The Mule on the Minaret Read online

  Aziz flushed angrily. ‘You have no right to say a thing like that, here in the Lebanon.’

  ‘And where have I a better right? What is the Lebanon’s story but the record of one invasion after another? Everybody’s overrun it: everybody always will overrun it. It has no defence. We shrug our shoulders and charge our conquerors one per cent. As an Armenian, I’m more Lebanese than the Lebanese. I don’t really care who wins the war, but by and large I would as soon the Germans did, and I guess forty per cent of you in Turkey feel the same.’

  ‘How do you know what we in Turkey feel?’

  ‘I often go there. As a matter of fact, I’ll be going there in a month or so. I need to keep my eyes and my ears open.’ He moved away.

  ‘I wonder who that was,’ Aziz said.

  ‘I can tell you that: Alexis Belorian. He’s a cousin of our hostess.’

  ‘Really, so that’s who he is.’

  His eyes flashed. She knew what he was thinking. She was thrilled and tremulous. Yet at the same time she felt qualms, on his account. He was getting in very deep.

  Once she visited the office in the M.E.S.C. building. It was curious to meet in the flesh men whom she knew so well on paper, particularly the Professor; Aziz had spoken of him so much. He was the one person for whom Aziz had seemed to have a genuine attachment. She felt a kinship with the Professor because he was the only one in the office who had understood and appreciated Aziz. He had found the clue to him. The love of music. It was ironic that that understanding, that appreciation, had been Aziz’s undoing.

  She wished that she could talk to the Professor about Aziz. She wondered whether he was inquisitive about her relationship with Aziz. Diana suspected something, she was very sure. Had Diana said anything in the office? Presumably she had; or at least she must have to the Professor. But even of that she could not be sure. Diana had great reserves. She was not a gossip. It might well be that she maintained her office standards of security in her private life; if, in their kind of racket, you could be said to have a private life.

  On her official visit to the office she did not discuss Aziz or either of the operations in which he was involved. Her interview was personal and social. Farrar asked her about the clubs in Istanbul, about the cafés, how much night-life there was. Was it difficult to get certain foods? What about beer? He had had some Turkish beer in Iraq. It had cost five shillings a bottle and had tasted of straw. Did they ever meet the Germans? How did the Germans seem? Arrogant and boastful, he supposed. What about the Americans? Did she see anything of them? At the end of his questionnaire, Farrar said, ‘From what you tell me, I shall do my best to avoid being posted there. I fancy Ferdinand would wilt. Not enough of the fleshpots for his “little heart of clay”.’

  She had no idea whether Aziz was apprehensive about his equivocal position. She never saw moody expressions on his face. He seemed tranquil, self-composed. She rarely discussed the war with him; they did not discuss anything very much. They listened to music; they swam, they picnicked, they motored into the country. They made love; but they did not talk about making love.

  ‘Once,’ he said, ‘I told Professor Reid that music gave me a peace of mind that nothing else did because it was not precise; not to be explained in words; it brought you into harmony with the whole universe, but did not lay down rules about the universe. It took you to the core of understanding. You understood the mystery of existence. When I told him that, he said, “There are those who say that that same paradise can be reached through love.” He paused. ‘I think the Professor was right,’ he added.

  They made love with an assiduous frenzy; she threw herself into love-making with an unslaked zest. She still had not experienced that acute, devastating ecstasy, that death in life, that utter apotheosis of every nerve cell of which she had read in books. But the very fact that she had not, quickened her absorption in this new pastime. She concentrated upon his response, not her own, devising new ways to heighten and prolong his pleasure. Though she was inexperienced in the practice of love, she was not ignorant of its theory. She had read and lingered over a number of the semi-medical books that had appeared in the late thirties. Her ignorance had increased her interest in them. She had brooded salaciously over the delights she had denied herself. She had sometimes looked at girls like Kitty and had thought, ‘Has she done that; has she tried this?’

