had the pathetic posture and half-starved stare of the shtetl Hassidim. These were good-looking Jews with broad, well-proportioned faces and beautiful deep-set eyes. The women were notoriously handsome and, when they came on the market, were always sought after by men of the world. These were the Jews one might have seen following Moses into the desert, like those who followed Charlton Heston, self-respecting and clean. Even Goering distinguished between this type and the other, but in the end his arguments went unheard. They thought him too much of a sentimentalist, I suppose. I, too, am used to being ignored for that reason. It was Goering who reminded me of the joke about never trusting the well-fed Jew, he was always the one who was cheating you most successfully. Not that I ever felt short-changed by Charlton Heston. It was Cecil B. De Mille, after all, who sought to establish Hollywood as the spiritual capital of out faith. At present, of course, Zion rules there. But not in 1929, a year in which while I dreamed in Oriental luxury the Western world changed dramatically. I spent that year with most of my senses focused on my affaire d’amour, so it was not until months after the event that I heard of my California bank’s collapse. Banks were falling like bowling-pins all over the world, from Shanghai to Stockholm, and it seemed that Western civilisation was in collapse, that the predicted Chaos was at last upon us. Here was the signal for the final clash of armies where, for a while, it seemed the forces of good were in the ascendant. But all these opportunities have been thrown away. I do not absolve Hitler and Mussolini and the rest. They also turned their backs on salvation.
With the dawning understanding of the world’s disorders, I began to count myself lucky that I enjoyed the security of El Glaoui’s court and that my proposed destination would be Rome, now clearly the strongest capital in Europe. Here was sure proof of everything Mussolini had warned against. From this time on, this evidence gave authority to Hitler’s claims. Bolshevism and Big Business between them were discredited. The Age of the Dictators was not an aberration, it was an attempt to cure the disease. We all willed that Age into existence. But the disease at last triumphed. Now the giants stride hand in hand, brothers in financial intercourse, the triumph not of Capitalism or Communism but of Centralised Monopolism. This is exactly what Mr Weeks had warned me about when we were still on speaking terms. This was the bleak future he predicted and now I am living in it. And nobody but me seems to care.
The plane almost ready, I resumed my petition at El Glaoui’s court. Hadj Idder seemed surprised to see me. He asked me how the work progressed. I thought this a good sign. I told him very well. We were nearing completion.
‘It will be as new?’ he enquired a little cryptically. I thought this was an Arab expression and he meant that we would go back to square one, as the Americans say. I shared his humour. ‘As good as new,’ I agreed. He took my letter and my money then crossed to where Mr Mix sat rather moodily on his bench and, after sharing a friendly word, accepted his envelope.
But when he had gone away, Mix shouldered through the crowd of pleading petitioners whose envelopes had not been accepted and spoke to me rapidly. ‘I wasn’t kidding about what I told you. Wise up, Max, you’re in deep shit! Meet me here at eight tonight. Wear a disguise if you can.’ He handed me a note.