‘You’re asking him to betray the best friend he has here!’ Mr Mix’s response was understandable but scarcely politic. As Hadj Idder said, Fromental would merely receive orders to return home and from there he would go to the Cameroons or perhaps Mozambique. But I now knew I must agree to nothing without first having practical guarantees. I had learned this in Egypt, from God. I told Hadj Idder that Mr Mix was right. I could not betray my friend.
The majordomo shrugged. ‘It is a shame,’ he said. ‘You would rather betray the Pasha?’
At his tone, rather than his words, I shuddered. ‘And it would have gladdened my heart to have set you free,’ the negro continued, ‘since I am such an admirer. It would be in my power to ensure, with Allah’s grace, that you would make many more movies.’
‘Sadly, the movies I have made will never again be seen here,’ I hinted. ‘Would that I could lift a little of your burden, Si Idder, by taking myself and my films back to America. There, it would give me much pleasure to describe the generosity and wisdom of the Lord of Marrakech.’
‘But it would not reflect well upon my master when you mentioned this unfortunate incarceration.’
‘Neither, dear friend, would it reflect well upon myself, should I be asked why I found myself in jail. There are certain incidents best not spoken of. After a while they become no more than dreams, and their substance can be proven or disproven as readily as the substance of dreams. But let it be said, Si Idder, that I am proud of my achievements with the Pasha and I would use them to increase my own honour. Whose interest would be served by the spreading of lies and distortions about a trusted business colleague?’
Hadj Idder took my point and was quite clearly mulling over the bargain I had proposed while Mr Mix, whose own Arabic was less sophisticated, kept asking who the hell were the two of us selling out between us.
I took this as a joke.
I knew my casual mention of the famous English detective had given Hadj Idder pause and it was equally clear that he might release me if a face-saving formula could be discovered.
I began to hope. Against all the evidence I saw a chance of salvation. I prayed that I might after all go home to Hollywood, to Di Heym, the new Byzantium. Her slender minarets and gentle roofs blend with the outline of cedars, poplars and cypresses in a warm mist that wanders through silver hills and is scented with jasmine and mint and bougainvillea. I walk along her palm boulevards, beside her ocean, secure and tranquil beneath a benign golden sun. And here the great spires and domes which rise above her tall trees shall be dedicated not to the cruel and drooling patriarch who shits upon the world like an ancient losing control of his bowels, but to his Son, his Successor, who is God re-born, God cleansed and whole, God not as our brooding master but as our partner in self-improvement. I speak of the Christian God, no God that Jew or Arab can claim. Their God is the God of Carthage, senile and confused, yet full of the blind brute rage which brought the Minotaur to ruin. He is a God of the bloody past. This is not a God to advise upon the subtle problems of urban living. To call upon such a God in Notting Hill would be tantamount to summoning the Devil. I speak of the God who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ. I speak of that self-regenerated God who proclaimed the Age of Peace and then watched in dismay as He saw what Man made of it. God, says the Cornelius girl, is a woman. Then you do not know God, I say. God is a Presence. God is an Idea. She says it is typical of me to reduce everything to abstractions. But God is an Abstraction, I say. What are we reducing?
Brodmann, of course, wanted me dead. I remembered his gloating expression as Grishenko’s whip fell upon my buttocks. I remember the insults. I remember Brodmann’s filthy eyes darting back and forth from my penis to my arse. Let him think what he likes. I am a victim of Scientific Rationalism, not Religion. My father’s knife was secular. Ni moyle . . . Ikh farshtey nit. . . Mrs Cornelius agrees with me. She says they all do it now in England. It has no connection with religion. And in America, too. All over the West. This is poor consolation. What does it actually proclaim? What else but that Zion has overrun Christendom? Sometimes Mrs Cornelius is so anxious to see good in the world that she is blind to the obvious. At such times she knows my logic has triumphed and she refuses to continue. That is typical of women but I do not care. I have all my life been a willing victim of the fair sex. Your eyes reflect their every fantasy, said the Jew in Arcadia. He wrote down the aphorism Byzantium endures the laughter of Carthage; Jerusalem commands the vengeance of Rome. It means more in Yiddish, I think. He used the Greek models, chiefly, he told me. I reminded myself that Jesus was born a Jew and was spiritually a Greek. Was this why my heart sang to him? I have not known such love since. Your dark eye mirrors my imperfect soul. I embrace your blasphemed body.
