When the Going Was Good Page 4

  It was while he was doing this that a fight began. It raged chiefly round the exit, which was immediately below our seats. The heads of the combatants were on a level with our feet, so that we were in a wholly advantageous position to see everything without serious danger. It was difficult to realize quite what was happening; more and more of the audience joined in. The Negro got up from his board of knives, feeling thoroughly neglected and slighted, and began addressing the crowd, slapping his bare chest and calling their attention to the tortures he was suffering for them. The man on my right, a grave Egyptian with a knowledge of English, with whom I had some conversation, suddenly stood up, and leaning across all three of us struck down with his umbrella a resounding blow on the top of one of the fighting heads; then he sat down again with unruffled gravity and devoted himself to his hubble-bubble.

  ‘What is the fight about -’ I asked him.

  ‘Fight?’ he said. ‘Who has been fighting? I saw no fight.’

  ‘There.’ I pointed to the seething riot in the doorway which seemed to threaten the collapse of the entire tent.

  ‘Oh, that!’ he said. ‘Forgive me, I thought you said “fight”. That is only the police.’

  And sure enough, when the crowd eventually parted some minutes later, there emerged from its depths two uncontrollably angry police constables whom the onlookers had been attempting to separate. They were ejected at last to settle their quarrel outside; the crowd began sorting out and dusting their fallen fezes; everything became quiet again, and the big Negro resumed his self-lacerations in an appreciative calm.

  Various forms of acrobatics followed in which the little French girl displayed great intrepidity and style. It was in full swing when we left, and apparently continued for hours nightly until the last comer felt he had had his money’s worth. One day after this we saw the French child in the town, seated at a table in the confectioner’s with her manager, eating a great many chocolate éclairs with a wan and emotionless face.

  During Bajiram, the railway sold return tickets to Cairo at half price, so the solicitor and I went up for a night in a very comfortable Pullman carriage.

  We arrived in the late afternoon and went to look for an hotel. All the hotels in Egypt are bad, but they excuse themselves upon two contrary principles. Some maintain, legitimately, that it does not really matter how bad they are if they are cheap enough; the others, that it does not really matter how bad they are if they are expensive enough. Both classes do pretty well. We sought out one of the former, a large, old-fashioned establishment under Greek management in the Midan el-Khaznedar, called the Hotel Bristol et du Nil, where rooms even in the high season are only 80 piastres a night. My room had three double beds in it under high canopies of dusty mosquito netting, and two derelict rocking chairs. The windows opened on a tram terminus. None of the servants spoke a word of any European language, but this was a negligible defect since they never answered the bell.

  Dennis – as it would be more convenient to name my companion – had been to Cairo before and was anxious to show me the sights, particularly, of course, those of the ‘red light district’.

  The whole quarter was brilliantly illuminated in honour of the holiday. Awnings of brightly coloured cotton, printed to imitate carpets, were hung from window to window across the streets. Rows of men and women sat on chairs outside the houses watching the dense crowds who sauntered up and down. Many small cafés were occupied by men drinking coffee, smoking, and playing chess. This district, in addition to its disreputable trade, is the centre of a vivid social life; men were dancing deliberate and rather ungainly folk dances in some of the cafés. There was plenty of music on all sides. Except for a picket of military police, we saw no Europeans; nobody stared at us or embarrassed us in any way, but we felt ourselves out of place in this intimate and jolly atmosphere, like gate-crashers intruding on a schoolroom birthday party. We were just about to go when Dennis met an acquaintance-an Egyptian electrical engineer who had been in the ship with him coming out. He shook us both warmly by the hand and introduced the friend who was with him; they linked their arms with ours and all four of us paraded the narrow street in this way, chatting amicably. The engineer, who had been trained in London for some important post connected with telephones, was very anxious that we should form a good impression of his town, and was alternately boastful and apologetic. Did we find it very dirty? We must not think of them as ignorant people; it was a pity it was a holiday; if we had come at any other time he could have shown us things people never dreamed about in London; did we love a lot of girls in London? He did. He showed us a pocket-book stuffed with photographs of them; weren’t they peaches? But we must not think Egyptian girls were ugly. Many had skins as fair as our own; if it had not been a holiday, he could have shown us some beauties.

