The Lighthearted Quest (19 page)

“I suppose they are rather anti the new Sultan, then?” she asked. “I mean, he's like a schismatic Pope, isn't he?”

“You are astonishingly well-informed”—he bent his bright lizard's eyes curiously onto Julia's lovely blank face. “Yes—well—yes and no. The late Pope, as you so amusingly regard him, presented great difficulties to the Administration; but the installation of the schismatic one has presented even greater. And in spite of their strong religious leanings not all the Moulays—for I should explain that these leaders and many others besides, being descendants of the Prophet, are entitled to be called Moulay This-or-That—are ‘anti': amusing transatlantic word, but how briefly expressive! Where was I?” Mr. St John asked, suddenly lost in his own parentheses.

“You'd got to where not all the Moulays were anti-something, but you didn't say what—you got held up on the word anti,” said Julia, amused.

“Ah—yes—thank you. Well, by no means all of them are ‘anti', or against the French Administration, since it has brought such undoubted benefits to Morocco: peace, stability, order, wealth; progress in agriculture, and in the development of natural resources such as oil and minerals—all things unknown here for two thousand years; moreover things which the Arabs and Berbers, delightful and splendid though they may be as individuals, are congenitally incapable of creating for themselves. And these men, wiser and more
forward-looking than most of their compatriots, have tried to use their influence, both religious and political, to achieve co-operation with the French régime. Since the régime has installed a schismatic Sultan, or Pope, they have supported him too.”

“That sounds very sensible to me; fine, in fact,” quoth Julia.

“It
is
fine, it
is
sensible,” said Mr. St John. “But what is the lamentable result? Do you read the papers, here? If so you will have seen that the Moulay X was murdered in Casablanca last week.”

“No, I hadn't seen it. Good gracious, that must be since I was there! And everyone thought it was getting so quiet.”

“ ‘Everyone' was wrong. This Moulay X was an excellent man, learned, wise and sufficiently statesman-like to realise that the best thing for Morocco, whatever mistakes the French may have made, was a long continuance of the Protectorate; and he threw all his weight into that end of the scale. But that sufficed for him to be branded as a quisling, and all he got for his pains was a bullet.”

“Fired by whom?”

“A nationalist—or more probably a common assassin hired by the extreme nationalists—who are neither learned, nor wise,
nor
statesman-like,” said Mr. St John, an astonishing bitterness suddenly infusing his clipped delicate accents. “So-called patriots!” he said angrily, tapping sharply with his stick against the corner of a house. “Oh,” he said, with a sudden change of tone—“We have passed it. I am sorry.”

“Passed what?”

“Marshal Lyautey's house. Would you like to see it?” He looked backwards as he spoke.

“Not if it means going down that hill again,” said Julia firmly. “Another day, perhaps.” They appeared to have reached the top of Mount Everest at last, and had turned into a fairly level street whose surface was, thank goodness, sand and not cobbles.

“Very well—we will go on to the museum—it is quite close by.”

“Look, Mr. St John, couldn't we—I—go to the museum some other time? I'd far sooner go on hearing about the French and the Nationalists than look at the finest museum in the world, if there is any place, besides Bathyadis' shop, in the whole of Fez where one can
sit,”
said Julia.

He was full of compunction.

“Of course—you are tired, and I am thoughtless! There is a charming garden attached to the museum; we can sit there.” And there in a few minutes they did sit, on the kerb of a fountain in the sun, among beds full of bright flowers, with exotic trees growing darkly overhead against the blue African sky.

“That's
lovely,”
said Julia, stretching her feet out in front of her luxuriously. “Heaven fountain; heaven garden. Now please, would you tell me what mistakes, exactly, the French have made? You said just now that Moulay What-Not wanted to play in with the French, in spite of their mistakes. I thought from what I saw in Casa that they had done a lot for this country—but of course I don't know anything yet.”

“What did you see in Casablanca?” Mr. St John asked—his stress on the full word was a minute rebuke, Julia felt.

“Oh, all those hospitals—“ she described her morning with Ali.

