The High Place

by Geoffrey Household

  It is not a matter of which I wish to write. Woman to her man she wanted—well, let it be! I loved and love her like a woman, and I take it that we—if they will permit me for a moment to be one of them—know a permanency of passion and of misery that to men is rarely given. Yet male I am in this: I had not the anodyne of women, the unquestioning loyalty to the beloved for as long as it remained beloved.

  Was I a humiliation to her? That was a subject which I never dared to approach. Her initial resistance was artistic but per­functory, and thereafter she made little concession to the vanity of the male. For the sake of her prestige she wouldn’t take a mate among her own companions at Kasr-el-Sittat. Well, I was the best, perhaps the only European alternative; and at times, when she would lie awake staring at anything but me, she may have put it to herself as crudely as that. A passionate chef d’œvre of amorous sculpture, likely to be awarded the prize of the year by any session, if such could be, of competent judges—that, I have no doubt, was her warmest, her most ecstatic picture of our affair. O God, I wish I had no doubt.

  We spent three days in Damascus, and I can remember every hour of them. Such a period comes only once in a man’s life, when he may love without impediment or afterthought, when the mere earning of a living is simple and secure, when he has a cause as well as a woman to which he can give his heart.

  Little by little Elisa was more explicit. At first I was uneasy as she unfolded to me the objects of Kasr-el-Sittat and its grow­ing power. I shied away from all the implications, and insisted that the movement was really nothing more than a sort of Civil Liberties organization with teeth in it.

  ‘Yes, you might call it that,’ she answered. ‘The more aspects there are, the better for us—so long as our own object is clear. Here’s a question for you to think about when you’re all alone in your little house at Tripoli.’

  I told her that the house waited for her and was made for her, but she laughed and insisted that I should listen to her question:

  ‘On which side was the Vichy Government during the war?’

  ‘God knows,’ I answered. ‘It was like an amœba. Its shape depended on its environment.’

  The illustration delighted her, and moved her to more frank­ness than she had, I think, as yet intended.

  ‘Then suppose we allow the Americans to put Kasr-el-Sittat under the microscope, what do they find? A bitter anti-communist organization which can prove the existence of a flourishing underground from Niev to Budapest. And now put it in the Cominform’s solution. They hate it. It hasn’t any shape at all. It looks like nihilism. Still—we are creating dis­affection and disobedience in the West. Eric, I tell you we can get money from both sides. All of them, East or West, may suspect that for itself the amœba has a shape, but why be afraid of it when it is so useful? Did the men who financed Hitler look any further than their own intentions?’

  ‘And what is there at the heart?’ I asked boldly.

  ‘Clear sight, Eric, and implacable hatred.’

  I drove Elisa back to Kasr-el-Sittat, and was put up for the Saturday and Sunday nights in an empty bungalow that had just been whitewashed and reconditioned. The colony was expanding and busy with its home. We passed a party of local labourers, their black cotton garments powdered with cement and plaster, returning to the villages; and on the paths of the settlement were industrious colonists carrying ladders and pots of paint.

  The dining-room was fuller than I had ever seen it, and there were a number of new faces. As Elisa had not turned up, I sat down with a party of mixed Slavs, who seemed as naïve as mid-nineteenth-century nihilists. They were all anxious to explain their ideas, and I don’t think they ever gave me a chance to reply. That the disciplined Bolshevik party had driven through these idealists like a tank through a mist was no wonder. I admitted, however, that, properly handled, they might yet have power to blind the driver.

  When we had nearly finished, Elisa swept in, accompanied by Osterling and two strangers. One was nothing but moustache and dark glasses; the other was a tall man of splendidly wiry physique, dressed dashingly and purposefully in jacket, boots and breeches. He had a bony, Baltic head, and I put him down—correctly—as a Pole. Elisa was smouldering with annoyance, and looked it. I was selfish enough to adore that touch of humanity. A fit of the sulks upon my coolly radiant goddess had hitherto been unthinkable.

