Arabesque (30 page)

Two days later Rashid came to see her. She sat him, gallantly protesting, down on a sofa while she mixed a drink of heroic size. Drinks, furniture, flat—none of them belonged to her. This
floating life did not disturb her, for Dion Prayle represented the reality of past and future. Her present, wrapped in this chrysalis of government possessions, was unimportant.

Rashid had collected a Military Gross, and he pointed out the ribbon with a proud and reverent forefinger. Armande, too, was impressed, for the army, after nearly four years of fighting, had no
medals later than the green and purple of the pre-war Palestine campaign—and Rashid was most certainly not entitled to that.

He had none of the inhibitions of the British officer. He told the exploits of Honeymill’s force in full and fantastic detail. The flashing eyes, the rhythmic sentences, the quick,
stabbing movements of head and hands, while his seated body preserved its dignity, reminded her of storytellers in the bazaar. There were occasional mentions of Alexander and Montgomery, presiding
or interfering like Homeric gods, but the war in the desert, as handed on to Arab poets of the future, was evidently to be a personal struggle between Rashid and Rommel.

“We fought with the British as equal to equal. We have beaten the Germans. And now we will deal with the Jews,” declared Rashid as a peroration.

“Rashid Bey, shame on you!”

Rashid, unabashed, happily patted the unseen knife that lay upon his lean stomach.

“Willah!”
he cried in his deep, gargling voice. “Only the British stand between the Jews and this! And the British are going. Everyone says so. Then we shall have
Americans, have seen them. They can fight. But they will not fight for the Jews as you did.”

“Café talk, Rashid,” she said in gentle reproof.

“I repeat what they say,” he admitted. “Who am I to know the truth? Perhaps there will be no Americans. Perhaps the British will stay for ever, and my home is ever open to
them. But I think they will leave us alone with the Jews.”

“And if you are—haven’t they a secret army called the Hagana, and trained by us too? Are you so sure?”

“I am a soldier. Mrs. Armande. By God, I have no other trade, and I understand it. I know the Hagana. They will die like men. They will win every battle against us, but they cannot be
everywhere at once. The Jews are surrounded by Islam. If we raid them, they can punish us. They will. But they cannot occupy, for there is nothing to occupy. How then will they force us to
peace?”

“Damascus isn’t far away.”

“By God, Mrs. Armande, you should be a soldier! Your thought has the sharpness of the sword. Well, let them take Damascus—but they would need more warrior Jews than there are in the
world to hold it! And meanwhile, Damascus is farther from Tel Aviv than Tel Aviv from Jordan.”

She let Rashid rave himself out, aware that in the unfamiliar, exciting presence of a European woman he became intoxicated by his own personality. To Rashid, Armande guessed, she was real and
solid and a friend, but incredible. It was hard to imagine a parallel experience for herself; to her and her like no social situation was wholly unprecedented. She could have talked to a black
chieftain or a Siberian peasant with equal ease, knowing, instinctively, what was the common ground, and, historically, what were the obvious differences. Perhaps if the black chieftain had been
educated at Oxford and yet wore no clothes at all, she would encounter something of what Rashid felt towards a woman with whom his intellect and emotions effortlessly marched, who yet broke every
one of his traditions and conventions.

She told him as much as it was wise for him to know: that the British Secret Service (to him, who would be impressed by it, she used the unnecessarily dramatic name) wanted information about the
movements and contacts of a Mr. Makrisi. When he was ready, he could come to her flat, meet this Mr. Makrisi and also leave with him, so that any men he might post in the street could recognise the
person to be followed.

Armande herself knew where Mr. Makrisi was likely to be found at certain hours; thus, if she were not suspected, it was child’s play to put Rashid’s men back on his track when they
lost it. She did not like this assignment; it tasted of treachery. She had, after all, worked with Montagne for some eight months, always loyally and sometimes admiringly. She was sure that
Furney’s uneasiness was justified—his vague suspicions squared too well with her own—but she hoped with all her heart that Montagne was not engaged in anything that need be taken
over-seriously, and that his activities could be unobtrusively checked in good time.

