The High Place (27 page)

‘There are enough executioners,’ said Elisa. ‘And none of us here can doubt it.’

‘In the nature of man I am certain only of this: that he is willing to suffer and die for what he believes,’ Anton replied. ‘If it were not so, there would be no religion. If
it were not so, there would be no war. Are there a million in the world who believe your teaching that the State must be resisted? If there are, they have only to refuse obedience. Then those that
you have allowed or chosen to be your rulers will be made humble, and for the unborn the day shall come when men will be unwill­ing to govern, and therefore worthy to do so.’

I think it was the vine-dresser who shouted:

‘Down with War! Long live Civil Disobedience!’

I could willingly have shot the fool. Yet it was that cry, that hysterical simplification of Tabas, which defeated Elisa. Instead of ignoring the childish protest, she answered it.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘Or out of work?’

The sarcasm might have been effective if it had not stirred too many memories. Most of those men and women behind her had carried banners or shouted slogans in their time. No doubt, as she
expected, they looked back on their youthful enthusiasm with the contempt of an élite. Yet she had ignored Anton’s constant of human nature: its pride in suffering.

Juan Villaneda seized his opportunity. He cried:

‘Will you use the lives of others to destroy the state, or will you give your own?’

There wasn’t one of us who could fail to see that Tabas had offered a creed, that Juan had accepted it, and that it was a challenge to the sincerity of our ideals. Moreover, it was a
practical creed. The humiliation of the state by individuals fearless of the consequences to themselves was a policy exactly fitted to Kasr-el-Sittat and its organisations.

The next shout came from behind Elisa. It was a sign that Juan no longer represented a mere negative.

‘I ask what is the strength of our movement!’

He came straight out of the power plant across the no man’s land, followed by his supporters. They were no longer partisans; they were delegates.

‘I will answer your question, friend,’ he said. ‘The strength of our movement in the West is double the million for which Anton has asked. In the East it is every man who knows
a dozen others with whom he can talk freely.’

The more irreconcilable of the colonists closed immediately round Elisa—for it was, after all, only twenty minutes since Juan had tried to kill her. This defensive movement gave her the
chance to recreate the dividing line.

‘Leave them alone! she cried sharply, as if she were genuinely afraid that her own people would resort to force.

She turned away, leaving behind her only an odd dozen of the colonists, for whom the pleasure of argument with their opponents was irresistible. To that extent her authority was weakened. It
didn’t matter so long as Czoldy in far-off Paris was undisturbed.

The ruthlessness of Juan and his party, whatever its motives, was to most of the colonists an unforgivable outrage upon the peace of Kasr-el-Sittat; and Elisa’s tacit sentence of
excommunication effectively countered the attack. The rebels were limited to their positions. They could submit to public opinion or defeat themselves by impatience.

We had only gained the now useless allegiance of Phil Grynes. He showed himself a typical policeman by grasping his opportunity when it was too late. As the colonists eddied about us, he
whispered to me that he had changed his mind, that he had not realized before how fundamental was the difference between Elisa and Anton Tabas. I fear I was some­what short with him. His
hesitation had nearly cost Elisa’s life and mine. I told him that he should be a little surer of his damned conscience.

Tabas, who had overheard my raised voice, rebuked me with the same sternness that he used to Elisa.

‘Are you so firm a Christian, Eric, that you believe in the unchanging victory of God? I tell you that the race between good and evil is unending.’

I did not resent his severity, for I knew that I was wrong. I was far more annoyed at the lightheartedness of Oliver Poss.

‘My dear sir,’ he remarked—‘or should I say your rever­ence?—I yield to none in my respect for a good piece of fulmination. But if you’re going to bring
up angelic races let us not forget that the 1.30 at Amberson Park damn near ended in a photo-finish.’

2

Discussion there might be, but the bodies of Gisorius and the electrician still lay on the table in Osterling’s office, while Elisa’s indignant friends preserved the peace for them;
and Juan’s partisans in the power plant still kept a cigarette alight for the instant ignition of a fuse. There was no agreement to observe the
status quo
. It imposed itself. Elisa and
Osterling dared not attack the plant and the explosives store, the two points that Juan must hold at any cost. As for Juan, he had learned his lesson. He knew now that nothing but a massacre would
give him control of the wireless room.

