She didn't like Cunningham and had difficulty concealing her dislike. I didn't blame her. He was a stock caricature of the imperialist and imperious Englishman left behind in “Ind-ja" after the British gave it back to the Indians. Red-faced, with bogus Empire breeding shellacked to contemptuous hardness for the “bloody heathens" blood-line strictly Colonel Blimp out of Nigel Bruce with a C. Aubrey Smith whiplash to his whine; a clinger to Kipling values, but the unsureness of his watery blue eyes gave him away and labeled him as a man out of his time, a relic left mystified by a land which had surpassed even his disdain. His presence was more a matter of business than social, and the politeness with which Jayasana countered his thinly-veiled prejudices towards modern India and Indians was actually the most devastating of rebukes.
After lunch, Samantha and I left the other two to their business and she saw to it that the afternoon passed most pleasantly. She showed me the gardens, jasmine-scented and magnificent in a riot of carefully landscaped colors. We went horseback riding and later took a swim in the lavish pool sprawling behind the tennis courts. Then we parted to dress for dinner. Soup-and-fish all around, with Samantha a knockout in a strapless evening gown of gold lamé that hinted of Paris and set off her bronze complexion to perfection. There were cocktails first, and the rest of us were already sipping them when Mustafa Ben Narouz made his entrance. As it happened, the moment he picked to arrive was inadvertently designed to give me an unexpected insight into Ben Narouz.
Jayasana was patiently listening to Cunningham outlining some interminable business proposition to him, and Samantha and I had drifted over to the other side of the room to resume the bantering flirtation we'd begun that afternoon. This consisted of swapping vaguely sexual innuendoes, mots and often outrageous puns. “Sex is just a number after five," was my not too original reply to some remark of hers and it struck her as being quite funny. Her eyes sparkled and she punctuated her laughter with an impulsive caress, her hand lingering tinglingly along the side of my face. It was at that precise moment that I looked up and saw Mustafa Ben Narouz poised in the doorway.
His face gave him away. There was no mistaking the expression of jealousy written on it. The full upper lip under the pencil-line moustache was drawn back over his even white teeth. A paleness had erased the natural ruddiness of his cheeks. His eyes, narrowed, were twin pools of jealous rage.
It only lasted a split moment. Then the impression dissolved as he continued into the room. There was no sign of his jealousy, no strain to his easy composure, as Samantha introduced us. The change was so complete that I wondered if my first impression had been right
It had been. A second such moment and a frank acknowledgement from Samantha confirmed it. Both followed dinner, during which Ben Narouz dominated the conversation in a manner that was both urbane and witty. He spoke well on a wide variety of topics and I, as well as the others, found him quite entertaining. For a youth in his early twenties, Ben Narouz had the personable sophistication usually found only in an older man.
Nevertheless, it collapsed into that expression of petulance and youthful jealousy when, after coffee, Samantha neglected to include him in her invitation to show me the gardens by moonlight. I could almost feel his eyes shooting darts into my back as we left by the doors leading onto the patio. And the note of agitation in his voice was audible as he continued the conversation with Jayasana and Cunningham .
"Our young friend seems a little miffed at our pairing off this way," I observed to Samantha.
“You noticed? You are very observant, Mr. Victor. And you are right. Where I am concerned, Mustafa sometimes behaves like a schoolboy.”
“Then there is something between you?"
"Something. Just how much, I am not sure myself.”
"I shouldn't want my attentions to you to cause you any embarrassment," I said, putting it diplomatically. Actually, it was her attentions to me which had roused the Egyptian's dander.
“But I enjoy them!" she protested. “If they annoy Mustafa, that's his concern. I am not his property. No understanding has been reached between us. He has not spoken to my father of his feelings."
“Has he spoken to you?"
"Yes. And he has made love to me politely, but far from completely. In one way, his circumspect treatment of me, that sort of exaggerated respect that makes me feel more like a piece of delicate china than a flesh-and-blood woman, is more of an obstacle standing between his ardor and me than you are, Mr. Victor.”
“Strange for a man who seems to be so well-traveled." I was fishing.
"Yes. But many a man with a wide experience of women has forgotten all he knows when confronted by one for whom he has genuine feeling."
“And do you return that feeling?"
“I don't know, Mr. Victor. I am young. I have had little experience with love myself. I do not want to tie myself down to one man until I have had some knowledge of others. And besides, I have not known Mustafa long enough to judge him, or how I feel about him."
“How long have you known him?"
“About two years. But the period is misleading. I first met him about two years ago, but this is really only the second time I have seen him during that period. We established quite a rapport during his first visit. He evidently feels that we should automatically resume it now. But I am woman enough to resent his taking me for granted all this time. People change, and if he wishes to pick up where he left off, then he must woo me anew, start from scratch, as you Americans say."
“How did you meet?" I was wondering to myself what Samantha's reaction would be if she knew that Mustafa had acquired a Russian wife during the two-year hiatus in their relationship.
“My Father met him at a party at the U.A.R. embassy and invited him to stay with us while he was in Calcutta. He was on his way to Peking at the time and Father also invited him to visit us on the return trip. He accepted, but after he left, we got a note that he wouldn’t be stopping over in Calcutta on his way back to Cairo. Father wrote back extending him a blanket invitation for whenever his travels should bring him this way again. Two days ago he called to say that he had just arrived in Calcutta and Father once again extended our hospitality, which he accepted."
Interesting! So Mustafa had been in China before going as an exchange student to the Soviet Union. I wondered why he'd stopped off in Calcutta en route that first time. And I wondered what he was doing here now. His feeling for Samantha might have been reason enough ordinarily, but not at this time when he was so involved with delivering Anna Kirkov to the Chinese.
I left the various questions this posed for later consideration and turned back to Samantha, We were deep in the gardens now and her face was alternately lost in the shadows and spotlighted by the moonrays. Her arm locked in mine had pressed her breast tight against me and I was much aware of its softness and warmth and I knew that she was conscious of my awareness. It showed in her eyes as she turned to me after I'd asked a question implying that the attention she was lavishing on me might be designed to make Mustafa even more jealous.
“That's not true!" She denied the insinuation indignantly. “And I shouldn't have thought you a man with so little ego, Mr. Victor. Why should I not be interested in you for yourself?”
Her lips were very close to mine as she posed the query, and it seemed natural to kiss her, rather than answer. Her response to the kiss took me by surprise. Her mouth clung to mine hungrily and all the curiosity of an aroused young virgin was evident in the way her body seemed to open itself as though seeking more intimate caresses. I was quick to grant them, aroused even more than she by the fever-heat of her flesh straining against the flimsy gown she wore.