The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  But there was one exception to the general state of exhaustion – and that was constituted by the behaviour of poor Piers which differed completely from our own. He was plainly choking, with both hands trying to tear an invisible serpent from his throat; he rose to his knees, writhing, fighting, gasping with weakness. He rolled over on his side, still struggling – and his miming of the snake, something huge like a boa, was so lifelike that for a moment one almost saw the reptile sliding round him, squeezing the breath from his body. As I say, all this was so very lifelike, and his distress so great that I started feebly to try and rouse myself to go to his aid, but Akkad smilingly bade me desist; in fact he looked highly delighted by this mimic battle and by the deep anxiety of my friend. Later he was to tell me, for what it was worth, that it confirmed the initiation of Piers, and his inclusion without further probation into the sect. He had been granted the particular sign of the snake-covenant. Myself I was reminded when he said this of the Aesculapian snake and the incubatio in the white colonnades of Epidaurus where the doctors interpreted the first night’s sleep according to the snake-dreams of the patient. Yes, there were many connections which Akkad helped me to work out during the short time I was in Egypt with him, many resonances and affiliations.

  Piers had gone so white and still that he seemed dead. But to tell the truth everyone showed the same signs of utter blank exhaustion in varying degrees, and presently at a sign from Akkad the servants appeared with soft wraps which they laid upon the recumbent forms. The great snake disappeared. Somewhere a door opened and a cold whiff of desert air entered to chase the columns of incense and bring a breathable atmosphere into the mosque. But we were all utterly dead with sleep, all of us; myself I lay in a state of dreamy half-convalescence like a child at breast. I felt the soft material draped over me and the cushion adjusted under my head by an invisible hand, and I allowed myself to founder softly into nothingness, worn out with all I had experienced. When I awoke with a jolt it was early dawn already, and all the other sleepers had vanished with the exception of Piers who had crawled to my side and now slept quietly with his head against my shoulder. Sylvie? Toby? Gone! Moreover everything was silent save for the hum of insects in the trees outside the mosque. The sun was just touching the rim of the horizon and the whole world was saffron and lion-gold. The cold cut to the very bone of thought. I took Piers’ pulse. He seemed perfectly normal now – and indeed I myself felt completely recovered from the mysterious fatigue of the night before. I was full, too, of a physical exuberance unusual for me, and also a tremendous mental euphoria – the kind of feeling one gets after having, without deserving it, passed a difficult exam unexpectedly. “Piers,” I whispered, “I’m going to have a swim.” He did not open his eyes or say anything, but a tiny pucker of a smile came to the corner of his lips so that I knew he had heard me.

  I went down the stairs into the crisp dawn light; the whole village slept. It looked like an abandoned battlefield. Only an occasional horse was stirring. I walked towards the looking-glass of the lake, eager to see my own reflection in it as if in some curious way I expected to have changed, to have altered in my physical appearance. For what reason? I do not know – only this abstract sense of jubilation and relief dogged my steps, and I could offer myself no reason for it. I broke into a run along the margins of the lake, looking sideways to see my reflection racing through the massed spear-points of the reeds. The sun came up like a bronze medallion and its regal heat spilled over on to the damp sand, swiftly dispelling the heavy night dews. I looked carefully to see if there were any of the tell-tale black shells in the shallows which might portend water infected by the dread bilharzia but there were none and before I could think it I was up to my waist in the icy brilliance of the lake water, consumed again by this inexplicable joy. I swam out of my depth and turned over to let the sun fire a million silver drops of prismatic light on to my wet eyelashes. It was not too long either before a second figure joined me, and then the third – the dark girl whom I could never see like this without a contraction of the heart. I did not say “I love you” aloud, nor did she. Our wet fingers touched and we formed a circle like the corolla of a flower, floating into the silence of the desert dawn with the ancient sun on our bodies. It lasted a long time, this swim which seemed to have some of the qualities of an esoteric act of lustration. We were all somehow too excited to speak or exclaim; only our triumphant eyes met from time to time to exchange jubilant glances. It is true that once I asked Sylvie: “Did you see …?” But she drew her breath and, nodding, cut off my sentence, as if not only had we shared the same vision but also that it did not bear speaking about openly.

  Piers smiled to himself. He looked vaguely preoccupied, as if he were making an inventory of his feelings, were documenting something – an experience which threw the whole range of his past feelings into relief, so that he was forced to re-evaluate them all in the light of this new element. What new element? What had he seen? At this point I recall the coarse stentorian voice of Toby (who was waiting for us on the bank with towels and clothes) as it uttered the words “Mumbo Jumbo” – but rather defensively, I thought. We who knew him so well could detect something artificial in the fervour of his exclamation. Sylvie smiled. “Akkad is waiting,” he added, feeling the water with the tips of his fingers and deciding with a shudder that it was too cold to join us in a swim. “I must take you to him. It’s an order.”

