XIV

 

If Nessim had the temerity to laugh softly now to himself as he studied the invitation: if the propped the florid thing against his inkstand the better to study it, laughing softly and uneasily into the space before him; it was because he was thinking to himself:

      'To say that a man is unscrupulous implies that he was born with inherent scruples which he now chooses to disregard.  But does one visualize a man born patently conscienceless?  A man born without a common habit of soul?  (Memlik).'

      Yes, it would be easy if he were legless, armless, blind, to visualize him; but a particular deficit of a glandular secretion, a missing portion of soul, that would make him rather a target for wonder, perhaps even commiseration.  (Memlik).  There were men whose feelings dispersed in spray - became as fine as if squeezed through an atomizer: those who had frozen them - 'pins and needles of the heart'; there were others born without a sense of value - the morally colour-blind ones.  The very powerful were often like that - men walking inside a dream-cloud of their actions which somehow lacked meaning to them.  Was this also Memlik?  Nessim felt all the passionate curiosity about the man which an entomologist might have for an unclassified specimen.

      Light a cigarette.  Get up and walk about the room, pausing from time to time to read the invitation and laugh again silently.  The relief kept displacing anxiety, the anxiety relief.  He lifted the telephone and spoke to Justine quietly, with a smiling voice: 'The Mountain has been to Mahomet.'  (Code for Mountolive and Nur.)  'Yes, my dear.  It is a relief to know for certain.  All my toxicology and pistol-practice!  It looks silly now, I know.  This is the way I would have wanted it to happen; but of course, one had to take precautions.  Well, pressure is being put upon Mahomet, and he has delivered a small mouse in the form of an invitation to a Wird.'  He heard her laugh incredulously.  'Please, my darling,' he said, 'obtain one of the finest Korans you can get and send it to the office.  There are some old ones with ivory covers in the library collection.  Yes, I shall take it to Cairo on Wednesday.  He must certainly have his Koran.'  (Memlik.)  It was all very well to joke.  The respite would only be a temporary one; but at least he need not for the moment fear poison or the stealthy figure lurking in an alley which might have.... No.  The situation seemed not without a promise of fruitful delay.

      Today in the sixties the house of Memlik Pasha has become famous in the remotest capitals of the world chiefly because of the distinctive architecture of the Banks which bear their founder's name; and indeed their style has all the curious marks of this mysterious man's taste - for they are all built to the same grotesque pattern, a sort of travesty of an Egyptian tomb, adapted by a pupil of Corbusier!  Irresistibly one is forced to stop short and wonder at their grim façades, whether one is walking in Rome or Rio.  The squat pillars suggest a mammoth stricken by sudden elephantiasis, the grotesque survival, or perhaps revival, of something inherently macabre - a sort of Ottoman-Egyptian-Gothic?  For all the world as if Euston Station had multiplied by binary fission!  But by now the power of the man has gone out through these strange funnels into the world at large - all that power condensed and deployed from the small inlaid coffee-table upon which (if ever) he wrote, from the tattered yellow divan to which his lethargy held him tethered day by day.  (For interviews of particular importance, he wore his tarbush and yellow suède gloves.  In his hand he held a common market fly-whisk which his jeweller had embellished with a design in seed-pearls.)  He never smiled.  A Greek photographer who had once implored him in the name of art to do so had been unceremoniously carted out into the garden under the clicking palms and dealt twelve lashes to atone for his insult.

      Perhaps the strange mixture of heredities had something to do with it; for his blood was haunted by an Albanian father and a Nubian mother, whose dreadful quarrels tormented his childhood sleep.  He was an only son.  This was perhaps how simple ferocity contrived  to be matched against an apparent apathy, a whispering voice raised sometimes to a woman's pitch but employed without the use of gesture.  Physically too, the long silky head-hair with its suggestion of kink, the nose and mouth carved flatly in dark Nubian sandstone and set in bas-relief upon a completely round Alpine head - they gave the show away.  If indeed he had smiled he would have shown a half-circumference of nigger whiteness under nostrils flattened and expanded like rubber.  His skin was full of dark beauty-spots, and of a colour much admired in Egypt - that of cigar-leaf.  Depilatories such as halawa kept his body free from hair, even his hands and forearms.  But his eyes were small and set in puckers, like twin cloves.  They transmitted their uneasiness by an expression of perpetual drowsiness - the discoloured whites conveying a glaucous absence of mind - as if the soul inhabiting that great body were perpetually away on a private holiday.  His lips too were very red, the underlip particularly so; and their contused-looking ripeness suggested: epilepsy?

