• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 14233 0

figures in it — the brothers: both armed with long-barrelled rifles. Soon he would be overtaken; but warm in the circle of Leila’s arms, as if he were Antony at Actium, he could hardly bring himself to feel fear. They did not speak, or at least, he heard no voices. As for himself, he felt only the messages to and from the woman in his arms — transmitted it seemed only by the ticking blood. They were past speech and reflection — the diminished figures of an unforgotten, unregretted past, infinitely dear now because irrecoverable. In the heart of the dream itself, he knew he was dreaming, and awoke with surprise and anguish to find tears upon the pillow. Breakfasting according to established custom, he suddenly felt as if he had a fever, but the thermometer refused to confirm his belief. So he rose reluctantly and presented himself in full fig, punctual upon the instant, to find Donkin nervously pacing the hall with the bundle of papers under his arm.

‘Well’ said Mountolive, with a gesture va gue ly ind icating his rig,

‘here I am at last.’

In the black car with its fluttering pennant they slid smoothly across the town to the Ministry where the timid and ape-like Egyptian waited for them full of uneasy solicitudes and alarms.

He was visibly impressed by the dress uniform and by the fact that the two best Arabists of the British Mission had been detailed to call upon him. He gleamed and bowed, automatically playing the opening hand — an exchange of formal politenesses — with his customary practice. He was a small sad man with tin cuff-links and matted hair. His anxiety to please, to accommodate, was so great that he fell easily into postures of friendship, almost of mawkishness. His eyes watered easily. He pressed ceremonial coffee and Turkish delight upon them as if the gesture itself represented a confession of love almost. He mopped his brow con-tinua lly, and gave his ingratiating pithecanthropoid grimace. ‘Ah!

Ambassador’ he said sentimentally as the compliments gave place to business. ‘You know our language and our country well. We trust you.’ Paraphrased, his words meant: ‘You know our venality to be ineradicable, the mark of an ancient culture, therefore we do not feel ashamed in your presence.’

Then he sat with his paws folded over his neat grey waistcoat, glum as a foetus in a bottle, as Mountolive delivered his strongly worded protest and produced the monument to Maskelyne’s industry. Nur listened, shaking his head doubtfully from time to time, his visage lengthening. When Mountolive had done, he said impu lsive ly, standing up: ‘Of course. At once. At once.’ And then, as if plunged into doubt, unsteadily sat down once more and began to play with his cuff-links. Mountolive sighed as he stood up.

‘It is a disagreeable duty’ he said, ‘but necessary. May I assure my Government that the matter will be prosecuted with speed?’

‘With speed. With speed.’ The little man nodded twice and licked his lips; one had the impression that he did not quite understand the words he was using. ‘I shall see Memlik today’

he added in lower tones. But the timbre of his voice had changed. He coughed and ate a sweetmeat, dusting the castor sugar off his fingers with a silk handkerchief. ‘Yes’ he said. If he was interested in the massive document lying before him it was (or so it seemed to Mountolive) only that the photostats intrigued him. He had not seen things like these before. They belonged to the great foreign worlds of science and illusion in which these Western peoples lived — worlds of great powers and responsibilities — out of which they sometimes descended, clad in magnificent uniforms, to make the lot of the simple Egyptians harder than it was at the

best of times. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes’ said Nur again, as if to give the conversation stability and depth, to give his visitor confidence in his good intentions.

Mountolive did not like it at all; the whole tone lacked directness, purpose. The absurd sense of optimism rose once more in his breast and in order to punish himself for it (also because he was extremely conscientious)