The Brides of Solomon

by Geoffrey Household

  Then John Douaihy arrived. Helena led him to our room so that I might know who had come and that he was unaccompanied. I assure you that he was telling Helena she should not remain alone in the house.

  ‘God grant you more brains in your fat head, O my father!’ I said to him from under the bed.

  I could only see him from feet to knees. They trembled like those of a Syrian dancing girl. I poked out my head and told him not to be a fool.

  ‘But you killed Zeid,’ he stammered.

  They are a feminine folk, the Arabs. After a while they are taken in by their own lies. By now John Douaihy himself had begun to believe I might be mad—it is possible that he had not forgiven me the salad—and if Helena had not laughed at him I think he would have backed out of the room. To be giggled over by a daughter—there’s nothing like that for bringing a man back to common sense.

  Yes. I had killed Zeid, and I told him why. He had only time to lean down—for I was still under the bed—and take my hand between his and promise to tell his people that it was shameful to hunt a citizen of Ferjeyn, whether mad or not, and that they must not shoot so long as my rifle was slung. And then the gendarmerie were at the door.

  There were two of them. They came with the news that I must be lying up close to or on our mountain. The goatherds of the Jebel Sinjar had seen a man with a rifle hiding among the rocks at dusk and looking down into the saddle between the main range and the hill of the Christians. It was true that for a few minutes I had been careless. But the first sight of Ferjeyn pastures was full of emotion.

  All the doors from the guest-hall were open. In so fresh and empty and windswept a house the gendarmes could see at once I was not there. And both Helena and her father were calm. John Douaihy, from the moment of the knock on the door, had become the dignified headman of his commune. In spite of his appearance the old owl could surrender himself to his feelings like a child. During a mere five minutes he had been overcome by the demands of terror, of affection, and now of duty. He led the gendarmes away. As a father-in-law he was worth many more civilised. I should like to hold his hand again.

  I was encircled, M. le Consul. And no means of breaking through. Two Syrian troopers were not much of a force against a sergeant-major, but what about my fellow-townsmen and, beyond them, the Moslems of the plain? I had no wish to start a battle with either. It looked as if I had only two alternatives: to give myself up or to remain in the house until the search for me slackened. But the latter was impossible. The oldest of my boys was only seven. At that age children can act a part for a few hours, but not day after day.

  The tactical position was simple enough even for a gendarme. There were a dozen routes by which I could leave my house, but if I went up I must somewhere cross the pastures on top of the hill; and if I went down I must go through Ferjeyn. So I knew more or less where the pickets would be. True, they were expecting my arrival, whereas I was trying to get away. But that made no difference.

  I asked Helena to go out at dusk and try to report to me where the gendarmes were and what was the organisation of the people of Ferjeyn. All the same, I had not much confidence. She would be closely watched for her own safety, or because it might be thought that she was trying to find me.

  ‘That is what I should do,’ she cried. ‘Nothing could keep me from going to find my husband.’

  ‘But he is difficult to find,’ I laughed. ‘Since he ran away from you, he has learned too much from bad characters.’

  ‘You would send me a message,’ she said.

  Well, there, out of our pleasantries, leaped the scheme. It was ready-made. It only needed details to be filled in by a woman’s wit and a soldier’s experience.

  A basket of food to be left out for me. Excellent! Where to leave it? But the answer springs to the lips. Where there was a clear field of fire, so that the gendarmes could settle down on a rock overlooking the basket, and be confident. Then the men of Ferjeyn had to be considered. They must be decoyed away from the route I would take back to the Jebel Sinjar.

  It was easy. There was a little glade on the south-western slope of the mountain, commanded by the necessary rock. It was a spot well-known to us, where we used to go in the heat of summer, before the babies could walk, and let them crawl on the grass. Now, if I were coming from the Jebel I should traverse the southern slopes of our mountain and reach that glade without ever crossing the pastures. And any man of Ferjeyn would be sure of it. So there was no need for any cordon across the top.

