That was what had made her so mad. She wanted his esteem, and when he asked her to “befriend” Wolff, she knew she was never going to get it, not really. Anyway the whole thing was foolish. the relationship between a woman such as she and an English officer was doomed to turn out like all Elene’s relationships-manipulation on one side, dependence on the other and respect nowhere. Vandarn would always see her as a whore. For a while she had thought he might be different from all the rest, but she had been wrong. And she thought: But why do I mind so much?
Vandam was sitting in darkness at his bedroom window in the middle of the night, smoking cigarettes and looking out at the moonlit Nile, vhen a memory from his childhood sprang, fully formed, into his mind. He is eleven years old, sexually innocent, physically still a child. He is in the terraced gray brick house where he has always lived. The house has a bathroom, with water heated by the coal fire in the kitchen below: he has been told that this makes his family very fortunate, and he must not boast about it; indeed, when he goes to the new school, the posh school in Bournemouth, he must pretend that he thinks it is perfectly normal to have a bathroom and hot water coming out of the taps. The bath-room has a water closet too. He is going there now to pee. His mother is in there, bathing his sister, who is seven years old, but they won’t mind him going in to pee, he has done it before, and the other toilet is a long cold walk down the garden. What he has forgotten is that his cousin is also being bathed. She is eight years old. He walks into the bathroom. His sister is sitting in the bath. His cousin is standing, about to come out. His mother holds a-towel. He looks at his cousin. She is naked, of course. It is the first time he has seen any girl other than his sister naked. His cousin’s body is slightly plump, and her skin is flushed with the heat of the water. She is quite the loveliest sight he has ever seen. He stands inside the bathroom doorway looking at her with undisguised interest and admiration. He does not see the slap coming. His mother’s large hand seems to come from nowhere. It hits his cheek with a loud clap. She is a good hitter, his mother, and this is one of her THE KEY TO REBECCA 111
best efforts. It hurts like hell, but the shock is even worse than the pain. Worst of all is that the warm sentiment which had engulfed him has been shattered like a glass window. “Get outl” his mother screams, and he leaves, hurt and humiliated. Vandam remembered this as he sat alone watching the Egyptian night, and he thought, as he had thought at the time it happened: Now why did she do that? 9
In the early morning the tiled floor of the mosque was cold to Alex Wolff’s bare feet. The handful of dawn worshipers was lost in the vastness of the pillared hall. There was a silence, a sense of peace, and a bleak gray light. A shaft of sunlight pierced one of the high narrow slits in the wall, and at that moment the muezzin began to cry: “Allahu akbarl Allahu akbarl Allahu akbarl Allahu akbar!” Wolff turned to face Mecca. He was wearing a long robe and a turban, and the shoes in his hand were simple Arab sandals. He was never quite sure why he did this. He was a True Believer only in theory. He had been circumcised according to Islamic doctrine, and he had completed the pilgrimage to Mecca; but he drank alcohol and ate pork, he never paid the zakat tax, he never observed the fast of Ramadan and he did not pray every day, let alone five times a day. But every so often he felt the need to immerse himself, just for a few minutes, in the familiar, mechanical ritual of his stepfather’s religion. Then, as he had done today, he would get up while it was still dark, and dress in traditional clothes, and walk through the cold quiet streets of the city to the mosque his father had attended, and perform the ceremonial ablutions in the forecourt, and enter in time for the first prayers of the new day. He touched his ears with his hands, then clasped his hands in front of him, the left within the right. He bowed, then knelt down. Touching his forehead to the floor at appropriate moments, he recited the el-fatha: “In the name of God the merciful and compassionate. ill THE KEY TO REBECCA 113