The night came down over Kasr-el-Sittat, and the lights went on all over the colony. Juan could afford to be generous, for he still held our German wireless operator. The common-room and the
dining-hall lived again, but like an ant-heap with the top cut off lived with an unnatural activity.

We had all forgotten that we inhabited any other country than Kasr-el-Sittat, for to us it was a country in itself. Even I, during those last thirty-six hours, had become a typical
Euro­pean, occupying myself so intensely with a closed circle that I forgot the existence of the natives. Yet the local labourers of Kasr-el-Sittat were all round the colony in their huts and
villages, and they had ears and tongues; being Syrian, they also had plenty of imagination. The story as Ashkar heard it must have surpassed the very wildest of the rumours that broke out from
Kasr-el-Sittat in the days of God and his wives.

After midnight, when the colony had settled into a hill silence, I awoke suddenly from a few hours of exhausted sleep. Some hunted part of me must have been listening for any unfamiliar noise.
It was the splashing of horses through the dis­tant ford that I had heard, and as I opened my eyes and listened I heard a volley of curses when Ashkar discovered that the water was deeper than
he had any right to expect. I put on my coat and shoes—which were all I had taken off—and went out into the hall. Poss was sitting at the table with a case of papers open in front of
him, engaged on the accounts of his complex trafficking. He yawned generously and said that he was sitting up in case Osterling again had nothing to strike matches on. I was surprised and grateful.
I told him that he could now confidently go to bed as the police had arrived. His immediate response was to lock up his papers with a speed and neatness born of long experience.

At Kasr-el-Sittat there was only a night breeze, but in the upper air convoys of clouds rolled and wallowed from sea to desert past the station of the half moon. In an interval of light I saw
Ashkar, a sergeant and six troopers halted near the gate, and obviously puzzled by the lack of any disturbance. A few colonists stood by in the shadows. They were being evasive as any villagers.
One of them, who actually taught at the colony’s language courses, pretended that he didn’t understand Ashkar’s excellent French. They were, of course, on most delicate ground.
They had never before dealt with, or even seen the civil power of the land.

Ashkar praised God for the beholding of me, and entirely forgot his proper calm—chiefly, I think, because he had put on his best boots and breeches to impress the Europeans of
Kasr-el-Sittat, and was suffering from all the annoyance of a poor man at getting them soaked in the ford.

‘What is the truth of all this foolishness?’ he exploded. ‘A battle last night? Guns, bombs and parachutes? Or is it all be­cause some father of forty thousand whores chose
the middle of the night to kill a pig?’

‘God curse the father of him!’ I echoed piously, playing for time.

‘And you? What are you doing here? Come—tell me all! And it shall go no further.’

Then I remembered that I had let him go from our last meet­ing still under the impression that I was some sort of agent of the British Government.

‘There are two men dead,’ I answered, ‘and you must do your duty.’

‘Murdered?’

‘That is for you to judge. I am only a visitor.’

He took the hint.

‘Then I will not come to you till I must. But tell me this. How am I to proceed?’

‘As you would in a Christian village.’

‘Who is the headman?’

‘A woman. Elisa Cantemir. They will have told her of your arrival, and she will come to you here.’

Then I saw what I must do. The outline of the scheme and of its consequences was plain; and as I thought of those conse­quences and shuddered away from them, the details too pre­sented
themselves to my unwilling mind. I and I alone could ensure our peaceful possession of the wireless room on con­dition that I no longer kept up my weak pretence of neutrality—which Juan
and even Osterling respected for Elisa’s sake—and struck at her boldly and openly.

There is no hope that I can ever forgive myself, and least of all for the words that I now said. They have been said too often of Elisa before, and I put myself deliberately in the class of
those who had uttered them.

‘Hold her for interrogation till dawn.’

