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allow you time for a brief nap, although I suggest that you plan to devote
considerable attention to the state of your fingernails.
I held up my hands and looked at them. The nails were in a lamentable state,
it was true, but if anything they added to the verisimilitude of my disguise.
 Why?
 Because we are dining, of course, he said in surprise, snapping his stick
briskly under one arm.  At the American Colony. Not formal dress, of course.
After all, there has been a war on.
 Oh, no, Holmes, you can t mean 
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He opened the door.  I left a frock in your room. If there is any other thing
I ve forgotten, ask Suleiman the cook to arrange it. I shall see you at
seven.
I did seriously consider an outright refusal of his peremptory summons; I
wanted nothing but to strip off my turban and collapse onto my gently rustling
bed. However, curiosity got the better of me that and the challenge, which
had not been voiced but which I knew had been made.
My fingernails, however, defeated me. In the end, after a hasty consultation
of my Arab-English dictionary, I went through the room shared by Ali, Mahmoud,
and most of our baggage (the men were not there; the door was unlocked) and
called down the outside stairs to Suleiman the cook that I needed a pair of
women s gloves, quickly, and to send a boy out into the bazaar for them.
My hair, too, was in a sorry state, but I eventually combed it back into a
sleek knot and examined myself critically in the mottled glass Holmes had
brought to my cubicle along with frock, stockings, shoes, hairpins, earrings,
and all the accoutrements of female preparation. He knew the routine, give him
that: he d even thought to include a small bottle of expensive scent, which I
used rather more liberally than was my wont. Cold water does not actually
cleanse.
Still, I thought I might pass, if I did not forget myself and drop to my
haunches or let loose with a florid Arabic curse. The frock was of an outdated
fashion, perhaps more appropriate here than in London, with a high neck, long
sleeves, and low hem. It was a nicely made garment, in a dark maroon fabric
with touches of white that clung and moved and distracted the eye from the
tint of my skin, which no amount of rice powder would lighten.
I examined my reflection and had to wonder uneasily if Holmes had intended for
me to look quite so& exotic. The young woman looking back at me seemed, shall
I say, sensuous loose, even, like some Eurasian temptress in a bad novel. On
the whole, I thought perhaps the effect was accidental; had he been
deliberately aiming at the effect, he would probably have included a bottle of
hair-rinse to make my blonde hair colour seem artificial.
A selection of gloves arrived, and shortly thereafter Ali and Mahmoud came up
the stairs. They stood in the doorway, frankly staring at me, but I absolutely
refused to blush. Instead, I turned to them for their opinion.
 What do you think, the white gloves or the lacy ones?
Ali just gawped. Mahmoud examined the two choices, and his lips twitched. I
chose the long lacy ones, which, as they were more difficult to get on and
off, might excusably be retained during dinner.
With no more self-consciousness than a pair of cats the two men watched me
complete my toilette, tug the gloves into place, and check my hairpins.
Finally Ali said,  There is a motorcar in the road.
 Why didn t you say so earlier? I asked in irritation, catching up the
evening cloak and pushing past them to reach the external stairway it was dark
now, and outside there would be less chance of observers to remark on the
inn s bizarre guest. I was picking my cautious way down the stairs when I
heard Mahmoud s voice from above me.
 Is your hair the colour that is called  strawberry blonde ? he asked.
I stopped.  I suppose so, I answered. When no other enquiries followed, I
shrugged my shoulders and continued down the stairs, but before I reached the
cobbles, a strange noise filled the dirty little yard: a man s voice, a tenor,
singing. It took a moment for the words to register, by which time a second
voice, a baritone, had joined in.   I danced with the girl with the
strawberry curls,  they sang,   and the band played on&   The old tune
followed me out the gates, and as I was being handed into the car by the
driver the words dissolved into laughter. I shook my head. It was like living
with a pair of adolescent boys. And Holmes was at times no better.
We drove out through the gap in the city wall next to the Jaffa Gate, the hole
cut in 1898 to enable the Kaiser to ride his white horse into the city. I had
seen a photograph somewhere of the occasion, the German emperor dressed in
white silk, preceded by brass bands and Arab horsemen, with his ladies
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following behind in the comfort of their touring car. Once inside, of course,
there would have been no place for the motorcar or the bands to go our inn was
at the very farthest reaches of automotive traffic, short of a motorcycle, in
this labyrinthine city. Symbolism, however, especially in Jerusalem, is
all which explained as well the contrasting entrance Allenby had chosen to
make nineteen years later when he seized the city from the Kaiser s allies.
The general walked up the hill in his dusty boots, surrounded by men in the
same battle-worn khaki uniforms as himself, all pageantry aside as he
addressed himself to the gathered representatives of the city before returning
to the business of freeing the remainder of Palestine. Symbolism, indeed.
The American Colony, north of the Old City, was precisely what it sounded
like: a family of Americans who had come over in the 1880s and stayed to do
good work through increasingly evil times. Their main house, originally built
by a Turkish pasha for his several wives, was a two-storey stone block
surrounding a private courtyard garden, strongly Eastern in its character. The
night was cold; nonetheless I surrendered my cloak and followed a young man,
who despite his accent and skin tone seemed more family than servant, through
rooms that combined the high, airy arches of the Orient with the heavy
furniture and grass-plumes-in-brass-pots motif of Victorian decorating, into
the courtyard that sparkled with hanging lamps and glowing braziers, made even
more festive by the delicate play of a fountain. My hostess quite obviously
had no idea who I was, but received me graciously and introduced me to all the
men nearby. And most of the people in the garden were men, many of them
officers with red tags marking them as being on the staff of General Allenby,
with a very few wives and not one unattached woman other than the daughters of
the house and myself. Holmes was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if he would
appear at all, or if I was to be abandoned here to my own resources, having no
idea whatsoever why I was here or what I was to do, and feeling fairly certain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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