The High Place (24 page)

Grynes got up and went straight out to do so. He and Tabas had no conventional regard for night and day. They rested their bodies or exercised their souls wherever there was opportunity and
whenever there was need.

On the western edge of Kasr-el-Sittat was a long, low building which the colonists had constructed on a foundation of unknown age. It was divided into little rooms, floored and walled with
unfaced stone blocks, but comfortably matted and furnished. Here Grynes and Tabas had their quarters.

Anton was not in his room, but Phil showed no surprise. He repeated that Tabas was unsettled, and behaving just as in the last weeks at Cæsarea.

‘Do you know where he is?’ I asked.

‘Up at his altar, I expect.’

‘His altar?’ I exclaimed involuntarily, for I had always thought of it as Elisa’s—not that she was often there, but I had fixedly associated the topographical axis of
Kasr-el-Sittat with its spiritual axis.

‘As much his as anyone else’s, isn’t it?’ Phil answered. ‘And he uses it when he wants to be alone.’

While we talked in the guest bungalow it had been raining. The half-light of the winter morning grew through the washed and purified air, promising a gentle day in which the green growth would
be that of northern spring. A few doors opened in the houses below us, showing for an instant tarnished golden light as early risers, or, more probably, the many sleepless, proved to themselves
with eyes and nostrils that a night so reminiscent of their past was over.

On the grass below the altar, his head supported by the slant­ing drum of a column three-quarters in the turf, Tabas slept. His gaunt body was huddled under an old army greatcoat, the knees
drawn up like those of an excavated skeleton. Phil Grynes hung over him tenderly, and with a mother’s unnecessary gesture adjusted the coat so that it covered neither more nor less of the
sleeper; then he searched under his sweaters for any remains of a cigarette, lit the squashed half he found and sat still, watching the new moisture of the valley begin to live and sparkle in the
light from eastern clouds. Meanwhile I fidgeted in the back­ground, intent upon 10.30 as any suburban psychopath upon his train.

‘Thank you, Philip,’ said Anton, opening his eyes.

‘What for now?’ Grynes asked, smiling as if at some elaborate and unnecessary courtesy.

‘For watching over me while I slept.’

‘Been here five minutes, cock.’

‘Love has no minutes.’

Tabas got up and came straight towards me. I was quite still; yet he knew I was behind him.

‘You have forgotten your garden,’ he said. ‘But I cannot.’

I replied that I wished to God I could forget it.

‘No,’ Anton answered. ‘When we lose our peace we must cherish the memory of it. Remember happiness, for it may be that the object of this life is to teach us what to seek when
it is over.’

‘There was peace here, too.’

‘There was never peace here, Eric. There was only fear. That blood upon your clothes has changed nothing. Sit down and tell me.’

I told him, and how weary I was of the story! I found my words growing emptier and emptier of meaning. The facts and the politics were sordid and pointless, as if my own voice were that of some
insistent stranger boring me with details from a life that nowhere touched my own. Only when I had to explain the emotions of Elisa and Osterling, of Juan and myself, did my sentences have a
cracked ring of truth; and, even so, no more meaning than a cry of pain.

Phil Grynes listened with a deep frown on his wrinkled fore­head. His police service had so disillusioned him of the efficacy of action that he was ready to find in Tabas’ teaching a
spirit of negation that was not really there. He was furious with Juan Villaneda for using Anton. Wasn’t it possible for Anton to talk, he asked, without a lot of damned bloodthirsty
revolutionaries taking advantage of him?

‘No, Philip,’ Anton answered. ‘It is not possible. Nor should you judge a cause by the effect you can understand, for effect is in all time. That is why I tell you: do not seek
reasons for what you know to be right conduct. And if you do not know what is right conduct, you must ask and accept the answer.’

‘Well, I am asking, cock,’ Grynes protested too loudly.

‘Philip, you are asking what you already know.’

Phil Grynes turned to me with sudden confidence.

‘Look here!’ he said. ‘It’s not that I want to punish Villeneda or anything. All this may be as you say it is. But I’m not going to do anything against Mrs.
Cantemir or Mr. Osterling. I’m their guest—that ought to put it so that you’ll understand. Well, and it isn’t so easy as all that either. It’s just that my duty is to
the nearest neighbour, if you see what I mean.’

