Jerusalem Commands

NINETEEN

WHAT I EXPRESS IN SADNESS, she expresses in anger; but the pain is the same, the pain of watching people destroy themselves, destroying any hope for their children. ‘Yer carn’t save ev’rybody, Ive,’ says Mrs Cornelius. Yet I thought I had found a way. ‘They ‘ave ter make their own mistakes,’ she says. Sometimes she falls prey to that careless tolerance which is her caste’s bane but which the middle-class idealise as its greatest virtue. Their myth of the British sense of fair play is their most effective means of maintaining a status quo favouring an elite. If there was anything wrong with what they were doing, they say, the people would complain. Everyone knows the British will only complain about the weather to which their combined creative intellects have failed to make a jot of difference. And yet they are always surprised by it. They have a myth of snowy winters and hot summers, imprinted from childhood Annuals. What is more they have been conditioned so thoroughly to a Stoic conceit, wherein suffering is morally superior to pleasure, that they are now the chief guardians of their own confinement. I see this clearly. Anyone could. Observing the truth does not make me a Communist! It is easy enough to identify the disease but far harder to agree on a cure. This is what neither side will ever understand. I am not a fool. I know what it means to take an independent position in life. People do not appreciate the consequent pain and the loneliness of that position, the contempt and insulting threats one frequently endures. I do not think this is ‘amoral’, as those women say. Nor is it immoral. I am a man of profound and subtle conscience. Only a moron would disagree that it is not always possible to be sure of the best course of action. Why make politics confrontational? One cannot solve every moral dilemma in an instant. Am I the only man on earth who is naturally tolerant and unbiased? Who likes to weigh all arguments?

Why should I feel guilt because I refuse to march through the streets of Paris side by side with some semi-literate student? Does it make me a monster because I have actually seen the red flag flying over vanquished courts and parliaments and understood its immediate meaning? Why are the agents of Terror such figures of romance to the young? Bonnie and Clyde? I saw the movie. During their hey-day, ask anyone, it was no fun to step in their path.

Though lighting problems made it impossible to film just then in the tombs, our photoplay progressed fairly well during that first fortnight and the basic story was soon ‘in the can’. Sir Ranalf assured us that we should eventually receive a generator or, failing that, he would seek permission to shoot what we needed in the complexes of Karnak. The rest, he said, could be reconstructed in the studio. I still had my chief love scene to enact with Mrs Cornelius in the tomb. We would die in each other’s arms, to be resurrected centuries later as the young lovers of the opening. Then I must perform what we called ‘the seduction scene’ with Esmé when, for a few brief days, I had to fall under her spell, almost betraying my love for Mrs Cornelius. Few - even Wolf Seaman himself - denied this was my greatest acting achievement. If I never acted again the world would remember this film for the passion and sensuality I was able to bring to it! A monument, a testimony to my love and my aspiration, even should I die the day it was completed. This film would be seen in every picture-house in the world. Cornish and Peters would be as famous as Garbo and Gilbert. We performed our parts in the blazing sun, with an audience of grubby German tourists, local children and tarbooshed guides. They applauded every gesture and embrace. The lack of sleep and the sapping heat meant we resorted increasingly to our cocaine, of which our ‘technical producer’ Malcolm Quelch had an endless supply. Sir Ranalf Steeton expressed gargantuan delight in our achievements. Desert Passions would set new records at box-offices across Europe and America. During the day he now insisted upon Esmé accompanying him wherever he went. She was his ‘sweet little kiddy’, his ‘perfect girl’. At the time, I found cloying and unnatural these affected pronouncements of an older man for the charms of young flesh. Yet Esmé explained how important it was to keep his goodwill. She had overheard him praising the merits of the film to his partners, who were all Egyptians. She thought they expected something more sensational. By now I had seen a few examples of the local shadowy melodramas. I told her our own film was so much above those that there was no point in making a comparison. Egyptian ‘thrillers’ scarcely travelled out of their country, let alone to America. But I understood the importance of encouraging our producer not to drop artistic standards for short-sighted commercial gains, so I permitted my girl her time with the Englishman when, on more than one occasion, she attended meetings and helped reassure his partners as to the nobility and certain financial success of our venture. If any other relationship was developing between Sir Ranalf and my girl I did not detect it, although I must admit I suppressed suspicions now and again. I thought often of Kolya and I was desperate to ensure that my scenes with Mrs Cornelius would be as perfect as possible. I must admit I did not give as much time to my little girl as she deserved. It is folly to neglect a perfect flower, as we used to say in Kiev. Without appreciation, such a flower fades or is plucked by another. I blame myself as much as anyone. Sir Ranalf Steeton plucked my flower, but I do not think I was to blame for most of what followed. I suppose, too, I should not blame Esmé for feeling a certain jealousy while she watched those powerful scenes between my old friend and myself, though it was always clear we were platonic comrades off-screen. While Seaman did not suspect me, he was on the other hand deeply suspicious of Professor Quelch. Mrs Cornelius seemed the only person able to get a smile from the old boy. Quelch grew almost foolishly relaxed in her company and said he thought she was the most amusing companion he had ever known.

Another distraction was the general attitude of the crew. Grace was almost constantly in a state of bridling offence and disappeared one night, apparently with a Greek soldier on leave, while O.K. Radonic clearly had no respect for the director or sympathy with the story. He spent most of his time looking for cigars, operating his camera only when forced to do so, and displaying all the signs of the heat fatigue which eventually brought him down. He was taken to the Hungarian doctor in Luxor and was declared unfit to work. Seaman solved the problem by turning the camera himself until our two lighting people deserted with a pair of wealthy Swedish women they had met in Tutenkhamun’s tomb. We began to look less like a film company than a small dramatic troupe, yet the beaming Sir Ranalf was undismayed by anything! He assured us that new staff would soon be entrained from Cairo. He knew only the best Egyptian film professionals and could easily get skilled technical staff from Italy if necessary. Eventually we were joined by an Alexandrine Greek, who was impressed by what he called our ‘modern’ equipment, but showed himself a competent enough cameraman under Seaman’s direction. Two more Greeks and several Copts followed until we had a full complement again, although Seaman moaned constantly about their incompetence and laziness. The Copts, discovering Esmé to be fluent in Turkish, spent most of their time chatting with her. She was soon on excellent terms with them until Sir Ranalf objected. Her friendliness was not good for discipline. We should keep a proper distance.

