FOURTEEN
JE LA PRIS SAUVAGEMENT! Elle pleurait, grognait, criait. Je la griffai jusqu’au sang. Je la mordis. Je la pénétrai et le sang coula encore. Mais cela ne suffit pas à me rassasier . . .
The rest was never a memory, simply an impression from which, at length, I stole away. I had made Esmé my own again. My mark was upon her. I had seen a new respect in her eyes. Ses yeux paraissaient de cuivre incandescent, sa chevelure luifaisait comme un halo de flammes, son corps était convert d’ égratignures, d’empreintes laissées par mes dents et de marques voluptueuses . . . And my anxieties were vanished, as were hers. We had achieved mutual release. I do not regret all that. It was an act of confirmation. One must experience it to understand it. It was a shame, after so much exertion, that my little girl was wanted for work that morning. As we boarded the hired coach to drive out to the Mena Palace Hotel, where we would organise ourselves before the day’s shooting began, both Wolf Seaman and O.K. Radonic regarded us with a kind of distant curiosity, while Mrs Cornelius even exuded a certain disapproval. None of that upset me. I am one who follows the Master. I fly like a Hawk. I cackle like the Goose. O Sovereign of all Gods delivered from that God who liveth upon the damned. I was restored to my old power and was fully a man again. I had proven my control over my own life and intended very firmly to continue with that control. I would not be diverted from my ambitions.
I had already confided some of this to Quelch as we prepared for the morning and he became positively fervid in support of my new determination. ‘We are all the slaves of Fate, dear boy. But it’s up to us to do our best and pretend that this is not so; to take up the reins of our own runaway chariot or die in the attempt! Abusus non tollit usum. That is my answer to those who would judge us.’ He had placed a friendly hand upon my shoulder as I shaved. ‘It is a motto well suited to this awful country which, I fear, is inclined to bring out all kinds of dormant or unimagined passions in the sexes. The residents here always recognised the danger. That is why it is so important to keep up appearances. Non nobis sed omnibus. But this is a rule you and I must take as it comes. We are not, after all, what they would even consider, I suspect, as omnibus.’ The tone of the older man, rather than his words, was comforting.
Malcolm Quelch was beginning to reveal depths unlike his brother’s yet just as mysterious and fascinating. His understanding of the Beast was oddly tolerant, like that of a clergyman confident in his own faith and the triumph of the Holy Ghost over Satan and His armies, even accepting of those times when he himself was in the power of the Beast. The Beast is within all of us. It is our gift from God that we learn to tame the Beast by any means we choose. Rasputin understood this. Quelch confided his ideas of God as we travelled side by side into the west, where the great ruins lay, famous and, like all great works, untarnished by familiarity. The reality was stupendous.
It was when we had changed from the car to the little open tram which carried us up the line through the sand on the last stages of our route that I was suddenly aware of the pyramids’ colossal size! I realised why it is not possible to take a picture of the pyramid that does not diminish it since one has to step back a considerable distance to include any idea of its shape and by that means lose the scale. We were fleas upon the remains of Pride; grubs crawling at the feet of the Gods. Never before have I known such awe as when I contemplated the enormous power of an individual able to dedicate the lives and resources of his entire nation to the construction of his own monument! Only Stalin has since known such total might.
‘I must say,’ Mrs Cornelius strolls up to join us, content beneath her parasol, ‘they ain’t a disappointment.’ With the satisfaction of a housewife who has seen the rising of a perfect pie she peers benignly upon the Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Behind us the film crew are unloading their equipment, observed by crowds of local hucksters and beggars controlled by our own private guards - burly men who gathered the skirts of their white gelabeas about them, using their long bamboo canes liberally and without anger upon an undismayed flock momentarily contenting itself with imprecations, wailed pleadings, filthy insults and the offer to sell any one of us anything our hearts or our lusts had ever remotely desired .
Wincing a little, Esmé moves closer to me. She has been sharing for a moment a seat with Seaman. She insisted on coming. I eventually agreed she should continue, to further her career. Our future after all is by no means as certain as it was. Seaman is begging every one of us to give of our best today, since Sir Ranalf Steeton will be driving out later to see how we work. He does not explain that Steeton’s word to Goldfish might bless the production again. Much as I am unhappy with Esmé’s acting ambitions, it was never in my nature to force another human being to a course of action that does not suit them. As Malcolm Quelch frequently remarks, what one did in one’s own bedroom was a matter of personal taste; what one did in one’s drawing-room must always be a matter of social probity.
I was thoroughly confident in Esmé’s love and respect for me and trusted her completely, in spite of Mrs Cornelius’s untypically jealous behaviour which had led her earlier that morning to ask me if I intended to start up as a full-time pimp in Cairo. I told her, rather stiffly, that there was a fairly large difference between a pimp and, for instance, an agent. I saw nothing wrong with a man encouraging his fiancée to follow a career. Most men would, I said significantly, be jealous of their sweetheart’s desire for success. And yet, as events were to show, Mrs Cornelius might have had at least a glimmer of honest concern for her rival, some intimation of the danger which lay ahead of us all. Tel de l’acier en fusion, mon sperme emplit son anus. Je vous aime toutes les deux. Il n’y a aucun mal à être en vie. Wir steckten in einer Maschine, die weissglühend and weich war, die jedoch härtesten Stahl zerquetscht hätte. Das Mahlwerk serrieb uns. Blut spritze. Blut spritze. Sie wollten Vergeltung, den Tod. Sie baten um Gott, um den gnädigen, strafenden Jesus, der in dieser Stunde der Offenbarung über sie gekommen war. Plötzlich war ich missgelaunt. . .
Le sang jaillissait. I have no further memory.
Sweet. I did love. Sweet, sweet. I did love. Sweet. There is no more sweet, sweet. I did love.
A kite, some scout for her fellow-scavengers, flared her wing feathers high overhead, about half-way to the peak of the pyramid, and the telescopes of a score of bird-watchers swung to observe her. We had arrived at the exact same moment as a Cook’s Tour of the British Ornithological Society, ‘Here to spot Egyptian exotics and familiar wintering friends!’ The tour, I was told by an excited matron, would also include visits to the principal sites of antiquity. She handed me a neatly folded blue and white brochure couched in prose worthy of Ouida. Before she was politely moved on by one of the crew, I returned her leaflet and gave my attention to the camera and our director who, like most of us, had donned his comfortable riding clothes. The cameraman’s boy was even wearing khaki shorts, while O. K. Radonic sported a suit of loud yellow golfing pyjamas he had bought the previous day, he told us, at Davis, Bryan and Company in West Street. The clothiers was famous in Serbia for the fineness of its English cut. On a British officer, perhaps, the golfing pyjamas might have looked almost elegant. On Radonic they looked as if he had borrowed a seaside pierrot suit several sizes too large for him. But the cameraman seemed pleased with his purchase and wore the outfit with the air of one who is at last perfectly a la mode.