  He seemed a popular young man. Friends greeted him on all sides and he introduced us to them. They all shook hands and offered us cigarettes. As none of them spoke any English these encounters were brief. Finally he asked us if we would like some coffee, and took us into one of the houses.

  ‘This is not so dear as the others,’ he explained, ‘some of them are terrible what they charge. Just like your London.’

  It was called the High Life House, the name being painted up in English and Arabic characters on the door. We climbed a great many stairs and came into a small room where three very old men were playing on oddly shaped stringed instruments. A number of handsomely dressed Arabs sat round the walls munching nuts. They were mostly small landed proprietors, our host explained, up from the country for the festival. He ordered us coffee, nuts, and cigarettes and gave half a piastre to the band. There were two women in the room, a vastly fat white creature of indistinguishable race, and a gorgeous young Sudanese. Would we like to see one of the ladies dance, he asked. We said we would, and suggested the Negress. He was puzzled and shocked at our choice. ‘She has such a dark skin,’ he said.

  ‘We think she is the prettier,’ we said.

  Courtesy overcame his scruples. After all, we were guests. He ordered the Negress to dance. She got up and looked for some castanets without glancing in our direction, moving very slowly. She cannot have been more than seventeen. She wore a very short, backless, red dance dress with bare legs and feet, and numerous gold bracelets round her ankles and wrists. These were quite genuine, our host assured us. They always put all their savings into gold ornaments. She found her castanets and began dancing in an infinitely bored way but with superb grace. The more inflammatory her movements became, the more dreamy and detached her expression. There was no suggestion of jazz about her art – merely a rhythmic, sinuous lapsing from pose to pose, a leisurely twisting and vibrating of limbs and body. She danced for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, while our host spat nutshells contemptuously round her feet; then she took up a tambourine and collected money, giving a faintly discernible nod at each donation.

  ‘On no account give her more than half a piastre,’ said our host.

  I had nothing smaller than a 5-piastre piece, so I put that into her collection, but she received it with unmoved indifference. She went out to conceal her winnings and then sat down again, and, taking a handful of nuts, began munching and spitting, her eyes half closed and her head supported on her fist.

  Our host was clearly finding us something of an encumbrance by now, so after prolonged exchanges of courtesy and good fellowship we left him for the European quarter. Here we picked up a taxi and told him to drive us to a night club. He took us to one called Peroquet, which was full of young men in white ties throwing paper streamers about. This was not quite what we were looking for, so we drove on right out of the town and across the river to Gizeh. The place of entertainment here was called Fantasio, and there was a finely liveried commissionaire outside. A number of slot machines in the vestibule, however, removed any apprehensions about its smartness. The tables were divided into pens by low wooden partitions; about three-quarters of them were empty. On a stage at the end of
the hall a young Egyptian was singing what sounded like a liturgical chant in a doleful tenor. With brief pauses, this performance continued as long as we were there. There was a magnificent-looking old sheik in one of the boxes, incapably drunk.

  After half an hour of the Fantasio even Dennis’s enthusiasm for night life became milder, so we engaged an open horse-carriage and drove back under the stars to the Bristol and Nile.

  Shortly before Easter the doctors pronounced Juliet fit to move, so we packed up and left Port Said for Cairo. Before going we made our adieux to the various people who had befriended us. This was no modern, informal leave-taking, but a very solemn progression from house to house with little packs of calling cards marked ‘p.p.c’ in the corner. I had heard scathing comments from time to time at Port Said dinner-parties on people who neglected these polite observances.

  The journey was unremarkable except to Juliet, who was not used to the ways of Egyptian porters. These throw themselves upon one’s baggage like Westminster schoolboys on their Shrove Tuesday pancake, with this difference, that their aim is to carry away as small a piece as possible; the best fighter struggles out happily with a bundle of newspapers, a rug, an air-cushion, or a small attaché case; the less fortunate share the trunks and suitcases. In this way one’s luggage is shared between six or seven men, all of whom clamorously demand tips when they have finally got it into the train or taxi. Juliet was shocked to see her husband and myself defending our possessions from attack with umbrella and walking-stick; when the first onslaught was thus checked and our assailants realized that we had not newly disembarked, we were able to apportion it between two of them and proceed on our way with dignity.

