“And what about José?”
“I met him in Berlin when I was dancing there. He did not like his partner. She was,” she added simply, “a terrible bitch.”
“Was this long ago?”
“Oh, yes. Three years. We have been to a great many places.” She examined him with affectionate concern. “But you are tired. You look tired. You have cut your face, too.”
“I tried to shave with one hand.”
“Have you got a very nice house in England?”
“My wife likes it.”
“Oh là-là!
And do you like your wife?”
“Very much.”
“I do not think,” she said reflectively, “that I would like to go to England. So much rain and fog. I like Paris. There is nothing better to live in than an apartment in Paris. It is not expensive.”
“No?”
“For twelve hundred francs a month one can have a very nice apartment. In Rome it is not so cheap. I had an apartment in Rome that was very nice, but it cost fifteen hundred lire. My fiancé was very rich. He sold automobiles.”
“That was before you married José?”
“Of course. We were going to be married but there was some trouble about his divorce from his wife in America. He always said that he would fix it, but in the end it was impossible. I was very sorry. I had that apartment for a year.”
“And that was how you learned English?”
“Yes, but I had learned a little in that terrible convent.” She frowned. “But I tell you everything about myself. About you I know nothing except that you have a nice house and a wife, and that you are an engineer. You ask questions, but you tell me nothing. I still do not know why you are here. It is very bad of you.”
But he did not have to reply to this. Another passenger had entered the saloon, and was advancing towards them, clearly with the intention of making their acquaintance.
He was short, broad-shouldered and unkempt, with a heavy jowl and a fringe of scurfy grey hair round a bald pate. He had a smile, fixed like that of a ventriloquist’s doll: a standing apology for the iniquity of his existence.
The boat had begun to roll slightly; but from the way he clutched for support at the backs of chairs as he crossed the room, it might have been riding out a full gale.
“There is lot of movement, eh?” he said in English, and subsided into a chair. “Ah! That is better, eh?” He looked at Josette with obvious interest, but turned to Graham before he spoke again. “I hear English spoken so I am interested at once,” he said. “You are English, sir?”
“Yes. And you?”
“Turkish. I also go to London. Trade is very good. I go to sell tobacco. My name is Mr. Kuvetli, sir.”
“My name is Graham. This is Señora Gallindo.”
“So good,” said Mr. Kuvetli. Without getting up from his chair, he bowed from the waist. “I don’t speak English very well,” he added, unnecessarily.
“It is a very difficult language,” said Josette, coldly. She was obviously displeased by the intrusion,
“My wife,” continued Mr. Kuvetli, “does not speak English any. So I do not bring her with me. She has not been to England.”
“But you have?”
“Yes, sir. Three times, and to sell tobacco. I do not sell much before, but now I sell lot. It is war. United States ships do not come to England any more. English ships bring guns and aeroplanes from U.S. and have no room for tobacco, so England now buys lot of tobacco from Turkey. It is good business for my boss. Firm of Pazar and Co.”
“It must be.”
“He would come to England himself, but cannot speak English any. Or he cannot write. He is very ignorant. I reply to all favours from England and elsewhere abroad. But he knows lot about tobacco. We produce best.” He plunged his hand into his pocket and produced a leather cigarette case. “Please try cigarette made from tobacco by Pazar and Co.” He extended the case to Josette.
She shook her head.
“Tesekkür ederim.”
The Turkish phrase irritated Graham. It seemed to belittle the man’s polite efforts to speak a language foreign to him.
“Ah!” said Mr. Kuvetli, “you speak my language. That is very good. You have been long in Turkey?”
“Dört ay.”
She turned to Graham. “I would like one of
your
cigarettes, please.”
It was a deliberate insult but Mr. Kuvetli only smiled a little more. Graham took one of the cigarettes.
“Thank you very much. It’s very good of you. Will you have a drink, Mr. Kuvetli?”
“Ah, no, thank you. I must go to arrange my cabin before it is dinner.”
“Then later, perhaps.”
“Yes, please.” With a broadened smile and a bow to each of them he got to his feet and made his way to the door.
