He asked us if we had eaten and drunk enough. We said that we had. ‘This is a matter of state security,’ he explained. ‘It is unfortunate. There are forces amongst the French that are inimical to my master’s desires. If there was some way of releasing you, believe me, I would do so. But you have nothing with which to bargain.’ I had the impression that he had been put up to this by the Pasha, perhaps to sweeten our torment. I quelled the hope that the visit had a different purpose. ‘Normally Europeans are not treated in this way, especially celebrities. But there is a certain amount of overcrowding at the moment due to the various rebellions and the Pasha’s family problems.’ He had grown a little apologetic. He was hesitating, as if he had some secret he wished to share. I looked up at him enquiringly.
‘Si Peters,’ he said, ‘I have as you know admired several of your cinema adventures and especially enjoyed your cowboy roles. I would feel privileged if I could have your autograph before the Pasha returns from Tafouelt. Perhaps on a small poster I was lucky enough to come by?’
He did not appear upset by Mr Mix’s poorly suppressed sniggering and spluttered congratulations that with such fans I might never need enemies.
I told Hadj Idder I would be honoured to oblige and perhaps he in return would see that a note was sent to a friend of mine currently staying in Tangier. His name was Mr Sexton Blake.
This impressed him as I had hoped. He frowned and said that he believed something could be arranged to suit everyone’s honour.
He came back a few minutes later with the show-card for The Buckaroo’s Code and presented it to me, together with a large silver fountain pen, so that I might sign upon my own veiled face and recollect, too poignantly, my happy days in Hollywood with Esmé and Mrs Cornelius. How I wished now that I had been content and weathered Hever’s blackmail until another studio recognised my talents, but it was too late. I had let that terror the shtetl had put into my womb determine my actions. Now I must make my intellect rule or I would almost certainly die, and my dusky comrade with me. I wrote across my face in Arabic Hadj Idder - May God help us all - Your brother ‘Ace’ - and then in English, Happy Trails, Pardner - Yore pal, The Masked Buckaroo! The portly African seemed genuinely touched by the sentiments and kissed me several times on both cheeks, murmuring that God must surely help the faithful, and it was then I began to understand how he would dearly love to see us go free. But if we escaped, surely even Hadj Idder would have to forfeit his life? I told myself hopelessly that I was, as the Swiss say, clutching at feathers.
Hadj Idder did not carry away his trophy, but stood in deep thought before at last saying what was on his mind. ‘I think my master might bury his pride in this case,’ he said, ‘if you were, for instance, to undertake some small service for him.’ I remained suspicious. Cat-and-mouse was T’hami’s favourite game.
‘A service?’
‘Something to ease his present embarrassment with the French. I understand that you are friendly with Lieutenant Fromental, in spite of his opposition to the air fleet?’
I admitted I had enjoyed the young man’s company from time to time.
‘Yet you were aware he was a spy?’ Hadj Idder looked directly at me suddenly. I was, even in my present position, sceptical of this statement, but I said nothing.
‘If you were to confide in the Pasha,’ Hadj Idder continued, ‘perhaps a little of what this creature Fromental said to you about spying for the French. How he deliberately sabotaged our work and so on. If he were seen by the Quai d’Orsay as, let us say, failing in his duties or exceeding his power, it would be useful to our master. Or possibly he made some sexual advance? You must be aware of something you could put in a letter - ‘
‘That’s one of the lousiest things I’ve ever heard.’ Mr Mix was outraged. ‘We get free if we rat on a friend, is that it?’
‘Fromental will not be harmed - just despatched to another, less sensitive, post. It is all the Pasha wants.’
‘You’re asking him to betray the best friend he has here!’ Mr Mix’s response was understandable but scarcely politic. As Hadj Idder said, Fromental would merely receive orders to return home and from there he would go to the Cameroons or perhaps Mozambique. But I now knew I must agree to nothing without first having practical guarantees. I had learned this in Egypt, from God. I told Hadj Idder that Mr Mix was right. I could not betray my friend.
The majordomo shrugged. ‘It is a shame,’ he said. ‘You would rather betray the Pasha?’
At his tone, rather than his words, I shuddered. ‘And it would have gladdened my heart to have set you free,’ the negro continued, ‘since I am such an admirer. It would be in my power to ensure, with Allah’s grace, that you would make many more movies.’
‘Sadly, the movies I have made will never again be seen here,’ I hinted. ‘Would that I could lift a little of your burden, Si Idder, by taking myself and my films back to America. There, it would give me much pleasure to describe the generosity and wisdom of the Lord of Marrakech.’
‘But it would not reflect well upon my master when you mentioned this unfortunate incarceration.’
‘Neither, dear friend, would it reflect well upon myself, should I be asked why I found myself in jail. There are certain incidents best not spoken of. After a while they become no more than dreams, and their substance can be proven or disproven as readily as the substance of dreams. But let it be said, Si Idder, that I am proud of my achievements with the Pasha and I would use them to increase my own honour. Whose interest would be served by the spreading of lies and distortions about a trusted business colleague?’
Hadj Idder took my point and was quite clearly mulling over the bargain I had proposed while Mr Mix, whose own Arabic was less sophisticated, kept asking who the hell were the two of us selling out between us.
I took this as a joke.
I knew my casual mention of the famous English detective had given Hadj Idder pause and it was equally clear that he might release me if a face-saving formula could be discovered.
I began to hope. Against all the evidence I saw a chance of salvation. I prayed that I might after all go home to Hollywood, to Di Heym, the new Byzantium. Her slender minarets and gentle roofs blend with the outline of cedars, poplars and cypresses in a warm mist that wanders through silver hills and is scented with jasmine and mint and bougainvillea. I walk along her palm boulevards, beside her ocean, secure and tranquil beneath a benign golden sun. And here the great spires and domes which rise above her tall trees shall be dedicated not to the cruel and drooling patriarch who shits upon the world like an ancient losing control of his bowels, but to his Son, his Successor, who is God re-born, God cleansed and whole, God not as our brooding master but as our partner in self-improvement. I speak of the Christian God, no God that Jew or Arab can claim. Their God is the God of Carthage, senile and confused, yet full of the blind brute rage which brought the Minotaur to ruin. He is a God of the bloody past. This is not a God to advise upon the subtle problems of urban living. To call upon such a God in Notting Hill would be tantamount to summoning the Devil. I speak of the God who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ. I speak of that self-regenerated God who proclaimed the Age of Peace and then watched in dismay as He saw what Man made of it. God, says the Cornelius girl, is a woman. Then you do not know God, I say. God is a Presence. God is an Idea. She says it is typical of me to reduce everything to abstractions. But God is an Abstraction, I say. What are we reducing?