by Norman Lewis
A third servant, ebony-faced, in blue and gold livery stood like a graven image, holding a silver platter at our side. This held iced and perfumed squares of cambric, and between sips of mint tea, the Bey picked one up in his tapered, waxen fingers, pressed it to his lips and let it fall on the ground. I followed suit. The Bey sat with his back to the opening of the bower on a scape of lawns and flowering trees, and beyond the janissary in his braided gilet and tasselled cap, with his scimitar resting on his shoulder, a capering juggler, brought to entertain us, played on a pipe held in one hand and threw balls into the air and caught them with the other.
The Bey said, ‘We are not prepared to surrender our country to socialism. Instead, we wish to become part of the British Empire.’
‘What was it like?’ Leopold asked.
‘Like a film set.’
‘How was the palace?’
‘I didn’t go inside. We stayed in the garden.’
‘So what does the Bey want, then?’
‘He wants us to take over Tunisia. We’re going to win the war, he says, and he’d like his country to be in the Empire.’
Leopold let out a howl of delight. He danced all round the office, then opened the door and looked down the passage to satisfy himself that nobody was within earshot. ‘Tell me about this man. Are you sure he’s right in the head?’
‘The Bey’s nobody’s fool, and he knows what’s happening. For example he knows all about the Sicilian thing, including the date.’
‘I don’t even know that.’
‘It’s all set for the second week in July.’
‘Christ,’ Leopold said. ‘We’ve really hit on something this time.’
‘And not only that. He’s in touch with the Sicilian separatists in this town. They don’t want to stay with Italy, but they’re ready to fight for the old Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. They’d turn the island over to us and ask to become a protectorate.’
Leopold shook his head. ‘It’s getting too big for us now. We can’t handle it. As soon as a word of this gets out they’ll take it away from us. We’ll have had it.’
I told him that I wasn’t altogether sure of that. For reasons that still remained a mystery to me, the Bey had insisted that he was not prepared at this stage to discuss his plans with anyone but myself. I could only suppose he was under some terrific misapprehension about a powerful agent of Intelligence Service britannique sheltering behind the stripes of an FS sergeant.
He thought about this and agreed that it might be the case. In a burst of renewed optimism he decided that we all might come out of this with emergency commissions. ‘So how’s it been left?’ he asked.
‘There’s to be another meeting this day next week. If we show interest he’ll be ready with concrete proposals.’
‘What are we going to do about Merrylees?’ Leopold asked.
I asked him what he suggested, and he said it was essential to report the meeting that had taken place to cover us in case the whole thing blew up in our face. We had to find some way of playing it down, he thought — a sort of casual mention slipped into the body of the main report, that with luck might be overlooked. It was lucky that Merrylees had been out of circulation for a couple of days, giving out that he was ill. It might make him all the less likely to be able to concentrate.
Between us it was arranged that I should produce a voluminous and largely nonsensical report, stuffed with the meaningless statistics of which Merrylees was especially fond, and that among this a single vaguely worded sentence would refer to the visit to the Bey. At this point I asked for an outright assurance from Leopold that he had had no previous knowledge of this affair, and he used some sort of Sephardic oath to swear he hadn’t.
I was left with an unsolved mystery. For an instant I was tempted to accept the presence in the Corps of some previously unsuspected rationality. Could it possibly be that the visits so long ago to the War Office, and the captain in the Mayfair flat, had led in the end through the long odyssey of stultification at Omagh, Winchester, Matlock and the coal-tips of Ellesmere Port to the palace of Kassar Said?
The credulous moment evaporated. I had every reason to know that in the Intelligence Corps there was no divinity that shaped our ends, no unseen but watchful eye, no enduring memory for its sons. Muddle ruled us. We were lost in the files, sent to the wrong country, inevitably innocent of what we would encounter when we got there. I came to the conclusion that the most likely solution to this riddle was that I had been chosen to play a part in a crafty game permitting the Army to reap what benefit it could from a potentially embarrassing overture, while not appearing to be involved. For a general to have talked to the Bey might have been a dangerous matter, a motive for recrimination between allies, even scandal. A sergeant counted for nothing. He could be instantly repudiated, explained away as having interfered without authorization in what did not concern him. The more I thought about this the less I could believe that it was likely to end well.