  Osterling jumped up as I passed their table, and asked me to wait for them at my bungalow. They would all come round, he said, and crack a bottle. He had the irresponsible cheerfulness of an accomplished diplomat, and I was far from guessing his real intent. He sounded as eager and innocent as if he were suggesting that I should lay on a champagne supper for the two of us and a couple of Viennese cabaret stars.

  I strolled back through the delicious June night, and waited for Elisa and her party outside the door. The scattered houses between my own and the rest of the colony were not yet ready for occupation, and the network of paths was deserted. Starlight and faint voices reminded me of loneliness in some hut above a mountain village.

  Elisa, when she arrived, still seemed embarrassed and inacces­sible, but Osterling was most genial. He introduced the Pole as Mr. Gisorius and the man in the dark glasses by some temporary name I have forgotten. He then produced a syphon and bottle of whisky. The rule of consuming only local drinks did not, he said, apply to respectable ex-statesmen in their hungry sixties.

  As soon as we had settled down, Osterling remarked, with his delightful smile, that Elisa had been telling them about my amœba. I disclaimed any copyright in the metaphor.

  ‘But the trouble is,’ he said, ‘that she seems to have shown it to you in too many typical environments.’

  I became aware that I was alone, facing Elisa and the three men. Our seating had, accidentally but too plainly changed to that of the accused before his judges. Osterling at once moved with complete naturalness to an easy chair more or less by my side.

  ‘Have a cigar?’ he offered.

  Elisa began to prowl about under the window with tightly-clenched fists. I thanked him, and lit up an exquisite Havana.

  ‘I expect,’ I said, ‘that you all have the same respect for Elisa Cantemir’s judgment that I have.’

  I met Gisorius’ analytical eye. It was not wholly hostile; it held indeed the grim humour of a man entirely confident in himself and his sense of justice. His head was ridged and faceted as an animal’s skull.

  ‘A profound respect,’ he answered, ‘for her judgment in cold blood.’

  Elisa smothered the opening syllables of something that sounded as if it would be perilously near abuse. I kept quiet, for Osterling had already started to deal with Gisorius.

  ‘My experience of human beings,’ he said gracefully, ‘per­suades me that their judgment is more affected by what they want than by what they have. And in any case Elisa’s instinct is that of the immortals, neither cold nor hot nor logical, but invariably right. No, no, I shouldn’t dream of questioning it. Our problem, Amberson, is not whether Elisa is right, but whether we can afford to be wrong. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ I replied. ‘On the other hand, she said you needed me. I don’t know why. But obviously you have to take a risk with someone. And you had better ensure, as she did, that he’s in full sympathy.’

  ‘In full sympathy?’ asked Gisorius. ‘An ordinary business man?’

  His tone was matter-of-fact rather than offensive, but he had touched a sensitive spot. I told him—and I must have sounded sincere, though too excited—that his remark was typical of a political pedant, that the millions compelled into commerce had among them as many subtle and fine intelligences as the whole body of professional master-minds, and that one of the major causes of strain and impatience in the world was that the damned economists wouldn’t grant to the trader any higher ambition than the making of money.

  The man in the dark glasses took them off. He had looked like a somewhat blank and massive Rudyard Kipling, but now I kne
w that I had seen his face before. Little wrinkles that seemed due to intensity of effort rather than humour radiated from the corners of his eyes, and beneath were heavy pouches; but the orbs were clear and magnificent.

  ‘The higher ambitions of the trader,’ he repeated. ‘Interesting how quickly the pendulum swings! Now I should have thought that you, in England especially, had had quite enough trouble with the higher ambitions of the trader.’

  ‘I mean his right to be considered an altruistic thinker, failing any evidence to the contrary,’ I said. ‘To put it crudely, I sug­gest that the average commercial traveller is a deal less prejudiced than the average intellectual.’

  ‘The interesting thing is that you believe that,’ he answered. ‘I don’t. I think your opinion is merely a reaction against the pseudo-science of the politicians. But we must talk it out some other time. On your next visit, perhaps.’

