The High Place (21 page)

‘What’s the trouble then?’

‘Well, look her—I’ll tell you. Once a policeman, always a policeman. And I’m ashamed of it.’

Little by little it came out that he’d noticed or seemed to notice the formation of small groups. There weren’t any street corners in the colony, he said, but if there had been,
he’d have put on a plain-clothes man to hang about them. And really, he supposed, there weren’t any more groups than before. It was just that somehow they looked careful and dispersed
more quickly.

‘I’ll be up here for a week or two, Phil,’ I said.

‘I’ll be glad of it, sir,’ he answered, wholly unconscious of that monosyllable of hierarchy. ‘I’m all for this voluntary association they talk about, but there are
times when a chap would like to know who’s the boss.’

My reception by the Secretariat was suave and natural. Elisa had the same severe and spirited graciousness that she always assumed for me at Kasr-el-Sittat, but it was plain that her
appar­ent spontaneity was costing her a deal of nervous determination. As soon as we were alone, she caught my hands, and cried:

‘Wait, Eric, wait!’ in a voice breaking under the pressure of all that she could not tell me. Her tired and brilliant eyes shone with excitement, as if she were promising to me and
to herself work and love upon her satanic island. She took the emotion in my face as approval of her own, compelling me to involun­tary, irremediable treachery.

On that first evening Osterling and Gisorius, rather than Elisa, played my hosts. Gisorius was restless as a tiger at feeding-time, and had developed a new habit of playing with a two-foot
length of stout twine while he talked. That damned piece of string held my eyes. I have no doubt that its movements between his fingers were calculated to put an added strain on the nerves of a
guilty man. I was trying to think what reaction he would expect from the innocent when Osterling removed the sinister rosary, and casually tied it round a bottle. He disliked avoidable
eccentricities.

The next day Osterling called for me at the guest bungalow and took me for a walk round the estate. His mood was very different from Elisa’s. For him waiting was no agony; it was rather an
opportunity to rest. He saw his life in terms of chap­ters, penny packets, a succession of units. It was a stoic attitude which enabled him to throw off his cares in the intervals, and to
recognize, as in another three days he did, the difference between an interval and an end.

His mind, however, was never off duty. Our talk hovered around Tabas and Grynes, and suddenly he remarked:

‘What a splendid way to plant a serpent in our little paradise, Amberson—just introducing him as stooge to a holy man!’

I remember that we were leaning on the wall of the pig pens at the time: the very picture, no doubt, of two country gentle­men enjoying the winter sunshine. Osterling’s friendly voice
invited me to share the joke, but I knew he was listening for the slightest note of strain in my reply.

‘I suppose Gisorius has made some enquiries,’ I replied.

‘Yes, of course. There’s a certain freemasonry among refugees, and the Jews will always answer a civil question. All that story of his about Cæsarea is perfectly true. Good
Lord—the queer creatures that you and Elisa get hold of! You’re an extraordinary pair. How is it that you never quarrel?’

‘Mutual curiosity, perhaps.’

‘Yet there seems to be a bit more reserve than usual. Don’t resent my mentioning it, Amberson. I know it’s an unpardonable intrusion. But I can’t have Elisa
upset.’

I saw now what he was after—to guess from my response whether or not Elisa had mentioned the Secretariat’s suspicions. What an accomplished diplomat he would have been in a sane
world! That I was a match for him at all I can only ascribe to my Syrian habit of considering words as a mere polite exercise and waiting patiently for the motive they concealed.

‘You’ve been in my position a dozen times in your life,’ I answered. ‘What with my own affairs and yours, I’m a very busy man. I can’t always make my
movements fit her con­venience.’

‘I sympathize,’ he said. ‘But in fact I’ve never been in your position. It’s a rare one. Would you be offended if I suggested that you have the responsibilities,
severely limited—the faintest possible parallel—of a prince consort? And may I add you have the tact for them?’

I was angry enough to have struck him. It wasn’t his fault. I am sure he never suspected the abandonment of my love for Elisa, nor the humility which that entailed. He couldn’t know
that his thought and his very phrase had been among my most private and cherished fantasies.

‘We wish you to join us at Kasr-el-Sittat,’ he went on. ‘Will you?’