I admitted to some embarrassment. It was so quiet that day in Arcadia and not even a tram along the sea-front to Odessa until I had almost given up. War will often bring silence as well as noise. For a while I sold new bicycles in my shop, but there was no market for them. Now, of course, all the city-gents are wanting them. They buy in the West End, but they come to me for repairs. In the West End they would tell them to throw the thing away and get another. Personally I have no special love for these consumer cycles.
What is their bourgeois wealth giving them? I ask Mrs Cornelius. Is their life sweeter? Is their life better? Do they relish it more? Not very much, it seems.
I see them, in the pub on Saturday, these new TV people and their friends, in their identical sweaters with their ill-behaved children, cackling at one another across the bars like so many mad parrots, eyeing one another’s identical wives with leering uncertainty. What are they doing? Their rituals are a mystery to me. The sound they make is not a happy one. Mrs Cornelius says I am reading too much into them. “They’re dead simple, those greedy bastards.’ She finds my analyses amusing. ‘Bastards is bastards and orl yer ‘ave ter know is ‘ow ter stop ‘em. Because bastards has ter be stopped. That’s anower rule.’ When the worse for drink, she is inclined to over-simplify.
Brodmann wanted me dead, but for some reason Hadj Idder did not. That seemed to be the new essence of the situation. Brodmann did not care about any political consequences for the Pasha following my death. Hadj Idder thought of little else. He did not want to see his master shamed. Yet the Pasha’s honour must certainly be satisfied. I could not imagine that for whatever good reasons El Glaoui’s right-hand man would betray him and so I tried to pay no attention to my leaping heart. But then it occurred to me that perhaps there had been a change of policy which he had been entrusted to implement after El Glaoui left for the south.
Evidently Hadj Idder did not want his master embarrassed in Europe and America. Our removal I guessed was proving less simple than they had imagined. People could be making awkward enquiries. Could it be that El Glaoui wished to reverse his reckless verdict but could not do so without losing face? Perhaps the only answer to his problem would be to free us? I grew cautiously hopeful. Was Hadj Idder even now waiting for the appropriate word from me?
‘He might be changing his mind,’ I told Mr Mix.
He was scarcely listening. ‘What about Rosie?’ he wanted to know. ‘Did she get clear?’ He was, I thought, overly concerned about the fate of someone he hardly knew. I could not understand his anxiety, but I too was anxious for news of Rosie. Had El Hadj T’hami let me think she had betrayed me and escaped when actually she had been recaptured and merely been forced to give up my bag?
‘I gather Miss von Bek is no longer a guest of the Pasha,’ I coldly remarked to Hadj Idder who was rubbing at his glossy jowls as if some prison bug had crept amongst the folds and bitten him where he could no longer reach.
‘Miss von Bek is believed to have died in the mountains.’ The black man looked at the floor. ‘Your El Nahla was well named. She flew a little erratically and was unhappy with heights. You both loved her, I know. I respect your grief.’
But he had not told me she was dead. He had told me she was free. I had every
faith in my plane. I was delighted. I relayed this to Mr Mix.
‘It means he can’t be sure she won’t tell someone about what’s happening to us here,’ he said. ‘They’re stuck now, Max.’ He seemed rather foolishly delighted. He winked at Hadj Idder. He grinned. And slowly the vizier began to smile back. Then Hadj Idder chuckled. The quality of the tension altered. We all became peculiarly expectant. Hadj Idder said courteously, ‘I was very thrilled by your exploits in Ace of the Aces, Si Peters. Gloria Cornish is a beauty! I envy you.’