      How had he risen so swiftly?  Stage by stage, through slow and arduous clerkships in the Commission (which had taught him his contempt for his masters) and lastly by nepotism.  His methods were choice and studied. When Egypt became free, he surprised even his sponsors by gaining the Ministry of the Interior at a single bound.  Only then did he tear of the disguise of mediocrity which he had been wearing all these years.  He knew very well how to strike out echoes around his name with the whip - for he was now wielding it.  The timorous soul of the Egyptian cries always for the whip.  'O want easily supplied by one who has trained himself to see men and women as flies.'  So says the proverb.  Within a matter of a year his name had become a dreaded one; it was rumoured that even the old King feared to cross him openly.  And with his country's new-found freedom he himself was also magnificently free - at least with Egyptian Moslems.  Europeans had still the right, by treaty, to submit their judicial problems or answer charges them at Les Tribunaux Mixtes, European courts with European lawyers to prosecute or defend.  But the Egyptian judicial system (if one could dare to call it that) was run directly by men of Memlik's stamp, the anachronistic survivals of a feudalism as terrible as it was meaningless.  The age of the Cadi was far from over for them and Memlik acted with all the authority of someone with a Sultan's firman or dispensation in his hands.  There was, in truth, nobody to gainsay him.  He punished hard and often, without asking questions and often purely upon hearsay or the most remote suspicion.  People disappeared silently, leaving no trace, and there was no court of appeal to heed their appeals - if they made any - or else they reappeared in civil life elegantly maimed or deftly blinded - and somehow curiously unwilling to discuss their misfortunes in public.  ('Shall we see if he can sing?' Memlik was reputed to say; the reference was to the putting out of a canary's eyes with a red-hot wire - an operation much resorted to and alleged to make the bird sing more sweetly.)

      An indolent yet clever man, he depended for his staff work upon Greeks and Amenians for the most part.  He hardly ever visited his office in the Ministry but left its running to his minions, explaining and complaining that he was always besieged there by time-wasting petitioners.  (In fact he feared that one day he might be assassinated there - for it was a vulnerable sort of place.  It would have been easy, for example, to place a bomb in one of the unswept cupboards where the mice frolicked among the yellowing files.  Hakim Effendi had put the idea into his head so that he himself could have a free play in the Ministry.  Memlik knew this, but did not care.)

      Instead he had set aside the old rambling house by the Nile for his audiences.  It was surrounded by a dense grove of palms and orange-trees.  The sacred river flowed outside the windows.  There was always something to see, to watch: feluccas plying up or down-river, pleasure parties passing, an occasional motorboat.... Also it was too far for petitioners to come and bother him about imprisoned relations.  (Hakim shared the office bribes anyway.)  Here Memlik would only see people who were relatively too important to dismiss: struggling upright into a seated position on the yellow divan and placing his neat shoes (with their pearl-grey spats) upon a damask footstool before him, his right hand in his breast pocket, his left holding the common market fly-whisk as if to confer an absolution with it.  The staff attending to his daily business transactions here consisted of an Armenian secretary (Cyril) and the little doll-like Italian, Rafael (by profession a barber and procurer), who kept him company and sweetened the dullness of official work by suggesting pleasures whose perversity might ignite a man who appeared to have worn away every mental appetite save that for money.  I say that Memlik never smiled, but sometimes when he was in good humour he stroked Raphael's hair thoughtfully and placed his fingers over his mouth to silence his laughter.  This was when he was thinking deeply before lifting the receiver of the old-fashioned goose-necked telephone to have a conversation with someone in that low voice, or to ring the Central Prison for the pleasure of hearing the operator's obvious alarm when he uttered his name.  At this, Raphael particularly would break into sycophantic giggles, laughing until the tears ran down his face, stuffing a handkerchief into his mouth.  But Memlik did not smile.  He depressed his cheeks slightly and said: 'Allah! you laugh.'  Such occasions were few and far between.

