I agreed that this might be the short-term remedy but he might as well stay intact for the moment. Suppose the djinn were driven out, then the poor creature would have been maimed for nothing and so rendered less valuable. Kolya seemed relieved by what he could overhear of this.
I next explained how we travelled with little to spare, all we had were a few small measures of good-quality cloth. Perhaps they would accept a foot or two for the madman. The chief smiled appreciatively at this gambit and invited me to squat down on the ground with him. So the serious bargaining began. We made jokes, exchanged insults, acted out a range of emotions from incredulity to despair, shared several cups of bitter tea, reflected on the state of the world, agreed that faith was the only road out of our dilemma and that the Jews and also the Christians were the cause of our troubles (any other analysis tended to shift the blame to God, which was of course a blasphemy). From time to time we brought the conversation back to the issue at hand and began another enjoyable round of bargaining. Sometimes trade is all the desert-dweller has in common with others of his kind and bartering becomes as elaborate a means of social intercourse as it is of arriving at a fair price. Eventually, just after three o’clock on the second day at the Zazara Oasis, I declared that my friends would curse me for a headstrong fool but I would throw in an ornamental dagger with the bale of tartan cloth they coveted. They agreed suddenly and so my friend was returned to me. I believe the tension of the moment had sobered him. He no longer spoke of Wagner but thanked me with his old civility. ‘You are a natural diplomat, Dimka dear. Do you still have all our camels?’
I assured him that I had kept our little caravan together. Although weary, he was cheerful. The water and food offered him by the Gora so that he should be a better purchase had given him the strength to take hold of his senses again. ‘What happened, Dimka?’ He paused for breath as we climbed back towards the ledge. ‘Did the Italian army find you? Are we in need of identities?’
I assured him he was in no further danger. He stopped again to get his breath and stared down at the net and the silk which draped the surrounding rocks. ‘If it isn’t the army, who is it? The Italian air force?’
But I would tell him no more until I had helped him ascend, pretending to curse him and goad him, until he reached the top of the ridge and stood staring in astonishment at the basket and its charming occupant.
Signorina von Bek now wore a pale green frock with dark-blue fringes, a dark-blue cloche and matching stockings. Her shoes were the colour of her dress. ‘How is the poor fellow?’ she asked me over his head.
‘Praising Allah for His mercy, Signorina von Bek, as are we all.’
Their business done, the Gora were already striking camp. I guessed that they were on their way to another outlaws’ rendezvous where they hoped to pick up work. But they would also speak of us.
As Kolya approached, Signorina von Bek wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, dear! He’d better have a bath, don’t you think?’
I agreed with her. I would also bathe, I said. Meanwhile, she decided, as soon as the slave was rested perhaps he could bring her up some water for her own ablutions. Gladly, I said, but first I must see to my camels. Our poor patient beasts had suffered too long. Leaving the loads near the balloon’s basket, Kolya and I led the eager animals at last to stretch their elegant necks over the oasis. The water was good but had a peculiar taste to it from an old palm which had fallen in at the far side and rotted. The camels sniffed the pool carefully before they drank.
‘I trust you do not seriously expect me to take that girl’s bathwater up to her,’ murmured my friend as we stripped off and waded into the shadowy pond where we could not easily be seen from above.
I smiled at his dismay and said we would carry some up in a fantasse on the camel. ‘Since, dear Kolya, you were not in your senses I had no choice but to fall back on the familiar excuse of congenital idiocy.’
‘It is not a rôle to which I’m much suited,’ he admitted, but he understood my point. ‘The girl I take it is here on government business?’
‘Only in a manner of speaking. Hers is the first one-woman flight for the Italian Geographical Society. I gather Mussolini’s giving a lot of backing to such enterprises at the moment.’ It was only at that second that the inspiration came to me that Italy was the country I should offer my talents to. I could help build the power-plants and machines needed to make that country truly the nation of the future, the New Rome in every sense. They also possessed, I understood, a thriving film industry. Perhaps my meeting with Signorina von Bek had been opportune in more ways than one.
