The Alexandria Quartet (113 page)

Jolting past the Goharri Mosque I remembered finding one-eyed Hamid there one afternoon rubbing a slice of lemon on a pilaster before sucking it. This, he had said, was an infallible specific against the stone. He used to live somewhere in this quarter with its humble cafés full of native splendours like rose-scented drinking water and whole sheep turning on spits, stuffed with pigeons, rice, nuts. All the paunch-beguiling meals which delighted the ventripotent pashas of the city!

Somewhere up here, skirting the edge of the Arab quarter the tram gives a leap and grinds round abruptly. You can for one moment look down through the frieze of shattered buildings into the corner of the harbour reserved for craft of shallow draught. The hazards of the war at sea had swollen their numbers to overflowing. Framed by the coloured domes there lay feluccas and lateen-rig giassas, wine-caiques, schooners, and brigantines of every shape and size, from all over the Levant. An anthology of masts and spars and haunting Aegean eyes; of names and rigs and destinations. They lay there coupled to their reflections with the sunlight on them in a deep water-trance. Then abruptly they were snatched away and the Grande Corniche began to unroll, the magnificent long sea-parade which frames the modern city, the Hellenistic capital of the bankers and cotton-visionaries — all those European bagmen whose enterprise had re-ignited and ratified Alexander's dream of conquest after the centuries of dust and silence which Amr had imposed upon it.

Here, too, it was all relatively unchanged save for the full khaki clouds of soldiers moving everywhere and the rash of new bars which had sprung up everywhere to feed them. Outside the Cecil long lines of transport-trucks had overflowed the taxi-ranks. Outside the Consulate an unfamiliar naval sentry with rifle and bayonet. I could not say it was all irremediably changed, for these visitors had a shiftless and temporary look, like countrymen visiting a capital for a fair. Soon a sluice gate would open and they would be drawn off into the great reservoir of the desert battles. But there were surprises. At the Consulate, for example, a very fat man who sat like a king prawn at his desk, pressing white hands together whose long filbert nails had been carefully polished that morning, and who addressed me with familiarity. ‘My task may seem invidious' he fluted, ‘yet it is necessary. We are trying to grab anyone who has a special aptitude before the Army gets them. I have been sent your name by the Ambassador who had designated you for the censorship department which we have just opened, and which is grotesquely understaffed.'

‘The Ambassador?' It was bewildering.

‘He's a friend of yours, is he not?'

‘I hardly know him.'

‘Nevertheless I am bound to accept his direction, even though I am in charge of this operation.'

There were forms to be filled in. The fat man, who was not unamiable, and whose name was Kenilworth, obliged by helping me. ‘It is a bit of mystery' I said. He shrugged his shoulders and spread his white hands. ‘I suggest you discuss it with him when you meet.'

‘But I had no intention —' I said. But it seemed pointless to discuss the matter further until I discovered what lay behind it. How could Mountolive… ? But Kenilworth was talking again. ‘I suppose you might need a week to find yourself lodgings here before you settle in. Shall I tell the department so?'

‘If you wish' I said in bewilderment. I was dismissed and spent some time in the cellars unearthing my battered cabin-trunk and selecting from it a few respectable city-clothes. With these in a brown paper parcel I walked slowly along the Corniche towards the Cecil, where I purposed to take a room, have a bath and shave, and prepare myself for the visit to the country house. This had begun to loom up rather in my mind, not exactly with anxiety but with the disquiet which suspense always brings. I stood for a while staring down at the still sea, and it was while I was standing thus that the silver Rolls with the daffodil hub-cups drew up and a large bearded personage jumped out and came galloping towards me with hands outstretched. It was only when I felt his arms hugging my shoulders and the beard brushing my cheek in a Gallic greeting that I was able to gasp ‘Pombal!'

‘Darley'. Still holding my hands as tenderly, and with tears in his eyes, he drew me to one side and sat down heavily on one of the stone benches bordering the marine parade. Pombal was in the most elegant
tenue
. His starched cuffs rattled crisply. The dark beard and moustache gave him an imposing yet somehow forlorn air. Inside all these trappings he seemed quite unchanged. He peered through them, like a Tiberius in fancy-dress. We gazed at each other for a long moment of silence, with emotion. Both knew that the silence we observed was one of pain for the fall of France, an event which symbolized all too clearly the psychic collapse of Europe itself. We were like mourners at an invisible cenotaph during the two minutes' silence which commemorates an irremediable failure of the human will. I felt in his handclasp all the shame and despair of this graceless tragedy and I sought desperately for the phrase which might console him, might reassure him that France itself could never truly die so long as artists were being born into the world. But this world of armies and battles was too intense and too concrete to make the thought seem more than of secondary importance — for art really means freedom, and it was this which was at stake. At last the words came. ‘Never mind. Today I've seen the little blue cross of Lorraine flowering everywhere.'