Finding himself with only moderately expert help, Seaman grew increasingly distracted. Few of the team spoke English, one spoke a little German and Seaman was forced to rely on those of us with French to translate the simplest instructions. Eventually, when I was unable to fix the run-down old generator brought to us to power our lights, he announced he could no longer work in such conditions. We had set up our camera in Tutenkhamun’s tomb, a rather chilly, narrow place for a king to be buried, with tiny chambers and unimpressive paintings like bad comic strips. None possessed the beauty or the inspiration I had seen in other tombs and temples where it was impossible not to become familiar with ancient Egyptian art. Eventually the two-dimensional form seemed perfectly natural to me and it was easily possible to distinguish sublime from crude. There were wonderful bas-reliefs and tomb paintings, temple art and monumental sculpture, but there were also, thousands of years on, wretched copies of the great originals, heartless academic facsimiles, just as exist in our own world. Age does not improve bad art. There are never many great artists alive at any one time and Tutenkhamun’s fame appears to rest on his gold and his physical beauty rather than upon the magnificent workmanship of his burial goods, the artistry of his tomb’s paintings. They believed the tomb was really meant for a minister, but that the boy king died suddenly and it would have taken too long to quarry a fresh tomb from the rocks of the Wadi el Mulak. The stars in the dark roof were lifeless; the blue, green and red figures in procession on the walls seemed without direction. I found the place depressing. But that, I suppose, is the nature of tombs. I do not share the public’s fascination with such places. While everyone else spent their free time exploring the various resting-places of the much-disturbed dead, I contented myself with sketching designs for a new project in which I hoped to interest Sir Ranalf. I had conceived the idea some months earlier. I called it my Desert Liner. Finally the patient camel would be discarded as ‘the ship of the desert’ in favour of a gigantic motor! My vehicle would carry passengers across the dreaded Sahara Desert in the comfort and luxury they enjoyed on an ocean liner. I showed the plans to Sir Ranalf one afternoon as he sat in his car watching Esmé playing cricket with the Alexandrine, Mrs Cornelius and Professor Quelch. ‘Howzat!’ he would cry, and, ‘Well caught!’

‘My Desert Liner,’ I told him, ‘will have its dining-saloon, recreation-room, look-out deck, state-rooms and other comforts. A fleet of them could easily be built. The prototype would be a hundred and thirty feet long. She would be forty-two feet high from the bottom of the wheels to the top of the upper deck, and twenty-six feet wide. In general arrangement she will closely resemble a passenger steamship, with the exception that she will run on wheels of colossal dimensions!’

‘Splendid!’ said Sir Ranalf. ‘Astonishing! Go on, brave sorcerer! Prithee, tell me the rest of thy tale!’

‘The wheels will measure thirty-nine feet in diameter,’ I explained. ‘As you can see here, by the employment of an ingenious (you’ll forgive my pride) compensating mechanism they hold closely to the sand and soil in every possible position. This means the hull of the ship is kept always at a comfortable level. Whatever the relative position of the wheels may be, the hull remains steady!’

Clearly surprised by my engineering vision, Sir Ranalf nodded his plump head. ‘But what would power such a monster, my boy? The engine would have to be huge! The weight! The weight!’

I was ready for this. ‘It will be driven by two Diesel motors of four hundred and fifty horse-power, of which the second is kept in reserve. Two dynamos furnish light and electromotive force. Steering is effected by means of this hydraulic apparatus.’ I folded back the plan to display it.

‘You should patent this, brilliant youth!’ Then some action of the cricket game caught my patron’s attention and he let out a mysterious gasp.

‘The machine is built to ascend grades of thirty degrees. Steep hills are very numerous, as you know, in the Sahara. Great speed has not been my aim because the friction of the sand on the wheels will generate tremendous heat, some of which, admittedly, I can convert for a variety of purposes. The ship will travel at about nineteen miles an hour.’

‘So slow!’

‘Faster than a camel, Sir Ranalf! It will carry a hundred and fifty people, including passengers and crew members, two hundred tons of merchandise, oil and water and a supply of fuel sufficient for a journey of ten to twelve thousand miles without replenishment. The vehicle will be more than able to cover the greatest desert surfaces in the world!’ There would be four decks, I explained. The upper deck held the control cabin, the wireless cabin, the cabins of the commander and three officers, two-berth passenger cabins plus four cabins de luxe. On this deck, as I showed on my plans, would be the washrooms, an office, a baggage-room, and a large promenade sheltered by a roof from the sun’s burning rays. The two intermediate decks would contain cabins, the dining-saloon, the kitchen, the reading-room, the smoking-room and more baggage-rooms. I showed him where I had sketched the two derricks, weighing 2,000 pounds each, which could be fitted on either side for the handling of baggage and cargo. I was particularly pleased with a novel and important feature. My land-ship would have a cooling-room always maintaining artificially low temperatures. Here passengers overcome by the desert heat could rest and recover. The extreme clearness of the desert air allowed the sun’s rays, as we had all grown painfully aware, extraordinarily powerful penetration. Exposure to them was, of course, dangerous, since they penetrated the brain and spinal cord (the practical reason why, I reminded him, Arabs had always worn heavy turbans over heads and necks).

The pretty sportsters screamed and giggled and began, inexpertly, to make runs. Sir Ranalf’s interest in the cricket became intense. I had never understood the British enthusiasm for this mysterious game. Whenever I could catch his attention I continued to explain how I had reserved the lower decks for merchandise, the helmsman’s cabin, the motor-room, the repair-room, the water and fuel reservoirs. ‘If you want to put this to your business partners, the discussion will naturally arise as to the merits in conquering sandy wastes of a small motor vehicle over this “land leviathan”. Well, Sir Ranalf, as we have all read in The Egyptian Gazette, recent proof is provided that specially constructed small cars, such as your own, can cross the Sahara! But you will also have read that they are subjected to enormous dangers, including wild desert tribes!’

‘The desert, it’s true, my dear chap, is crammed with hazards. Those heathen fellows were Tripoli Berbers mostly, I suspect. The British police are powerless of course. Well run, pretty demoiselle!’

‘You will appreciate, Sir Ranalf, the superiority of my Desert Liner over the desert motor-car. A freight Desert Liner of three hundred and fifty tons would cost about twenty-six thousand pounds. Forty motor-trucks would cost, say, five hundred pounds apiece. Armed with Bofors and Bannings my liner costs about six thousand pounds more than the trucks, yet the running expenses of forty motor-trucks on a dirt-track without tank stations would be considerably higher than that of my luxury cruiser of the dunes. Each truck would require at least two chauffeurs, for instance, making a minimum staff of eighty men. A crew of twenty is sufficient to run and man my liner! The population of wild desert tribes is reckoned at some three and a half million. Wild beasts are another common danger. Where trucks would have to make camp and guard against these threats, my liner ploughs on day and night without a halt. Thomas Cook should be especially interested.’

‘Howzat! Ha! Ha! Howzat! Cook?’ Sir Ranalf glared at me almost in alarm. ‘Oh, no! We’ll sort something out without involving them. My partner in Aswan is always interested in daring new notions. I am sure he would love to back you to the hilt. And there are others I know in Alexandria and Cairo. Perhaps even here in Luxor. See me later, famous bard, and I shall be delighted to help you find someone for your ship!’ His eyes wandered again to the willow and the leather. ‘A scheme, my handsome mechanic, worthy of the Suez Canal and all who built her! I am mightily impressed.’ And then he could resist the contest no longer and went rolling and panting through the dust to snatch the bat from Esmé’s hands and call an incoherent challenge to Professor Quelch who, thoughtfully rubbing his ball upon his bottom, began the long stroll backwards which was a special feature of this game.

Everyone who knew me in 1926 knew where Bischoff of Kiel got his plans, lock, stock and barrel when he announced the building of the Countess Marianna. As it was, the Nazis scratched all Bischoff’s experiments and research when they came to power. I understood Hitler’s decision, but he was already growing into another short-sighted politician. Thanks to their ideology they needed to show the public immediate gains. As with Stalin, life, dignity, spirit, everything was sacrificed. Goebbels was right. He and his friends were, indeed, temperamental opposites of the patient Jew. Seaman was himself very Teutonic and determined. The Slav possesses both virtues, which is why he survives so successfully through history’s ups and downs, resisting all outside conquerors.

