The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [320]
Ambassador’ he said sentimentally as the compliments gave place to business. ‘You know our language and our country well. We trust you.’ Paraphrased, his words meant: ‘You know our venality to be ineradicable, the mark of an ancient culture, therefore we do not feel ashamed in your presence.’
Then he sat with his paws folded over his neat grey waistcoat, glum as a foetus in a bottle, as Mountolive delivered his strongly worded protest and produced the monument to Maskelyne’s industry. Nur listened, shaking his head doubtfully from time to time, his visage lengthening. When Mountolive had done, he said impu lsive ly, standing up: ‘Of course. At once. At once.’ And then, as if plunged into doubt, unsteadily sat down once more and began to play with his cuff-links. Mountolive sighed as he stood up.
‘It is a disagreeable duty’ he said, ‘but necessary. May I assure my Government that the matter will be prosecuted with speed?’
‘With speed. With speed.’ The little man nodded twice and licked his lips; one had the impression that he did not quite understand the words he was using. ‘I shall see Memlik today’
he added in lower tones. But the timbre of his voice had changed. He coughed and ate a sweetmeat, dusting the castor sugar off his fingers with a silk handkerchief. ‘Yes’ he said. If he was interested in the massive document lying before him it was (or so it seemed to Mountolive) only that the photostats intrigued him. He had not seen things like these before. They belonged to the great foreign worlds of science and illusion in which these Western peoples lived — worlds of great powers and responsibilities — out of which they sometimes descended, clad in magnificent uniforms, to make the lot of the simple Egyptians harder than it was at the
best of times. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes’ said Nur again, as if to give the conversation stability and depth, to give his visitor confidence in his good intentions.
Mountolive did not like it at all; the whole tone lacked directness, purpose. The absurd sense of optimism rose once more in his breast and in order to punish himself for it (also because he was extremely conscientious) he stepped forward and pressed the matter forward another inch. ‘If you like, Nur, and if you expressly authorize me, I am prepared to lay the facts and recommendations before Memlik Pasha myself. Only speak.’ But here he was pressing upon the shallow, newly-grown skin of protocol and national feeling.
‘Cherished Sir’ said Nur with a beseeching smile and the gesture of a beggar importuning a rich man, ‘that would be out of order. For the matter is an internal one. It would not be proper for me to agree.’
And he was right there, reflected Mountolive, as they drove uneasily back to the Embassy; they could no longer give orders in Egypt as once the High Commission had been able to do. Donkin sat with a quizzical and reflective smile, studying his own fingers. The pennant on the car’s radiator fluttered merrily, reminding Mountolive of the quivering burgee of Nessim’s thirty-foot cutter as it slit the harbour waters…. ‘What did you make of it, Donkin?’ he said, putting his arm on the elbow of the bearded youth.
‘Frankly, sir, I doubted.’
‘So did I, really.’ Then he burst out: ‘But they will have to act, simply have to; I am not going to be put aside like this.’ (He was thinking: ‘London will make our lives a misery until I can give them some sort of satisfaction.’) Hate for an image of Nessim whose features had somehow — as if by a trick of double-exposure
— become merged with those of the saturnine Maskelyne, flooded him again. Crossing the hall he caught sight of his own face in the great pierglass and was surprised to notice that it wore an ex-pression of feeble petulance. That day he found himself becoming more and more short-tempered with his staff and the Residence servants. He had begun to feel almost persecuted.
* * * * *
XIV
f Nessim had the temerity to laugh softly now to himself as he studied the invitation: if he propped the florid thing I against his inkstand the better to study it, laughing softly and uneasily into the space before him; it was because he was thinking to himself: