Destination Unknown - Agatha Christie [30]
Miss Hetherington said acidly, when she had departed:
‘That’s exactly like these American women. Rushing from place to place, never settling down anywhere. Egypt one day, Palestine the next. Sometimes I really don’t think they know what country they’re in.’
She shut her lips with a snap, and rising and gathering up her knitting carefully she left the Turkish room with a little nod to Hilary as she went. Hilary glanced down at her watch. She felt inclined not to change this evening for dinner, as she usually did. She sat on there alone in the low, rather dark room with its oriental hangings. A waiter looked in, then went away after turning on two lamps. They did not give out very much light and the room seemed pleasantly dim. It had an Eastern sort of serenity. Hilary sat back on the low divan, thinking of the future.
Only yesterday she had been wondering if the whole business upon which she had been engaged was a mare’s nest. And now–now she was on the point of starting on her real journey. She must be careful, very careful. She must make no slip. She must be Olive Betterton, moderately well educated, inartistic, conventional but with definite Left Wing sympathies, and a woman who was devoted to her husband.
‘I must make no mistake,’ said Hilary to herself, under her breath.
How strange it felt to be sitting here alone in Morocco. She felt as though she had got into a land of mystery and enchantment. That dim lamp beside her! If she were to take the carved brass between her hands and rub, would a Djinn of the Lamp appear? As the thought came to her, she started. Materializing quite suddenly from beyond the lamp, she saw the small wrinkled face and pointed beard of Mr Aristides. He bowed politely before sitting down beside her, saying:
‘You permit, Madame?’ Hilary responded politely.
Taking out his cigarette case he offered her a cigarette. She accepted and he lit one himself also.
‘It pleases you, this country, Madame?’ he asked, after a moment or two.
‘I have been here only a very short time,’ said Hilary. ‘I find it so far quite enchanting.’
‘Ah. And you have been into the old city? You liked it?’
‘I think it is wonderful.’
‘Yes, it is wonderful. It is the past there–the past of commerce, of intrigue, of whispering voices, shuttered activities, all the mystery and passion of a city enclosed in its narrow streets and walls. Do you know what I think of, Madame, when I walk through the streets of Fez?’ ‘No?’
‘I think of your Great West Road in London. I think of your great factory buildings on each side of the road. I think of those buildings lit throughout with their neon lighting and the people inside, that you see so clearly from the road as you drive along in your car. There is nothing hidden, there is nothing mysterious. There are not even curtains to the windows. No, they do their work there with the whole world observing them if it wants to do so. It is like slicing off the top of an anthill.’ ‘You mean,’ said Hilary, interested, ‘that it is the contrast that interests you?’
Mr Aristides nodded his elderly, tortoise-like head.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There everything is in the open and in the old streets of Fez nothing is à jour. Everything is hidden, dark…But–’ he leant forward and tapped a finger on the little brass coffee table ‘–but the same things go on. The same cruelties, the same oppressions, the same wish for power, the same bargaining and haggling.’
‘You think that human nature is the same everywhere?’ Hilary asked.
‘In every country. In the past as in the present there are always the two things that rule. Cruelty and benevolence! One or the other. Sometimes both.’ He continued with hardly a change of manner. ‘They have told me, Madame, that you were in a very