  Helena made up a basket of food, and pretended to be taking it up the mountain to her uncle. Boulos was really there, hoping, I am sure, to warn me off if he could; it was not likely that John would have had a chance to speak with him yet. First, she had to find the gendarmes and act suspiciously and draw their attention. Then she must make them follow her, and pretend not to be aware of it. That was difficult—impossible if she had not been acting in character. But all Ferjeyn knew what she was. If a starving husband had managed to let her know he needed food, she would have blindly taken it to him, though he were armed and mad and had tried to kill her.

  She returned at the beginning of the night. Meanwhile the children had come home and were keeping guard—all but the youngest who was under the bed with me. She had no doubt that she had been followed. The gendarme was clumsy when sneaking through the woods on foot.

  I said my farewells, and plunged into a night that was also of the spirit. As I have said, I planned to go back to the Yezidis. The route, the people, the hiding-places, I had worked them all out. A lot of fuss about nothing. Such planning was against my principles. I should have known better.

  On the track between my house and the pastures there should be a picket. Even if I were expected elsewhere, that was an elementary precaution to take for the safety of my wife and children. I was glad to find three of my fellow-townsmen alert and in the position I would have chosen for them myself. It gave me confidence that Helena was always in their thoughts. With all its faults, it was a gallant little town, my Ferjeyn. The three men were facing uphill, and I was able to leave the track and pass boldly round them. When they heard me, they challenged. I replied in the falsetto of an idiot that it was Nadim Nassar returning from his wife. They laughed.

  It was impossible to guess the position of the rest. If the men of Ferjeyn wished to capture me before I collected my basket of food, they would be under cover on the eastern slope; if they wanted the gendarmes to take all responsibility, they would be in the trees between the glade and my house, ready to pick up my body or intercept me if I escaped. In either case they would not be on the pastures.

  As in all attempts to predict the behaviour of opponents, my reasoning was neither right nor wrong. There were, in fact, a few men on the top; but they kept to the east, well away from the gendarmes’ preserves. The pasture was by no means an open alp. It was the rugged top of a mountain, sown with rocks and bushes, where the grass grew in hundreds of little patches rather than a continuous meadow. Well, with the half moon showing every bush as a movement and every shadow as inhabited, the men of Ferjeyn were nervous. They were smoking, and whispering to keep up their courage. They were not much use as soldiers. The cattle were in more danger than I.

  Without difficulty I reached the little cliff which overlooked our glade. The basket was half concealed under a bush. Since I knew where to look for it, I could just distinguish the white cloth. The two gendarmes I could not see, but I knew exactly where they were—flat on their rumbling bellies under the overhang of the cliff with their carbines trained on the basket.

  Their horses were tethered on the pasture, behind a rock. As soon as I found them I saw my opportunity. Good Lord, how right I had been to feel sceptical of my plans for returning to the Jebel Sinjar!

  I inserted a prickly burr under the tail of one of those patient animals. He did not like that at all. You would have said, a charging elephant! One gendarme came up to see what was wrong. He was so much occupied with the horse that I was able to measu
re my blow. It was enough to leave him breathing quietly on the ground.

  He could not answer enquiries himself and I did not know him well enough to imitate his voice, so I only had time to change into half his uniform when the other gendarme, alarmed at the silence, advanced to see what had happened. He caught me at a disadvantage. I had his comrade’s breeches round my ankles. I should have shot quickly. But, M. le Consul, I did not wish to become, like John Douaihy, frightened of myself. I pretended to be demoralised, to beg for mercy. And he, thinking of the boasting he could enjoy if he took Nadim Nassar single-handed, came too close to use his arms. Since he struck me twice across the face, I was not so gentle with him as with the other.

  I left them well tied up with the spare reins and halter, confident that they would not be found till morning. And there! I had a horse to ride, another to lead, two carbines and two pistols as well as my own rifle. I trotted across the pasture and down the track, past the picket, past my house and through the streets of Ferjeyn. On my head I carried the spare saddle to conceal my face. I gave the impression of an extremely angry gendarme in a hurry, and answered questions only with muttered curses.