Already Kolya was discussing the next stage of our route across the desert. Now we had found Zazara and the Thieves’ Road, all we had to do was head west on it. Eventually, ‘in less than a thousand miles,’ we should reach Morocco.
By now, of course, I saw my future following a rather different course, but I said nothing. ‘First we must help Signorina von Bek reflate her balloon.’ I stretched in the water. I floated. ‘And then we can be on our way. It is the least we can do, Kolya, since she, effectively, saved our bacon.’
‘By crashing in the desert?’ (I had sketched the story for him.)
‘By trusting us,’ I reminded him. ‘We could be a pair of rogues for all she knows.’
He was offended at this. Surely I had seen how she had already taken note of the man beneath the rags? When he was properly dressed again, he would thank her himself for her timely arrival, though she had not, after all, deliberately helped us. It was merely good fortune that she happened to be there. I protested this was a parsimonious compliment to her aerial navigation, especially since Kolya’s own sense of direction was unremarkable. He was being churlish. He apologised at once. His privations, his nerves, the exhausting fetching of water, had all taken their toll.
By now it was sunset and the Gora had filed out of the gorge, doubtless on their way across the desert and as glad to be free of conflict as ourselves. Leaving Kolya sleeping at the water’s side, I filled the metal fantasse myself, loaded it onto Uncle Tom and led her back up the steep path to where the aviatrix waited. Signorina von Bek had been reading to pass the time. I had already noticed the little bundle of brightly-coloured paper-covered books and magazines she kept. They were all English and seemed to be tales of adventure. She had developed a taste for blood-and-thunder, she said, at Cheltenham. ‘It was so uneventful, you know, otherwise.’
Carefully marking her place, she put the book on her table and drew from another fitted locker a collapsible canvas bathtub which she stretched carefully upon its frame. Into this, I emptied the four-gallon fantasse. She clapped her hands. ‘I have longed desperately for this for three days!’ Discreetly I returned to the oasis and saw to Uncle Tom’s grooming. She grumbled and snapped the whole time but could not disguise the pleasure she took in my attention. What was more, the mechanical and familiar actions helped me gather my thoughts. Our best escape from the desert must surely be in the repaired balloon. But what if it also delivered us directly into the hands of the authorities? If we continued on the Thieves’ Road it would be months, perhaps longer, before we reached civilisation. If we took the balloon and kept our disguises we had every chance of slipping away into a town before the Italians or French became over-curious. There was also a good possibility we would again be waylaid and this time murdered for our camels and goods. The Gora were doubtless not the only outlaw band in these parts. They would pass on the news. At best we must expect a fight or two. And we must consider the camels.
‘My dear, your feeling for those camels is positively obscene.’ Kolya had risen and walked over to one of our grazing pack animals to feel for something on the beast’s hump. It was only then I noticed the recently healed scars. ‘I grew concerned that you would decide to trade a couple of our camels for me!’
‘I would have been ashamed if I had bid more than your value,’ I replied. This badinage was usual with us. In my heart I was of course deeply relieved at my friend??
?s survival. Save for Captain Quelch I do not think I have ever had quite such love for a man. We were Roland and Oliver, fellow adventurers, followers of the Code of Chivalry.
I owed my life to him. Nonetheless, it still seemed to me pure folly to continue with his original plan. It was even possible that we might convince the lady to drop us off at some convenient spot. ‘Please remember to take it easy, Kolya, dear. You are still weak and your sanity remains, I would guess, a trifle fragile.’
He shrugged this off and casually hummed some jazz number, as if to prove to me that his mind was fully restored.
When I mentioned her name my friend was anxious to be introduced to Signorina von Bek. ‘I have heard of the woman. She was Benito Mussolini’s mistress. I remember her from Paris! And she flew with the Spanish Barcelona-to-Rio expedition a couple of years ago.’
