VII
As the summer burned
away into autumn, and autumn into winter once more we became slowly aware that
the war which had invested the city had begun slowly to ebb, to flow gradually
away along the coast-roads fringing the desert, releasing its hold upon us and
our pleasures. For receding like a tide
it left its strange coprolitic trophies along the
beaches which we had once used, finding them always white and deserted under
the flying gulls. War had denied them to
us for a long time; but now, when we rediscovered them, we found them littered
with pulped tanks and twisted guns, and the indiscriminate wreckage of
temporary supply harbours abandoned by the engineers to rot and rust under the
desert sun, to sink gradually into the shifting dunes. It gave one a curious melancholy reassurance
to bathe there now - as if among the petrified lumber of a Neolithic age: tanks
like the skeletons of dinosaurs, guns standing about like outmoded
furniture. The minefields constituted
something of a hazard, and the Bedouin were often straying into them in the
course of pasturing; once Clea swerved - for the road
was littered with glistening fragments of shattered camel from some recent
accident. But such occasions were rare,
and as for the tanks themselves, though burned out they were tenantless. There were no human bodies in them. These had presumably been excavated and
decently buried in one of the huge cemeteries which had grown up in various
unexpected corners of the western desert like townships of the dead. The city, too, was finding its way back to
its normal habits and rhythms, for the bombardments had now ceased altogether
and the normal nightlife of the Levant had begun once more to flower. And though uniforms were less abundant the
bars and nightclubs still plied a splendid trade with servicemen on leave.
My own
eventless life, too, seemed to have settled itself into a natural routine-fed
pattern, artificially divided by a private life which I had surrendered to my
complete absorption in Clea, and an office life
which, though not onerous, had little meaning to me. Little had changed: but yes, Maskelyne had at last managed to break his bonds and escape
back to his regiment. He called on us,
resplendent in uniform, to say goodbye, shyly pointing - not his pipe but a
crisp new swagger-stick - at his tail-wagging colleague. 'I told you he'd do it,' said Telford with a
triumphant sadness in his voice. 'I
always knew it.' But Mountolive
stayed on, apparently still 'frozen' in his post.
From time
to time by arrangement I revisited the child at Karm
Abu Girg to see how she was faring. To my delight I found that the
transplantation, about which I had many misgivings, was working perfectly. The reality of her present life apparently
chimed with the dreams I had invented for her.
It was all as it should be - the coloured playing-card characters among
whom should could now number herself! If
Justine remained a somewhat withdrawn and unpredictable figure of moods and
silences it only added, as far as I could see, to the sombre image of a
dispossessed empress. In Nessim she had realized a father. His image had gained definition by greater
familiarity because of his human tendernesses. He was a delightful companion-father now, and
together they explored the desert lands around the house on horseback. He had given her a bow and arrows, and a
little girl of about her own age, Taor, as a
body-servant and amah. The
so-called palace, too, which wee had imagined together, stood the test of
reality magnificently. Its labyrinth of
musty rooms and its ramshackle treasures were a perpetual delight. Thus with her own horses and servants, and a
private palace to play in, she was an Arabian Nights queen indeed. She had almost forgotten the island now, so
absorbed was she among these new treasures.
I did not see Justine during these visits, nor did I try to do so. Sometimes, however, Nessim
was there, but he never accompanied us on our walks or rides, and usually the
child came to the ford to meet me with a spare horse.
In the
spring Balthazar, who had by now quite come to himself and had thrown himself
once more into his work, invited Clea and myself to
take part in a ceremony which rather pleased his somewhat ironic
disposition. This was the ceremonial
placing of flowers on Capodistria's grave on the
anniversary of the Great Porn's birthday.
'I have the express authority of Capodistria
himself,' he explained. 'Indeed, he
himself always pays for the flowers every year.' It was a fine sunny day for the excursion and
Balthazar insisted that we should walk.
Though somewhat hampered by the nosegay he carried he was in good
voice. His vanity in the matter of his
hair had become too strong to withstand, and he had duly submitted to Mnemjian's ministrations, thus 'rubbing out his age', as he
expressed it. Indeed, the change was
remarkable. He was now, once more, the
old Balthazar, with his sapient dark eyes turned ironically on the doings of
the city. And no less on Capodistria from whom he had just received a long
letter. 'You can have no idea what the
old brute is up to over the water. He
has taken the Luciferian path and plunged into Black
Magic. But I'll read it to you. His graveside is, now I come to think of it,
a most appropriate place to read his account of his experiments!'
The cemetery
was completely deserted in the sunshine.
Capodistria had certainly spared no expense to
make his grave imposing and had achieved a fearsome vulgarity of decoration
which was almost mind-wounding. Such
cherubs and scrolls, such floral wreaths.
On the slab was engraved the ironic text: 'Not Lost But Gone
Before'. Balthazar chuckled
affectionately as he placed his flowers upon the grave and said 'Happy
Birthday' to it. Then he turned aside,
removing coat and hat, for the sun was high and bright, and together as we sat
on a bench under a cypress tree while Clea ate
toffees and he groped in his pockets for the bulky typewritten packet which
contained Capodistria's latest and longest
letter. 'Clea,'
he said, 'you must read it to us. I've
forgotten my reading glasses. Besides, I
would like to hear it through once, to see if it sounds less fantastic or
more. Will you?'
Obediently
she took the close-typed pages and started reading.
'My dear
M.B.'
'The
initials,' interposed Balthazar, 'stand for the nickname which Pursewarden fastened on me - Melancholia Borealis, no
less. A tribute to my alleged Judaic
gloom. Proceed, my dear Clea.'
The letter
was in French.