When she brought the two together, Rashid immediately disliked Mr. Makrisi; he was so ceremoniously polite that it was obvious. She knew the reason. Mr. Makrisi could not keep out of his voice
that faint irony with which the French, except for their rare spirits born to command, were wont to treat Arab peoples of whatever religion. Rashid might have put up with this from a Frenchman,
simply assuming that it was one of the inevitable and unimportant European discourtesies, but he resented the tone on a little Egyptian clerk.

Fortunately their conversation was limited, for Rashid’s arabic was the classical tongue of northern Arabia, and Montagne’s was his own personal adaptation from the Algerian. Armande
was frequently called on to interpret through French and English.

“He won the war all alone, your friend,” said Montagne.

“Perhaps. But you are not to annoy him,” Armande answered.

“Annoy him? I? I adore the Tartarins. I envy them. Do you not know, even you,” he cried bitterly, “how I wish that I had died at Bir Hachim?”

“What does he say of Bir Hachim?” asked Rashid.

“That the French, too, fought magnificently,” Armande replied, not wishing to translate exactly and thus arouse a suspicion of Mr. Makrisi’s true nationality.

Rashid, finding at last a subject upon which he could get to know his quarry, proceeded to map the battle with the aid of cushions. Montagne added a rolled-up tablecloth to represent the
enveloping Germans and Italians, and lumps of sugar for the minefields. As Rashid had actually seen the ground, and Montagne had read everything on the engagement that he could borrow from Furner,
there was room for argument; Rashid, with proper subtlety, allowed Mr. Makrisi the best of it. Armande relaxed in her chair and let them play happily upon the floor. They left together, still
discussing Bir Hachim, and on the friendliest terms.

During the next three weeks Rashid called several times at the flat for additional information on Mr. Makrisi, and once with a dashing, blustering demand for money to reward his men. He was
evasive, difficult, exclamatory, claiming results but refusing to admit what they were. Armande, taught by Wadiah and clients at the Casino, knew her Arabs. It was not hard for her. Whether
Christian or Moslem, they resembled European woman so much more than European man. They welcomed hypocrisy so long as it was pleasant; they surrendered instantly to a mixture of strength and
courtesy, but felt an instinctive and unforgiving dislike of those who were incapable of either. She waited patiently and took pains that Rashid should be devoted to her as a woman whatever he
might think of her as an agent.

At last he came to report, grinning with such candour and confidence that Armande knew perfectly well he was determined to tell no more than half the truth.

“It was easy,” he said. “He told me in the first week. He wanted me to work for the Arabs.”

“Against whom?”

“The Jews, of course.”

“That would be against us. Against me, Rashid Bey.”

“I do not know. Perhaps. But who am I? What do you know of Makrisi’s friends, Mrs. Armande?”

“Nothing,” she answered, smiling. “I want you to tell me.”

“Believe me, Mrs. Armande, I am out of politics. I am a soldier.”

“You are all a soldier should be, Rashid Bey.”

“By God, you are beautiful! I would give three hundred black goats to your father for you.”

“But I am already married, my dear. And I have explained to you that our marriage is as serious as yours.”

“Then we are friends for always. Brother and sister as if we had played in the same dust. And I will never betray you.”

“Nor will I betray you, my brother Rashid.”

“And you remember Major Toots,” he continued with some agitation. “You know how I loved him. I will do nothing that he would not order.”

Armande suddenly saw light. This magnificent creature, nervously advancing and retreating, was full of mistrust. He suspected that he was being double-crossed, and that, so far from being
engaged to report on Mr. Makrisi. Makrisi was really engaged to report on him.

“Rashid,” she said, “I too love the memory of Major Toots. I will never ask you to do anything that he would not order. Tell me—why do you think I doubted you?”

“By God. I thought no such thing!”

“But if you had thought so, why would you have thought it?”

Rashid grinned with delight at this courtesy.

“Why, Mrs. Armande?
Billah!
I will tell you why. Because your Makrisi incites me against the Jews, yet he makes secret visits to a house of Jews.”

“What about it? Can’t he have friends of all religions, as you and I?”

“Yes, but he is not open as you and I. My men have watched him. He goes secretly to this house. Two of the Jews he meets in a café near the station, also secretly, and once he gave
them a small parcel. This is not mere friendship. This is what you told me to find. But what does it mean? Am I the hunter or the gazelle?”

