The Alexandria Quartet

  ‘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 the 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 his 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 gave 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 off his bedside lamp and tip-toe 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!”’

  VIII

  So the year turned on its heel, through a winter of racing winds, frosts keener than grief, hardly preparing us for that last magnificent summer which followed the spring so swiftly. It came curving in, this summer, as if from some long-forgotten latitude first dreamed of in Eden, miraculously rediscovered among the slumbering thoughts of mankind. It rode down upon us like some famous snow-ship of the mind, to drop anchor before the city, its white sails folding like the wings of a seabird. Ah! I am hunting for metaphors which might convey something of the piercing happiness too seldom granted to those who love; but words, which were first invented against despair, are too crude to mirror the properties of something so profoundly at peace with itself, at one with itself. Words are the mirrors of our discontents merely; they contain all the huge unhatched eggs of the world’s sorrows. Unless perhaps it were simpler to repeat under one’s breath some lines torn from a Greek poem, written once in the shadow of a sail, on a thirsty promontory in Byzantium. Something like…

  Black bread, clear water, blue air.

  Calm throat incomparably fair.

  Mind folded upon mind

  Eyes softly closed on eyes.

  Lashes a-tremble, bodies bare.

  But they English badly; and unless one hears them in Greek falling softly, word by word, from a mouth made private and familiar by the bruised endearments of spent kisses they must remain always simply charmless photographs of a reality which ov
erreaches the realm of the poet’s scope. Sad that all the brilliant plumage of that summer remains beyond capture — for one’s old age will have little but such memories upon which to found its regretful happinesses. Will memory clutch it — that incomparable pattern of days, I wonder? In the dense violet shadow of white sails, under the dark noon-lantern of figs, on the renowned desert roads where the spice caravans march and the dunes soothe themselves away to the sky, to catch in their dazed sleep the drumming of gulls’ wings turning in spray? Or in the cold whiplash of the waters crushing themselves against the fallen pediments of forgotten islands? In the night-mist falling upon deserted harbours with the old Arab seamarks pointing eroded fingers? Somewhere, surely, the sum of these things will still exist. There were no hauntings yet. Day followed day upon the calendar of desire, each night turning softly over in its sleep to reverse the darkness and drench us once more in the royal sunlight. Everything conspired to make it what we needed.

  It is not hard, writing at this remove in time, to realize that it had all already happened, had been ordained in such a way and in no other. This was, so to speak, only its ‘coming to pass’ — its stage of manifestation. But the scenario had already been devised somewhere, the actors chosen, the timing rehearsed down to the last detail in the mind of that invisible author — which perhaps would prove to be only the city itself: the Alexandria of the human estate. The seeds of future events are carried within ourselves. They are implicit in us and unfold according to the laws of their own nature. It is hard to believe, I know, when one thinks of the perfection of that summer and what followed it.

  Much had to do with the discovery of the island. The island! How had it eluded us for so long? There was literally not a corner of this coast which we did not know, not a beach we had not tried, not an anchorage we had not used. Yet it had been there, staring us in the face. ‘If you wish to hide something’ says the Arabic proverb, ‘hide it in the sun’s eye.’ It lay, not hidden at all, somewhere to the west of the little shrine of Sidi El Agami — the white scarp with the snowy butt of a tomb emerging from a straggle of palms and figlets. It was simply an upshouldered piece of granite pushed up from the seabed by an earthquake or some submarine convulsion in the distant past. Of course, when the sea ran high it would be covered; but it is curious that it remains to this day unmarked on the Admiralty charts, for it would constitute quite a hazard to craft of medium draught.

  It was Clea who first discovered the little island of Narouz. ‘Where has this sprung from?’ she asked with astonishment; her brown wrist swung the cutter’s tiller hard over and carried us fluttering down into its lee. The granite boulder was tall enough for a windbreak. It made a roundel of still blue water in the combing tides. On the landward side there was a crude N carved in the rock above an old eroded iron ring which, with a stern anchor out to brace her, served as a secure mooring. It would be ridiculous to speak of stepping ashore for the ‘shore’ consisted of a narrow strip of dazzling white pebbles no larger than a fireplace. ‘Yes, it is, it is Narouz’ island’ she cried, beside herself with delight at the discovery — for here at last was a place where she could fully indulge her taste for solitude. Here one would be as private as a seabird. The beach faced landward. One could see the whole swaying line of the coast with its ruined Martello towers and dunes travelling away to ancient Taposiris. We unpacked our provisions with delight for here we could swim naked and sunbathe to our heart’s content without interruption.

  Here that strange and solitary brother of Nessim had spent his time fishing. ‘I always wondered where it could be, this island of his. I thought perhaps it lay westerly beyond Abu El Suir. Nessim could not tell me. But he knew there was a deep rock-pool with a wreck.’

  ‘There is an N carved here.’

  Clea clapped her hands with delight and struggled out of her bathing costume. ‘I’m sure of it. Nessim said that for months he was fighting a duel with some big fish he couldn’t identify. That was when he gave me the harpoon-gun which Narouz owned. Isn’t it strange? I’ve always carried it in the locker wrapped in an oilskin. I thought I might shoot something one day. But it is so heavy I can’t manage it under water.’

  ‘What sort of fish was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  But she scrambled back to the cutter and produced the bulky package of greased rags in which this singular weapon was wrapped. It was an ugly-looking contrivance, a compressed-air rifle no less, with a hollow butt. It fired a slim steel harpoon about a metre and a half in length. It had been made to specifications for him in Germany. It looked deadly enough to kill quite a large fish.

