The Man Who Went Down With His Ship (25 page)

Whereupon, sensing perhaps that all this stuttered
information
, this verbal and apparently moral twisting was just Charlie’s way of vocalising, and that all that was needed now for the music to flood out was the mildest of pressures to be applied, the Englishman paused, leaned forward, right over the railings, and, staring into the black, star-reflecting water, applied it. ‘How come?’ he murmured. ‘I mean, doesn’t it make difficulties for you here, or hasn’t it in the past? I should have thought

Charlie found himself pausing. He gave Isabella a final, imploring glance, and saw that she was looking at him with some curiosity now, as a witness in court might a murderer who is about to be cross-examined. Then he took, in his imagination, a deep breath and opened his mouth.

‘Difficulties? No,’ he said, starting in a very subdued manner that gave no clue as to the pyrotechnics he suspected, knowing
himself, were likely to follow. ‘You know on the whole, in spite of everything, the Egyptians like the English, and look on them as being civilised and friendly. The French they tend to find standoffish and anyway they have a reputation for being
prejudiced
against the Arabs. The Germans they find—well, German. The Americans they think loud and stupid, generally nice, but sort of crass; and the Italians—present company excepted of course,’ he muttered to the watching, waiting Isabella, ‘friendly, very friendly, and cheerful, but at times, and especially when they’re trying not to be, just a little bit—well,
vulgar.
Whereas the English, I mean, it’s all nonsense of course and just a pack of generalisations. And maybe I feel this way because of who I am and what I am. You see, all right, I was born here and my father was born here. My mother’s Italian, from Ravenna, or at least her family was, because she was born here too. And in a way, despite the fact that I have a British passport and I have to apply for a resident’s permit every month—we all do—I’m Egyptian and this country’s part of me and I love it as if it were, which as I say it is in a way, my own. Also, because I’ve never been to any other country in my life. I’ve never actually wanted to, though my father’s always trying to persuade me to. But although I was born here, and although to all intents and purposes I consider myself an Egyptian, inside I have this dream of England. I’m sure it doesn’t correspond to the reality in any way. Or not much. And I’m sure if I actually went there I’d be terribly shocked. Either pleasantly or unpleasantly. But that doesn’t really matter. Because my England’s an imaginary place and I can’t help feeling, I’ve never been able to help feeling, that even if it doesn’t exist, it’s a place I’ve got to aspire to. It’s the one place in the world I’ve got to be … worthy of. If you follow me. Because, well, I mean, in a sense I’m an outcast here, someone who doesn’t fit …’ he hesitated, laughed nervously, and shot on. ‘I mean, look at me.’ He laughed again, ‘I don’t look like an Arab, do I? On the other hand, I don’t look like an Englishman either. Or an Italian. Or … anything. And so—oh,
I suppose most people who feel like me tend to identify with America, to think of themselves as Americans at heart. The land of the free and all that. The land of opportunity. But aside from the fact that I’ve never quite gone along with that idea—oh, I suppose my imaginary England is more congenial to me. I feel it would harbour someone like me more … understandingly than America would. You see …’—and now he could hear his, as it were, interior voice starting to rise and see Isabella taking a step back; but it was far too late to stop now, especially with that damned Englishman urging him on, exhorting him, saying with his very stance, ‘Go on, Charlie, you can do it,
sing’
—‘I’ve always pictured it as the green and pleasant land that tourist books tell us it is and poets have always written odes to, where the very landscape, the very soft wet weather will take one in and make one feel welcome. Unlike here, where there’s only sun and desert, and the Nile. But as well as the landscape, or even more than the landscape, it’s the people of my imaginary England who I feel would welcome me, would take me in should I ever want to … go home. Of course, it’s sentimental nonsense, this is home and I probably wouldn’t even be allowed to stay there for more than a month or two, for all my British passport. And the English I’ve come into contact with here, business contacts of my father’s, friends of distant relatives who have been told to look us up, just tourists in the street, are no different, no better, no worse, than any of the other people I come into contact with. But my dream English—oh, they’re a people who have committed terrible crimes, worse crimes, I can’t help feeling, than any people who have ever lived. I mean, not just because of the British Empire and all that, nor even because I myself in a certain sense am a casualty of British history, a bit of driftwood left here in the sand when the British tide went out. But because of their attitude. Because of their manner. Such a stunned, awkward, at times smug, at times arrogant, people
must
have committed great crimes. How else could they have become as they are? There’s no other people on earth who do
give such an impression of being weighed down, somehow stained through and through with guilt. Not the Russians. Not the Americans. Not the French. Not even, not above all, the Germans, who in this particular century should perhaps, more than anyone else. And yet, and yet, though they are so stained, though they are so riddled with guilt, or just exhausted from the too heavy weight of history, they seem to bear their exhaustion, their guilt, with—how can I put it?—
grace.
All right, they seem to be telling you, our hands are dripping with blood and like Lady Macbeth we’ll never be able to wash it off. But please, can’t we extend this hand to you, and won’t you take it and allow it to help you? For only those who have greatly sinned, unforgivably sinned, can really offer … consolation. Oh, I know I’m talking nonsense,’ Charlie repeated, with, as he had had last night when looking up at the stars, tears in his eyes; tears that didn’t, however, blind him to the fact that Isabella was not just backing away now but was, as discreetly as she could, actually leaving him alone up there with the Englishman. ‘And you’ll probably think I’m mad and disappointed or simply typical of someone who doesn’t really belong here, there or anywhere. Well, maybe I am. All the same, that grace, that consolation I sense in my imaginary England, or in my imaginary English, seems to me the very essence of civilisation, which I can’t help feeling all men, everywhere on earth, should aspire to. Not because they will ever attain it, or because it will ever wash their hands clean, but because otherwise—oh, the sheer stain of being human will drag them down, destroy them and deprive them of any chance of happiness that they might have here on earth.

