From that point forward day merged with day and night with night to such an extent that time became fluid, distances illusory; we were moving from one dream to another, merging from one truth into another in a way that gave the lie to the banal chronology of Piers’ diary which tried to segment our lives in so untruthful a fashion. When one is fully extended by day and exhausted every evening one lives differently, without the weight of yesterday or tomorrow on one’s shoulders. I stored up simply a constellation of moments, a firework display of small but brilliant incidents which were like a set of coloured engravings of this great river with its moods and silences, its strange caprices and impulses. It was never still, and it compelled the imagination to follow its flight across the ancient land, as if it had been some marvellous steed running wild in the exuberance of youthful beauty. But it was sinister, too, and ruthless. Ask the huge crocodiles in the upper reaches! Here and there the hurrying water had carved up the soft banks, intruding on a nest of cobras and carrying them off, or else had invaded the shallow grave of a boatman buried, as they always were, on the tow-path they had so often trodden. A corpse whirling down the river, trailing its wrappings, as ancient as any mummy of the Pharaoh’s. Or else walking in the calm evening through a forest of tall supple date palms to a village where a quaint old lady sold us milk by the tin cup and where we took the early evening flights of turtle-dove which tried desperately to rise steeply enough to avoid our guns, but were pressed down low by a river wind. These little birds would be feathered in the evening by the Arabs and then cooked by Piers. I can recall so much, but cannot give the memories order and shape, so completely had the days fused together. It did not take us long to feel the imprint of this wild life without cares and preoccupations.
We let our beards grow. We did not change our clothes despite the well-meant offers to wash them on the part of our servants who were somewhat shocked at our unkemptness. Nothing mattered but this succession of marvellous days that flew by, bearing us on their backs, as the river water bore the Nasr. One day in the upper reaches we came upon immense flights of pelicans which lay in – droves, shoals, what shall I say? – upon the surface of the water and showed no alarm; only when we approached quite close they did get up, or half get up, screaming harshly and beating the water with their vast wings. To Piers’ utter fury and humiliation the Arab captain, without asking his permission, took up his charged gun which was lying, broken but loaded, on the hatch, and discharged it into the mass of birds, killing one outright. It upset us terribly – as if it had been an albatross; but the crew could not understand our shame and fury, and cheerfully tumbled overboard to retrieve it, the water being shallow and the day windless. It was quite an effort to get it aboard, and now the deed had been done I swallowed my anger and allowed my curiosity to get the better of me. It must have weighed about forty pounds, this opulent bird. The thick soft delicate plumage of the breast was milk white at the roots, but if you blew on it you found the top part tinged with a tinge of pink or rose colour. This shows up most beautifully when the bird rises on the wind and turns its breast slowly into the sun. It had a touching, ungainly beauty which made us regret even more the shot which had cost its life.
Before the Arabs should feather it – for they showed every sign of being prepared to eat it for dinner – Sylvie had it laid upon the hatch in the evening sunshine while she sketched it. But when dusk came it was surrendered to the cooks, and here Piers was sufficiently French to take an interest in their manner of dressing it. The meat was distressingly coarse and fibrous like old beef; but worst of all, it had an oily fishy flavour which made it most unpalatable, so we abandoned all hope of sharing in the repast. It must be said that the crew themselves showed every sign of enjoying it, greasy and fishy as the taste was. They made some attempt to burn out the fish smell by filling its stomach with live coals, but as far as I could see, without achieving anything very remarkable. But eat it they did, unto the last morsel. The Arabs, according to Piers, called this bird Gamal El Bahr which means River Camel – perhaps some vague association stirring between the hump of the camel as a place where water is stored and the pelican’s enormous shutter of a beak? Who can say?
Daily the Nile seemed to increase in grandeur and magnitude, and for a whole series of days we found our path running across something like an inland sea or delta, full of lovely tufted islands, some sinking and some emerging under the vibration of the waters. They had the lonely fragility of dreams in which one could only half believe. I could see now how it must be on the other great rivers of the world, the Yangtse or the Ganges or old Amazon. A whole world passing by in a kaleidoscope of colour, yet always changing, always impermanent. All day long this feast of colour, and then at night the heavens thick with brilliant stars like the loaded boughs of an almond in blossom. Standing on deck at night, listening to far-off hyenas barking and following some spot of light from a village, one drank in an immense peace and calm, feeling the old river stealing by beneath one, licking the prow of the ship, sliding beneath the dreams of the humble Arabs like a floor of glass.
So we came to the region which throws up a few riverside mountains, so pitted and hollowed by wind and sand that they have become the home of millions of birds. Here the number of cormorants and black Damietta duck was prodigious and beggared all description; every morning at dawn, with a tremendous hurrying of wings, they arrived in huge flights from the direction of the desert. They sounded like an approaching storm; then they settled with a thunderous clamour upon the mountain scalps from which they came down from time to time to dive for fish. Pigeons, hawks and swallows also abounded here. And here too we struck relatively low flying geese with hides so thick that it seemed quite impossible to hole them or bring them down. You could hear the smack of the shot like a drum on their feathers, but they did not even deign to break formation. I tried some ball on them, but always missed owing to the height and the lack of a choked duck-gun.
