Nessim haunted her for some time before getting her to consent, I am told; I cannot say I had misgivings about it all exactly, but
… even today their marriage feels in some curious way uncemented. They make a perfect pair, but never seem to touch each other; indeed, once I saw her very slightly shrink as he picked a thread from her fur. Probably imagination. Is there perhaps a thundercloud brooding there behind the dark satin-eyed wife?
Plenty nerves, certainly. Plenty hysteria. Plenty Judaic melancholy. One recognizes her vaguely as the girl-friend of the man whose head was presented on a charger…. What do I mean?
Well, Maskelyne says with his dry empty contempt: ‘No sooner does she marry than she starts an affair with another man, and a foreigner to boot.’ This of course is Darley, the vaguely amiable bespectacled creature who inhabits Pombal’s box-room at certain times. He teaches for a living and writes novels. He has that nice round babyish back to the head which one sees in cultural types; slight stoop, fair hair, and the shyness that goes with Great Emotions imperfectly kept under control. A fellow-romantic quotha! Looked at hard, he starts to stammer. But he’s a good fellow, gentle and resigned … I confess that he seems unlikely material for someone as dashing as Nessim’s wife to work upon.
Can it be benevolence in her, or simply a perverse taste for innocence? There is a small mystery here. Anyway, it was Darley and Pombal who introduced me to the current Alexandrian livre de chevet which is a French novel called Moeurs (a swashing study in the grand manner of nymphomania and psychic impotence) written by Justine’s last husband. Having written it he wisely divorced her and decamped but she is popularly supposed to be the central subject of the book and is regarded with grave sympathy by society. I must say, when you think that everyone is both polymorph and perverse here, it seems hard luck to be singled out like this as the main character in a roman vache. Anyway, this lies in the past, and now Nessim has carried her into the ranks of le monde where she acquits herself with a sharply defined grace and savagery. They suit her looks and the dark but simple splendours of Nessim himself. Is he happy? But wait, let me put the question another way. Was he ever happy? Is he unhappier now than he was? Hum! I think he could do a lot worse, for the girl is neither too innocent nor too unintelligent. She plays the piano really well, albeit with a sulky emphasis, and reads widely. Indeed, the novels of Yours Truly are much admired — with a disarming wholeheartedness. (Caught! Yes, this is why I am disposed to like her.)
On the other hand, what she sees in Darley I cannot credit.
The poor fellow flutters on a slab like a skate at her approach; he and Nessim are, however, great frequenters of each other, great friends. These modest British types — do they all turn out to be Turks secretly? Darley at any rate must have some appeal because he has also got himself regally entangled with a rather nice little cabaret dancer called Melissa. You would never think, to look at him, that he was capable of running a tandem, so little selfpossession does he appear to have. A victim of his own fine sentiment? He wrings his hands, his spectacles steam up, when he mentions either name. Poor Darley! I always enjoy irritating him by quoting the poem by his minor namesake to him: O blest unfabled Incense Tree That burns in glorious Araby, With red scent chalking the air, Till earth-life grows Elysian there.
He pleads with me blushingly to desist, though I cannot tell which Darley he is blushing for; I continue in magistral fashion: Half-buried in her flaming breast In this bright tree she makes her nest Hundred-sunned Phoenix! When she must Crumble at length to hoary dust!
It is not a bad conceit for Justine herself. ‘Stop’ he always cries.
Her gorgeous death-bed! Her rich pyre Burn up with aromatic fire!
Her urn, sight-high from spoiler men!
Her birthplace when self-born again!
‘Please. Enough.’
‘What’s wrong with it? It’s not such a bad poem, is it?’ And I conclude with Melissa, disguised as an 18th Century Dresden China shepherdess.
The mountainless green wilds among, Here ends she her unechoing song With amber tears and odorous sighs Mourned by the desert where she dies!
So much for Darley! But as for Justine’s part in the matter I can find no rhyme, no reason, unless we accept one of Pombal’s epigrams at its face value. He says, with fat seriousness: ‘Les femmes sont fidиles au fond,tu sais? Elles ne trompent que les autres femmes!’ But it seems to me to offer no really concrete reason for Justine wishing to tromper the pallid rival Melissa. This would be infra dig for a woman with her position in society. See what I mean?
Well, then, it is upon Darley that our Maskelyne keeps his baleful ferret’s eyes fixed; apparently Selim tells us that all the real information on Nessim is kept in a little wall-safe at the house and not in the office. There is only one key to this safe which Nessim always carries on his person. The private safe, says Selim, is full of papers. But he is vague as to what the papers can be. Love letters? Hum. At any rate, Selim has made one or two attempts to get at the safe, but without any luck. One day the bold Maskelyne himself decided to examine it at close range and take, if necessary, a wax squeeze. Selim let him in and he climbed the back stairs — and nearly ran into Darley, our cicisbeo, and Justine in the bedroom! He just heard their voices in time. Never tell me after this that the English are puritans. Some time later I saw a short story Darley published in which a character exclaims: ‘In his arms I felt mauled, chewed up, my fur coated with saliva, as if between the paws of some great excited cat.’ I reeled. ‘Crumbs!’ I thought. ‘This is what Justine is doing to the poor bugger — eating him alive!’ I must say, it gave me a good laugh. Darley is so typical of my compatriots — snobbish and parochial in one. And so good! He lacks devil. (Thank God for the Irishman and the Jew who spat in my blood.) Well, why should I take this high and mighty line?
Justine must be awfully good to sleep with, must kiss like a rainbow and squeeze out great sparks — yes. But out of Darley?
It doesn’t hold water. Nevertheless ‘this rotten creature’ as Maskelyne calls her is certainly his whole attention, or was when I was last there. Why?
All these factors were tumbling over and over in my mind as I drove up to Alexandria, having secured myself a long duty week-end which even the good Errol found unexceptionable. I never dreamed then, that within a year you might find yourself engaged by these mysteries. I only knew that I wanted, if possible, to demolish the Maskelyne thesis and stay the Chancery’s hand in the matter of Nessim. But apart from this I was somewhat at a loss. I am no spy, after all; was I to creep about Alexandria dressed in a pudding-basin wig with concealed earphones, trying to clear the name of our friend? Nor could I very well present myself to Nessim and, clearing my throat, say nonchalantly:
‘Now about this spy-net you’ve got here….’ However, I drove steadily and thoughtfully on. Egypt, flat and unbosomed, flowed back and away from me on either side of the car. The green changed to blue, the blue to peacock’s eye, to gazelle-brown, to panther-black. The desert was like a dry kiss, a flutter of eyelashes against the mind. Ahem! The night became horned with stars like branches of almond-blossom. I gibbered into the city after a drink or two under a new moon which felt as if it were drawing half its brilliance from the open sea. Everything smelt good again. The iron band that Cairo puts round one’s head (the consciousness of being completely surrounded by burning desert?) dissolved, relaxed — gave place to the expectation of an open sea, an open road leading one’s mind back to Europe…. Sorry. Off the point.