by Alec Waugh
‘Shall we see Abana and Pharfa?’ asked Reid.
‘You’ll see Abana; a trivial stream.’
They were staying at the Omayyed, a hotel built by the French in modern Oriental style. It had wide lounges and deep armchairs and carpets. In its hall there was a vast mural of Syria, showing in relief its links by air and rail and car with Europe. There were advertisements of flights from Amsterdam. ‘That’s ironic now,’ said Reid.
‘This is even more ironic,’ Farrar said. He pointed to the writing desk on which were set out the 1939 instructions as to the dates on which you could post airmail letters to Saigon.
They dined that evening in the French Officers’ Club. ‘They still may have some French wine left,’ said Farrar.
The Damascus Cercle was very quiet after the Beirut Cercle. There were not many British officers in Damascus and only a small French garrison. The dining-room was high and dimly lighted but it had an air of France. It was a quiet, cosy dinner. At the end of it Farrar said: ‘Listen now. I hope you two won’t mind, but I’ve a number of old friends here whom I’d like to see. Could you look after yourselves tomorrow, go sightseeing or whatever you like, and then we’ll start in fresh on Thursday after breakfast? O.K. Fine.’
A long, long day with nothing to do but loiter. It was the first such day that Reid had had for longer than he could remember. Had he indeed had one since the war?
‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’ he asked Diana.
‘Only once for half a day.’
‘That’s enough to let you act as guide.’
It was a warm, clear day and the sun brought a glint of gold into the high ochre brown mountains that screened the city from the northern winds. They went to the Souks first. ‘They are arranged in sections, according to the trade,’ she told him. ‘This, by the way, is the street that was called straight.’
There was a steady roll of noise, the rattle of harness, the tinkle of camel bells, the honking of horns, the raising of impatient voices, the murmur of gossip. Cabs and carts and camels jostled pedestrians into the gutter. But the salesmen in the small theatres of their shops contributed little to the general din. They sat impassive among their goods, cloth or corn or leather; spices or silks or carpets; they were wrapped in heavy, coarse, brown cloaks, usually with the peaked headdress lowered over the shoulder, the head protected by a tightly fitting skull-cap. They did not solicit custom, though they bargained endlessly; that was their game and they enjoyed it. But their pride would not allow them to invite refusal. If you were interested in their goods they would display them for as long as you chose to look, in a spirit of Arab hospitality. Their time is yours, you are their guests. They do not press you to buy. Sometimes they will offer you a cup of coffee, but the offer of it entails no obligation. Salesmanship is dignified in the Souks.
‘We’re coming to the goldsmiths’ section,’ Diana said. A succession of gnome-like figures were beating the yellow metal into brooches and bangles that were sold by weight. The yellow under the electric light was so vivid that it seemed unreal. The designs of the articles were so commonplace and tasteless that you felt you were being offered brasswork in a county fair.
‘This is the street where they sell high-quality goods,’ she told him. ‘This is their Rue de la Paix.’
They went into a large silk shop. ‘I must get something here,’ he said. The owner spread out a succession of exquisite brocades. Reid took out his wallet. ‘I wish I’d brought more money.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ the salesman said. ‘I will always cash a cheque on a British bank.’
‘Even in wartime?’
‘Especially in wartime.’
He hesitated between a red and a pale blue material.
‘Is it for your wife?’ Diana asked. He nodded.
‘Is she fair or dark?’
‘She’s dark.’
‘Then I should take the red.’
Often in a gap in the Souks would be a doorway, studded with brass.
‘That’s probably the home of a rich Damascus merchant; many of them live here in the Souks.’ One such house, the Azid Palace, was on show to tourists. It was a large, low building, or rather it was a succession of low buildings with courtyards and fountains playing; off it opened rooms with painted ceilings and rich harmonizing colours. There was a spacious air of leisure and deliberation. It was hard to realize that the din and traffic of the Souks were only a few yards distant.
‘The Arabs know how to live,’ he said.
‘We’ll go to the citadel afterwards,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll see how much space there is between the actual framework of the Souks. It’s rather like looking down on England from an aeroplane. You see how much land lies between the ribbon developments of all those roads that radiate from London.’
Now and again they would catch in the Souks glimpses of the old wall itself, with ironwork let into the great stone gates. At the entrance to the Souks was a single Roman column. Paul of Tarsus may have rested his hand against it. There was a moneychanger on whose table a shabby-looking Arab produced from the folds of his djellabah a bag containing sovereigns. ‘So that’s where our gold’s got to,’ said Reid. They climbed up the citadel. He could see the pattern of the bazaars from the arched domes of the corrugated iron that protected them. He could discern the outline of the old city from the arrangement of the mosques. ‘I’m glad you’ve seen Damascus the first time with me,’ she said.
They took an Arak at a sidewalk café. A vendor of soft drinks went by, his goat-skin bright with brass.
They lunched at an open-air French restaurant.
‘I wonder what kind of a meal they get now in the South of France in a restaurant like this,’ he said. He put his parcel of brocade on the empty chair.’
‘She’ll like that,’ she said.
‘I hope so.’
‘Do you know, that’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned her?’
