“EXCUSE me, sir, but could you tell me the name of that island?”
I turned and looked at her.
“That, Madam, is the island of Cerigo, better known as Cythera, and famous for the cult of Aphrodite.”
She received this statement with gentle indifference.
“The one beyond,” I continued, “has several names. It is called Cerigotto or Anti-Kythera, or Lius: to the ancients it was known as Ægilia or Ogylos.”
She gazed up at me with blue but meditative eyes.
“Excuse me, sir,” she began again, “but are you any relation to Sir Ronald Storrs?”
“I am afraid not, Madam—not in any way.”
She sighed at this. “You are so like him,” she added.
I was not at all displeased at having evoked this association. Storrs, it is true, is a slightly older man than I, but his face at least is ardent and pro-consular. I have often envied him, as I have envied Gerry Wellesley, the faculty of giving people rapid and often accurate information. So I spoke to her politely. “I like Sir Ronald Storrs,” I said, “and I have followed his career with interest and admiration. But we are not, I regret to say, related.”
She sighed again and looked away from me out across the Ægean. Her eyes, which were fixed disapprovingly upon Cythera, were the colour of the intervening sea. Her little podgy hand clasping the Saturday Evening Post displayed a large cabuchon sapphire. It was the colour of her eyes. For the rest, she was completely round—she represented two superimposed circles like the figure eight or a very neat and new cottage loaf. She was small and mild and gentle and wrapped in a series of blue silk scarves that matched her eyes. One felt that for forty-five odd years she had eaten expensive candy, and drunk a great deal of iced water, and had at least 34,000 baths, and worn very clean and fleecy underclothing. I was somewhat desolate at the time, and the abundant maternal instinct which exuded from her as lanoline from a tube was not unpleasurable. I smiled down upon her deck-chair, hoping that she would smile up from it at me. She did nothing of the sort. She was still gazing with marked discontent at the amethyst contours of Cythera.
“And so that,” said Miriam Codd, “is Cyprus.”
The s.s. Helouan rolled slumberously in the warm November sunshine on her way to Alexandria. The rubber soles of Colonel Pomeroy went flip-flap, flip-flap on the planks as he walked eager and exultant round and round the promenade deck: every seven minutes he would pass my chair, and his exultant monologue would swell out and then decrease again: “… by a man called Lawrence. Upon my word there are pages in that book which ought to be taken out and burnt. Clever, I grant you, but what I always say….” Major Tweedie trotted acquiescent beside him. Seven minutes would elapse and then that confident gait, that exultant voice, would again intrude upon my consciousness:—“rotten, my boy, that’s what I call it, rotten. And mark you, I’ve known Joynson-Hicks since we were kiddies together. Not but what …” I lay back and watched the evening sun advance and recede across the sharp tar-lines in the deck: from time to time there would be a heavier roll and the sunlight would swing up to my feet, pause a moment, and then retreat again. The shadows of the stanchions supporting the upper deck were elongated and then again foreshortened in the process. And behind it all, outside the focus of consciousness, came the swish and tumble of the sea, the sound of stewards rattling the dinner-plates in the saloon. How much I dislike the melancholy of these marine and steamship sunsets! The sunlight in its rhythmic swaying takes on a yellow, and then an orange, and then a scarlet tinge: the waves turn cold and purple: the miserable lights are lit along the deck, desolate and feckless points of security against a growing menace: the sea frowns and becomes aloof and limitless: the ship, no longer buoyant and foam-sounding, cowers inert, puny, helpless and engulfed. The spray seethes and sighs around one with the hiss of death. I rose dejectedly and went into the music-room.
There was a young Polish gentleman at the piano playing Ravel. I knew it was Ravel because, on passing behind the piano, I had seen the name written quite distinctly below the word “Suite.” I had met M. Ravel once (a miffy little man) lunching with Lady Colefax; his name, therefore, was not unfamiliar to me. In an armchair at the end of the saloon sat Miriam Codd like a small blue-bottle, fat and to all appearance friendly. At her right hand, at a little distance, sat the King of Mesopotamia with his doctor. On her left hand at a little distance sat the Coptic Archbishop of Alexandria with his chaplain. Upon his chest flamed a large topaz cross. Mrs. Codd was reading a book with a blue cover. I went boldly towards her and sat down. She said “Good-evening.” I said “Good-evening, Mrs. Codd.” The Pole had ceased playing and was turning over some music: he wore a fine turquoise ring: the sighing and slapping of the darkened sea reached us through the port-holes. I rather hoped that that Pole would start to play again.
