There are no better alternatives. I can only make a decision based on the least harmful choices presented to me. Once more I know what it means to be powerless and without an embassy. I am alone. I have no rights and am forced to fall back upon my own resources. Expediency demands the only possible decision: ‘Very well.’ I lay a firm fist upon my hip and hold up my head with all possible dignity. ‘I will play the rape scene.’
My statement is received with general applause by everyone save Quelch who stares at me from eyes darkening with a joyful intensity; as if our terrible compromise is the result of his own wicked engineering; as if he believes he rights some singular wrong performed by us upon himself. A malevolent automaton, a Golem, he smiles at me from the shadows. I look urgently for Seaman. He might now be my only ally, my last link with Hollywood and safety, but he has vanished. Sir Ranalf shrugs and smiles. For the time being he will direct the film himself. (I heard that Seaman left the next morning and eventually returned to Sweden, from there to Hollywood where he resumed his career.) Once I was naked Sir Ranalf expressed his delight. Circumcision, he assures me, was practised by high-born Egyptians. It was a sign of nobility. It is important to establish our authority, to have our details as authentic as possible. Abraham, der als erster seiner eigenen Menschlichkeit ein Opfer brachte: Wo traf dein Messer deinen vertrauensvollen Sohn? Alte, geliebte, furchttreifende Sumer. Leugne den Juden, und du leugnest Vergangenheit. There was a time when the Hebrews were feared by Egypt, and by Greece and by Rome, before they cultivated their insidious, all-destroying fatalism, a philosophy which makes a virtue out of defeat and dissipation. For this, I suppose, we must also blame Vespasian. It became richtung-gas . . .
I perform the rape. Thoth and Isis look down in sad disgust but the Englishman is all celebration. ‘Well done, Maxie. Oh, sweet boy, well done!’ And Esmé weeps quite silently. The tactful camera will not detect it. It seems as if she is smiling. Bar’d shadeed. It is cold. There is a piece of metal in my heart. I cannot get rid of it. They say we are at the beginning of a new Ice Age. Now only ice can cleanse the world. Then the fires and then the sea. After Ragnarok the world shall renew and perfect herself.
Not only Nazis accept this.
All evil dies there an endless death, while goodness riseth from that great world-fire, purified at last, to a life far higher, better, nobler than the past... I understand that Moslems have some similar belief in the purification of the world through battle, death and rebirth. There is an attractive singularity to such notions. I am drawn to them myself. They are not, in essence, unchristian. Some perfectly reasonable people are convinced that a nuclear holocaust is now our only hope.
Again, next day, I perform the rape scene. I achieve this by turning my terror and hatred into love. It is easier to do than I imagined. I have no time in which to consider spiritual profit and loss. Only the moment becomes important. This is not an uncommon response, I gather.
Perhaps I think of Lif and Lifthrasir hiding in Mimir’s forest, sleeping in peaceful unconsciousness of the world’s destruction, until the time shall come when we can take possession of a regenerated earth? What fundamental wisdoms remain in those ancient stones? What lessons are there to be learned from that land of the waiting dead and old, still vibrant power? The Sahara obscures swiftly, but what it obscures it also preserves! Here is a world of secret magic, which could be brought to life by a random breath of wind; here the worlds of the here-and-now intersect with the worlds of the spirit and the stars. Here lie hidden long-gone ambitions, immortal yearnings that were never fully stilled, great and monumental dreams; here sleeps a living culture of archetypal loves and hatreds, where death is celebrated as the best and richest of all adventures and a host of gods, goddesses and demi-gods greet and welcome one’s new-fleshed soul. It is so easy to become confused between the realities and the imaginings of the ancients. They say there is a lush forest existing below the desert where the souls of the dead wait patiently for judgement. I, who am Osiris, am Yesterday and the kinsman of the Morrow . . . May your knives not impede me; may I not fall into your abattoir. For I know your names. My course upon earth is with Ra and my fair goal is with Osiris. Let not my offerings be in your disfavour upon your altars. I am one who follows the Master. I fly like a Hawk. I cackle like the Goose. I move eternally as Nehebkau. O Sovereign of All Gods, deliver me from that god who liveth upon the damned, whose face is that of a hound, but whose skin is that of a man, devouring shades, digesting human hearts and voiding ordure. One seeth him not. Deliver me from that god who seizeth upon souls, who consumes all filth and corruption in the darkness or in the light. All those who fear him are powerless. This god is Set, who is also Sekhet, the goddess. Sekhet is called ‘the Eye of Ra’ and is the instrument of mankind’s destruction. Deliver me from that god that is both male and female. May I not fall under their knives, may I not sit within their dungeons, may I not come to their places of extermination, may there be done to me none of those things which the gods abominate. It was what Quelch gave me before he abandoned us, that Book of the Dead. ‘It might prove useful to you,’ he had said.
There is more work for me, says Sir Ranalf. I am a star, he says. I am a genius. I am a natural. Who would have suspected such talent? Al-Habashiya, the negress, has instructed him to convey her approval. I know how and why I must earn more. I become weak. I think they are feeding me native food. I cannot hold it in. I continue to perform the rape scene. I rape her anus. I rape her mouth. I have no choice. If I am to rescue her and myself then I can only comply with their demands until the moment comes when we can both escape.
She does not understand.
She thinks I have betrayed her.
TWENTY
MY SHIP is called The Ship of Death and she cannot fly. She drifts upon an infinite river of black mercury, beneath high shadowed arches as in some vast Stamboul cistern. She is crewed by the damned, steered by a blind man, captained by the Turnface. I perform the rituals of the dead. I perform the rituals of submission and remorse. By careful repetition I shall make my way through to that better world where every earthly dream is perpetually fulfilled.
I journey to the place where souls are weighed, where benevolent Anubis weighs our sins, the jackal weighs our sins. The dead have no choices.
I had no choices. They took us to where the darkness was. The darkness had a thick, vital quality, a great, slow intelligence at once malevolent and amused, at once agonised and triumphant; a sublime intelligence gone quite mad with grief and loss; as though it were, in the entire universe, the last of its species, grown selfish and utterly alone, without mercy or concern for any other living thing.
Here was Death personified. Here was pure Evil. Its name was Satan. Its name was Set. A nihilistic essence, it was at its most seductive in the person of its female avatar, the lioness-goddess Sekhmet, the Destroyer. They put a headdress on my little girl, some rosbif’s moth-eaten trophy, a snarling civet, and they called her Sekhmet, the evil one, whom I must vanquish with my magic, my manhood, for they made me a god. First I was Horus, the Hawk, son of Osiris, brother to Anubis the weigher of souls. Then every day I was resurrected as a new god. Every day my girl was freshly vanquished. It was our art, perhaps, but only the night world would ever applaud it. I knew about these films. Most of the time our directors, so long as we obeyed them in all other ways, let us wear our masks. They were contemptuously knowing; they understood that every day the concessions grew fewer and we were descending deeper into their world, became more thoroughly their creatures. I schemed to steal the films. Next they began to ration everything, our food, our drugs. We became disorientated and light-headed. There were naphtha flares fluttering amongst the electrics, the powerful scent of jasmine and roses, long black figures crawling between the columns, a stink of cheap tobacco and sweat. I wished them lingering deaths but we could not eat without their goodwill, we could not sustain ourselves. We could not live. They made us smile for them.