My patience saved me undue exertion, whereas Seaman grew increasingly frustrated at the antics of his inefficient crew and at Sir Ranalf’s interference. With the second problem, I sympathised. I had explained to Sir Ranalf how a producer’s function is to be the efficient medium of the artist’s creativity, but he had tasted previously unguessed-at power and wanted to embrace it forever. Did the film have sufficient ‘authority’? Sir Ranalf mused. When we did not follow his reasoning, he explained that so far we had to take too much in the film for granted. The characters needed deepening.

As a team we united against him. We were not sure what he meant by ‘deepening’, we said. All the actors, even Esmé, had given extremely good performances. They were real people on the screen, with whom other real people could identify.

‘But not every one!’ Sir Ranalf insisted the film have as universal an appeal as possible. He was not sure he really believed, for instance, that Esmé was actually a voluptuously sensual temptress. I was offended by this. Our rushes showed Esmé to be thoroughly sexual. Clara Bow herself had said as much about Esmé.

‘But do we believe she could seduce the greatest priest in Egypt, the noblest of men, your good self, Ah-ke-tep! You are the mightiest engineering genius the world had ever known, sweet esquire, Rameses the Second’s most powerful architect!’

He had no need to butter my parsnips. Better than any I understood my story’s symbolism! I could not deny, for instance, a certain autobiographical strain. Yet I was puzzled by his body language. I was reminded of a semaphoring squid.

‘I think we should show Ru-a-na in a scene of her own. Where she reveals her charms to you.’ He cleared his throat.

‘Wot?’

Mrs Cornelius came ploughing through the dust to gulp refreshment. She had been on a camel most of the morning and unlike myself had no affinity for the animal. ‘Dirt?’

‘A scene of artistic nudity.’ Sir Ranalf ignored Mrs Cornelius, fuming and scarlet, behind him.

‘Wot the effin’ butler sor!’ she declared. ‘I noo you wos a twisted ticket, Rannie. Someone tol’ me yer made yer pile in dirty pictures!’

‘Really, my dear Queen of the Nile, I assure you I speak for the whole of Europe, where the nude scene is an accepted convention of the medium. In America, where prudishness reigns, I would agree that is not so. But surely you, as cosmopolitans, understand that I demand nothing unworthy of your great talents?’

‘Too effin’ right, chum.’ Mrs Cornelius drew me forcefully on, speaking in a rapid whisper. ‘I’ve ‘ad enuff, Ive. This bastard’s up ter somefink filfy, I c’n smell it. Git art, nar. Take an ol’ trouper’s tip.’ And, laying her pink finger alongside her delicious nose, she informed me she had been in touch with Major Nye in Cairo. ‘Me an’ ther major are chums again, since that larst night. ‘E sent a ticket, firs’ class. An’ I gotta bit o’ spendin’ money. I’ve reelly ‘ad enuff o’ this, Ive. Next fing yer know I’ll be on some bloody pilgrim boat off ter ther bloody Sultan’s ‘areem. God knows wot they’ll do wiv you!’ And she smiled, though her grip on my arm was urgent. I had rarely known her so positive. Yet she was asking me to give up the project of a lifetime. I needed to see my film completed. True, all our main scenes were ‘in the can’, and we had only to shoot a few more interiors, which could be ‘faked’; but I needed her with me! I begged her to remain. We would insist on complete control over any doubtful material. ‘It’s orl bloody doubtful, Ivan. You know as well as I do wot that bunch o’ Bubbles an’ Eye-ties do fer a livin’. Git on ther bloody train, Ive. Same time as me.’

I trusted her instincts, but my loyalty to Esmé and my art was greater than my fear. This loyalty, of course, was completely misplaced. I have never ceased to curse my own folly, though she never once reminded me of that warning, in all my years in England. I told her I would consider her suggestions. I would let Esmé decide (I could not, after all, abandon her). There was also the question of Sir Ranalf s partners investing in my Desert Liner. I had more than one career established in Egypt - then a country ripe for every kind of development. Surely I could trust men whose self-interest was identical to mine? I did not know then how many of those business people prefer to talk than act. (Unless of the most hysterical and irresponsible types they are racially conditioned to inactivity. The blood feud and the football match is all that engages them.)

During that boiling May I could see my chance of fame returning. Already history had rolled over my hopes and destroyed a career in Russia, another in Turkey, another in France. It threatened yet another in America. But now I had the chance to redeem everything. Here were wealthy potentates with private fortunes for developing ideas. I would point out the military as well as civilian use of my Desert Liner. Such a juggernaut at the heart of their armies would ensure British dominion over the entire desert as far away as their deeper African possessions.

Mrs Cornelius wished me to abandon that dream (as well as the dream of our screen union) together with my salary and my fiancée? How could I listen? Yet, so great even then was my belief in my old friend that I was prepared to consider flight, as long as Esmé would come with me. By now others were glancing curiously in our direction. Mrs Cornelius became evasive. ‘Well, ‘ave a good time wiv it, Ive. Don’ ketch cold.’ And she stormed towards her tent.

That evening we returned to Luxor and prepared for our evening meal aboard the boat. As soon as I could I took Esmé aside to tell her urgently that she should not do the scene Sir Ranalf suggested. At the station I would get us tickets for Alexandria. From there we would go to Italy, where we had friends. It would not be long before we were returning to America. I said nothing of my own reservations.

To my relief she would have none of my sacrifice! ‘You have set such store by this, Dimka. I could not let you abandon it. I understand the scene is necessary to the success of the movie.’ She giggled. ‘After all, my darling, I am not unused to a few appreciative male eyes.’

I told her, ‘That bad time in your life is a forgotten dream. I promised you need never suffer such awfulness again.’

‘Oh, Dimka, sweetie, it is fun,’ she said. ‘It’s just a jolly game. Sir Ranalf will explain. You mustn’t be so stuffy, darling.’

I was, I admitted, the product of a more upright age, yet I did not wish to seem unadventurous in my darling’s eyes. I required her voluntary obedience. I smiled at her jokes about my ‘stern, old-fashioned face’. She had won me! I saw how, through art, she would not demean herself. I had to add something in reference to Mrs Cornelius’s observation. Foreigners would feast, I said, upon her form.

She laughed. ‘None of them Moslems, Dimka dear.’

Then Wolf Seaman joined us, a bulky vibrating tower, and explained with lugubrious intensity how our film would shock no one in Europe. Without those scenes the story would lack a certain impact. Let us do this, he begged, for the sake of perfection. He did not know of course that Mrs Cornelius, whom he still referred to as his fiancée, was leaving. I made up my own mind. I sought my friend in the cocktail lounge and drew her from the bar into a quiet corner of the deck. With trembling voice I begged her to remain long enough to complete the tomb scene. She was adamant. ‘When I git a sniff o’ somefink narsty, Ive, I’m on me bike. This littel set-up’s gettin’ defnitely niffy. I’m orf while the goin’s good an’ ya’d better scarper, too. Mum’s ther word, eh?’