'I have
been conscious, my dear friend, that I owed you some account of my new life
here, yet though I have written you fairly frequently I have got into the habit
of evading the subject. Why? Well, my heart always sank at the thought of
your derisive laugh. It is absurd, for I
was never a sensitive man or quick to worry about the opinion of my
neighbours. Another thing. It would have involved a long and tiresome
explanation of the unease and unfamiliarity I have always felt at the meetings
of the Cabal which sought to drench the world in its abstract goodness. I did not know then that my path was not the
path of Light but of Darkness. I would
have confused it morally or ethically with good and evil at that time. Now I recognize the path I am treading as
simply the counterpoise - the bottom end of the seesaw, as it were - which
keeps the light side up in the air.
Magic! I remember you once
quoting to me a passage (quite nonsensical to me then) from Paracelsus. I think you added at the time that even such
gibberish must mean something. It
does! "True Alchemy which teaches
how to make or transmute out of the five imperfect metals, requires no other
materials but only the metals. The
perfect metals are made out of the imperfect metals, through them and with them
alone; for with other things is Luna (phantasy)
but in the metals is Sol (wisdom)."
'I leave
for a moment's pause for your peculiar laugh, which in the past I would not
have been slow to echo! What a mountain
of rubbish surrounding the idea of the tinctura
physicorum, you would observe. Yes but....
'My first
winter in this windy tower was not pleasant.
The roof leaked. I did not have
my books to solace me as yet. My
quarters seemed rather cramped and I wondered about extending them. The property on which the tower stands above
the sea had also a straggle of cottages and outbuildings upon it; here lodged
the ancient, deaf couple of Italians who looked after my wants, washed and
cleaned and fed me. I did not want to
turn them out of their quarters but wondered whether I could not convert the
extra couple of barns attached to their abode.
It was then that I found, to my surprise, that they had another lodger
whom I had never seen, a strange and solitary creature who only went abroad at
night, and wore a monk's cassock. I owe
all my new orientation to my meeting with him.
He is a defrocked Italian monk, who describes himself as a Rosicrucian
and an alchemist. He lived here among a
mountain of masonic manuscripts - some of very great
age - which he was in the process of studying.
It was he who first convinced me that this line of enquiry was
(despite some disagreeable aspects)
concerned with increasing man's interior hold on himself, on the domains which
lie unexplored within him; the comparison with everyday science is not
fallacious, for the form of this enquiry is based as firmly on method - only
with different premises! And if, as I
say, it has some disagreeable aspects, why so has formal science - vivisection
for instance. Anyway, here I struck up a
rapport, and opened up for myself a field of study which grew more and more
engrossing as the months went by. I also
discovered at last something which eminently fitted my nature! Truthfully, everything in this field seemed
to nourish and sustain me! Also I was
able to be of considerable practical assistance to the Abbé
F. as I will call him, for some of these manuscripts (stolen from the secret
lodges on Athos I should opine) were in Greek, Arabic
and Russian - languages which he did not know well. Our friendship ripened into a
partnership. But it was many months
before he introduced me to yet another strange, indeed formidable figure who
was also dabbling in these matters. This
was an Austrian Baron who lived in a large mansion inland and who was busy (no,
do not laugh) on the obscure problem which we once discussed - is it in De Natura Rerum? I think it is - the generatio
homunculi? He had a Turkish butler
and famulus to help him in his experiments. Soon I became persona grata
here also and was allowed to help them to the best of my ability.
'Now this
Baron - whom you would certainly find a strange and imposing figure, heavily
bearded and with big teeth like the seeds of a corn-cob - this Baron had ...
ah! my dear Balthazar, had actually produced ten homunculi which he
called his "prophesying spirits".
They were preserved in the huge glass canisters which they use
hereabouts for washing olives or to preserve fruit, and they lived in
water. They stood on a long oaken race
in his studio or laboratory. They were
produced or "patterned", to use his own expression, in the course of
five weeks of intense labour of thought and ritual. They were exquisitely beautiful and
mysterious objects, floating there like sea-horses. They consisted of a king, a queen, a knight,
a monk, a nun, an architect, a miner, a seraph, and finally a blue spirit and a
red one! They dangled lazily in these
stout glass jars. A tapping fingernail
seemed to alarm them. They were only
about a span long, and as the Baron was anxious for them to grow to a greater
size, we helped him to bury them in several cartloards
of horse-manure. This great midden was sprinkled daily with an evil-smelling liquid
which was prepared with great labour by the Baron and his Turk, and which
contained some rather disgusting ingredients.
At each sprinkling the manure began to steam as if heated by a
subterranean fire. It was almost to hot
to place one's finger in it. Once every
three days the Abbé and the Baron spent the whole
night praying and fumigating the midden with
incense. When at last the Baron deemed
this process complete the bottles were carefully removed and returned to the
laboratory shelves. All the homunculi
had grown in size to such an extent that the bottles were now hardly big enough
for them, and the male figures had come into possession of heavy beards. The nails of their fingers and toes had grown
very long. Those which bore a human
representation wore clothes appropriate to their rank and style. They had a kind of beautiful obscenity
floating there with an expression on their faces such as I have only once seen
before - on the face of a Peruvian pickled human head! Eyes turned up into the skull, pale fish's
lips drawn back to expose small perfectly formed teeth! In the bottles containing respectively the
red and blue spirit there was nothing to be seen. All the bottles, by the way, were heavily
sealed with oxbladders and wax bearing the imprint of
a magic seal. But when the Baron tapped
with his fingernail on the bottles and repeated some words in Hebrew the water
clouded and began to turn red and blue respectively. The homunculi began to show their faces, to
develop cloudily like a photographic print, gradually increasing in size. The blue spirit was as beautiful as any
angel, but the red wore a truly terrifying expression.
