The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [332]
‘My dear Leila: At this moment it seems more necessary than ever that I should see you and I must ask you to overcome your….’
But it was a failure. He crumpled up the letters and threw them regretfully into the wastepaper basket. Overcome her what?
Was he beginning to hate Leila too, now? Somewhere, stirring in the hinterland of his consciousness was the thought, almost certain knowledge now, that it was she and not Nessim who had initiated these dreadful plans. She was the prime mover. Should he not tell Nur so? Should he not tell his own Government so?
Was it not likely that Narouz, who was the man of action in the family, was even more deeply implicated in the conspiracy than Nessim himself? He sighed. What could any of them hope to gain from a successful Jewish insurrection? Mountolive believed too firmly in the English mystique to realize fully that anyone could have lost faith in it and the promise it might hold of future security, future stability.
No, the whole thing seemed to him simply a piece of gratuitous madness; a typical hare-brained business venture with a chance of large profits! How typical of Egypt! He stirred his own con-tempt slowly with the thought, as one might stir a mustard-pot. How typical of Egypt! Yet, strangely, how un-typical of Nessim!
Sleep was impossible that night. He slipped on a light over-coat, more as a disguise than anything, and went for a long walk by the river in order to settle his thoughts, feeling a foolish regretfulness that there was not a small dog to follow him and occupy his mind. He had slipped out of the servants’ quarters, and the resplendent kawass and the two police guards were most surprised to see him re-enter the front gate at nearly two o’clock, walking on his own two legs as no Ambassador should ever be allowed to do. He gave them a civil good-evening in Arabic and let himself into the Residence door with his key. Shed his coat and limped across the lighted hall still followed by an imaginary dog which left wet footprints everywhere upon the polished parquet floors….
On his way up to bed he found the now finished painting of himself by Clea stand ing for lornly against the wall on the first landing. He swore under his breath, for the thing had slipped his mind; he had been meaning to send it off to his mother for the past six weeks. He would make a special point of getting the Bag Room to deal with it tomorrow. They would perhaps have some qualms because of its size, he debated, but nevertheless:
he would insist, in order to obviate the trouble of obtaining an export licence for a so-called ‘work of art’. (It was certainly not that.) But ever since a German archaeologist had stolen a lot of Egyptian statuary and sold it to the Museums of Europe the Government had been very sensitive about letting works of art out of the country. They would certainly delay a licence for months while the whole thing was debated. No, the Bag Room must attend to it; his mother would be pleased. He thought of her with a sentimental pang, sitting reading by the fire in that snowbound landscape. He owed her a really long letter. But not now. ‘After all this is over’ he said, and gave a small involuntary shiver.
Once in bed he entered a narrow maze of shallow and un-refreshing dreams in which he floundered all night long — images of the great network of lakes with their swarming fish and clouds of wild birds, where once more the youthful figures of himself and Leila moved, spirited by the soft concussion of oars in water, to the punctuation of a single soft finger-drum across a violet night-scape; on the confines of the dream there moved another boat, in silhouette, with two