‘Anton!’ I appealed.

‘Suppose that I could work this machine,’ he asked, smiling, ‘would you try to tell me what is right for me?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then why do you expect me to tell Philip what is right for him?’

‘Because for him there shouldn’t be any doubt.’

‘Do you mean that there is more than one morality, Eric?’

I said that I didn’t mean that at all, and then hesitated and asked him to tell me what I did mean.

‘You mean that every man has his own field of action. The principle of conduct is one and unchanging. But the principle is applied by the conscience of man, and the conscience is limited
in vision. Do you believe in creatures of spirit, Eric?’

‘Not quite. But I do not see why all forms of life should necessarily be visible.’

‘If they exist, consider their conscience. The principle that they obey is your principle, but their world is not your world, and their time is not your time. Right conduct is absolute,
but relative to the observer, who may see evil as good and good as evil. Therefore only the spirit itself, in its own field of action, can be the judge of what is right conduct and what is not. So
I say to you that if Philip believes with his whole heart that he is doing right, you and I must be humble before him, for he is obeying the Purpose of God.’

It was full morning, and I was impatient. I said that humble could be damned, and if there were any purpose in all this lunacy, it was I who fulfilled it.

‘No, Eric,’ he answered. ‘Both of you fulfil it.’

‘But one of us must be right?’

‘Both of you are right.’

‘Then Elisa too may be right. If belief is your standard, she believes in herself more than any of us. And I am a fool to have wrecked her life and mine.’

‘You have not understood me, Eric,’ he said. ‘I tell you that when conscience is opposed to conscience, both fulfil the purpose of God. To Elisa also there is an opposite, for
whom she is wholly evil. Yet to That of which light and darkness are alike the servants, both she and her opponent may be right.’

I was too impatient to understand him, but now, as I repeat his words, the shadow of the sense falls upon me. He meant that he himself was the opponent of Elisa to whom she was wholly evil. Yet
neither then nor later had his opposition to her any appearance of deliberation. He hardly entered our too human battle.

At the time I despaired of any force to be measured against the Secretariat but Juan and his forty partisans. I found him at the power plant, and told him that Grynes had been too repelled by
bloodshed to obey us, and that Tabas had supported him.

Juan took it well. He was dead tired, and his eyes were brilliant with that fever of the spirit which surpasses the effect of rest, and quickens in any true leader his grasp of essentials and
his power of decision. He didn’t waste time in wondering what pressure of argument or physical force we could bring to bear on Grynes. He went straight to the point—a point which I had
not seen at all.

‘The hell of a saint, your Anton!’ he exclaimed ironically. ‘Well, if I’m to go his way, he must tell me what it is.’

3

As the morning wore on, it was plain that Juan’s first full day of control had ended in stalemate; and that was failure. From behind the window curtains of the bungalow Elisa and Osterling
must have seen that their patience was beginning to pay a divi­dend. Breakfast went in to them, and the empty tray came out. The guards moved uneasily, and began to look self-conscious. There
was already a tendency for groups of colonists to hang about on the turf of the hilltop; they were almost picketing the picket. I felt that it was no longer the authority of a moral chalk-line which
separated them from their leaders, but only a rumour of that weapon which had killed Gisorius.

At midday the car from Aleppo arrived and stopped at the far side of the ford. It brought the mail and Oliver Poss. The driver we could deal with. He returned immediately to Aleppo with the
outgoing mail, except that posted in the last twenty-four hours, unaware that there was anything wrong in the colony except a temporary flooding of the road. Poss, however, was more than a
practical problem; he was an emotional shock. He burst into the closed intensity of our thoughts, and dazed us. We had no room for any preoccupation but Kasr-el-Sittat and those conference tables
where Czoldy smiled and served.

It was folly to turn Poss back to Istanbul, with some story that he had been refused access to Elisa; moreover, it was certain that he would refuse to go. He was perfectly capable of sitting on
the river bank and smoking cigars until he had formed a party of his own from the passers-by.