  We had booked rooms at Mena House on the grounds that desert air and a certain degree of luxury were essential to Juliet’s recovery. The road out to it is a great place for motor-speeding, and there is usually a racing car or so piled up at the side of the road any time one goes along, for Egyptians, particularly the wealthier ones, are reckless with machinery. We passed two on our way out with Juliet, one about two hundred yards from the road in a field of cucumbers, with two fellahin eyeing it distrustfully. Trams run all the way out to the pyramids, crowded and slow and very little used by Europeans or Americans. At the tram terminus there are a mob of dragomans, a great number of camels and mules for hire, a Greek-owned café, a picture-postcard shop, a photographic shop, a curiosity shop specializing in scarabs, and Mena House. This is a large building in pseudo-Oriental style, standing in a vast and lovely garden. The pyramids were a quarter of a mile away, impressive by sheer bulk and reputation; it felt odd to be living at such close quarters with anything quite so famous – it was like having the Prince of Wales at the next table in a restaurant; one kept pretending not to notice, while all the time glancing furtively to see if they were still there. The gardens were grossly luxuriant, a mass of harsh greens and violets. Round the house they were studded with beds, packed tight with brilliantly coloured flowers, like Victorian paper-weights, while behind and beyond were long walks bordered by gutters of running water, among orchards and flowering trees heavy with almost overpowering scent; there were high cactus hedges and a little octagonal aviary, and innumerable white-robed gardeners, who stood up from their work and bowed and presented buttonholes when a visitor passed them.

  There was plenty of life at Mena, particularly at the week-ends. The residents were mostly elderly and tranquil, but for luncheon and tea all kinds of people appeared. Huge personally conducted luxury tours of Americans and northern Englishmen, Australians in jodphurs with topees and fly-whisks, very smart Egyptian officers with vividly painted motor cars and astonishing courtesans – one in a bright green picture frock led a pet monkey on a gold chain; it wore a jewelled bracelet round its neck and fleaed its rump on the terrace while she had her tea. On Easter Monday they had what they called a gymkhana, which meant that all the prices were raised for that afternoon. Apart from this it was not really a success. There was a gentlemen’s camel race which was very easily won by an English sergeant who knew how to ride, and a ladies’ camel race for which there were no competitors, and a ladies’ donkey race won by a noisy English girl of seventeen, and a gentlemen’s donkey race for which there were no competitors, and an Arabs’ camel race the result of which had clearly been arranged beforehand, and an Arabs’ donkey race which ended in a sharp altercation and the exchange of blows. There was an English tourist who tried to make a book; he stood on a chair and was very facetious, but gave such short odds that there were no takers. There was a lady of rank staying in the hotel who gave away the prizes – money to the camel- and donkey-boys and hideous works of Egyptian art to the Europeans. On another evening there was a ball, but that too was ill attended, as it happened to coincide with a reception at the Residency, and no one was anxious to advertise the fact that he had not been invited there.

  Geoffrey’s and my chief recreations were swimming and camel-riding. We used to ride most days for two hours, making a wide circle through the Arab village and up the ancient track past the Sphinx and the smaller pyramids. To please their customers, the boys called their beasts by American names – ‘Yankydoodle’, ‘Hitchycoo’, ‘Red-Hot Momma’. They were most anxious to please in every way, even to seizing our hands and foretelling by the lines in our palms illimitable wealth, longevity, and fecundity for both of us.

  Geoffrey, Juliet, and I went round the local antiquities with a kindly old Bedouin called Solomon.