'These
beings were fed every three days by the Baron with some dry rose-coloured
substance which was kept in a silver box lined with sandalwood. Pellets about the size of a dried pea. Once every week, too, the water in the
bottles had to be emptied out; they had to be refilled (the bottles) with fresh
rainwater. This had to be done very
rapidly because during the few moments that the spirits were exposed to the air
they seemed to get weak and unconscious, as if they were about to die, like
fish. But the blue spirit was never fed;
while the red one received once a week a thimbleful of the fresh blood of some
animal - a chicken I think. This blood
disappeared at once in the water without colouring or even troubling it. As soon as this bottle was opened it turned
turbid and dark and gave off the odour of rotten eggs!
'In the
course of a couple of months these homunculi reached their full stature, the
stage of prophecy - as the Baron calls it; then every night the bottles were
carried into a small ruined chapel, situated in a grove at some distance from
the house, and here a service was held and the bottles "interrogated"
on the course of future events. This was
done by writing questions in Hebrew on slips of paper and pressing them to the
bottle before the eyes of the humunculus; it was
rather like exposing sensitized photographic paper to light. I mean it was not as if the beings read but
divined the questions, slowly, with much hesitation. They spelled out their answers, drawing with
a finger on the transparent glass, and these responses were copied down
immediately by the Baron in a great commonplace book. Each homunculus was only asked questions
appropriate to his station, and the red and blue spirits could only answer with
a smile or a frown to indicate assent or dissent. Yet they seemed to know everything, and any
question at all could be put to them.
The King could only touch on politics, the monk religion ... and so on. In this way I witnessed the compilation of
what the Baron called "the annals of Time" which is a document at
least as impressive as that left behind him by Nostradamus. So many of these prophecies have proved true
in these last short months that I can have little doubt about the rest also
proving so. It is a curious sensation to
peer thus into the future!
'One day,
by some accident, the glass jar containing the monk fell to the stone flags and
was broken. The poor monk died after a
couple of small painful respirations, despite all the efforts made by the Baron
to save him. His body was buried in the
garden. There was an abortive attempt to
"pattern" another monk but this was a failure. It produced a small leech-like objects
without vitality which died within a few hours.
'A short
while afterwards the King managed to escape from his bottle during the night;
he was found sitting upon the bottle containing the Queen, scratching with his
nails to get the seal away! He was
beside himself, and very agile, though weakening desperately from his exposure
to the air. Nevertheless he led us quite
a chase among the bottles - which we were afraid of overturning. It was really extraordinary how nimble he
was, and had he not become increasingly faint from being out of his native
element I doubt whether we could have caught him. We did, however, and he was pushed,
scratching and biting, back into his bottle, but not before he had severely
scratched the Abbé's chin. In the scrimmage he gave off a curious odour,
as of a hot metal plate cooling. My
finger touched his leg. It was of a wet
and rubbery consistency, and sent a shiver of apprehension down my spine.
'But now a
mishap occurred. The Abbé's
scratched face became inflamed and poisoned and he went down with a high fever
and was carried off to hospital where he lies at present, convalescing. But there was more to follow, and worse; the
Baron, being Austrian, had always been something of a curiosity here, and more
especially now when the spy-mania which every war brings has reached its
height. It came to my ears that he was
to be thoroughly investigated by the authorities. He received the news with despairing
calmness, but it was clear that he could not afford to have unauthorized
persons poking about in his laboratory.
It was decided to "dissolve" the homunculi and bury them in
the garden. In the absence of the Abbé I agreed to help him.
I do not know what it was he poured into the bottles but all the flames
of hell leaped up out of them until the whole ceiling of the place was covered
in soot and cobwebs. The beings shrank
now to the size of dried leeches, or the tied navel-cords which sometimes
village folk will preserve. The Baron
groaned aloud from time to time, and the sweat stood out on his forehead. The groans of a woman in labour. At last the process was complete and at
midnight the bottles were taken out and interred under some loose flags in the
little chapel where, presumably, they must still be. The Baron has been interned, his books and
papers sealed by the Custodians of Property.
The Abbé lies, as I said, in hospital. And I?
Well, my Greek passport has made me less suspect than most people
hereabouts. I have retired for the
moment to my tower. There is still the
mass of masonic data in the barns which the Abbé inhabited; I have taken charge of these. I have written to the Baron once or twice but
he has not, perhaps out of tact, replied to me; believing perhaps that my
association with him might lead to harm.
And so ... well, the war rolls on about us. Its end and what follows it - right up to the
end of this century - I know: it lies here beside me as I write, in question
and answer form. But who would believe
me if I published it all - and much less you, doctor of the empiric sciences,
sceptic and ironist? As for the war -
Paracelsus has said: "Innumerable are the Egos of man; in him are
angels and devils, heaven and hell, the whole of the animal creation, the
vegetable and mineral kingdoms; and just as the little individual man may be
diseased, so the great universal man has his diseases, which manifest
themselves as the ills which affect humanity as a whole. Upon this fact is based the prediction of
future events." And so, my dear
friend, I have chosen the Dark Path towards my own light. I know now that I must follow it wherever it
leads! Isn't that something to have
achieved? Perhaps not. But for me it truthfully seems so. But I hear that laughter!
'Ever your
devoted Da Capo'. [The
incidents recorded in Capodistria's letter have been
borrowed and expanded from a footnote in Franz Hartmann's LIFE OF PARACELSUS.]
'Now,' said Clea, 'oblige with the
laughter!'
'What Pursewarden,' I said, 'called "the melancholy laughter
of Balthazar which betokens solipsism".'
Balthazar
did indeed laugh now, slapping his knee and doubling himself up like a
jack-knife. 'That damned rogue, Da Capo,' he said.
'And yet, soyons raisonnables
if that is indeed the expression - he wouldn't tell a pack of lies. Or perhaps he might. No, he wouldn't. Yet can you bring yourself to believe in what
he says - you two?'
'Yes,' said
Clea, and here we both smiled, for her bondage to the
soothsayers of Alexandria would naturally give her a predisposition towards the
magic arts. 'Laugh,' she said quietly.