Collapsing confidence sent me back to Leopold for reassurances. ‘I don’t want to put myself in a position where I could be thrown to the lions for free-lancing,’ I explained. Leopold told me to leave it to him. He’d make absolutely sure that I was covered in the report. Some way had to be found of playing it down, he said, or Merrylees would be sure to wreck everything. ‘Just suppose he doesn’t pick it up,’ I said. ‘What are we going to tell the Bey? That the British are interested? How can we do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but we’ll think of something by next week.’
This was a Tuesday, and the weekly report to which we were all supposed to contribute something went in to Merrylees next morning. On the rare occasions when an item took his eye, he might send for the author of the information and ask a few desultory questions. The report was put together by Leopold and what usually worried Merrylees was its lack of style, but apart from a little chiselling away at the grammar and punctuation, it normally went through untouched, to be typed out in final form by the section clerk for presentation to the G2. No more, and no less, Leopold found out, had happened in this case.
Some time on Wednesday afternoon Merrylees sent for the couple who looked after us, and after a few words to them in Latin — which he assured Leopold that as Italians they understood perfectly — he set them to work with brooms, mops and pails to clean his office up. This, with the furniture polishing that followed, occupied the rest of their afternoon and part of the evening, in consequence of which they were unable to cook the evening meal. As soon as Merrylees had dismissed the Italians, his driver-batman was called on to press his uniform and polish his equipment. This signified to us that the FSO proposed to visit GHQ for once, and hand the report in in person. It was something that happened on average once a month. Otherwise Leopold deputized for him.
Next morning, Thursday, before leaving for GHQ with the report, Merrylees paraded the section for a morning meeting. With most sections this was a daily routine, but with us it had only happened four or five times since the section had been formed. We filed into the office and lined up, and Merrylees watched us intently with a tiny glint of canine teeth in the fixed grin we had come to regard as a warning of strain. The office was usually in a mess, and anyone who called in to see the FSO could expect to find him rummaging through the papers strewn over his desk, and piled on the floor. Now, wherever we looked, there were empty, polished surfaces. The files were no longer in sight, the notices had been removed from the notice board, and the in-and-out trays had gone. In their place on the desk-top stood two toy-soldiers in uniforms of the last century, and the framed portrait of an elderly woman.
Captain Merrylees got up, came round the desk and walked towards us. He walked slowly down our line, stopping in front of each man for a prolonged scrutiny of his face. The muscles round his mouth seemed to have twisted it into a kind of cramp over which he had no control. There was anger in his expression but also a kind of bewilderment, and when his lips moved as we stood facing each othe
r and he seemed about to speak, I half-expected him to ask the question, ‘Who are you? Do I know you?’ Leopold at attention, and stick under his arm, watched from beside the desk, and as Merrylees moved on we exchanged a quick, puzzled glance. A moment later this eerie episode was at an end, without a word having been spoken. Leopold asked for permission to dismiss, and we filed out.
The rest of Thursday and Friday passed without incident. Our bilingual senior sergeant, who was the only member of the section Merrylees showed any liking for, saw him on several occasions and reported him as not only calm but unusually cheerful. The Italian servant was delighted to receive a substantial tip for the extra work he and his wife had done, and showed his appreciation by presenting Merrylees with a splendid bouquet which was now in a vase on Merrylees’ desk, along with the two toy soldiers and the portrait.
On Saturday evening I found Mélia in the Chat Qui Rit, attended by one of the Jewish sisters called Rebka, who was seated at his table strumming a bandurria. As I came in she got up, whispering as she passed me, ‘Es un señor muy grande — muy importante.’
I sat down with Mélia, who wanted to know if there was any news, and when I said there was not he asked if I was hopeful as to the way things were progressing.