  There were neither telephone nor telegraph in Ferjeyn. By riding hard due north across the Duck’s Bill, I reckoned to be over the Turkish frontier before the alarm had gone out. They were two fresh horses and I did not spare them. In the morning, galloping through Moslem villages where they tried to stop me to hear why I was riding so fast, I may have aroused some suspicion. But once near the frontier I had no more trouble. It cannot have been an uncommon sight—a silent gendarme in a hurry, leading the horse of his dead comrade.

  And then I made a circuit through the Turkish hills—not so easy, M. le Consul, that it can be dismissed in a sentence, but I am conscious that I may have kept you too long from more important work—and I descended cautiously upon the camp of Merjan.

  It is a refuge, that country, and beautiful, but miserably poor. Three rifles, two pistols, their ammunition and two horses was a considerable capital. Merjan decided that he and his brother and I could live more freely than as timber-cutters and middlemen for smugglers. With a Russian deserter, a Turk and a Persian—of true officer material, but having felt it his duty to assassinate a political—we formed a band. I should not like you to think that we are criminals on a European scale. In the first place there is practically nothing here worth stealing. But we can go where we wish without interference, and we are on good terms with the tribes. In return for food, we give them protection from police and bandits. And if they do not wish for protection we make it desirable. Sometimes, too, we act as escort for smugglers. In fact one does what one can. But it is not a life for a man who loves to be in his own town.

  M. le Consul, for myself I have no right to ask more than what I have. I live, and when I die there will be no fuss—unless Merjan and his brother devoutly say a prayer for me to the devil. But for my boys I beg your patronage and, through you, that of the Republic. I have no address, and Damascus is very far. Perhaps in the spring I shall be able to send another messenger to call on you. Perhaps he will bring back to me a word of comfort.

  Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, M. le Consul, the assurance of my highest consideration.

  Valentin Lecormier.

  Annexe to the Statement of Sergeant-major Lecormier

  Quai d’Orsay

  20th April, 1952

  Dear Consul and Old Comrade,

  But what a document! It is not often in these days that we get anything from our representatives abroad to entertain us. You have the thanks of the whole department.

  He’s a type, your bandit! As I look at it, only once in his life has he made a wrong decision, and that upset him so badly that he denies we can ever make decisions at all. You really must do something for him. As a bureaucrat, one gets so bored with being inhuman.

  Here is the minute I have received from the Ministry of War:

  Lecormier, Valentin

  Three times mentioned. Croix de Guerre. Missing in Cyprus 1944. Believed killed in interallied brawl, or suffering from loss of memory. Character excellent. An outstanding leader of men, whether native or metropolitan.

  From discreet enquiries I learn that the major whom Lecormier crowned with a bottle—he now has his division—swore that they had both been attacked by drunken British. No one was more unhappy than he when Lecormier vanished, and it was he who suggested loss of memory.

  Look, old man—that plea will be accepted. Lecormier, so far as France is concerned, has nothing whatever against his name. And we have urgent need of such old soldiers. We will find means of paying a passage to Marseille for his thirteenth-century Helena and the boys. As for him, you who are wise in the ways of the Orient can no doubt extract him, metamorphosed into a good French bourgeois, from his spider’s web of frontiers. If he hesitates you may assure him that we know the taste of old warrant officers for garrison life, and that they are invariably stationed in a little town.

  (Signature illegible)

  Kindly Stranger

  IT is an odd thought—at this date unworldly rather than disturbing—that I am responsible for all the disasters of the last forty years, for 1914/18, for the Russian Revolution, for Hitler. No martian arriving from outer space could have changed the quietly running world into so devastatingly wrong and fast a gear. And, as in a cautionary tale for children, it all came about through disobedience.