And then at night, anchored under these unusual cliffs with their sleeping bird populations, to see the white moonlight falling upon a wilderness of jewelled crags, touched in with ink-dark shadows of grottoes, chasms, caves. How small and frail was our light on the sleeping ship.
I must leave to Piers the detailed account of the journey in all its details; for somewhere among his affairs the old diary must still be knocking about with its long list of temples and towns, monuments and tombs. For my part I simply engulfed everything wolfishly, never even pausing to ask the name or the history of a site. I knew that we could look it all up later on if necessary. For me the raw experience was enough. Later of course I rather regretted my lack of documentation, for my memory was far from infallible and I tended to mix up places and times without discrimination. But Piers was indefatigable and spent a fair while every evening bringing his little book up to date while Sylvie slept with her arm thrown over her face to ward off the moonlight and I cleaned the guns or did our accounts.
When at long last we turned back for home we enjoyed a period of very favourable weather characterised by fair soft breezes and long calms, which enabled the sailors virtually to leave the Nasr to make her own way downstream with the current while they told stories and smoked all day. One of them, the eldest, was a sort of merry andrew and was not above dressing the part with a weird cap of jackal’s skin with many hanging tails and tassels. This individual seized hold, tambourine-wise, of an earthenware vessel covered at one end with a tightly stretched skin, and started to beat and thump on it like a drum. His fingers syncopated deftly while he launched into a monotonous air, a song at once repetitive and strangely rhythmical. At times another musician in the crew came to accompany him on a double flute, made of two long reeds, which uttered a sharp and plaintive note like a river bird. With this he improvised a lingering wavering cadenza to the original song, the audience meanwhile beating out the time with their palms and showing every mark of joy. One night, too, from a village quite near the point of our landing for the night, the peasants
were drawn by the sound of our water-music and the women came down to the river’s edge to dance for us – a magical, unforgettable sight under the moon.
So at last it came to an end this timeless journey into ancient Egypt; and one afternoon, listless as the calm itself, we drifted into Bulaq once more with only the current, steering our way through the various craft towards our berth where the stately Embassy kavasses waited in their regal uniforms like great ventripotent pashas for us to land. It was a tearful business saying goodbye to the Arab crew for we had become fast friends and hated to part from them. But there were papers to be filled in and signed, a manifest to initial, and various other small duties such as present-giving and tipping. All this to complete before we finally handed over the boat to the French Embassy again! But all formalities were complete by dusk and the three of us, silent and rather melancholy, climbed into Piers’ duty car and told the driver to take us out on the road to Alexandria.
The night was cold, and the stars were brilliant. Winter was on the way, and my thoughts turned towards the year’s end, for we had been granted a long leave for Christmas by our respective missions, and we had great hopes of spending it at Verfeuille together. I watched the glittering desert wheel past us as we sped on towards the sea; Sylvie drowsed in the crook of my arm while Piers sat beside the chauffeur in front in a somewhat Napoleonic attitude, head on his breast, dozing between military engagements, so to speak. Our headlights cut a long yellow path of light upon the dark macadam which here and there had been invaded by desert sand-drifts. We were so replete with this enriching adventure on the river! It had left us speechless with joyful fatigue.
The evening life of the summer capital was in full swing when we threaded our way into it, though by now the gay summer awnings and street-cafés had vanished at the first hint of autumn freshness. Piers had me dropped off at the Embassy where I lived in a small flat, and the chauffeur helped me carry my things up to my quarters. I had promised to join them later for dinner, though it was going to be somewhere late. I poked my head into the Chancery but everybody had gone home except Rycroft the messenger who was chaining up a bag for London. In the dispensary I found a note telling me about a patient of mine whose child was ill with measles, also a dinner plan left by the social secretary. H. E. was giving a dinnerparty in honour of a visiting dignitary from London and I was bidden to hold the leg of the table as part of my social duties. The bachelors and the third secretaries in a small mission get most of these corvées. However, that was not for a couple of days, and the measles could wait. I bathed and changed, and took the lift down to the garage in search of my own car. It bore me across town to the apartment of Piers – a sumptuous enough place to suit a career diplomat who had a fair amount of entertaining to do. Needless to say it was seldom very tidy in spite of his domestics; books and paintings lay about everywhere, and latterly even old missals and Byzantine parchments which he had borrowed from the Patriarchal Library with the consent of the secretary. It was into these tantalising works that my friend had plunged after his shower and a change of clothes. Dinner would be a little late, so after some hesitation I accepted a whisky and a cigarette with a grain of hashish loaded into its body by pinpoint. It was not enough to do more than soothe my weariness and bring me a quiet sedation which would stand me in good stead when at last I got to bed.
“Piers, where are you now with Akkad’s little initiation? I feel I have learned all I will ever learn.”
