‘Art like life is an open secret.’ (g)
‘Science is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart’s affections.’ (h)
‘Truth is independent of fact. It does not mind being disproved. It is already dispossessed in utterance.’ (i)
‘I love the French edition with its uncut pages. I would not want a reader too lazy to use a knife on me.’ (j) In a book of poems: ‘One to be taken from time to time as needed and allowed to dissolve in the mind.’ (k)
‘We must always defend Plato to Aristotle and vice versa because if they should lose touch with each other we should be lost. The dimorphism of the psyche produced them both.’ (l)
‘To the medieval world-picture of the World, the Flesh and the Devil (each worth a book) we moderns have added Time: a fourth dimension.’ (m)
‘New critical apparatus: le roman bifteck, guignol or cafard.’ (n)
‘The real ruins of Europe are its great men.’ (o)
‘I have always believed in letting my reader sink or skim.’ (p) On reading a long review of God is a Humorist: ‘Good God! At last they are beginning to take me seriously. This imposes a terrible burden on me. I must redouble my laughter.’ (q)
‘Why do I always choose an epigraph from Sade? Because he demonstrates pure rationalism — the ages of sweet reason we have lived through in Europe since Descartes. He is the final flower of reason, and the typic of European behaviour. I hope to live to see him translated into Chinese. His books would bring the house down and would read as pure humour. But his spirit has already brought the house down around our ears.’ (r)
‘Europe: a Logical Positivist trying to prove to himself by logical deduction that he exists.’ (s)
‘My objects in the novels? To interrogate human values through an honest representation of the human passions. A desirable end, perhaps a hopeless objective.’ (t)
‘My unkindest critics maintain that I am making lampshades out of human skin. This puzzles me. Perhaps at the bottom of the Anglo-Saxon soul there is a still small voice forever whispering:
“Is this Quaite Naice?” and my books never seem to pass the test.’ SCOBIE’S COMMON USAGE Expressions noted from Scobie’s quaint conversation, his use of certain words, as: Vivid, meaning ‘angry’, ex.: ‘Don’t be so vivid, old man.’ Mauve, meaning ‘silly’, ex.: ‘He was just plain mauve when it came to, etc’ Spoof, meaning ‘trick’, ex.: ‘Don’t spoof me, old boy.’ Ritual, meaning ‘habit, form’, ex.: ‘We all wear them. It’s ritual for the police.’ Squalid, meaning ‘very elated’, ex.: ‘Toby was squalid with joy when the news came.’ Septic, meaning ‘unspeakable’, ex.: ‘What septic weather today!’ Saffron Walden, meaning ‘male brothel’, ex.: ‘He was caught in a Saffron Walden, old man, covered in jam.’ Cloud Cuckoo, meaning ‘male prostitute’, ex.: ‘Budgie says there’s not a cloud cuckoo in the whole of Horsham. He’s advertised.’ WORKPOINTS
‘How many lovers since Pygmalion have been able to build their beloved’s face out of flesh, as Amaril has?’ asked Clea. The great folio of noses so lovingly copied for him to choose from — Nefertiti to Cleopatra. The readings in a darkened room.
* * * Narouz always held in the back of his consciousness the memory of the moonlit room; his father sitting in the wheel—chair at the mirror, repeating the one phrase over and over again as he pointed the pistol at the looking-glass.
* * * Mountolive was swayed by the dangerous illusion that now at last he was free to conceive and act — the one misjudgement which decides the fate of a diplomat.
* * * Nessim said sadly: ‘All motive is mixed. You see, from the moment I married her, a Jewess, all their reservations disappeared and they ceased to suspect me. I do not say it was the only reason.
Love is a wonderfully luxuriant plant, but unclassifiable really, fading as it does into mysticism on the one side and naked cupidity on the other.’
* * * This now explained something to me which had hitherto puzzled me; namely that after his death Da Capo’s huge library was moved over to Smyrna, book by book. Balthazar did the packing and posting.
NOTE IN THE TEXT
* Page 298 From Eugene Marais’s The Soul of The White Ant.
MOUNTOLIVE
The dream dissipated, were one to recover one’s commonsense mood, the thing would be of but mediocre import — ’tis the story of mental wrongdoing. Everyone knows very well and it offends no one. But alas! one sometimes carries the thing a little further. What, one dares wonder, what would not be the idea’s realization if its mere abstract shape thus exalted has just so profoundly moved one? The accursed reverie is vivified and its existence is a crime.
D. A. F. de Sade: Justine
Il faut que le roman raconte.
StendhalI
A CLAUDE
NOTE All the characters and situations described in this book (a sibling to Justine and Balthazar and the third volume of a quartet) are purely imaginary.
I have exercised a novelist’s right in taking a few necessary liberties with modern Middle Eastern history and the staff-structure of the Diplomatic Service.
I
As a junior of exceptional promise, he had been sent to Egypt for a year in order to improve his Arabic and found himself attached to the High Commission as a sort of scribe to await his first diplomatic posting; but he was already conducting himself as a young secretary of legation, fully aware of the responsibilities of future office. Only somehow today it was rather more difficult than usual to be reserved, so exciting had the fish-drive become.
He had in fact quite forgotten about his once-crisp tennis flannels and college blazer and the fact that the wash of bilge rising through the floorboards had toe-capped his white plimsolls with a black stain. In Egypt one seemed to forget oneself continually like this. He blessed the chance letter of introduction which had brought him to the Hosnani lands, to the rambling oldfashioned house built upon a network of lakes and embankments near Alexandria. Yes.
The punt which now carried him, thrust by slow thrust across the turbid water, was turning slowly eastward to take up its position in the great semicircle of boats which was being gradually closed in upon a target-area marked out by the black reed spines of fish-pans. And as they closed in, stroke by stroke, the Egyptian night fell — the sudden reduction of all objects to bas-reliefs upon a screen of gold and violet. The land had become dense as tapestry in the lilac afterglow, quivering here and there with water mirages from the rising damps, expanding and contracting horizons, until one thought of the world as being mirrored in a soap-bubble trembling on the edge of disappearance. Voices too across the water sounded now loud, now soft and clear. His own cough fled across the lake in sudden wing-beats. Dusk, yet it was still hot; his shirt stuck to his back. The spokes of darkness which reached out to them only outlined the shapes of the reed-fringed islands, which punctuated the water like great pincushions, like paws, like hassocks.