To this I replied that I was as much in the dark as he was, and that we should have to be patient until Tuesday, when there should be something to report. This seemed the moment to tackle him on the subject of my doubts, and I told him I felt disinclined to involve myself any further unless it could be explained why I should have been singled out for the approach.
‘On Tuesday,’ he said, ‘you will be seeing His Highness again. If you ask him, I’m sure he will tell you. Why should he not?’
The Jewish girl came with her bandurria and sang cante flamenco to us, and we sat drinking and listening to the music for an hour or so, and then I saw Leopold beckoning to me in the doorway of the café. I went out, overpowered suddenly by a tremendous premonition.
‘Nice night,’ Leopold said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
We strolled down to the water’s edge. Suddenly Tunis had come to life again with a fresh movement of ships, and a few that had not been squeezed into the main harbour had been sent to La Goulette. By daylight they seemed little better than hulks with the paintwork everywhere bubbling over eruptions of rust. Night in Tunis was kind to them, and at a distance they could have been ocean-going liners with all the passengers asleep in their cabins. ‘Have to take a look over them in the morning,’ Leopold said, but something in his voice warned me that this was no more than a private thought spoken aloud, from which I should have been excluded.
Everything in Leopold’s manner was slightly abnormal. Above all, whether or not he really had anything to say, he was a man who fought shy of silence. We walked on a few more yards under the shapes of the ships, and suddenly — speaking as if something has just occurred to him — he said, ‘Things all right with you, then?’ Why the solicitude? I wondered, beginning to understand that something had gone wrong.
‘Things are all right with me, but what’s happened?’ I asked.
‘You’ve been posted,’ Leopold said.
‘Couldn’t you have told me before?’ I said. By this time I already knew what was coming.
‘I only just heard myself. It was written on a slip of paper Merrylees handed to me. That was all. Not a word out of him.’
‘What’s it all mean?’ I asked. ‘Is this the high jump — or just another muddle?’
‘There’s no way of knowing. I’m in the dark as much as you are.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘What’s to stop you? But it won’t do you any good. Anyway, what have you got to worry about? It’s a wonderful let-out for you. We’re going to be stuck here for the rest of the war. You’ll be where the action is. It’ll be like starting all over again. I only wish I were in your shoes.’
‘What section is it?’
‘A new one. One-o-one. Coming up from Algiers.’
‘And going to Sicily?’
‘Where else? It looks like your friend the Bey was right.’
‘What’s the objection to my waiting for them here?’
‘Because it’s not the way the Army works. You have to go all the way to Algiers and come all the way back again.’
‘Are you going to do anything about the Bey?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not in a position to.’
‘If he knows about the invasion, just about everybody else does. Even if we don’t want him in the Empire, surely that’s something to worry about.’
‘Fuck the Bey, and fuck the Empire,’ Leopold said. ‘The report went in, and that’s the end of it, so far as I am concerned. What more do you expect me to do?’
I watched him go, taken by surprise suddenly by the realization that it would come as a wrench to leave this place. Suddenly I admitted to myself, with shame — as if to a weakness — that La Goulette in its sly and diffident fashion had won me over. And more than that, for now, late in the day, I accepted that if there were a place in which to take refuge, in which to go to earth while the spirit renewed itself, and the eye corrected its vision, this was it.’
Calmly and surreptitiously La Goulette turned its back on the world. The drums thudded across the pink waters of the lake but it might have been for a dance. When the planes took off at El Ariano the flamingos stood up in our shallow lagoon, flapped their wings and skipped defiantly into the air, and that was about as much as we heard or saw of the war. People here, whatever their race, were linked together by a kind of low key, unselfconscious amity. The Jews played their bandurrias at Arab weddings, and the Arabs sat down to eat at the tables of the Jews. Living in La Goulette was like breathing in the smoke of opium that slowed the movements, pacified the thoughts and replaced the noxious habit of action with a taste of introspection. All the Algerians had found reason for hating someone, but in reality Algeria was Europe. Here in La Goulette the East began. The Tunisians were the calmest of the Arabs, ready on the slightest pretext to embrace a stranger in an unemotional way. For me it had been the best of both the Eastern and Western worlds, remote yet not cut off, and the lines of communication between La Goulette and home remained intact. In the end the letters would have arrived with an explanation of why they had been so long delayed. Utter silence awaited in Sicily. Silence, and a long banishment.