  One Friday, Solomon came to tell us about some religious dances that were to be performed in the neighbourhood; did we want to see them? Juliet did not feel up to it, so Geoffrey stayed at home with her and I went off alone with Solomon. We rode to the farther end of the plateau on which the pyramids stand, and then down into a sandy hollow where there were the entrances to several tombs. Here we left our camels in charge of a boy and climbed into one of the holes in the hillside. The tomb was already half full of Arabs; it was an oblong chamber cut in the rock and decorated in places with incised hieroglyphics. The audience were standing round the walls and packed in the recesses cut for the coffins. The only light came through the door – one beam of white daylight. The moment we arrived the dance began. It was performed by young men, under the direction of a sheik; the audience clapped their hands in time and joined in the chant. It was a dull dance, like kindergarten Eurhythmics. The youths stamped their feet on the sandy floor and clapped their hands and swayed slowly about. After a short time I signed to Solomon my readiness to leave, and attempted to make as unobtrusive a departure as possible so as not to disturb these ungainly devotions. No sooner, however, had I reached the door than the dance stopped and the whole company came trooping out crying for ‘bakshish’. I asked Solomon whether it was not rather shocking that they should expect to be paid by an infidel for keeping their religious observances. He said, rather sheepishly, that some tip was usual to the sheik. I asked where the sheik was. ‘Sheik. Me sheik,’ they cried, all running forward and beating their chests. Then the old man appeared. I gave him the piastres and they promptly transferred their attention to him, seizing his robes and clamouring for a share. We mounted our camels and rode away. Even then two or three urchins pursued us on foot crying, ‘Bakshish! Bakshish! Me sheik!’

  As we went back I asked Solomon, ‘Was that a genuine religious dance?’

  He pretended not to understand.

  You did not like the dance?’

  ‘Would they have done that dance if you had not brought me?’

  Solomon was again evasive. ‘English and American lords like to see dance. English lords all satisfied.’

  ‘I wasn’t satisfied,’ I said.

  Solomon sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, which is the Arab’s reply to all difficulties with English and American lords. ‘Better dance another day.’

  ‘There won’t be another day.’

  ‘All right,’ said Solomon.

  One day I went alone to Sakkara, the enormous necropolis some way down
the Nile from Mena. There are two pyramids there, and a number of tombs; one of them, named unpronounceably the Mastaba of Ptahhotep, is exquisitely decorated in low relief. Another still more beautifully sculptured chamber is called more simply the Mastaba of Ti. As I emerged from this vault I came upon a large party of twenty or thirty indomitable Americans dragging their feet, under the leadership of a dragoman, across the sand from a charabanc. I fell in behind this party and followed them underground again, this time into a vast subterranean tunnel called the Serapeum, which, the guide explained, was the burial-place of the sacred bulls. It was like a completely unilluminated tube-railway station. We were each given a candle, and our guide marched on in front with a magnesium flare. Even so, the remote corners were left in impenetrable darkness. On either side of our path were ranged the vast granite sarcophagi; we marched very solemnly the full length of the tunnel, our guide counting the coffins aloud for us; there were twenty-four of them, each so massive that the excavating engineers could devise no means of removing them. Most of the Americans counted aloud with him.

  One is supposed, I know, to think of the past on these occasions; to conjure up the ruined streets of Memphis and to see in one’s mind’s eye the sacred procession as it wound up the avenue of sphinxes, mourning the dead bull; perhaps even to give licence to one’s fancy and invent some personal romance about the lives of these garlanded hymn-singers, and to generalize sagely about the mutability of human achievement. But I think we can leave all that to Hollywood. For my own part I found the present spectacle infinitely stimulating. What a funny lot we looked, trooping along that obscure gallery! First the Arab with his blazing white ribbon of magnesium, and behind him, clutching their candles, like penitents in procession, this whole rag-tag and bobtail of self-improvement and uplift. Some had been bitten by mosquitoes and bore swollen, asymmetrical faces; many were footsore, and limped and stumbled as they went; one felt faint and was sniffing ‘salts’; one coughed with dust; another had her eyes inflamed by the sun; another wore his arm in a sling, injured in heaven knows what endeavour; every one of the party in some way or another was bruised and upbraided by the thundering surf of education. And still they plunged on. One, two, three, four … twenty-four dead bulls; not twenty-three or twenty-five. How could they remember twenty-four? Why, to be sure, it was the number of Aunt Mabel’s bedroom at Luxor. ‘How did the bulls die?’ one of them asks.