‘Well finally the casket was produced — and what a casket!
That was a real poke in the eye for us. It was like a confectioner’s triumphant effort at something suitable for inexpensive chocolates.
Father Paul tried to snatch it, but poor Pombal held on to it firmly as we trailed towards the car. I must say, here Pombal showed some backbone. “Not you” he said as the priest started to climb into the car. “I’m going alone with Clea.” He beckoned to me with his head.
‘ “My son” said Father Paul in a low grim voice, “I shall come too.”
‘ “You won’t” said Pombal. “You’ve done your job.”
‘ “My son, I am coming” said this obstinate wretch.
‘For a moment it seemed that all might end with an exchange of blows. Pombal shook his beard at the priest and glared at him with angry eyes. I climbed into the car, feeling extremely foolish.
Then Pombal pushed Father Paul in the best French manner — hard in the chest — and climbed in, banging the door. A susurrus went up from the assembled consuls at this public slight to the cloth, but no word was uttered. The priest was white with rage and made a sort of involuntary gesture — as if he were going to shake his fist at Pombal, but thought better of it.
‘We were off; the chauffeur took the road to the eastern desert, acting apparently on previous instructions. Pombal sat quite still with this ghastly bonbonniиre on his knees, breathing through his nose and with half-closed eyes. As if he were recovering his self-composure after all the trials of the morning. Then he put out his hand and took mine, and so we sat, silently watching the desert unroll on either side of the car. We went quite far out before he told the chauffeur to stop. He was breathing rather heavily.
We got out and stood for a desultory moment at the roadside.
Then he took a step or two into the sand and paused, looking back. “Now I shall do it” he said, and broke into his fat shambling run which carried him about twenty yards into the desert. I said hurriedly to the chauffeur, “Drive on for five minutes, and then come back for us.” The sound of the car starting did not make Pombal turn round. He had slumped down on his knees, like a child playing in a sand-pit; but he stayed quite still for a long time. I could hear him talking in a low confidential voice, though whether he was praying or reciting poetry I could not tell. It felt desperately forlorn on that empty desert road with the heat shimmering up from the tarmac.
‘Then he began to scrabble about in the sand before him, to pick up handfuls like a Moslem and pour it over his own head.
He was making a queer moaning noise. At last he lay face downwards and quite still. The minutes ticked by. Far away in the distance I could hear the car coming slowly towards us — at a walking pace.
‘ “Pombal” I said at last. There was no reply. I walked across the intervening space, feeling my shoes fill up with the burning sand, and touched him on the shoulder. At once he stood up and started dusting himself. He looked dreadfully old all of a sudden.
“Yes” he said with a vague, startled glance all round him, as if for the first time he realized where he was. “Take me home, Clea.” I took his hand — as if I were leading a blind man — and tugged him slowly back to the car which by now had arrived.
‘He sat beside me with a dazed look for a long time until, as if suddenly touched to the quick by a memory, he began to howl like a little boy who has cut his knee. I put my arms round him.
I was so glad you weren’t there — your Anglo-Saxon soul would have curled up at the edges. Yet he was repeating: “It must have looked ridiculous. It must have looked ridiculous.” And all of a sudden he was laughing hysterically. His beard was full of sand.
“I suddenly remembered Father Paul’s face” he explained, still giggling in the high hysterical tones of a schoolgirl. Then he suddenly took a hold on himself, wiped his eyes, and sighing sadly said: “I am utterly washed out, utterly exhausted. I feel I could sleep for a week.”
‘And this is presumably what he is going to do. Balthazar has given him a strong sleeping draught to take. I dropped him at his fiat and the car brought me on here. I’m hardly less exhausted than he. But thank God it is all over. Somehow he will have to start his life all over again.’ As if to illustrate this last proposition the telephone rang and Pombal’s voice, weary and confused, said: ‘Darley, is that you?
Good. Yes, I thought you would be there. Before I went to sleep I wanted to tell you, so that we could make arrangements about the flat. Pordre is sending me into Syria en mission. I leave early in the morning. If I go this way I will get allowances and be able to keep up my part of the flat easily until I come back. Eh?’
‘Don’t worry about it’ I said.
‘It was just an idea.’
‘Sleep now.’ There was a long silence. Then he added: ‘But of course I will write to you, eh? Yes. Very well. Don’t wake me if you come in this evening.’ I promised not to.
But there was hardly any need for the admonition for when I returned to the flat later that night he was still up, sitting in his gout—chair with an air of apprehension and despair. ‘This stuff of Balthazar’s is no good’ he said. ‘It is mildly emetic, that is all.
I am getting more drowsy from the whisky. But somehow I don’t want to go to bed. Who knows what dreams I shall have?’ But I at last persuaded him to get into bed; he agreed on condition that I stayed and talked to him until he dozed off. He was relatively calm now, and growing increasingly drowsy. He talked in a quiet relaxed tone, as one might talk to an imaginary friend while under anaesthetic.
‘I suppose it will all pass. Everything does. In the very end, it passes. I was thinking of other people in the same position.
But for some it does not pass easily. One night Liza came here.
I was startled to find her on the doorstep with those eyes which give me the creeps — like an eyeless rabbit in a poultry shop.
She wanted me to take her to her brother’s room in the Mount Vulture Hotel. She said she wanted to “see” it. I asked what she would see. She said, with anger, “I have my own way of seeing.”
Well I had to do it. I felt it would please Mountolive perhaps.
But I did not know then that the Mount Vulture was no longer a hotel. It had been turned into a brothel for the troops. We were halfway up the stairs before the truth dawned on me. All these naked girls, and half-dressed sweating soldiers with their hairy bodies; their crucifixes tinkling against their identity discs. And the smell of sweat and rum and cheap scent. I said we must get out, for the place had changed hands, but she stamped her foot and insisted with sudden anger. Well, we climbed the stairs.
Doors were open on every landing, you could see everything. I was glad she was blind. At last we came to his room. It was dark.
On his bed there lay an old woman asleep with a hashish pipe beside her. It smelt of drains. She, Liza, was very excited.
“Describe it” she told me. I did my best. She advanced towards the bed. “There is a woman asleep there” I said, trying to pull her back. “This is a house of ill fame now, Liza, I keep telling you.” Do you know what she said? “So much the better.” I was startled. She pressed her cheek to the pillow beside the old woman, who groaned all at once. Liza stroked her forehead as if she were stroking a child and said “There now. Sleep.” Then she came slowly and hesitantly to my hand. She gave a curious grin and said: “I wanted to try and take his imprint from the pillow.