Graham lit his cigarette. “Was it absolutely necessary to be so rude? Why drive the man away?”
She frowned. “Turks! I do not like them. They are”—she ransacked the automobile salesman’s vocabulary for an epithet—“they are goddamned dagoes. See how thick his skin is! He does not get angry. He only smiles.”
“Yes, he behaved very well.”
“I do not understand it,” she burst out angrily. “In the last war you fought with France against the Turks. In the convent they told me much about it. They are heathen animals, these Turks. There were the Armenian atrocities and the Syrian atrocities and the Smyrna atrocities. Turks killed babies with their bayonets. But now it is all different. You like the Turks. They are your allies and you buy tobacco from them. It is the English hypocrisy. I am a Serb. I have a longer memory.”
“Does your memory go back to nineteen twelve? I was thinking of the Serbian atrocities in Turkish villages. Most armies commit what are called atrocities at some time or other. They usually call them reprisals.”
“Including the British army, perhaps?”
“You would have to ask an Indian or an Afrikander about that. But every country has its madmen. Some countries have more than others. And when you give such men a license to kill they are not always particular about the way they kill. But I am afraid that the rest of
their fellow countrymen remain human beings. Personally, I like the Turks.”
She was clearly angry with him. He suspected that her rudeness to Mr. Kuvetli had been calculated to earn his approval and that she was annoyed because he had not responded in the way she had expected. “It is stuffy in here,” she said, “and there is a smell of cooking. I should like to walk outside again. You may come with me if you wish.”
Graham seized the opportunity. He said, as they walked towards the door: “I think that I should unpack my suitcase. I shall hope to see you at dinner.”
Her expression changed quickly. She became an international beauty humouring, with a tolerant smile, the extravagances of a love-sick boy. “As you wish José will be with me later. I shall introduce you to him. He will want to play cards.”
“Yes, I remember you told me that he would. I shall have to try to remember a game that I can play well.”
She shrugged. “He will win in any case. But I have warned you.”
“I shall remember that when I lose.”
He returned to his cabin and stayed there until the steward came round beating a gong to announce dinner. When he went upstairs he was feeling better. He had changed his clothes. He had managed to complete the shave which he had begun in the morning. He had an appetite. He was prepared to take an interest in his fellow passengers.
Most of them were already in their places when he entered the saloon.
The ship’s officers evidently ate in their own quarters. Only two of the dining tables were laid. At one of them sat Mr. Kuvetli, a man and woman who looked as if they might be the French couple from the cabin next to his, Josette, and with her a very sleek José. Graham smiled courteously at the assembly and received in return a loud “good evening” from Mr. Kuvetli, a lift of the eyebrows from Josette, a cool nod from José, and a blank stare from the French couple. There was about them an air of tension which seemed to him to be more than the ordinary restraint of passengers on a boat sitting down together for the first time. The steward showed him to the other table.
One of the places was already filled by the elderly man whom he had passed on his walk round the deck. He was a thick, round-shouldered man with a pale heavy face, white hair and a long upper lip. As Graham sat down next to him he looked up. Graham met a pair of prominent pale blue eyes.
“Mr. Graham?”
“Yes. Good evening.”
“My name is Haller. Doctor Fritz Haller. I should explain that I am a German, a good German, and that I am on my way back to my country.” He spoke very good, deliberate English in a deep voice.
Graham realised that the occupants of the other table were staring at them in breathless silence. He understood now their air of tension.
He said calmly: “I am an Englishman. But I gather you knew that.”
“Yes, I knew it.” Haller turned to the food in front of
him. “The Allies seem to be here in force and unhappily the steward is an imbecile. The two French people at the next table were placed here. They objected to eating with the enemy, insulted me and moved. If you wish to do the same I suggest that you do so now. Everyone is expecting the scene.”
“So I see.” Graham cursed the steward silently.
“On the other hand,” Haller continued, breaking his bread, “you may find the situation humorous. I do myself. Perhaps I am not as patriotic as I should be. No doubt I should insult you before you insult me; but, quite apart from the unfair differences in our ages, I can think of no effective way of insulting you. One must understand a person thoroughly before one can insult him effectively. The French lady, for example, called me a filthy Bosche. I am unmoved. I bathed this morning and I have no unpleasant habits.”
