The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

a moment whether he had some strange new religion, whether this was what was meant. She waited with interest, amused yet disturbed to see how deeply moved he was. ‘I wish to make you a confidence now which, if betrayed, might mean irreparable harm to myself and my family; and indeed to the cause I am serving. I wish to put myself utterly in your power. Let us suppose we are both dead to love … I want to ask you to become part of a dangerous….’

The strange thing was that as he began to talk thus, about what was nearest to his thoughts, she began to care, to really notice him as a man for the first time. For the first time he struck a responsive chord in her by a confession which was paradoxically very far from a confession of the heart. To her surprise, to her chagrin and to her delight, she realized that she was not being asked merely to share his bed — but his whole life, the monomania upon which it was built. Normally, it is only the artist who can offer this strange and selfless contract — but it is one which no woman worth the name can ever refuse. He was asking, not for her hand in marriage (here his lies had created the misunderstanding) but for her partnership in allegiance to his ruling daimon. It was in the strictest sense, the only meaning he could put upon the word ‘love’. Slowly and quietly he began, passionately collecting his senses now that he had decided to tell her, marshalling his words, husbanding them. ‘You know, we all know, that our days are numbered since the French and the British have lost control in the Middle East. We, the foreign communities, with all we have built up, are being gradually engulfed by the Arab tide, the Moslem tide. Some of us are trying to work against it; Armenians, Copts, Jews, and Greeks here in Egypt, while others elsewhere are organizing themselves. Much of this work I have undertaken here…. To defend ourselves, that is all, defend our lives, defend the right to belong here only. You know this, everyone knows it. But to those who see a little further into history….’

Here he smiled crookedly — an ugly smile with a trace of complacency in it. ‘Those who see further know this to be but a shadow-play; we will never maintain our place in this world except it be by virtue of a nation strong and civilized enough to dominate the whole area. The day of France and England is over — much as we love them. Who, then, can take their place?’ He drew a deep breath and paused, then he squeezed his hands together between his knees, as if he were squeezing out the unuttered thought, slowly, luxuriously from a sponge.

He went on in a whisker: ‘There is only one nation which can determine the future of everything in the Middle East. Everything — and by a paradox, even the standard of living of the miserable Moslems themselves depends upon it, its power and resources. Have you understood me, Justine? Must I utter its name? Perhaps you are not interested in these things?’ He gave her a glittering smile. Their eyes met. They sat staring at each other in the way that only those who are passionately in love can stare. He had never seen her so pale, so alert, with all her intelligence suddenly mobilized in her looks. ‘Must I say it?’ he said, more sharply; and suddenly expelling her breath in a long sigh she shook her head and whispered the single word.

‘Palestine.’

There was a long silence during which he looked at her with a triumphant exultation. ‘I was not wrong’ he said at last, and she suddenly knew what he meant: that his long-formulated judgement of her had not been at fault. ‘Yes, Justine, Palestine. If only the Jews can win their freedom, we can all be at ease. It is the only hope for us … the dispossessed foreigners.’ He uttered the word with a slight twist of bitterness. They both slowly lit cigarettes now with shaking fingers and blew the smoke out towards each other, enwrapped by a new atmosphere of peace, of understanding. ‘The whole of our fortune has gone into the struggle which is about to break out there’ he said under his breath. ‘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 chamber-mate 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 pleasure-seeker, 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