The Avignon Quintet (117 page)

So the sleepy commerce between them entered upon the domains of an attachment where the physical and the mental made common cause; but she realised that he had opened up something inside her mind by this conversation, had primed her, and that if they were not careful she would become impregnated. It was as if he had hypnotised her into this delicious satyriasis; she was dying to feel, to prosper and harvest his orgasm, but he hung back, as if reluctant – in fact to sharpen her desire for him. They lay in an agony of impatience with thoughts of loving obedience pouring out between them like some vast waterfall. “Now!” she said. “Wait!” he replied, engrossed mentally in trying to accord their breathing, their very pulse-beat. Already he could sense the rich void of repletion they would enjoy afterwards, lying like drunks in each other’s arms, driven to sleep like sheep, into a pen. He turned her lightly towards him and loosed the sails, feeling them draw breath, feeling their craft heel and strain and then gather weight with a shared ecstasy guiding it. She realised that she had never known what love was, what it could be. She was terrified to feel so much at his mercy, and at her own. To surrender, to yield, to abdicate and receive – it made her feel dangerously vulnerable. She said sadly, “Ah, but you are joking and I am serious; you are going to be disappointed in me. I am only a scientist at heart. I believe in causality.”

He raised himself on an elbow and looked closely at her, as if seeing her for the first time, as if she were some strange insect which had alighted before him on the counterpane. “Alchemically speaking, nothing can be achieved without the woman, without you; your thighs are the tuning-fork of the male intuition. You strike the spark, we light the fire in the hearth and stick you with child.”

“O yes, Herr Professor,” she said meekly.

They both laughed. “O no, you don’t,” she said in her new relaxed and confident mood. “This is a male plot to make our relationship neurotic. I’m not playing. Let us begin with ourselves, only ourselves. I’m only an old Freudian, and can’t see further than my nose.”

“You live in the spare parts of other people’s dreams, neologisms among the nightmares which project themselves into your own daymares of violence and panic. Which
somnifère
do you take? Constance, we are full of ideas which remain obstinately homeless. I want to share, to share.” There was a tap at the door and a breakfast tray appeared as it opened. With an unpremeditated gesture they both drew the sheets over their heads and lay motionless, as if in deep slumber, until the tray was placed by the bed and the maid withdrew. Then they burst out laughing, throwing off all the covers and engaging with a sudden new-found fierceness in a love bout which was deliberately pain-giving. The violence was delicious, she felt with horror and pleasure his vampire’s
suçon
on her throat under her ear. It would leave a tell-tale blue mark which would need careful powdering out. Damn! But this time it was he who called the tune and she was surprised by the controlled strength of that tall, somewhat awkward body with its bony girl-like motions. At the same time it made her exultant, the inner recognition that he was completely fashioned as a male, and capable of making her groan softly with pain, to hurt her without leaving bruises or blemishes, with the sole exception of her throat – but this was a piece of pure vulgar sexual boasting and she would tell him as much. She found herself trembling under his assault, trembling at her good luck in being after all able to plunge deep into an attachment without reserve – she who had felt herself dried-up and empty of all emotion. Suddenly the thought of Livia smote her, she saw her dead face, and between pain at the memory and pleasure in the present began to cry, which made him desist. He was apologetic now; he had been thoughtless when she was so tired. Then he added an amazing thing: “And shocked too by Livia’s death.”

She sat up in bed, wrapping her kimono round her and said, “How on earth . .?” but he shook his head gently to reassure her and explained, “From Smirgel, of course. He has been in our pay for a long time.” It should not have surprised her, but it did. “Whose pay exactly?” she asked, and he replied, “I didn’t mean the Red Cross, silly, I meant the Egyptian army, so called. It’s an independent net. The British feel happier with their own old-fashioned methods and men like Quatrefages – whose field of vision is very limited. We work independently, though of course we share our labours with them when there is anything really important. But they never believe us – they don’t believe in Smirgel, for example.”

“Neither would I,” she said. “He is a real Nazi believer, he confessed as much to me and gave me the whole gospel. I would never trust him. Really not, not an inch.”

“He is a double operator, perhaps,” agreed her lover equably. “But we have had a long history together. I must tell you how we’ve saved his head more than once from Hitler’s impatience and Ribbentrop’s. Head for a head, so to speak.”