  She recalled those moments. Now that she was freed from the stable, she would gallop with a loose rein over open country. She would admit no bridle. No device would be too bizarre. She rolled certain French words on her tongue as a wine-taster rolls the wine round his mouth: Outrée and dévergondée. They were self-expressive. Sometimes she felt that she was being ridden like a steed over open country; that she was galloping, galloping, faster, faster towards the kill. Had she been with a compatriot, or a man older than herself, an inherited modesty would have placed its check on her; but with this foreigner, this inexperienced foreigner, who was three years younger than herself, she could abandon herself to an utter shamelessness. The word ‘shame’ did not exist for her. She studied his response, learning what he liked most, what most excited him. Had she been concerned with her own pleasure she could not have been so solicitous of his. No woman would be able to boast that she had taught him anything.

  The knowledge that this thing between them could have no future gave it a special savour. They were divided by age, race, religion; sooner or later they would go their separate ways. She felt no jealousy on that account. On the contrary, she relished the prospect of his dissatisfaction with her successors. They would seem tepid after her. She wished that he could have an affair with Kitty; she could imagine Kitty’s astonishment when Aziz said, ‘Ah, that little Eve, she was unique.’

  He did not use the big words of love; he could not express himself with ease. But she had little doubt of the hold that she had placed on him. There was no sense of tragedy about their parting. They were sure of one another. She joked over his promise to come up in August. ‘If you want any new records, you’ll have to come up, won’t you, to get the answers to those questions.’

  It had been arranged that Eve should be driven to catch the Taurus at Aleppo by the girl in the Spears unit who shared Diana’s flat. Diana, at the last minute, decided to come too.

  Jane was late. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I made a night of it. What a relief not to be driving on real duty. Where duty is concerned, I’m the punctual soldier. But a routine drive like this.’ Her voice was a little blurred. There were lines under her eyes. As soon as they were on the main northern route to Tripoli, Diana offered to take over.

  ‘That’s very civil of you,’ Jane said. In ten minutes she was asleep.

  High on a distant hill, they saw the Crak des Chevaliers, a forlorn relic of the Crusades.

  ‘Do you want to make a detour?’ Diana asked.

  ‘Why bother?’

  Diana laughed. ‘Yet think of all the tourists who in peacetime spend vast sums of money to visit the Levant, and include that castle as a “must”. Can you picture us in ten years confessing why we’ve never seen Petra or Isfahan or the arch at Tesiphon. Simply because it is so easy, we don’t bother.’

  They paused at Horns where the great water-wheel turned slowly with its cranking chains. They had come south by this same road two weeks earlier, but then Eve had been too excited to notice what she was seeing. So much had happened to her during these two weeks; she was a different person because of what had happened to her in Beirut. Yet for Diana they had been two weeks like any other. Wasn’t there a poem of Hardy’s on those lines: ‘For them it had been an ordinary day’? Yet how could she tell if it had been an ordinary fortnight for Diana? Did she herself look any different? When she was back in Istanbul, would Kitty stop in her tracks? ‘Good heavens, kid!’

  They reached Aleppo in the early evening. The train left next morning. They had booked in a Y.W.C.A. hostel.

  ‘I’m packing in,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t often get a chance of a
n early night like this.’

  ‘We, on the other hand, are going to do ourselves extremely well. This dinner’s on the house,’ Diana said.

  The hotel where they dined had been the headquarters of the Turkish General Staff during the First War. It had a stolid sober air. ‘And I suppose,’ Diana said, ‘that there are still officers on the German roster who dined here then; one or two of them a year ago, when the Free French campaign hung in the balance, must have thought, “Maybe we’ll be dining in there again next month.” Perhaps some of them actually did come back here with the Axis Armistice Commission.’

  The dining-room was very empty. Aleppo was now a railhead, little more; a junction for the Taurus. Eve felt a little awkward sitting alone with Diana. It was the first time that they had been more than casually together. ‘There should be some real wine here,’ Diana said. There was: a Burgundy that was full and warm, like its own rich colour. Diana lifted her glass between her hands, breathing in its bouquet reverentially.

  ‘Jane’s missing something,’ Eve said.