Of course, I could not betray her. I bowed. I kissed her hand. Then I returned, with some reluctance, to what remained of our fold.

Mrs Cornelius’s disappearance was discovered next morning, as we set up our shots beside the Colossi of Memnon, those strange guardians of a lost road to the barren valleys of the dead. I retired as quickly as possible to the little Greek cafe across the way, which catered to passing tourists. Sitting in the shade with a cup of Lipton’s, I listened to Seaman bellowing as loudly as those legendary Colossi whose voices had howled above the desert winds even when Caesar came here to marvel at the monuments to a conquered past. Seaman delivered a manifesto on the nature of art, the artist, his rôle and rights, his need for order, his own need for us to work as hard as he did, his understanding that punctuality was the backbone of a good movie play. They believed Gloria Cornish had remained behind in Luxor, but I had looked from my window early that morning and seen her, aided by tip-toeing Nubians, heading for the kalash stand at the top of the mooring steps. She was taking the early train to Cairo and would return to England with Major Nye, re-assess her career, and perhaps rejoin me in Hollywood later. She could easily get a job in England on the strength of Social Follies and Lady Lorequer alone. By eleven Sir Ranalf arrived, summoned by Seaman. At first our master seemed as angry as his director but then he had composed himself, going about with his usual authority, calming everyone, white or native alike. It was not, he said, an important issue. Our main footage was shot. Esmé could take a slightly stronger part. No actress, he was sure, and he touched his fingertips to her face, would refuse such a chance. Esmé flushed with pleasure. I must admit I became a little jealous. I left my place in the shade and strode up the path towards them, calling out, ‘Miss Cornish will be ready for us soon, I am sure. Meanwhile, I should remind you, gentlemen, that the story is mine. I will accept no interference. No dilutions.’ Had Sir Ranalf, too, seen Mrs Cornelius on her way to the station? Perhaps while he glanced idly from the window of his hotel, overlooking our boat? He did not say. He was all soft reassurance, affirming our story as a model of the literary art. There was no question of interfering with its fundamentals. But he was a showman - a kind of window-dresser. It was his job to make sure the public would come to see our picture. If they did not come, my message would never be heard. This was a reasonable argument. I was relieved to hear it put this way. Then Sir Ranalf began the rather more difficult task of calming Seaman, who claimed he could not work without his star’s presence. Eventually it was agreed that we shoot all the scenes, with ‘Irene Gay’ heavily veiled, standing in for Gloria Cornish who would be with us the next day when we could shoot a few more scenes. Sir Ranalf reminded us that time was money and since this solution would cost more, no doubt we thought his acceptance exceptionally generous.

Mrs Cornelius did not turn up, of course. After a couple of days, Sir Ranalf s people established that she had boarded the Cairo Express. Whereupon Seaman returned to his cabin and refused to come out. When he did emerge next day he seemed chastened. Sir Ranalf had visited him in the night and brought him to his senses. Thereafter, he was a far more agreeable man. Indeed, his control over the film was almost too light, even lacklustre, on occasions.

The nude scene was tastefully accomplished by daylight amongst the ruins of Karnak. There were, of course, no witnesses amongst the general public and, moreover, the majority of our crew was banned from participating. As Esmé stripped her silks from her body, her eyes yearning towards me, I must admit I was moved to my deepest masculinity. This display aroused an unexpected lust. The beast leaped to fill my skin; a sensation in its own way more intense than those almost savage days of lovemaking experiment in Cairo. The scene could not have been better and was unquestionably of the most superior artistic merit. Seaman was thoroughly satisfied with our work. Esmé, with good humour and her Erdgeist’s love of nudity and natural freedom, made me understand how I had indeed been unnecessarily stuffy. That night my little girl and I continued our scene unobserved. Free from other eyes, she became uninhibited, inventive.

When, next day, Seaman assembled us near the Sacred Pool and casually required my darling to remove her clothing and seem about to swim, I remained relaxed. There had, I accepted, to be continuity. Karnak, that bastion of a savage intellectualism, of a profoundly pagan art, helped establish in us a new mood. It had grown so hot that most of us were already wearing as little as possible, no more than a pair of shorts, a singlet and our lightest boots. This semi-nudity contributed to a mood of moral looseness which, with the slow pace of Luxor’s days, the high quality of the cocaine and the kif, was extremely seductive. I was young and relatively inexperienced. I do not blame myself for relaxing my standards a little. Perhaps, even by then, I could not have escaped. Now we had lights, so that we could shoot in the shadows of the temples, amongst the great pylons. We laid Esmé out upon a great fallen slab, stretched for sacrifice. And I, the priest of Ra, was supposed to raise my knife over her lovely, screaming head. I discussed this scene with Malcolm Quelch. I had an artistic, as well as an historical, problem. Surely there had been no such sacrifices made at that time? He said there was such a thing as imaginative human licence. I asked him if he meant ‘artistic licence’ and he said he did. He had become extremely off-hand in the past week.

Our days now had a peculiar, hermetic quality. We filmed in enclosures, in alcoves, in ruined chapels, among Karnak’s tall, knowing pillars which had witnessed all human folly, all human greed, all lust and dark, unnatural need. My inhibitions indeed seemed stupid in the presence of all this hot African sensuality. I was giving myself up to the past, to a barbaric civilisation that had grown old, tolerant and yet was still greedy for human feeling, for the thrill of flesh against flesh, the touch of a fingertip upon a nipple, the rush of blood and heat, the gasping desire, the stink of sweat and sex. Watching Esmé spreadeagled and perspiring on that rock I conceived such an almost uncontrollable desire for her I yelled with astonishment when Sir Ranalf s friendly hand fell upon my naked shoulder. ‘Isn’t she lovely, old boy? Such a deliriously natural young lady, don’t you know. Well, we should all know. Those things we do in secret!’ And he chuckled. I was offended. ‘What do you know of my private life?’ At once he became an avuncular tomcat. ‘Only what our little darling has told me,’ he purred. And, of course, it was then I knew she had betrayed me.

My emotion at that realisation is indescribable. Though I hated them both my lust for her had never been greater. Had I always hated her, always mistaken one intense emotion for another? Had I ever loved her? I became horribly confused. That dreadful passion threatened to engulf and activate my entire being. I was grasped by the twin fists of lust and rage.

My Esmé was a whore! She had been fucked so many times she had calluses on her cunt. They aren’t a bad bunch, the soldiers I’m with. Why had she betrayed me? She was my angel. Meyn batayt, meyn doppelgänger. It was my duty to rescue her. Yet I had so many other duties, not least to Art and to Science. To the Future.

‘Esmé?’ I moved to where she lay, chained and ready for sacrifice. ‘Sir Ranalf has confessed.’ I turned to still the cameras. This was not, I said quietly, a scene for the public view.

Her voice was a little sleepy, as if she had been dozing while waiting for the take. ‘But you told me it was all right, Dimka.’

Now, of course, I understood my own thoughtlessness. For all her exotic past my little girl was not trained in the ways of the larger world. I had protected her for too long. I softened. ‘I had not meant - ‘

‘Really, my dear Childe Max! As a man of the world!’ It was Sir Ranalf who had taken advantage of us. My respect for the man vanished in an instant. I turned. ‘How could you?’

