But the whole thing was preposterous. Graecen was one of those hopelessly self-divided people who are so often made the victims of their own whims. Idly he would get an idea, as idly play with it; and then, all of a sudden, find himself dragged protesting towards it. He recognized this as one of those momentous ideas which would, if he did not act, enslave him utterly.
Damn the girl, she was smiling at him again. Apologetically he leaned forward and patted her arm. Virginia’s face melted sympathetically into a kind of smiling sadness. Graecen began calling himself names, but underneath he heard the systematic echo of the idea vibrating in the hollows of his consciousness. Why should he not marry Virginia? “Don’t be a fool,” he said aloud.
“Eh?” said Baird, coming out of his reverie.
“Sorry,” said Graecen with confusion. “I was thinking of something. I was miles away.”
Baird looked tired all of a sudden, and excited. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette. “I think”, he said, “I’ll not come directly to the labyrinth with you. I’ve got some other business to do first.” His effort to make it sound a business transaction was a palpable failure. He averted his eyes and added: “I know where the house is. If you’d be good enough to send on my bag, Graecen, I’ll come in to dinner.” He caught sight of the perplexity on his companion’s face and said: “Oh, it’s nothing serious. Perhaps I’ll be able to explain a little later.”
Graecen primmed his lips and nodded. Baird had already hinted at an official mission. No doubt this had something to do with it.
Canea had gone spinning away southwards with its orange trees and powdery houses of red and white. Painted into the hard blue frame of the horizon lay the unruffled cobalt of the sea, yellow and green where it touched the coastline. The three taxis rumbled across the verdant valleys, trailing behind them a great cloud of soft dust. The queer noise of their klaxons woke the uplands towards which they headed, and curious ink-spot jays dropped down from the trees to watch their progress.
Never had Elsie Truman dreamed of such scenery; flawless in their purity the valleys were picked out in rectangles and squares of colour by the sunlight. It was better, she told her husband, than the best Technicolor film. Riding down the winding roads she pressed his hand under the decent privacy of the rug, and handed him boiled sweets to suck.
Miss Dombey sat beside them, finding the dust very trying. She repeated the charge several times, as if to express her disapproval of a world in which one had to make long journeys in deep dust — and in such company. The implication was not lost on Mrs. Truman. She smiled as she saw Miss Dombey wind her face in a veil and lie back against the moth-eaten hood of the car, closing her eyes. The dog lay quietly at their feet.
Something of her irritation must have been communicated to the guide, who sat in front beside the driver. He removed his arm from its position round the neck of the latter and leaned back to ask a question. His conversation was rendered unintelligible by the wind, however, and he was forced to shout until Miss Dombey winced with pain. Was she ill, he asked? No? He gave an imitation of Miss Dombey in a veil, which the Trumans found delightfully comic. When they smiled at him he roared with laughter. If she was not ill, then why? — and he made the gesture of wrapping himself in a veil once more. Miss Dombey was so revolted by his performance that she told him to shut up and turn round. The guide’s hurt feelings were only partly assuaged by Mrs Truman’s offer of an acid-drop. He sucked it for a moment with a sad and pouting air of wounded amour-propre. Then, to return the courtesy, he removed his hat, and taking a cigarette-end from inside it, solemnly pressed it upon Mr. Truman who found himself forced to accept the object with thanks. Miss Dombey’s lips were compressed into a thimble-top of disapproval. Truman muttered angrily to his wife: “There you go again. Can’t let people be.” And she laughed until she nearly swallowed her sweet, then coughed until he had to thump her on the back.
In the taxi behind them Campion and Fearmax sat deep in conversation, while all around them were packed the trunks, suitcases and packs of those who were to stay the night at Cefalû. “But of course,” Campion was saying emphatically, “the artist’s job is to present concrete findings about the unknown inside himself and other people. How else can you justify art? The paintings of a man like Picasso are just as much discovery as the atom bomb. That is why one gets filled with such a hideous sense of uselessness in realizing that the next war is inevitable, inevitable.” He banged his hand on his knee. Fearmax buried his jowls deeper in his coat. “Most likely,” he said.
“Inevitable,” said Campion vehemently. “You don’t even have to read the texts of the peace-pacts to see that, or read about the new bomb they call ‘Fragmentation X’ to see that the whole silly farce is going to begin over again. The nation will be led automatically to victory this time with all the flags out. No sacrifice too great. Buy to save to spend to lend to end to buy to slave to rend. Eliot will be banished to Iceland: mystics have green dossiers now: they are known as PCS—‘possibly controversial subjects’. Industry will be geared to war-pitch in a matter of hours. The Pope won’t know whether to intervene and offer the peace which passeth all misunderstanding or not … we should really get Graecen to set it to music:
’Tis the voice of the idealist
I hear him declare
Though you hide at the North Pole
They’ ll follow you there
With honour and unction
Debentures and bonds!
Till they close the green dossier
And drag all the ponds.”
Fearmax smiled dryly. “I have so much to do,” he said. “So much to do.”
Campion lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old. “And I”, he said, “am just on the edge of becoming a real artist, a suffering member of the world: just able to contribute what is positive in me after a lifetime of revolt and wasted energy. It is not important. If there were no alternative to the present state of things I could accept it. But there is. The equipment is lying like an unpressed switch in the heart of every man. Damn, bugger, blast the world.”
Even as he said it he thought that it was not true — it was rather a dramatic approximation of truth which he wished to become. Actually what was he. He saw Fearmax’s eyes on him, measured the glance of those experienced eyes and turned his own head away. And now suddenly he thought of Francesca with a pang; Francesca, so beautiful a companion and friend. He had left her as one leaves a bundle of laundry. Did the interests of the search justify, on the ordinary scale of loyalties and decencies, so sudden and pointless a betrayal? He heard himself once more saying: “My mother is dead,” with that flat unemotional tone of voice.
“It seems to me”, said Fearmax, “that you affirm far too much. You are right, of course, that we all work through the various states of being, our negatives, our husks, which we discard. But can we, at any given point, know that we’ve arrived at the end of the quest? Surely the self-consciousness of the illumination you talk about does not tell us we have reached the — what shall I say? — ’The Absolute,’ ‘God,’ ‘Tao’. It is, on the contrary, that growing awareness which disposes of the act of searching. I think the man you want to be would have a humbler attitude, a non-affirming attitude, a passivity towards the whole process — even if he were sitting on an atom-bomb. The sage has nothing to tell us, you know. It is by his silence alone that we deduce the fact of his existence.”