‘Who will pay it?’
‘I will order, eat and pay for it myself.’
‘That is not much good.’ Pursewarden made an impatient face in the mirror.
‘On the contrary’ he said. ‘A quiet evening is what I most need.
I shall compose a few more fragments of my autobiography over the good oysters at Diamandakis.’
‘What is the title?’
‘Beating about the Bush. The opening words are “I first met Henry James in a brothel in Algiers. He had a naked houri on each knee.”
‘Henry James was a pussy, I think.’ Pursewarden turned the shower on full and stepped into it crying: ‘No more literary criticism from the French, please.’ Pombal drove a comb through his dark hair with a laborious impatience and then consulted his watch. ‘Merde’ he said, ‘I am going to be retarded again.’ Pursewarden gave a shriek of delight. They adventured freely in each other’s languages, rejoicing like schoolboys in the mistakes which cropped up among their conversations. Each blunder was greeted with a shout, was turned into a war-cry. Pursewarden hopped with pleasure and shouted happily above the hissing of the water: ‘Why not stay in and enjoy a nice little nocturnal emission on the short hairs?’ (Pombal had described a radio broadcast thus the day before and had not been allowed to forget it.) He made a round face now to express mock annoyance. ‘I did not say it’ he said.
‘You bloody well did.’
‘I did not say “the short hairs” but the “short undulations”des ondes courtes.’
‘Equally dreadful. You Quai d’Orsay people shock me. Now my French may not be perfect, but I have never made a ——’
‘If I begin with your mistakes — ha! ha!’ Pursewarden danced up and down in the bath, shouting
‘Nocturnal emissions on the short hairs’. Pombal threw a rolled towel at him and lumbered out of the bathroom before he could retaliate effectively.
Their abusive conversation was continued while the Frenchman made some further adjustments to his dress in the bedroom mirror. ‘Will you go down to Etoile later for the floor-show?’
‘I certainly will’ said Pursewarden. ‘I shall dance a Fox-Macabre with Darley’s girl-friend or Sveva. Several Fox-Macabres, in fact.
Then, later on, like an explorer who has run out of pemmican, purely for body-warmth, I shall select someone and conduct her to Mount Vulture. There to sharpen my talons on her flesh.’ He made what he imagined to be the noise a vulture makes as it feeds upon flesh — a soft, throaty croaking. Pombal shuddered.
‘Monster’ he cried. ‘I go — goodbye.’
‘Goodbye. Toujours la maladresse!’
‘Toujours.’ It was their war-cry.
Left alone, Pursewarden whistled softly as he dried himself in the torn bath-towel and completed his toilet. The irregularities in the water system of the Mount Vulture Hotel often drove him across the square to Pombal’s flat in search of a leisurely bath and a shave. From time to time too, when Pombal went on leave, he would actually rent the place and share it, somewhat uneasily, with Darley who lived a furtive life of his own in the far corner of it. It was good from time to time to escape from the isolation of his hotel-room, and the vast muddle of paper which was growing up around his next novel. To escape — always to escape…. The desire of a writer to be alone with himself — ‘the writer, most solitary of human animals’; ‘I am quoting from the great Pursewarden himself’ he told his reflection in the mirror as he wrestled with his tie. Tonight he would dine quietly, self-indulgently, alone! He had gracefully refused a halting dinner invitation from Errol which he knew would involve him in one of those gauche, haunting evenings spent in playing imbecile paper-games or bridge.
‘My God’ Pombal had said, ‘your compatriots’ methods of passing the time! Those rooms which they fill with their sense of guilt! To express one idea is to stop a dinner party dead in its tracks and provoke an awkwardness, a silence…. I try my best, but always feel I’ve put my foot in it. So I always automatically send flowers the next morning to my hostess…. What a nation you are! How intriguing for us French because how repellent is the way you live!’ Poor David Mountolive! Pursewarden thought of him with compassion and affection. What a price the career diplomat had to pay for the fruits of power! ‘His dreams must forever be awash with the memories of fatuities endured — deliberately endured in the name of what was most holy in the profession, namely the desire to please, the determination to captivate in order to influence.
Well! It takes all sorts to unmake a world.’ Combing his hair back he found himself thinking of Maskelyne, who must at this moment be sitting in the Jerusalem express jogging stiffly, sedately down among the sand-dunes and orangegroves, sucking a long pipe; in a hot carriage, fly-tormented without and roasted within by the corporate pride of a tradition which was dying…. Why should it be allowed to die? Maskelyne, full of the failure, the ignominy of a new post which carried advancement with it. The final cruel thrust. (The idea gave him a twinge of remorse for he did not underestimate the character of the unself-seeking soldier.) Narrow, acid, desiccated as a human being, nevertheless the writer somewhere treasured him while the man condemned him. (Indeed, he had made extensive notes upon him — a fact which would certainly have surprised Maskelyne had he known.) His way of holding his pipe, of carrying his nose high, his reserves…. It was simply that he might want to use him one day. ‘Are real human beings becoming simply extended humours capable of use, and does this cut one off from them a bit? Yes. For observation throws down a field about the observed person or object. Yes. Makes the unconditional response more difficult — the response to the common ties, affections, love and so on. But this is not only the writer’s problem — it is everyone’s problem.
Growing up means separation in the interests of a better, more lucid joining up…. Bah!’ He was able to console himself against his furtive sympathy with Maskelyne by recalling a few of the man’s stupidities. His arrogance! ‘My dear fellow, when you’ve been in “I” as long as I have you develop intuition. You can see things a mile off.’ The idea of anyone like Maskelyne developing intuition was delightful. Pursewarden gave a long crowing laugh and reached for his coat.
He slipped lightly downstairs into the dusky street, counting his money and smiling. It was the best hour of the day in Alexandria — the streets turning slowly to the metallic blue of carbon paper but still giving off the heat of the sun. Not all the lights were on in the town, and the large mauve parcels of dusk moved here and there, blurring the outlines of everything, repainting the hard outlines of buildings and human beings in smoke. Sleepy cafes woke to the whine of mandolines which merged in the shrilling of heated tyres on the tarmac of streets now crowded with life, with white-robed figures and the scarlet dots of tarbushes. The window-boxes gave off a piercing smell of slaked earth and urine.
The great limousines soared away from the Bourse with softly crying horns, like polished flights of special geese. To be halfblinded by the mauve dusk, to move lightly, brushing shoulders with the throng, at peace, in that dry inspiriting air … these were the rare moments of happiness upon which he stumbled by chance, by accident. The pavements still retained their heat just as water-melons did when you cut them open at dusk; a damp heat slowly leaking up through the thin soles of one’s shoes. The seawinds were moving in to invest the upper town with their damp coolness, but as yet one only felt them spasmodically. One moved through the dry air, so full of static electricity (the crackle of the comb in his hair), as one might swim through a tepid summer sea full of creeping cold currents. He walked towards Baudrot slowly through little isolated patches of smell — a perfume shed by a passing woman, or the reek of jasmine from a dark archway — knowing that the damp sea air would soon blot them all out. It was the perfect moment for an aperitif in the half-light.