The servant returned, soundlessly, and poured our coffee into exquisitely chased cups of brass, out of a tall long-spouted jug. It was thick Arabian coffee, flavoured with camomile. The Caliph watched me sipping it. ‘Better, I dare say, than the stuff they give you at Lazaretto?’
‘Most certainly better,’ said I, ‘and a thousand times better than the tea.’
‘Oh the tea,’ he laughed. ‘Be careful what you say about the tea. They’ve only just invented it — like that Aqua Hav, equally appalling I am told.’
But he was about to tell me more, I reminded him, about relations with the Arab world.
‘Yes, yes, something more I can say. But remember my Oath! Also I regret we must soon cut our conversation short; I have an unavoidable engagement this evening.’ He looked at his watch. ‘This I can tell you: that whereas I am persona non grata with some of the Arab factions, I am able to play a useful role in relations with others. I am a link, so to speak, outside the sphere of diplomacy, between them and this Republic. I cannot be more specific. Suffice it to say that the people at your Legation would like to know more. There are certain aspects of trade and economics which can best be facilitated by unofficial channels, certain commodities outside more normal consignments — certain people too who can entrust their whereabouts with confidence to me. Some indeed, whose names or at least cognomens, may be familiar to you, who advocate the revival of the Caliphate itself! If you follow me, Miss Jan, if you can read me between the lines, as I believe you say, please keep your conclusions to yourself.’
I was not all sure I could read him between the lines, and told him so.
‘So much the better, for the moment anyway. My Oath precludes my telling you more. But I have a proposal to make to you. In my official capacity I must attend tonight, purely as an observer, naturally, the monthly Holy Séance of the Perfects. It might be of interest of you to observe it. You cannot of course enter the Séance Hall, but there are means by which you could watch its proceeedings in private. But on no account must you allow your presence to be known.’
I thought it better, on the whole, not to tell him that I had done it once before — with Yasar.
‘I’m sure I can trust you not to reveal the arrangements to a living soul, and I have already instructed my Wazir to get you to the Séance Hall without revealing to you its whereabouts. I’m sure you will understand. You agree? Yes? Then you will excuse me if I leave you now. Please make yourself at home in my house, and the Wazir will come for you in half an hour or so.’
I thanked him and walked with him to the door of the room.
‘Actually,’ he said, turning back at the door, ‘I do very much prefer the Avery and Heath-Stubbs translation to Fitzgerald’s. But it’s a matter of taste, I suppose.’
The Wazir slid in. He was very light on his feet, and graceful. He must apologize, he said, for what he had to say. His Holiness had intimated that he must, well, extract from me a formal promise not to memorize, or indeed consciously observe, our route to the Séance Hall.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But purely as a matter of interest, is it in the same place, wherever that was, before the Intervention?’
‘I think I may say that it is. The very rare visitors allowed are usually blindfolded, but His Holiness thought that would be inapposite in your case. He tells me that your word would be perfectly sufficient. In that case, shall we make our way there? It is only a short walk.’
I felt ashamed, I admit it, to be deceiving them in this way, and resolved that I really would not try to determine the way we went. We walked to the Medina, I could not help realizing that; but once within its labyrinth I easily lost my bearings. I caught a glimpse of the Grand Mosque, but conscientiously averted my eyes. The Wazir spoke not a word, but thoughtfully guided me along alleys and around corners until, producing a very small key from his waistcoat pocket, he unlocked an unobtrusive metal door in the side of an office building and ushered me down some steps into a tunnel.
Dear God, said I to myself, yet another tunnel. The tunnel could easily be Hav’s emblem, alongside the maze — like the city of Bucharest, in Romania, which seems to me obsessed with the idea of the tunnel, murky with tunnel legends, burdened with tunnel memories. The Hav séance tunnel was not very long, and not very murky either, for its lights were bright and its walls whitewashed, but our footsteps echoed as we walked along it, the Wazir said not a word, and the absolute emptiness did give me rather eerie feelings. Was I on the verge of revelations?
We reached the end of the tunnel. The Wazir took out his key again, and unlocked another door, into a cramped space like a decompression chamber. Inside stood Mario Biancheri, with two Chinese in dark suits. ‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Jan,’ he said, and as he spoke he shook hands with the Wazir. ‘It is my unhappy duty, though. There is a booking for you on the ten o’clock Havair flight to Istanbul. Your bags are already checked in, your passport is at Balad, at the desk they will give you an open ticket onward, and my men here will see that you are there in good time. Ciaou.’
The Wazir bowed in my direction, breathed salaam aleykum, and the two of them, politely giving way to each other, disappeared.
With perfect courtesy the Chinese bustled me away into a limousine and chatted amiably as we drove to the airport. A pity, they said, that my visit had ended so abruptly. Why was it ending so abruptly, I asked? but they did not explain. Orders is orders was the gist of their reply, and when we parted they kissed my hand in turn, murmuring ‘dirleddy’ as they did so.
I had never flown over Hav before. It was dark when we left, and we took off to the south before swinging around over the sea and heading for the Escarpment. The city looked utterly isolated down there. Beyond it the continent seemed deserted, around it the sea lay dark and empty. The scene was like an allegory itself — the famous Kiruski might have designed it! For at the tip of the dark peninsula, with only the odd dim light flickering in the moorlands, Hav lay there all ablaze. There was the Medina, where the money was made, industriously glowing still. There were the long runways of Balad. I could see the Castle, like a black smudge set against the city lights below, and the H1 street-lights running away towards the cluster of Yuan Wen Kuo. Lazaretto was twinkling festively. I fancied I saw watchful lights burning in the Caliph’s villa… And above it all rose the Tower, like a pillar of fire, scintillating, incandescent, with the great ‘M’ at its summit shining there fainter and fainter, smaller and smaller, until we had crossed the Escarpment and left all Hav like a dream behind.
The great ‘M’! ‘M’ for what? ‘M’ really for Myrmidon, or ‘M’ for Mammon? For Mohammed the Prophet? For Mani the Manichaean? ‘M’ for Macdonald’s, or Monsanto, or Microsoft? ‘M’ for Melchik? ‘M’ for Minoan? ‘M’ for Maze?
Or, could it possibly be, I wondered as we droned on through the darkness, and I fell into an uneasy slumber, ‘M’ for Me?
Epilogue
When the first part of this book, Last Letters, originally appeared in 1985, few readers apparently recognized it as fictional. They thought it described a real place, incomprehensibly little-known. They asked me how to get there. They wanted to know if one needed a visa. Even somebody at the Map Room of the Royal Geographical Society asked me to put him straight about Hav’s location. Only one single correspondent, an octogenarian lady in Iowa, saw my little book as allegory.