  ‘Pretty horrible looking’ she said, eating an orange.

  ‘We must try it.’

  ‘It’s too heavy for me. Perhaps you will manage it. I found that the barrel lagged in the water. I couldn’t bring it to bear properly. But he was a marksman, so Nessim said, and shot a lot of quite large fish. But there was one, a very big one, which made infrequent appearances. He watched and waited in ambush for it for months. He had several shots at it but always missed. I hope it wasn’t a shark — I’m scared of them.’

  ‘There aren’t many in the Mediterranean. It is down the Red Sea that you get them in numbers.’

  ‘Nevertheless I keep a sharp eye out.’

  It was too heavy an instrument, I decided, to lug about under water; besides I had no interest in shooting fish. So I wrapped and stowed it once more in the cutter’s ample locker. She lay there naked in the sunlight, drowsing like a seal, to smoke a cigarette before exploring further. The rock-pool glowed beneath the glimmering keel of the boat like a quivering emerald, the long ribbons of milky light penetrating it slowly, stealing down like golden probes. About four fathoms, I thought, and drawing a deep breath rolled over and let my body wangle downwards like a fish, not using my arms.

  Its beauty was spell-binding. It was like diving into the nave of a cathedral whose stained-glass windows filtered the sunlight through a dozen rainbows. The sides of the amphitheatre — for it opened gradually towards the deep sea — seemed as if carved by some heartsick artist of the Romantic Age into a dozen half-finished galleries lined with statues. Some of these were so like real statuary that I thought for a moment that I had made an archaeological find. But these blurred caryatids were wave-born, pressed and moulded by the hazard of the tides into goddesses and dwarfs and clowns. A light marine fucus of brilliant yellow and green had bearded them — shallow curtains of weed which swung lightly in the tide, parting and closing, as if to reveal their secrets suggestively and then cover them again. I pushed my fingers through this scalp of dense and slippery foliage to press them upon the blind face of a Diana or the hooked nose of a medieval dwarf. The floor of this deserted palace was of selenite plastic clay, soft to the touch and in no way greasy. Terracotta baked in a dozen hues of mauve and violet and gold. Inside close to the island it was not deep — perhaps a fathom and a half — but it fell away steeply where the gallery spread out to the sea, and the deeper lining of water faded from emerald to apple green, and from Prussian blue to black, suggesting great depth. Here, too, was the wreck of which Clea had spoken. I had hopes of finding perhaps a Roman amphora or two, but it was not alas a very old ship. I recognized the flared curve of the poop as an Aegean design — the type of caique which the Greeks call ‘trechandiri’. She had been rammed astern. Her back was broken. She was full of a dead weight of dark sponges. I tried to find the painted eyes on the prow and a name, but they had vanished. Her wood was crawling with slime and every cranny winked full of hermit crabs. She must have belonged to sponge fishers of Kalymnos I thought, for each year their fleet crosses to fish the African coast and carry its haul back for processing in the Dodecanese Islands.

  A blinding parcel of light struck through the ceiling now and down flashed the eloquent body of Clea, her exploding coils of hair swerved up behind her by the water’s concussion, her arms spread. I caught her and we rolled and sideslipped down in each other’s arms,
playing like fish until lack of breath drove us upwards once more into the sunlight. To sit at last panting in the shallows, gazing with breathless delight at each other.

  ‘What a marvellous pool.’ She clapped her hands in delight.

  ‘I saw the wreck.’

  And climbing back to the little sickle of beach with its warm pebbles with her drenched thatch of hair swinging behind her she said: ‘I’ve thought of another thing. This must be Timonium. I wish I could remember the details more clearly.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘They’ve never found the site, you know. I am sure this must be it. Oh, let us believe that it is, shall we? When Antony came back defeated from Actium — where Cleopatra fled with her fleet in panic and tore open his battle-line, leaving him at the mercy of Octavian; when he came back after that unaccountable failure of nerve, and when there was nothing for them to do but to wait for the certain death which would follow upon Octavian’s arrival — why he built himself a cell on an islet. It was named after a famous recluse and misanthrope — perhaps a philosopher? — called Timon. And here he must have spent his leisure — here, Darley, going over the whole thing again and again in his mind. That woman with the extraordinary spells she was able to cast. His life in ruins! And then the passing of the God, and all that, bidding him to say good-bye to her, to Alexandria — a whole world!’

  The brilliant eyes smiling a little wistfully interrogated mine. She put her fingers to my cheek.

  ‘Are you waiting for me to say that it is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. It is.’

  ‘Kiss me.’

  ‘Your mouth tastes of oranges and wine.’

  It was so small, the beach — hardly bigger than a bed. It was strange to make love thus with one’s ankles in blue water and the hot sun blazing on one’s back. Later we made one of many desultory attempts to locate the cell, or something which might correspond to her fancy, but in vain; on the seaward side lay a tremendous jumble of granite snags, falling steeply into black water. A thick spoke of some ancient harbour level perhaps which explained the wind-and-sea-break properties of the island. It was so silent, one heard nothing but the faint stir of wind across our ears, distant as the echo of some tiny seashell. Yes, and sometimes a herring gull flew over to judge the depth of the beach as a possible theatre of operations. But for the rest the sun-drunk bodies lay, deeply asleep, the quiet rhythms of the blood responding only to the deeper rhythms of sea and sky. A haven of animal contents which words can never compass.