Because I was frightened by the implication of his words, I took refuge in sneering. 'Your own métier is at an end, if all you say is true,' I said. 'Have you considered that? I mean, you depended on this system didn't you? The swamp has been your habitat.'
'Swamp?' he said.
'Yes.' I was thinking of the flower that was now spreading its petals against the roof of my poor demoralised brain. 'The Empire is a swamp,' I said, 'and if you don't mind my saying so, we both belong in it, together with the orchids and snakes.'
'I don't know about that,' he said. He was embarrassed by my metaphorical language. Rather over-doing things, he probably thought. He himself never used figures of speech. 'In any case, I shall be moving on, you see.' He raised his eyes to the statue's face. 'This is a turning point in my life,' he said. 'Do you realise how few original Greek bronzes there are in existence?'
'I thought you were intending to turn it over to the authorities tomorrow.'
'Oh, yes,' he said. 'I am, of course. But just the association of the discovery with my name will be enough.'
He was lying to me, Excellency. I knew it then, beyond doubt. Knew it in bitterness and desolation. He would never give the statue up. Had he not been 'directed' to it? He would go on, as I had always dreaded, follow his dream, while I would be left behind in this place, penniless, among enemies, without an occupation even. I could not endure it. I knew then, finally, what I must do. My eyes were close to the boy's flank. They filled with tears, through which the bronze glinted, became iridescent.
'It is surprising,' Mister Bowles said, in a different, more measured voice, 'well, at least it always surprises me, how Greek sculpture provides us with a sort of universal paradigm, a model for all human affairs.'
I looked up at him from my crouching position. He was standing with his back against the hillside, head turned to look upwards along the slope. My eyes were still slightly blurred, and as I looked up at his face in profile, his features had a strange outer edge of light, as if the area immediately adjoining his face derived a radiance emitted from the surface.
'How do you mean?' I said.
'Well, in the very early period, the seventh and sixth centuries, the figures were not really individualised at all. It didn't matter who they were. They were images of man as such. They were marvellously human, but they were not distinguished one from another. Just a celebration of collective humanity, you know. Then you got the breakdown of that sort of mythical unity in the classical period, when there was an awakening to personality, to individual responsibility. It was still monumental – to begin with at least. I mean there was harmony and balance in it. The weight was in the centre. But the unity was achieved in the individual work, not so much in the expression of a collective attitude. As in the sculptures of Phidias, for instance. Perfect unity of form and spirit. But it didn't last long you know. Just that perfect balance, for a generation only, not much more anyway. While it was actually happening, the conditions that made it possible were being undermined. In the Greek state itself things were beginning to break up. There was a lot of conflict – between the individual and the state, secular and religious claims, and so on, and as you come down into the fourth century this shows itself in the sculptures. The centre of gravity is displaced from the middle. The figures are not so secure, not so self-contained. There is more differentiation, more insistence on naturalistic detail. Then in the Hellenistic period, you know, after about three hundred, the whole process degenerates into drama and decoration. Instead of that clear arrangement of axes, you get tricks of opposing rhythms. The forms no longer reach out, they turn around their own centre. That is the finish of it. The whole art becomes decadent, and so does the society, of course.'
'Well,' I said, 'of those periods you mention, I should have been most at home in the last one, the tricks of opposing rhythms, as you put it – and so would you, I think.' In fact, Excellency, although he had spoken in his lecturing voice, there had been a touch of the old moral disapproval in the way he had ended, and it had riled me slightly – hence the gibe, which I do not think he noticed. 'I don't see why decadence should be such a dreadful thing,' I added.
'Well, the whole thing was fragmented,' he said. 'You only have to look at the fluctuations of style. You only have to look at the faces, there is no serenity in them. They are questing and doubtful.'
'What about his face?' I said.
'Oh, him.' Mister Bowles's voice softened. My eyes were clear now, Excellency, but Mister Bowles's face still had that radiance about it. He was happy. 'He is just at the point of decline,' he said.' At the brink. That is why he is so marvellous.'
'Fragmented,' I said. 'That was the word you used, wasn't it? And this whole process took about five hundred years.'
'About that, yes.'
(That is roughly the duration of your Empire, Excellency. I point this out to you for the sake of the parallel.)
'So,' I said, 'it went from a collective idea of man, to a very brief period of perfect balance, then to increasing anguish and disunity, finally to breakdown and fragmentation.'
'Yes,' he said. 'That's about it. We've been living among the fragments ever since.'
'Fragments mean pickings,' I could not help saying, again provoked by his somewhat schoolmasterly air. 'If it could be speeded up,' I added, 'it would look like an explosion, wouldn't it?'
'How do you mean?'
I looked at him for a moment or two before replying. How strange it was, Excellency. Here we were together, he and I, talking easily, more than that, intimately – we had become friends at last, we had achieved our own, poignantly brief, balance. And I was about to betray him. I felt myself in danger of tears again. 'Well,' I said, looking away from him, 'think of a bomb – a perfect, unified shape, then fragments.'
'Yes,' he said, 'in a way, perhaps, but not really. The true perfection was the balance itself, and that is always an intermediate stage, you know. And brief, as I say.'
I nodded. 'Well,' I said, 'I can't do much more here. I'll be getting back now, if you don't mind.'
'Ah right,' he said. He stood silent while I retrieved my jacket and put it on. 'I'll stay on a bit longer,' he said. 'By tomorrow I shall have all the information I need, you know. Then we can go ahead.'
'Yes,' I said. 'Goodbye then, for the moment.' Mister Bowles hesitated, then suddenly held out his hand. 'Thanks for your help,' he said. 'I won't forget it. Listen, take my advice, don't go to Constantinople. Get out of it all, while the going's good. With your languages you could get work in Europe, as an interpreter, something of that kind.'
'It depends on money,' I said.
'You'll get your money,' he called after me. 'You have my word for that.'
At the foot of the slope I turned to look back at him. 'Tell me,' I said, 'what did you mean that day, when you said you were an instrument?'
'Oh, that,' he said. 'Well, someone has to show them.'
'Show them?'
'The error of their ways, you know.'
'A sort of mission?'
'You could put it like that.'
'I see,' I said. 'Yes, I see.'
And I did see, Excellency. I saw several things as I clambered up out of the hollow. Mister Bowles must have had Messianic leanings for a long time-perhaps even in those early days, in the insurance office. Now he has come to believe himself sent by a higher power. The delicate balance between zeal and financial gain which has preserved him hitherto, kept him apparently sane among the world of men, an accomplished trickster, has been broken. Whatever daimon led him down there in the first place was conducting him straight to mania, to the excess-in his own nature which was always there. He went mad in that hollow, Excellency.