'To tell
the truth,' said Balthazar more soberly, 'when one casts around the fields of so-called
knowledge which we have partially opened up one is conscious that there may
well be whole areas of darkness which may belong to the Paracelsian
regions - the submerged part of the iceberg of knowledge. No, dammit, I must
admit that you are right. We get too
certain of ourselves travelling backwards and forwards along the tramlines of
empirical fact. Occasionally one gets
hit softly on the head by a stray brick which has been launched from some other
region. Only yesterday, for example,
Boyd told me a story which sounded no less strange: about a soldier who was
buried last week. I could, of course,
supply explanations which might fit the case, but not with any certainty. This young boy went on a week's leave to
Cairo. He came back having had an
enjoyable time, or so he said. Next he
developed an extraordinary intermittent fever with simply huge maximum
temperatures. Within a week he died. A few hours before death a thick white
cataract formed over his eyeballs with a sort of luminous red node over the
retina. All the boy would repeat in the
course of his delirium was the single phrase: "She did it with a golden
needle". Nothing but these
words. As I say, one could perhaps strap
the case down clinically with a clever guess or two but ... had I to be honest
I would be obliged to admit that it did not exactly fit within an accepted
category that I knew. Nor, by the way,
did the autopsy give one anything more to go on: blood tests, spinal fluid,
stomach, etc. Not even a nice, familiar
(yet itself perhaps inexplicable) meningeal
disturbance. The brain was lovely and
fresh! At least so Boyd says, and he
took great pleasure in thoroughly exploring the young man. Mystery!
Now what the devil could he have been doing on leave? It seems quite impossible to discover. His stay is not recorded at any of the hotels
or army transit hotels. He spoke no
language but English. Those few days
spent in Cairo are completely missing from the count. And then the woman with the golden needle?
'But in
truth it is happening all the time, and I think you are right' (this to Clea) 'to insist obstinately on the existence of the dark
powers and the fact that some people do scry as
easily as I gaze down the barrel of my microscope. Not all, but some. And even quite stupid people, like your old Scobie, for example.
Mind you, in my opinion, that was a rigmarole of the kind he produced
sometimes when he was tipsy and wanted to show off - I mean, the stuff
supposedly about Narouz: that was altogether too
dramatic to be taken seriously. And even
if some of the detail were right he could have had access to it in the
course of his duties. After all, Nimrod
did the procès verbal and that document
must have been knocking around.'
'What about
Narouz?' I asked curiously, secretly piqued that Clea had confided things to Balthazar which she had kept
from me. It was now that I noticed that Clea had turned quite white and was looking away. But Balthazar appeared to notice nothing
himself and plunging on. 'It has the
ingredients of a novelette - I mean about trying to drag you down into the
grave with him. Eh, don't you
think? And about the weeping you would
hear.' He broke off abruptly, noticing
her expression at last. 'Goodness, Clea my dear,' he went on in self-reproach, 'I hope I am
not betraying a confidence. You suddenly
look upset. Did you tell me not to
repeat the Scobie story?' He took both her hands and turned her round
to face him.
A spot of
red had appeared in both her cheeks. She
shook her head, though she said nothing, but bit her lips as if with
vexation. At last 'No,' she said, 'there
is no secret. I simply did not tell Darley because ... well, it is silly as you say: anyway he
doesn't believe in the sort of rubbish.
I didn't want to seem stupider than he must find me.' She leaned to kiss me apologetically on the
cheek. She sensed my annoyance, as did
Balthazar who hung his head and said: 'I've talked out of turn. Damn!
Now he will be angry with you.'
'Good
heavens, no!' I protested. 'Simply curious,
that is all. I had no intention of
prying, Clea.'
She made a
gesture of anguished exasperation and said: 'Very well. It is of no importance. I will tell you the whole thing.' She started speaking hastily, as if to
dispose of a disagreeable and time-wasting subject. 'It was during the last dinner I told you
about. Before I went
to
It was
strange what a gloom this nonsensical yet ominous recital put over our spirits;
something troubling and distasteful seemed to invade that brilliant spring
sunshine, the light keen air. In the
silence that followed Balthazar gloomily folded and refolded his overcoat on
his knee while Clea turned away to study the distant
curve of the great harbour with its flotillas of cubist-smeared craft, and the
scattered bright petals of the racing dinghies which had crossed the harbour
boom, threading their blithe way towards the distant blue marker buoy. Alexandria was virtually at norm once more,
lying in the deep backwater of the receding war, recovering its pleasures. Yet the day had suddenly darkened around us,
oppressing our spirits - a sensation all the more exasperating because of its
absurd cause. I cursed old Scobie's self-importance in setting up as a fortune-teller.
'These
gifts might have got him a bit further in his own profession had they been
real,' I said peevishly.
Balthazar
laughed, but even here there was a chagrined doubt in his laughter. His remorse at having stirred up this silly
story was quite patent.
'Let us
go,' said Clea sharply. She seemed slightly annoyed as well, and for
once disengaged her arm when I took it.
We found an old horse-drawn gharry and drove slowly and silently into
town together.
'No, damn
it!' cried Balthazar at last. And
without waiting for answer from us he redirected the jarvey
and set us mutely clip-clopping down the slow curves of the Grande Corniche towards the Yacht Club in the outer harbour of
which was now to befall something momentous and terrible for us all. I remember it so clearly, this spring day
without flaw; a green bickering sea lighting the minarets, softly spotted here
and there by the dark gusts of a fine racing wind. Yes, with mandolines
fretting in the Arab town, and every costume glowing as brightly as a child's
coloured transfer. Within a quarter of
an hour the magnificence of it was to be darkened, poisoned by unexpected -
completely unmerited - death. But if
tragedy strikes suddenly the actual moment of its striking seems to vibrate on,
extending into time like the sour echoes of some great gong, numbing the
spirit, the comprehension. Suddenly,
yes, but yet how slowly it expands in the understanding - the ripples
unrolling upon the reason in ever-widening circles of fear. And yet, all the time, outside the
centrepiece of the picture, so to speak, with its small tragic anecdote, normal
life goes on unheeding. (We did not even
hear the bullets, for example. Their
sullen twang was carried away on the wind.)
