Arabesque (23 page)

“That goes for you, too.”

“Does it? Yes, I suppose so.”

“And I can get you twenty useful jobs at G.H.Q. tomorrow, only you won’t let me.’

“And arrange a lover for me too?’ she asked ironically, quickly avoiding all discussion of jobs.

“I’d even leave Rashid behind for you, if you’d stay here,” he answered.

“Poor Rashid! He’s so easy for a woman to live up to, Toots. A knight, and I am his unobtainable lady. He writes me poems in Arabic which he refuses to translate. He’d never
forgive you or me if he guessed you had left him behind deliberately.
I
could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more
—can you say that in Arabic,
Toots?”

“Yes, you can, and mean it. Armande, why are you crying?”

She clung to him in sudden terror of the unknowable future, of this lonely passing from one life to another. But all she could capture was a vivid, composite memory of every sentimental,
unsatisfactory flirtation in Beirut and Jerusalem.

“That was so sweet,” he said.

“What a lovely voice, Toots! I wish you meant it.”

“Armande!” he answered reproachfully.

“Oh, my dear! It’s me, don’t you see? It’s as if I were always in love and couldn’t forget. I’m death to all emotion. Death.”

She was exhausted by her struggle not to allow this flat to become another Beirut for her. She knew that the Armande of assured background and easy future was smashed and finished. The
alternatives before her were to hang on to unreality, accepting, like Carry and Xenia, any impossible situation so long as it provided shelter with honour, or to enter the Praylean world of
adventurous individuals who could take in their stride crook employment agencies and hopped chemists and any other beastliness.

“You must stay here,” he insisted. “I can’t leave you like this, accusing yourself of all sorts of impossibilities. Get some money from London, and wait till you are
surer of what you want.”

“I will not get money from London.”

“I don’t mean from your husband. From you mother.”

“Never from my mother!”

“All the same,” he persuaded her, “help in trouble is what mothers are for.”

“But they blind you. They are ruthless. I never want to be possessed by her again.”

He murmured something about her father, of which, in her agonies of self-reproach, she heard only the word amid a blur of soothing sounds.

“Oh, leave me alone!” she cried. “I killed him too.”

“What was your father?” he said, his cool hands closing on hers. “Tell me—as if you were telling the story of another person.”

“An old cavalry trooper who kept a pub.”

“And he married your mother in France during the last war, I suppose?” he asked, refusing to be distracted by her attempt to shock him.

“Yes. And when the franc fell she was ready to get out. I can remember how happy he was the first year in England. And then Maman—for me or for herself? Just because she was made
that way, perhaps—turned the pub into a famous place.”

“That must have startled him.”

“Slowly, if one can be startled slowly. Oh, Toots, I can see him now. He had nothing to do—nothing! Every morning he used to polish the mahogany bar, polish it for hours. It was the
only use he was, for Maman’s barman served the drinks. And then she covered the bar with zinc like a
bistro.
It was all he had left.

“He didn’t have me any longer then. Before I went away to school we would spend hours together. Not talking much. He didn’t talk much to anyone. But together and so happy.
Afterwards, in my holidays, Maman kept me busy, always with herself or with the guests. He didn’t want to intrude. He kept away till I was used to him keeping away. He sat in the stables,
trying to be busy. And when Maman covered the bar, he died.”

Armande’s cheeks were flooded with tears, though she sobbed no longer.

“I didn’t understand,” she cried. “I was a little fool. Because he kept to himself, I made no effort. I just accepted Marxian’s way. I could have loved him, spent
my time with him, told him that he mattered to me more than anything on earth. But I was allowed no time. No time. Maman dominated us. It’s as if everything I am had been made by a human
sacrifice.”

“How old were you when he died?”

“Fourteen.”

“A bit young to run your own small world,” he said.

“No. Not for a woman. Not for a tough little
gamine
as I had been only three years before. As I’m going to be again. Not too young to love and show love and make it all that
matters to someone who needs you. Oh, Toots, I don’t know why I’ve told you this! I’ve shed all my life on to you.”