They rose and as they breakfasted he told her more in his quiet, smiling voice. “You see poor Smirgel in another light, but in fact the wretched fellow is quite astute, quite clever; he must be to have kept the ear of Ribbentrop. But he did not bargain for Hitler’s impatience to get to the bottom of the Templar heresy and all the mystery surrounding it. Not only that but the rumoured treasure which they buried somewhere and which crackpots like Galen try to unearth. Hitler views them as a heretical sect convicted of religious malpractice, and he wants to found an order of black chivalry – if I may coin a phrase – to take their place. Mad, of course, absolutely mad! But when he has nothing better to think about he gives Ribbentrop a shove, or his replacement, and the shove is duly communicated to Smirgel. Recently there was some talk of replacing Smirgel, but we managed to save his head by providing something on account, so to speak. Did you ever see the dried Crusader head which Hassad carries about in a scarlet hat-box container? You did? Well, we allowed Smirgel to discover this, based upon the confession of Quatrefages. Everyone was delighted. At last something tangible! Moreover we cooked a pedigree for it. It is supposed to be the prophesying head of Pompey which the Crusaders believed was imprisoned in the cannon ball which tops Pompey’s Pillar in Alexandria. Once in a while the thing is alleged to utter a prophecy, but in one’s sleep; one has to have it beside the bed. Do you know where it is now? Beside Hitler’s bed. He half-believes, is amused and intrigued, shows it to everyone. Who can say what a shrunken head knows?”

Who indeed? Alas, there was no way of planting ready made speeches in its mouth to influence the ideas of the monster; but for the time being Smirgel was being left relatively alone with his routine duties and was concentrating on the build-up and the dumping which was going on in the new command, herald of who knew what?

“Where can we meet at the earliest sheer possibility? What are you going to do today?”

She was going to look in on her flat and tidy it if need be, visit the office, and then perhaps try and locate Sutcliffe, to make belated contact and let him know that she was back. Had he heard about Aubrey coming?

“Indeed he has. He groaned and said, ‘It’s a hard life for those of us who live vicariously.’”

She said, “Rob Sutcliffe will have to pull his weight now and stop bothering so much about her”– she expressed this opinion in rather an offhand way. “His devotion is so exaggerated that it will soon seem suspect to us, Schwarz and me.”

“You must tell him.”

“I will.”

But despite these pious sentiments once more they fell asleep in each other’s arms, and if from time to time her mind cleared and she awoke it was to a dazed abstraction which heralded something like a new life – a new attitude to her life. She felt so strange! Everything had irremediably changed.

Yes, with all this she had suddenly, dramatically assumed herself, her full femininity – something which had remained always a sort of figment, a symbol which gave off no current. To be a woman in this sense it was not necessary to be a mother, or a wife, or a nun or a whore – all these documentary forms of living were quite secondary to the central state. The doctor in her had made a discovery of the first order! To achieve some understanding of the role of the female – why, it chimed with her art, it was implicit in the craft of her job. The female was the principle of renewal and repair in the cosmic sense, it was she who made things happen, made things happen, made things grow. She was the principle of all fertility even though she might be disguised in the trappings of Mrs. Jones. (He had been brutal with her once – his joy had over-brimmed into a possessive lust, and the pain he inflicted was harsh and hard to bear; but she welcomed it, as a martyr welcomes the burning pyre.) He had split her down the centre as if with an axe. “Turn again,” he had cried, and she submitted and turned, quite prepared to die in his arms – but the poetic figure of speech was now the relevant one, for she “died” in the Elizabethan sense, and her own wanton cry of delight rang out on the silence, expressing many things, notably the thought: “So I can love, after all!” though up to that moment she had never once considered herself incapable of loving. It was as if she had simply not known what the animal was. His face looked so tense, so withdrawn: she recognised his male weakness, his alarming precariousness of feeling, his absolute need for the support without which no advance was possible, no creation within his own scope. This realisation made her suddenly conscious of her own strength, as if she could now use a whole set of muscles which up to now had lingered on in disuse. She glimpsed the tantric left-hand path of which he was always talking, and which so much irritated her scientific mind. He had given her much more than his love, he had given her the full maturity of her gift, her medical skill. “O thank you, thank you!” But he made a vague hopeless gesture and groaned, saying, “I don’t know why the devil I am telling you all this gibberish – it will make you love me finally, and you’ll find all other men insipid for about ten years after I leave you, as I have to. Damn!” But the trick was done; she possessed the secret of her own soul now, and her generous kisses and smiling eyes told him that there was nothing to regret for either of them henceforward. The imp was out of the bottle.