Yet our
eyes were drawn, as if by the lines-of-force of some great marine painting, to
a tiny clutter of dinghies snubbing together in the lee of one of the
battleships which hovered against the sky like a grey cathedral. Their sails flapped and tossed, idly as
butterflies contending with the breeze.
There were some obscure movements of oars and arms belonging to figures
too small at this range to distinguish or recognize. Yet this tiny commotion had force to draw the
eye - by who knows what interior premonition?
And as the cab rolled silently along the rim of the inner harbour we saw
it unroll before us like some majestic seascape by a great master. The variety and distinction of the small
refugee craft from every corner of the Levant - their differing designs and
rigs - gave it a brilliant sensuality and rhythm against the glittering water. Everything was breath-taking yet normal; tugs
hooted, children cried, from the cafés came the rattle of the trictrac boards and the voices of birds. The normality of an entire world surrounded
that tiny central panel with its flickering sails, the gestures we could not
interpret, the faint voices. The little
craft tilted, arms rose and fell.
'Something
has happened,' said Balthazar with his narrow dark eye upon the scene, and as
if his phrase had affected the horse it suddenly drew to a halt. Besides ourselves on the dockside only one
man had also seen; he too stood gazing with curious open-mouthed distraction,
aware that something out of the ordinary was afoot. Yet everywhere people bustled, the chandlers
cried. At his feet three children played
in complete absorption, placing marbles in the tramlines, hoping to see them
ground to powder when the next tram passed.
A water-carrier clashed his brass mugs, crying: 'Come, ye thirsty
ones.' And unobtrusively in the background,
as if travelling on silk, a liner stole noiselessly down the green thoroughfare
towards the open sea.
'It's Pombal,' cried Clea at last, in
puzzled tones, and with a gesture of anxiety put her arm through mine. It was indeed Pombal. What had befallen them was this. They had been drifting about the harbour in
his little dinghy with their customary idleness and inattention and had strayed
too near to one of the French battleships, carried into its lee and off their
course by an unexpected swoop of the wind.
How ironically it had been planned by the invisible stage-masters who
direct human actions, and with what speed!
For the French ships, though captive, had still retained both the
small-arms and a sense of shame, which made their behaviour touchy and
unpredictable. The sentries they mounted
had orders to fire a warning shot across the bows of any craft which came
within a dozen metres of any battleship.
It was, then, only in response to orders that a sentry put a bullet
through Pombal's sail as the little dinghy whirled
down on its rogue course towards his ship.
It was merely a warning, which intended no deliberate harm. And even now this might have ... but no: it
could not have fallen out otherwise. For
my friend, overcome with rage and mortification, at being treated thus by these
cowards and lackbones of his own blood and faith,
turned purple with indignation, and abandoned his tiller altogether in order to
stand precariously upright and shake his huge fists, screaming: 'Salauds!' and 'Espèces de
cons!' and - what was perhaps the definitive epithet - 'Lâches!'
Did he hear
the bullets himself? It is doubtful
whether in all the confusion he did, for the craft tilted, gybed,
and turned about on another course, toppling him over. It was while he was lying there, recovering
the precious tiller, that he noticed Fosca in the
very act of falling, but with infinite slowness. Afterwards he said that she did not know she
had been hit. She must have felt,
perhaps, simply a vague and unusual dispersion of her attention, the swift
anaesthesia of shock which follows so swiftly upon the wound. She tilted like a high tower, and felt the sternsheets coming up slowly to press themselves to her
cheek. There she lay with her eyes open,
plump and soft as a wounded pheasant will lie, still bright of eye in spite of
the blood running from its beak. He
shouted her name, and felt only the immense silence of the word, for the little
freshet had sharpened and was now rushing them landward. A new sort of confusion supervened, for other
craft, attracted as flies are by wounds, began to cluster with cries of advice
and commiseration. Meanwhile Fosca lay with vague and open eyes, smiling to herself in
the other kind of dream.
And it was
now that Balthazar suddenly awoke from his trance, struggled out of the cab
without a word and began his queer lurching, traipsing run across the dock to
the little red field-ambulance telephone with its emergency line. I heard the small click of the receiver and
the sound of his voice speaking, patient and collected. The summons was answered, too, with almost
miraculous promptness, for the field-post with its ambulances was only about
fifty yards away. I heard the sweet
tinkle of the ambulance's bell, and saw it racing along the cobbles towards us. And now all faces turned once more towards
that little convoy of dinghies - faces on which was written only patient
resignation or dread. Pombal was on his knees in the sheets with bent head. Behind him, deftly steering, was Ali the
boatman who had been the first to comprehend and offer his help. All the other dinghies, flying along on the
same course, stayed grouped around Pombal's as if in
active sympathy. I could read the name Manon which he had so proudly bestowed upon it, not
six months ago. Everything seemed to
have become bewildering, shaken into a new dimension which was swollen with
doubts and fears.
Balthazar
stood on the quay in an agony of impatience, urging them in his mind to
hurry. I heard his tongue clicking
against the roof of his mouth teck tsch, clicking softly and reproachfully; a reproach, I
wondered, directed against their slowness, or against life itself, its
unpremeditated patterns?
