‘On that depends everything. Here, of course, we are doing other things which I will explain to you. The British and French help us, they see no harm. I am sorry for them. Their condition is pitiable because they have no longer the will to fight or even to think.’ His contempt was ferocious, yet full of controlled pity. ‘But with the Jews — there is something young there: the cockpit of Europe in these rotten marshes of a dying race.’ He paused and suddenly said in a sharp, twanging tone: ‘Justine.’ Slowly and thoughtfully, at the same moment they put out their hands to each other. Their cold fingers locked and squeezed hard. On the faces of both there was expressed an exultant determination of purpose, almost of terror!
His image had suddenly been metamorphosed. It was now lit with a new, a rather terrifying grandeur. As she smoked and watched him, she saw someone different in his place — an adventurer, a corsair, dealing with the lives and deaths of men; his power too, the power of his money, gave a sort of tragic backcloth to the design. She realized now that he was not seeing her — the Justine thrown back by polished mirrors, or engraved in expensive clothes and fards — but something even closer than the chambermate of a passional life.
This was a Faustian compact he was offering her. There was something more surprising: for the first time she felt desire stir within her, in the loins of that discarded, pre-empted body which she regarded only as a pleasureseeker, a mirror-reference to reality. There came over her an unexpected lust to sleep with him — no, with his plans, his dreams, his obsessions, his money, his death! It was as if she had only now understood the nature of the love he was offering her; it was his all, his only treasure, this pitiable political design so long and so tormentingly matured in his heart that it had forced out every other impulse or wish.
She felt suddenly as if her feelings had become caught up in some great cobweb, imprisoned by laws which lay beneath the level of her conscious will, her desires, the self-destructive flux and reflux of her human personality. Their fingers were still locked, like a chord in music, drawing nourishment from the strength transmitted by their bodies. Just to hear him say: ‘Now my life is in your keeping’ set her brain on fire, and her heart began to beat heavily in her breast. ‘I must go now’ she said, with a new terror — one that she had never experienced before — ‘I really must go.’ She felt unsteady and faint, touched as she was by the coaxings of a power stronger than any physical attraction could be. ‘Thank God’ he said under his breath, and again ‘Oh Thank God.’ Everything was decided at last.
But his own relief was mixed with terror. How had he managed at last to turn the key in the lock? By sacrificing to the truth, by putting himself at her mercy. His unwisdom had been the only course left open. He had been forced to take it. Subconsciously he knew too, that the oriental woman is not a sensualist in the European sense; there is nothing mawkish in her constitution. Her true obsessions are power, politics and possessions — however much she might deny it. The sex ticks on in the mind, but its motions are warmed by the kinetic brutalities of money. In this response to a common field of action, Justine was truer to herself than she had ever been, responding as a flower responds to light. And it was now, while they talked quietly and coldly, their heads bent towards each other like flowers, that she could at last say, magnificently: ‘Ah, Nessim, I never suspected that I should agree. How did you know that I only exist for those who believe in me?’ He stared at her, thrilled and a little terrified, recognizing in her the perfect submissiveness of the oriental spirit — the absolute feminine submissiveness which is one of the strongest forces in the world.
They went out to the car together and Justine suddenly felt very weak, as if she had been carried far out of her depth and abandoned in mid-ocean. ‘I don’t know what more to say.’
‘Nothing. You must start living.’ The paradoxes of true love are endless. She felt as if she had received a smack across the face. She went into the nearest coffee-shop and ordered a cup of hot chocolate. She drank it with trembling hands. Then she combed her hair and made up her face. She knew her beauty was only an advertisement and kept it fresh with disdain.
It was some hours later, when he was sitting at his desk, that Nessim, after a long moment of thought, picked up the polished telephone and dialled Capodistria’s number. ‘Da Capo’ he said quietly, ‘you remember my plans for marrying Justine? All is well. We have a new ally. I want you to be the first to announce it to the committee. I think now they will show no more reservation about my not being a Jew — since I am to be married to one. What do you say?’ He listened with impatience to the ironical congratulations of his friend. ‘It is impertinent’ he said at last, coldly ‘to imagine that I am not motivated by feelings as well as by designs. As an old friend I must warn you not to take that tone with me. My private life, my private feelings, are my own. If they happen to square with other considerations, so much the better.
But do not do me the injustice of thinking me without honour.
I love her.’ He felt quite sick as he said the words: sick with a sudden self-loathing. Yet the word was utterly exact — love.
Now he replaced the receiver slowly, as if it weighed a ton, and sat staring at his own reflection in the polished desk. He was telling himself: ‘It is all that I am not as a man which she thinks she can love. Had I no such plans to offer her, I might have pleaded with her for a century. What is the meaning of this little four-letter word we shake out of our minds like poker-dice — love?’ His self-contempt almost choked him.
That night she arrived unexpectedly at the great house just as the clocks were chiming eleven. He was still up and dressed and sitting by the fire, sorting his papers. ‘You did not telephone?’ he cried with delight, with surprise. ‘How wonderful!’ She stood in grave silence at the door until the servant who had showed her in retired. Then she took a step forward letting her fur cape slide from her shoulders. They embraced passionately, silently. Then, turning her regard upon him in the firelight, that look at once terrified and exultant, she said: ‘Now at last I know you, Nessim Hosnani.’ Love is every sort of conspiracy. The power of riches and intrigue stirred within her now, the deputies of passion. Her face wore the brilliant look of innocence which comes only with conversion to a religious way of life! ‘I have come for your directions, for further instructions’ she said. Nessim was transfigured. He ran upstairs to his little safe and brought down the great folders of correspondence — as if to show that he was honest, that his words could be verified there and then, on the spot. He was now revealing to her something which neither his mother nor his brother knew — the extent of his complicity in the Palestine conspiracy. They crouched down before the fire talking until nearly dawn.
‘You will see from all this my immediate worries. You can deal with them. First the doubts and hesitations of the Jewish Committee. I want you to talk to them. They think that there is something questionable about a Copt supporting them while the local Jews are staying clear, afraid of losing their good name with the Egyptians. We must convince them, Justine. It will take a little while at least to complete the arms build-up. Then, all this must be kept from our well-wishers here, the British and the French. I know they are busy trying to find out about me, my underground activities. As yet, I think they don’t suspect. But among them all there are two people who particularly concern us.