I left them together, as I have said, Mister Bowles and his bronze love. I knew, quite coldly and certainly what I must do. There was no inclination to tears now, only the feeling of desolation which attends acts of destruction felt to be necessary but not really desired.
I felt neither fatigue nor hunger as I made my way back to the town. Occasionally, however, I found myself staggering a little. I went straight to the Metropole, straight to Herr Gesing's room. Just as I was, stained with sweat and clay. If I passed anyone on the way I did not notice. He kept me waiting for some time and when he came to the door he was in crumpled pyjamas, puffy-eyed. I had disturbed his afternoon sleep.
'So,' he said. 'It is you, Pascali.'
'Can I see you for a few minutes?' I said.
He looked at me for a moment or two longer, then stood aside for me to enter. His room was bigger than Mister Bowles's. The bed was in an alcove with an arched entrance.
'Here,' he said, 'take a seat. You are not looking so good this afternoon, Pascali. You like a cold coffee?'
Gratefully I assented. While he busied himself I looked round the room. There were typewritten sheets on the table, but I lacked the energy to try to get a closer look. I needed no confirmation now. Whether Herr Gesing was acting for Mannfeldt or, as I suspected, some subsidiary interest, possibly a mining company, was of no real interest now.
'I keep always cold coffee, for the afternoons,' Herr Gesing said. 'In this verflucht hot weather.'
We sat opposite each other, at the table. Herr Gesing removed the papers, but without haste. 'Well,' he said. 'What can I do for you?'
Two minutes it took, no more, to commit myself to the betrayal of Mister Bowles. I did not give any information to Herr Gesing, and he did not ask for any. I did not by word or sign indicate that I knew of the bauxite deposits. I merely made him the offer.
'You said you wanted the Englishman off the land,' I said.
Herr Gesing offered me cigarettes from a japanned box. 'Yes, that is so,' he said. 'And that is the same now. Our attitude the same remains.'
'Well,' I said, 'I can get him off. For good. Within forty-eight hours. But I must be paid.'
I asked him for money, Excellency, in a forlorn attempt to preserve an appearance of reasonable motive, to conceal from Herr Gesing and from myself the gratuitous nature of my act. Mister Bowles is intending to be off the island anyway by tomorrow, if I am right, but Herr Gesing does not know this. I do not think he knows anything about the supposed finds on the site, nor the deal between Mister Bowles and Mahmoud Pasha. He may know of the existence of the statue, but that would be of no great concern to him, probably. Mister Bowles is simply an intruder to him, a potential threat to his interests.
He smoked reflectively for a minute or two, while I waited, my head swimming slightly, my vision not clear. 'My name,' he said, 'must not be…'
'Involved?'
'Involved, ja. There are interests here, big interests. You must conduct with care. Es ist eine lokale Sache, Pascali. You understand?'
'Yes,' I said.
'Fifty liras. I can give you fifty liras.'
'When?' I said. 'Now?'
He laughed a little. 'No, not now,' he said. 'When it is done. You come to me when it is done.'
'Very well,' I said. It did not matter to me, Excellency. The money, I mean. Except, as I have said, to provide a motive. All the same, I thought it probable that he would pay. 'Fifty liras is not much,' I said, out of a long habit of bargaining.
'Bah!' he said. 'Listen to me, the Englishman has no right there, the lease is not in order. In the courts it cannot stand up.'
'Yet they allow him to remain there,' I said.
'That it is that I do not understand,' He shrugged his thick shoulders. 'But who can understand these people?' he said.
I struggled to my feet. 'Don't worry,' I said, 'the site will be free by this time tomorrow.'
'Good, good,' Herr Gesing said. His pale fleshy face creased suddenly, revealing a shallow dimple in the left cheek. He held out his hand. 'Now we are allies,' he said. 'Allies, Pascali.'
'Yes,' I said. I shook his hand. 'Commerce and National State advancing hand in hand,' I said.
He chuckled. 'You remember, eh?' he said. 'The future is with us. Wir haben die Wille.'
I pictured us as Mister Punch might have depicted us: me as feminine Commerce in helmet and clinging gown, Herr Gesing as National State in a top hat, sausages cascading from below his frock coat. Like the strings of pink sheep guts the Turks carried away after the Sacrifice, for their evening chorba. Suddenly it seemed to me that I could smell it again, here in this close room, the stink of blood and sheep pelt that had hung over the whole island. I felt faint, my vision blurred. Then the world cleared again, and Herr Gesing was smiling the same smile.
'A noble ideal,' I said.
'Not ideal, no. Ideals is nostalgia. Like your Mister Bowles, he has ideals. Pah!' Herr Gesing tightened his small mouth in disgust. 'No, ideals we do not have – wir haben Ziele, Pascali. Ziele.'
'Goals,' I said.
'Goals, ja. The Baghdad Railway, which we Germans have built, that was not an ideal.'
'No,' I said, moving towards the door. 'I suppose not.'
I said goodbye to him quickly. Too much to expect that I would linger there with him, talking about Darwinism as applied to national states. Darwin never meant it to be. Besides, I preferred Mister Bowles's perverted idealism to this dirty future of Herr Gesing's, built on one crooked deal after another.
From there I went to Izzet. It did not take long to explain things to him. I did not, of course, tell the whole story. He would have thought me mad. They knew about the statue already – Mister Bowles had been watched. But Izzet was not worried about that. It had not occurred to him that the Englishman would be mad enough to try and remove it; and while he was engaged thus they had felt more secure, since he was neglecting the smaller, more obviously valuable things on the site.
This security I proceeded to destroy. It was not a question of the statue, I said, but of other things. 'Other things?' he said.
'Other things he has found there. Don't you see, Izzet, the statue is only a trick. He has used it to cover up his other activities.'
'Why are you telling me this?'
'When I discovered the truth, the kind of man he really is I had no choice. My loyalty to the Vali… And then, think of my position, I had helped him, you see. You would not have believed me…'
'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I see.' He was already trembling, Excellency. Izzet, as I have said, is very emotional about money. He was far too disturbed to examine my motives thoroughly. 'The pig,' he said. 'What treachery.'
'Yes,' I said. 'He will have a full moon, tonight. They will use the American's boat. They are all in it together.'
Touch by touch I inflamed his rage and greed. 'I will report this at once to the Vali,' he said. 'You will return to your house, and remain there. You will not leave your house, Pascali.'
I obeyed him, Excellency, to the letter. Here I am. It must be somewhere between eleven and midnight. I have heard nothing. Supposing after all that I am wrong. I review the evidence in my mind: the involvement with Lydia; his meeting with Mister Smith; his talk of the day after tomorrow; full moon – he would not dare show lights; the finality of that handshake, and then the envelope under the door. No, I cannot be mistaken. Above all, there is my knowledge of him. He would never give the statue up…
Excellency, I hear sounds now, on the terrace outside, voices. They have come for me. What I have been dreading so much I could not speak of it… They will ask me to guide them… They are knocking now, calling my name.
Everything is finished, Excellency. I am outside the frame now. He is dead. Lydia too is dead. It is more than a week since I have been able to write. I go on living here in my house. No one has made a move against me; I am left alone. It is only with the greatest effort that I take up my pen again. All desire to write has left me, all that racing to keep abreast of things, that passion for recording, that has kept me writing so furiously ever since he arrived: all ended now, all stilled. The shots that killed them ended my report. What is left is epilogue; or perhaps, roughly speaking, coda.