The Mule on the Minaret

by Alec Waugh

  ‘What shall I say in this speech?’

  ‘Pretty much what you said to me when you gave your reasons for preferring those agents to keep the set. Explain how the situation is different in Iraq from what it is in the Lebanon. Explain why we want to keep Iraq the way it is; with the Royal Family that owes its presence here to British influence and to men like Nuri who are convinced that Iraq’s prosperity depends on a close alliance with Great Britain. But I don’t need to dictate your speech to you. You are much better than I am at that kind of thing. If I outline the general strategy, I can leave the tactical side of it to you.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Fine; and now we’ve got our shop behind us and can relax. Let’s have a fourth whisky. Then we can go over to the Sinbad.’

  The Sinbad was not fifty yards from the British Club. It was a still, warm night. In a few days now, they would be discarding battle-dress for bush shirts, and there would be those three or four blessed weeks of early summer, of which he had heard so much, before the heavy July heat had killed off the flies, when the river sank and the peasants came out to plant vegetables on the islands and along the banks. Reid was in an anapaestic mood because both of the whiskies and of the news that he had heard. He was looking forward to his dinner. He scarcely ever dined in an hotel. They were expensive and he dined well enough in his own mess. It was the first time he had been alone with Mallet, except for occasional periods of a few minutes when the mess was empty except for themselves. Was it true what they said about him?

  Nigel Farrar had said all those days ago that schoolmasters had a nose for that kind of thing. He was not a schoolmaster, and very certainly he hadn’t. It was in fact something he found difficult to understand. As a schoolboy he had—as practically every English Public Schoolboy did—experienced a romantic attachment for a younger boy. But in the monastic seclusion of a Public School, a younger boy had the look and appeal of something feminine. He was weaker, needed protection; and moving in a different—since junior—world had the appeal of foreignness. Reid recognized too that certain men had the misfortune to have female temperaments and natures encased in a masculine body. Those willowy young men constituted a third sex, but frankly, he could not understand how someone like Mallet, who was strong, virile, active, good-looking and to whom one would expect women to be attracted, could have become homosexual. There was nothing dandified or precious about the Colonel. Was it really true? Might it not be that some men were completely sexless, as certain women were? No one would insist that a woman was a Lesbian simply because she did not marry and have children. In the same way that some men and women were tone deaf, had no response to music, lacked indeed a sense that was for the majority of human beings their greatest source of happiness and rapture, might not some others be born without an interest in and aptitude for sex? A man’s reputation in the modern world was more easily tarnished than a woman’s. Why should they say this about the Colonel, because he had not married, because he had no obvious liaisons, because he had drifted away from regimental duties? He might be absorbed in his mother. There were so many explanations. Anyhow he was on the brink of a good dinner.

  It was nearly eleven before they were back in their own quarters. Reid’s head was swimming as it had not done for very many years. He was not a man who had ‘nights out with the boys.’

  ‘I’ll be going into my office for a moment,’ he said. ‘It’s been a great, great evening.’

  If he went straight to bed, the whole world would be swinging round. He sat down at his desk, his elbows rested on it, his eyes closed. A lot had happened since he had last sat there. Could it really be true that he was going to run the Centre? He had never pictured himself with red flannel on his tunic. He wondered if he could get himself photographed in colour. It would be fun to send one to the boys. They would get a kick out of it. And Rachel. He checked. What would this mean to Rachel? Would this mean anything to her now? He lifted his head: opened his eyes. There were a couple of airgraphs in his in-tray. The top one was from Jenkins.

  Chapter Five

  Eve too had been worried by Beirut’s report on Aziz. She wondered desperately what was happening to him. She saw no way of finding out. He was still, as far as she knew, due to come up in May. They never corresponded. She felt that his letters would be stiff and awkward. She did not want to have her letters to him subjected to censorship and read by acquaintances all over the Middle East. He had readily accepted her suggestion that they should not write to one another. He too was afraid of censorship, though he did not know that she knew why he had cause to be. It was always difficult for her to have to remember how little he knew about how much she knew about him; the fact that he knew she knew something made it the more difficult. It would have been easier to be in complete ignorance. There was a curious double take, in that way, in their relations. Neither could be completely open with the other. Yet he believed that she was being completely open.

  She anxiously awaited her office’s reply to Beirut’s inquiry. It came ten days later. ‘We have made inquiries through Aunt Mildred about Aziz and the answer is non-committal. The Germans have found Aziz an unsatisfactory medium. This is not surprising. Aziz is not a trained spy. He has no access to special information. He is quite clever, but he is leading a busy life as a student. He has not much spare time. He devotes most of that spare time to music. If one tries to imagine oneself in his place, one would ask oneself “How on earth am I going to find out anything that they don’t know already?” Last time he was up here they tried to frighten him. See our report X37/1206 of Dec 12, 1942. But it does not appear to have had very much effect. The reports that Aziz sent up by the agreed channel (X37/1208 of Jan. 13, 1943 and Feb. 17, 1943) cannot have been very helpful to the Germans. Our hunch is that the Germans have lost interest in him. This is not surprising in view of the fact that they have in Belorian a much more productive agent with a far higher potential who is covering the same area. They have in Belorian’s case, moreover, a simpler means of communication, direct correspondence by mail with secret ink. The method of correspondence with Aziz was elaborate and occupied valuable time. It may be assumed that Germany is feeling a shortage of manpower. Her casualties in Russia have been very great; her forces are spread so wide that in many places they are being spread very thin. Able-bodied men are being combed out of Embassies and back areas. Their places are being filled by the elderly, the less active and the less efficient: sometimes their places are left unfilled, with one man doing the work of three. They cannot afford to waste their time and energy. It is very probable that the Germans have decided that Aziz is more trouble than he is worth, and called the whole operation off.