      Was he indeed as terrible as his reputation made him?  The truth will never be known.  Legends collect easily around such a personage because he belongs more to legend than to life.  ('Once when he was threatened by impotence he went down to the prison and ordered two girls to be flogged to death before his eyes while a third was obliged' - how picturesque are the poetical figures of the Prophet's tongue - 'to refresh his lagging spirits.'  It was said that he personally witnessed every official execution, and that he trembled and spat continuously.  Afterwards he called for a siphon of soda-water to quench his thirst.... But who shall ever know the truth of these legends?)

      He was morbidly superstitious and incurably venal - and indeed was building an immense fortune upon bribery; yet how shall we add to the sum of this the fact of his inordinate religiosity - a fanatical zeal of observance which might have been puzzling in anyone who was not an Egyptian?  This is where the quarrel with the pious Nur had arisen; for Memlik had established almost a court-form for the reception of bribes.  His collection of Korans was a famous one.  They were housed upstairs in a ramshackle gallery of the house.  By now it was known far and wide that the polite form in which to approach him was to interleave a particularly cherished copy of the Holy Book with notes or other types of currency and (with an obeisance) to present him with a new addition to his great library.  He would accept the gift and reply, with thanks that he must repair at once upstairs to see if he already had a copy.  On his return, the petitioner knew that he had succeeded if Memlik thanked him once more and said that he had put the book in his library; but if Memlik claimed to possess a copy already and handed back the book (albeit the money had inevitably been extracted) the petitioner knew that his plea had failed.  It was this little social formula which Nur had characterized as 'bringing discredit upon the Prophet' - and had so earned Memlik's quiet hate.

      The long-elbowed conservatory in which he held his private Divan was also something of a puzzle.  The coloured fanlights in cheap cathedral glass transformed visitors into harlequins, squirting green and scarlet and blue upon their faces and clothes as they walked across the long room to greet their host.  Outside the murky windows ran the cocoa-coloured river on whose further bank stood the British Embassy with its elegant gardens in which Mountolive wandered on the evenings when he found himself alone.  The wall-length of Memlik's great reception-room was almost covered by two enormous and incongruous Victorian paintings by some forgotten master which, being too large and heavy to hang, stood upon the floor and gave something of the illusion of framed tapestries.  But the subject-matter!  In one, the Israelites crossed the Red Sea which was gracefully piled up on either side to admit their fearful passage, in the other a hirsute Moses struck a stage rock with a shepherd's crook.  Somehow these attenuated Biblical subjects matched the rest of the furniture perfectly - the great Ottoman carpets and the stiff ugly-backed chairs covered in blue damask, the immense contorted brass chandelier with its circles of frosted electric-light bulbs which shone night and day.  On one side of the yellow divan stood a life-size bust of Fouché which took the eye of the petitioner at once by its incongruity.  Once Memlik had been flattered by a French diplomat who had said: 'You are regarded as the best Minister of Interior in modern history - indeed, since Fouché there has been no-one to equal you.'  The remark may have been barbed, but nevertheless it struck Memlik's fancy, and he at once ordered the bust from France.  It looked faintly reproachful amidst all the Egyptian flummery, for the dust had settled thick upon it.  The same diplomat had once described Memlik's reception-room as a cross between an abandoned geological museum and a corner of the old Crystal Palace - and this also was apt though cruel.

