The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

‘Nevertheless, that is Memlik’s case. I thought you’d like to know, sir. Errol and I are just off to Alex. There isn’t anything else, is there?’

Mountolive shook his head. Donkin closed the door softly behind him. ‘So now they are going to turn on Narouz. What a muddle of conflicting policies and diversions.’ He sank despairingly into a chair and frowned at his own fingers for a long moment before pouring himself out another cup of tea. He felt incapable now of thought, of making the smallest decision. He would write to Kenilworth and the Foreign Secretary this very morning about his transfer. It was something he should have considered long since. He sighed heavily.

There came another and more diffident rap at the door. ‘Come in’ he called wearily. It opened and a dispirited-looking sausage-dog waddled into the room followed by Angela Errol who said, in a tone of strident heartiness not untouched by a sort of aggressive archness, ‘Forgive the intrusion, but I came on behalf of the Chancery wives. We thought you seemed rather lonely so we decided to put our heads together. Fluke is the result.’ Dog and man looked at each other in a dazed and distrustful silence for a moment. Mountolive struggled for words. He had always loathed sausage-dogs with legs so short that they appeared to flop along like toads rather than walk. Fluke was such an animal, already panting and slavering from its exertions. It sat down at last and, as if to express once and for all its disenchantment with the whole sum of canine existence, delivered itself of a retromingent puddle on the beautiful Shiraz. ‘Isn’t he jolly?’ cried the wife of the Head of Chancery. It cost Mountolive something of an effort to smile, to appear to be overcome with pleasure, to express the appropriate thanks due to a gesture so thoughtful. He was wild with vexation. ‘He looks charming’ he said, smiling his handsome smile, ‘really charming. I am most awfully grateful, Angela. It was a kind thought.’ The dog yawned lazily. ‘Then I shall tell the wives that the gift has met with approval’ she said briskly, and moved towards the door. ‘They will be delighted. There is no companionship like that of a dog, is there?’ Mountolive shook his head seriously. ‘None’ he said. He tried to look as if he meant it.

As the door closed behind her he sat down once more and raised his cup of tea to his lips as he stared unwinkingly and with distaste into the dog’s lustreless eyes. The clock chimed softly on the mantelpiece. It was time to be going to the office. There was much to be done. He had promised to finish the definitive economic report in time for this week’s bag. He must bully the bag room about that portrait of himself. He must….

Yet he sat on looking at the dispirited little creature on the mat and feeling suddenly as if he had been engulfed in a tidal wave of human contumely — so expressed by his admirers in this unwanted gift. He was to be garde-malade, a male nurse to a short-legged lap dog. Was this now the only way left of exorcizing his sadness…? He sighed, and sighing pressed the bell….

* * * * *

XVI

The day of his death was like any other winter day at Karm Abu Girg; or if it was different it was only in one small and puzzling detail, the significance of which did not strike him at first: the servants suddenly ebbing away to leave him alone in the house. All night long now he lay in troubled sleep among the luxuriant growths of his own fantasy, dense as a tropical vegetation; only waking from time to time to be comforted by the soft whewing of the cranes flying overhead in the darkness. It was full winter and the great bird migrations had begun. The long vitreous expanses of the lake had begun to fill up with their winged visitants like some great terminus. All night long one could hear the flights come in — the thick whirring of mallard-wings or the metallic kraonk kraonk of high-flying geese as they bracketed the winter moon. Among the thickets of reed and sedge, in places polished to black or viper-green by the occasional clinging frosts, you could hear the chuckling and gnatting of royal duck. The old house with its mildewed walls where the scorpions and fleas hibernated among the dusty interstices of the earth-brick felt very empty and desolate to him now that Leila had gone. He marched defiantly about it, making as much noise as he could with his boots, shouting at the dogs, cracking his whip across the courtyard. The little toy figures with windmill arms which lined the walls against the ubiquitous evil eye, worked unceasingly, flurried by the winter winds. Their tiny celluloid propellers made a furry sound as they revolved which was somehow comforting.

