Free The Dark Labyrinth by Lawrence Durrell

Dombey had been sent east upon what she described as “the Lord’s business.” Leaving England had been a revelation. She had always heard of the “backward” races, she said, but had never realized how backward and savage they were. “The filth, ” she said challengingly, when he tried to defend Cairo and Jerusalem. Miss Dombey obliged with two examples of Egyptian life which were incontestably true to character. Walking down Kasr El Nil she had seen a little man in a black suit and hat approaching her. He had no nose, but in the space where the nose should have been was the cork of a bottle, across which lay the rim of his spectacles. On another occasion, travelling third the better to observe her quarry (the fellah), she had noticed that a strange smell of burning was emanating from the man seated next to her. He had a lighted cigarette in his hand which had burnt down to the flesh of the finger. He felt nothing. She realized that the smell was that of burnt flesh. The man was a leper ! She recounted these ancedotes with triumphant gestures and Baird had to admit that his Middle East was dirty; but how varied, and how delightful. “It’s the same everywhere,” said Miss Dombey, “ same people saying the same things.” That also was true. Everywhere there was the conventional Latin situation—hopeless broken-down provincial societies talking Lycée French and making Cirque Medrano love. But everywhere, too, the seduction of blue water and islands, and the occasional slant-eyed dark person who demanded only a fugitive devotion of the body, being unable to touch the heart or perhaps not even desiring it. How could one make this clear to Miss Dombey? He could imagine the expression on her face if he should say that he had become a sub-tropical man. “I must go,” he said, “the taxi for Beirut is leaving in a few minutes.” He shook her warmly by the hand and left her standing there in her torn mackintosh, with her uncombed, untidy red hair shaking in the wind from the open door.
    He had spent several months in the Lebanon among the little Druse villages, and was travelling towards Gaza once more in a crowded second-class compartment, when he heard that war had been declared. A couple of Egyptians in their red tarbushes were eagerly reading an Arabic paper; opposite him an old Hebrew and his son were arguing in French about the possibilities of fighting spreading to the Middle East. As the train started rolling slowly away from the flower-scented groves of cultivation towards the twilit desert that stretched between them and Egypt, the old man was repeating: “A war is nothing at all.” He was, like all Orientals, equipped with a massive rosary which he drew backwards and forwards through his fingers as he talked, touching the larger amber stones voluptuously. Baird could see the venal old face with its dark eye-pouches quickened by the thought of war and its profits; the movement of men and armies, the millions of tons of provisions—concrete, steel, tobacco, and medical stores—which would be spewed out and wasted in every theatre. “It is nothing,” he repeated; how many wars, expulsions, evacuations had he seen that he could think of war in Europe with nothing more than the restless cupidity of his race? He was urging his son to join the army at the first opportunity. “Syria will be a bastion,” he repeated. But it was obvious from his face that he was thinking how much a son in uniform could help him to get contracts for fruit or wool or firewood. Their argument became quite heated. “But the war will never come here,” said the younger man and his father’s face fell, while the face of one of the Egyptians in uniform brightened considerably.
    Baird wrapped himself in his coat and tried to sleep. It seemed to him that he had never been so well-equipped for death. He confronted the idea with an utter calm. He