The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [241]
‘Well, David’ he said, and patted Mountolive’s arm with affection. ‘I owe you many a good turn. No humming today, however appropriate.’
They walked slowly down the long curving staircase and into the hall where Mountolive saw his Chief gloved and coated before signalling the official car by house-telephone. ‘When do you want to go?’ The old voice trembled with genuine regret.
‘By the first of next month, sir. That leaves time to wind up and say good-bye.’
‘You won’t stay and see me out?’
‘If you order me to, sir.’
‘You know I wouldn’t do that’ said Sir Louis, shaking his white head, though in the past he had done worse things. ‘Never.’
They shook hands warmly once more while Merritt walked past them to throw back the heavy front door, for his ears had caught the slither and scrape of tyre-chains on the frosty drive outside. A blast of snow and wind burst upon them. The carpets rose off the floor and subsided again. The Ambassador donned his great
fur helmet and thrust his hands into the carmuff. Then, bowed double, he stalked out to the wintry greyness. Mountolive sighed and heard the Residence clock clear its dusty throat carefully before striking one .
Russia was behind him.
* * * * *
Berlin was also in the grip of snow, but here the sullen goaded helplessness of the Russias was replaced by a malignant euphoria hardly less dispiriting. The air was tonic with gloom and uncer-tainty. In the grey-green lamplight of the Embassy he listened thoughtfully to the latest evaluations of the new Attila, and a valuable summary of the measured predictions which for months past had blackened the marbled minute-papers of German Department, and the columns of the P.E. printings — political evaluations. Was it really by now so obvious that this nation-wide exercise in political diabolism would end by plunging Europe into bloodshed? The case seemed overwhelming. But there was one hope — that Attila might turn eastwards and leave the cower-ing west to moulder away in peace. If the two dark angels which hovered over the European subconscious could only fight and destroy each other…. There was some real hope of this. ‘The only hope, sir’ said the young attaché quietly, and not without a certain relish, so pleasing to a part of the mind is the prospect of total destruction, as the only cure for the classical ennui of modern man. ‘The only hope’ he repeated. Extreme views, thought Mountolive, frowning. He had been taught to avoid them. It had become second nature to remain uncommitted in his mind.
That night he was dined somewhat extravagantly by the youthful Chargé d’Affaires, as the Ambassador was absent on duty, and after dinner was taken to the fashionable Tanzfest for the cabaret. The network of candle-lit cellars, whose walls were lined with blue damask, was ruled with the glow of a hundred cigarettes, twinkling away like fireflies outside the radius of white lights where a huge hermaphrodite with the face of a narwhal conducted the measures of the ‘Fox Macabre Totentanz’. Bathed
in the pearly sweat of the nigger saxophonists the refrain ran on with its hysterical coda:
Berlin, dein Tanzer ist der Tod!
Berlin, du wuhlst mit Lust im Kot!
Halt ein! lass sein! und denk ein bischen nach:
Du tanzt dir dock vom Leibe nicht die Schmach.
denn du boxt, und du jazzt, und du foxt auf dem Pulverfass!
It was an admirable commentary on the deliberations of the afternoon and underneath the frenetic licence and fervour of the singing he seemed to catch the drift of older undertones —