      All this detail Nessim's polite eye took in with many a hidden gleam of amusement as he stood in the doorway and heard his name announced.  It appealed richly to him to be thus invited to share a prayer-meeting or Wird with the redoubtable Memlik.  Nor were these functions uncommon, strange though it seems to relate, for Memlik frequently enjoyed these so-called 'Nights of God' and his piety did not seem inconsistent with the rest of his mysterious character; he listened attentively, unwaveringly to the reciter, often until two or three in the morning, with the air of a hibernating snake.  Sometimes he even joined in the conversational gasp 'Allah' with which the company expressed its joy in some particularly felicitous passage of the Gospel....

      Nessim crossed the chamber with a light and lively walk, conventionally touching breast and lip, and seated himself before Memlik to express gratitude for an invitation which did him great honour.  On the evening of his appearance there were nine or ten other guests only, and he felt certain that this was because Memlik wished to study him, if possible even to hold some private conversation with him.  He carried the exquisite little Koran wrapped in soft tissue paper; he had carefully larded the pages with blank drafts negotiable in Switzerland.  'O Pasha,' he said softly, 'I have heard of your legendary library and ask only the pleasure of a book-lover in offering you an addition to it.'  He laid his present down on the little table and accepted the coffee and sweetmeats which were placed before him.  Memlik neither answered nor moved his position on the divan for a long moment, allowing him to sip his coffee, and then said negligently: 'The host is honoured.  These are my friends.'  He performed some rather perfunctory introductions to his other visitors who seemed rather an odd collection to gather together for a recitation of the Gospel; there was nobody here of any obvious standing in the society of Cairo, this much Nessim noticed.  Indeed, he knew none of them though he was attentively polite to all.  Then he permitted himself a few generalized comments on the beauty and appropriateness of the reception chamber and the high quality of the paintings against the wall.  Memlik was not displeased by this and said lazily: 'It is both my work-room and my reception-room.  Here I live.'

      'I have often heard it described,' said Nessim with his courtier's air, 'by those lucky enough to visit you either for work or pleasure.'

      'My work,' said Memlik with a glint, 'is done on Tuesdays only.  For the rest of the week I take pleasure with my friends.'

      Nessim was not deaf to the menace in the words; Tuesday for the Moslem is the least favoured day for human undertakings, for he believes that on Tuesday God created all the unpleasant things.  It is the day chosen for the execution of criminals; no man dares marry on a Tuesday for the proverb says: 'Married on Tuesday, hanged on Tuesday.'  In the words of the Prophet: 'On Tuesday God created darkness absolute.'

      'Happily,' said the smiling Nessim, 'today is Monday, when God created the trees.'  And he led the conversation around to the lovely palm-trees which nodded outside the window: a conversational turn which broke the ice and won the admiration of the other visitors.

      The wind changed now, and after half an hour of desultory talk, the sliding doors at the far end of the chamber were set aside to admit them to a banquet laid out upon two great tables.  The room was decorated with magnificent flowers.  Here at least over the expansive delicacies of Memlik's supper table, the hint of animation and friendship became a little more obvious.  One of two people talked, and Memlik himself, though he ate nothing, moved slowly from group to group uttering laboured politenesses in a low voice.  He came upon Nessim in a corner and said quite simply, indeed with an air of candour: 'I wished particularly to see you, Hosnani.'

      'I am honoured, Memlik Pasha.'

      'I have seen you at receptions; but we have lacked common friends to present us to each other.  Great regrets.'

      'Great regrets.'

      Memlik sighed and fanned himself with his fly-whisk, complaining that the night was hot.  Then he said, in a tone of a man debating something with himself, hesitantly almost: 'Sir, the Prophet has said that great power brings great enemies.  I know you are powerful.'

      'My power is insignificant, yet I have enemies.'

      'Great regrets.'

      'Indeed.'

      Memlik shifted his weight to his left leg and picked his teeth thoughtfully for a moment; then he went on:

      'I think we shall understand each other perfectly soon.'

      Nessim bowed formally and remained silent while his host gazed speculatively at him, breathing slowly and evenly through his mouth.  Memlik said: 'When they wish to complain, they come to me, the very fountainhead of complaints.  I find it wearisome, but sometimes I am forced to act on behalf of those who complain.  You take my meaning?'