Leopold’s footsteps had died away. The time had come to take leave of my friends in the Chat Qui Rit, and then I saw the man coming with his ladder to light up the mosque ready for the call to prayer, one of the many small routine entertainments that La Goulette offered.
No one here, except for the Jewesses in making their music, did anything well, and this man’s inefficiency never failed to enchant me. He carried a ladder with several rungs missing, stood it against the mosque’s wall, climbed up and began to twist wires together. The fishermen, still at the quayside, who seldom caught a fish by day, let alone by night, turned to watch the performance. A dozen or so lights came on, then, in a shower of sparks and a wisp of smoke, went out again, while on the ladder the electrician had done something to the wiring of the public address system over which the call to prayer would be made. We all waited and in a moment the call began. Through faults in the system I had never known the affirmation of the Muslim faith to be given in its entirety, but at least hitherto it had got as far as ‘There is no God, but God’. This time it spluttered into silence after the atheistic declaration, ‘There is no God —.’ Beliefs were held lightly in La Goulette and fanaticism unknown. Everyone, including the electrician, laughed. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘they will deliver the new transformer at last. Come back tomorrow, sir, and you will see the whole mosque lit up as never before, and for once not a single word of the call to prayer will be lost.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I told him, ‘Destiny had decided that I shall not be here, but be sure I’ll be with you in the spirit.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
; I LEFT LA GOULETTE at the end of June, joined the new section in Algiers, and arrived with it back in Tunisia in the middle of July. The rest of that month was spent in a field hospital at Sousse with malaria. In this way I missed the Sicilian invasion, being, as things turned out, reserved for the later one of the Italian mainland. In August, shortly before this took place, shuttling back once again to Algiers, I found an opportunity to call on my old friends at La Goulette. They were without an FSO following a dramatic episode in the previous week, when Merrylees had called another of his surprise morning parades which proved to be the last. Marching into the office my former comrades had found Merrylees waiting for them. Apart from his well-polished Sam Browne and his boots he was stark naked, and he held his pistol in his hand. He proposed, he said, to shoot one of them and then himself. Leopold, who had caught a glimpse of him preparing for the meeting and suspected that something of the kind was about to happen, had slipped away to telephone, and within minutes a medical officer arrived, accompanied by an infantryman with a rifle, and Merrylees was persuaded to dress and go with them. Thus ended his military career.
On 9 September 1943 I landed with the Italian invasion force at Paestum, south of Salerno, there finding myself involved largely as a spectator in a long-drawn-out, confused and untidy battle, ending for me in the first week in October with the occupation of Naples.
No other experience of the war made as deep an impression upon me as the first days spent in this devastated city in which so many people dragged out an existence amid the remnants of modern urban surroundings, comparable perhaps to that of the pre-Middle Ages. There was a curious deadly matter-of-factness in the air. Grief had worn itself out, to be replaced by a kind of sullen resignation, and the pressures of utter necessity had enforced the suspension of many restraints. Thus in the municipal offices of Torre del Greco, where queues had once formed at counters under notices about the municipal taxes, rows of blank-faced housewives waited in the hope, there and then, in the most public of places, to prostitute themselves for army rations of corned beef and Spam. Down at the water’s edge they were experimenting with weird machinery in an attempt to distil drinking water from the sea, and gnawing at raw limpets scraped from the rocks, while other citizens grubbed for edible roots in the parks, and bombed-out families harnessed to carts piled with their possessions poked among the ruins in search of shelter. These people were bowed and bent like troglodytes, silent and expressionless, as though they had just emerged from holes into which they would soon creep back again.