Drawn by a sturdy sailing-boat, a string of barges went by, the sacking tight across their mounded cargo bringing to mind a shoal of primitive river monsters advancing to devour the distant city. Seaman strolled over from the bar where he had been talking to Radonic. ‘It seems we are not to be saved by Ben Hur, after all. Although it has made a considerable profit, it has made none for our former master. He has lost heart, I would guess, for historical subjects, at least temporarily, and has found an excuse to withdraw his support. Thank God for Sir Ranalf! The native gentleman, by the way, is some sort of business colleague of Steeton’s. He’s only going as far as El-Wasta and from there will take the train up to Medinet el-Fayoum where I gather he will address a public meeting. I think he’s going by boat to get a rest from his duties. He’s an important “big-wig”, you know, in the Egyptian government. It’s through him we received permission to film almost anywhere we like. Even the British can’t pull strings like that, as a rule.’
Only then did it occur to me to wonder what kind of compromise Wolf Seaman himself had made in order to secure his own ambitions. While I believed in the ideals expressed by our new producer, it now seemed to me that Seaman’s explanation of our passenger’s presence aboard was somewhat defensive. Was he justifying a secret arrangement with Sir Ranalf? It did not greatly concern me what Seaman gave up or promised, so long as our film was made to the highest standards and we received our salaries. When it was completed I would return to the US with Esmé and challenge Hever to do his worst!
‘You are so clever, Wolfy.’ My darling was an admiring schoolgirl. ‘None of this would be possible without you.’
‘Steeton is an agreeable fellow.’ Smiling down at her he passed a modest hand through his curly hair. ‘And I intend to make our movie, little fawn, never fear.’ With a sigh he stepped up to the rail and stood beside me. Together we looked towards some distant ruin. ‘It will tell the true story of mankind,’ he continued. ‘How we strive in so many ways to avoid the fact of death. The variety of ways in which we avoid the inevitability of unbearable loss. Unlike ourselves, the Egyptians refused to remove themselves from that central fact. They built their entire civilisation around it. As a result it lasted the longest of them all. Empires like the British, or especially the American, build their culture on the very opposite idea. Their people devote themselves to avoiding and ignoring the fact of death. Well, Death in the Pyramids will force the world to look upon its folly and to bow its head in shame.’
‘They will love it!’ Esmé turned away from where she had been admiring a group of little boys bathing in the shallows. ‘It will pack them in, darling Wolfy.’
And turning again, so that only I could see her this time, she delivered a wink of such ironic intelligence I realised with delight the depths to my darling I had yet to explore.
Separating themselves from Mrs Cornelius and O.K. Radonic (newly nicknamed The Yellow Kid) Professor Quelch and Ali Pasha Khamsa, now getting on like fire-engines, rejoined us.
‘Actum ne agas,’ the Egyptian was saying.
‘But how can we avoid it, my dear sir?’ Professor Quelch moved delicately upwind of Ali Pasha Khamsa’s cigarette.
‘That is what we’re in the process of discovering. The fashion in Europe today is to pamper and adopt the Jews, but there are a few men of vision who see the dangers of that policy. Have you heard of Adolf Hitler? He’s a German very much in the news there. A follower of Mussolini’s, I understand, with a positive approach to his country’s real problems. A genuine intellectual activist. You read German, do you, Professor Quelch?’
‘Only inexpertly.’
‘I’ve seen a lot about these socialists in the Berliner Zeitung,’ Seaman joined in. He had always shown a preference for the German newspapers. ‘It’s rather alarming, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, they are scarcely socialists in the old sense. This new kind is dedicated to the destruction of Zionist Bolshevism. A good many people in Egypt are following this chap’s activities. He could teach us all a thing or two.’
And that was how I came first to hear of Hitler, in the early days of his success, when he still controlled his party. It was painful to see such a fine man brought low by his own hubris. Some day, if there is a future left to us, a playwright will take Hitler’s story as a subject and show Germany’s Führer as the noble, flawed, tragic hero that he was. I mourn my own lost opportunities, but how he must have mourned in those last moments, when Berlin was falling to the Bolshevik guns! It would take a Wagner to do that tragedy justice.
‘You are a Muslim, Ali Pasha?’ Seaman was hesitant.
‘Good heavens, my dear sir, nothing so old-fashioned! I am a secular humanist by persuasion. But it is best to keep one’s religion to oneself in democratic Egypt. We are still in some ways a very backward country. There is much to do. Industrialisation is, of course, of chief importance.’
‘And you support land reforms?’ Quelch’s question had a significance I barely understood. Ali Pasha Khamsa was amused. ‘I have nothing against the rich, Professor Quelch, if that’s what you’d like to know. I wish all my people were rich. I respect, as thoroughly as anyone, a hard-working man’s right to do well for himself. There are ways to expand our agriculture so everyone could become a prosperous farmer. I believe this can be achieved through engineering, not social regimentation.’
‘You really are a chap after my own heart.’ Malcolm Quelch raised a salute. ‘Mr Peters, you must tell Ali Pasha all about your inventions and your ideas for “turning the desert green”. This young man, sir, is an engineering genius. He has already built several flying-machines and a dynamite car. Let him describe to you the astonishing marvel of his aerial turbine!’
‘Egypt has great need of engineers.’ The politician looked speculatively at me. ‘Especially American engineers.’
I explained to him that I was only American by adoption. I was actually Russian, forced from my homeland by the Reds. He expressed sympathy and enthusiasm. ‘So much the better. If there is ever a revolution here, Mr Peters, believe me it will not be a Red one!’
Again I was learning not to judge a man by superficial. Ali Pasha Khamsa was anxious to listen to my ideas. I was soon expanding on my dreams of vehicles especially designed to cross vast areas of desert, of others for automatically digging canals for hundreds of miles, irrigating land which had not known fertility since Time was first recorded. I was quick to tell him, however, that I did not share his general distaste for the Jewish race. There were those among them of the most virtuous type. I myself owed my life to a Jew. But there was no persuading him. I lacked, he said, daily experience of the race. His people had had to contend with their cunning for centuries. ‘Islam has been singularly tolerant to the Hebrews. But there is no pleasing them. Zionists are taking over the British parliament, demanding Palestine for themselves. No longer content with milking us of our money, they now demand free land! Land which at no time belonged to them. Soon, we fear, the British will give them Egypt itself! This will be my subject in Medinet el-Fayoum.’
Emphatically I assured him the British could not possibly betray Egypt’s trust.
1948 was to prove how wrong I had been in those days of my innocent idealism.