The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [337]
He was morbidly superstitious and incurably venal — and indeed was building an immense fortune upon bribery; yet how shall we add to the sum of this the fact of his inordinate religiosity
— a fanatical zeal of observance which might have been puzzling in anyone who was not an Egyptian? This is where the quarrel with the pious Nur had arisen; for Memlik had established almost a court-form for the reception of bribes. His collection of Korans was a famous one. They were housed upstairs in a ramshackle gallery of the house. By now it was known far and wide that the polite form in which to approach him was to interleave a particu-larly cherished copy of the Holy Book with notes or other types of currency and (with an obeisance) to present him with a new addi-tion to his great library. He would accept the gift and reply, with thanks that he must repair at once upstairs to see if he already had a copy. On his return, the petitioner knew that he had succeeded if Memlik thanked him once more and said that he had put the book in his library; but if Memlik claimed to possess a copy already and handed back the book (albeit the money had inevitably been ex-tracted) the petitioner knew that his plea had failed. It was this little social formula which Nur had characterized as ‘bringing
discredit upon the Prophet’ — and had so earned Memlik’s quiet hate.
The long-elbowed conservatory in which he held his private Divan was also something of a puzzle. The coloured fanlights in cheap cathedral glass transformed visitors into harlequins, squirting green and scarlet and blue upon their faces and clothes as they walked across the long room to greet their host. Outside the murky windows ran the cocoa-coloured river on whose further bank stood the British Embassy with its elegant gardens in which Mountolive wandered on the evenings when he found himself alone. The wall-length of Memlik’s great reception-room was almost covered by two enormous and incongruous Victor ian paintings by some forgotten master which, being too large and heavy to hang, stood upon the floor and gave something of the illusion of framed tapestries. But the subject-matter! In one, the Israelites crossed the Red Sea which was gracefully piled up on either side to admit their fearful passage, in the other a hirsute Moses struck a stage rock with a shepherd’s crook. Somehow these attenuated Biblical subjects matched the rest of the furniture perfectly — the great Ottoman carpets and the stiff ugly-backed chairs covered in blue damask, the immense contorted brass chandelier with its circles of frosted electric light bulbs which shone night and day. On one side of the yellow divan stood a life-size bust of Fouché which took the eye of the petitioner at once by its incongruity. Once Memlik had been flattered by a French diplomat who had said: ‘You are regarded as the best Minister of Interior in modern history — indeed, since Fouché there has been no-one to equal you.’ The remark may have been barbed, but nevertheless it struck Memlik’s fancy, and he at once ordered the bust from France. It looked faintly reproachful amidst all that Egyptian flummery, for the dust had settled thick upon it. The same diplomat had once described Memlik’s reception-room as a cross between an abandoned geological museum and a corner of the old Crystal Palace — and this also was apt though cruel. All this detail Nessim’s polite eye took in with many a hidden gleam of amusement as he stood in the doorway and heard his name announced. It appealed richly to him to be thus invited to share a prayer-meeting or Wird with the redoubtable Memlik. Nor were these functions uncommon, strange though it seems to
relate, for Memlik frequently enjoyed these so-called ‘Nights of God’ and his piety did not seem inconsistent with the rest of his mysterious character; he listened attentively, unwaveringly to the reciter, often until two or three in the