I must have hesitated an instant in my reply, for I remember what seems an intolerable time while I stared at the whitewashed walls of the piggeries and tried to think myself back into the
summer. I was at the limit of my power as an actor. I could only carry on by taking a part that I had actually played, by answering as my bygone self would have answered.

‘Gladly. And what do you want me to do with my business?’

‘Elisa’s man Poss will take over from you. Oh, we shan’t expect from him your knowledge or devotion,’ he protested, seeing that this plan repelled me. ‘It’s
just that it would be con­venient for our finance if he had a bona fide Lebanese com­pany—and possibly for him, in this explosive world.’

I reminded him that they had not wanted Poss to know of the existence of Kasr-el-Sittat.

‘What after all is Kasr-el-Sittat, Amberson?’ he replied. ‘The headquarters of the syndicate which employs him as money­changer and cigar-merchant, with some rather odd
people in it like Tabas and our excellent roadmenders who you so naughtily describe as earnest. We’ll give the amœba a convinc­ing shape for him.’

I have never known so likeable a man with so subtle a brain. Not knowing whether I were innocent or guilty, he had ensured from then on I would be in his keeping. I was to be stripped of
everything I possessed—my garden, my house, my busi­ness. If I were as devoted to Kasr-el-Sittat as Elisa thought me, that wouldn’t distress me. If I were the unknown enemy, it put
me beyond all ties, all inconvenient enquiries, and made my removal very simple. He had covered the possibilities, and left himself free to take action when he wished.

We strolled through the home pastures, and back into the colony at the top of the hill, where the highest houses formed an irregular ring around two cedars, the fallen columns and the altar. It
was the beginning of the lunch hour, and a few of the colonists had gathered round Tabas under the northern tree.

‘Old Pop-eyes seems to be in form,’ said Osterling half-admiringly. ‘But I’m sorry his attitude is so Confucian. Not a hope of pre-lunch cocktails for the
multitude!’

His irreverence jarred, but perhaps was salutary. Those of us who took Tabas seriously were inclined to take him very seriously indeed. When I commit his words to writing, I be­come as
futile as a commentator. His eyes, his voice, his power to express a definite meaning by the use of our very indefinite human words—those were what counted, and still count in memory.

‘Who are the multitude?’ I asked.

Osterling raised his hand to his glasses—an invariable man­nerism of his when speaking to or looking at any number of people. I felt sure that the origin of this gesture was contempt;
he was lifting his spy-glass, like a Regency buck, to observe the goings-on of the vulgar. Even so, he gave his usual impres­sion of warmth. His smile and the movement of his hand brought him
nearer to his company.

‘One of the women is Lucia, an Italian who works in my office,’ he said, ‘and the other is Elisa’s chief accountant. There’s the chap in charge of tobacco-drying,
the electrician and two mechanics. And the man with the pony is our vine-dresser. It’s an odd thing, Amberson. There’s only one German among the lot, my wireless operator. Tabas acts on
the colony as a sort of catalyst. I hope a harmless catalyst. He separates the Medi­terranean element from the rest. Now why the devil should he appeal to the hard, limited sense of the Latin?
You would think that mist called to mist, but it doesn’t.’

‘Tabas is only mist to you because you’re a northerner your­self,’ I answered. ‘It needs hard sense to understand simplicity.’

The vine-dresser was pressing Tabas with questions; he couldn’t be described as baiting him, for he was obviously in­terested in the answers.

‘But what do you mean by God?’ I heard him insist, as he lounged gracefully with an elbow on the pony’s saddle.

‘You,’ Anton replied.

‘And my horse too?’

‘Your horse too. But he cannot know it.’

‘And after death what is the difference between us?’

‘I am not a fortune-teller,’ Tabas answered with a gentle smile.

‘Nor am I!’ the electrician exclaimed heartily. ‘But those of us who have no faith, what can we know?’

‘The Purpose of God,’ said Tabas, turning his head, and re­vealing those softly luminous eyes which might have had as large a pupil behind each sphere for looking inward.

‘How?’

‘By seeking for it in ourselves.’

Lucia, Osterling’s propaganda woman, asked if by the Pur­pose of God he meant Evolution, and Anton answered that, for her, he did.

‘Then I think you must admit there are too many purposes for us ever to find the one.’