  ‘We shall be able to judge this when Aziz pays his next visit here. It is the practice for them to contact him, not for him to contact them. He presumably does not know how he could contact them. When does Aziz come here next?’

  Beirut’s reply came a week later. ‘Fadhil reports that Aziz will be visiting Istanbul early in May. We endorse your appreciation of the situation. If the Germans are no longer in touch with Aziz, how will they know when he reaches Istanbul?’

  There was no reference to any plans that Beirut itself might have. When she went into Sedgwick, she looked enviously at the small filing cabinet in the corner. If only she knew what it contained. If only she knew by what channel its contents reached this office.

  Aziz on that last visit had said ‘Early in May.’ But from the last week in April she began to study the list of Taurus express passengers. She wanted to be on her guard for his arrival. She had given him her telephone number that last time. There had seemed no reason not to. Why waste half a day? Next time, she thought, she would arrange for him to send her a postcard telling her the day. Then she could have her hair fixed the day before and get her nerves in order. Next time. Would there be a next time?

  She had wondered sometimes during his five months’ absence whether it could ever be so good again. Kitty had quoted to he
r a poem of Thomas Hardy’s: ‘Lines on a Departure Platform.’

  ‘And why, young man, must eternally fly A joy you’ll repeat if you love her well? Oh friend, nought happens twice thus; why? I cannot tell.’

  ‘It’s extraordinary. There’s no explanation,’ Kitty had gone on. ‘You meet someone. It clicks right away. Your eyes meet across a room. You’ve absolutely no doubt about each other. It’s settled before you’ve said a word. And the whole thing’s wonderful; the way you knew it would be. It goes on being wonderful. Then there’s a break. You’re frightened. Will things be different? But they aren’t any different. They’re even better. This is against all the rules, you’ll say. There’s another break. And you aren’t frightened at all. This time it’s going to be even better. You count the days until he comes back. You don’t have dates with anybody else. You are so excited that you lose your appetite. And then there he is—and suddenly the whole thing’s dead. There’s no explanation.’

  The third time was the test, so Kitty said. This was the third time.

  But there was no need for her to have been alarmed; it was just as it had been, with an added novelty.

  He lay on his face across her outstretched arm; his unstifled sobs, his broken sighs were slowly subsiding to a long even breathing. The leather necklace that was slipped round her wrist dangled to the floor. She shook it loose. She passed her hand slowly, over his back, over the curve of his back towards his knees. Tomorrow there would be thin, dark weals there. She would count them, gloatingly. There would be more weals there in three weeks’ time when he went away. He would be shy of sunbathing lest his friends should notice them. She had set her seal on him. That seal would fade, in two, in three weeks’ time. But the seal that she had set upon his mind, upon his heart would never fade. He would never forget her, never. He was hers; she had made him hers.

  ‘Have you brought a list of inquiries?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes. I’ve brought a list.’

  ‘I’ll have your answers ready within a week.’

  ‘Mind they’re full answers; or I shan’t come again.’

  ‘It’s really only to get those records that you come here, isn’t it?’

  ‘What other reason could I have for coming here?’

  They laughed together. And she chuckled inwardly, knowing that he too must be chuckling, thinking to himself: ‘What would she say if she knew about my visits to the Germans; how trivial are those few records in comparison with the funds that are being paid into that Zürich bank.’ How completely she had him at her mercy.

  Summer came early that year to Anatolia; and it was summer things they did during a halycon three weeks. He borrowed a car and on working day evenings they drove down the Bosphorus and dined at one or other of the fish restaurants on the water’s edge; sipped rakki and ate pleasantly slushy dishes, like Imam Baialdi, the Imam faints; or they would take a ferry down the Sea of Marmora past the hospital where Florence Nightingale nursed her Crimean casualties: they would sup in the café off tea and the white pancakes out of which a thick cream oozed. And a cool breeze would blow down from the Black Sea; and she would recall Flecker’s poetry. ‘Rose of cities drooping with the heavy summer’s burning dew.’

  They would get back early to the flat so that they could listen to music with the windows open and the curtain drawn and the room filled with moonlight. And though they never planned to make love, half the time it seemed they were making love. And it was as good as it had been before.

  Occasionally he would stay the night. She woke earlier than he and she would slide out of bed and stand at the window, watching the sun rise over the low hills beyond the Bosphorus. Around her the houses rose steeply in a half-closed semi-circle. The sun’s reflection on the water rippled on their windows. Below her was a small mosque, its garden shaded by a willow. She could see Leander’s tower and the minarets of Santa Sofia. Ferry boats chunked across the channel. ‘I’m glad it happened here,’ she thought.