Mrs. Codd closed her book, marking the place with a leather marker stamped with the lilies of the Lung’ Arno. “Now how,” she said, “did you know my name?” “Your name, Mrs. Codd, is written in large white letters on your large black trunks.” “Why, so it is. I never thought of that.” I failed to understand why this circumstance should have caused her surprise: the trunks, black and shiny, were grouped in the passage: across them, white as the palings of a racing stable, ran the words “Mrs. Miriam Codd,” emphatic and indeed assertive, printed in uniform block-capitals. There was a little square box among them which had no space to contain the whole formula: it bore on its lid the large white notice “Codd.” It seemed strange to me that the owner of so deliberate a series of inscriptions should have been unaware of the information which they were liable to convey. But in the weeks that followed I was to learn that the infuriating thing about Mrs. Codd was that one could never even approximately foretell by what she would be, or would not be, surprised. Her mind was a calm ocean of indifference punctuated by sporadic reefs.
She smiled at me and asked me my name. If she felt any disappointment she managed to conceal it. “And your home-town?” she added. I was disconcerted by this question and at a loss for the moment how to reply. “Sevenoaks,” I answered, accenting the last syllable so as to give to the word a druidic rather than a suburban flavour. “That must be very nice,” she commented. I assured her that it was indeed. “And I,” she said, “come from Nashville.” Seeing no immediate response, she added “Tennessee.” My response at that was immediate. It was evident that we should become fast friends. It was not, at that time, evident how virulent would become our mutual dislike.
I hoped at this stage that she would ask me where I was going. “Well, as a matter of fact,” I would have answered, “I am going to Persia.” I had found it, in such cases, kinder and more modest to dilute this intoxicating statement with the water of “as a matter of fact”: it showed that my journey was not due to any special prowess on my part, but to a coincidence such as might happen to anyone, even to Mrs. Codd. But she did not ask me this question. It was I myself who raised the subject.
“I suppose, Mrs. Codd, that you are going to Luxor?”
“Well, I may do, if I have the time. It must be vurry vurry interésting.”
I advised her that it was certainly not a thing to miss.
“Well you see, Mr. Nicolson, it’s like this. I’m fixed up to go to Persia, and as I’m meeting some friends at Beyrout in January I have to be careful of my dates.”
I do not say that I was annoyed by this: I was annoyed only by the way in which she had announced her curious intention: I answered a little vaguely: I said, “Oh, yes—of course.” The Pole by then had started to play another tune.
I am not, as I have said, very aware of music, but I can tell when a man plays badly. I have learnt that mere rapidity of motion or that gambit about crossing the hands are not, as tests of excellence, very reliable: the only sure test for the ignorant is the pianist’s treatment of the single note. The bad pianist will just put one finger on that single note as if indeed it were a simple thing to do: the good pianist, who, during the involved passages, will have leant back idly letting his square hands browse miraculously on the key-board, will suddenly be galvanised into passion at the approach of the single note. His whole body will become rigid with the intensity of his concentration: he will lean close down over the key-board, his trembling forefinger outstretched, and then he will flick at that note with that forefinger, as if a dentist extracting a dying nerve. When that happens I fling myself back in my chair. “Dieu,” I exclaim, “comme il joue bien! Quel doigté!”
It happened, at that instant, to the Pole. “Dieu!” I exclaimed. “God,” I corrected, “how well that man plays! What a touch!” “I don’t think he plays very well,” said Mrs. Codd. I didn’t expect her to say this, and I looked up in surprise. “You care very much for music, Mrs. Codd?” “No, I don’t care very much for music.” Again I had drawn a blank. Really this matronly school-girl was very disconcerting.
“So you are also going to Persia?” I began.
“Why, yes, I’m going to Teeran to stop with Mary MacCormack.”
“I also am going to Tehran.”
“Why, fancy that!”
Her voice showed no surprise: it showed no interest. It did not rise a half-note above that flat and level tone of hers, that tone like a gilt J nib. Again I felt irritated. The woman was deplorably lacking in response. Nay! she was lacking in human sympathy. She was not a sympathetic woman. I had been quite wrong about that lanoline, about that maternal instinct. Mrs. Codd was selfish: Mrs. Codd was a fool. Had I not sacrificed everything, my comforts, my home, my family, my friends, in the hope that this flaming adventure, this ruthless exile, would strip me clean and slim?” “Je reviendrai,” I had said, “avec des membres de fer, le peau sombre, l’œil furieux: sur mon masque, on me jugera d’une race forte … je serai oisif et brutal. Les femmes soignent ces féroces infirmes retour des pays chauds.” This Rimbaud feeling had sustained me during that unpleasant parting at Victoria, it had given me courage when the train slipped through the dusk at Amiens, it had carried me across Paris, it had enabled me to say farewell to Venice without a tear. And now that the ancient parapets of Europe had slipped behind me, already my moral and mental muscles were becoming vigorous and taut. It had been a wrench and an effort to begin this new and exacting chapter: I had with square-jawed defiance turned the page: and there, in the very first paragraph, I had been confronted not by my colleague Sir Richard Burton, but by Miriam Codd.