      'Perfectly.'

      'At some moments, I am not bound to commit myself to particular action.  But at others, I may be so bound.  Therefore, Nessim Hosnani, the wise man removes the grounds for complaints.'

      Nessim bowed again gracefully and once more remained silent.  It was useless to pursue the dialectics of their relative positions until he had obtained acceptance of his proffered gift.  Memlik perhaps sensed this, for he sighed and moved away to another group of visitors, and presently the dinner ended and the company retired once more to the long reception-room.  Now Nessim's pulse beat faster, for Memlik picked up the tissue-wrapped package and excused himself, saying: 'I must compare this with the books in my collection.  The sheik of tonight - he of Imbabi - will come soon now.  Seat yourselves and take your leisure.  I will join you soon.'  He left the room.  A desultory conversation began now, in which Nessim tried his best to take part though he realized that his heart was beating uncomfortably fast and his fingers felt shaky as they raised a cigarette to his lips.  After a while, the doors were once more opened to admit an old blind sheik who had come to preside over this 'Night of God'.  The company surrounded him, shaking his hands and uttering compliments.  And then Memlik entered abruptly and Nessim saw that his hands were empty: he uttered a prayer of thanksgiving under his breath and mopped his brow.

      It did not take him long to compose himself once more.  He was standing rather apart from the press of dark-coated gentlemen in whose midst stood the old blind preacher, whose vacant, bewildered face turned from voice to voice with the air of some mechanical contrivance built to register sound-waves; his air of mild confusion suggested all the ghostly contentment of an absolute faith in something which was the more satisfying for not being fully apprehended by the reason.  His hands were joined on his breast; he looked as shy as some ancient child, full of the kinetic beauty of a human being whose soul has become a votive object.

      The pasha who entered once more made his way slowly to Nessim's side, but by stages so delayed that it seemed to the latter he would never reach him.  This slow progress was prolonged by compliments and an air of elaborate disinterestedness.  At last he was there, at Nessim's elbow, his long clever fingers still holding the bejewelled fly-whisk.  'Your gift is a choice one,' the low voice said at last, with the faintest suggestion of honey in its tones.  'It is most acceptable.  Indeed, sir, your knowledge and discrimination are both legendary.  To show surprise would betoken vulgar ignorance of the fact.'

      The formula which Memlik invariably used was so smooth and remarkably well-turned in Arabic that Nessim could not help looking surprised and pleased.  It was a choice turn of speech such as only a really cultivated person would have used.  He did not know that Memlik had carefully memorized it against such occasions.  He bowed his head as might to receive an accolade, but remained silent.  Memlik flirted his fly-whisk for a moment, before adding in another tone: 'Of course, there is only one thing.  I have already spoken of the complaints which come to me, effendi mine.  I all such cases I am bound sooner or later to investigate causes.  Great regrets.'

      Nessim turned his smooth black eye upon the Egyptian and still smiling said in a low voice: 'Sir, by the European Christmastide - a matter of months - there will be no further grounds for complaint.'  There was a silence.

      'Then time is important,' said Memlik reflectively.

      'Time is the air we breathe, so says a proverb.'

      The pasha half turned now and, speaking as if to the company in general, added: 'My collection has need of your most discriminating knowledge.  I hope you may discover for me many other treasures of the Holy Word.'  Again Nessim bowed.

      'As many as may be found acceptable, pasha.'

      'I am sorry we did not meet before.  Great regrets.'

      'Great regrets.'