‘And I know that people say that happiness is not the goal of human life,’ Charlie said, adding a brief wistful coda to his aria. ‘But it seems to me it must be. Because to me, happiness is almost synonomous with goodness. And if you do not try to be the one, you can never hope to be the other. Which is why,’ he concluded, ‘I have always loved Egyptian art, my art,’ he shrugged, ‘so much and have always thought that the ancient
Egyptians must have known in reality what the English know in my imagination. For those statues, those paintings, seem to me supremely graceful, supremely consoling and seem to me to be the expression of a culture that, more than any other, equated the good with the happy. What was it that Chekhov wrote in
The
Three
Sisters
? “We aren’t happy and we can’t be happy, we only want happiness.” It’s a beautiful line. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it passionately. We
can
be happy. Just as long as we try, however hopelessly, to be good. Of course, I suppose we should say what we mean by “good”. But I think maybe, really, we all know that, don’t we? Or, at any rate, we can talk about it some other night.’

So, at last, Charlie came to a halt; and, at last, he felt he had said something, said everything, he had been wanting to say for years. Moreover, though he had claimed, once or twice, that he was talking nonsense, that had just been good manners passing as self-deprecation. He didn’t believe for a moment that he had been talking nonsense and stood totally behind every word he had uttered. He did love England and the English of his dreams for the reasons he had given. He did believe that the only culture that was still more full of grace, still more consoling than the English, and thus still more aware of the blood that had been shed in order to create it and still more representative of human achievement, human civilisation at its highest, was that of ancient Egypt. And he would have continued to believe it even if someone had proved him wrong, or convinced him that he was a fool. For his love of both was essential to his life; and without his love he would have been only what he appeared to be, or worse; not just ugly; but yes, unhappy and, if only in his own estimation, bad.