‘My dear little knight-errant, don’t be cross! We’re all innocent bucolic lads and lasses here together, enjoying a little bit of pagan pleasure for the short years we are upon this Earth. What harm was meant, sweet Orpheus? These are games, no more! Natural games, you know, as between little boys and girls. Between chums and chumesses, eh? Yum, yum!’ And he placed his warm fingers on my arm to pat it. ‘No secret nastiness was intended. We are not the humdrum sort enchained and limited by awful, useless emotions of jealousy and possessiveness, surely? I had you down, dear Sir Galahad, for a Shelleyan like myself. A worshipper of all that is natural.’

Again, I was made to feel both inhumane and unsophisticated. An intolerable bigot. I blushed and cleared my throat, ‘I had not quite understood,’ I said. ‘It was a shock - ‘

‘Of course it was! I’m so very deeply sorry, dear, old pal. I thought all this was happening with your consent. I knew - ‘

‘Whereas I did not!’ But, hard as I strove for sophisticated acceptance, I was close to tears. So many different emotions flooded through me.

‘You will of course remember your professional commitment.’

I could not answer at once. My groin flashed white-hot. Seaman now joined us, followed by Quelch, who was now forever at the director’s shoulder. Perhaps as Mrs Cornelius had done a little earlier, I looked to Quelch for sympathy but he returned my glance with the same shifty warmth I interpreted as continuing embarrassment at my witnessing his Eastertime fellatial diversion. And Seaman seemed entirely without energy. His ‘Can I help?’ was almost timid.

‘We need you to persuade our baffled chum that what we demand is within the bounds of artistic good taste.’ Sir Ranalf was affable. ‘Really, there are pictures hanging in perfectly respectable Birmingham villas more suggestive than our little scene.’

‘It’s a question of conviction,’ said Seaman. ‘We need to startle them.’

‘We need to persuade the audience, you see, of the absolute authority of our mise-en-scène.’

As they talked we smoked a little kif and I began to understand what they were driving at. I recalled that I had read how many Egyptians went naked during festivals and special periods of worship. But not, surely, in such circumstances? I looked to Quelch who spread his hands. ‘I think, as I said earlier, that some licence . . .’

‘But, of course, it would help if you, too, could get a little closer to nature, to the olden times. Don’t you agree, Herr Seaman? Dear Maxie should divest himself of his own little kilt and perhaps substitute a tasteful ceremonial apron?’

I, of course, refused. At this rate what would be the difference, I asked, between our film and a piece of commercial pornography?

‘They have nothing in common,’ Sir Ranalf assured me in some outrage. ‘Our great moral work will stand as one of the milestones in the history of dramatic representation. It will be the Hamlet, the Pinero, the Birth of a Nation of its time. Because we dared, dear Maxie. Because we dared . . .’

But I was still unconvinced of any authentic reason to undress. The chance that my father’s ‘hygienic’ operation might be detected and the obvious appalling conclusions drawn was, I must admit, my chief fear. Again Malcolm Quelch was commissioned to take me aside to mention certain precedents in certain paintings, the great myths of fertility and rebirth we hoped to examine through our film. In another part of the temple he helped me light another calming pipe and soothed me with his scholarship, his talk of high aspiration, of the world’s attention. ‘This could be your guarantee of immortality.’ He helped with a match to coax a flame. The kif was especially pungent and I think now that he had made what was known as a cocktail, perhaps with opium and something else. It had the effect of bringing me back to my deep self, my fundamental beliefs, my sense of self-worth. This would, he murmured, be merely the means to an end. When The Follies of a Pharaoh made me world-famous every other reward would fall into my lap. At this point I became convinced, yet still insisted I must have my own little changing-space, a curtain drawn across a corner of the ruin. Quelch agreed. He helped me as, a little unsteadily, I disrobed. Then, in ‘ritual apron’ and the rest of my rather gorgeous costume, I presented myself again upon the set.

I had not expected to find another figure standing with Steeton in the shadows of the pylons. An enormous bulbous negress, a gauzy veil scarcely hiding her huge lips and flat nose, blinked extraordinarily long eyelashes, like a cow’s. From the way she met my glance she clearly believed herself attractive. Was she some sort of nurse brought to give proper decorum to the scene? Eventually Sir Ranalf came over to murmur that this was a ‘very highly placed personage who could finance all our ambitions’. I was dreamy by now from the pipe and I smiled and bowed to the negress, whose response was to withdraw almost coquettishly into the deeper shadows. It did not for a second occur to me who or what she might actually be.

Her own first glimpse of the woman seemed to startle Esmé, who moved cautiously on the slab, as if testing her bonds. But then she looked to me and seemed reassured. I guessed from her manner that she had already encountered the negress with Sir Ranalf at one of the ‘meetings’ I had innocently encouraged her to attend.

My anger surged back. I stepped forward, calling out to Seaman. ‘Can we start them rolling, soon, Mr Director? I have other duties, you know, besides acting the leading part and writing the scenario.’

Seaman scuttled towards the camera and placed his hand on the poker-faced Greek who stood ready to turn the crank. Checking lights and angles in only a fraction of his normal time he nodded to me with a shout of ‘Action’.

Knife in hand, I advance towards my treacherous child. O, how I have worked for her, lived for her, suffered such agonies for her. And this is to be my reward! Reminded of my own folly, of the fruitless idealism that tried to turn a dungheap weed into a perfect rose, now all I wish is to ravage her, to terrify her until she begs for my forgiveness. I long to hurt her in every fibre of her being as I had never hurt her before. I am not proud of these feelings, but they are any man’s normal emotions in the circumstances and I have never been one to resist the truth. The drugs brought a drumming to my ears. It was as if the bodies of a huge crowd pressed close around me, their humid breath upon my back, their dreamy eyes upon my every action. They were willing me to take vengeance, to take vengeance for them, for every act of betrayal Woman ever served on Man since Eve betrayed Adam, since God expelled them from the Garden.

Seaman’s voice grows suddenly animated, as it does only when he knows he has a singular shot. ‘That’s it! That’s wonderful! You go towards her. You love her. You hate her. You want to kill her. You want to save her. She is yours. She is everyone’s. You are expected to sacrifice her. That’s right. You raise the knife. Good. But your hand stays. You cannot move. You cannot bring yourself to kill her - not before you have ravaged her. Yes. You will rape her. You will take her. You are heedless of her cries. Of her struggles. This is what she offered you. What she owes you. This is the debt you will now claim - and then appease the gods with her blood.’

Bile rose in my mouth. I was terrified, certain I must vomit, yet I was completely committed to the scene, knowing what an incredible sensation it would create on screen. I flung my body on hers. Peering into her terrified eyes, I realised that she too was drugged and was genuinely afraid of something. I pulled back. I leaned to spit into the sand at the base of the rock.

‘Cut!’ cried Seaman.

We would try another take, he said, later. Perhaps tomorrow, when we had seen the rushes. I apologised for my condition. The heat was proving too much for me again. Sir Ranalf was solicitous. ‘We must get you back to the boat, dear little chummy. You were wonderful. It must have drained so much out of you. But this is how we will make our film not merely good, you know, but great.’

