Then like the chime of a distant bell I heard the tart voice of the dead Pursewarden saying ‘But our unhappiness was sent to regale us. We were intended to revel in it, enjoy it to the full.’ Melissa had been simply one of the many costumes of love!
I was bathed and changed by the time Pombal hurried in to an early lunch, full of the incoherent rapture of his new and remarkable state of mind. Fosca, the cause of it, was, he told me, a refugee married to a British officer. ‘How could it have come about, this sudden passionate understanding?’ He did not know.
He got up to look at his own face in the hanging mirror. ‘I who believed so many things about love’ he went on moodily, half addressing his own reflection and combing his beard with his fingers, ‘but never something like this. Even a year ago had you said what I am just saying I would have answered: “Pouagh! It is simply a Petrarchian obscenity. Medieval rubbish!” I even used to think that continence was medically unhealthy, that the damned thing would atrophy or fall off if it were not frequently used. Now look at your unhappy — no happy friend! I feel bound and gagged by Fosca’s very existence. Listen, the last time Keats came in from the desert we went out and got drunk. He took me to Golfo’s tavern. I had a sneaking desire — sort of experimental — to ramoner une poule. Don’t laugh. Just to see what had gone wrong with my feelings. I drank five Armagnacs to liven them up. I began to feel quite like it theoretically. Good, I said to myself, I will crack this virginity. I will depuceler this romantic image once and for all lest people begin to talk and say that the great Pombal is unmanned. But what happened? I became panic—stricken! My feelings were quite Hindis like a bloody tank. The sight of all those girls made me memorize Fosca in detail. Everything, even her hands in her lap with her knitting! I was cooled as if by an ice cream down my collar. I emptied my pockets on the table and fled in a hail of slippers and a torrent of cat-calls from my old friends. I was swearing, of course. Not that Fosca expects it, no.
She tells me to go ahead and have a girl if I must. Perhaps this very freedom keeps me in prison? Who knows? It is a complete mystery to me. It is strange that this girl should drag me by the hair down the paths of honour like this — an unfamiliar place.’ Here he struck himself softly on the chest with a gesture of reproof mixed with a certain doubtful self-commendation. He came and sat down once more saying moodily: ‘You see, she is pregnant by her husband and her sense of honour would not permit her to trick a man on active service, who may be killed at any time. Specially when she is bearing his child. Зa se conзoit.’ We ate in silence for a few moments, and then he burst out:
‘But what have I to do with such ideas? Tell me please. We only talk, yet it is enough.’ He spoke with a touch of self-contempt.
‘And he?’ Pombal sighed: ‘He is an extremely good and kind man, with that national kindliness which Pursewarden used to say was a kind of compulsion neurosis brought on by the almost suicidal boredom of English life! He is handsome, gay, speaks three languages. And yet … it is not that he is froid, exactly, but he is tiиde — I mean somewhere in his inner nature. I am not sure if he is typical or not. At any rate he seems to embody notions of honour which would do credit to a troubadour. It isn’t that we Europeans lack honour, of course, but we don’t stress things unnaturally. I mean self-discipline should be more than a concession to a behaviour-pattern. I sound confused. Yes, I am a little confused in thinking of their relationship. I mean something like this: in the depths of his national conceit he really believes foreigners incapable of fidelity in love. Yet in being so truthful and so faithful she is only doing what comes naturally to her, without a false straining after a form. She acts as she feels. I think if he really loved her in the sense I mean he would not appear always to have merely condescended to rescue her from an intolerable situation. I think somewhere inside herself, though she is not aware of it, the sense of injustice rankles a little bit; she is faithful to him … how to say?
Slightly contemptuously? I don’t know. But she does love him in this peculiar fashion, the only one he permits. She is a girl of delicate feelings. But what is strange is that our own love — which neither doubts, and which we have confessed and accepted — has been coloured in a curious way by these circumstances. If it has made me happy it has also made me a little uncertain of myself; at times I get rebellious. I feel that our love is beginning to wear a penitential air — this glorious adventure. It gets coloured by his own grim attitude which is like one of atonement.
I wonder if love for a femme galante should be quite like this.
As for him he also is a chevalier of the middle class, as incapable of inflicting pain as of giving physical pleasure I should say. Yet withal gentle and quite overwhelming in his kindness and uprightness. But merde, one cannot love judicially, out of a sense of justice, can one? Somewhere along the line he fails her without being conscious of the fact. Nor do I think she knows this, at any rate in her conscious mind. But when they are together you feel in the presence of something incomplete, something which is not cemented but just soldered together by good manners and convention. I am aware that I sound unkind, but I am only trying to describe exactly what I see. For the rest we are good friends and indeed I really admire him; when he comes on leave we all go out to dinner and talk politics! Ouf!’ He lay back in his chair, exhausted by this exposition, and yawned heavily before consulting his watch. ‘I suppose’ he went on with resignation ‘that you will find it all very strange, these new aspects of people; but then everything sounds strange here, eh?
Pursewarden’s sister, Liza, for example — you don’t know her?
She is stone blind. It seems to us all that Mountolive is madly in love with her. She came out originally to collect his papers and also to find materials for a book about him. Allegedly. Anyway she has stayed on at the Embassy ever since. When he is in Cairo on duty he visits her every weekend! He looks somehow unhappy now — perhaps I do too?’ He once more consulted the mirror and shook his head decisively. Apparently he did not. ‘Well anyway’ he conceded ‘I am probably wrong.’ The clock on the mantelpiece struck and he started up. ‘I must get back to the office for a conference’ he said. ‘What about you?’ I told him of my projected trip to Karm Abu Girg. He whistled and looked at me keenly. ‘You will see Justine again, eh?’ He thought for a moment and then shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.
‘A recluse now, isn’t she? Put under house arrest by Memlik.
Nobody has seen her for ages. I don’t know what’s going on with Nessim either. They’ve quite broken with Mountolive and as an official I have to take his line, so we would never even try to meet: even if it were allowed, I mean. Clea sees him sometimes. I’m sorry for Nessim. When he was in hospital she could not get permission to visit him. It is all a merry-go-round, isn’t it? Like a Paul Jones. New partners until the music stops! But you’ll come back, won’t you, and share this place? Good. Then I’ll tell Hamid.