‘But that leaves only the two of you down here,’ Ed said. ‘If they once get inside this place …’ He hesitated. ‘What makes you so sure they won’t attack?’
Bilvidic turned and looked at him. ‘I know about mobs, monsieur,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘In Casablanca I have had to do with many riots. Now hurry, please.’
I knew he was right. It was no time to argue, anyway. I woke Julie and Karen and bundled them up the stairs, explaining the position to them as we went. Jan followed close at my heels and Ed was behind him.
There were Venetian blinds in one of the upper rooms and through the slats we watched the mob slow down and come to a halt in front of the house. Bilvidic was right. It had no leader. It was moved only by the sense of being a mob. Those behind pushed forward and spilled out to the sides, spreading round the house. The people who had been watching and waiting in the space between the forts moved into the herd as though drawn by instinct. The inarticulate murmur of the mass gradually died into silence. It was like a brute beast standing with his head down, wondering whether to charge.
I could pick out individual faces now. They were curiously blank. Many of those in front were young men. They were awed by the stillness of the house, by the Tricolour floating from its flagstaff and by the looming mass of the forts behind, mute evidence of France’s mastery of this land. A little knot gathered in the centre and a young man was pushed forward. He was too young to have any hair on his face and he was scared. But he had women behind him who goaded him on and he suddenly clutched the silver hilt of the knife at his waist and ran forward.
But all he did was to peer in at the windows and then he ran back to the crowd, which opened out and sucked him into its bosom. He was shaking his head and then the mob had closed up again and I could no longer see him. But it wasn’t a silent crowd now. The people were talking and becoming individuals again in the process. It was no longer a headless, dangerous mass, but a thousand individuals all full of their own opinions. Looking down on it was like looking at some disease through a microscope. It writhed and seethed, splitting up into little eager groups.
The danger, for the moment, was over.
I breathed a sigh of relief, for there were women in the crowd, many of whom would have lost menfolk in the disaster at Kasbah Foum. If this bonfire was to catch fire, it was they who would set the match to it. And the mob was armed. Apart from the knife which every Berber carries at his waist, I counted at least two dozen, perhaps more, with long-barrelled, old-fashioned guns.
‘What will they do now?’ Julie asked. And it was only then, as I glanced at her and saw her face close to mine, that I realised that I had my arm round her shoulder. ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘They will talk and talk. And then they will get hungry and go home.’
A buzzer sounded downstairs. It was an odd, mechanical little sound in the stillness that had descended on the house. It stopped and then started again. I heard the scrape of a chair on the tiles and a man’s tread as he crossed the main room towards the study. ‘By God, it’s the telephone,’ Ed cried. ‘We’re through to Agdz.’ And he went clattering down the stairs. I shouted at him to stop, but all he said was, ‘I want a word with the Commandant myself.’
‘Ed! Come back!’ I flung myself down the stairs after him.
The stairs descended into a recess between the main room and the study. As I reached the bottom Ed was already in the study. Bilvidic was seated at the desk with the field telephone pulled in front of him and the receiver to his ear, and behind him, framed in the window, was the lined, gaunt face of an old Berber. He was staring into the room and he saw Ed moving towards the desk, his mouth opened slightly to reveal a solitary tooth, like a fang hanging in the muzzle of an old dog; and then the face was gone and I heard Bilvidic saying, ‘Oui, out, tout de suite.”
‘Let me talk to him,’ Ed said. I think he thought they’d take more notice of an American.
But Bilvidic waved him away. ‘Get back upstairs.’
There was the sudden crack of a gun and a splintering crash. A bullet thudded into the woodwork above my head. Glass from the shattered window-pane rained on to the desk. Bilvidic shouted to us to get down. But Ed was standing dazed in front of the desk with blood welling from a cut on the side of his head and trickling down his face. He turned slowly to the shattered window. A big, wild-eyed man was standing staring at us, the long-barrelled gun with which he had fired the shot still smoking in his hand.
Ed’s reaction was instantaneous. His hand grabbed at his Luger. ‘Don’t fire!’ Bilvidic screamed at him. ‘For God’s sake don’t fire!’
For an awful moment there was a stillness in the room. Then Ed lowered the gun. He put his hand up to the side of his head and stared at the blood on his fingers. ‘He tried to kill me,’ he said in a dazed voice.
I didn’t say anything. Bilvidic wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘If you had fired,’ he said slowly in a small, quiet voice, ‘the lust for blood would have entered into that mob out there. You would have been committing suicide — for yourself and for all of us.’ He turned to me. ‘You take the gun, monsieur; and get him upstairs out of sight of these people.’
, Ed turned to me then and gave a little shaken laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have come down.’ He glanced towards the window, listening to the roar of the crowd who had become excited at the sound of the shot. Blood dripped from his chin to the floor. Then he turned to Bilvidic who was busy explaining to the man at the other end of the line what had happened. ‘Monsieur. You must get them to send troops. That’s what I came down to tell you. We need troops here, and we need them quick.’
Bilvidic looked at me and nodded towards the door. ‘Get him upstairs,’ he said. ‘And get one of the ladies to see to that cut.’ And then he was back on the telephone. ‘Allo. Allo. Monsieur le Commandant? Est-ce que vous avez…’ Ed stood there listening to Bilvidic’s request for a military detachment to be despatched immediately.
‘Come on,’ I said.
He nodded and moved towards the door, his handkerchief held to the side of his head. ‘Well, at least they know what’s going on. They’ll send troops now.’
I got him back up the stairs and handed him over to Julie. Fortunately it was only a superficial cut from a piece of flying glass and it had missed his eye.
‘So they know we’re in the house now,’ Jan said when I had explained what had happened.
I nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
He turned on Ed. ‘You damned fool!’ And then he was looking at Karen. He was scared and angry, for he was standing by the window and the roar of the crowd came up to him.
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Julie said. ‘He did it for the best.’ She was bandaging Ed’s head with a strip torn from a sheet.
I went over to the window and looked out at the crowd. They were like cattle, bawling and milling around, waiting to stampede. And then suddenly, above the solid, heavy roar came a liquid sound, an ululation made with the tongue like a yodel. It was just a little sound at first, but it swelled rapidly, a female sound that swamped the male.
My blood ran cold, for I knew that sound. I had heard it in the High Atlas. But then it had been a greeting, a ceremonial welcome. Now I was hearing it for the first time as I had been told it was really used: a repetitive sound like the singing of crickets to drive the men to a frenzy of excitement, to goad them into battle.
I went to the window and saw that the women were gathering together, closing up behind the men, their mouths open, their tongues moving; and the shrill, insistent cry gathered greater and greater volume.