“It’s hard to disentangle,” he admitted softly, “but only because the traces have been covered over by the wicked invective and propaganda of the Church Fathers, who had every interest in representing the gnostics as fostering obscene rites in their religious ceremonies. But this belief throws into relief every form of heresy, every form of chivalrous dissent from the great lie which the Church would have us live by. You will find little fragments of this basic refusal to sign the confession (to use modern Russian terms) in so many places that it is quite bewildering – sometimes in quarters not specifically devoted to gnostic beliefs. At home in Provence of course the cathars have always been self-elected and self-created gnostics. But what about the Courts of Love and their gradual extinction? The love the troubadours extolled made orthodoxy very thoughtful – in particular because it posited a new freedom for the woman, and a new role as Muse and refiner of the coarser male spirit. This was not to be relished by people who felt happier within the iron truss of the Inquisition … O I can’t tell you how my eyes have been opened, and how grateful I am to Akkad. I’ve hit bedrock with this system, and I feel I shall go to the end of it, I feel it.”
“Tomorrow I am going to the scent bazaar,” said Sylvie in order to shut him up and change the subject which was for her both boring and somewhat frightening. She knew that her brother was capable of any quixotry, any excess.
There matters stood. The season dragged on, deepening towards the winter and our departure, which lent an air of pleasant expectation to things. The diplomatic winter season of balls and dinner parties became almost pleasurable with the knowledge that soon we should be free of them for several weeks, and back once more in France. Toby had already gone back to Oxford for a term and Sabine had characteristically disappeared again. Then there came a completely unexpected blow for Piers in connection with our gnostic enterprise. It fell out like this. It was our habit about twice a week to stroll down the Hellenic end of the town to where the barber of Akkad had his gorgeous emporium – where ladies and gentlemen alike were barbered and scented. Here one was rather coddled and made much of, coffee and pipes were provided, and such newspapers as had arrived from Europe by seamail. At a pinch one could devour a cake while one was being expertly barbered. At any rate Piers was a frequent visitor. One day he picked up an old magazine in the shop and propped it on his knee to read while his hair was being trimmed. He came upon an article about hoaxes and frauds and sharp practice in general in Egypt, and among the various types of criminals of this kind – card sharpers, forgers, white-slavers and so on – he was surprised and chilled to find described in great detail the practice of supposed religious initiations which had been mounted by criminals wishing to take advantage of gullible tourists. The various steps were carefully described, beginning with the partnership in a secret society, of which there were many hundreds in Egypt (all false according to the journalist); then the attendance at a ceremony of initiation: finally … but Piers read no further. His heart beat so fast that he felt almost suffocated. The astonished barber had to surrender his client half-shaved.
Piers took up the phone to ring Akkad’s office only to find out that he was away for a few days and would not be available until the weekend. It would not be possible to describe the state of confusion and distress into which the article pushed him. To make matters worse, among the illustrations was a picture of the ceremony (identical to the one we had attended) in the Abu Manouf mosque, over which Akkad was presiding with an air of manifest deceit and yet imperturbably – or so it seemed to the distracted eye of Piers. He did not know what to do, where to turn. His whole world seemed to have turned turtle. He took the details of the publication and placed an order for a copy with his newsagent on the way home. His brain was really spinning, and he felt on the point of collapse – so deep had been his investment in this whole business of Akkad’s, so blind his belief in what he had been told. Could it all have been a fake?
I came into the flat after lunch to find him lying spread-eagled on the sofa with his face in his arms, silent and pale. He looked like a man with a high temperature, and I irritated him by trying to take his pulse. But he was wounded and distraught and accepted a whisky which he drank with a trembling hand and a vague and absent-minded stare – his whole thought was fixed upon this momentous, and to him terrible, story which threw into doubt the honesty of Akkad’s actions and the bona fides of the sect. My alarm was so marked that at last he stirred himself to stand up and tell me the story, holding out the offending magazine in order to let me see
the telltale illustrations. “I’ve ordered my own copy,” he said sadly. “I intend to face Akkad with it. I’ll have to give this one back to Fahem.”
He groaned and slumped forward on the couch, cupping his chin in his hands. I read the article through thoughtfully. It went as far as suggesting that this form of cheat had originally been organised for the American tourist industry, but that the original organisers had found that not only the Americans were superstitious: from all over the Middle Orient believers came to be “initiated” as well as from Egypt itself. … It is difficult to describe the mixture of feelings I experienced as I read all this; in part amusement, in part relief, and in part a base desire to say “I told you so,” though of course I had said nothing at all, nor cast any doubt upon the proceedings. In fact I had been as deeply disturbed and fructified by them as had been the others. And now the whole thing was called into question. … Piers had tears in his eyes as he said: “What do you make of it?” I shrugged my shoulders and sat down soberly. “We have been hoaxed, that’s all. At least Akkad did not charge us anything for the experience.”
“I suppose he thought it was funny,” said Piers angrily, striking his knee with his clenched fist. “I have a good mind to challenge him to a duel – to send him my seconds.”
The Avignon Quintet Page 16