As he obeyed and stepped forward into the swaying cab he smelt her strange confusion of scents on the night air — again a troubling departure from the accepted memory. But orangewater, mint, Eau de Cologne, and sesame; she smelt like some old Arab lady! And then he caught the dull taint of whisky. She too had had to string her nerves for the meeting with alcohol! Sympathy and indecision battled within him; the old image of the brilliant, resourceful and elegant Leila refused somewhere to fix itself in the new. He simply must see her face. As if she read his thoughts, she said: ‘So I came at last, unveiled, to meet you.’ He suddenly thought, bringing himself up with a start, ‘My God!
I simply haven’t stopped to think how old Leila might be!’ She made a small sign and the old jarvey in the tarbush drew his nag slowly back on to the lighted macadam of the Grande Corniche and set the gharry moving at walking pace. Here the sharp blue street-lamps came, up one after the other to peer into the cab, and with the first of these intrusive gleams of light Mountolive turned to gaze at the woman beside him. He could very dimly recognize her. He saw a plump and square-faced Egyptian lady of uncertain years, with a severely pock-marked face and eyes drawn grotesquely out of true by the antimony-pencil.
They were the mutinous sad eyes of some clumsy cartoon creature: a cartoon of animals dressed up and acting as human beings. She had indeed been brave enough to unveil, this stranger who sat facing him, staring at him with the painted eye one sees in frescoes with a forlorn and pitiable look of appeal. She wore an air of unsteady audacity as she confronted her lover, though her lips trembled and her large jowls shook with every vibration of the solid rubber tyres on the road. They stared at each other for a full two seconds before the darkness swallowed the light again. Then he raised her hand to his lips. It was shaking like a leaf. In the momentary light he had seen her uncombed and straggly hair hanging down the back of her neck, her thoughtless and disordered black dress. Her whole appearance had a rakish and improvised air. And the dark skin, so cruelly botched and cicatriced by the smallpox, looked coarse as the skin of an elephant. He did not recognize her at all! ‘Leila!’ he cried (it was almost a groan) pretending at last to identify and welcome the image of his lover (now dissolved or shattered forever) in this pitiable grotesque — a fattish Egyptian lady with all the marks of eccentricity and age written upon her appearance. Each time the lamps came up he looked again, and each time he saw himself confronting something like an animal cartoon figure — an elephant, say. He could hardly pay attention to her words, so intent was he upon his racing feelings and memories. ‘I knew we should meet again some day. I knew it.’ She pressed his hand, and again he tasted her breath, heavy with sesame and mint and whisky.
She was talking now and he listened uneasily, but with all the attention one gives to an unfamiliar language; and each time the street lamps came up to peer at them, he gazed at her anxiously — as if to see whether there had been any sudden and magical change in her appearance. And then he was visited by another thought: ‘What if I too have changed as much as she has — if indeed this is she?’ What indeed? Sometime in the distant past they had exchanged images of one another like lockets; now his own had faded, changed. What might she see upon his face — traces of the feebleness which had overrun his youthful strength and purpose? He had now joined the ranks of those who compromise gracefully with life. Surely his ineffectuality, his unmanliness must be written all over his foolish, weak, goodlooking face? He eyed her mournfully, with a pitiful eagerness to see whether she indeed really recognized him. He had forgotten that women will never surrender the image of their hearts’ affections; no, she would remain forever blinded by the old love, refusing to let it be discountenanced by the new. ‘You have not changed by a day’ said this unknown woman with the disagreeable perfume. ‘My beloved, my darling, my angel.’ Mountolive flushed in the darkness at such endearments coming from the lips of an unknown personage. And the known Leila? He suddenly realized that the precious image which had inhabited his heart for so long had now been dissolved, completely wiped out! He was suddenly face to face with the meaning of love and time. They had lost forever the power to fecundate each other’s minds! He felt only selfpity and disgust where he should have felt love! And these feelings were simply not permissible. He swore at himself silently as they went up and down the dark causeway by the winter sea, like invalids taking the night air, their hands touching each other, in the old horse-drawn cab. She was talking faster, now, vaguely, jumping from topic to topic. Yet it all seemed an introduction to the central statement which she had come to make. She was to leave tomorrow evening: ‘Nessim’s orders. Justine will come back from the lake and pick me up. We are disappearing together. At Kantara we’ll separate and I shall go on to Kenya to the farm.
Nessim won’t say, can’t say for how long as yet. I had to see you.
I had to speak to you once. Not for myself — never for myself, my own heart. It was what I learned about Nessim at the carnival time. I was on the point of coming to meet you; but what he told me about Palestine! My blood ran cold. To do something against the British! How could I! Nessim must have been mad. I didn’t come because I would not have known what to say to you, how to face you. But now you know all.’ She had begun to draw her breath sharply now, to hurry onward as if all this were introductory matter to her main speech.
Then suddenly she came out with it. ‘The Egyptians will harm Nessim, and the British are trying to provoke them to do so.
David, you must use your power to stop it. I am asking you to save my son. I am asking you to save him. You must listen, must help me. I have never asked you a favour before.’ The tear-and crayon—streaked cheeks made her look even more of a stranger in the streetlights. He began to stammer. She cried aloud: ‘I implore you to help’ and suddenly, to his intense humiliation, began to moan and rock like an Arab, pleading with him. ‘Leila!’ he cried. ‘Stop it!’ But she swayed from side to side repeating the words ‘Only you can save him now’ more, it seemed, to herself, than to anyone else. Then she showed some disposition to go down on her knees in the cab and kiss his feet. By this time Mountolive was trembling with anger and surprise and disgust.
They were passing the Auberge for the tenth time. ‘Unless you stop at once’ he cried angrily, but she wailed once more and he jumped awkwardly down into the road. It was hateful to have to end their interview like this. The cab drew to a halt. He said, feeling stupid, and in a voice which seemed to come from far away and to have no recognizable expression save a certain old-fashioned waspishness: ‘I cannot discuss an official matter with a private person.’ Could anything be more absurd than these words? He felt bitterly ashamed as he uttered them. ‘Leila, goodbye’ he said hurriedly under his breath, and squeezed her hand once more before he turned. He took to his heels. He unlocked his car and climbed into it panting and overcome by a sense of ghastly folly.
The cab moved off into the darkness. He watched it curve slowly along the Corniche and disappear. Then he lit a cigarette and started his engine. All of a sudden there seemed nowhere in particular to go. Every impulse, every desire had faltered and faded out.