At last
they were on us. Our heard quite
distinctly the sound of their breathing, and our own contribution, the snap of
stretcher-thongs, the tinkle of polished steel, the small snap of heels studded
with hobnails. It all mixed into a
confusion of activity, the lowering and lifting, the grunts as dark hands found
purchase on a rope to hold the dinghy steady, the sharp serrated edges of
conflicting voices giving orders. 'Stand
by' and 'Gently now' all mixed with a distant foxtrot on a ship's radio. A stretched swinging like a cradle, like a
basket of fruit upon the dark shoulders of an Arab. And steel doors opening on a white throat.
Pombal wore an air of studied vagueness, his features all
dispersed and quite livid in colour. He
flopped on to the quay as if he had been dropped from a cloud, falling to his
knees and recovering. He wandered
vaguely after Balthazar and the stretcher-bearers bleating like a lost
sheep. I suppose it must have been her
blood splashed upon the expensive white espadrilles which he had bought
a week before at Ghoshen's Emporium. At such moments it is the small details which
strike one like blows. He made a vague
attempt to clamber into the white throat but was rudely ejected. The doors clanged in his face. Fosca belonged now
to science and not to him. He waited
with humbly bent head, like a man in church, until they should open once more
and admit him. He seemed hardly to be
breathing. I felt an involuntary desire
to go to his side but Clea's arm restrained me. We all waited in great patience and
submissiveness like children, listening to the vague movements within the
ambulance, the noise of boots. Then at
long last the doors opened and the weary Balthazar climbed down and said: 'Get
in and come with us.' Pombal gave one wild glance about him and turning his
pain-racked countenance suddenly upon Clea and
myself, delivered himself of a single gesture - spreading his arms in
uncomprehending hopelessness before clapping a fat hand over each ear, as if to
avoid hearing something. Balthazar's
voice suddenly cracked like parchment.
'Get in,' he said roughly, as if he were speaking to a criminal; and as
they climbed into the white interior I heard him add in a lower voice, 'She is
dying.' A clang of iron doors closing,
and I felt Clea's hand turn icy in my own.
So we sat,
side by side and speechless on that magnificent spring afternoon which was
already deepening into dusk. At last I
lit a cigarette and walked a few yards along the quay among the chaffering
Arabs who described the accident to each other in yelping tones. Ali was about to take the dinghy back to its
moorings at the Yacht Club; all he needed was a light for his cigarette. He came politely towards me and asked if he
might light up from me. As he puffed I
noticed that the flies had already found the little patch of blood on the dinghy's
floorboards. 'I'll clean it up,' said
Ali, noticing the direction of my glance; with a lithe cat-like leap he jumped
aboard and unloosed the sail. He turned
to smile and wave. He wanted to say 'A
bad business,' but his English was inadequate.
He shouted 'Bad poison, sir.' I
nodded.
Clea was still sitting in the gharry looking at her own
hands. It was as if this sudden incident
had somehow insulated us from one another.
'Let's go
back,' I said at last, and directed the driver to turn back into the town we
had so recently quitted.
'Pray to
goodness she will be all right,' said Clea at
last. 'It is too cruel.'
'Balthazar
said she was dying. I heard him.'
'He may be
wrong.'
But he was
not wrong, for both Fosca and the child were dead,
though we did not get the news until later in the evening. We wandered listlessly about Clea's rooms, unable to concentrate on anything. Finally she said: 'You had better go back and
spend the evening with him, don't you think.'
I was uncertain. 'He would rather
remain alone I imagine.'
'Go back,'
she said, and added sharply, 'I can't bear you hanging about at a time like
this.... Oh, darling, I've hurt you. I'm
sorry.'
'Of course
you haven't, you fool. But I'll go.'
All the way
down Rue Fuad I was thinking: such a small displacement
of the pattern, a single human life, yet it had power to alter so much. Literally, such an eventuality had occurred
to none of us. We simply could not
stomach it, fit it into the picture which Pombal
himself had built up with such care. It poisoned
everything, this small stupid fact - even almost our affection for him, for it
had turned to horror and sympathy! How
inadequate as emotions they were, how powerless to be of use. My own instinct would have been to keep away
altogether! I felt as if I never wanted
to see him again - in order not to shame him.
Bad poison, indeed. I repeated
Ali's phrase to myself over and over again.
Pombal was already there when I got back, sitting in his
gout-chair, apparently deep in thought.
A full glass of neat whisky stood beside him which he did not seem to
have touched. He had changed, however,
into the familiar blue dressing-gown with the gold peacock pattern, and on his
feet were his battered old Egyptian slippers like golden shovels. I went into the room quite quietly and sat
down opposite him without a word. He did
not appear to actually look at me, yet somehow I felt that he was conscious of
my presence; yet his eye was vague and dreamy, fixed on the middle distance,
and his fingers softly played a five-finger exercise on each other. And still looking at the window he said, in a
squeaky little voice - as if the words had power to move him although he did
not quite know their meaning: 'She's dead, Darley. They are both dead.' I felt a sensation of a leaden weight pulling
about my heart. 'C'est
pas juste,' he added absently and fell to pulling
his side-beard with fat fingers. Quite
unemotional, quite flat - like a man recovering from a severe stroke. Then he suddenly took a gulp of whisky and started
up, choking and coughing. 'It is neat,'
he said in surprise and disgust, and put the glass down with a long
shudder. Then, leaning forward he began
to scribble, taking up a pencil and pad which were on the table - whorls and
lozenges and dragons. Just like a
child. 'I must go to confession tomorrow
for the first time for ages,' he said slowly, as if with infinite
precaution. 'I have told Hamid to wake me up early.
Will you mind if Cléa only comes?' I shook my head, I understood that he meant to
the funeral. He sighed with relief. 'Bon,' he said, and standing up took
the glass of whisky. At that moment the
door opened and the distraught Pordre appeared. In a flash Pombal
changed. He gave a long chain of deep
sobs. The two men embraced muttering
incoherent words and phrases, as if consoling each other for a disaster which
was equally wounding to both. The old
diplomat raised his white womanish fish in the air and said suddenly,
fatuously: 'I have already protested strongly.'