I looked at her coldly. A plump school-girl nursing a doll. And yet the upper of her two chins had, at moments, a rigid shape about it: there were moments when those eyes ceased to recall Astarte and recalled a garden thistle or even the dark flash of polished steel. It was her voice, her flat and gentle voice which gave that lanoline effect: it was her figure, her round and lacteal figure, which produced that soothing sense of the maternal. The central core, I reflected, is hard: Miriam Codd is a hard and self-indulgent partridge; Miriam Codd is not an interesting person at all.
“Do you,” she was saying to me, “care for ocean voyage?”
“No.”
“When did you finish your grade school?”
I was interested by this question, being uncertain both of its meaning and its purpose. But I was anxious not to be drawn into conversation: I was anxious at the moment to manifest displeasure. Above all, as Miriam Codd had shown no interest in my amazing Odyssey, I should show no interest in Miriam Codd. So I answered, “1907.” She looked a little surprised at this, but continued her examination.
“I should like to get at your achievement chart. I should like to fix your spare time and recreation record.”
“I have no achievements—and but few recreations.”
She sighed at this and picked up her book. I glanced at the title. It was the Golden Bough.
After dinner that evening I sat in the saloon reading a really admirable novel by Agatha Christie. I had observed Mrs. Codd on entering, but had avoided her, wishing in the first place to read my book and in the second to evade all further questions about achievement. Colonel Pomeroy was playing bridge exultantly. He flung himself into the game with a proprietary gusto which cast a frightened gloom over his opponents and his partner: Major Tweedie opposite to him would play a card: Colonel Pomeroy would raise his eyebrows in silent endurance: at the end of each rubber the Colonel summarised the play in clipped and masterly phrases which allowed of no appeal. I was sorry for Major Tweedie. The band in the music-room was playing “Tosca.”
I became conscious that someone had sunk very gently into the chair beside me. I glanced up in apprehension of Mrs. Codd: it was only the Pole. His name, I had discovered, was Ostrorog. I returned to Agatha Christie. The Pole interrupted me.
“Vous aimez la musique, Monsieur?”
“Non, je déteste la musique.”
“Vous la détestez?”
“Je la déteste.”
He laughed a little uncertainly at this, and crossed his legs. I could see that he was the languid type of invert, whereas the sort I like best are of the brisk variety. So I read my book.
“Vous allez en Perse, Monsieur?’
“Oui, je vais à Téhéran.”
“Moi aussi, je vais à Téhéran.”
“Vous aussi…?”
I was appalled. This was really intolerable. I had drawn so vivid a picture of this my Central Asian voyage. The car dashing across the unvintaged desert under alien stars: myself crouching solitary in the back, my hand resting on the leather case of my revolver: that feint dust ahead of us represented the armoured cars: that droning in the air above, the escorting aeroplane: the two dark figures in front—the driver at the wheel, the Iraqi guard with his rifle ready at the knee: the camel-corps lolloping behind. On and on through the night across Arabia: on and on—Jerusalem behind us and in front Baghdad. And my friends that night, dining together at the Ivy, walking back up Shaftesbury Avenue after the theatre. The moon rising as we reached the Euphrates: the dawn upon the Tigris. Saved.
The Colonel had finished his disquisition on the last rubber. “Yes,” he was saying, “I try to take a different route each time. Extraordinarily interesting, I can assure you. Extraordinarily interesting. This time it’s Jerusalem, Baghdad, Tehran, Meshed, Duzdab, and so to Quetta.”
I turned to the Pole. “Le Colonel,” I said, “vient avec.”
“Ça sera parfait.”
I refrained from expressing the full force of my disagreement with that remark. Mrs. Codd, Ostrorog, Colonel Pomeroy! My adventure had ceased to be one. I might as well have remained (I had far better have remained) in Ebury Street. And oh, that pleasant little side-door on the Horse Guards Parade! I had always been opposed to romanticism: one should be more loyal to one’s prejudices. I returned to my cabin in a mood of angered remorse.