I remained for the rest of the evening and the night in my cabin, sleeping and dreaming. The image of my chained fiancée recurred frequently and with it that same swamping, horrible lust, a kind of bleakness. Then I would recall the image of that huge negress. What was she? A princess of the ruling blood? Some royal shame? Or a mere brothel-keeper? She had seemed to approve of me. The pale delicacy of my spreadeagled child and the engulfing embrace of the negress merged in a single sudden sensation gripped my genitals and caused me to wake gasping for breath, crying out. I was alone in my cabin as it rocked gently on the water. Outside, far away, came the call of a jackal to its mate. The dreams did not stop. I had soaked my sheets.

Next morning I was aroused by a cheerful Quelch. ‘Come along to the viewing-room, dear boy. You did wonderfully. It’s all developed and ready to watch.’

Still bleary from the opium, I allowed him to help me wash and get my clothes on. Then I followed on padding feet through the hot, yellow daylight to the stern where the company was already seated in semi-darkness waiting for Seaman’s projector to roll. The rushes appeared, flickered, focused and gave us very suddenly three powerful minutes. Now I saw why everyone was so excited. They were incredible shots. All my fierce lust and rage and hatred had been captured. Esmé’s terror had been genuine. There had never been scenes to rival these in the power of their emotional statement! I was at once perturbed and proud. Surely this ravishment would do for me what Valentino’s tango did for him. ‘And yet,’ said Sir Ranalf, after they had all congratulated us, ‘we still have a little way to go before our movie reaches its perfect peak!’ I said I thought we had reached the pinnacle. But he laughed heartily. ‘No, dear, dear chum, we have hardly begun to climb! Isn’t that so, Professor Quelch?’

‘Indeed. We are still, as it were, in the foothills of the ecstatic element of our film. The metaphysical element, shall we say. After all we are seeking to record the insubstantial, the indescribable!’

The English have always had a singular admiration for the insubstantial in everything but religion. Their composers and their painters, their fashionable writers, they are all so happy to substitute mysticism for experience. It is not quite the same thing as our Russian ‘soul’. However, I was convinced. The scenes possessed artistic and intellectual authority. I began to feel quite proud of what everyone but myself and Esmé described as my acting.

‘And, too, remember we have Dame Commerce to placate,’ added Sir Ranalf, shaking his head at the crudeness of our world. I wondered if he referred to the negress. ‘We must ensure that we have enough properly sentimental scenes as well as, I think, a few more “fun scenes”. To give substance to our spectrum, you know. To show that no aspect of human life is left unexamined. This afternoon, Maxie, my good fellow, I want you to consider, perhaps, ripping aside your ritual apron as you advance on the helpless vampire. It will not be photographed directly, of course, but it will help with the ambience, will it not, Mr Seaman?’

Seaman nodded silently from where he sat huddled in his chair. He had achieved the best scene of his career, yet for some reason he was discontented.

I refused Sir Ranalf’s suggestion. ‘I have to consider my reputation,’ I said. ‘I am not sure the engineering world would trust a man who showed his bare bottom to the kinema public.’

They laughed at this. The public would receive only a hint! Of course, I would have a perfect right to see the rushes. I would note how subtle the shots would be.

In spite of my deep desire to continue with the film, I could not bring myself to agree. Paramount in my mind was my need to get our footage safely back to America and edit it properly. Only if it won the approval of America would it be a true success. The more intimate scenes would not appear in the United States version but their rumour would attract millions. It was also probably true that the rest of the world would not respond prudishly to such natural portraits which were almost necessary for a film’s success, in France, for instance. Yet what held me back was the dilemma of my shame - or rather my father’s shame - my missing foreskin, removed for hygienic reasons almost before I was sentient. Again, with good grace, I refused to accept their logic.

Sir Ranalf seemed only a trifle disappointed. ‘Just as you like, dear chappy. I take it, however, that you aren’t averse to turning up for some extra shots this afternoon?’

I told him, with perfect truth, that this film meant everything to me. I would do nothing to harm it.

When Sir Ranalf took Esmé back to the Winter Palace for lunch I was rather relieved. It was difficult at present to face her in real life, our rôles had grown so intense. Profoundly disturbed and thoroughly confused, I was grateful when Professor Quelch showed some of his brother’s old affection for me and suggested we try another pipe or two before work began.

‘To calm you down, old boy. You want to be on your best form, don’t you? And it certainly worked yesterday. What superb shots they were!’

We sat together in the cabin we shared while Quelch read to me from Browning and some more modern writers. But it was impossible to give my attention to the written word. I struggled to find a language to describe my dilemma. At last I admitted that, while I had every understanding of their logic and needs, I wanted neither Esmé nor myself to perform further nude scenes. ‘It is not what we mean, it is how it will be interpreted,’ I said. Quelch dismissed this. He assured me that only certain bluestockings in America would object while in Europe I would become a household name. An honoured artist! A great engineer! But I remained uncertain. There was another problem, I said; a question of my operation. He became sympathetic. He did not know I was bothered by such a thing. A scar? He did not recall a scar. The scar, I said, was secret and indelible. And then, because I had borne this lonely burden on my soul for so long, I told him how my father, a socialist, a physician and a Modern Man, had performed the barbaric surgery which was to dog me all my days and which more than once had almost cost me my life. Quelch was deeply understanding. He had heard of the operation. Children in England were given it all the time, these days. He understood it even to be fashionable amongst the lower classes. I was foolish to worry. This was not a stigma. Everyone would understand. ‘Besides,’ he laughed, ‘your bald gentleman would go quite unnoticed in this country, don’t you know!’

This was far from being any consolation! But he went on to tell me how such a thing meant nothing outside Ukraine these days, that it was quaintly old-fashioned of me to worry. Nobody would take me for something I was not. This was the time to put all such stupid thoughts and fears behind me. ‘After all, my dear Peters, fortuna favet fortibus!’

Fortuna favet fatuis, they say also. Would that I had been the fool Fortune favoured!

That evening I came to the set in my light overcoat. I had already donned my costume so that I need not risk further awkwardness. I was a little bleary. Some of the earlier details of that evening have gone but I know we were to re-enact the scene in a ‘tomb’ created in a small ruined Coptic chapel on the outskirts of town, its walls freshly covered with paintings supposed to depict the life and death-journey of our mythical Queen. Esmé will be chained into the coffin in place of the mummy. It will be her fate to be sealed there forever, fulfilling her ambition to take the place of the queen she dared challenge. We will shoot alternative scenes. In one I will stab her. In the other I will reach longingly towards her lips, my body tensed as if I mean to release her. Then I will crush one kiss upon her and turn to flee down the rather ramshackle cardboard corridor representing the tunnel from the tomb. Again I am brought to an Esmé already stretched upon the slab, her legs pressed against the warm stone, her wonderful little body writhing in the most lifelike display of terror. I am proud of her. I am aroused. I have never felt such a peculiar power. I never wanted it. But it will not leave me. The beast stirs and stretches within me. There is metal in our womb. I draw back, conscious of the electric ambience. I turn to Seaman. ‘I cannot,’ I say.

‘You must.’ His voice is quiet and urgent. There seems to be fear in it. ‘You must.’

