"Have you never wanted to get married and have children?"
They all asked that one. It was simply another way of saying, "Are you, in that case, homosexual?"
"Once," I said. "Just once."
"What happened?"
"There was only one person ever in my life, Mr Aziz…and after she went I sighed.
"You mean she died?"
I nodded, too choked up to answer.
"My dear fellow," he said. "Oh, I am so sorry. Forgive me for intruding."
We drove on for a while in silence.
"It's amazing," I murmured, "how one loses all interest in matters of the flesh after a thing like that. I suppose it's the shock. One never gets over it."
He nodded sympathetically, swallowing it all.
"So now I just travel around trying to forget it. I've been doing it for years.
We had reached the foot of Mount Maghara now and were following the track as it curved around the mountain towards the side that was invisible from the road the north side. "As soon as we round the next bend you'll see the house," Mr Aziz said.
We rounded the bend…and there it was! I blinked and stared, and I tell you that for the first few seconds I literally could not believe my eyes. I saw before me a white castle-I mean it-a tall, white castle with turrets and towers and little spires all over it, standing like a fairytale in the middle of a splash of green vegetation on the lower slope of the blazing-hot, bare, yellow mountain! It was fantastic! It was straight out of Hans Christian Andersen or Grimm. I had seen plenty of romantic-looking Rhine and Loire valley castles in my time, but never before had I seen anything with such a slender, graceful, fairytale quality as this! The greenery, as I observed when we drew closer, was a pretty garden of lawns and date-palms, and there was a high white wall going all the way round to keep out the desert.
"Do you approve?" my host asked, smiling.
"It's fabulous!" I said. "It's like all the fairytale castles in the world made into one."
"That's exactly what it is!" he cried. "It's a fairy-tale castle! I built it especially for my daughter, my beautiful Princess."
And the beautiful Princess is imprisoned within its walls by her strict and jealous father, bang Abdul Aziz, who refuses to allow her the pleasures of masculine company. But watch out, for here comes Prince Oswald Cornelius to the rescue: Unbeknownst to the bang, he is going to ravish the beautiful Princess, and make her very happy.
"You have to admit it's different," Mr Aziz said.
"It is that."
"It is also nice and private. I sleep very peacefully here. So does the Princess. No unpleasant young men are likely to come climbing in through those windows during the night."
"Quite so," I said.
"It used to be a small oasis," he went on. "I bought it from the government. We have ample water for the house, the swimming-pool, and three acres of garden."
We drove through the main gates, and I must say it was wonderful to come suddenly into a miniature paradise of green lawns and flowerbeds and palm-trees. Everything was in perfect order, and water-sprinklers were playing on the lawns. When we stopped at the front door of the house, two servants in spotless gallabiyahs and scarlet tarbooshes ran out immediately, one to each side of the car, to open the doors for us.
Two servants? But would both of them have come out like that unless they'd been expecting two people? I doubted it. More and more, it began to look as though my odd little theory about being shanghaied as a dinner guest was turning out to be correct. It was all very amusing.
My host ushered me in through the front door, and at once I got that lovely shivery feeling that comes over the skin as one walks suddenly out of intense heat into an air-conditioned room. I was standing in the hall. The floor was of green marble. On my right, there was a wide archway leading to a garden room, and I received a fleeting impression of cool white walls, fine pictures, and superlative Louis XV furniture. What a place to find oneself in, in the middle of the Sinai Desert!
And now a woman was coming slowly down the stairs. My host had turned away to speak to the servants, and he didn't see her at once, so when she reached the bottom step, the woman paused, and she laid her naked arm like a white anaconda along the rail of the banister, and there she stood, looking at me as though she were Queen Semiramis on the steps of Babylon, and I was a candidate who might or might not be to her taste. Her hair was jet-black, and she had a figure that made me wet my lips.
When Mr Aziz turned and saw her, he said, "Oh darling, there you are. I've brought you a guest. His car broke down at the filling-station-such rotten luck-so I asked him to come back and stay the night. Mr Cornelius…my wife."
"How very nice," she said quietly, coming forward.
I took her hand and raised it to my lips. "I am overcome by your kindness, madame," I murmured. There was, upon that hand of hers, a diabolical perfume. It was almost exclusively animal. The subtle, sexy secretions of the spermwhale, the male musk-deer, and the beaver were all there, pungent and obscene beyond words; they dominated the blend completely, and only faint traces of clean vegetable oils-lemon, cajuput, and zeroli-were allowed to come through. It was superb! And another thing I noticed in the flash of that first moment was this: When I took her hand, she did not, as other women do, let it lie limply across my palm like a fillet of raw fish. Instead, she placed her thumb underneath my hand, with the fingers on top; and thus she was able to-and I swear she did-exert a gentle but suggestive pressure upon my hand as I administered the conventional kiss.
"Where is Diana?" asked Mr Aziz.
"She's out by the pool," the woman said. And turning to me, "Would you like a swim, Mr Cornelius? You must be roasted after hanging around that awful filling-station."
She had huge velvet eyes, so dark they were almost black, and when she smiled at me, the end of her nose moved upwards, distending the nostrils.
There and then, Prince Oswald Cornelius decided that he cared not one whit about the beautiful Princess who was held captive in the castle by the jealous lang. He would ravish the Queen instead.
"Well… " I said.
"I'm going to have one," Mr Aziz said.
"Let's all have one," his wife said. "We'll lend you a pair of trunks."
I asked if I might go up to my room first and get out a clean shirt and clean slacks to put on after the swim, and my hostess said, "Yes, of course," and told one of the servants to show me the way. He took me up two flights of stairs, and we entered a large white bedroom which had in it an exceptionally large double-bed. There was a well-equipped bathroom leading off to one side, with a pale-blue bathtub and a bidet to match. Everywhere, things were scrupulously clean and very much to my liking. While the servant was unpacking my case, I went over to the window and looked out, and I saw the great blazing desert sweeping in like a yellow sea all the way from the horizon until it met the white garden wall just below me, and there, within the wall, I could see the swimming-pool, and beside the pool there was a girl lying on her back in the shade of a big pink parasol. The girl was wearing a white swimming costume, and she was reading a book. She had long slim legs and black hair. She was the Princess.
What a set-up, I thought. The white castle, the comfort, the cleanliness, the air-conditioning, the two dazzlingly beautiful females, the watchdog husband, and a whole evening to work in! The situation was so perfectly designed for my entertainment that it would have been impossible to improve upon it. The problems that lay ahead appealed to me very much. A simple straightforward seduction did not amuse me any more. There was no artistry in that sort of thing; and I can assure you that had I been able, by waving a magic wand, to make Mr Abdul Aziz, the jealous watchdog, disappear for the night, I would not have done so. I wanted no pyrrhic victories.