The following day we landed at Alexandria. I leant over the side watching the coloured chaos below me, that sudden mutiny in the evening sun. There was Mrs. Codd, a round blue circle, being piloted through the clutching rabble by a uniformed assistant from Shepheard’s Hotel. There was Colonel Pomeroy counting his luggage as he had counted the bridge-score, knowing from twenty years’ experience how to handle natives. Over there, sitting on a packing-case, was Ostrorog on the verge of tears. Aloof, escorted, privileged, I was the last to descend.
Thereafter followed three helpful days of respite. I went to Cairo and stayed with Charles Hartopp in his flat. I thus avoided meeting my future companions. On the fourth day I left for Jerusalem. I knew they were in the train, but was able to evade them. The train stopped at El Kantara, where there is a ferry which takes one across the Suez Canal. In the dark it did not look in the least like a canal; one had no impression of the rectilinear; it looked like some small harbour where great steamers congregate, like Queenstown in the old days, like Newhaven, like the Hook of Holland. White mast-lights high up among the stars, red lights low-clustering by the water, one arc-light illuminating a row of trucks. Across the harbour shone the windows of the wagonlit. The ferry itself was bright and garish, like a tram or a house-boat: there was a white garden seat newly painted. I got there first: the other three joined me in succession: Mrs. Codd, gentle and uninterested: Colonel Pomeroy, flustered and managing: Ostrorog, battered and perturbed. The ferry gave a sudden hoot like a launch and the surrounding lights began to sway across each other as we slowly moved. We were leaving Africa: we were going to Asia. “How strange!” I said to Mrs. Codd, “that two such unwieldy continents should be so contiguous.” She said, “Yes, indeed!” I felt my remark was worthy of a more enlightened reception. “Étrange,” I said to Ostrorog, “que deux continents aussi difformes et maladroits soient si contigus.” “Parfaitement,” he answered, “Monsieur.” I was disheartened by this and did not try my apophthegm upon the Colonel. The ferry, on reaching Asia, bumped delicately against the quay.
Our luggage was deposited in the long brown body of the sleeping car: we waited in the station buffet upon a little terrace looking back over the canal. Ostrorog had a glass of Benedictine and then two more: Mrs. Codd ordered tea: the Colonel had a whisky-and-soda: I had a glass of tepid beer. The trucks over there in Africa clanked backwards and forwards under the now distant arc-light: the little electric bulb above us, pendant and naked on its cord, showed red against the diamond white of stars. “Oh,” I murmured, “le crépuscule des petits ports.”
“Plâit-il?” Ostrorog inquired.
I did not repeat my remark. I was listening to the Colonel and Mrs. Codd. “Well,” he was saying, exultant again and breathless. “And so here we are! Extraordinarily interesting. And to-morrow we shall wake up in Palestine. Ever been to Palestine, Mrs. Codd?”
“I have never been to Palestine, Colonel Pomeroy.”
“Disappointing, of course, at first sight. But extraordinarily interesting for all that. Jerusalem, you know. It gives one a feeling of emotion in spite of oneself.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Codd, “it may do. A strong conditioned stimulus (because, as I always say, a stimulus can be very intensely conditioned), a vurry, vurry strong conditioned response.”
The Colonel blinked at this considerably. I leant forward with an awakened interest. “So you also,” I said, “are a behaviourist?”
Mrs. Codd assumed a new dignity. Her eyes peered out across the gentle canal, looking westwards. “I am an experimenter,” she said slowly, “at the Harriet Putzheim Medical School.”
And so this was the explanation! That indifference to all experience and association: that placidity: that apparent stupidity: that evident cunning: that soft firmness: that motherly look, and again that flash of cruelty. An experimenter at the Harriet Putzheim Medical School! I knew something about the Harriet Putzheim. It is where they take little children and prove to themselves that the only inherent instinct is that of fear produced by either (a) noise, or (b) bumps. Little Leah aged eighteen months is given a frog one morning instead of her bottle: she shows no surprise: but on the third morning an experimenter stands behind and when the frog is produced the experimenter utters a loud yell close to Leah’s ear: thereafter Leah does not care for frogs. Little Ikey, again, aged fifteen months, is allowed to play with a rabbit: on the fourth day, when the rabbit is produced, Ikey is sharply bumped by the experimenter upon the floor: this produces a conditioned response: the bumping process is called “loss of support”: thereafter, when the rabbit is produced, Ikey screams. It is all very interesting and conclusive: the experimenters, on their charts, register with hard and competent eyes a further triumph over Mr. William James.