‘As a matter of fact she is my wife,’ I said. ‘We were married some years ago in Russia. At present she eagerly awaits my return to our Hollywood mansion. As do our children. I’m glad you enjoyed Ace. My uncle, President Hoover, always told me it was one of his own favourites.’
Rather than surprising or alarming Hadj Idder, my remarks seemed to confirm something he had already guessed.
‘What a meal the papers will make of this!’ declaimed Mr Mix, attempting a chorus of his own. I told him to keep quiet. Statements about newspapers could seem like crude and impolitic threats. I told Hadj Idder that El Glaoui had been a good and generous master. It would hurt me, I told him, if shame were to attach to the Pasha’s name through any action of mine. With the vizier’s permission I reached into my bag and drew out the gold I had put there. Since this, I said, was no longer of any use to me would Hadj Idder please take it and use it for whatever pious work he chose.
He accepted the money with his usual grace. He said that Allah would bless me, and no doubt favour me. It is all I pray for, I said.
‘And I, Si Peters. We would both avoid this embarrassment if we could. Sadly, I do not possess the means of releasing you. That power is entirely in your hands. Naturally, I respect your decision not to use it, just as I would respect your decision to use it. It is a matter of principle and we are, Allah be praised, both men of principle.’
‘Indeed,’ I agreed, ‘and good followers of the Prophet, I hope, who would see justice done in the world.’
‘Indeed.’
A further pause while Mr Mix grunted and fidgeted in his chains saying he would rather go to the electric chair in Sing Sing than hear another minute of our bullshit. He asked what the hell was going on. In the hobo vernacular I told him to button his lip while I sweet-talked our jailer.
I paused.
‘I would see justice done above all,’ I said at last, to Hadj Idder’s visible satisfaction.
‘I will have the materials brought,’ he said and clapped his hands. From somewhere not far away an old servant carried a tray with ink, pens, vellum. I briefly entertained the wild thought that my denunciation of young Fromental was to be illuminated like some monkish manuscript, but all I had to do was write a little essay. I knelt upon the cushion the servant presented and, while he held the salver steady for me, began to write with the soft-nibbed quill. I ignored Mr Mix’s half-animal turmoil behind me. He was cursing and rattling his leg-irons. The poor black was beginning to lose his nerve. Perhaps he thought I was selling him.
When I had finished I left the paper unsigned. ‘It will be signed when my servant and I are released with my luggage and my films,’ I told him. ‘At the station.’
Hadj Idder was beaming with relief and bore the happy air of one who has seen a dear friend reach a sensible decision and save himself from danger.
The vizier had taken his gold and his signed portrait away and I was beginning to suspect a further trick when ten minutes later a somewhat nervous guard in a grubby djellabah entered bearing a large hessian sack which obviously contained the film cans. After he dumped the sack down and turned the big crude keys to unlock our leg-irons, he lit a cigarette. Then he glared at us, as if we were to blame for his predicament, and slouched off, cursing us for dirty infidels. Though the door of the cell had been left open, this was not particularly unusual. There was no way out of the prison without permission and the jailers’ charges were so well disciplined that few dared crawl a further inch towards the door, let alone enter the common corridor.
An hour later, Hadj Idder reappeared. He had brought us heavy djellabahs to put on over our remaining rags. He then gave stern orders to the same guard whose expression changed rapidly from chagrin to terror to reconciliation. Then, with sullen resentment, the Arab led us up the steps before pausing at the door into the warren of passages which had brought us here. In French, Hadj Idder called from below. ‘When my master returns he will be angry. He is obliged to punish those who tamper with his women. Therefore you would be wise, both of you, to remove yourselves from Morocco as soon as possible.’
‘We have no car,’ I said. ‘And the plane is gone. We were supposed to have train tickets, but - ‘
‘How you leave is of no interest to me.’ He spoke casually.
‘Will you not also be punished for helping us?’ I asked the plump negro. ‘Perhaps you had better come too?’