I explained that, given his status, it would be both dangerous and unseemly for him to socialise with our hostess. Considering her history there was some small chance she could be an Italian government agent. At all costs we had to preserve our disguises until we knew we could trust her. He understood this but did not relish, he declared, remaining a fool for long. He would be glad when we were on our way. He remained obsessively fixed in his determination to follow the Thieves’ Road.
I dined that evening with my new friend. Below us my old friend cooked himself kus-kus to which he added a hard-boiled egg Signorina von Bek had given him. My female alter ego possessed the same spontaneous generosity which had led me into so many scrapes! Yet I do not regret being this way. Better to follow a virtuous impulse, I have always said, than to think always of self-interest. ‘Yer give ‘em too fuckin’ much, Ivan, and then yer regret it, silly bugger,’ said Mrs Cornelius to me the other day and it is true. But I have few regrets of that sort. I have never quite understood what she and Signorina von Bek had in common, for they were chalk and chips, but it might have been a quality of self-possession. Certainly it was not a similarity of enthusiasms! The last time I described an engineering principle to Mrs Cornelius, she ran from the pub claiming a weak bladder and I had to borrow a pound from Miss B. to pay for the round. With Signorina von Bek, however, I had an uncanny affinity. Together we discussed enormous projects. As soon as Kolya was bedded down I told her a little about my Desert Liner. She, in turn, sketched for me her rocket-powered tube-train. She said the Italian government was about to commission an experimental prototype. Knowing Mussolini’s preference for co-opting famous people to help him, she had agreed to this flight for publicity reasons rather than from genuine scientific curiosity. ‘I was finding it all extremely jolly until I was shot down. It was partly my own fault for dropping too low to ask those Arabs where I was. Still, I suppose even that was providential. What larks, eh, Sheikh Mustafa!’
From dawn until ten o’clock the next morning we worked on repairing the balloon fabric, and gathering material to build a fire which would funnel up air for the initial inflation. With Kolya’s reluctant help, we took the whole apparatus to the top of the hill looking out over the dead city and at Signorina von Bek’s instruction arranged the fabric to funnel heated air into the balloon proper. As I watched the huge egg-shaped canopy begin to fill I could hardly contain myself.
Now the Italian flag swelled across the sky. I imagined Mussolini’s thrusting New Rome, his great African empire which would at last stamp Carthage into non-existence. His firmament would be full of such ships. Architecture grand and graceful as Ancient Rome’s would rise upon the ruins of an honourable past. The balloon was a vision! It was as if an angel had spoken. My manhood was returning. I knew I must make my way to Il Duce’s court as soon as I could and link my destiny with his. It was not idealists like me who gave fascism a bad name. However, I would not be a Christian gentleman if I did not admit to past loyalties. The excesses of Benito Mussolini’s lieutenants are best seen as the excesses, say, of the Spanish Inquisition which followed Ferdinand and Isabella into Moorish Spain. They discovered corruption, dark superstitions, decadence, voluptuous orientalism, academic abstraction and answered the Holy Call to cleanse eight centuries of evil and moral turpitude from their land. They revitalised their people and gave them back a history. Sometimes a man indulging in too many scruples fails to face the evil nature of his enemy. The Italians are a sentimental people. They need a dictator, the disciplines of fascism, to make them great, or their inherent laziness will always win. That they turned their backs on the only leader who could have made them great again is proof of my point. Now what are they? What is their wealth? A few ruins and Renaissance fountains they can hire out as props for the latest Cinerama epic! For all my powers of precognition, I saw, in this case, only a glowing future. I glimpsed perfection.