“The hunter,” she said, “and a very good one, my dear. I can’t make any more of this than you, but we will see what they think higher up.”

Armande decided to test Montagne herself before she made any report, and arranged, by a pretence of aimless boredom, for him to invite her to dinner at one of the small native eating places
which he patronised. She had a cautious respect for Montagne’s acute instinct for danger, sharpened by years of official and unofficial intrigue, but she reckoned that there would be nothing
for him to suspect so long as she stayed within a part that was or had been natural to her. She gave deliberate expression to the worst in her—moody resentment of her treatment by Abu Tisein.
She had, in fact, very little resentment left, only a broad, warm, healthy anger. It was absurd to brood over a petty black-listing by Security when she was the trusted agent of a department of
Intelligence at least as secret and as important to the war.

It needed little effort of the imagination to throw herself back into the raw sensitivity of that Armande who had been the loveless, shrinking, black-listed dancer at the Casino. She was clever
openly to abuse Abu Tisein, but she became depressed and bitter over her wine, and allowed Montagne to draw his own conclusions. He drew them.

“In the jolly little dog kennel,” he said, “where I hide myself among the excrement of my own thoughts, I pass my time in making a special study of Jewish politics. And I
flatter myself that I have discovered the worst enemy of the Zionists. It is a good beginning for us.”

“The Arab League?” she asked.

“The League? Never! The Arabs are intelligent, my child. They know that they have only to attack, for all the democracies to come down on the side of the Jews. No enemy of the Zionists
would pay a piastre to the Arabs. The Arabs are waiting. They know how to wait. The Jews do not.

“Jewish Palestine is an explosive, Armande. It can be made to destroy itself. And there is no lack of those who will supply …”

He held up finger and thumb two inches apart, as if they measured between them the length of a detonator. Armande recognised the gesture. In the privacy of her flat Montagne had a disconcerting
habit, when fulminating against the Boche, of pulling out a detonator from its packing of cotton wool and exhorting it to carry out his final curses.

“Some for one motive, some for another will help them to blow themselves up. You and I, because we hate them. I have hated Franco. And Petain. And the Catholics and monarchists who pervert
my general …”

Armande watched his eyes. They should have been burning, but they were cold, even a little hazy, at the bottom of the deep sockets.

“… But they were decent little hates—mere dislike, shall I say?—if I compare them to my hatred for this Jewish Agency. After Hitler and his crew are in hell, the Zionists
will be the only National Socialists left in the world.”

Armande’s acting broke down in indignation.

“That isn’t so,” she cried. “They are nationalist and they are socialist, I know. But you cannot call them Nazis. They have to be strong in order to create.”

“Strength through joy,” spat Montagne, “and the same pretty tactics. We were in their way, eh? Little people in their way!”

Armande had ruined her chance of discovering more. She was sure that he was not suspicious, but ordinary common sense would prevent him telling any more of his anti-Zionist intrigue to a person
who was not in sympathy. She led him gently through National Socialism into a discussion of Spanish politics.

There was now plenty to tell Guy Furney. She called him up. He asked her to lunch at a garden restaurant on the banks of the Nile, where the grilled pigeons were famous, and a table could be
discreetly arranged among shrubs at a distance from other guests, who, for the most part, were respectable Egyptians enjoying family parties. Armande decided to look the humble and admiring
employee in printed cotton. She had evolved an unconscious but consistent code for dealing with the quantity of free meals that came her way. If she was being entertained for herself, she did her
best to please and excite her host; if she was fed as an agent of H.M. Government, she took pains to appear inconspicuous.

“That’s a very clear story,” said Furney when she had made her report. “Now let us see what facts there are.” He smiled at her as if to disclaim any superior
intelligence. “We know (a) that Montagne blames the Jews for his misfortune. Personally I think that he should blame me or the French or this damned G.H.Q. which shifted me out of Beirut at
the beginning of the case. But there it is. (b) That all his fanaticism has been channelled into this personal grudge; in fact, that he’s running amok, (c) That, in contradiction to all this,
he is mixed up in an intrigue with Jews. Now it would all become much clearer if we knew what sort of Jews—Zionists, anti-Zionists, neutrals or just plain black market.”