A bell rang somewhere and she sat up. Good God! It was late afternoon! She had slept all day, and Affad lay beside her once more. How had he come in without waking her?

He woke from his deep trance-like sleep and rubbed his eyes, saying, “That means a new drum of paper for the machine. Smirgel has become increasingly talkative, he runs on and on. It makes you think of the agony of silence spies have to endure, for keeping a secret is a real effort, like wanting to pee during a march past. He can talk to nobody. Except me. He has become like a chatterbox wife. I keep trying to shut him up but to no avail.”

“I understand nothing of all this,” she said, and as he rose and hunted for a wrap in the bathroom he told her to follow him and see for herself what it was all about. They tiptoed down the cool corridor to what seemed like an outside lavatory – but was a radier solid-looking room with a steel door, which bore a sign proclaiming it a power point with dangerous wires. “Do not enter,” said the notice, and “do not touch”.

“That is just camouflage,” he said and opened the door with a small key to reveal a comfortable office-like room with a tickertape machine punctually extruding what appeared to be news items or stock reports. “It’s Smirgel,” said Affad with a chuckle. “He has become very alarmed and excited since the first attempt at landing. I am drowned in information.” He indicated the piles of striped yellow transcription paper which littered the floor and with a grimace said, “I hardly dare to go to sleep for fear that I will find myself strangling in the coils of this infernal ticker. At any rate he works for his money, Smirgel. Look!” The machine clicked steadily on, the paper lengthened. Affad opened a hatch and replaced some paper drums with new ones, passing them into the jaws of the rotor and securing them to ensure continuity. “Where does he do this?” she asked curiously, impressed by the element of risk incurred. Affad said: “In the so-called dangerous wards at Montfavet-les-Roses, separated from the half dozen or so madmen by a bead curtain and a frail door. He is scared stiff. But it’s the safest place. It was suggested by Dr. Jourdain, to whom we owe much. By the way, what sort of chap is he?”

“The doctor? Rather mannered, highly cultivated and very pro-English. He wears a college blazer – he studied at Edinburgh. Has a death-mask on his desk. I think he is secretly in love with Nancy Quiminal, though I never speak of it to her, nor has she mentioned it to me. But that is all I know!”

He sank into a chair and allowed the long paper streamer to pass through his fingers as he slowly read the progress report of the agent. “The interminable list of Jews deported – nearly forty thousand now, it’s hardly to be believed,” he said with sorrow. “Smirgel always sounds grimly approving – I suppose from what you say he could hardly feel otherwise.”

“It is sickening.”

“Yes. And doubly so, for we shall never hear the end of this calamitous blunder; the Jews will extract the last ounce of blood from our horror and repentance, they are masters of the squeeze. We will have to hang our heads in their presence for a century at least.”

“You don’t sound as if you like them very much.”

“I am from Alexandria, I live with them and know their problem to be insoluble – so brilliant and fragile they are, so conceited and afraid and contemptuous of us. After all, Constance, the Gentiles did not invent the ghetto – it’s they who wished to lock themselves up with their monomania and their pride and cosmic solipsism. The little I know about racial discrimination I learnt from them – once I had the temerity to want to marry an Orthodox Jewess in Cairo. I was offering a quite straightforward and honourable marriage. But the row it caused! Everybody, up to the Grand Rabbi, meddled in the affair, while the parents of the girl locked her away for safety in an asylum, pretending she was mentally afflicted. From which I was forced to kidnap her and force their hands, which I did. But it opened my eyes to the whole matter of race and religion – everything to do with monotheism, monolithic organisation, everything mono, which leads to this self-induced paranoia called Western Civilisation.… The Germans are simply following out the whole pattern in their usual gross fashion. It’s heart-rending, senseless, barbaric. But even the Jews are not helping themselves! Anyway, let’s hope we are in time to rescue at least half of them. Not to mention gypsies, tramps, jailbirds and ‘slaves’ of every persuasion. It isn’t only the Jews, you know, though of course they make the most noise as a majority.”