Soon the canopy was swinging overhead shimmering like a netted whale and Signorina von Bek started the little engine, firing it up until blistering steam whistled through the valves. This kept hot air in the canopy but no longer powered our abandoned propeller. Now, as the basket jerked impatiently at the ropes, the aviatrix jumped expertly to her work, adjusting ballast, checking trim and giving particular attention to the neatly fixed patch of blue silk which obscured part of the national arms and the letters Fert. She moved like a nymph between her engine and her ropes, cheering whenever her ship responded as she should. Excitedly she leaned out of the basket waving to Kolya, who stood open-mouthed, watching the airship come to life. All the tethering ropes were at full stretch with one or two threatening to drag loose their pegs. She called for us to remove the funnelling fabric and she cheered again. ‘Hooray! Wonderful! What a godsend you fellows proved to be! Let’s get the luggage aboard. I say, what are you going to do about your camels?’
Kolya began to blurt something. I spoke in Russian. ‘Are you babbling in tongues again, Kolya, dear? Take her offer! We can be in Tangier within a week!’
‘Or in French Equatorial,’ he said gloomily. ‘You can’t steer a balloon, Dimka. But you can follow a road. At least I’ll know which direction I shall be travelling. Leave her. She’s an attractive and dangerous woman. She lives for thrills. I would have thought you’d had enough of adventures for a while. There are no clear advantages to your suggestion. With our original plan, we know exactly where we’re going.’
‘To Hell, Kolya! The danger’s now unwarranted.’
‘Is he all right?’ asked Signorina von Bek in English.
‘He is afraid to fly in your ship, I think,’ I said in English, then in Russian, ‘There’s nothing for you here, Kolya.’
‘Only a bastard would leave these poor camels,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’ It was the argument which won me. I had, myself, been deeply reluctant to desert my beautiful Uncle Tom. Yet her chances of survival on that lawless road were far better than mine. I was experiencing an agony of guilt and could hardly bear the idea of parting from Kolya. Yet survival, at such moments, demands no sentiment. Uncle Tom might find new owners in the desert, even if they proved to be the returning Gora. Her beauty guaranteed she would be well treated whoever inherited her.
‘Come, Kolya,’ I begged my friend the last time for conscience’s sake. ‘Signorina von Bek says the prevailing wind will take us west. She would prefer to go north, she says, but either way we wind up in Tripoli or Tangier.’
‘Or Timbuktu,’ he said significantly. ‘It is you who face unwarranted danger, not I. Go, if you like. Simply leave me my camels and our few remaining goods.’
‘Everything. Gladly,’ I said. My mind was set upon Italy. I was filled with the urgency of idealism, a sense that my true vocation was returning. Oh, Esmé! You saw me fly. My faith in the power of rational science was coming back. I was filled with the Holy Spirit. My whole body quickened. My senses returned, thanks to Allah’s wisdom. I had walked dead into the desert and out of the desert I arose, to live again. My body began to sing at last.
‘You have your passport?’ Kolya seemed ill-tempered suddenly. I was a little put out by his brusqueness. It was I, after all, who had
been rejected!
‘Indeed, I have. I will fetch my kit from Uncle Tom.’
‘You have plenty of water?’ He drew a breath of desert air as if to renew himself. He hummed a strain from Tristan und Isolde.
‘Plenty.’
Kolya insisted on coming with me as I parted from Uncle Tom. He helped me lead my lovely creature back up the steep path to the top of the hill where Signorina von Bek waited in the balloon. A strong breeze now stirred her hair and her chiffon scarf was blown upward to frame her head.
‘You are a fool,’ Kolya muttered. ‘I do not fear to fly in that thing - although it’s folly - but I would fear to go with her. She is dangerous, believe me. Return to the desert and its freedoms. You have never known a woman like her, Dimka. She feeds off power. She plays with power and is fated to an early death, as are all her kind. And she’ll take at least one poor devil with her. She’s volatile, like nitro.’
‘This is nothing but jealousy, Kolya. I beg you reconsider your own decision. Do not sink, in your own anxiety, to besmirching a lady’s honour. Signorina von Bek is clearly a gentlewoman. She also has a fine mind. A man’s mind. But she could never come between us, Kolya. We are brothers. I merely express concern for your well-being. Can our few trade goods sustain you all that way?’