exquisite that it moved them to the full poetry of
desire.
It is not a matter of which I wish to write. Woman to her man she wanted—well, let it be! I loved and love her like a woman, and I take it that we—if they will permit me for a moment
to be one of them—know a permanency of passion and of misery that to men is rarely given. Yet male I am in this: I had not the anodyne of women, the unquestioning loyalty to the beloved for
as long as it remained beloved.
Was I a humiliation to her? That was a subject which I never dared to approach. Her initial resistance was artistic but perfunctory, and thereafter she made little concession to the vanity
of the male. For the sake of her prestige she wouldn’t take a mate among her own companions at Kasr-el-Sittat. Well, I was the best, perhaps the only European alternative; and at times, when
she would lie awake staring at anything but me, she may have put it to herself as crudely as that. A passionate chef d’œvre of amorous sculpture, likely to be awarded the prize of the
year by any session, if such could be, of competent judges—that, I have no doubt, was her warmest, her most ecstatic picture of our affair. O God, I wish I had no doubt.
We spent three days in Damascus, and I can remember every hour of them. Such a period comes only once in a man’s life, when he may love without impediment or afterthought, when the mere
earning of a living is simple and secure, when he has a cause as well as a woman to which he can give his heart.
Little by little Elisa was more explicit. At first I was uneasy as she unfolded to me the objects of Kasr-el-Sittat and its growing power. I shied away from all the implications, and
insisted that the movement was really nothing more than a sort of Civil Liberties organization with teeth in it.
‘Yes, you might call it that,’ she answered. ‘The more aspects there are, the better for us—so long as our own object is clear. Here’s a question for you to think
about when you’re all alone in your little house at Tripoli.’
I told her that the house waited for her and was made for her, but she laughed and insisted that I should listen to her question:
‘On which side was the Vichy Government during the war?’
‘God knows,’ I answered. ‘It was like an amœba. Its shape depended on its environment.’
The illustration delighted her, and moved her to more frankness than she had, I think, as yet intended.
‘Then suppose we allow the Americans to put Kasr-el-Sittat under the microscope, what do they find? A bitter anti-communist organization which can prove the existence of a flourishing
underground from Niev to Budapest. And now put it in the Cominform’s solution. They hate it. It hasn’t any shape at all. It looks like nihilism. Still—we are creating
disaffection and disobedience in the West. Eric, I tell you we can get money from both sides. All of them, East or West, may suspect that for itself the amœba has a shape, but why be
afraid of it when it is so useful? Did the men who financed Hitler look any further than their own intentions?’
‘And what is there at the heart?’ I asked boldly.
‘Clear sight, Eric, and implacable hatred.’
I drove Elisa back to Kasr-el-Sittat, and was put up for the Saturday and Sunday nights in an empty bungalow that had just been whitewashed and reconditioned. The colony was expanding and busy
with its home. We passed a party of local labourers, their black cotton garments powdered with cement and plaster, returning to the villages; and on the paths of the settlement were industrious
colonists carrying ladders and pots of paint.
The dining-room was fuller than I had ever seen it, and there were a number of new faces. As Elisa had not turned up, I sat down with a party of mixed Slavs, who seemed as naïve as
mid-nineteenth-century nihilists. They were all anxious to explain their ideas, and I don’t think they ever gave me a chance to reply. That the
desire.
It is not a matter of which I wish to write. Woman to her man she wanted—well, let it be! I loved and love her like a woman, and I take it that we—if they will permit me for a moment
to be one of them—know a permanency of passion and of misery that to men is rarely given. Yet male I am in this: I had not the anodyne of women, the unquestioning loyalty to the beloved for
as long as it remained beloved.
Was I a humiliation to her? That was a subject which I never dared to approach. Her initial resistance was artistic but perfunctory, and thereafter she made little concession to the vanity
of the male. For the sake of her prestige she wouldn’t take a mate among her own companions at Kasr-el-Sittat. Well, I was the best, perhaps the only European alternative; and at times, when
she would lie awake staring at anything but me, she may have put it to herself as crudely as that. A passionate chef d’œvre of amorous sculpture, likely to be awarded the prize of the
year by any session, if such could be, of competent judges—that, I have no doubt, was her warmest, her most ecstatic picture of our affair. O God, I wish I had no doubt.
We spent three days in Damascus, and I can remember every hour of them. Such a period comes only once in a man’s life, when he may love without impediment or afterthought, when the mere
earning of a living is simple and secure, when he has a cause as well as a woman to which he can give his heart.
Little by little Elisa was more explicit. At first I was uneasy as she unfolded to me the objects of Kasr-el-Sittat and its growing power. I shied away from all the implications, and
insisted that the movement was really nothing more than a sort of Civil Liberties organization with teeth in it.
‘Yes, you might call it that,’ she answered. ‘The more aspects there are, the better for us—so long as our own object is clear. Here’s a question for you to think
about when you’re all alone in your little house at Tripoli.’
I told her that the house waited for her and was made for her, but she laughed and insisted that I should listen to her question:
‘On which side was the Vichy Government during the war?’
‘God knows,’ I answered. ‘It was like an amœba. Its shape depended on its environment.’
The illustration delighted her, and moved her to more frankness than she had, I think, as yet intended.
‘Then suppose we allow the Americans to put Kasr-el-Sittat under the microscope, what do they find? A bitter anti-communist organization which can prove the existence of a flourishing
underground from Niev to Budapest. And now put it in the Cominform’s solution. They hate it. It hasn’t any shape at all. It looks like nihilism. Still—we are creating
disaffection and disobedience in the West. Eric, I tell you we can get money from both sides. All of them, East or West, may suspect that for itself the amœba has a shape, but why be
afraid of it when it is so useful? Did the men who financed Hitler look any further than their own intentions?’
‘And what is there at the heart?’ I asked boldly.
‘Clear sight, Eric, and implacable hatred.’
I drove Elisa back to Kasr-el-Sittat, and was put up for the Saturday and Sunday nights in an empty bungalow that had just been whitewashed and reconditioned. The colony was expanding and busy
with its home. We passed a party of local labourers, their black cotton garments powdered with cement and plaster, returning to the villages; and on the paths of the settlement were industrious
colonists carrying ladders and pots of paint.
The dining-room was fuller than I had ever seen it, and there were a number of new faces. As Elisa had not turned up, I sat down with a party of mixed Slavs, who seemed as naïve as
mid-nineteenth-century nihilists. They were all anxious to explain their ideas, and I don’t think they ever gave me a chance to reply. That the
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