  Diana shrugged. ‘Poor Jane. Every time she has an evening free, she gets the way she was last night. She’s resolved to stay out of mischief while her husband is behind barbed wire; she wants to be able to say to him at the end of the war, “Darling, nothing happened, nothing.” But he’s almost certainly resigned himself to something happening. He has already rehearsed his little speech, his “Darling, let’s forget everything that’s happened in the last six years and start again where we left off.” Hundreds of husbands all over Europe are preparing to say just that. Jane’s an ass not to accept the general pattern.’

  They continued to discuss Jane as the level of the wine sank below the label.

  ‘It’s difficult for her,’ Diana said. ‘She was crazy about her husband. They’d had a two-weeks’ honeymoon, and that was that. A perfect honeymoon. And when you get down to brass tacks, that means she liked love-making; suddenly to be deprived of it, just when you’d started to enjoy it, and not to know when you’d have a chance of it again .. . It’s easier for a widow. She may be heartbroken, but she can say to herself, “One day I’ll get over this.” There’s an interval and life begins again. She can look at a calendar and think, “1942. I should be a new self by then.” Jane can’t do that. She’s in a vacuum. She does not know when the war will end. It might last ten years. Think of those French officers in Napoleon’s time.’

  Diana did most of the talking, and Eve, as she listened, wondered as so many men had done, what Diana’s own life was. She was so assured, so composed. She had no inhibitions, yet she never talked about herself. You felt that she had come to terms with the problems her life had brought her, her background, her height, her conflict with conformity.

  ‘And Jane’s a man’s piece,’ she was continuing. ‘She attracts men and they attract her. She likes dancing. She’s not a prude. She’s only twenty-four. She’s tempted, just as we all are, and there’s the heat; and the men outnumbering the women twenty-five to one. Healthy, good-looking men who scarcely ever see a woman; ravenous young men. Think of the strain on her. No wonder that she drinks like that.’

  ‘Is that why she drinks so much?’

  ‘I’ve presumed it is: to damp down the fire. It’s also a form of self-defence. She encourages the men to drink. When they want to leave a restaurant she’ll say, ‘Oh, no, let’s stay a little longer. I’d like to see that cabaret again.” That means another brandy; then another; both get a little high. Then she can pull an act, become sentimental and self-pitying: maybe it’s not an act. She is self-pitying and sentimental at that point of the evening. A man feels sorry for her and chivalrous; and won’t take advantage of the wife of a brother officer who’s behind barbed wire. It’s all very noble and self-sacrificial, but it’s also very silly and self-destructive. She’s ruining her health. Soon she’ll be ruining her looks. That husband of hers won’t be all that grateful when he’s met by a plump, bloated spouse; even if she is virtuous. He’d prefer, after five celibate years, to be welcomed by a lively wanton.’

  ‘How often is she like the way she was last night?’

  ‘Too often for it to be comfortable. She’s careful on the nights before she’s taking out an ambulance. But one day she’ll get an unexpected summons. That’s the danger. Her reactions may not be fast enough. She’s all right at the moment, but she’s on a slippery slope. I wish to heaven she’d fall in love with someone.’

  It was said in the most detached way possible, yet it was said with warmth. There was no note of the cold analyst. Once again Eve found herself wondering about Diana’s own life.

  ‘Does the Prof, know Jane well?’

  ‘Fairly well. Why?’

  ‘Mightn’t he do for Jane? He’s a married man. With someone to forget. They’re in the same boat, in their separate ways.’

  Diana smiled. “Somehow I can’t see the Prof, and Jane in that galley.’

  Their glasses were nearly empty. It was getting late. ‘Do you worry much about the future?’ Eve asked.

  ‘It doesn’t do much good worrying, does it?’

  ‘Doesn’t it? I find I have to, or rather I can’t help it. Before the war one could make decisions for oneself. Now decisions are made for one. One lives from day to day. One can’t make any long-term plans. At school I was told that I must discover what I wanted out of life and then try and see if I couldn’t get it. One can’t do that any longer, can one?’

  Once again Diana laughed, a rich ironic laugh. ‘I never could,’ she said. ‘I’ve never known what I wanted out of life. I’ve only known what I didn’t want, and I knew that from the start.’