      But now he became the host again and turned aside.  The wide circle of uncomfortable stiff-backed chairs had been almost filled by his other visitors.  Nessim selected one at the end of the line as Memlik reached his yellow divan and climbed slowly upon it with the air of a swimmer reaching a raft in mid-ocean.  He gave a signal and the servants came forward to remove the coffee-cups and sweetmeats; they brought with them a tall and elegant high-backed chair with carved arms and green upholstery which they set for the preacher a little to one side of the room.  A guest rose and with mutterings of respect led the blind man to his seat.  Returning in good order the servants closed and bolted the tall doors at the end of the room.  The Wird was about to begin.  Memlik formally opened the proceedings with a quotation from Ghazzali the theologian - a surprising innovation for someone, like Nessim, whose picture of the man had been formed entirely from hearsay.  'The only way,' said Memlik, 'to become united with God is by constant intercourse with him.'  Having uttered the words he leaned back and closed his eyes, as if exhausted by the effort.  But the phrase had the effect of a signal, for as the blind preacher raised his scraggy neck and inhaled deeply before commencing, the company responded like one man.  At once all cigarettes were extinguished, every leg was uncrossed, coat buttons formally done up, every negligent attitude of body and dress corrected.

      They waited now with emotion for that old voice, melodious and worn with age, to utter the opening strophes of the Holy Book, and there was nothing feigned in the adoring attention of the circle of venal faces.  Some licked their lips; others lowered their heads and closed their eyes as if against a new experience in music.  The old preacher sat with his waxen hands folded in his lap and uttered the first sura, full of the soft warm colouring of a familiar understanding, his voice a little shaky at first but gathering power and assurance from the silence as he proceeded.  His eyes now were as wide and lustreless as a dead hare's.  His listeners followed the notation of the verses as they fell from his lips with care and rapture, gradually seeking their way together out into the main stream of the poetry, like a school of fish following a leader by instinct out into the deep sea.  Nessim's own constraint and unease gave place to a warmth about the heart, for the loved the suras, and the old preacher had a magnificent speaking voice, although the tone was as yet furry and unaccentuated.  But it was a 'voice of the inmost heart' - his whole spiritual presence coursed like a bloodstream in the magnificent verses, filling them with his own ardour, and one could feel his audience tremble and respond, like the rigging of a ship in the wind.  'Allah!' they signed at every newly remembered felicity of phrasing, and these little gasps increased the confidence of the old voice with its sweet high register.  'A voice whose melody is sweeter than charity,' says the proverb.  The recitation was a dramatic one and very varied in style, the preacher changing his tone to suit the substance of the words, now threatening, now pleading, now declaiming, now admonishing.  It was no surprise that he should be word-perfect, for in Egypt the blind preachers have a faculty for memorizing which is notorious, and moreover the whole length of the Koran is about two-thirds that of the New Testament.  Nessim listened to him with tenderness and admiration, staring down upon the carpet, half-entranced by the ebb and flow of the poetry which distracted his mind from the tireless speculations he had been entertaining about Memlik's possible response to the pressures which Mountolive had been forced to bring upon him.

      Between each sura there came a few moments of silence in which nobody stirred or uttered a word, but appeared sunk in contemplation of what had gone before.  The preacher then sank his chin upon his breastbone as if to regain his strength and softly linked his fingers.  Then once more he would look upwards towards the sightless light and declaim, and once more one felt the tension of the words as they sped through the attentive consciousness of his listeners.  It was after midnight when the Koran reading was complete and some measure of relaxation came back to the audience as the old man embarked upon the stories of tradition; these were no longer listened to as if they were a part of music, but were followed with the active proverbial mind: for they were the dialectics of revelation - its ethic and application.  The company responded to the changed tone by letting their expression brighten to the keenness of habitual workers in the world, bankers, students, or businessmen.

      It was two o'clock before the evening ended and Memlik showed his guests to the front door where their cars awaited them, with a white dew upon their wheels and chromium surfaces.  To Nessim he said in a quiet deliberate voice - a voice which went down to the heart of their relationship like some heavy plumb-line: 'I will invite you again, sir, for as long as may be possible.  But reflect.'  And with his finger he gently touched the coat-button of his guest as if to underline the remark.

      Nessim thanked him and walked down the drive among the palm-trees to where he had left the great car; his naked relief was by no means unmixed with doubt.  He had at best, he reflected, gained a respite which did not fundamentally alter the enmity of the forces ranged against him.  But even a respite was something to be grateful for; for how long though?  It was at this stage impossible to judge.