She spoke with a quiet dignity, trying—as I afterwards saw—to clarify her mind, much as Juan Villaneda did when he took to the road in Syria and refreshed himself by contact with the
untutored anarchy of the Arab.

‘The Purpose of God appears to be the State,’ she went on. ‘The individual loathes it, yet it draws him with what I fear to be an evolutionary force. Which is the Purpose of
God, to re­sist or accept?’

‘Neither,’ he answered, ‘for acceptance preserves what is evil, and resistance creates a new evil. It is hard for any society of men to obey the Purpose of God, for God is not
all of us. He is each of us.’

Osterling liked that.

‘One could make out a very good case, Anton,’ he said, ‘for God being each of us, and the devil all of us.’

‘Do you believe it?’ Tabas asked, almost eagerly.

‘I give it you for what it’s worth,’ Osterling replied.

‘Then it is worth nothing.’

That was the only time in our acquaintance when I ever saw Osterling look embarrassed.

‘I think I understand you, Anton,’ Lucia said. ‘You mean that mankind can never be developed by political action, only through the moral standard of the individual. But I still
ask you—how do I know which of my many beliefs is the Purpose of God?’

‘If you do not know, ask and accept the answer. He who cannot believe the truth that is in him must believe a religion. Among them all he will find a truth that is his truth.’

‘And how about rendering unto Cæsar?’ I asked.

‘I do not know which things are God’s. Do you?’

‘Yes,’ I answered boldly. ‘Some of them.’

‘Then those you will never surrender.’

‘To any community?’ the electrician asked.

There was an odd silence. Every one of those listeners had his or her eyes fixed on Tabas. His face grew melancholy, for he saw that he and his principles were being used for some worldly
intrigue. I thought it probable that, to avoid the un­known conflict, he would not answer; but he broke the silence courageously.

‘When we do not know to what neighbour is our duty,’ he said, ‘there is nothing left but our duty towards God.’

Osterling shrugged his shoulders, and led me away down the hill. Even he could not entirely escape the influence of the catalyst.

‘I am uneasy, Amberson,’ he admitted. ‘Tabas is innocent of any intent, but to anyone who despises the State with real moral fervour he offers the only alternative policy to
our own. Rebellion of the individual. Religion rather than mass action. Thank God his religion isn’t intelligible! If it were, we should have to set a limit to our hospitality.’

I cannot remember the rest of that day. A sort of Sunday peace must have descended upon Kasr-el-Sittat, a period of apparent quiescence like the silence of the crowd before the starter’s
pistol. I went to bed early, and couldn’t sleep. Yet Juan Villaneda moved so quietly that he had passed through the cen­tral hall of my bungalow and was in my room before I heard him.

‘Don’t turn on the light,’ he said.

I asked him if I were being watched even at night, and he replied that of course I was and that he himself was in charge of the arrangements.

‘But we’ll take no chances, friend,’ he added. ‘For all I know, Gisorius may be watching me too. Tell me quickly. You were with Osterling all the morning. What is your
impression?’

‘That I am in no danger at all.’

‘I know that, man!’ he answered impatiently. ‘But has he noticed anything? Have you?’

I repeated what Osterling had said: that he had noticed a separation of the Mediterranean element from the rest, and that Tabas seemed to be acting as the unconscious catalyst which split the
colony.

‘He is three-quarters right,’ Juan exclaimed. ‘His damned Excellency is always three-quarters right, and the quarter he forgets is the most important. I told you these
colonists were sheep. Well, those who are least sheep, who know their own worth, they listen to Tabas. They are men and women whom it was safe for me to sound. Latins? Not necessarily. But sane and
crisp and of the people. Tabas is not in our world, yet through him I have formed my party.’

‘Grynes suspects something,’ I said.

‘That doesn’t surprise me. He is there and he keeps his eyes open. What about him? Is he yours if we want him?’

I declared fatuously that he was, entirely forgetting that Grynes was no Ashkar, and that he had lived a lifetime of the spirit since he left the Palestine Police.

‘What chance have we?’ I asked.

‘Less than I thought. There is no time. Czoldy’s best oppor­tunity must be in the last four days of November, and we are now at the 23rd. My only hope is to control all
communica­tions, and that is not easy. Does Elisa carry an arm?’

‘Good God, no!’