The negress was treated with increasing respect by everyone and it was soon clear that it was she to whom they all, even Sir Ranalf, deferred. She was always a faintly stirring presence in the darkness. Was she perhaps the darkness itself? Its human form? She stank of everything I most feared. With great respect they called her al-Habashiya, but I did not know what it meant. I would be taught only one name for her. The only name I would ever be permitted to utter. But that would come later. For many weeks I performed the rape scene. I became very weary and could not stop weeping. Eventually they took pity on me and let me rest while some of the crew did my work for me. But al-Habashiya insisted I remain present in the scene. ‘It will make for better continuity.’ Sir Ranalf’s eyes now stared all the time from red sockets and he had taken to wearing Seaman’s old wardrobe, most of which fitted very badly.
Occasionally I saw Quelch but he no longer looked at me. He did not seem satisfied with recent events and he had a haunted appearance as if he, too, longed to escape. Once, I recall, al-Habashiya offered to have him whipped and left naked outside the local barracks, a punishment normally reserved for blacks. Min darab el-walad es-saghir? Wahid Rumi nizil min el-Quads. Er-ragil misikni min idu. Fahimtush entu kelami? Ana kayebt gawab . . .
My ship is called The Sun, the source of all life. My ship is Ra, light of the day, brother to the moon. Gold married to silver in that forbidden crucible. My ship is called The Unknown World. Two lions guard her - one is called Yesterday and the other Today. The lioness is their mother, Sekhmet, Mother of Time, fierce Hater of Life. Her chariot is a fiery disc. She flies swiftly above the Nile, destroying all she detects. They say on the radio that Haydn was always jealous of Beethoven. I understand this. So many were jealous of my own genius.
I would not become a Musselman. Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich. Mein Kampf makes me sick. I could never read it. Yet Adolf Hitler was a brilliant man. He inscribed a copy to Clara Bow, hoping she enjoyed reading it as much as he enjoyed writing it. Poor Clara went mad, I heard, on some remote ranch, with a cowboy. I think Mein Kampf contained a truth I dared not face. Facing that truth drove Hitler mad. I did not wish to suffer the same fate. Let sleeping dogs lie, I said. Perhaps I was young. How could I blame myself? Such guilt is useless. It has no purpose. I, after all, was the one betrayed. Eindee haadha - ma eindee shee - haadha dharooree li-amalee . . Wayn shantati - wayn shantati - wayn shantati . . . They would tell me so little, even when I begged. I asked for my luggage, my plans, my books, my personal goods. They said my things were still in Luxor. They had been put in Sir Ranalf s care at the Winter Palace. I dared not mention my only valuables, Yermeloff’s black and silver Georgian pistols, symbols of my Cossack heritage. I prayed they would not find them where I had hidden them in the Gladstone’s bottom, beneath work materials, notes and designs, mayn teatrumsketches, and the details of my Desert Liner! They were, I will admit, by then becoming decreasingly important in my mind for they all existed in the world of the living. Esmé and I now inhabited the world of the dead; ordered to mime the functions of life to earn our sleep, our food, the very drugs enabling us still to perform the rape scene. The drugs relieved some of the pain. It was clear we would never earn enough to pay back our debts. Though I could easily wean myself of any craving, I knew it would be impossible for her. Therefore I saw no point in refusing what was offered until such time as escape was possible. So we became the lady and the butler, the newly-weds, the slave-market, the office couple. We played many parts but with a certain sameness of plot. The more elaborate Sir Ranalf s demands upon us, the closer did al-Habashiya move her couch from the shadows to the set. Every day she watched us with mounting interest. She was a fleshy heavy darkness with burning eyes, gasping weightily, smacking red lips, until soon she was almost within the scene herself, exuding a sense of greedy urgency, then she would fall back and something would be purred in Arabic. Sir Ranalf would suggest a different angle.
They said they needed new backgrounds where we were less likely to be interrupted. They took us to a ruined Coptic chapel in the remote Western Desert. In the shelter of a wind-smoothed crenellated wall, al-Habashiya had pitched her gorgeous tent with all the proud display of a wealthy Bedawi.
The chapel was unknown to archaeologists, Sir Ranalf assured us, because it did not serve a camel route.
There was however a well where two etiolated palm trees stretched high into the arching clarity of the sky. In the distance the desert was broken by a ridge of muddy slate. We sat silently together, Esmé and I, while al-Habashiya shared a glass of sherbet with Quelch and Sir Ranalf. They stretched on couches arranged to enjoy the sunset better. We sat at their feet on the carpeted sand. ‘In Bi’r Tefawi,’ murmured al-Habashiya, ‘I have a villa and a garden. It is more peaceful there. I live in seclusion these days, though once, Professor Quelch, as you know, I ruled Cairo - or at least the Wasa’a and its environs. But then they arrested me.’ She drew lusciously upon her hukah. ‘I was put, eventually, into jail. It was not unpleasant. I was lucky enough to have friends there. But Russell Pasha himself had made up his mind to set an example. I was arrested again. They tried to confiscate my business interests. Russell Pasha was not then prepared to come to any sort of agreement, so I was forced to die in prison. I had no trouble arranging it. But I am used to a city. Exiled to the provinces one grows easily bored. It is very hard to kill so many hours.’
In the first months of my captivity this was one of the longest speeches al-Habashiya was ever to make in my presence.
I recalled Quelch’s stories of a creature who had sat unmoving all day on a bench in the Shari Abd-el-Khaliq, yet had controlled rigidly every aspect of Cairo’s vice. I remembered too that he was a transvestite negro of enormous size, who always dressed as a woman and veiled himself in white and would stretch jewelled fingers to be kissed by some passing servitor. Every Arab of the quarter was owned in some way by that grotesque. A silent, ebony idol, Quelch had said, more powerful than the king himself. Cairo’s most successful brothel-keeper, pimp, drug-dealer and white-slaver, a major partner behind half the ‘theatrical booking agencies’ in the East. And yet beautiful, Quelch told me. Once he had seen the negro’s face. Everyone who knew him agreed he was, despite his bulk, the loveliest transvestite they had ever seen.
For us all, however, al-Habashiya, if it were the same creature, remained veiled, mysteriously feminine. Those were the early days of our serfdom, when it seemed we must soon be released. They never raised their voices. They always spoke humorously. They merely offered us choices. Certain choices were good ones and we were praised for making them. Certain choices were bad and we were punished.