  During working hours at her office, she would wonder how he was spending his time with his family. ‘I’d like to be able to picture you,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you do; from the moment you get up, until the moment we meet in the evening.’ He laughed. ‘You Europeans always want to be doing something. You can’t realize how much time we can manage to spend, gossiping over a cup of tea or coffee.’

  She persisted in her questioning, but she got no answer. This was no doubt the Oriental reserve that she had heard about; the dignity that must not be disturbed. Yet the Prof, had made him talk apparently. How much of the Germans was he seeing? Was he seeing anything of them? To learn that, she would have to wait for Aunt Mildred’s report after he had left. It was a curious position: to be as close to him as she was, so utterly abandoned in delight, and yet to have to rely on an impersonal police report for the facts about him.

  ‘Next time before you come up,’ she said, ‘I’d like you to send a postcard. You needn’t say that you are coming up on a certain day. That might make the censorship suspicious. But bring the date in somehow. Say: “My mother’s birthday is on the 18th of October. We shall drink your health that day.” Will you do that?’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘When do you think you will be coming up?’

  ‘September. October.’

  ‘Not in August this time?’

  ‘No, not in August.’ And it was not any good, she knew, asking him for a reason.

  ‘I may not be here then,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ve been abroad three years. That’s about as long as they keep any of us on foreign service.’

  ‘I see.’

  His face expressed no emotion. ‘His damned oriental impassivity,’ she thought. ‘I wonder if he’ll care at all if he never sees me again.’

  She had warned him that they might not meet again, but she made no attempt to beat up the emotion of their final days with a ‘last time’ frenzy. There was no need for that. Their excitement over one another had been so natural, so spontaneous, that she felt it must of necessity go on for ever. Yet at the same time she felt that it would not matter if it stopped. It could not lead anywhere. They had had all they had to give each other. There could never be any mental companionship, apart from their love of music. With him, there could be no mingling, no blending of two natures till they became one person, so that out of their two lives they could make one life. No, it would not really matter if it ended now.

  On the morning that he left, it was in a lighthearted mood that she made her report to Sedgwick on his visit. ‘It was the same as usual. He brought up some questions about Turkish imports and exports. The British Council gave me a few figures. He seemed quite satisfied.’

  ‘Good, fine.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘I must say you always look wonderfully refreshed after he has been here.’

  A week later she typed out the official report on Aziz’s visit.

  ‘Aziz,’ the report read, ‘has spent three weeks here. As Beirut has reported (X/37 3471 of May 31,1943), he brought up with him a list of inquiries about Turkish imports and exports. We provided him with the appropriate answers. Aunt Mildred reports that as far as she knows there was no contact between Aziz and the Germans. In her opinion the Germans have lost interest in Aziz.’

  Three weeks later Beirut’s reply arrived. Aziz has now been here for two Mondays. On neither of them has he been to Fawsi Café. Our Man Friday makes regular trips to Aleppo where he contacts Chessman on the Taurus. He has received no newspapers from Chessman. Chessman can offer no explanation. Chessman’s assumption is that the Germans have lost interest in Aziz. We are inclined to find ourselves in agreement with our adversaries. This seems to be an example of one of those occasions when a highly promising project gets bogged down for no obvious reason. One has to accept the fact; and move on to the next assault. We do not consider, however, that Operation Aziz should be written off as an entire loss. It was through Aziz that we managed to enrol Belorian. And in our op
inion he is one of the reddest irons in our fire; we are also of the opinion that there is still some use that can be made of Aziz. We will submit our views of this in a later summary.’

  Eve’s eyes widened as she read that final paragraph. She did not know what Beirut had in mind, but she knew Nigel Farrar. He was bright, brisk, ruthless. He did not spare himself; he did not spare others. Aziz was in danger. ‘I’ve got to get out of this,’ she thought.

  She was Aziz’s link with Istanbul Intelligence. If she were not here to give him the answers to those fake inquiries, a whole new routine would have to be set up. It would not be worth Beirut’s time. The enrolment of a successor would be too involved and Aziz might not welcome her successor. As long as she was here, Aziz would think it worth his while to come. And as long as he made those trips he was vulnerable. When she had gone back to England, he might not bother to visit his parents, with whom he was in no great sympathy. Beirut was more fun than Istanbul and almost certainly in a little time, probably in a very little time, he would have found a girl-friend there. She had lit in him a fire that would not be easily put out. And if Aziz remained in Beirut Farrar would lose interest in him as quickly as had the Germans here in Istanbul. He was small fry, and there were big fish in the pool.

  So that was that, she thought. She looked down the passage and saw the green light shining over Sedgwick’s door. She knocked, was answered and went in. ‘Yes, Eve?’

  ‘You remember, that a year ago you offered me repatriation?’

  ‘I do, indeed. No one could have been happier than I when you declined.’

  ‘Thank you, Francis; I was very happy that you should have felt that way about me; but a year’s a long time and these last weeks I have been feeling... Well, I don’t feel as elastic as I was. I think I ought to have a change of atmosphere.’