‘You understand' he murmured and squeezed my hand again. ‘I knew you would understand. Even when you most criticized her you knew that she meant as much to you as to us.' He blew his nose suddenly, with startling loudness, in a clean handkerchief and leaned back on the stone bench. With amazing suddenness he had become his old self again, the timid, fat, irrepressible Pombal of the past. ‘There is so much to tell you. You will come with me now. At once. Not a word. Yes, it is Nessim's car. I bought it to save it from the Egyptians. Mountolive has fixed you an excellent post. I am still in the old flat, but now we have taken the building. You can have the whole top floor. It will be like old times again.' I was carried off my feet by his volubility and by the bewildering variety of prospects he described so rapidly and confidently, without apparently expecting comment. His English had become practically perfect.

‘Old times' I stammered.

But here an expression of pain crossed his fat countenance and he groaned, pressing his hands between his knees as he uttered the word: ‘Fosca!' He screwed up his face comically and stared at me. ‘You do not know.' He looked almost terrified. ‘I am in love with her.'

I laughed. He shook his head rapidly. ‘No. Don't laugh.'

‘I must, Pombal.'

‘I beseech you.' And leaning forward with a look of despair on his countenance he lowered his voice and prepared to confide something to me. His lips moved. It was clearly something of tragic importance. At last he brought it out, and the tears came into his eyes as he spoke the words: ‘You don't understand.
Je suis fidèle malgré mot.'
He gasped like a fish and repeated
‘Mcdgré moi
. It has never happened before,
never.'
And then abruptly he broke into a despairing whinny with the same look of awed bewilderment on his face. How could I forbear to laugh? At a blow he had restored Alexandria to me, complete and intact — for no memory of it could be complete without the thought of Pombal in love. My laughter infected him. He was shaking like a jelly. ‘Stop' he pleaded at last with comic pathos, interjecting into the forest of bearded chuckles the words. ‘And I have never slept with her, not once. That is the insane thing.' This made us laugh more than ever.

But the chauffeur softly sounded the horn, recalling him to himself abruptly, reminding him that he had duties to perform. ‘Come' he cried. ‘I have to take a letter to Pordre before nine. Then I'll have you dropped at the flat. We can lunch together. Hamid is with me, by the way; he'll be delighted. Hurry up.' Once more my doubts were not given time to formulate themselves. Clutching my parcel I accompanied him to the familiar car, noticing with a pang that its upholstery now smelt of expensive cigars and metal-polish. My friend talked rapidly all the way to the French Consulate, and I was surprised to find that his whole attitude to the Chief had changed. All the old bitterness and resentment had vanished. They had both, it seemed, abandoned their posts in different capitals (Pombal in Rome) in order to join the Free French in Egypt. He spoke of Pordre now with tender affection. ‘He is like a father to me. He has been marvellous' said my friend rolling his expressive dark eye. This somewhat puzzled me until I saw them both together and understood in a flash that the fall of their country had created this new bond. Pordre had become quite white-haired; his frail and absent-minded gentleness had given place to the calm resolution of someone grappling with responsibilities which left no room for affectation. The two men treated each other with a courtesy and affection which in truth made them seem like father and son rather than colleagues. The hand that Pordre placed so lovingly on Pombal's shoulder, the face he turned to him, expressed a wistful and lonely pride.

But the situation of their new Chancery was a somewhat unhappy one. The broad windows looked out over the harbour, over the French Fleet which lay there at anchor like a symbol of all that was malefic in the stars which governed the destiny of France. I could see that the very sight of it lying there was a perpetual reproach to them. And there was no escaping it. At every turn taken between the high old-fashioned desks and the white wall their eyes fell upon this repellent array of ships. It was like a splinter lodged in the optic nerve. Pordre's eye kindled with self-reproach and the zealot's hot desire to reform these cowardly followers of the personage whom Pombal (in his less diplomatic moments) was henceforward to refer to as
‘ce vieux Putain'
. It was a relief to vent feelings so intense by the simple substitution of a letter. The three of us stood there, looking down into the harbour at this provoking sight, and suddenly the old man burst out: ‘Why don't you British intern them? Send them to India with the Italians. I shall never understand it. Forgive me. But do you realize that they are allowed to keep their small arms, mount sentries, take shore leave, just as if they were a neutral fleet? The admirals wine and dine in the town, all intriguing for Vichy. There are endless
bagarres
in the cafés between our boys and their sailors.' I could see that it was a subject which was capable of making them quite beside themselves with fury. I tried to change it, since there was little consolation I could offer.