  Chapter Ten

  A few days later Diana received a report from the official analyst. It contained the photostat of a message sent up to Istanbul by Aziz. ‘Strongly pro-German anti-British Armenian called Alexis Belorian visiting Istanbul shortly. Will try inform you E.T.A. Young man, expensive tastes, good family, believe easily bribed.’ She shrugged. She filed it, entered the cross-reference in the other appropriate files, then brought it to Reid’s office. ‘This is what you were hoping for.’

  He read it carefully, then whistled.

  ‘The captain does hit the nail on the head. He’ll be dancing round the office when he sees this.’

  ‘Is he alone now?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let’s break the good news to him together.’

  Rarely had Reid seen a man more overjoyed. Farrar jumped to his feet, and began to stride backwards and forwards like a panther.

  ‘Wonderful. Wonderful. Better than I dared hope for, and so soon. I felt that we couldn’t fail. Yet I couldn’t trust myself to hope. We’ve made it. You know that Arab proverb, “When the camel has got his nose under the flap of the tent, his body will soon follow.” We can’t miss. Alexis is the tops . . . all that Cole Porter stuff; the Coolidge dollar, Whistler’s Mama. Poor Aziz. He’ll get no reward for this. Let’s mention him in our wills. Let’s have him endowed. Let’s open a Trust Fund in Geneva. We’re sitting pretty. Man, are we sitting pretty. We’ll have Alexis in Istanbul within a month. Not sooner. Give the Germans time to bait the trap. They are so slow and thorough. They’ll have to make inquiries about Alexis. We must see that when he is there he’ll be visiting people whom they can trust. We must give him a sound cover story, so that he’ll have a water-tight alibi for going up there, and one that will give him an excuse for going up again. It won’t be difficult. We must have a steady talk with Alexis. Then he must convince the Germans that he has sound sources of information. We must build him up a team of notional characters.’

  ‘What are notional characters?’

  Farrar stared, pretending to be dumbfounded.

  ‘You don’t know what a notional character is?’

  ‘How should I?’

  ‘What did they teach you in Matlock? A notional character is... well, let me explain. This should have been lecture No. 5 in counter-espionage. When you have a double-age
nt who is working under your control, he has to have sources for his information. And he has to be able to convince his employers of the validity of those sources. For instance, he might say, “I know an Irishman whose father was murdered by the Black and Tans. He hates the British. He drinks heavily. In his cups he is boastful, arrogant and anti-British. In his resentment against the British, he is often indiscreet. He is inclined to say things like ‘Would you believe what these miserable creatures are doing now,’ and out comes a piece of secret information.” Now that Irishman doesn’t exist. He’s a notional character. But he has to exist for the Germans; he has to be a real and convincing character. That is what we have to do for Alexis, build up a cast of notional characters so that he has as many sources of information as possible. He should be able to give naval, military and air force information. He should also be able to give some clues to diplomatic situations. He ought to have a pipe-line on to the Spears Mission.

  ‘What we have to do—and I’d say that this is the kind of thing you’d do far better than I—is to imagine the kinds of person that a chap like Alexis would know. He’s only twenty-three. We mustn’t have him moving in too exalted circles. The thing has to be convincing; and his cast can grow. He must be devious. He must try to find the kinds of person who can help him. It won’t be too easy for us to create that cast, but let’s remember this: the men who are going to read these messages are completely in the dark. Any news is welcome. I’ll work on a character or two. You do the same. Then we’ll compare notes and make a composite picture out of the two. There’s no desperate hurry. He can’t be expected to send back messages right away. He hasn’t got his team lined up yet. Besides, he doesn’t know yet what they want to know; or rather we don’t know yet what they want to know from him.

  ‘Do you remember that golfing cartoon of Reynolds’, of the man in plus-fours sitting in his study, and his wife admonishing their children, “Sh, darlings, don’t go in there. Daddy’s gone round in par and he wants to think about it.” That’s how I feel; I want to sit and brood. The heavens are opening and I see new worlds. No one can tell where this day’s work will end.’