“I see your point. But …”
“But there is a matter of etiquette involved. Quite so. Fortunately, I must leave that to you. Move or not, as you choose. Your presence here would not embarrass me. If it were understood that we were to exclude international politics from our conversation we might even pass the next half-hour in a civilised manner. However, as the newcomer on the scene, it is for you to decide.”
Graham picked up the menu. “I believe it is the custom for belligerents on neutral ground to ignore each other if possible and in any case to avoid embarrassing the neutrals in question. Thanks to the steward, we cannot ignore each other. There seems to be no reason why we should make a difficult situation unpleasant. No doubt
we can rearrange the seating before the next meal.”
Haller nodded approval. “Very sensible. I must admit that I am glad of your company to-night. My wife suffers from the sea and will stay in her cabin this evening. I think that Italian cooking is very monotonous without conversation.”
“I am inclined to agree with you.” Graham smiled intentionally and heard a rustle from the next table. He also heard an exclamation of disgust from the Frenchwoman. He was annoyed to find that the sound made him feel guilty.
“You seem,” said Haller, “to have earned some disapproval. It is partly my fault. I am sorry. Perhaps it is that I am old, but I find it extremely difficult to identify men with their ideas. I can dislike, even hate an idea, but the man who has it seems to be still a man.”
“Have you been long in Turkey?”
“A few weeks. I came there from Persia.”
“Oil?”
“No, Mr. Graham, archeology. I was investigating the early pre-Islamic cultures. The little I have been able to discover seems to suggest that some of the tribes who moved westward to the plains of Iran about four thousand years ago assimilated the Sumerian culture and preserved it almost intact until long after the fall of Babylon. The form of perpetuation of the Adonis myth alone was instructive. The weeping for Tammuz was always a focal point of the pre-historic religions—the cult of the dying and risen god. Tammuz, Osiris and Adonis are the same Sumerian deity personified by three different races. But the Sumerians called this god Dumuzida. So did some of
the pre-Islamic tribes of Iran! And they had a most interesting variation of the Sumerian epic of Gilgamish and Enkidu which I had not heard about before. But forgive me, I am boring you already.”
“Not at all,” said Graham politely. “Were you in Persia for long?”
“Two years only. I would have stayed another year but for the war.”
“Did it make so much difference?”
Haller pursed his lips. “There was a financial question. But even without that I think that I might not have stayed. We can learn only in the expectation of life. Europe is too preoccupied with its destruction to concern itself with such things: a condemned man is interested only in himself, the passage of hours and such intimations of immortality as he can conjure from the recesses of his mind.”
“I should have thought that a preoccupation with the past.…”
“Ah yes, I know. The scholar in his study can ignore the noise in the market place. Perhaps—if he is a theologian or a biologist or an antiquarian. I am none of those things. I helped in the search for a logic of history. We should have made of the past a mirror with which to see round the corner that separates us from the future. Unfortunately, it no longer matters what we could have seen. We are returning the way we came. Human understanding is re-entering the monastery.”
“Forgive me but I thought you said that you were a
good
German.”
He chuckled. “I am old. I can afford the luxury of despair.”
“Still, in your place, I think that I should have stayed in Persia and luxuriated at a distance.”
“The climate, unfortunately, is not suitable for any sort of luxuriating. It is either very hot or very cold. My wife found it particularly trying. Are you a soldier, Mr. Graham?”
“No, an engineer.”
“That is much the same thing. I have a son in the army. He has always been a soldier. I have never understood why he should be my son. As a lad of fourteen he disapproved of me because I had no duelling scars. He disapproved of the English, too, I am afraid. We lived for some time in Oxford while I was doing some work there. A beautiful city! Do you live in London?”
“No, in the North.”
“I have visited Manchester and Leeds. I preferred Oxford. I live in Berlin myself. I don’t think it is any uglier than London.” He glanced at Graham’s hand. “You seem to have had an accident.”