Hitler's peace

“Imshi,” yelled my driver, or, as often, “Fuck off,” as he steered the little Austin Seven between ancient-looking Thorneycroft buses, nervous flocks of sheep, cruelly laden asses, and other impatient drivers.

“From America, sir?” asked the driver. He was a blue-eyed, hatchet-faced man, as lean as a garden hose, and by the look of things, just as wet. Sweat rolled out of his wavy short black hair, down his thin white neck, and underneath his khaki shirt collar, to join a large damp patch between his shoulder blades.

“Yes. And you?”

“Manchester, England, sir. I used to dream of being somewhere hot, sir. And then I came here. Did you ever see such a bloody place, sir? Bloody chaos, that’s what it is.”

“Seen much action?”

“None since I’ve been here. At least not from the bloody Germans. You’ll see the antiaircraft searchlights at night, but there’s little chance of any bombers coming this far south. Not since the summer. By the way, sir, the name is Coogan, sir. Corporal Frank Coogan, and I’ll be your regular driver while you’re here in Cairo.”

“Nice to meet you, Frank.”

At last Coogan turned down a side street and I caught my first sight of the famous Shepheard’s Hotel, an ungainly building at whose large front terrace dozens of British and American officers were seated. Coogan pulled up, waved away an Arab guide wearing a bright red tarboosh, and, collecting my cases off the luggage rack, led the way inside.

Battling my way through officers of all ranks and races, prosperous Levantine businessmen, and several dubious-looking women, I presented myself at the reception desk and glanced around at the Moorish-style hall with its vast pillars, thick and lotus-shaped, and the grand staircase that swept upward, flanked by two tall caryatids of ebony. It was like being on the set of a film by Cecil B. DeMille.

There were three messages for me: one from Donovan, suggesting that we meet for a drink in the hotel’s long bar at three o’clock; an invitation for dinner the following evening from my old friend, the Princess Elena Pontiatowska, at her house in Garden City; and a letter from Diana.

I dismissed Coogan, and, thinking I might try one last time to lose Donovan’s case, I let the hotel manager organize its delivery to my hotel room. But fifteen minutes later, I was safely ensconced in my suite with all my bags, including Donovan’s. Throwing open the shutters and the windows, I stepped onto the balcony and surveyed the rooftops and the street below. There was no doubt about it: Donovan had done me proud; I could not have chosen better myself.

I put off reading Diana’s letter for as long as I could, the way you do when you’re afraid of finding out a truth. I even smoked a cigarette while I contemplated it from a safe distance. Then I read it. Several times. And there was one passage in her letter to which I paid particular attention.

You mentioned the injustice of my walking out on you as I did and avoiding you these last few days. I’m afraid I was and still am very angry with you, Willard. The person with whom I had spent that evening, when I was supposed to be at the movies, was an old friend of mine, Barbara Charisse. I don’t think you’ve ever met her, but she has heard of you and, recently, she had been in London. She’s also an old friend of Lord Victor Rothschild, whom I believe you do know. It seemed she had been at a party you were also at, and had heard from some pansy that while you were in London you were sleeping with someone called Rosamond Lehmann. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but it irritated me the way you quizzed me about whether I’d seen that film or not, and your unspoken assumption that you had occupied the moral high ground by not asking me about it further. And I thought to myself, Fuck you, mister. Fuck you, for making me feel like I was the betrayer. So, since you ask, I find that I haven’t really changed that opinion. I also find that I’m not likely to change it, either. Fuck you, Willard.

I folded Diana’s letter up and put it in my breast pocket, right next to the aching hole where my heart had been. A few minutes before three o’clock, I went down to the lobby. Outside on the hotel terrace someone was playing a piano, badly, while the lobby was buzzing loudly with conversations, mostly in English. I went into the Long Bar, forbidden to ladies, and glanced around as a group of slightly drunk British officers clapped their hands loudly for service and shouted Arabic words they mistakenly believed would summon a waiter.

Almost immediately I saw Donovan, seated with his back to a pillar and sweating profusely in a white tropical suit that was maybe a size too small for his retired football player’s physique.