This will not do. They say there is a question of my being mistaken! But I did not become a Musselman! An ethereal Parsifal drifts across the desert. The aeroplane banks and glides over wooded Pennsylvanian hills as wide as the gentle Steppe. I am flying towards my past and my future, towards my Esmé and the East. I will claim my bride and take her back to live forever in der Heim, in Hollywood. We shall build a twelve-bedroomed Beach House and rediscover our passion. I recall and anticipate the delicacy and variety of our love-making! In Constantinople we were Adam and Eve in Eden, the innocent children of Fate. Brother and sister, father and daughter, husband and wife: all these rôles and many variations extended and refined our spirits. I am no stranger to Rasputin’s theories. I have personally guided many a young woman to the profoundest realms of sensual fulfilment. But Esmé was more; she was my feminine self, a further dimension. Incubus and succubus as the old Norwegian had it. In Paris a random trick of fate had almost destroyed the being that was our single united soul. Oh, how I longed to know that unity again; that delicious, breathtaking blending of spirituality and sexuality which both threatened and enhanced my reason, taking me to new emotional and intellectual heights beyond those achieved even with the finest cocaine. As the plane, a confident Walkyrie, drew us closer, I could feel her, smell her, touch her, taste her. She rode on the great Atlantic breakers, plunging towards an as yet invisible shore. She was music. She was ecstasy!
Faygeleh? This is nonsense. I was always above such definitions. Es tut vay daw. Besides, these practices are natural in Egypt.
Deliver me from that god that is both male and female. May I not fall under their knives. Shuft, effendi, shuft, shuft, effendi. Aiwa! Murhuuba! Aiwa? Let them tug at me. Let them insult me and rub their hands and sholom-al-aichem me as much as they like, those mocking wretches. They have no self-respect. That bastard nation will ever remain a warning symbol to us all. O, Egypt, thou art fallen to Carthage and cruel Arabia lounges in the ruins of thy glory! But Spain, ever our bastion against the Moor, again triumphs! In Spain the sons of Hannibal Barca are destroyed or fled. There is one lamp still burning in the camp of Christ -
Her engine uttering a discreet grunt, the DH4 began a downward curve. I was surprised. I looked at my watch and saw that it had stopped. We were not due to land until New York and we were banking over the chimneys of a small industrial town built at the convergence of three rivers, one of them almost certainly the Delaware. (Like most Cossacks, I have a memory for rivers.)
The late August sunshine, thrusting through clouds of black, yellow and grey smoke, glittered on the lacquered white canvas of the plane as we flew low over a suburban settlement so elegant it rivalled, in its new colonialism, its Tudor dignity, the better parts of Beverly Hills. Levelling out, we headed for the twelve-storey brick towers of a prosperous and familiar-looking business district. We reached the meeting of the rivers and I smelled machine oil in the smoke and the sharp sweetness of summer pines. I at once remembered coming here to Wilmington; my first, startled meeting with that accusing angel, Justice Department Agent Callahan. Wilmington was not a place I associated with tranquillity of mind. Yet, even as behind me Roy Belgrade, a startled sloth in his flying goggles and fur-trimmed helmet, threw out a reassuring gesture and guided the plane towards a green area, probably a public park, I was not excessively nervous. We had already made two routine stops in Colorado and Ohio. I had come to understand that Belgrade was a cautious pilot, obsessed with checking every change in the engine note. Once the young man had satisfied himself that his machine was in perfect order, we should be in the air again within minutes. I still had the best part of the day to reach Esmé in New York. At worst, she was only a few hours away by train. Good engineers that we both were, I assured myself, Belgrade and I had left a considerable margin for error. The story would just be part of another adventure to laugh about when Esmé and I were reunited.
Fairly suddenly, the DH4 banked again, over a stand of oaks, and straightened into a climb, as if Belgrade had missed his mark and was determining another approach. The field, some quarter of a mile from a river bend, backed on to a large building whose windows were suddenly filled with excited faces. I was tempted to wave. The field was full of flowers, a profuse geometry, a kaleidoscope of colours and scents, rich and ordered. It was a glimpse of a perfect world. The plane lifted and I saw the faces again - so many undernourished plants pressed to the glass and gasping for the sun. As we wheeled and were levelling down towards a space between the trees and flowerbeds only a cretin would consider big enough for landing, I had my first doubts about Roy Belgrade. Then the hot smell of resin was mixed with the scent of roses and lavender, the stink of the Rolls Royce Eagle as it wailed with sudden life and as suddenly cut dead before we struck a bank of red, white and blue poppies (no doubt some patriotic memory of Flanders). I yelled out to my pilot but he was too far away to hear me. We cleared the flowerbeds in a burst of earth and petals, bounced, and were taxiing over the grassy area watched by two old men (one excessively fat, the other excessively slender) who remained seated on a bench at the far end of the garden. They were clearly enjoying the whole display. I looked about me in disgust. Save for the poppies we had done very little damage, but the surrounding walls, trees and power-lines would make it impossible for us to take off. We needed immediate help to get the plane to a more suitable field.
Controlling my temper, I climbed out of the plane, stepping from wing to lawn while Roy Belgrade remained in his cockpit studying his map with the familiar air of one who is completely lost. At my signal he loosened his helmet.
‘We’re in Wilmington, Delaware.’ I spoke a little abruptly.
‘I know that much, sir.’ Belgrade returned to his map. ‘But I don’t reckon this here is a baseball diamond, do you?’
‘Did you think it was?’ The man was half-blind! ‘It’s clearly a public garden.’ I advanced towards the grinning oldsters. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen. Can you help? To take off again we need to wheel our plane into open space.’
‘Why in heck did you fellers want to land here at all?’ The skinny man had the narrow features of the typical New England peasant, the flat, grudging accent of a people for whom stinginess had been elevated to a moral virtue and generosity made a cardinal sin.
‘We had engine trouble. I suppose I should find a telephone!’ At least the park had only low fences and we should have few problems once we got the plane into the open street.
‘If you want to call the police, don’t worry about it. Look there, Mr Meng, I told you so.’ His plump companion indicated the gate where four or five uniformed officers had appeared, clearly confounded by the sight of our flying machine and the havoc it had done to the municipal blooms. I approached them at once. ‘Thank heaven you’re here, gentlemen! Naturally, I apologise for the damage and will ensure all concerned are generously reimbursed. I regret we were forced down here but a few sturdy lads like yourselves will soon get us back into the air again.’
The policemen were of the good, old school. ‘Don’t worry, mister. We’ll have you up there faster than a pigeon out of a trap.’ The leader was a grey giant, probably an ex-prizefighter.