To whom, I wondered? To the
invisible powers which decree that things shall fall out this way or that? The words sputtered out meaninglessly on the
chill air of the drawing-room. Pombal was talking.
'I must
write and tell him everything,' he said.
'Confess everything.'
'Gaston,'
said his Chief sharply, reprovingly, 'you must not do any such thing. It would increase his misery in prison. C'est pas
juste. Be
advised by me: the whole matter must be forgotten.'
'Forgotten!'
cried my friend as if he had been stung by a bee. 'You do not understand. Forgotten!
He must know for her sake.'
'He must
never know,' said the older man.
'Never.'
They stood
for a long while holding hands, and gazing about them distractedly through
their tears; and at this moment, as if to complete the picture, the door opened
to admit the porcine outlines of Father Paul - who was never to be found far
from the centre of any scandal. He
paused inside the doorway with an air of unction, with his features registering
a vast gluttonous self-satisfaction. 'My
poor boy,' he said, clearing his throat.
He made a vague gesture of his paw as if scattering Holy Water over us
all and sighed. He reminded me of some
great hairless vulture. Then
surprisingly he clattered out a few phrases of consolation in Latin.
I left my
friend among these elephantine comforters, relieved in a way that there was no
place for me in all this incoherent parade of Latin commiserations. Simply pressing his hand once I slipped out
of the flat and directed my thoughtful footsteps in the direction of Clea's room.
The funeral
took place next day. Clea
came back, looking pale and strained.
She threw her hat across the room and shook out her hair with an
impatient gesture - as if to expel the whole distasteful memory of the
incident. Then she lay down exhaustedly
on the sofa and put her arm over her eyes.
'It was
ghastly,' she said at last, 'really ghastly, Darley. First of all it was a cremation. Pombal insisted on
carrying out her wishes despite violent protests from Father Paul. What a beast that man is. He behaved as though her body had become
Church property. Poor Pombal was furious.
They had a terrible row settling the details I hear. And then ... I had never visited the new
Crematorium! It is unfinished. It stands in a bit of sandy wasteland
littered with straw and old lemonade bottles, and flanked by a trash heap of
old car-bodies. It looks in fact like a
hastily improvised furnace in a concentration camp. Horrid little brick-lined beds with half-dead
flowers sprouting from the sand. And a
little railway with runners for the coffin.
The ugliness! And the faces of
all those consuls and acting consuls!
Even Pombal seemed quite taken aback by the
hideousness. And the heat! Father Paul was of course in the foreground
of the picture, relishing his rôle. And then with an incongruous squeaking the
coffin rolled away down the garden path and swerved into a steel hatch. We hung about, first on one leg then on the
other; Father Paul showed some inclination to fill this awkward gap with
impromptu prayers but at that moment a radio in a nearby house started playing
Viennese waltzes. Attempts were made by
various chauffeurs to locate and silence it, but in vain. Never have I felt unhappier than standing in
this desolate chicken run in my best clothes.
There was a dreadful charred smell from the furnace. I did not know then that Pombal
intended to scatter the ashes in the desert, and that he had decided that I
alone would accompany him on this journey.
Nor, for that matter, did I know that Father Paul - who scented a chance
of more prayers - had firmly made up his mind to do so as well. All that followed came as a surprise.
'Well
finally the casket was produced - and what a casket! That was a real poke in the eye for us. It was like a confectioner's triumphant
effort at something suitable for inexpensive chocolates. Father Paul tried to snatch it, but poor Pombal held on to it firmly as we trailed towards the
car. I must say, here Pombal showed some backbone. "Not you," he said as the priest
started to climb into the car. "I'm
going alone with Clea." He beckoned to me with his head.
'"My
son," said Father Paul in a low grim voice, "I shall come too."
'"You
won't," said Pombal. "You've done your job."
'"My
son, I am coming," said the obstinate wretch.
'For a
moment it seemed that all might end with an exchange of blows. Pombal shook his
beard at the priest and glared at him with angry eyes. I climbed into the car, feeling extremely
foolish. Then Pombal
pushed Father Paul in the best French manner - hard in the chest - and climbed
in, banging the door. A susurrus went up
from the assembled consuls at the public slight to the cloth, but no word was
uttered. The priest was white with rage
and made a sort of involuntary gesture - as if he were going to shake his fist
at Pombal, but thought better of it.
'We were
off; the chauffeur took the road to the eastern desert, acting apparently on
previous instructions. Pombal sat quite still with this ghastly bonbonnière on his knees, breathing through his nose
and with half-closed eyes. As if he were
recovering his self-composure after all the trials of the morning. Then he put out his hand and took mine, and
so we sat, silently watching the desert unroll on either side of the car. We went quite far out before he told the
chauffeur to stop. He was breathing
rather heavily. We got out and stood for
a desultory moment at the roadside. Then
he took a step or two into the sand and paused, looking back. "Now I shall do it," he said, and
broke into his fat shambling run which carried him about twenty yards into the
desert. I said hurriedly to the
chauffeur, "Drive on for five minutes, and then come back for us." The sound of the car starting did not make Pombal turn around.
He had slumped down on his knees, like a child playing in a sand-pit;
but he stayed quite still for a long time.
I could hear him talking in a low confidential voice, though whether he
was praying or reciting poetry I could not tell. It felt desperately forlorn on that empty
desert road with the heat shimmering up from the tarmac.
'Then he
began to scrabble about in the sand before him, to pick up handfuls like a
Moslem and pour it over his own head. He
was making a queer moaning noise. At
last he lay face downwards and quite still.
The minutes ticked by. Far away
in the distance I could hear the car coming slowly towards us - at a walking
pace.