“Yes, the French have done that: created wonderful social services in the larger towns. And they are struggling to educate the Moors to a point where they are fit for self-government, and to create a competent indigenous bureaucracy; have you seen the great college that they have built at Rabat, devoted entirely to courses in political administration?”

No, Julia had not yet been to Rabat.

“Well, you will see it. But—“ the old gentleman paused, and emitted another of those hissing sighs. “Their mistakes—how difficult they are to analyse! Intellectual mistakes, spiritual
mistakes, emotional mistakes—all intangible, but how appallingly potent and dangerous intangibles can be! That is what the modern world so fatally tends to forget, obsessed as it is by material and economic progress. Spiritual values?—idealistic rubbish! But they are the ultimate ones, even in things political.” He darted a diamond-bright lizard's eye onto Julia, seated beside him on the fountain's rim, her face turned up lovingly to the sun with closed eyelids, her thick tawny lashes resting on her apricot-coloured cheeks. “This really interests you?” he enquired a little sharply.

“Yes. That's why I asked,” said Julia, without opening her eyes. Mr. St John chuckled—cool himself, the coolness of this young woman pleased him. He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket, ruffled the pages, and said—

“Then I will read you a prophecy about the French mistakes in North Africa—made by one of the two men who loved it most, and understood it best. If you care, that is, to listen.”

“I'm listening,” said Julia, still without opening her eyes; and Mr. St John proceeded to read.

“ ‘If France fulfils her duty, if she behaves towards her peoples as mother and not exploiter, doing to others what she would wish done to her, she will have an admirable Empire. If she does not, the mass of the population will necessarily remain alien and aloof, without attachment to us, different from us in everything; it will be influenced only by the local aristocracy. This aristocracy, composed of the middle class, the small chiefs, and the marabouts, will study in our schools, but without acquiring there any affection for us; from their schooling, owing to the ease of communications, will arise the idea of a patriotic union between all the lettered, educated, or distinguished people of the Barbary countries, from Fez to Tunis, all with a single aspiration—that of throwing us out.' “

The words rang, somehow, vaguely familiar in Julia's ears, but she could not place them at once.

“Goodness, that's accurate enough as a prophecy,” she said. “It's exactly what
is
happening. Who wrote it?”

“It was written in the year 1911, please remark,” said Mr. St John.

“Yes, but who by? Oh, I believe I know—was it de Foucauld?”

“You surprise me more and more! Yes, it was. Do you study him?”

“Well, I read that Fremantle book—so good, I thought—and the French life—not so good, wouldn't you say? But it was a long time ago, and I had rather forgotten. Good Heavens!” said Julia reflectively—“he
was
a prophet. But then he would be.”

“Please note what he says about the ‘ease of communications' at that time,” said Mr. St John. “In 1911 there was no airmail, spinning a deplorably rapid web of postal deliveries all over North Africa—still less was there the even more lamentable diffusion of ideas by the wireless. Today every small town in Morocco can, and does, listen to false, vain, and utterly subversive broadcasts in Arabic from Cairo radio.”

“Do they do much harm?”

“Infinite! It is largely, mainly, Egypt's fault that the situation here has got so completely out of hand. Egypt!” said Mr. St John, putting a serpent's hiss of contempt into the word. “Weak, effete; futile in armed conflict—look at her ignominious performance in the war with Israel!—and yet this vaulting ambition.
She
will lead the Arab world. The whole Egyptian army is not worth one corps of Moroccan tribesmen! But because she has the technical capacity to disseminate these ideas, she is a disruptive force throughout North Africa.”

“Yes, I always gathered that the Gyppos were pretty wet,” said Julia, still reflectively. “Some older friends of mine were there during the war, and they took a dim view of them, I must admit. But you still haven't told me what the French mistakes were,” she persisted. “Did de Foucauld prophesy them too?”

“He indicated what would have to be done to avoid them—and it has not been done. This,” said Mr. St John, turning to his little notebook again, “was written in 1915,”—and once more he read.

“ ‘We French have in Africa two essential duties to perform. The first is the administration and civilisation of North-west Africa—Algeria, Morocco, Tunis, the Sahara are united for the first time in history, and form a single block. Our second duty is evangelisation—and we do, we might as well say, absolutely nothing about it. The White Fathers are fifty-six in all North Africa! . . . Moreover I do not know anyone, colonising farmer, officer, or missionary, who knows the indigenous population sufficiently well.' There you have it—the ‘not knowing the people sufficiently well' has all along been one of the major French mistakes,” said Mr. St John sadly.

