A policeman had appeared in the doorway, obviously troubled about the abandoned car. That was the first time I saw the great house of Nessim with its statues and palm loggias, its Courbets and Bonnards — and so on. It was both beautiful and horrible. Justine hurried up the great staircase, pausing only to transfer her olive-pit from the pocket of her coat to a Chinese vase, calling all the time to Nessim. We went from room to room, fracturing the silences. He answered at last from the great studio on the roof and racing to him like a gun-dog she metaphorically dropped me at his feet and stood back, wagging her tail. She had achieved me.
Nessim was sitting on the top of a ladder reading, and he came slowly down to us, looking first at one and then at the other. His shyness could not get any purchase of my shabbiness, damp hair, tin of olives, and for my part I could offer no explanation of my presence, since I did not know for what purpose I had been brought here.
I took pity on him and offered him an olive; and sitting down together we finished the tin, while Justine foraged for drinks, talking, if I remember, of Orvieto where neither of us had been. It is such a solace to think back to that first meeting. Never have I been closer to them both — closer, I mean, to their marriage; they seemed to me then to be the magnificent two-headed animal a marriage could be. Watching the benign warmth of the light in his eye I realized, as I recalled all the scandalous rumours about Justine, that whatever she had done had been done in a sense for him — even what was evil or harmful in the eyes of the world. Her love was like a skin in which he lay sewn like the infant Heracles; and her efforts to achieve herself had led her always towards, and not away from him. The world has no use for this sort of paradox I know; but it seemed to me then that Nessim knew and accepted her in a way impossible to explain to someone for whom love is still entangled with the qualities of possessiveness. Once, much later, he told me: ‘What was I to do? Justine was too strong for me in too many ways. I could only out-love her — that was my long suit. I went ahead of her — I anticipated every lapse; she found me already there, at every point where she fell down, ready to help her to her feet and show that it did not matter. After all she compromised the least part of me — my reputation.’
This was much later: before the unlucky complex of misfortunes had engulfed us we did not know each other well enough to talk as freely as this. I also remember him saying, once — this was at the summer villa near Bourg El Arab: ‘It will puzzle you when I tell you that I thought Justine great, in a sort of way. There are forms of greatness, you know, which when not applied in art or religion make havoc of ordinary life. Her gift was misapplied in being directed towards love. Certainly she was bad in many ways, but they were all small ways. Nor can I say that she harmed nobody. But those she harmed most she made fruitful. She expelled people from their old selves. It was bound to hurt, and many mistook the nature of the pain she inflicted. Not I.’ And smiling his well-known smile, in which sweetness was mixed with an inexpressible bitterness, he repeated softly under his breath the words: ‘Not I.’
* * * * *
Capodistria … how does he fit in? He is more of a goblin than a man, you would think. The flat triangular head of the snake with the huge frontal lobes; the hair grows forward in a widow’s peak. A whitish flickering tongue is forever busy keeping his thin lips moist. He is ineffably rich and does not have to lift a finger for himself. He sits all day on the terrace of the Brokers’ Club watching the women pass, with the restless eye of someone endlessly shuffling through an old soiled pack of cards. From time to time there is a flick, like a chameleon’s tongue striking — a signal almost invisible to the inattentive. Then a figure slips from the terrace to trail the woman he had indicated. Sometimes his agents will quite openly stop and importune women on the street in his name, mentioning a sum of money. No one is offended by the mention of money in our city. Some girls simply laugh. Some consent at once. You never see vexation on their features. Virtue with us is never feigned. Nor vice. Both are natural.
Capodistria sits remote from it all, in his immaculate shark-skin coat with the coloured silk handkerchief lolling at his breast. His narrow shoes gleam. His friends call him Da Capo because of a sexual prowess reputed to be as great as his fortune — or his ugliness. He is obscurely related to Justine who says of him: ‘I pity him. His heart has withered in him and he has been left with the five senses, like pieces of a broken wineglass.’ However a life of such striking monotony does not seem to depress him. His family is noted for the number of suicides in it, and his psychological inheritance is an unlucky one with its history of mental disturbance and illness. He is unperturbed however and says, touching his temples with a long forefinger: ‘All my ancestors went wrong here in the head. My father also. He was a great womanizer. When he was very old he had a model of the perfect woman built in rubber — life-size. She could be filled with hot water in the winter. She was strikingly beautiful. He called her Sabina after his mother, and took her everywhere. He had a passion for travelling on ocean liners and actually lived on one for the last two years of his life, travelling backwards and forwards to New York. Sabina had a wonderful wardrobe. It was a sight to see them come into the dining-saloon, dressed for dinner. He travelled with his keeper, a manservant called Kelly. Between them, held on either side like a beautiful drunkard, walked Sabina in her marvellous evening clothes. The night he died he said to Kelly: “Send Demetrius a telegram and tell him that Sabina died in my arms tonight without any pain.” She was buried with him off Naples.’ His laughter is the most natural and unfeigned of any I have ever heard.
Later when I was half mad with worry and heavily in Capodistria’s debt, I found him less accommodating a companion; and one night, there was Melissa sitting half drunk on the footstool by the fire holding in those long reflective fingers the I.O.U. which I had made out to him with the curt word ‘discharged’ written across it in green ink…. These memories wound. Melissa said: ‘Justine would have paid your debt from her immense fortune. I did not want to see her increase her hold over you. Besides, even though you no longer care for me I still wanted to do something for you—and this was the least of sacrifices. I did not think that it would hurt you so much for me to sleep with him. Have you not done the same for me—I mean did you not borrow the money from Justine to send me away for the X-ray business? Though you lied about it I knew. I won’t lie, I never do. Here, take it and destroy it: but don’t gamble with him any more. He is not of your kind.’ And turning her head she made the Arab motion of spitting.
* * * * *
Of Nessim’s outer life — those immense and boring receptions, at first devoted to business colleagues but later to become devoted to obscure political ends — I do not wish to write. As I slunk through the great hall and up the stairs to the studio I would pause to study the great leather shield on the mantelpiece with its plan of the table — to see who had been placed on Justine’s right and left. For a short while they made a kindly attempt to include me in these gatherings but I rapidly tired of them and pleaded illness, though I was glad to have the run of the studio and the immense library. And afterwards we would meet like conspirators and Justine would throw off the gay, bored, petulant affectations which she Wore in her social life. They would kick off their shoes and play piquet by candle-light. Later, going to bed, she would catch sight of herself in the mirror on the first landing and say to her reflection: ‘Tiresome pretentious hysterical Jewess that you are!’