He was so drunk on his own words, so relieved finally to have said more or less completely what he had been wanting to say for ages and so happy that he had allowed that Englishman to drag out of him what he had always wanted to reveal, that although he was aware that by thus revealing himself he had
made himself loathsome in Isabella’s eyes and lost her, it wasn’t until the morning after—having once again stayed up on deck till four, and slept no more than three hours—that what he had done really sank in, and with part of himself he started to regret that he had allowed himself to be so played upon, so encouraged to display what he thought of as his soul. Once it had sank in it sank in deeply, however; and that part of him that was regretful became almost the equal of that part of him that was glad. Not because Isabella scarcely said good morning to him when he went down to the dining room for breakfast, and wouldn’t have said good morning at all had she not known that to be so overtly rude would have drawn the attention of her father, whose dark little eyes never missed a trick. Rather because, as she gave him a quick resentful glance, muttered ‘Morning’ in reply to his own beamed, tender, but he already knew doomed greeting, and went straight back to her coffee, he saw why, in her mind, it had become necessary for her to be suddenly so cold, to look at and upon him with such an air of hurt and scorn. For while the truth was that he had lost her by revealing himself not to be a monster, Isabella had come up with another reason for cutting him off so abruptly. Namely: by exposing himself morally, it was as if he had exposed himself physically, and she was forced to admit what she must have known all along. That this beastly toad whom she had pitied and been kind to loved her. And maybe not only loved her, but lusted after her and wanted to take her slim, dark, sixteen-year-old body in his foul, sweating hands, to kiss her mouth with his wide, wet, slobbering lips and cover her with his bloated, misshapen flesh. You must be mad, her expression told Charlie as he watched her eating her breakfast. You should be taken away and locked up somewhere. After all the goodness I’ve shown you, after all my
friendliness,
to be treated thus! To have you, you horror,
show
yourself to me. How could you? How
could
you? And if you ever so much as touch my hand again, I swear I’ll tell my father you tried to rape me. Oh Charlie,
Charlie, pretending to be talking to that man last night. I know whom you were really talking to. I know what you were really doing, you obscene, vile
pervert
, you ungrateful, repulsive…
freak.

What could he say to defend himself? How could he apologise, or take her aside and say ‘No, Isabella, it wasn’t like that, it isn’t like that. You’re fooling yourself, lying to yourself because, for whatever reason, you can only care for what is ugly. And having listened to me last night, you can no longer help admitting what you half suspected before: that I am not entirely the monstrosity you saw me as previously and that even in me there is some trace, some possibility, of beauty.’

He couldn’t, he told himself, however idiotically he beamed and sloped around the ship, however grotesque he tried to make himself. First, because having lost her, he knew that Isabella wouldn’t listen to a further word of his, whether he spoke rationally or whether he simply blurted out ‘You must realise I didn’t actually “expose” myself to you last night and you really shouldn’t blame me or make me suffer just because you have some psychological hang-up that makes it impossible for you to like what is beautiful apart from clothes and jewels.’ And second—and this is what clinched the matter, and made him sit down at the table and start to eat his breakfast in a manner that even he found disgusting—because seeing that scorn, that shocked revulsion on Isabella’s face, he became aware that he too suffered from what he would have termed a psychological hang-up.

From the moment he had seen Isabella crying in the minibus on her way in from the airport, Charlie had thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen and had been in love with her. He had thought her perfect, tender, innocent and exquisite, and made only more so by the various little flaws he had discerned in her that in others he would have found
irritating
, if not unacceptable. For to have those flaws—that were, in any case, just the scars left on her by other people’s wickedness or stupidity—and still be perfect, didn’t that, mustn’t that make
her more perfect, and more innocent and more beautiful yet? Yes, he had told himself, oh yes. But though he had loved her, or because he had loved her in the way that he had, seeing her as an ideal being who was hardly touched by reality, he had never really thought of his love as having any consequence. It had in itself been an ideal love and the idea of him, who felt
lovely
when Isabella gazed at him with those deep, black eyes, and heard again and again that heartbreaking fragment of music
‘E
io
t’
amavo
per
la
tua
pietà
,’
actually doing anything to express that love—other than grovel at her feet and play Quasimodo to her Esmeralda—had been so out of the question as never to enter his head. Isabella was there to be worshipped, cherished, protected, blessed; adored, dreamed of and revered, But not, but never, to be the object of his—or, in his imagination, anyone else’s—lust. Such a thought would have struck him as genuinely obscene.