  These last words of his were, I think, a sort of casting vote. None of them showed any immediate change of mood. Even Elisa did not yet sit down. I was intensely curious both then and afterwards to know how the discussion before dinner had gone, but since all were determined to create the illusion that there had never been any discussion at all, I tried to live up to their manners. It is my guess that Gisorius would have preferred me to have no next visit anywhere, and that for Osterling, who always thought in human symbols, the possible damage I might do was nothing compared to the certainty of upsetting Elisa’s balance and energy.

  ‘It’s the old question of the missionaries and the trader,’ said Osterling with a friendly smile. ‘We need you because you know the country.’

  I said, more to Elisa than to him, that they seemed to be managing very well in Damascus. Elisa replied impatiently:

  ‘My dear, I was fifteen when I learned how to bribe an official without hurting his dignity.’

  ‘I will explain my own case, which is typical,’ said the stranger, ‘by the way, I think you have recognized me?’

  ‘I’ve only got so far as thinking I ought to,’ I replied. ‘Your face is familiar to me from newspaper photographs before the war. And something you stood for I liked.’

  ‘So did I,’ he said. ‘We were on our way to a world then, But there is no return. My name, Mr. Amberson, is Czoldy.’

  Czoldy, of course! His personality had fascinated both journalists and public in the ’thirties. In the League of Nations debates he used to dissect the soul and intentions of Nazi states­men with an exquisite irony that couldn’t be openly resented and yet was unanswerable. It was odd to think of so passionate a European at Kasr-el-Sittat, but what might be in Czoldy’s mind after the destruction of his life’s work and ten years of poverty, prison camps and humiliation was beyond my conjec­ture.

  ‘Are you here for good?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘My dear sir, I wish I were! No, I am on the permanent staff of the United Nations. Where else should I be? I am like one of those palace servants who were slaughtered to attend their royal master in the grave. We bear the seals of the nations, and there is no flesh on our hands. But I was giving you an example of our difficulties. Czoldy may visit Turkey. Why not? It is better, however, that he should not be known to have visited Kasr-el-Sittat. So he must come by paths that seem to him, at his age, unnecessarily romantic. Is there a safer route, Mr. Amberson?’

  ‘There’s the sea,’ I said, ‘and you will have me at a port. But Kasr-el-Sittat is conveniently close to the frontier.’

  ‘Is that common talk?’ Gisorius asked at once.

  ‘No. You’re not discussed at all outside your own corner. And to local people you’re mysterious and feared—but just another monastery.’

  Gisorius seemed pleased that I had understood the implica­tions of his question.

  ‘You were in Intelligence, weren’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not exactly. A very amateur political officer.’

  ‘I was with you, too, all through the war,’ he said. ‘You were going to fight on till the independence of Poland was restored, if I remember.’

  He dipped a knee and held out his arm in a macabre and supplicating gesture that no ballet dancer could have bettered.

  ‘A cup of dust for your dead master, Czoldy! But it was fresh blood when I filled it.’

  He recovered from his extravaganza with a smooth athletic­ism of body and mind that astonished me. One could not dislike a man who hid such volcanic vitality at the bottom of his soul.

  ‘That Captain Ashkar——’ he asked suddenly. ‘Should we pay him?’

  His voice was dry and unpleasant, but he was doing his best, like a friendly commanding officer, to make me feel I was a fellow expert.

  ‘In Ashkar’s mind the frontier belongs to him personally,’ I answered, ‘and, believe me, he can’t be bribed. You can trust him to carry out his orders from Damascus, not to talk, and no more.’

  ‘Shall we have him broken?’ Elisa asked.

  In reconstructing what I remember of this conversation, I may have given an impression of myself as a bumptious rabbit in a trap. That was not so. All my emotions—and I do not mean just those overwhelmed by Elisa—were passionately devoted to Kasr-el-Sittat, and blind as the loyalties of the many dead whose chief crime was to adore a leader. I could even forgive Gisorius and admit that in his place I too might have refused such a gamble as myself. Logic? When one is under the excite­ment of a revelation, there is no logic. These were my people, and the purpose of my life was momentarily clear. Even so, I could not quite forget my old army sympathy for an official trying to do his duty under difficulties, and to that extent I was on the side of Ashkar. Entire sincerity towards either party was impossible, but Elisa’s question at least allowed me to be an honest middleman.