I looked at Mrs. Codd with a cold surmise. I was a little shocked. I glanced at Colonel Pomeroy and saw that he was more than a little shocked. I leant towards him:—“Mrs. Codd,” I said, “is a behaviourist.” I accented the first four syllables of the word, since I feared that he had mistaken the lady’s profession. I think he was reassured. He murmured, “Extraordinarily interesting,” and began to chink some money against his glass to bring the waiter. I turned to Ostrorog: “Madame,” I said to him, “est une conduitiste.” “Plâit-il?” he said. “Une conduitiste,” I repeated firmly: from Ostrorog at least I would stand no nonsense. Mrs. Codd sat there placidly, not displeased with the effect of her disclosure. Suddenly the engine behind us gashed the gentle night with a shriek of impatience: Mrs. Codd jumped in her chair and gave a little scream. “Noise?” I said to her. The waiter was clearing the table: he pushed her chair: she flamed at him a look of fury: “Loss of support?” I asked her. She did not answer these questions. It was from that moment, I think, that she began intensely to dislike me.
We climbed into our sleeping cars and left for Jerusalem.
Three nights later, two dusted Cadillacs of the Nairn Transport Company swung under the Jaffa Gate and drew up in front of the Allenby Hotel. The first car was fully occupied by a Syrian family: in the second car there were places for Colonel Pomeroy, Count Ostrorog, myself and Miriam Codd. For the latter’s insistent luggage, as I immediately pointed out, there was no room at all. I got them to rope my own luggage on to the splash-boards while the others were at dinner. We were to start at 9 p.m. Having completed my preparations I entered the hotel and passed along the corridor to the dining-room. The Syrian family were having a large meal in the corner on the left: in the corner on the right sat Colonel Pomeroy, Count Ostrorog and Miriam Codd. The Colonel was doing host: “Now what about some more bread—what? Waiter! Some more bread!”
I sat down at a little table in the centre of the room next to the one occupied by the Nairn drivers. Two tired young men they were, with bloodshot eyes and eyebrows white with the dust of the road from Haiffa. I asked them when we should reach Baghdad. They had no idea. One could never calculate on the Ammon route, something was almost certain to happen. We must trust to luck. I groaned at the prospect of motoring with Colonel Pomeroy for seven days trusting to luck. Three days and nights to Baghdad, four days on to Tehran. Would it really take us three whole days of constant motion to reach Baghdad? They hoped not, it had been done in two. They were polite but tired: they answered my questions as a Channel steward answers when asked whether it is going to be rough.
I had been very nimble during those three days at Jerusalem in evading my companions. I had not stayed at the hotel: I had stayed with Ronald Storrs—paragon among hosts, paragon among cicerones. I asked him about Mrs. Codd. “Oh, my God,” he said, “not that woman!” So thenceforward I had an ally in my campaign of evasion. We managed it beautifully: we had seen them bearing down upon us across the wide terrace of the Mosque of Omar, and had escaped by jumping down a wall: on the next day Mrs. Codd had been observed and avoided in the vicinity of Bethlehem: that very morning, on hearing the words “extraordinarily interesting,” I had dodged behind the Holy Sepulchre. As I sat there in the dining-room of the Allenby Hotel I realised that my hours of liberty were drawing to a close. One of the drivers glanced at his watch and made a sign to his companion. They left the room and the Syrian family scuttled out after them. Colonel Pomeroy rose and put on a dust coat and a solar topee: he sucked his teeth and wriggled into a pair of field-glasses on a long strap: again he sucked his teeth and wriggled with the other arm under the strap of a long leather-covered flask. As they passed my table the Colonel said “en route” to me, heartily. I ordered a liqueur brandy. I felt that I did not want that evening to cross Arabia in the least.
It was 10 p.m. before we started. The cars under the street lamps bulged with packages enclosed in nets. They looked like two large and dusty widows returning from market. A few idlers hung around us, a few Palestinian idlers: for three days we should not see strangers again, for three days I should see only the familiar faces of my present companions: I looked wistfully at the porter of the Allenby Hotel: what a gulf, I felt, separated him from his colleague at Baghdad. I leant forward and lovingly pressed a note into his hand. It was my farewell to humanity. The car hooted at that, and then jerked off and out under the Damascus Gate: it then swerved to the right, past the Gate of Herod and the Tower of the Storks. The great walls loomed square above us against the stars. We began to descend: a few olive trees flashed into the circle of the headlights and flicked back again into the dark: a village street illumined suddenly, an open door showing a deal table and a lamp, the hurried barking of dogs. “Bethany,” I murmured. “Now was that really Bethany?” exclaimed the Colonel. “How extraordinarily interesting!” I decided not to speak again. For an hour we descended in and out of hair-pin bends, and as we dropped into the valley the night-air softened and we missed the scent of thyme. Some lights to the left there clustered below us. “Jericho,” I thought, but I did not say so. The Colonel and Mrs. Codd in the back seat were silent and perhaps asleep. Ostrorog and I sat loosely in the two middle seats that folded up. They were not uncomfortable. We stopped when we reached the Jordan, and our passports were examined: to the right and left of us shrilled the high note of frogs. It was after midnight when we reached Rabboth Ammon.