I begin to shake. Sir Ranalf comes up. ‘My poor dear old fellow, are you sickly?’

I cannot do the scene at all. I will never do it. He asks if I am nervous. I do not know. I am trembling. Sir Ranalf speaks more soothing words. He gives me into the professor’s care. Morphine and cocaine help me get a grip on myself. Now I feel very guilty. I have not been professional. It is completely against my self-interest to let down my potential patron.

When I return to the set, Esmé is calmer. Her eyes are closed and she pants almost in natural sleep. Distanced, she becomes another creature, a lovely animal, even more desirable. Now I am much steadier, almost gay, as I adjust my costume, let the Ethiopian put finishing touches to my make-up and advance towards the altar. All the gods of Egypt are looking down on me. As Seaman rolls the camera I stare in sudden awe at Horus and Anubis and Osiris and Isis, at Mut and Set and Thoth and the hosts of animal-headed demigods surrounding us. Beast blends with man, woman with beast. I feel the power of the beast in me. I feel that terrible power which can inhabit every one of us who invites it in but which it is our duty to control. I would have controlled it. I have controlled it since. Then Esmé begins to cry, a strange little sound, a dreaming sound, and I turn to see her face shift through a dozen expressions, almost as if a series of masks emerges, one beneath another, and her eyes open and she smiles at me. She thinks I can save her.

‘Now, Maxie, now!’ whispers Sir Ranalf from somewhere behind Seaman. ‘You do not know whether to kill her or whether to ravage her. You are torn. The knife is in your hand! But you cannot immediately kill one whom you have loved so passionately. How to take your final revenge?’

And I press myself upon her, kissing her, fondling her, thrusting my body upon her soft, shivering flesh. Her cries are now almost guttural and they frighten me. I continue to kiss her and caress her, but slowly my inspiration again fails me. I stand up, my leg steadied against the rasping granite, and tell them that I will do no more.

‘But that is not possible.’

It is the negress who speaks. A deep, vibrant voice; gorgeously sensual. ‘We must have our rape, I think, or there will be no proper resolution. And the public demands resolution.’

I do not understand her. I hear Sir Ranalf in urgent conversation with her, but cannot make out the words. She is adamant. Sir Ranalf comes up to me. ‘My sweet boy, this is our most important backer. It would be very foolish of any one of us to give offence to such a personage. If you could please find the inspiration from somewhere, I would be deeply obliged.’

I stand there and shake my head. Suddenly the negress advances, a pillar of swirling vividly-coloured silks and rolling black flesh, she walks with the deliberation of a colossus.

A gusty sigh escapes the creature. Her rich voice is now full of sadness. ‘I had hoped to be associated with one of the century’s great picture-plays. The rape will provide the catharsis. The resolution. You understand Freud?’

I say I am not prepared to pretend to rape my girl.

‘We did not suggest that you pretend.’ The negress’s bulk moves as if to silent laughter.

‘Then I will act no further.’ I am barely able to focus on the creature. From her radiates an aura of extraordinary power. Her eyes refuse any disobedience. Yet I stand my ground. For my girl. For myself.

‘This is deeply shame-making, dear boy,’ murmurs Sir Ranalf from behind his partner. ‘It is so important for us all to achieve this.’

‘What you are asking, however, is too much.’ My lips are dry, my words sluggish. ‘Esmé and I will return to Cairo in the morning. I believe you have genuinely frightened her.’ I reach backwards to clutch for her grateful fingers. ‘This has all gone too far.’

‘ Very well,’ Sir Ranalf turns away with a small shrug. ’Once your debts are cleared up and everything else sorted out, you can be on your way.’

‘You can have every penny of my wages.’ I am cool. ‘All I want is a ticket home for Esmé and myself.’ I speak clearly. My demands are exact. I refuse compromise.

‘Sweet boy, I fear your back wages, generous as they were by Egyptian standards, are not enough to cover your IOUs.’ Sir Ranalf’s tone is one of deep regret. ‘Not so?’ And he turns blue, enquiring eyes upon his backer.

The negress waves a confirming hand.

I cannot read their signs.

‘Professor Quelch will explain.’ Sir Ranalf is curt.

‘I got behind with my own bills, I fear, dear boy. My hands are tied. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, you might say. Your IOUs were my only collateral.’

Sir Ranalf clarifies Quelch’s meaning. Esmé and I owe some £2,500 in back debts. Our salaries would yield perhaps £500. Accommodation costs have also been deducted, as well as local taxes, bar bills and so on. There is also a question of a dishonoured contract. ‘It is very simple,’ he says. ‘If you wish to leave the project, merely pay your bills, reimburse us for your expenses and go.’

‘But what of our film?’

‘You may have what has been shot, I suppose.’

‘The negative as well?’

‘If you can reach agreement with Mr Seaman.’ But when I look at him Seaman withdraws. I realise he has already made his own irreversible compromises.

‘We should leave.’ This from Esmé. I turn back to her. She moves her drugged hands in the chains. ‘We must get home, Maxim. To America. It was my fault. Help me.’

I do not know whether to blame her for all this or whether to take her in my arms and comfort her. It is clear, however, that we are for the moment trapped. All I can do now is bide my time until we can escape. Tomorrow I will seek the help of the American Consul.

‘We will leave,’ I determined, still bleary.

‘We shall keep the film, I understand, as security.’ This is the negress. I cannot bear the idea of my naked Esmé becoming her property. I cannot think clearly. I stand there, trying to determine the best course of action.

‘You must make a decision, Maxim. You must make a decision.’ Never before have I heard such urgency in her voice.

‘But the film is ours. We are its creators!’

‘I am afraid that as the producer I must confirm it belongs to my company,’ said Sir Ranalf. ‘And our friend here, of course, is our major shareholder.’

‘I own you all, I think.’ A thin smile plays behind the negress’s veil. ‘I think so. But we need not quarrel. You will be good, I know.’

Esmé whispers to me again. She must escape. She must get to Cairo. I have so many duties. I have a duty to our film. She will not respect me if I abandon it. After all, her chances of fame are also linked to it. We need only return to Hollywood and our fortunes are made. But we have no money here. I look towards Quelch. There is a suggestion of guilty triumph in his eyes and it occurs to me he could actually be chief architect of our predicament. Has he nursed some dreadful plan of vengeance since Esmé and I, the only witnesses, inadvertently stumbled upon him and the Nubian boy?

‘We can compromise.’ Sir Ranalf is persuasive. ‘We can still be friends and comrades. After all, we have the basics of a jolly good film!’

‘But he must rape the girl.’ The negress speaks quietly, in a tone of threatening finality.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

I turn to test Esmé’s bonds. She is chained firmly to the slab. I understand something of the trap into which we are falling, yet I can see no easy way out.

‘Decide, Maxim!’ She is desperate with tension. But how can I decide? After all, she betrayed me. She was nothing but a little whore I rescued from Constantinople’s gutters. What did I owe her? Up to now she had already enjoyed a far superior life with me than any she might have expected. She was born a whore. Let her suffer the fate of a whore.

Within me my love for my angel, my sister, my rose burns as strong as ever. But I cannot let this inform my common sense.