“Could the Moslems have been evangelised? I thought it was next to impossible. Even Fr. de Foucauld never baptised a convert, did he?”

“No—and perhaps evagelisation, in his terms, was impossible. But they could have been loved and understood as he loved and understood them. His influence was incalculable—the influence of the Christian spirit; that, in spite of all the great good that the French have done, has been lacking, and that alone might have prevented what he foresaw so terribly clearly. Hear him again—how wise he was!

“ ‘My thought is, that if the Moslems of our colonial Empire do not gently, little by little, become converted, a nationalist movement analogous to that in Turkey will arise; an intellectual élite will be formed in the big cities, taught
à la française
without having either French hearts or minds, an élite which will have lost its own Islamic faith, but which will keep the label in order to influence the masses. . . . Nationalist sentiments will be exalted by this élite, which when it finds an opportunity (such as would be provided by difficulties threatening France from without or from within) will use
Islam as a lever to rouse the ignorant multitudes, and will try to create an independent African Moslem Empire.' “

“Goodness, what price Isaiah now? That
is
today, to a hair!” said Julia.

“Yes, it is. I give the French two more years here, at the outside.”

“No!” Julia was shocked. Little as she yet knew of Morocco at first hand, the idea of the French leaving, or being driven out, and so soon, put coldly like that, appalled her. “Do you really think that, after all they've done?”

“I do indeed.” Mr. St John sighed again, loudly, elegiacally. “Alas, alas!”

That was on a Tuesday. Julia would rather have waited longer before going to see Bathyadis again, but Steve Keller had said that he was coming up on Thursday, and if he arrived in time she thought they had better go to Volubilis and check on the
huilerie
for Mme La Besse at once; then she would have another day in which to tackle Mr. St John about Colin—always supposing that she got no satisfaction, or not as much as she needed, from Bathyadis. After which, unless one or the other could put her in the way of finding her cousin at once she would return to Tangier. Of course if either of them told her where to reach him she would throw everything aside and go; but Julia was getting rather dubious about all these clues and contacts which seemed to lead nowhere, and modest as it was, her little French hotel in Fez was a good deal more expensive than the Espagnola—moreover in Fez she wasn't earning.

The following morning, accordingly, she laid on Abdul, the handsome voluble Arab guide whom Mr. St John had so unceremoniously waved aside the day before, and told him to take her to Bathyadis. Abdul like all Arab guides had ideas of his own, and began by leading her to all sorts of irrelevant sights; Julia in her most
cassant
tones told him that M. Saint Jonne had already taken her through the street of the silks
and the street of the spices, and would he please take her directly to the
magasin
of M. Bathyadis. All the same she inhaled with intense pleasure the varied, heavy, penetrating odours which filled the air in the
souk
of the spices; she longed to know what all the different-coloured grains and powders, spread out in shallow oval baskets, were, and sniffed their varied aromas as she passed through.

Bathyadis greeted her with a most disarming appearance of warmth, and again sent his youth hastening to fetch mint tea. Julia told Abdul to wait outside, but the guide interpreted this instruction rather liberally, hanging about the opening of the shop while Julia successfully negotiated the purchase of the delicious little velvet trunk, or coffer, which she had seen the previous day for the equivalent of thirty-seven-and-sixpence. She held it on her knees, gloating over it, as she turned to her real business. A friend had told her, she said, that Mr. Bathyadis might be willing to help her with some information—no, not M. Saint Jonne, though no doubt he would say the same, she added, as a piece of corroborative detail—this was another friend in Tangier. She lowered her voice as she saw that Abdul had now come right into the shop and was hovering within earshot—“Remain outside,” she told him curtly. Abdul withdrew. The matter was confidential, Julia explained, and then said quite flatly that she had come from England to make contact with a young Englishman called Monro, who happened to be her cousin; she had reason to believe that he had been, or was, in Fez, and in touch with Mr. Bathyadis.