‘Is it? I suppose it is.’
‘It’s funny. I’ve told you so much about myself. I know so little about you.’
‘There isn’t very much to know. It’s a very humdrum kind of life.’
‘I can’t even picture it.’
‘That’s only because you didn’t go to a University. It’s lecturing and tutorials, a certain amount of routine research.’
‘But your home life; what’s your house like?’
‘Eighteenth century, rectangular and convenient.’
She looked at him thoughtfully, with the half-flicker of a smile, a fond, protective smile. ‘You aren’t going to tell me anything, I know. I rather like it that way: for you to be somebody I think and guess about and make pictures of.’
‘Make pictures of me?’
‘But of course I do.’ Her eyes were steadily on his; there was a look in them that he had not seen in any eyes before. It made him feel nervous and excited as he had done in the days when he played cricket as he waited with his pads on in the pavilion.
‘I’d like to see a film this afternoon,’ she said.
Hedy Lamarr and James Stewart were showing in Come Live With Me.
‘Have you ever seen that?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I have, but I could see it several times. The way she says, “Perhaps your orchids help.” ’
‘Don’t spoil it for me.’
They had had an Arak before lunch at a sidewalk café and they had drunk a bottle of red wine with their meal. Drowsiness stole over him. He fought against it; he wanted to hear her say, ‘Perhaps your orchids help,’ but the bright light of the screen held him in a hypnotic spell; his attention faded; every nerve was tranquil, he did not feel he had a trouble in the world. He was conscious of her scent, heavy, fleeting, evocative; a wave of Jasmin, it increased his drowsiness; his eyelids closed.
He woke, when the lights went on, with a start. ‘I hope I didn’t snore,’ he said.
‘I’d have woken you if you had.’
The
sun was low in the sky when they came out into the street.
‘It’s my turn for a rest,’ she said. ‘Let’s meet in the bar at seven.’
He left her in the door of the Omayyed and strolled through the new part of the city. He was conscious, acutely conscious, of an all-pervading peacefulness. He made no attempt to analyse it. He was content to wrap its mantle round him.
They dined in the hotel. The large ornate room was practically empty. They took a table in the corner.
‘I feel as though there were no one in the whole world except ourselves,’ he said.
‘Haven’t you ever had that feeling even when you were in a crowded room?’
‘Have I? I suppose I have. I wonder.’
‘If you haven’t, you’ve been unlucky.’
‘I’ve been so lucky in some things, that perhaps I have had to be unlucky in others.’
‘Have you, though, really? Have you been unlucky . . . in that, I mean?’
He did not answer for a moment. He did not know how to answer. Had he been unlucky? It was a question that he had never asked himself. He had been worried about his marriage but most men, he imagined, worried about their marriages. He answered her obliquely: ‘I don’t think I’d want to be anybody else. I don’t wish that I had someone else’s life. If I can say that, I can say I’ve been lucky, can’t I?’
‘That doesn’t mean that you don’t feel that there are some things you’ve missed.’
‘Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t feel that he’s missed something. Don’t you yourself?’
‘Yes, but I’m still hoping that I’ll get it. You’re talking as though you never would get it.’
The waiter was at their side with a wine-list.
‘They’ve still got some French wines on their list,’ he said. ‘What is your favourite wine?’
‘Red Burgundy.’
‘Mine, too. They’ve got a Richebourg ‘34.’
It was a rich, full wine; velvet-smooth, with a lingering flavour on the palate.
‘I wonder what’s happening there now,’ he said. ‘Have you heard the story of the French colonel who ordered his men on their way to battle to present arms to the Clos de Vougeot? “Mes enfants, it is to preserve such beauties that you are about to fight.” Think of it now. The slopes of gold, with Germans there.’
They were eating a roast chicken, that did not interfere with the wine’s flavour. He felt once again a sense of being in tune with the entire universe. As always when she drank, she held the glass between her hands, raising it reverently to her lips. He returned to the earlier subject of their talk.
‘They used to complain about Victorian novels that end with marriage bells; marriage wasn’t an end, the critics said, but a beginning. Yet really it is an end, a man with a career, after a certain point, sees the way clear ahead; only a certain number of things can happen to him unless there’s a calamity of some kind; in most careers, at least. No one could have foreseen that Churchill would have had this fantastic St. Martin’s summer; but he’s the exception. That’s why the early chapters of an autobiography are more interesting than the later ones. A young man of promise might become any one of a dozen things, he might be a lawyer, a politician, an administrator, and it’s usually chance that decides what he will become. He is leaving his flat in a hurry; the telephone bell rings. Shall he answer it? He almost doesn’t. It is an invitation to a party, where he meets the person who will reorientate his entire life for him. If he hadn’t answered that telephone he would never have met that person, his life would have been completely different. That’s what one asks of an autobiography, to be told how a man got set originally on the road he’s followed. One sees him as he is today, in the round, one wants to know how he became the person that he is.’
He enlarged the subject, embroidered on it, drawing illustrations from the past and from contemporary events. She listened, her eyes wide: her lips slightly parted as though she were breathing in a rich, keen air. When he paused, she sighed.
