The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [296]
‘love’. Slowly and quietly he began, passionately collecting his senses now that he had decided to tell her, marshalling his words, husbanding them. ‘You know, we all know, that our days are numbered since the French and the British have lost control in the Middle East. We, the foreign communities, with all we have built up, are being gradually engulfed by the Arab tide, the Moslem tide. Some of us are trying to work against it; Armenians, Copts, Jews, and Greeks here in Egypt, while others elsewhere are
organizing themselves. Much of this work I have undertaken here.
… To defend ourselves, that is all, defend our lives, defend the right to belong here only. You know this, everyone knows it. But to those who see a little further into history….’
Here he smiled crookedly — an ugly smile with a trace of complacency in it. ‘Those who see further know this to be but a shadow-play; we will never maintain our place in this world except it be by virtue of a nation strong and civilized enough to dominate the whole area. The day of France and England is over —
much as we love them. Who, then, can take their place?’ He drew a deep breath and paused, then he squeezed his hands together between his knees, as if he were squeezing out the unuttered thought, slowly, luxuriously from a sponge. He went on in a whisper: ‘There is only one nation which can determine the future of everything in the Middle East. Everything —
and by a paradox, even the standard of living of the miserable Moslems themselves depends upon it, its power and resources. Have you understood me, Justine? Must I utter its name? Perhaps you are not interested in these things?’ He gave her a glittering smile. Their eyes met. They sat staring at each other in the way that only those who are passionately in love can stare. He had never seen her so pale, so alert, with all her intelligence suddenly mobilized in her looks. ‘Must I say it?’ he said, more sharply; and suddenly expelling her breath in a long sigh she shook her head and whispered the single word.
‘Palestine.’
There was a long silence during which he looked at her with a triumphant exultation. ‘I was not wrong’ he said at last, and she suddenly knew what he meant: that his long-formulated judgement of her had not been at fault. ‘Yes, Justine, Palestine. If only the Jews can win their freedom, we can all be at ease. It is the only hope for us … the dispossessed foreigners’ He uttered the word with a slight twist of bitterness. They both slowly lit cigarettes now with shaking fingers and blew the smoke out towards each other, enwrapped by a new atmosphere of peace, of understanding. ‘The whole of our fortune has gone into the struggle which is about to break out there’ he said under his breath.
‘On that depends everything. Here, of course, we are doing other things which I will explain to you. The British and French help us,
they see no harm. I am sorry for them. Their condition is pitiable because they have no longer the will to fight or even to think.’
His contempt was ferocious, yet full of controlled pity. ‘But with the Jews — there is something young there: the cockpit of Europe in these rotten marshes of a dying race.’ He paused and suddenly said in a sharp, twanging tone: ‘Justine.’ Slowly and thoughtfully, at the same moment they put out their hands to each other. Their cold fingers locked and squeezed hard. On the faces of both there was expressed an exultant determination of purpose, almost of terror!
His image had suddenly been metamorphosed. It was now lit with a new, a rather terrifying grandeur. As she smoked and watched him, she saw someone different in his place — an adven-turer, a corsair, dealing with the lives and deaths of men; his power too, the power of his money, gave a sort of tragic backcloth to the design. She realized now that he was not seeing her — the Justine thrown back by polished mirrors, or engraved in expensive clothes and fards — but something even closer than the chamber-mate of a passional life. This was a Faustian compact he was offering her. There was something more surprising: for the first time she felt desire stir within her, in the loins of that discarded, pre-empted body which she regarded only as a pleasure-seeker, a mirror-reference to reality. There came over her an unexpected lust to sleep with him