There were some tents there under the high embankment of the Hedjaz railway, and we had some sardines and tea: Mrs. Codd was given a tent to herself and left us: the Colonel, Ostrorog and I slept on mattresses where we were: the Syrian family slept in their car: the moon rose, and with it the dogs of Rabboth Ammon began to bark: a goods train clattered in from Aleppo. I cannot say that I slept well.
It was still dark when they aroused us and we bundled sleepily into our car by the light of a single lantern. The dawn broke grey and bitter as we left the hills. The Colonel, thank God, and Mrs. Codd were both asleep. Their heads jerked and swayed as the car swung on, over the hillocks of tufted lava, over the banks of shale. It was very cold. The sun climbed up behind some black volcanic mountains: it swept gaily over that barren landscape: it touched with gold the dust cloud behind us: it touched with gold the face of Mrs. Codd. She woke.
“My!” she exclaimed, “it isn’t flat.”
“No, Mrs. Codd, the Arabian desert is not flat. It is, in fact, intersected by mountains.”
“And it isn’t sandy.”
“In the Nefud Roala to the south of us, you have red sand. The northern portion which we are about to enter is composed, however, of aluminous silicates. We shall reach the sandy portion after we have passed the Jebel Anaize.”
The driver spoke to me over his shoulder. “We don’t pass the Jebel Anaize: we go south by the Wad el Tebel. We shall get stuck there, unless we’re lucky, in the mud.”
“The North Arabian desert,” I explained to Mrs. Codd, “known locally as El Hamad, is comparatively well watered. We may get bogged.”
Mrs. Codd had closed her eyes again and pretended to be asleep. It was possible that she did not care for information. The Colonel, whose head swayed with open mouth, undoubtedly was asleep. Ostrorog sat pale and silent: a faint red bristle had grown upon his chin. We pursued our way across Arabia.
The morning sun blazed straight in front of us: we were travelling east. At nine o’clock we stopped for breakfast: we gathered camel thorn and lit a bonfire: at one edge of the bonfire we tilted the kettle, at the other a tin of sausages. The driver produced little cardboard cups and plates: on the front of the plates was printed “Trans desert mail: Nairn Transport Company”: on the back of the plates, the legend, “If you have complaints, tell us: if you have no complaints, tell your friends.” I was pleased by this tactful little message from the brothers Nairn, and my respect for their efficiency, already great, was much increased. The Colonel for his part was by now thoroughly awake: he fussed about laying the breakfast, counting one, two, three, four. “And, by Jove,” he said, “marmalade. They do one well and no mistake.” Mrs. Codd, in a motherly way and in very elementary French, was having a confidential conversation with the Pole. I sat and read the Anabasis of Xenophon in the Loeb edition: I read the English side of the page, but when I came to a point of interest it was the Greek side that I marked. The kettle, after a while, began to boil: the sausages were emptied from their tin: the Colonel was again becoming exultant. Ostrorog had been pouring into the ears of Miriam Codd the secrets of what I fear must have been a troubled and an epicene past. She nodded her head from time to time and said, “je vois”: there was a firm look in her round little face: the mother was rapidly being lost in the experimenter. We had breakfast. The Colonel, with old-world courtesy, acted as host.
I was assailed by two preoccupations: (1) Would the Colonel begin talking when we started again? would he go on talking till we reached Baghdad? I apprehended stories of other deserts: of the Dasht-i-Lut, of Takla Makan, of the sandy desert of Kizil-Kum. All this would encourage Mrs. Codd to speak of Arizona, and Ostrorog to talk to us about the Steppes. It was a gloomy prospect. (2) My second preoccupation was of a more kindly nature. I was worried about Mrs. Codd and her managements. Surely it would be very difficult for a lady in Arabia, with no cloak-room handy, and four men there, and no cover? But my preoccupation on these two points was unnecessary. The first was solved by Mrs. Codd saying as she helped herself to butter: “Let’s get our conversation over now: we mustn’t talk in the motor.” The second was solved, a few minutes later, by her just walking off. A round blue figure stumping off solitary in the direction of Medina: a round blue figure returning to us from the south.