'"Pombal," I said at last. There was no reply. I walked across the intervening space,
feeling my shoes fill up with the burning sand, and touched him on the
shoulder. At once he stood up and
started dusting himself. He looked
dreadfully old all of a sudden.
"Yes," he said with a vague, startled glance all round him, as
if for the first time he realized where he was.
"Take me home, Clea." I took his hand - as if I were leading a
blind man - and tugged him slowly back to the car which by now had arrived.
'He sat
beside me with a dazed look for a long time until, as if suddenly touched to
the quick by a memory, he began to howl like a little boy who has cut his
knee. I put my arms round him. I was so glad you weren't there - your
Anglo-Saxon soul would have curled up at the edges. Yet he was repeating: "It must have
looked ridiculous. It must have looked
ridiculous." And all of a sudden he
was laughing hysterically. His beard was
full of sand. "I suddenly
remembered Father Paul's face," he explained, still giggling in the high
hysterical tones of a schoolgirl. Then
he suddenly took a hold on himself, wiped his eyes, and sighing sadly said:
"I am utterly washed out, utterly exhausted. I feel I could sleep for a week."
'And this
is presumably what he is going to do.
Balthazar has given him a strong sleeping draught to take. I dropped him at his flat and the car brought
me on here. I'm hardly less exhausted
than he. But thank God it is all
over. Somehow he will have to start his
life all over again.'
As if to
illustrate this last proposition the telephone rang and Pombal's
voice, weary and confused, said: 'Darley, is that
you? Good. Yes, I thought you would be there. Before I went to sleep I wanted to tell you,
so that we could make arrangements about the flat. Pordre is sending
me into Syria en mission. I leave
early in the morning. If I go this way I
will get allowances and be able to keep up my part of the flat easily until I
come back. Eh?'
'Don't
worry about it,' I said.
'It was
just an idea.'
'Sleep
now.'
There was a
long silence. Then he added: 'But of
course I will write to you, eh?
Yes. Very well. Don't wake me if you come in this
evening.' I promised not to.
But there
was hardly any need for the admonition, for when I returned to the flat later
that night he was still up, sitting in his gout-chair with an air of
apprehension and despair. 'This stuff of
Balthazar's is no good,' he said. 'It is
mildly emetic, that is all. I am getting
more drowsy from the whisky. But somehow
I don't want to go to bed. Who knows
what dreams I shall have?' But I at last
persuaded him to get into bed; he agreed on condition that I stayed and talked
to him until he dozed off. He was
relatively calm now, and growing increasingly drowsy. He talked in a quiet relaxed tone, as one
might talk to an imaginary friend while under anaesthetic.
'I suppose
it will all pass. Everything does. In the very end, it passes. I was thinking of other people in the same
position. But for some it does not pass
easily. One night Liza
came here. I was startled to find her on
the doorstep with those eyes which give me the creeps - like an eyeless rabbit
in a poultry shop. She wanted me to
take her to her brother's room in the Mount Vulture Hotel. She said she wanted to "see"
it. I asked what she would see. She said, with anger, "I have my own way
of seeing." Well, I had to do
it. I felt it would please Mountolive perhaps.
But I did not know then that Mount Vulture was no longer a hotel. It had been turned into a brothel for the
troops. We were half-way up the stairs
before the truth dawned on me. All these
naked girls, and half-dressed sweating soldiers with their hairy bodies; their
crucifixes tinkling against their identity discs. And the smell of sweat and rum and cheap
scent. I said we must get out, for the
place had changed hands, but she stamped her foot and insisted with sudden
anger. Well, we climbed the stairs. Doors were open on every landing, you could
see everything. I was glad she was
blind. At last we came to his room. It was dark.
On his bed there lay an old woman asleep with a hashish pipe beside
her. It smelt of drains. She, Liza, was very
excited. "Describe it," she
told me. I did my best. She advanced towards the bed. "There is a woman asleep there," I
said, trying to pull her back. "This
is a house of ill fame now, Liza, I keep telling
you." Do you know what she
said? "So much the better." I was startled. She pressed her cheek to the pillow beside
the old woman, who groaned all at once. Liza stroked her forehead as if she were stroking a child
and said "There now.
Sleep." Then she came slowly
and hesitantly to my hand. She gave a
curious grin and said: "I wanted to try and take this imprint from the
pillow. But it was a useless idea. One must try everything to recover
memory. It has so many
hiding-places." I did not know what
she meant. We started downstairs
again. On the second landing I saw some
drunken Australians coming up. I could
see from their faces that there was going to be trouble. One of their number had been cheated or
something. They were terribly
drunk. I put my arms around Liza and pretended we were making love in a corner of the
landing until they passed us safely. She
was trembling, though whether from fear or emotion I could not tell. And she said "Tell me about his
women. What were they like?" I have her a good hard shake. "Now you are being banal," I said. She stopped trembling and went white with
anger. In the street she said "Get
me a taxi. I do not like you." I did and off she went without a word. I regretted my rudeness afterwards, for she
was suffering; at the time things happen too fast for one to take them into
account. And one never knows enough
about people and their sufferings to have the right response ready at the
moment. Afterwards I said many
sympathetic things to her in my mind.
But too late. Always too late.'
A slight
snore escaped his lips and he fell silent.
I was about to switch of his bedside lamp and tiptoe from his room when
he continued to speak, only from far away, re-establishing the thread of his
thought in another context: 'And when Melissa was dying Clea
spent all day with her. Once she said to
Clea: "Darley made
love with a kind of remorse, of despair.
I suppose he imagined Justine. He
never excited me like other men did. Old
Cohen, for example, he was just dirty-minded, yet his lips were always wet with
wine. I liked that. It made me respect him, for he was a
man. But Pursewarden
treated me like precious china, as if he were afraid he might break me, like some
precious heirloom! How good it was for
once to be at rest!"'
* *
* * *