Hadj Idder was amiably reassuring. He indicated our less than knowing guide. ‘What the Glaoui discovers and what he does not care to discover are his concern. But you need not fear for me. Some dog shall have to be punished so that my master’s honour can be satisfied. The dog will be beaten and executed and that will be the end of the matter. Assuming, of course, that you are by then on your way to another country.’ He gave a sharp order to the guard, who gloomily flung the sack onto his back.
Jacob Mix wanted to know if some of the film he himself had shot could be returned to him. Hadj Idder heard this request with appreciative amusement. ‘I hope you enjoy your freedom as much as I have enjoyed your comradeship,’ he said to Mr Mix in what was probably intended for a compliment, but he did not reply to the request.
I had found distasteful Hadj Idder’s hint that Miss von Bek had also been involved with Mr Mix. No doubt he meant me to look on my friend with suspicion, to poison my mind against him. It was impossible to imagine even the wild Rosie von Bek contemplating an affaire with an ordinary American darkie! I was about to confront Hadj Idder on this when the vizier stepped backwards into the shadows and was gone. The muttering Arab, who had been ordained to the rôle of scapegoat in Hadj Idder’s elegant plot, led us at such a snail’s pace through the maze and took so long to reach the end that I began to suspect a further trap, or that he would abandon us to some fresh threat. But at last we were in the dark, listening streets of the mellah, outside the house of the wretched Jew whom Brodmann had betrayed. The guard left the sack at our feet and backed away. Mr Mix hefted the sack and grinned. ‘Here’s The Masked Buckaroo, Max. He’s all yours.’ But when I failed to lift both the sack and the bag, he took pity on me, though his attitude remained cool, and he picked up the bag, striding ahead while I followed with the sack. I remained nervous. I could still not fully determine El Glaoui’s motives for releasing us. But Brodmann would surely be furious when he discovered my escape and would try to involve the French and Spanish authorities. We were still therefore in considerable danger. As we paused in the narrow space between one street wall and another, the archway ahead of us suddenly blazed with light and we heard the sound of an engine turning over. The Arab had already dropped well behind us. Cautiously we advanced up to the archway and the broader road beyond. A modern Buick sat in the shadows with its motor running, a pale, frowning Berber face staring from the cab. ‘Taxi ordered by Monsieur Josef,’ said the driver a little impatiently. ‘To go to the railway depot.’
‘That’s us,’ said Mr Mix and he opened the door for me to enter the comfortable interior and sit there with my bag on my knees desperately wishing that I could void my bowels, which had now been transmuted into water. Mr Mix put the sack of films on the floor as he settled back in the seat. ‘The only problem we have now is that we don’t have Fromental’s tickets and have no way of buying them. It’s not like an ordinary railroad office here. You have to do everything through the military.’
The car had left the mellah and pushed into the busier streets of the city. It crawled along the far edge of t
he Djema al Fna’a. Even now, as I fled for my life, I felt drawn to the Congress of the Dead, so ironically named. Here was every kind of life being lived at its most intense. Yet we are also the dead. We are also the ghosts of the unborn. We are our own betrayed children. Every evening at sunset these people poured into the square to perform a scene Griffith himself could not have bettered, to present a thousand cameos, a thousand little morality plays, for the benefit of an audience responding with all the spontaneity that once greeted those much-disputed performances first proclaimed across the boards of The Swan and The Globe; an audience frank and tolerant as all good-hearted peasants the world over.
The car pushed through the press of beggars, tumblers, oracles and story-tellers, through snake-charmers holding their dying, disenvenomed cobras high above their heads, through musicians with flute, tambourine and lute. Occasionally the Buick was forced to stop altogether as the bodies refused to part. Against the glass appeared the grinning faces of little boys, while behind them I observed the nosy disapproval of old men, the envious contempt of youths, the intense curiosity of the veiled women, and I had the impulse to cry out to them, to speak of the world I could have given them. Then, for a moment, I wondered if my world was indeed any better than the one they knew. Perhaps it was not right to bring the twentieth century to the fourteenth. Would it not be best to leave them in peace?