Arabesque (34 page)

“When will you understand that we have law? I am not the servant of the British Government. I am the servant of your government, of our government. We are the representatives of the
living, and of the dead who longed to see us here. And Eretz Israel is ours. We have won it by our work, our blood, our cunning, and with the friendship of the British. You—where were you
when I was dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv? Yes, I dancing—for joy that at last we had founded our city. The police whom you kill, I kissed that day. I cannot forget it. I hate them as you
do. But I cannot forget it. When will you understand that you have your leaders, freely elected? When will you understand that we know all you know, feel all that you feel? You talk of freedom and
democracy. But you do not know what they mean. The people can have no freedom if their will is not obeyed. Obey your government, your own Jewish Government. And if still you do not understand, then
remember what you heard as children: You shall not separate yourselves from your people.”

“We do obey,” said the leader, impressed to the point of argument. “But your methods are futile and useless. We only do for you what you dare not do for yourselves.”

“Dare not? And with ten thousand trained men instead of your handful of hysterical, suicidal … Bah! And with our own money! Where did that come from?” asked Abu Tisein, pointing
to the case of bank notes.

“I do not care where it came from. I shall use it in our fight for freedom.”

“Your fight!” cried David Nachmias ironically. “Your little fight, when all the power of Jew and Gentile is strained to the limit against the greatest enemy our race ever had!
What do you know? What do you care? For you Hitler and the British are all one. Have none of you lost parents, wives, children? Have none of you seen what I have seen”

“And what have you seen, safe here in Palestine?” cried the boy. “My father was killed. My mother was killed. Taken away by police like these police!”

“Then let us tell you how to take revenge. Revenge is not this way. Look, boy! There is that money, and you are told not to care where it has come from. Can you not see that you are mad
not to listen to us who know? That money—it could be from the teeth of your mother.”

The boy jumped up. He was shorter and slighter than he had seemed at the table. He waved his pistol, pointing it wildly at himself, at enemies imaginary, real; shouting defiance and misery in
the raucous Hebrew of his half-broken voice. His rancour seemed to find its outlet in the compassionate face of David Nachmias. He gesticulated towards him with wild reproaches, the pistol in his
hand a power, a talisman against further hurt and further pity. It went off.

Prayle and Fairfather jumped forward to catch Abu Tisein’s body, and were stopped short by guns jammed hard into their stomachs. The boy looked at the blood with timid curiosity; then
raised his eyes, flashing. They could see him forcing pride into his eyes. The leader took away his pistol, and wiped it carefully; he closed Abu Tisein’s hand around the butt, and placed his
limp finger within the trigger guard.

Dion Prayle assumed that he and Fairfather would be the next. With his hands up he stood there, to his astonishment, thinking Prayle, observer, watched events happening to Prayle, alien body.
The pair of eyes that faced him were completely expressionless, neither hard, nor fanatical, nor pitying. No British soldier had eyes like those. The man was an automaton, obeying, and sacrificing
all his emotions for the satisfaction of obedience. The best chance for Prayle, body, was to stand still. Commandos might have some trick for being quicker than the human finger, but a surer safety
lay in those political intangibles. Dion looked across at the man opposite Fairfather. That one was more human; he seemed pleased to have something better to do than scratch himself.

The red and white headcloth gave out its orders. Prayle strained his intelligence to guess the meaning of the Hebrew from its faint resemblance to Arabic. Then the man spoke in English.

“Captain Fairfather, I shall lock you both in this hut while we go. I hope you will realise that we too can be merciful to our enemies, and that you will be grateful.”

“If you think I’m not going to try to bring you to justice for these bloody murders …” stormed Fairfather.

“Captain, I am sure you will try. But what you British believe I do not care. And what the Jews believe—you will see.”

“They’ll believe anything!” Fairfather exclaimed contemptuously.

“Yes,” said the man, “a people in utter misery will believe anything. I am now going to cover you myself, while my friends take away the bodies. One against two—so if you
make the slightest movement I shall shoot.”