The ford was now five feet deep in the centre. Juan sent down two horses for the transport of Poss, the stores and the mail. It was not enough for Oliver Poss merely to cross the ford. He rode
as far as the gate of Kasr-el-Sittat, where I was deputed to receive him, at a smart trot, his shoes and trousers tied round his neck. His legs were brown and hairy, and he looked massively at home
on a horse. In spite of his respectable and double-breasted upper half, I was reminded of one of those innumerable pictures of rustics, English or Italian, riding up from water.

‘My dear sir!’ he exclaimed, dismounting at the gate. ‘Had I known that I should find you here, I would have comported myself with more oriental dignity. Put it down, Amberson,
to the effect of a cold stream upon a soul oppressed and cushioned by too long a residence in
wagons-lit
.’

He turned to bow to a startled Slav who was staring at him, and to bellow a cheerful good day.

‘Amberson,’ he demanded, ‘where am I and what is this? My personal guess is that Elisa has at last and very properly put her­self in the hands of a psychiatrist. I observe
with pleasure that she continues to merit your devotion, and that her fellow patients look remarkably well.’

I led him into the garage, where he resumed his shoes and trousers. Meanwhile I explained that this was the headquarters of the syndicate and Elisa’s permanent home.

‘You astound me! Now why should Elisa—who is by nature the sort of gem that only a city can hold in its heart—why should she have chosen so delectable a spot? God’s
Wounds, my dear sir, had I brought with me a penny whistle, I would sit upon that hilltop and play these bloody bungalows back into the mud! What deviltry is Elisa up to here? Well, within a matter
of minutes no doubt I shall be in the presence and com­mitting myself to some intolerable complication. Therefore, at the risk of seeming abrupt, I will ask you whether you agree that I should
take over your business. That house of yours? That garden? And you do not seem to have slept?’

There was affection for me in his damned patronizing orotundities, but I could not respond. I felt physically overwhelmed by him, and dried and weary. Like some disinterested chief clerk, I told
him that the syndicate was in the midst of reorgani­zation and that the question of my business was not immediate. Then I took him to the guest bungalow, and fixed him up in the room opposite
my own.

I persuaded Juan that Poss had better be allowed to see Elisa, that only by an embarrassing show of force could we keep him away. Since she had never spoken to him of greater issues than the
supposed syndicate, I said, it was improbable that she would do so now, and therefore a meeting could do no harm. The point which really convinced him—for he was willingly ignorant of the
handling of money—was that Poss would be needed as Kasr-el-Sittat’s man of business whoever was in control. He may have known that not one of my arguments was sincere. I didn’t
care. What I wanted was to see Elisa, and the arrival of Poss gave me an excuse.

That patience which had been impressive when imagined from outside the bungalow was not so obvious within. The empty breakfast plates were bluff. I caught a glimpse of puddled food on a dish in
the kitchen. The clean fragrance of the rooms was overpowered by the heaped ash-trays which surrounded Oster­ling. Elisa was colourless as if she had been confined for weeks. When she saw us,
light and shade began to play again between mouth and temple. The forced repose of her face or its sudden living—I do not know which was harder to bear.

She searched me with her eyes and smile. Her greeting seemed ironically content, as if she had known that I should not be equal to this crisis, and that my best, in face of violence and
determination, would be too poor or too subtle a resistance.

‘This reminds me of our first meeting, Poss,’ she said. ‘How much has Eric told you?’

‘My dear Elisa,’ he answered, ‘since you know our friend as well as I do, you will agree with me that owing to his long residence in the Levant he is incapable of making a
clear state­ment on any subject whatever.’

Those were his words, and I must admit that so far as my relations with him were concerned they were just; otherwise, they are wholly untrue.

‘I have observed merely that a little Latin gentleman accom­panied us to your door,’ he went on,  ‘and informed some other Latin gentleman that we were to be let in
and out. I trust he was only your doctor or a disgruntled shareholder, but to one of my experience there is a faint smell of presidents’ palaces. Cavalry upon the tram lines. I’ll take
the Treasury and Archibaldo shall have the Police. Amberson, however, has preserved the discreet detachment of a United Nations observer in the hotel cocktail bar.’