I performed the rape scene. He showed me how to make her scream so that on film it would look as if she were beside herself with passion, whereupon I was subjected to the same infamies while a second reel was shot. They were things a man should never suffer. He made me both a Jew and a woman. Whenever I could I reminded myself, through all the torment and the abuse, that I was neither. I was a true Cossack, a Lord of the Earth. I was Kiev. I was the sound of cavalry through the Podol. I was power, I had ultimate control over my own destiny. I was a scientist, an engineer. I could control the world and I could set the world free! I am a Jew, I said. Yes, I am Jewboy scum, but though my lips sounded the word my heart said ‘Cossack’, my soul said ‘Engineer’.
There was humour in those places, even between tormented and tormentor. We all shared amusement at our antics to stay alive. We connived at those appalling experiments in human cruelty not because we were any of us evil but because it was the only diversion available to us. To relieve our fear we told one another jokes about our own imminent deaths mid dismemberment. We participated in horror for its own sake. But I do not believe many of us were to blame. Our needs had not been for death, but for hope and for life. We nave power to men who had unequivocally promised us those things. If we wondered at their promises we did not challenge them with any great passion or suspicion. We had offered up in trust to them everything we valued, everything that was good. They were not simply collecting second-hand clothes. They wanted everything we possessed so that they could prove it was worthless. They were so greedy, those few. Yet great empires do not grow through greed, I said. They grow through need, gradually and through historical necessity. Those who would forge an empire in a few years are always thwarted. They always die, dishonoured by their own nations. Great empires do not flourish on war but on industry, trade and curiosity. Enlightenment follows such empires. Whatever inequalities they exploit, eventually they develop the idea of equality, of institutional democracy. Captain Quelch was that kind of old-fashioned imperialist. We met again on the Isle of Man, in 1940. He had suffered a great deal and had changed his name. His first words to me were ‘Hello, old man. How’s your sex-life?’ He had roared and embraced me, his face glowing with pleasure. I thought Seryozha was there, too, but sometimes I get the camps mixed up.
My main complaint against the Jews was their vulgarity. Ironically this loud, garish, uncontrollable, expansive race when brought to heel, and those wild, restless brains restrained, becomes even more overheated. In the frustration of their restrictions they become completely mad. This explains the outpourings of Marx and Freud, for instance. If left alone, I told Hitler, they merely quarrel amongst themselves and offer no threat to anyone. To me isolation seemed the best strategy. Hitler called me a Jew-lover. I thought he was joking. Two days afterwards I was discreetly arrested. Goering himself admitted it was a mistake. Later my engineering expertise, my natural wits and a certain amount of good fortune, earned me my freedom. We did not all die in those camps!
I have known passion and joy, the love of men and women. I have known success and I have seen a good deal of the world. I have known them all again, since 1926. So was my choice not the best possible choice? I am alive, nicht wahr?
My master said the English called her a pervert, did I know the word? I did. Was a pervert, she asked, worse than a Jew? No, Master, I said, a Jew is worse than a pervert. Was a Jew worse than a nigger? Yes, Master, a Jew is worse than a nigger. This was one of our jokes. And what are you, she said. I am worse than a Jew, I said. No matter, she played with my ears, I still love you. Then we would laugh together. Call me momma, al-Habashiya would say, reaching for one of her instruments, call me momma, dirty little Jewboy sweetheart. Momma! Momma! I was a Jew and Esmé was a whore. She still belongs to you, al-Habashiya was smiling. She is still yours. I hope so, I said. Oh, yes, she is still yours. Why, if you wanted to you could trade her with the Bedawi and become very rich. You could do it whenever you wished. Esmé smiled at her. We both smiled. We all smiled. She was my sister, my rose; but her innocence was gone. O, Esmé, how I wish you had not betrayed me. I did everything for you. I would have travelled wherever you desired. I would have made you my Queen. But perhaps you are no more to blame than I. We all have our moments of weakness. It did not change my love for you. I had no choice. I thought I would free us both. My Master says she must be worth, well, at least your drugs bill. You could sell her to me. I could pay your bill for you. Then we would be square on the matter. My Master’s beautiful hps are encouraging. Perhaps I could get to the police in Luxor? I do not care what happens to us so long as we get free of al-Habashiya. I do the best I can for us both. I agree to sell her to al-Habashiya. She now belongs to you, I say. I watch while she puts the sign of life on her inner thigh, branding the scarab on her. They all have it, if they are mine, she says.
I have discharged my debt. Now let me go to Cairo.
No, she says, we are going to Aswan. I have a large house and a beautiful garden. I am a respectable Egyptian dowager. Everyone knows me. If you are well-behaved, perhaps I will tell them you are my adopted son.
I am free of the debt. Let me go! Please, Master, let me go. But you are not yet out of debt, she says. You remain my property until you pay off your living expenses, your ongoing supplies of drugs, et cetera. I am, I think, generous in these matters of unpaid bills, at least while you remain in my charge.
I had not thought it possible for my despair to increase. We took the boat up to Aswan. Sir Ranalf was aboard but Quelch was no longer with us. Sir Ranalf was greatly irritated by this, doubtless missing civilised company since he and I were no longer allowed to communicate except when the camera was running. We spent the voyage, the three of us, in the viewing-room and watched while, over and over again, I performed the rape scene. The next night (here was just myself and al-Habashiya. At length I dared ask where Esmé was. Al-Habashiya was casual. She had been ‘sold on’, she said. She would doubtless fetch a handsome profit for someone in the Far East trade. Then my Master used me in my mouth while in black and white the rape scene flickered over us like the bleak lights of Hell.
I have never forgotten how cold and grey it was on the Isle of Man. I think there can be few camps as gloomy.
When I met Captain Quelch again he was a frail man, bent by scoliosis, but he retained his sense of humour. It was Quelch who told me of his younger brother’s fate and mentioned that he was sure he had seen Esmé on one of his runs along the coast near Shanghai. He was interned because he had been captured aboard a Japanese destroyer. There had scarcely been, he told me, any point in getting on the wrong side of them. ‘What the Japs do to the Chinks is no concern of mine. I don’t think the chaps in Whitehall believe I’m a traitor. Yes, I saw that little girl of yours - I would swear it was her, though the hair was a bit brighter and the make-up a bit thicker, and I think she recognised me. Anyway, it was in a bar in Macao, just before Pearl Harbor. Esmé wasn’t her name. She had some sort of nickname, I think. Coasters often get called by a nickname. Everyone seems to prefer it.’
When I asked he told me a coaster was a girl who lived by her wits up and down the West China coast. She had not, he assured me, seemed to be doing that badly. ‘She was showing a few signs of wear and tear, you know.’ But I will never be sure it was Esmé. Which Esmé had he seen? It was pleasant to think, however, that no great harm was done.