His three companions picked up the body of Abu Tisein, carefully resting on his chest the hand that held the pistol, and carried it out. Then they returned for Montagne.

“Keep looking straight to your front,” ordered the leader. “I am now going to the door, but I can kill you just as easily from behind. When you hear the door shut and locked,
you may move. Try the windows, if you like, but they are steel and rusted up.”

He closed the suitcase, picked it up and passed out of their field of vision. They heard the clicks of latch and lock. The engine of the lorry roared.

Prayle put down his hands, and felt in his pocket.

“Cigarette?” he said, offering his case to Fairfather.

“Thank you, Dion.”

They lit up.

“That’s better,” said Fairfather. “I was feeling slightly sick.”

“So did I when they shot Montagne. After that—well, it was all a solid piece.”

“Poor David! Poor, dear David!”

“Do you think the little bastard meant to shoot him?”

“Dion, I don’t know.
I didn’t mean it
—it’s what they all say from Hitler to some moron who waves a pistol at his girlfriend. God, how David let ’em
have it!”

“Not a man to be angry.”

“Never saw him angry before.”

“I’ve got the number of the lorry.”

“It’s quite certainly a different one now,” said Laurence.

“Yes. Efficiency on the scale of modern industry. Shall we have a bang at the door, bo? I think he was right about those windows.”

“Let’s swing the table at it, and save my aged shoulder.”

The door gave at their second charge. They were outside in the cool darkness of the Galilee hills. There were no sounds but the evening breeze stirring the scrub, and the munching of
Montagne’s donkey in the deserted garden.

“I am leaving Field Security,” he wrote. “Open for business shortly at G.H.Q.”

It meant months of Dion—no more fantastic, unexpected evenings splitting the bearable continuity of life into meaningless sections of before and after; no more separations to be followed
by those damnable days when Armande felt that he had vanished, when she was convinced that his life or health was in danger, when she was terrified by the sudden mobility of his army life. Her
obsession was that he might be posted to India. She feared India for its distance, for his possible infidelities.

At G.H.Q. All his free hours for her. She longed for him so, for again loneliness threatened her in this world of men. The government flat would be hers for another month, and then the present
job was over. Guy Furney’s manner had been abrupt. He told her that Montagne had disappeared and was presumed dead.

She put the precious letter in her bag, and went out, idly and happily, into the streets of Cairo. In the shops the display of intimate garments and summer frocks was alluring, though too
expensive for any but Egyptians. She needed nothing and reminded herself, when she hesitated before an occasional temptation, that she was wondering what Dion would think of her choice.

She wandered into that garden café upon which she had looked down during her first morning in Cairo, where, weeks later, she had taken her decision to dance with Floarea. Over
strawberries and cream she considered and tried to plan the months ahead with Dion. Her mood changed to severe responsibility.

No longer could this affair be passed off to conscience as a lovely and unreal ecstasy, of no importance to any but the two dreamers. It had to be preserved. That necessity involved, at once,
all the threads that bound her as a woman to everyone she thought about, loved or tolerated. Threads binding Dion existed too, though he was pleased to believe that they did not. Yet it was Dion
who insisted that John should be told.

John need not exactly be told in so many words; she would just indicate that she was worried whether the profounder motives for their union were any longer valid, and leave him to read between
the lines. The hint, without alarming him into despair, would start him wondering if after the war their marriage should continue, hoping that it could, and slowly realising that it could not.

In the afternoon, she composed an evasive letter which would reveal to John her disturbed emotions. There were certain phrases that she knew he would take as danger signals; in the fogotten days
of 1940, when she wrote from Paris and Beirut, those phrases, which then implied nothing more than temporary depression, had never failed to arouse his anxiety. She determined to keep the letter a
day or two for cool revision. Two hours later, in a panic lest she should tear it up, she posted it by air mail.

A week passed slowly for she was always expecting Dion. Correspondence from the military to a civilian, with the Middle East, travelled by devious routes of its own and remained in pigeonholes
under the disapproving eyes of censors or sorting clerks.

