'It takes time,' I said soothingly. 'You'll catch the tone.'
'Oh, I'm sure of that. Tell them I got a reservation.' Butler mopped his full glistening cheeks with a handkerchief.
'You have a reservation for William Butler?' I asked the manager in French.
He shook his head, looking at the register in front of him.
'Is he an American?' He looked surprised when I said that he was. 'But it didn't sound like English.'
'He was trying to speak Arabic.'
The manager sighed. 'Would you ask him to show me his passport and authorizations?'
I communicated this to Butler who pulled a bulky envelope from his pocket and handed it to the manager. As well as I could, without appearing inquisitive, I looked at the papers. I could tell nothing. The passport was evidently in order. The numerous authorizations from the Egyptian Government in the Pan-Arabic League, however, seemed to interest the manager intensely.
'Perhaps…' I began, but he was already telephoning the police. Though I speak Arabic with difficulty, I can understand it easily. The manager was inquiring at length about Mr Butler and about his status in Egypt. The police chief evidently knew all about him and the conversation was short.
'Would you ask him to sign the register?' The manager's expression was puzzled. I wondered what on earth it was all about.
'Don't know why,' said Butler, carving his name into the register with the ancient pen, 'there's all this confusion. I wired for a room last week from Cairo.'
'Communications have not been perfected in the Arab countries,' I said (fortunately for me, I thought to myself).
When he had done registering, a boy came and took his bags and the key to his room.
'Much obliged to you, Mr Hudson.'
'Not at all.'
'Like to see something of you, if you don't mind. Wonder if you could give me an idea of the lay of the land.'
I said I should be delighted and we made a date to meet for tea in the cool of the late afternoon, on the terrace.
When he had gone, I asked the manager about him but he, old friend that he was (he has been manager for twelve years and looks up to me as an elder statesman, in the hotel at least, since I have lived there longer), merely shrugged and said, 'It's too much for me, sir.' And I could get no more out of him.
2
The terrace was nearly cool when we met at six o'clock, at the hour when the Egyptian sun has just lost its unbearable gold, falling, a scarlet disc, into the white stone hills across the dull river which, at this season, winds narrowly among the mud-flats, a third of its usual size, diminished by heat.
'Don't suppose we could order a drink… not that I'm much of a drinking man, you know. Get quite a thirst, though, on a day like this.'
I told him that since foreigners had ceased to come here, the bar had been closed down: Moslems for religious reasons did not use alcohol.
'I know, I know,' he said. 'Studied all about them, even read the Koran. Frightful stuff, too.'
'No worse than most documents revealed by heaven,' I said gently, not wanting to get on to that subject. 'But tell me what brings you to these parts?'
'I was going to ask you the same thing,' said Butler genially, taking the cup of mint tea which the servant had brought him. On the river a boat with a red sail tacked slowly in the hot breeze. 'The manager tells me you've been up here for twenty years.'
'You must have found a language in common.'
Butler chuckled. 'These devils understand you well enough if they want to. But you…'
'I was an archaeologist at one time,' I said and I told him the familiar story which I have repeated so many times now that I have almost come to believe it. 'I was from Boston originally. Do you know Boston? I often think of those cold winters with a certain longing. Too much light can be as trying as too little. Some twenty years ago, I decided to retire, to write a book of memoirs.' This was a new, plausible touch, 'Egypt was always my single passion and so I came to Luxor, to this hotel where I've been quite content, though hardly industrious.'
'How come they let you in? I mean there was all that trouble along around when the Pan-Arabic League shut itself off from civilization.'
'I was very lucky, I suppose. I had many friends in the academic world of Cairo and they were able to grant me a special dispensation.'
'Old hand, then, with the natives?'
'But a little out of practice. All my Egyptian friends have seen fit to die and I live now as though I were already dead myself.'
This had the desired effect of chilling him. Though he was still young, hardly fifty, the immediacy of death, even when manifested in the person of a chance acquaintance, did inspire a certain gravity.
He mumbled something which I did not catch. I think my hearing has begun to go: not that I am deaf but I have, at times, a monotonous buzzing in my ears which makes conversation difficult, though not impossible. According to the local doctor my arteries have hardened and at any moment one is apt to burst among the convolutions of the brain, drowning my life. But I do not dwell on this, at least not in conversation.
'There's been a big shake-up in the Atlantic community. Don't suppose you'd hear much about it around here since from the newspapers I've seen in Egypt they have a pretty tight censorship.'
I said I knew nothing about recent activities in the Atlantic community or anywhere else, other than Egypt.
'Well they've worked out an alliance with Pan-Arabia which will open the whole area to us. Of course no oil exploitation is allowed but there'll still be a lot of legitimate business between our sphere and these people.'
I listened to him patiently while he explained the state of the world to me; it seemed unchanged: the only difference was that there were now new and unfamiliar names in high places. He finished with a patriotic harangue about the necessity of the civilized to work in harmony together for the good of mankind: 'And this opening up of Egypt has given us the chance we've been waiting for for years, and we mean to take it.'
'You mean to extend trade?'
'No, I mean the Word.'
'The Word?' I repeated numbly, the old fear returning.
'Why sure; I'm a Cavite Communicator.' He rapped perfunctorily on the table twice. I tapped feebly with my cane on the tile: in the days of the Spanish persecution such signals were a means of secret communication (not that the persecution had really been so great but it had been our decision to dramatize it in order that our people might become more conscious of their splendid if temporary isolation and high destiny); it had not occurred to me that, triumphant, the Cavites should still cling to those bits of fraternal ritual which I'd conceived with a certain levity in the early days. But of course the love of ritual, of symbol is peculiar to our race and I reflected bleakly on this as I returned the solemn signal which identified us as brother Cavites.
'The world must have changed indeed,' I said at last. 'It was a Moslem law that no foreign missionaries be allowed in the Arab League.'
'Pressure!' Butler looked very pleased. 'Nothing obvious of course; had to be done though.'
'For economic reasons?'
'No, for Cavesword. That's what we're selling because that's the one thing we've got.' And he blinked seriously at the remnant of scarlet sun; his voice had grown husky, like a man selling some commodity on television in the old days. Yet the note of sincerity, whether simulated or genuine, was unmistakably resolute.
'You may have a difficult time,' I said, not wanting to go on with this conversation but unable to direct it short of walking away. 'The Moslems are very stubborn in their faith.'
Butler laughed confidently. 'We'll change all that. It may not be easy at first because we've got to go slow, feel