‘Yes. You really must make up your mind.’ Sir Ranalf clearly fears the negress. ‘After all, you’re not exactly on the right side of the law now, are you, dears? Drugs and prostitution are both crimes in Egypt, ha, ha! The authorities would be deeply shocked to find a white man doing business in both.’

Sir Ranalf is of course describing himself but he is too well-protected to be caught, whereas Esmé and I are already on film. Quelch will doubtless turn State’s evidence to convict us of our drug-using. Worse, without money we have no guarantee we would ever get out of Cairo again. Had the negress bought or merely taken Quelch’s IOUs? Clearly she had a firm hold over both Sir Ranalf and the professor while I had no friends here. Common sense said that Kolya had long since gone on about his business and was by now back in Algiers.

‘Consider your assets.’ The negress is persuasive, impatient. ‘What do you own? A pretty fiancée and a young, healthy body? You also have brains and talent. But these are rather tenuous things. What can you sell me for two thousand five hundred pounds?’

‘My talent, apparently.’ I am growing steadily more frightened. ‘And my designs. I am an engineer. There are many other things I can do.’

‘Certainly. So there is no quarrel between us! If you wish to dissolve your partnership with us, that will be absolutely agreeable. If you are unhappy, you should not stay against your will. So, let us say the girl is worth two and a half thousand and call it even. She will be happy with us. That will discharge your whole debt. What do you say?’

The suggestion is loathsome. I am in their power for the moment but I retain my integrity.

From behind me Esmé still murmurs, begging me to make a decision. But it is impossible. I have no worthwhile choices. I am confused by the shocking suddenness of their threats, by the narcotics Quelch has pumped into me. It is true, I have a duty to the film, but I have a duty to my own destiny. She, after all, has already broken her trust. What does it matter if we indulge in a few moments of animal high spirits for the camera? The film will still be a great one. The world will see Gloria Cornish in my embrace. We have already found immortality. Esmé is calmer now. Her breasts rise and fall very slowly; her eyes, dark with emotion, stare mindlessly up at me.

There are no better alternatives. I can only make a decision based on the least harmful choices presented to me. Once more I know what it means to be powerless and without an embassy. I am alone. I have no rights and am forced to fall back upon my own resources. Expediency demands the only possible decision: ‘Very well.’ I lay a firm fist upon my hip and hold up my head with all possible dignity. ‘I will play the rape scene.’

My statement is received with general applause by everyone save Quelch who stares at me from eyes darkening with a joyful intensity; as if our terrible compromise is the result of his own wicked engineering; as if he believes he rights some singular wrong performed by us upon himself. A malevolent automaton, a Golem, he smiles at me from the shadows. I look urgently for Seaman. He might now be my only ally, my last link with Hollywood and safety, but he has vanished. Sir Ranalf shrugs and smiles. For the time being he will direct the film himself. (I heard that Seaman left the next morning and eventually returned to Sweden, from there to Hollywood where he resumed his career.) Once I was naked Sir Ranalf expressed his delight. Circumcision, he assures me, was practised by high-born Egyptians. It was a sign of nobility. It is important to establish our authority, to have our details as authentic as possible. Abraham, der als erster seiner eigenen Menschlichkeit ein Opfer brachte: Wo traf dein Messer deinen vertrauensvollen Sohn? Alte, geliebte, furchttreifende Sumer. Leugne den Juden, und du leugnest Vergangenheit. There was a time when the Hebrews were feared by Egypt, and by Greece and by Rome, before they cultivated their insidious, all-destroying fatalism, a philosophy which makes a virtue out of defeat and dissipation. For this, I suppose, we must also blame Vespasian. It became richtung-gas . . .

I perform the rape. Thoth and Isis look down in sad disgust but the Englishman is all celebration. ‘Well done, Maxie. Oh, sweet boy, well done!’ And Esmé weeps quite silently. The tactful camera will not detect it. It seems as if she is smiling. Bar’d shadeed. It is cold. There is a piece of metal in my heart. I cannot get rid of it. They say we are at the beginning of a new Ice Age. Now only ice can cleanse the world. Then the fires and then the sea. After Ragnarok the world shall renew and perfect herself.

Not only Nazis accept this.

All evil dies there an endless death, while goodness riseth from that great world-fire, purified at last, to a life far higher, better, nobler than the past... I understand that Moslems have some similar belief in the purification of the world through battle, death and rebirth. There is an attractive singularity to such notions. I am drawn to them myself. They are not, in essence, unchristian. Some perfectly reasonable people are convinced that a nuclear holocaust is now our only hope.

Again, next day, I perform the rape scene. I achieve this by turning my terror and hatred into love. It is easier to do than I imagined. I have no time in which to consider spiritual profit and loss. Only the moment becomes important. This is not an uncommon response, I gather.

Perhaps I think of Lif and Lifthrasir hiding in Mimir’s forest, sleeping in peaceful unconsciousness of the world’s destruction, until the time shall come when we can take possession of a regenerated earth? What fundamental wisdoms remain in those ancient stones? What lessons are there to be learned from that land of the waiting dead and old, still vibrant power? The Sahara obscures swiftly, but what it obscures it also preserves! Here is a world of secret magic, which could be brought to life by a random breath of wind; here the worlds of the here-and-now intersect with the worlds of the spirit and the stars. Here lie hidden long-gone ambitions, immortal yearnings that were never fully stilled, great and monumental dreams; here sleeps a living culture of archetypal loves and hatreds, where death is celebrated as the best and richest of all adventures and a host of gods, goddesses and demi-gods greet and welcome one’s new-fleshed soul. It is so easy to become confused between the realities and the imaginings of the ancients. They say there is a lush forest existing below the desert where the souls of the dead wait patiently for judgement. I, who am Osiris, am Yesterday and the kinsman of the Morrow . . . May your knives not impede me; may I not fall into your abattoir. For I know your names. My course upon earth is with Ra and my fair goal is with Osiris. Let not my offerings be in your disfavour upon your altars. I am one who follows the Master. I fly like a Hawk. I cackle like the Goose. I move eternally as Nehebkau. O Sovereign of All Gods, deliver me from that god who liveth upon the damned, whose face is that of a hound, but whose skin is that of a man, devouring shades, digesting human hearts and voiding ordure. One seeth him not. Deliver me from that god who seizeth upon souls, who consumes all filth and corruption in the darkness or in the light. All those who fear him are powerless. This god is Set, who is also Sekhet, the goddess. Sekhet is called ‘the Eye of Ra’ and is the instrument of mankind’s destruction. Deliver me from that god that is both male and female. May I not fall under their knives, may I not sit within their dungeons, may I not come to their places of extermination, may there be done to me none of those things which the gods abominate. It was what Quelch gave me before he abandoned us, that Book of the Dead. ‘It might prove useful to you,’ he had said.

There is more work for me, says Sir Ranalf. I am a star, he says. I am a genius. I am a natural. Who would have suspected such talent? Al-Habashiya, the negress, has instructed him to convey her approval. I know how and why I must earn more. I become weak. I think they are feeding me native food. I cannot hold it in. I continue to perform the rape scene. I rape her anus. I rape her mouth. I have no choice. If I am to rescue her and myself then I can only comply with their demands until the moment comes when we can both escape.

She does not understand.

She thinks I have betrayed her.