When at last he appeared, it was at a reasonable hour, after lunch, in the heat of the day. He was neat, polished and cool as if he had been on his way to an interview with a general. She would
have preferred him to show his longing by bursting in on her, dusty and unshaven from the road, but her beloved was still sensitive about his personal appearance. As if it mattered! She teased and
adored him for his childishness until he revealed, as well she knew, that his passionate impatience was satisfying as her own. Armande rejoiced in the incontinence and beauty of her naked body,
caressed, while her lover of a moment since lay still, by the warm wind that blew through the shutters of the flat.

Then she touched his face with her fingers, feeling for imaginary differences that the eyes could not detect.

“You’ve been worrying, beloved,” she said. “What really has brought you down to Egypt?”

“Shipped down river for promotion,” he answered lazily.

“But how splendid! A major?”

“A genuine phoney major?”

“My clever love! How did you do it?”

“Got the sack.”

“Darling, don’t be discreet. Tell me!”

“Just usual army practice. Man embarrasses us. Must be a clever chap to do that, but don’t want him here. How shall we get rid of him Well, sir, why not promote the
bastard?”

“Dion!”

“Best racket in the British Army, my soul. I supplies just as many good officers as bad ones. Can’t say that of any other system.”

“Talk to me properly. Tell me!”

“How much have you heard?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just Guy Furney being hollow and superior. He said that you had all done a good job and that Montagne was presumed dead.”

“Presumed?” he exclaimed, sitting up and turning round to her. “Did Furney say that?”

“That or some other word.”

“He couldn’t be deader. And they know it. Presumed! Just because his body hasn’t turned up! Furney had better stop laughing at his palace eunuchs. It’s taken them four
years of war to get his off, but they’ve done it!”

“Dion, you’re disgusting.”

“Kensington,” he murmured.

“If you ever say that to me again, I’ll—I’ll bite you.”

“What would Ma think if she saw you in that condition?”

“She’s the only person who has, Dion. And …”

“Ow! You beastly little foreigner!”

“And black-listed. And vicious. And in love. Put me inside under 18 B, my Dion, my darling!”

When the sun had gone down behind the tall blocks in the centre of Cairo, and the cool, green scent from the shadowed backwaters of the Nile began to drift through the eastern windows of the
flat, Dion wandered out of the bedroom and mixed two long drinks from the plentiful remains of the departmental stock of liquor. When he came back, Armande was sitting before her mirror, her black
hair demurely coiled, her body innocent and hieratic in a crimson and gold Bakhara dressing gown.

“Dion, now tell me all of what happened,” she said.

“I was just going to tell you when you interrupted.”

“You—!”

“Now be a good girl, and drink your medicine.”

He began to tell the story. Armande linked her arm in his, and led him into the living-room. She sat opposite him, her love of his mouth and of every twisted phrase overwhelming her
interest.

At the death of Abu Tisein she exclaimed in pity, but it was a moment before her preoccupation with the fate of Dion would let her remember; then she had nothing but sorrow for the end of such
robust vitality. She thought of him as he was in Beirut, with Madame. That poor woman! It might so easily have been Dion and not David Nachmias. Poor, broken woman! She must write.

“And so they just told us to bust the door down when we felt like hopping it,” he ended. “And then, Armande, we found, thank God, that they had put Laurence’s motorcycle
out of action! So we walked to Safad police station and stirred up the cops.”

“David Nachmias!” she sighed. “Whatever he was—what a loss to them all in Palestine!”

“The cops found him next morning at Tiberias in his own car. Hand stiff round the gun. And no fingerprints but his own on the steering wheel. Ingenious devils—must have towed him
there.”

“But why bother when you knew the truth?”

“Convention, darling. Seems to be generally accepted in the Holy Land that Jews never kill Jews. They are found to have bumped themselves off.”

“Nobody who knew Abu Tisein could ever believe he killed himself,” she said.