Deliberately. It was conscious abandonment for ever of my happiness and self-respect. My life, when I was blindly inspired to give it, was a far easier surrender, and I understood at last
Elisa’s wisdom and even kindliness in demanding that I should die for her. But she and Tabas, continually holding and with­holding their spiritual purposes were both too complex for me.
In some obscure way, clothing no doubt my reluctance in a convenient mysticism, I saw myself as representing a humanity that had rejected my blood sacrifice and cried out to me to perform my simple
duty.

‘Get the man Osterling,’ I told Ashkar, ‘and keep him with Cantemir. You will also have to detain and question Juan Villaneda, but do it this way. Send your sergeant to the
office’—and I explained to him where it was—‘to clear out the public and make an examination of the bodies. When I come with Juan Villaneda and another Englishman, tell him
to arrest the lot of us and put us for safe keeping in the inner room which I will show him. He should not finish his job, or let us out till daylight. And do not say you have seen me.’

Ashkar hesitated, more to memorize my advice than to question it—for what I asked was a reasonable routine—and then agreed. I vanished into the shadows of the garage and strode up
the hill. Between the houses I saw a flicker of white as Elisa went down to the destruction of her work and soul.

Juan’s people let me into the power plant unwillingly, for he was asleep. He sat up, swaying his body in time with the thump of the Diesel, as if the influence of that industrial lullaby
had not yet ceased to control his dreams. He did not hide his weari­ness and impatience, evidently considering that I had come with some too subtle message or proposal, which, at the moment,
would be beyond his power to analyse and answer. When I told him that Grynes was now with us, he cursed both me and him.

I didn’t stop to explain my behaviour. It wasn’t worth the trouble; nor, since his attempt on Elisa, did I care any longer what he thought of me. He was not a friend; he was a
necessary ally. I reported Ashkar’s arrival and what I intended to do. I must have had an air of assurance that was decisive. He pro­duced without question all the code-books and copies
of mes­sages that he had taken from Osterling’s office.

‘Elisa is not a fool, friend,’ he said. ‘She will know after this that it was you.’

Was he testing me? Or was his admiration of her so pro­found that, like Osterling, he could not strike without consider­ing the effect on her?

I answered shortly that of course she would know. He understood, and stretched out a hand which I avoided. For a good revolutionary he was too swift to recognize pain.

‘Have you decided what you want to say to Czoldy?’ I asked him.

He replied that he had, but wished me to correct his English. The primary code was from English into numerals.

His draft message was unconvincing, a lot of details about a change of policy which Osterling might conceivably have written—we had sone copies of his directives—but which were
utterly unlike the incisive style of Elisa or Gisorius. They, I felt sure, would have stuck to facts in any crisis, and trusted to Czoldy to take action on them.

‘Who will decypher at the other end?’ I asked.

‘Normally the Paris leader. But we can make Czoldy himself decypher.’

There was a certain mathematical combination which the Secretariat used for communications between themselves. If we headed our message URGENT AND PERSONAL FOR SIX—which was Czoldy’s
number—and then switched to the pri­vate code, the message could not be read in the Paris head­quarters and would be delivered to him personally.

The list of numbers and names was the only document which Juan did not offer to show me, nor had I any desire to see it.

We agreed at last on this:

If it entered Czoldy’s head that the personal code was com­promised, the mention of Coriolanos and the name of Fitz­Ernest (which was not in the code-book and had
to be spelt out) should carry conviction. Not even Juan, and certainly not the leaders of the party abroad knew anything of those cigars.

Juan, indeed, objected to my message on the grounds that the whole affair of the Coriolanos was only intelligent conjecture and that I might be wrong. I snapped at him that if wrong I were, we
could all thank God and go home to bed.

We found Phil Grynes with Tabas. Both of them were awake. The room gave an impression of peace as if they had sat together contentedly in a long silence. I asked Grynes again if he had any
objection to transmitting whatever we gave him, for I did not want to be let down at the last minute. He prom­ised that he would, and added apologetically to Tabas that he supposed action was a
necessary illusion.