  ‘No, don’t try to break him,’ I replied. ‘You might get a crook who would be harder still to handle. And up to a point I can deal with Ashkar for you.’

  I waited for the enquiry about Eugen Rosa. I was prepared to say that I would ask Ashkar to investigate. But nobody men­tioned him or even seemed on the verge of a question. I began to suspect that they did not connect him with Ashkar at all, and that there must be other places along Rosa’s route where he might have disappeared. This guess, as I found out later, was a good one.

  ‘You’re happy on your beach,’ Osterling remarked.

  ‘Yes. It’s a home. And it’s friendship that counts with the Arab more than money. Let them feel you like them, give a favour for a favour—and this country is open.’

  ‘The port too?’ Gisorius asked.

  ‘Within reason.’

  ‘Heavy crates?’

  ‘My business is machinery, and if the crates bear my marks——’

  ‘And could you land, for example, Czoldy or me or a party in my charge?’

  ‘Not at El Mina. On the open beaches, yes. But I’d remind you that seamen always talk. And I can’t guarantee anything at the Turkish end.’

  Gisorius looked at me ironically.

  ‘I see you have not fully appreciated all that Elisa Cantemir told you,’ he said. ‘In Turkey, if I am discreet, I am allowed considerable liberty of action.’

  That was my first and last meeting with the whole Secretariat of Kasr-el-Sittat.

  2

  And now began three even months of my life when I had a clear conscience and the satisfaction of success. A clear con­science? Well, a man who has been brought up to common honesty should at least mark carefully his own illegalities. I can only say that I did not. The smuggling which I carried out for Kasr-el-Sittat was too easy and conformed too closely to the morality of the country. Of course if conscience had bothered me I could have found a thousand excuses to satisfy it, for my motives to me were pure; but I never seemed to feel the neces­sity for any excuses at all.

  The work was not nearly so melodramatic as the Secretariat feared. Their collective intelligence, brilliant and wary though it was, did not move easily through the subtleties of an Arab country in which government was a matter of va
gue intentions and vaguer obedience. I used to explain to them that they were operating in a land so free as to be a practical example of their own ideal—a paradox which amused Osterling and roused Elisa to violent argument.

  My cover was perfect. In Tripoli and El Mina gossip was good-humoured and mildly envious. They discussed, of course, the visits of Elisa to my house and hidden garden, and I like to think that the woman and the setting sometimes turned their light minds to imagine beauty that in fact was real—but, if I know them, they probably thought I had seduced Elisa in order to get Kasr-el-Sittat’s orders for agricultural machinery.

  Our biggest import was the wireless transmitter. It was shipped to me from New York as an electrically-driven milking machine. The suction pipes and attachments of a milker were packed on the top of the case, and I had no difficulty in demon­strating to a friendly and interested customs inspector that a milking machine was what it was. From then on Kasr-el-Sittat could communicate—of course by Morse only—with all its secret offices in Europe. I never knew the technicalities of the network. Kasr-el-Sittat itself used the call-signs of a ship.

  Then there were the boxes of seeds and tools which pur­ported to have come from London via Italy. All I knew of these little shipments was that the boxes had false bottoms. So primitive a method of smuggling would have been discovered at once if they had been consigned to anyone but a regular merchant with the correct official friends. For me, however, customs examination was merely a disagreeable routine. If I wanted to move my goods at an awkward time, or if the docu­ments were too complicated for the easy-going, I was allowed to show the clerks how the clearance should be done; and if the port were busy, customs examination sometimes took place in my own warehouse after hours and over drinks.

  All this was so smooth, so much in the normal, unhurried movement of El Mina’s day, that, as I say, it never gave me a moment of anxiety. I didn’t like the caique traffic, but only twice did I have to organize it—once for Czoldy and a party of three, and once for two Russians who were taken on board at Istanbul and landed on the Syrian coast after dark.