Brodmann, of course, wanted me dead. I remembered his gloating expression as Grishenko’s whip fell upon my buttocks. I remember the insults. I remember Brodmann’s filthy eyes darting back and forth from my penis to my arse. Let him think what he likes. I am a victim of Scientific Rationalism, not Religion. My father’s knife was secular. Ni moyle . . . Ikh farshtey nit. . . Mrs Cornelius agrees with me. She says they all do it now in England. It has no connection with religion. And in America, too. All over the West. This is poor consolation. What does it actually proclaim? What else but that Zion has overrun Christendom? Sometimes Mrs Cornelius is so anxious to see good in the world that she is blind to the obvious. At such times she knows my logic has triumphed and she refuses to continue. That is typical of women but I do not care. I have all my life been a willing victim of the fair sex. Your eyes reflect their every fantasy, said the Jew in Arcadia. He wrote down the aphorism Byzantium endures the laughter of Carthage; Jerusalem commands the vengeance of Rome. It means more in Yiddish, I think. He used the Greek models, chiefly, he told me. I reminded myself that Jesus was born a Jew and was spiritually a Greek. Was this why my heart sang to him? I have not known such love since. Your dark eye mirrors my imperfect soul. I embrace your blasphemed body.
I admitted to some embarrassment. It was so quiet that day in Arcadia and not even a tram along the sea-front to Odessa until I had almost given up. War will often bring silence as well as noise. For a while I sold new bicycles in my shop, but there was no market for them. Now, of course, all the city-gents are wanting them. They buy in the West End, but they come to me for repairs. In the West End they would tell them to throw the thing away and get another. Personally I have no special love for these consumer cycles.
What is their bourgeois wealth giving them? I ask Mrs Cornelius. Is their life sweeter? Is their life better? Do they relish it more? Not very much, it seems.
I see them, in the pub on Saturday, these new TV people and their friends, in their identical sweaters with their ill-behaved children, cackling at one another across the bars like so many mad parrots, eyeing one another’s identical wives with leering uncertainty. What are they doing? Their rituals are a mystery to me. The sound they make is not a happy one. Mrs Cornelius says I am reading too much into them. “They’re dead simple, those greedy bastards.’ She finds my analyses amusing. ‘Bastards is bastards and orl yer ‘ave ter know is ‘ow ter stop ‘em. Because bastards has ter be stopped. That’s anower rule.’ When the worse for drink, she is inclined to over-simplify.
Brodmann wanted me dead, but for some reason Hadj Idder did not. That seemed to be the new essence of the situation. Brodmann did not care about any political consequences for the Pasha following my death. Hadj Idder thought of little else. He did not want to see his master shamed. Yet the Pasha’s honour must certainly be satisfied. I could not imagine that for whatever good reasons El Glaoui’s right-hand man would betray him and so I tried to pay no attention to my leaping heart. But then it occurred to me that perhaps there had been a change of policy which he had been entrusted to implement after El Glaoui left for the south.
Evidently Hadj Idder did not want his master embarrassed in Europe and America. Our removal I guessed was proving less simple than they had imagined. People could be making awkward enquiries. Could it be that El Glaoui wished to reverse his reckless verdict but could not do so without losing face? Perhaps the only answer to his problem would be to free us? I grew cautiously hopeful. Was Hadj Idder even now waiting for the appropriate word from me?
‘He might be changing his mind,’ I told Mr Mix.
He was scarcely listening. ‘What about Rosie?’ he wanted to know. ‘Did she get clear?’ He was, I thought, overly concerned about the fate of someone he hardly knew. I could not understand his anxiety, but I too was anxious for news of Rosie. Had El Hadj T’hami let me think she had betrayed me and escaped when actually she had been recaptured and merely been forced to give up my bag?
‘I gather Miss von Bek is no longer a guest of the Pasha,’ I coldly remarked to Hadj Idder who was rubbing at his glossy jowls as if some prison bug had crept amongst the folds and bitten him where he could no longer reach.
‘Miss von Bek is believed to have died in the mountains.’ The black man looked at the floor. ‘Your El Nahla was well named. She flew a little erratically and was unhappy with heights. You both loved her, I know. I respect your grief.’
But he had not told me she was dead. He had told me she was free. I had every faith in my plane. I was delighted. I relayed this to Mr Mix.
‘It means he can’t be sure she won’t tell someone about what’s happening to us here,’ he said. ‘They’re stuck now, Max.’ He seemed rather foolishly delighted. He winked at Hadj Idder. He grinned. And slowly the vizier began to smile back. Then Hadj Idder chuckled. The quality of the tension altered. We all became peculiarly expectant. Hadj Idder said courteously, ‘I was very thrilled by your exploits in Ace of the Aces, Si Peters. Gloria Cornish is a beauty! I envy you.’
‘As a matter of fact she is my wife,’ I said. ‘We were married some years ago in Russia. At present she eagerly awaits my return to our Hollywood mansion. As do our children. I’m glad you enjoyed Ace. My uncle, President Hoover, always told me it was one of his own favourites.’
Rather than surprising or alarming Hadj Idder, my remarks seemed to confirm something he had already guessed.
‘What a meal the papers will make of this!’ declaimed Mr Mix, attempting a chorus of his own. I told him to keep quiet. Statements about newspapers could seem like crude and impolitic threats. I told Hadj Idder that El Glaoui had been a good and generous master. It would hurt me, I told him, if shame were to attach to the Pasha’s name through any action of mine. With the vizier’s permission I reached into my bag and drew out the gold I had put there. Since this, I said, was no longer of any use to me would Hadj Idder please take it and use it for whatever pious work he chose.
He accepted the money with his usual grace. He said that Allah would bless me, and no doubt favour me. It is all I pray for, I said.
‘And I, Si Peters. We would both avoid this embarrassment if we could. Sadly, I do not possess the means of releasing you. That power is entirely in your hands. Naturally, I respect your decision not to use it, just as I would respect your decision to use it. It is a matter of principle and we are, Allah be praised, both men of principle.’
‘Indeed,’ I agreed, ‘and good followers of the Prophet, I hope, who would see justice done in the world.’
‘Indeed.’
A further pause while Mr Mix grunted and fidgeted in his chains saying he would rather go to the electric chair in Sing Sing than hear another minute of our bullshit. He asked what the hell was going on. In the hobo vernacular I told him to button his lip while I sweet-talked our jailer.
I paused.
‘I would see justice done above all,’ I said at last, to Hadj Idder’s visible satisfaction.
‘I will have the materials brought,’ he said and clapped his hands. From somewhere not far away an old servant carried a tray with ink, pens, vellum. I briefly entertained the wild thought that my denunciation of young Fromental was to be illuminated like some monkish manuscript, but all I had to do was write a little essay. I knelt upon the cushion the servant presented and, while he held the salver steady for me, began to write with the soft-nibbed quill. I ignored Mr Mix’s half-animal turmoil behind me. He was cursing and rattling his leg-irons. The poor black was beginning to lose his nerve. Perhaps he thought I was selling him.