      Justine had not gone to bed.  She was sitting in the lounge of Shepheards Hotel under the clock with an untouched Turkish coffee before her.  She stood up eagerly as he passed through the swing doors with his usual gentle smile of welcome; she did not move but stared at him with a peculiar strained intensity - as if she were trying to decipher his feelings from his carriage.  Then she relaxed and smiled with relief.  'I'm so relieved!  Thank God!  I could see from your face as you came in.'  They embraced gently and he sank into a chair beside her, whispering: 'My goodness, I thought it would never end.  I spent part of the time being rather anxious too.  Did you dine alone?'

      'Yes.  I saw David.'

      'Mountolive?'

      'He was at some big dinner.  He bowed frigidly but did not stop to speak to me.  But then, he had people with him, bankers or something.'

      Nessim ordered a coffee and as he drank it gave an account of his evening with Memlik.  'It is clear,' he said thoughtfully, 'that the sort of pressure the British are bringing is based upon those files of correspondence they captured in Palestine.  The Haifa office told Capodistria so.  It would be a good angle to present these to Nur and press him to ... take action.'  He drew a tiny gallows in pencil on the back of an envelope with a small fly-like victim hanging from it.  'What I gathered from Memlik suggested that he can delay action but that the sort of pressure is too strong to ignore indefinitely; sooner or later he will be forced to satisfy Nur.  I virtually told him that by Christmas I would be able ... I would be out of the danger zone.  His investigations would lead nowhere.'

      'If everything goes according to plan.'

      'Everything will go according to plan.'

      'Then what?'

      'Then what!'  Nessim stretched his long arms over his head, yawning, and nodded sideways at her.  'We will take up new dispositions.  Da Capo will disappear; you will go away.  Leila will go down to Kenya for a long holiday together with Narouz.  That is what!'

      'And you?'

      'I shall stay on a little while to keep things in place here.  The Community needs me.  There is a lot to be done politically still.  Then I shall come to you and we can have a long holiday in Europe or anywhere you choose....'

      She was staring unsmilingly at him.  'I am nervous,' she said at last with a little shiver.  'Nessim, let us drive by the Nile for an hour and collect our thoughts before we go to bed.'

      He was glad to indulge her, and for an hour the car nosed softly along the noble tree-lined roads of the Nile riverbank under the jacarandas, its engine purring, while they talked intermittently in low voices.  'What worries me,' she said, 'is that you will have Memlik's hand upon your shoulder.  How will you ever shake it off?  If he has firm evidence against you, he will never relax his grip until you are squeezed dry.'

      'Either way,' said Nessim quietly, 'it would be bad for us.  For if he proceeded with an open enquiry, you know very well that it would give the Government a chance to sequestrate our properties.  I would rather satisfy his private cupidity as long as I can.  Afterwards, we shall see.  The main thing is to concentrate on this coming ... battle.'

      As he uttered the word they were passing the brilliantly lighted gardens of the British Embassy.  Justine gave a little start and plucked his sleeve, for she had caught sight of a slender pyjama-clad figure walking about the green lawns with an air of familiar distraction.  'Mountolive,' she said.  Nessim looked sorrowfully across the gardens at his friend, suddenly possessed by a temptation to stop the car and enter the gardens to surprise him.  Such a gesture would have been in keeping with their behaviour towards each other - not three months before.  What had happened to everything now?  'He'll catch cold,' said Justine; 'he is barefooted.  Holding a telegram.'

      Nessim increased speed and the car curved on down the avenue.  'I expect,' he said, 'that he suffers from insomnia and wanted to cool his feet in the grass before trying to get to sleep.  You often used to do that?  Remember?'

      'But the telegram?'

      There was really no great mystery about the telegram which the sleepless Ambassador held in his hand and which he studied from time to time as he walked slowly about in his own demesne, smoking a cigar.  Once a week he played a game of chess with Balthazar by telegram - an event which nowadays gave him great solace, and some of the refreshment which tired men of affairs draw from crossword puzzles.  He did not see the great car as it purred on past the gardens and headed for the town.

 

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