He kissed her hair, and got up to fuss with drinks. Armande made running repairs to her complexion. She was weary of herself and her body and her sordid tear-stained face; but Carry and Xenia
might come in at any moment. It would be the lowest depth of shame if either of them should see that in an afternoon alone with Toots she had made the usual Cairo scene.

“Why do people tell you things?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, and added vaguely: “All these homeless men and women. And then there are one’s own chaps. I learn to listen. I wish I could go on
learning.”

“After the war?”

“If I get to the end. It makes me so anxious to settle all the unhappy too soon. And perhaps all I do, as you say, is to make prisoners.”

“It’s not your fault. We’re just women weeping for Adonis.”

“I don’t croon or anything,” he protested.

“Darling, I was serious, quite serious.”

“Were you? Yes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what there is behind all that light in your great eyes. And it’s surprising to be called Adonis by Astarte. Appropriate,
perhaps—though our great scene failed.”

“Toots, that’s the second hint. Don’t be rash, my dear.”

“I must be a little rash. It’s what we’ve been trained for.”

“Where are you going?”

“Into the desert,” he replied. “And soon. That’s why I’ve had to talk to you seriously.”

“Do what I ask about Carry and Xenia.”

“I will.”

For a week Armande was all brittle courage, which led her only into exploration of Cairo and a few improbable interviews. One morning as she let herself flow through the streets upon the tide of
busy human beings, hoping for inspiration from their very variety, she found Floarea Pitescu decorating the Rue Soleiman Pasha. The girl was staring into the window of a drugstore, where a display
of beauty preparations, in the deep tints and heavy perfumes that the dusky Middle East demanded, was grouped around the portrait of a movie star. Armande first recognised the Rumanian by her
valiant air of concentration. Floarea’s pose was quite unlike that of a pretty woman who had stopped to look in a shop window. She was slightly frowning and, as a connoisseur before a
picture, standing a little back: undoubtedly to analyse what the star had that she, Floarea, had not, whether it could be acquired, and with how much effort.

Armande carried her off for cakes and coffee, noticing with amused interest the appraisal—a joint appraisal—that they received, and the little silences as they passed between the
crowded tables of the garden café. Alone, she attracted no particular attention; nor, she suspected, did Floarea. Floarea’s frocks and auburn hair were so provocative that her
profession might well be misjudged; the casual glances of other women were more likely to be contemptuous than admiring. When, however, both were together, Floarea drew attention to Armande’s
good looks, and Armande to Floarea’s respectability, or rather—for respectability was too unkind a word—to the fact that Floarea had a private and definite character inhabiting
her too conspicously beautiful body.

While they strolled through the streets, Floarea’s enthusiastic chatter, illuminated by an occasional fact tersely expressed, had made it clear that she was in Egypt to get an engagement,
that the Romanova was still with her and well, and that times were hard.

“And you?” asked Floarea. “By the way. I have a message for you.”

“From whom?”

“Sheikh Wadiah. Before I left he said that if ever I met you I was to tell you that you would always be welcome at Beit Chabab. He was very precise.
Always
, he said.”

“How nice of him!”

“Yes, it was. After all the trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“I wouldn’t know, Armande. I keep clear of politics. But there were French and British officers hanging about (they were very useful to me—I got my visa), and everyone knew it
was something to do with you. First of all Beit Chabab said you were a German spy. And then Wadiah told them something. I don’t know what. And they decided that you and Wadiah together were
arming all the Christians in the East. It’s made Wadiah more of a prince than ever. That’s just like my own country. Any man of influence has to be mixed up in a scandal before he gets
real respect.”

Armande laughed. She was relieved to learn that Wadiah bore no ill will. She could imagine him as he twisted his moustaches to heaven, hinting, prevaricating, dropping calculated indiscretions
until a desirable legend had been born.

“How do you like Egypt?” she asked. “Have you got no work at all?”

“Just odd jobs as a photographer’s model. This sort of thing!”

Floarea hunted in an oversmart bag of white patent leather, and produced a photograph in which she was lying dazzingly and completely naked on a Victorian sofa.

“Good?” she asked, with the tolerant pride of an artist in a minor but efficient production.