Nessim had pleaded hard with him to accompany Leila and Justine but he had refused — and indeed behaved like a bear though he knew in truth that without his mother the loneliness of the house would be hard to support. He had locked himself into the egg-incubators, and to his brother’s feverish knocking and shouting had opposed a bitter silence. There had been no way of explaining things to Nessim. He would not emerge even when Leila came to plead with him — for fear that his resolve might weaken under her importunities. He had crouched there in silence with his back against the wall, his fist crammed into his mouth to stifle the noiseless sobbing — how heavy was the guilt one bore for filial disobedience! They had abandoned him at last. He heard the horses clatter out of the courtyard. He was alone.

Then after that a whole month of silence before he heard his brother’s voice on the telephone. Narouz had walked all day long in a forest of his own heart-beats, attending to the work of the land with a concentrated fury of purpose, galloping along the slow-moving river of his inheritance on horseback, his reflection flying beside him: always with the great whip coiled at his saddle-bow. He felt immeasurably aged now — and yet, at one and the same time, as new to the world as a foetus hanging from the birth-cord. The land, his land, now brown and greasy as an old wineskin under the rain, compelled him. It was all he had left now to care for — trees bruised by frost, sand poisoned by desert salt, water-pans stocked with fish and geese; and silences all day except for the sighing and the groaning of the water-wheels with their eternal message (‘Alexander has asses’ ears’) carried away by the winds to the further corners of the land, to pollinate history once more with the infectious memory of the soldier-god; or the suck and pluck of the black ‘forehead-smasher’ buffalo wallowing in the ooze of the dykes. And then at night the haunting plural syllables of the duck deploying in darkness, calling to one another in anxiety or content — travellers’ codes. Screens of mist, low-lying clouds through which the dawns and sunsets burst with unexampled splendour each one the end of a world, a dying into amethyst and nacre.

Normally, this would be the hunter’s season which he loved, brisk with great woodfires and roving gun-dogs: time for the dousing of boots with bear’s fat, for the tuning in of the long punt-guns, the sorting out of shot, the painting of decoys…. This year he had not even the heart to join in the great annual duck-shoot given by Nessim. He felt cut off, in a different world. He wore the bitter revengeful face of a communicant refused absolution. He could no longer exorcize his sadness privately with a dog and gun; he thought only of Taor now, and the dreams he shared with her — the fierce possessive recognition of his dedicated role here, among his own lands, and in the whole of Egypt…. These confusing dreams interlinked, overlapped, intersected — like so many tributaries of the great river itself. Even Leila’s love threatened them now — was like some brilliant parasite ivy which strangles the growth of a tree. He thought vaguely and without contempt of his brother still there in the city — (he was not to leave until later) — moving among people as insubstantial as waxworks, the painted society women of Alexandria. If he thought at all of his love for Clea it was for a love left now like some shining coin, forgotten in a beggar’s pocket…. Thus, galloping in savage exultation along moss-green wharves and embankments of the estuary with its rotting palms fretted by the wind, thus he lived.

Once last week Ali had reported the presence of unknown men upon the land, but he had not given the matter a thought. Often a stray Bedouin took a short cut across the plantations or a stranger rode through the property bound for the road to the city. He was more interested when Nessim telephoned to say that he would be visiting Karm Abu Girg with Balthazar who wished to investigate reports of a new species of duck which had been seen on the lake. (From the roof of the house one could sweep the whole estuary with a powerful glass.)

This indeed was what he was doing now, at this very moment. Tree by tree, reed-patch by reed-patch, turning a patient and curious eye upon the land through his ancient telescope. It lay, mysterious, unpeopled and silent in the light of the dawn. He intended to spend the whole day out there among the plantations in order to avoid, if possible, seeing his brother. But now the defection of the servants was puzzling, and indeed, inexplicable. Usually when he woke he roared for Ali who brought him a large copper can with a long spout full of hot water and sluiced him down as he stood in the battered Victorian hip-bath, gasping and hissing. But today? The courtyard was silent, and the room in which Ali slept was locked. The key hung in its place upon the nail outside. There was not a soul about.

With sudden quick strides he climbed to the balcony for his telescope and then mounted the outer wooden staircase to the roof to stand among the turrets of the dovecots and scan the Hosnani lands. A long patient scrutiny