I turned instead to Pombal's desk on which stood a large framed photograph of a French soldier. I asked who it was and both men replied simultaneously: ‘He saved us.' Later of course I would come to recognize this proud, sad Labrador's head as that of de Gaulle himself.

Pombal's car dropped me at the flat. Forgotten whispers stirred in me as I rang the bell. One-eyed Hamid opened to me, and after a moment of surprise he performed a curious little jump in the air. The original impulse of this jump must have been an embrace which he repressed just in time. But he put two fingers on my wrist and jumped like a solitary penguin on an ice-floe before retreating to give himself room for the more elaborate and formal greeting. ‘Ya Hamid' I cried, as delighted as he was. We crossed ourselves ceremonially at each other.

The whole place had been transformed once more, repainted and papered and furnished in massive official fashion. Hamid led me gloatingly from room to room while I mentally tried to reconstruct its original appearance from memories which had by now become faded and transposed. It was hard to see Melissa shrieking, for example. On the exact spot now stood a handsome sideboard crowded with bottles. (Pursewarden had once gesticulated from the far corner.) Bits of old furniture came back to mind. ‘Those old things must be knocking about somewhere' I thought in quotation from the poet of the city.* The only recognizable item was Pombal's old gout-chair which had mysteriously reappeared in its old place under the window. Had he perhaps flown back with it from Rome? That would be like him. The little box-room where Melissa and I.… It was now Hamid's own room. He slept on the same uncomfortable bed which I looked at with a kind of shrinking feeling, trying to recapture the flavour and ambience of those long enchanted afternoons when.… But the little man was talking. He must prepare lunch. And then he rummaged in a corner and thrust into my hand a crumpled snapshot which he must at some time have stolen from Melissa. It was a street-photograph and very faded. Melissa and I walked arm in arm talking down Rue Fuad. Her face was half turned away from me, smiling — dividing her attention between what I was saying so earnestly and the lighted shop-windows we passed. It must have been taken, this snapshot, on a winter afternoon around the hour of four. What on earth could I have been telling her with such earnestness? For the life of me I could not recall the time and place; yet there it was, in black and white, as they say. Perhaps the words I was uttering were momentous, significant — or perhaps they were meaningless! I had a pile of books under my arm and was wearing the dirty old mackintosh which I finally gave to Zoltan. It was in need of a dry-clean. My hair, too, seemed to need cutting at the back. Impossible to restore this vanished afternoon to mind! I gazed carefully at the circumstantial detail of the picture like someone bent upon restoring an irremediably faded fresco. Yes, it was winter, at four o'clock. She was wearing her tatty sealskin and carried a handbag which I had not ever seen in her possession. ‘Sometime in August —
was
it August?' I mentally quoted to myself again.*

Turning back to the wretched rack-like bed again I whispered her name softly. With surprise and chagrin I discovered that she had
utterly vanished
. The waters had simply closed over her head. It was as if she had never existed, never inspired in me the pain and pity which (I had always told myself) would live on, transmitted into other forms perhaps — but live triumphantly on forever. I had worn her out
like an old pair of socks
, and the utter-ness of this disappearance surprised and shocked me. Could ‘love' simply wear out like this? ‘Melissa' I said again, hearing the lovely word echo in the silence. Name of a sad herb, name of a pilgrim to Eleusis. Was she less now than a scent or a flavour? Was she simply a nexus of literary cross-references scribbled in the margins of a minor poem? And had my love dissolved her in this strange fashion, or was it simply the literature I had tried to make out of her? Words, the acid-bath of words! I felt guilty. I even tried (with that lying self-deception so natural to sentimentalists) to
force
her to appear by an act of will, to re-evoke a single one of those afternoon kisses which had once been for me the sum of the city's many meanings. I even tried deliberately to squeeze the tears into my eyes, to hypnotize memory by repeating her name like a charm. The experiment yielded nothing. Her name had been utterly worn out of use! It was truly shameful not to be able to evoke the faintest tribute to so all-engulfing an unhappiness. Then like the chime of a distant bell I heard the tart voice of the dead Pursewarden saying ‘But our unhappiness was sent to regale us. We were intended to revel in it, enjoy it to the full.' Melissa had been simply one of the many costumes of love!