And on we went. The sun was above us. The sun sank behind. Towards evening three vultures scattered at our passage: they flapped off languidly with trailing feet, and settled again some fifteen yards away: the body of an Arab lay there with the guts exposed: he was the first human being we had seen for four hundred miles. Mrs. Codd glanced at him indifferently, as if at a cinema poster passed at Purley. The Colonel said, “My God! Did you see that?” Ostrorog, under his pink incipient beard, turned a paler shade of green. The sun sank with a bump behind a black range of volcanic mountains. In forty minutes the stars were strewn above us like grains of scattered rice.
I was awakened five hours later by the sudden jerk of stoppage. In front of us, close against the blaze of our head-lights, appeared an object of amazing fantasy: a jumbled mass of fresh white wood and fresh white canvas torn and shattered to a height of fifteen feet. Here and there among the wreckage glittered a strand of aluminium, or the torpedo-heads of aluminium cylinders. It appeared like some vast toy, some vast consignment of elaborate toys, smashed upon arrival. The driver turned back into the recesses of the car. “This,” he said, “is where Maitland crashed. We have come along fine. We should make Baghdad to-morrow. Supper now.”
We tore the canvas and the woodwork from the lonely aeroplane: a great flame leapt up and licked the darkness: we sat beside it: the kettle and the sausages were tucked into the corners: more cardboard plates were produced. Mrs. Codd had pins and needles: she sank down on an air cushion and stretched her little buttoned feet in front of her, gyrating the toe-caps. “That,” I suggested, “is what you call the Babinski reflex.” She looked at me with eyes expressive (there was no doubt about it) of hatred. It was evident that she imagined I was making a mock of behaviourism, that I was making a mock of Miriam Codd. In this, to a large extent, she was mistaken. For I had heard Mr. Sebastian Sprott in London state that behaviourism was not in itself ridiculous: and what Sprott says, I believe. But none the less she turned her round blue back on me and continued her intent examination of the conditioned responses of Count Ostrorog. I felt that I could have told her quite quickly what was wrong with the Pole: her scant knowledge of the French language rendered her experimentation unnecessarily complicated. But I was not the one to assist unasked. I also turned my back and faced the Colonel. The latter, thank God, was very tired indeed: he drank his flask in silence: he gazed hard at a sardine tin: “extraordinarily interesting,” he murmured, but, as it were, to himself. The Syrian party had long since disappeared.
I ate in silence, gazing into the red heart of the flames. I was perfectly aware that around me stretched Arabia Deserta: that beside me, a point of civilisation in a radius of several hundred miles, were grouped a Cadillac, an English driver, a behaviourist, a Colonel, a smashed aeroplane, a Polish neuropath, some sausages, tea, cardboard plates, marmalade, Lea and Perrin’s sauce. These facts grouped themselves in the peripheral focus: my attention was concentrated upon the conversation, the very curious conversation, taking place between the Count and Miriam Codd. She was getting into very deep water; it had been some time since he, for his part, had felt the slightest touch of ground beneath his feet.
“Non,” she was saying, “pas complex. Habites. Coutumes.”
“Plâit-il?” repeated Ostrorog, a little wearily.
Mrs. Codd was becoming impatient. It was inevitable that sooner or later she should pocket her pride.
“Mr. Nicolson,” she said at last, “what is the French for ‘congestion of the pituitary gland’?”
“Congestion,” I answered, “de la glande pituitaire.”
“Plâit-il?” said Ostrorog.
“You better just try pituite.”
“Pituite,” chirped Miriam Codd.
“Would you explain to the Count that the unconscious is not a sex repression but an unverbalised glandular habit.”
“Madame veut dire que l’inconscient ne dérive pas de la suppression de l’instinct sexuel, mais qu’il n’est en effet qu’une habitude glandulaire non-ver-balisée.”
“Plâit-il?”
“And what does one say for untrained visceral organisation?”
“Mal au cœur.”
“You know very well,” she said sharply, “that I am not referring merely to alimentary trouble.”
“Well, I should try ‘indiscipline viscérale.”
She tried it, but it had no success. She gave me up for a bit, but collapsed again in front of “unstriped muscular habit.” “Une habitude,” I said (and after all why shouldn’t I?), “des muscles nonbariolés, des muscles, c’est-à-dire, qui ne sont pas à raies.”
“Plâit-il?”
Mrs. Codd turned to me indignantly: “You don’t help one bit, Mr. Nicolson. I really think you might assist.”
“But you see, Mrs. Codd…. You see—well, hadn’t we better leave it for the moment?”
It was a relief when we were herded again into the motor. The driver was tying the kettle on to the splash-board. “You see,” said Mrs. Codd, a note of despair rasping in her voice, “he believes in congenital degeneracy. I can’t convince him that heredity, if it exists at all, is merely intra-uterine behaviour. I may not have made it quite clear. Mr. Nicolson, you might just explain to him before we start.”