‘This is what I’ve always wanted; to hear you talk as your pupils hear you. That’s what I’ve been missing all this time. Now I see what Margaret meant.’ Her eyes were shining, her face gave a curious illusion of transparency as though there were a lamp inside it. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Don’t stop.’
The chicken was followed by a cheese ramekin that enhanced the flavour of the Burgundy. He had left a little wine in the bottle. He poured it into his own emptied glass. There was no sediment. ‘That’s luck,’ he said. He poured half of the wine into her glass. He raised his glass, touching hers with it. ‘I shall remember today as long as I remember anything,’ he said.
‘It’s been a dream day.’ The contralto in her voice struck a deeper tone, a tone he had never heard before. His whole being was flooded with an emotion he could not control. He had no power over his voice.
‘Another such day,’ he said, ‘and I’d be in love with you.’
She sighed; a long, slow sigh that seemed to rise from a deep well of happiness.
‘How I’ve been waiting for you to say just that. How I’ve despaired of your ever saying it.’
He stared, astounded. ‘But I had no idea . . .’
‘Darling, I know; it’s that that makes you irresistible.’ She checked; she leant forward across the table, resting her elbows on it, cupping her face between her hands. ‘I knew from the very start,’ she said. ‘That first evening in the night-club. This is my fate, I thought. You were saying how everything turns on chance; a telephone that rings at the last moment; taking a bus rather than a taxi; now there’s that muddle in your posting. We’d never have met but for it. No, please don’t say anything. Accept it; there’s nothing to be done. It’s wartime; we’re lucky, very lucky, not to have to make plans, not to have to discuss a situation. We’re lucky, darling. Oh, so very lucky.’
He stood outside her room. Her height made him feel awkward. He took her hand, lifted it, turned the palm over, held it against his mouth. It was soft and scented. She allowed it to rest there for a moment; then she turned towards the door. She paused on the threshold, smiled, raised her hand to her lips. ‘Good night.’
He had a glimpse of her room, with the moonlight shining on to her mosquito net. Then the door shut it out.
He leant on the window-sill of his own room. The light from hers fell in a long oblong on the courtyard. His heart was thudding. He picked up the receiver of his telephone. ‘Room number 26.’
There was a chuckle from the other end. ‘If you hadn’t called within three minutes I was going to jump right out into that courtyard.’
‘Can I look in and tuck you up?’
‘Of course.’
She had flung back the mosquito net. The room was filled with moonlight. She was sitting up among the pillows. She opened her arms to him.
Chapter Eight
Reid returned to a message from Amin Marun: Aziz was going to Istanbul for a holiday, would he come round to say au revoir. He showed the message to Diana. ‘It seems strange coming back from that to this,’ he said.
‘Perhaps it’s as well there should be contrasts.’
‘This is the kind of thing that makes me hate myself.’
‘We all have to hate ourselves at times.’
‘At those times it’s a relief to me to have you down the passage.’
‘It’s a relief to me.’
‘I say to myself pretty often, “I couldn’t stand this place if it weren’t for Diana.” ’
‘Please go on saying that.’
There was a warm look in her eyes. His whole being was flooded with peace and beauty.
‘Are you lunching anywhere?’ he asked.
‘I’d planned to boil an egg at home.’
‘Why not a steak at Sa’ad’s instead?’
‘That sounds a very nice idea.’
After lunch he said, ‘You’ve never seen my flat. Don’t you think it’s time you did.’
‘I do, most certainly.’
<
br /> ‘We’ve two hours before our office opens.’
‘We have.’
‘Is there any reason why we shouldn’t go round there now?’
‘I can’t think of one.’
* *
Reid found Madame Amin in the liveliest good humour.
‘This is your doing,’ she said. ‘It seems silly but till you asked if he was going back to Turkey, it hadn’t occurred to us to let him go. It’s because of your English system of the boarding-school. We think in terms of day schools. But you’re right; it is a good idea to send them home between their courses.’
Reid, as he looked at Aziz, had a sense of Aeschylean tragedy. Could you find a more poignant example of dramatic irony? Aziz was excited, happy; feeling himself important as one always does on the verge of taking off. All these people one tells oneself will be here tomorrow, doing the same things, meeting the same people, but I shall be in another universe. If one felt that in peacetime, how much more did one in wartime when so few were allowed to travel independently.
Reid moved across to him. ‘It’s strange to be a neutral in this war; hardly anyone in this room could make your journey without elaborate visas; without having immense influence; belligerents on both sides exist behind iron curtains. I don’t suppose that there’s one person in this room who could, if he wanted, continue his journey in that train through the occupied countries into Germany. Do you remember the Kaiser and the Berlin-Baghdad railway? It’s ironic, isn’t it, the way it has come out? It’s a strange war. It was very different in Napoleon’s day. Think of Byron going on his Grand Tour right through the war.’
Aziz made no reply, but his eyes were shining.
‘If you fail,’ Reid went on, ‘do give Alexandria a second thought.’
‘I will.’
‘I guess at the moment you’re so relieved at the thought that your exam, is behind you that for better or for worse there’s nothing you can do about it, that you’re so excited at the thought of going on a journey that you don’t much care what’ll be happening in three weeks.’