The simplest and most sincere actions — a visit to a public library, a shopping list, a message on a place-card — became baffling to the eye of a jealousy founded in emotional impotence. Nessim was torn to rags by her demands; she was torn to rags by the doubts she saw reflected in his eyes — by the very tenderness with which he put a wrap around her shoulders. It felt as if he were slipping a noose over her neck. In a queer sort of way this relationship echoed the psychoanalytic relationship described in Moeurs by her first husband — where Justine became for them all a Case rather than a person, chased almost out of her right mind by the tiresome inquisitions of those who never know when to leave ill alone. Yes, she had fallen into a trap, there is no doubt. The thought echoed in her mind like mad laughter. I hear it echo still.
So they went on side by side, like runners perfectly matched, offering to Alexandria what seemed the perfect pattern of a relationship all envied and none could copy. Nessim the indulgent, the uxorious, Justine the lovely and contented wife.
‘In his own way’ notes Balthazar ‘I suppose he was only hunting for the truth. Isn’t this becoming rather a ridiculous remark? We should drop it by common consent! It is after all such an odd business. Shall I give you yet another example from another quarter? Your account of Capodistria’s death on the lake is the version which we all of us accepted at the time as likely to be true: in our minds, of course.
‘But in the Police depositions, everyone concerned mentioned one particular thing — namely that when they raised his body from the lake in which it was floating, with the black patch beside it in the water, his false teeth fell into the boat with a clatter, and startled them all. Now listen to this: three months later I was having dinner with Pierre Balbz who was his dentist. He assured me that Da Capo had an almost perfect set of teeth and certainly no false teeth which could possibly have fallen out. Who then was it?
I don’t know. And if Da Capo simply disappeared and arranged for some decoy to take his place, he had every reason: leaving behind him debts of over two million. Do you see what I mean?
‘Fact is unstable by its very nature. Narouz once said to me that he loved the desert because there “the wind blew out one’s footsteps like candle—flames”. So it seems to me does reality. How then can we hunt for the truth?’
*******
Pombal was hovering between diplomatic tact and the low cunning of a provincial public prosecutor; the conflicting emotions played upon his fat face as he sat in his gout—chair with his fingers joined. He had the air of a man in complete agreement with himself. ‘They say’ he said, watching me keenly ‘that you are now in the British Deuxiиme. Eh? Don’t tell me, I know you can’t speak.
Nor can I if you ask me about myself. You think you know that I am in the French — but I deny the whole thing most strenuously.
What I am asking is whether I should have you living in the flat.
It seems somehow … how do you say? … Box and Cox. No? I mean, why don’t we sell each other ideas, eh? I know you won’t.
Neither will I. Our sense of honour … I mean only if we are in the … ahem. But of course, you deny it and I deny it. So we are not. But you are not too proud to share my women, eh? Autre chose. Have a drink eh? The gin bottle is over there. I hid it from Hamid. Of course. I know that something is going on. I don’t despair of finding out. Something … I wish I knew … Nessim, Capodistria … Well!’
‘What have you done to your face?’ I say to change the subject.
He has recently started to grow a moustache. He holds on to it defensively as if my question constituted a threat to shave it off forcibly. ‘My moustache, ah that! Well, recently I have had so many reproofs about work, not attending to it, that I analysed myself deeply, au fond. Do you know how many man-hours I am losing through women? You will never guess. I thought a moustache (isn’t it hideous?) would put them off a bit, but no. It is just the same. It is a tribute, dear boy, not to my charm but to the low standards here. They seem to love me because there is nothing better. They love a well-hung diplomat — how do you say, faisande? Why do you laugh? You are losing a lot of woman-hours too.
But then you have the British Government behind you — the pound, eh? That girl was here again today. Mon Dieu, so thin and so uncared for! I offered her some lunch but she would not stay.
And the mess in your room! She takes hashish, doesn’t she? Well, when I go to Syria on leave you can have the whole place. Provided you respect my firescreen — isn’t it good as for art, hein?’ He has had an immense and vivid firescreen made for the flat which bears the legend ‘legerete, fatalite, maternite’ in pokerwork.
‘Ah well’ he continues, ‘so much for art in Alexandria. But as for that Justine, that is a better barbarian for you, no? I bet she — eh? Don’t tell. Why are you not happier about it? You Englishmen, always gloomy and full of politics. Pas de remords,mon cher. Two women in tandem — who would want better? And one LeftHanded — as Da Capo calls Lesbians. You know Justine’s reputation? Well, for my part, I am renouncing the whole….’ So Pombal flows in great good humour over the shallow river bed of his experience and standing on the balcony I watch the sky darkening over the harbour and hear the sullen hooting of ships’ sirens, emphasizing our loneliness here, our isolation from the warm Gulf Stream of European feelings and ideas. All the currents slide away towards Mecca or to the incomprehensible desert and the only foothold in this side of the Mediterranean is the city we have come to inhabit and hate, to infect with our own self-contempts.
And then I see Melissa walk down the street and my heart contracts with pity and joy as I turn to open the flat door.
*******
These quiet bemused island days are a fitting commentary to the thoughts and feelings of one walking alone on deserted beaches, or doing the simple duties of a household which lacks a mother.
But I carry now the great Interlinear in my hand wherever I go, whether cooking or teaching the child to swim, or cutting wood for the fireplace. But these fictions all live on as a projection of the white city itself whose pearly skies are broken in spring only by the white stalks of the minarets and the flocks of pigeons turning in clouds of silver and amethyst; whose veridian and black marble harbour-water reflects the snouts of foreign men-of-war turning through their slow arcs, depicting the prevailing wind; or swallowing their own inky reflections, touching and overlapping like the very tongues and sects and races over which they keep their uneasy patroclass="underline" symbolizing the western consciousness whose power is exemplified in steel — those sullen preaching guns against the yellow metal of the lake and the town which breaks open at sunset like a rose.
*******
PART II
VI
Pursewarden!’ writes Balthazar.