  My father had a dear friend named von Lech who was an under-secretary in the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Education. They had really little in common except the self-confident liberalism of their time and a passionate interest in the art of teaching. Both of them believed that when all Europeans—the rest of the world could follow later—attended secondary school Utopia would have arrived. That did not seem so comical a creed in 1914 as it does now. It was a bond of idealism strong enough for them to visit each other, and even for their wives to be polite to each other.

  Von Lech was a hard-working administrator who kept two servants, but no car or carriage. That was just the position of my father. Both of them could live comfortably and precisely in that state to which Emperor and King had called them, but holidays were always a minor problem and illness a major one.

  Thus it was natural that when von Lech discovered a very cheap and hospitable hotel at Ilidze, an unknown summer resort in Austrian Bosnia, he should write to my father about it. He knew that my father was convalescing after a long illness and had been ordered by his doctor to go abroad for a rest. Frau von Lech also wrote to my mother in formal, diplomatic French. I think it was the use of French rather than German or English which overcame her mistrust. Ilidze was made to sound fashionable, which it wasn’t, and romantic, which it was.

  Neither of my parents knew anything whatever about Bosnia. My father, however, always accepted authority. Von Lech, it was plain, counted Bosnia a normal province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Provinces of the Empire were civilised and disciplined. It would therefore be an unwarranted misuse of the imagination to consider a visit to Ilidze at all adventurous. They decided to start in the middle of June. They would not hear of me travelling out by myself at the end of term—rightly, for at thirteen I was absurdly helpless—so I was let out of school six weeks early, and accompanied them by train to Trieste and by boat down the Adriatic.

  Ilidze was intensely excited by the coming visit of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his pretty wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. I cannot remember if she was really pretty. Even to a sophisticated eye all feminine royalty is dazzling. But I can see the Archduke now. I was immensely impressed by him. Not only was he going to become Emperor, but he reminded me of a taller, fiercer and unsmiling edition of my headmaster.

  The pair of them stayed at Ilidze for three nights while the Archduke attended the manœuvres. On June 28 they were to make a state visit to the neighbouring town of Sarajevo; and the von Lechs, who highly approved of the solid glimmerings of liberalism in the Archduke,
loyally determined to go over and cheer. Of course we went with them.

  We watched from a first-floor balcony on the Appel Quay. The house was some fifty yards from the cross-roads formed by Franz Joseph Street and the Latin Bridge, and belonged to some hotel acquaintance of the von Lechs—an old lady in black who entertained us with little cakes, and wine in coloured glasses. I think she must have been of rather lower social status, perhaps a native Bosnian, but I remember little about her except the coloured glasses.

  The Appel Quay was a long, straight road, bordered on one side by houses and on the other by the river. It was Sunday, and so there was a thick hedge of public on each side of the route. In the distance, to the right of our balcony, the procession was coming up the Quay towards us when we heard a sharp explosion. The cars stopped. Hedges wavered inwards and were held back.

  The women of our party screamed that it was a bomb. My mother watched Frau von Lech to see whether it would be proper to faint. Frau von Lech, however, decided that my mother would show the famous English phlegm, and determined to imitate her. The old lady prayed, and fascinated me by the complicated gestures with which she crossed herself.

  The men exerted their common-sense influence. Von Lech, who was still unused to cars, suggested that the noise had been due to a burst tyre or petrol tank. My father said that the public should not be allowed to purchase fireworks. The bomb as a political weapon was inconceivable to such believers in Progress; they easily assumed that—except in Russia—it was inconceivable to everyone else.

  I myself, with the superiority of a sound preparatory school, accepted their unimaginative confidence that the incident was trivial. The melancholy procession—now of three cars instead of four—restarted and passed hurriedly below our decorated balcony. The cheering was so thin that you could distinguish individual voices. I was disappointed. It seemed hardly worth the short journey from Ilidze for so small and dull an affair. My only comparable experience had been a visit of Edward VII to Gloucester. There had been lots of yeomanry in gorgeous uniforms. The genial, top-hatted figure in the open landau had created, by the mere force of his expansive masculinity, an air of festival.