All the qualities separating mammal from reptile were burnt out of us. Not for nothing is Satan represented as a snake. What does it matter how they style themselves any more - Tories or Trotskyites? They offer the same thing. Authority demands conformity because it has made conformity and familiarity synonymous with security. They have made a positive virtue of similarity. They have outlawed plurality and take power by promising to eradicate all inconsistency from the world. Do we need such heroes? Alexander the Great united the world while celebrating its variety. He did what no socialist has ever done. He drove Carthage out of the Semitic lands into equatorial Africa. He gave the Semites their chance to be whole again, to continue God’s work and his. Ptolemy and some of his successors tried to maintain Alexander’s momentum. To some extent they succeeded, but then Carthage cunningly returned in the form of a woman. Cleopatra caused the civil war which robbed Rome of her noblest men and ensured the destruction of Egypt’s capital, the greatest city of the Ancient World, famous for her learning and her art, ‘sweet, dreaming Alexandria, palm-shaded city of the sun, crucible of all that reason values,’ as Wheldrake had it. Captain Quelch was the first to note how, in so many of his works, the poet influenced Eliot.
That night, as it became unpleasantly warm, I sought out Captain Quelch, anxious to enjoy the comforting ambience, for the last time, of his wonderful cabin. He, too, was in a sentimental mood, wearing his scarlet Chinese dressing-gown and the pearl-trimmed smoking-cap he had won at a fan-tan game in Shanghai. He insisted I borrow the blue gown, undress and enjoy the sensuality of the silk while I sipped a ballon of perfect cognac, relishing the clear-headed heightening of mind and senses which is conferred by the best cocaine. He talked of home a little, of his schooldays in Kent, the vicarage where he and his brothers had grown up. He revealed almost casually that he had a wife of his own in England. ‘And two strapping lads, a pretty little girl. They’re in Cornwall now, near Bugle. We stay in touch, you know, and I hope to retire there, eventually. Don’t be mistaken, old boy, they never go short, even when I do. I think the pups are a little proud of their sailorman papa.’
‘They plan to join the navy, I suppose?’ I felt oddly embarrassed by a note I interpreted as regret.
‘Good Lord, old boy, I hope not! There never was any money in the sea. I keep hoping they’ll turn out to be lawyers. We could use some of those in the family. You must have a few in yours, eh, Max? Not to mention doctors and violinists and so on.’ None of these occupations was traditional either for a Cossack or a Russian aristocrat, I said, and we shared a minute or two of relaxing laughter. He said that his brother and I would get on famously. ‘More,’ he said, ‘Hibernico.’ And with an air of priestly pleasure he carefully lowered the first disc of Lohengrin to his turntable.
ELEVEN
THE PEOPLE whom you would call heathen or ignorant or merely ‘alien’ have amongst them as many heroes and great men, as many possessed of the finest virtues, as any Christian society; you would recognise as many amongst them as malcontents or evil-doers (the kind who sometimes rise to power over you) as you observe amongst yourselves. So why do you therefore single out and exaggerate these minor differences between you, so that you may feel free to mock and attack them? Is this not a true sin of Pride?
What possible virtue is there in all this terrible competing and quarrelling? You are like a rabble in a maze fighting amongst yourselves rather than pooling your resources to find a way through, to make a common plan. We are all frightened, all desperate for certainty. Not one of us does not secretly yearn to be given a real reason why we should suffer so and then die, perhaps even a reason why some win all life’s rewards, when the equally gifted (or equally ungifted) are allowed to exist in perpetual squalor. We refuse to accept the random qualities of God’s universe, and until we accept them, we shall be forever quarrelling in a maze of our own creation. A political creed is a maze. A religion can be a maze. Even simple faith can create a maze - for we impose simple models upon that which is not simple - as Americans visiting London attempt to impose a grid system upon the tangled streets. Their logic not only fails them at this point - they become fearful. Their inability to cope with the warren of streets encourages them to curse the fools who did not have the sense to simplify and lay a rule upon their city. The simple-minded dinosaur did not survive; he could not cope with change. Only by accepting the world as it is and fulfilling our lives in an unpredictable world can we ever know the universal harmony the majority of us long for. Contrary to what these hippies believe, harmony can be achieved by political and philosophical means; so long as the means are not imposed but are presented as arguments in a natural ‘pluralist’ democracy where humane Reason and uncorrupted Law are commonly respected. This is not too much to hope. The means is there. The only logical means of satisfying all Man’s spiritual, physical and psychological needs under a single idea which accepts plurality as its fundamental faith. I speak of the true church, the Church of Constantine, the First Christian Emperor. Ah, Tsar, remebre vus! The little girls scream in the cathedral. Kyrie eleison! Kyrie eleison! The ghost is risen and those temples were so cold one might have thought their contents cryogenically preserved and that the entire Dead of Egypt would, thanks to our warming blood, begin to rise and walk the earth again. Die Geschichte ist niemals gleich; doch es kommt vor, das Ereignisse sich wiederholen. Thus did Hannibal command his legions, ‘Rise from the ashes, and fight again!’ So Carthage sleeps; beautiful Carthage stirs; golden, heathen Carthage groans and opens up one hot and greedy eye to behold the Valley of the Nile, the fertile wonder of our world, the verdant birthplace of all we value and the fount of all we ever knew.
Mother Egypt, our universal Mother Egypt! With what great beauty were you dressed, mother; in what rich splendour! And all the vivid colours of Africa and all the subtleties of an English spring harmonise in you. You are forever beautiful, mother. Even your squalor, your vice, your danger, is beautiful. You were half-beast, still, when you began to build your nation. Your very diseases are exotic and beautiful. Mother Egypt! Mother Egypt! I had not expected you to be so beautiful. L’histoire est un perpetuel recommencement. The Greeks understood this. Even the gods must submit to fate.
Carthage opens up her other eye - and there lies Europe, luscious and rich. Sweet Europe, from the wheatlands of Ukraine to the apple trees of Kent, the pine forests of Lapland, the olive groves of Greece and Spain, the rich cities of the Romans. And Carthage blinks and Carthage grins and golden, mighty, wakening Carthage grinds her savage teeth and licks her scarlet lips and her burning breath stinks of roses. She prepares to feast. Soon, we shall all be silenced. Frightened and bribed into perpetual passivity we shall become no more than the domesticated cattle of Carthage. Then Carthage shall have no need of arms. She shall not need to hunt. Great Carthage becomes a financier and feeds the cows and chickens at weekends, a gentleman farmer called Collins or Carter or Green or some such reassuring English name. This is how Carthage, barbaric and devious, shall enslave us without our ever knowing it. Anyone detecting a glimmer of this truth, who attempts to broadcast the news of our imminent conquest and humiliation, is at best shunned as a lunatic, at worst killed in torment as a lesson to the rest never to utter the fact that our very souls are mortgaged to Satan.