(She used their texts as omens for the future, riffling the pages to place her finger at hazard upon a quotation — ‘bibliomancy’ the art is called.) Schopenhauer, Hume, Spengler, and oddly enough some novels, including three of Pursewarden’s. Their polished bindings reflected the light of the candles. She cleared her throat, extinguished her cigarette, and said in a calm voice: ‘I can be resigned to whatever you say. At the moment, this weakness of yours is a danger to both of us. And besides, your health is troubling us all, Balthazar not least. Even unobservant people like Darley are beginning to notice. That is not good.’ Her voice was cold and toneless.
‘Justine’ his admiration overflowed. He came and sat down beside her on the bed, putting his arms around her to embrace her fiercely. His eyes glittered with a new elation, a new gratitude.
‘I am so weak’ he said.
He extended himself beside her, put his arms behind his head, and lay silent, thinking. For a long time now they lay thus, silently side by side. At last she said:
‘Darley came to dinner tonight and left just before you arrived.
I heard from him that the Embassies will all be packing up next week to return to Cairo. Mountolive won’t get back to Alexandria much before Christmas. This is also our chance to take a rest and recuperate our forces. I’ve told Selim that we are going out to Abousir next week for a whole month. You must rest now, Nessim. We can swim and ride in the desert and think about nothing, do you hear? After a while I shall invite Darley to come and stay with us for a while so that you have someone to talk to apart from me. I know you like him and find him a pleasant companion. It will do us both good. From time to time I can come in here for a night and see what is happening … what do you say?’ Nessim groaned softly and turned his head. ‘Why?’ she whispered softly, her lips turned away from him. ‘Why do you do that?’ He sighed deeply and said: ‘It is not what you think. You know how much I like him and how well we get on. It is only the pretence, the eternal play-acting one has to indulge in even with one’s friends. If only we did not have to keep on acting a part, Justine.’ But he saw that she was looking at him wide-eyed now, with an expression suggesting something that was close to horror or dismay. ‘Ah’ she said thoughtfully, sorrowfully after a moment, closing her eyes, ‘ah, Nessim! Then I should not know who I was.’
*******
The two men sat in the warm conservatory, silently facing each other over the magnificent chessboard with its ivories — in perfect companionship. The set was a twenty—first birthday gift, from Mountolive’s mother. As they sat, each occasionally mused aloud, absently. It wasn’t conversation, but simply thinking aloud, a communion of minds which were really occupied by the grand strategy of chess: a by-product of friendship which was rooted in the fecund silences of the royal game. Balthazar spoke of Pursewarden. ‘It annoys me, his suicide. I feel I had somehow missed the point. I take it to have been an expression of contempt for the world, contempt for the conduct of the world.’ Mountolive glanced up quickly. ‘No, no. A conflict between duty and affection.’ Then he added swiftly ‘But I can’t tell you very much. When his sister comes, she will tell you more, perhaps, if she can.’ They were silent. Balthazar sighed and said ‘Truth naked and unashamed. That’s a splendid phrase. But we always see her as she seems, never as she is. Each man has his own interpretation.’ Another long silence. Balthazar loquitur, musingly, to himself.
‘Sometimes one is caught pretending to be God and learns a bitter lesson. Now I hated Dmitri Randidi, though not his lovely daughter; but just to humiliate him (I was disguised as a gipsy woman at the carnival ball), I told her fortune. Tomorrow, I said, she would have a life-experience which she must on no account miss — a man sitting in the ruined tower at Taposiris. “You will not speak” I said “but walk straight into his arms, your eyes closed. His name begins with an L, his family name with J.” (I had in fact already thought of a particularly hideous young man with these initials, and he was across the road at the Cervonis’ ball. Colourless eyelashes, a snout, sandy hair.) I chuckled when she believed me. Having told her this prophecy — everyone believes the tale of a gipsy, and with my black face and hook nose I made a splendid gipsy — having arranged this, I went across the road and sought out L. J., telling him I had a message for him. I knew him to be superstitious. He did not recognize me. I told him of the part he should play. Malign, spiteful, I suppose. I only planned to annoy Randidi. And it all turned out as I had planned.
For the lovely girl obeyed the gipsy and fell in love with this freckled toad with the red hair. A more unsuitable conjunction cannot be imagined. But that was the idea — to make Randidi hop! It did, yes, very much, and I was so pleased by my own cleverness. He of course forbade the marriage. The lovers — which I invented, my lovers — were separated. Then Gaby Randidi, the beautiful girl, took poison. You can imagine how clever I felt. This broke her father’s health and the neurasthenia (never very far from the surface in the family) overwhelmed him at last.
Last autumn he was found hanging from the trellis which supports the most famous grapevine in the city and from which….’ In the silence which followed he could be heard to add the words: ‘It is only another story of our pitiless city. But check to your Queen, unless I am mistaken….’
*******
XIII
With the first thin effervescence of autumn rain Mountolive found himself back for the winter spell in Cairo with nothing of capital importance as yet decided in the field of policy; London was silent on the revelations contained in Pursewarden’s farewell letter and apparently disposed rather to condole with a Chief of Mission whose subordinates proved of doubtful worth than to criticize him or subject the whole matter to any deep scrutiny. Perhaps the feeling was best expressed in the long and pompous letter in which Kenilworth felt disposed to discuss the tragedy, offering assurances that everyone ‘at the Office’ was sad though not surprised. Pursewarden had always been considered rather outre, had he not? Apparently some such outcome had long been suspected. ‘His charm’ wrote Kenilworth in the august prose style reserved for what was known as ‘a balanced appraisal’, ‘could not disguise his aberrations. I do not need to dilate on the personal file which I showed you. In Pace Requiescat. But you have our sympathy for the loyal way in which you brushed aside these considerations to give him another chance with a Mission which had already found his manners insupportable, his views unsound.’ Mountolive squirmed as he read; yet his repugnance was irrationally mixed with a phantom relief for he saw, cowering behind these deliberations as it were, the shadows of Nessim and Justine, the outlaws.
If he had been reluctant to leave Alexandria, it was only because the unresolved problem of Leila nagged him still. He was afraid of the new thoughts he was forced to consider concerning her and her possible share in the conspiracy — if such it was — he felt like a criminal harbouring the guilt for some as yet undiscovered deed. Would it not be better to force his way in upon her — to arrive unannounced at Karm Abu Girg one day and coax the truth out of her? He could not do it. His nerve failed him at this point. He averted his mind from the ominous future and packed with many a sigh for his journey, planning to plunge once more into the tepid stream of his social activities in order to divert his mind.