“Well …” began Armande, too startled to criticise.

Floarea’s face in the photograph was so serious and posed that it gave to the portrait a grave beauty. The pose was not languishing enough to advertise clothes—which indeed it hardly
could—or any object of feminine vanity or masculine desire.

“What on earth is it for?”

“Constipation. I never need pills, Armande, do you?”

“Have you got to do that kind of thing?” Armande asked.

“Why not? I am waiting to dance at a smart locale. I will not take an engagement at the second-rate.”

“But you’re heaps better than all these old turns in Cairo that everybody is tired of. Haven’t they given you a trial?”

“Oh, yes. But the conditions, my dear! The proprietor! Even the doorman! In Bucharest one is allowed some choice. But Cairo is a great brothel.”

“I am sure it is nothing of the kind for the top-flight turns,” said Armande demurely—she had already done the round of the Cairo cabarets with Toots and his circle.

“Do they have to sit at the tables?” Floarea asked.

“I don’t think the best do, unless they want to. You ought to be in their class.”

“I know I ought, but I haven’t the right approach.”

“Floarea,” Armande suggested, “what would happen if you and I asked for a job together?”

“You?”

“I can dance, you know. Or at least I could.”

“That doesn’t matter. I could carry you through.”

“I did not mean acrobatics,” said Armande coldly.

“That’s not fair!” Floarea flashed. “How was I to know you could dance? If you can.”

“I’ll show you. If I can, would I do?”

“Yes, but … there might be difficulties.”

“What’s the matter with me?”

“Nothing.”

“Am I sufficiently
snob
for the big engagement?”

“Of course, Armande, But … are you all right? I mean, we shouldn’t have any trouble with the police?”

“Why should I have?” asked Armande indignantly. “And what about you? An enemy subject!”

“I am a Jewess,” said Floarea smugly.

“Are you? I didn’t know.”

“No, Armande, I am Orthodox,” Floarea replied, drawing out from her bosom a small gold cross, and kissing it. “I wear my cross, though I hide it—and may God forgive me
for the lie! But Mama found out that artists were allowed to work and travel if they were Jews. So we learned a prayer in Hebrew, and said that we were. They say it’s dangerous in Palestine,
that there is a secret police who ask too many questions. But here we were believed. After all, any good Rumanian could pretend to be a Jew or a gypsy. Is it wrong, do you think?”

“Not for you,” Armande answered. “It’s a policeman’s world, this—and each of us must do what she can. Is there anywhere with a piano where we can practise?
Then you can see how much I’ve forgotten, and make up your mind.”

“Yes. At our rooms. Mama will be there.”

Floarea led her to a grim, unpainted apartment house, rising six stories above a row of shops. It was shabby, but in a good street, and looked as if it might be inhabited by small Greek
businessmen with large families. Floarea ran up five flights of stairs with a lightness that amazed Armande, unlocked the door of a flat and called loudly for Mama.

The flat looked and smelled as if it had been used by generations of cabaret artistes. The hall was hung with photographs of dancers, their signatures and their affectionate dedications to the
landlady scrawled in vast flowing hands, a dozen European languages and green, blue and violet inks. There was furniture everywhere, covered with cheap Oriental hangings and cottons printed with
scenes from ancient Egypt. Scattered about this overbearing quantity of textiles were cushions in vivid silks with the heals and feet of dolls. There did not seem to be anything in the house
without a skirt except the dancers in the photographs, Romanova and the landlady.

The landlady wore trousers. A roll of fat from her hips, surprisingly bagged in the pink silk of her underwear, emerged from the undone placket like the shapeless materialisation from a cheap
medium. Romanova, in a flowered cotton wrap, lay among the dolls drinking coffee. She looked cool. Indeed the whole flat, heavily curtained and shuttered, was cool. The same air had been imprisoned
for year after year, but at a more gentle temperature than that of the street.

The Romanova greeted Armande with reserve. Her eyebrows, painted in two appealing semicircles high on the aging forehead, were raised more in interrogation than welcome. Floarea explained, in a
rush of emphatic and musical Rumanian, the reason for Armande’s visit.