I was firm about this. After all we had had a tiring day. We had had two tiring days. “No,” I said, “Mrs. Codd, I will not.”
The cranking of the engine interfered with her reply.
A second dawn glimmered in front of us: the sun this time rose from a sweep of rolling sand-hills. We breasted them, and dipped over the edge. In the valley thus disclosed were two armoured cars: there was a little pool beyond with some English soldiers bathing: their knees and fore-arms showed like burnt umber against the white of their thighs. They ran a little way towards us, and cheered, waving their topees above their tousled heads. They had little sense of decency. Mrs. Codd put on her Harriet Putzheim expression: the Colonel clambered out. A sergeant appeared hurriedly from behind one of the cars, his chin lathered, a shaving brush in his hand. He waved the brush with a welcoming gesture at the advancing Colonel. The latter held a brisk and friendly inspection: he returned to us aglow with satisfaction. “Fine boys, fine boys: based on Ramadieh: fine set of fellows.” He hummed to himself and smacked his lips. “Fancy shaving like that, two hundred miles from nowhere! Good show that. First class show.” I also had experienced a slight tremor of that Kipling feeling. For the first time I felt a certain kinship with the Colonel. “Ramadieh, did you say, sir?” I put in the “sir” because of my Kipling feeling. Also because I knew it would annoy Mrs. Codd. It did. Ostrorog for his part was too exhausted to observe or comprehend.
At midday we crossed the Euphrates: we spun over the waste of hardened sand which separates the two rivers: a mirage danced in front of us, trees and water and cool marine caves. At five o’clock a fringe of palm trees edged the distance, and above them a single factory chimney belching smoke. The sun was setting as we crossed the Tigris and lurched into Baghdad.
They told us that a convoy was starting for Persia the next morning: we could take the train that night, and at dawn we would find the cars waiting for us at Khanikin. We were too dazed by then to question: like sheep we gathered for dinner in the Maude Hotel: like sheep we drove to the station: like sheep we huddled silent and exhausted in the railway carriage. It was a long saloon with slatted window-blinds and two large horse-hair settees. We lay there dusty and unshaven, our heads propped upon our luggage. Ostrorog looked seriously ill: the Colonel had finally lost his commanding manner: Miriam Codd alone remained the same. I dozed fitfully as the train dragged its cautious way towards the frontier.
The third aching dawn found us on the platform at Khanikin. Such sleep as we had snatched during the night had restored, to some degree, our powers of self-assertion. It had not restored our nerves. We had some breakfast at the canteen, sitting opposite to each other in silent hostility. I looked at the Colonel, I looked at Mrs. Codd, I looked at Ostrorog. No—one thing at least was certain: it was certain that I could not endure, I could not possibly endure, another four days in such a company. Mrs. Codd with a meditative but determined expression looked at me. A hard and a cruel look steeled itself in her eyes. She rose firmly and approached the station-master.
“Could you tell me, please, when I could get a train back to Baghdad?” He did not understand English and summoned a man who did. She would have to wait for the day, but could take the same train back at midnight. She walked back to us, with a return of that azure gentleness which had so misled me that afternoon on the Helouan. “I have rather a headache,” she said, “I don’t think I shall come on to Persia after all.” The Colonel expressed regret: “Very sorry, upon my word.” I said nothing. And Ostrorog for his part had failed to understand.
The cars by that time had arrived. There was a little Dodge limousine like a taxi. There was a high Fiat lorry for the baggage. I dashed to the lorry and climbed without a word beside the driver’s seat. The Colonel and Ostrorog disappeared into the Dodge. Mrs. Codd came in front of the station to see us start. The road beyond us was a sea of viscous mud. We splashed across it for a hundred yards and then the limousine stuck, its wheels revolving helplessly. My own lorry dashed onwards to the corner there by the palm grove. Across the road, in front of me, down from the hill, ran a fence of posts and wire ending in a gate and guard-house with a green and white flag. That gate was the gate to Persia. I looked round. Mrs. Codd, a blue circle, was waving from the station, she was waving a white handkerchief. Again, thus haloed by distance and farewell, she seemed small and gentle and friendly. The limousine was still embedded in the slime. From its window emerged the solar topee of Colonel Pomeroy. My heart sang with liberation. I leant out and backwards beyond the body of the van. I took off my hat: I waved it triumphantly at Colonel Pomeroy: I waved it at the diminishing blue bubble of Mrs. Codd. A few minutes later I entered Persia. And alone.