  We three dressed slowly, contentedly, still making no allusion to our thoughts and yet somehow deeply conscious that whatever they were they had become the common property of the three of us. It was like an extension of our loving – a sort of new tropical flora and fauna, a private country in which we wandered now, luxuriating in all its poetic beauty and variety. No horses attended us here, so we set off to wander across the sand together, led by scarlet Toby, who knew the way and who had orders to take us to Akkad for our breakfast. It was not so very far; we skirted some great silken mounds of dune and came at last to a bare stone plateau, its surface worn smooth by centuries of blowing sand so that even the coloured striations in the rock were smooth-graven, as if by an emery board. I had forgotten all about the little aeroplane of our host. It looked somehow vulnerable and primitive standing out there in the sunlight; like an insect. But bizarrely enough Akkad sat under it in a throne-like barber’s chair with inlaid arms smothered in decorations of copper and false pearl: and with a white cloth spread over him. His barber Fahem (we called him the Court Figaro) bent reverently over him to lather his cheeks while a small boy, also dressed in white, kept the already active flies away with a whisk. It was one of the pleasing little opulences of Alexandria for a rich man to have a portable barber; normally businessmen in Egypt did not shave at home. Their barbers waited in the ante-room to their offices with all their instruments. So they were shaved ceremoniously while sitting at their desks and sorting out the morning mail with the help of their secretaries. Akkad had simply extended the bounds of this feudal tradition; whenever he went by plane he took his own barber along. Now he peered at us shortsightedly but with an obvious pleasure – an air almost of congratulation. From the depths of a steaming towel he even said: “Come closer, I want to see your faces.” And when we obliged he gazed at us keenly and then gave a sigh. “Yes,” he said, “I can see that you saw him; you look so happy. And you, Piers, were accepted at once. It was a cardinal sign, your struggle with Ophis. I can read your heart, and yours too, Sylvie; for you there is going to be no looking back.” Then turning to me he said: “The traditions of your education have hampered you a bit but nevertheless you saw what they did, and in the long run your native scepticism will give way to acceptance. It will be slower, that is all. But you will catch them up.” Mysterious words! He submitted with a long-suffering comical grimace: to the barber’s massage and the wheezing spray of toilet water spurted on his scalp. Toby said stoutly and somewhat surprisingly: “I saw nothing except a lot of smoke. I don’t know what the others saw but I saw nothing.”
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br />   Akkad looked at him curiously and withal in kindly fashion as if he were genuinely puzzled; for my part, it seemed to me clear from Toby’s tone that he was prevaricating. But Akkad pondered the question for a long moment with closed eyes, as if he were verifying something in his memory. Then he said: “Yes, but you did see something; I will tell you what you saw. You saw something that looked like a brass rubbing from an English cathedral – the tomb of the Black Prince in somewhere like Canterbury. The vizor of the helmet was up, and you got scared when you stared into the black hole of the armoured head because you thought you saw the glitter of snake-eyes where the face should have been.” Toby’s jaw dropped and he turned rather pale. “How did you know that?” he gasped, quite forgetting to deny the truth of the allegation. Akkad shrugged his shoulders and adjusted his spectacles on his nose again the better to study his man. “I was puzzled at first,” he said mildly. “But now I see why you denied the whole thing; you have confused the biblical Jesus with the post-resurrectional Jesus in the gnostic context. He is simply a cipher for us. He has no connection with what you call Our Saviour (as you say quite rightly one only has to mention his name and blood starts flowing). Our Jesus comes much later in the day, and even he proved powerless to dethrone the personage you all saw last night who has had a thousand names, among them Sathanas and Lucifer. As each one brings a little of himself to what he sees you brought the trappings of your historic preoccupations, so that Monsieur flattered you by presenting himself with beaver up like Hamlet’s father’s ghost!” He roared with laughter and struck his knee.

  Toby was as confused and discountenanced as any schoolboy; but Akkad took him affectionately by the arm and said still laughing: “Come into the next room, I mean the next dune. I have ordered an absurd English breakfast for you all. After that I shall take you for a ride down to the sea and batter you with a little bit of theology – though not you yet, Toby. You are recalcitrant as yet. Your time will come later.” The sunshine was already baking and I was glad of our straw hats which Toby had brought with him; in a cloudless blue sky vultures hovered. We climbed the scarp into the next depression, and really could not help bursting into laughter ourselves, the scene was so surrealist. In the middle of the sand, looking incongruously without a relevant context, stood a long table covered in spotless napery on which Akkad’s munificence had caused to be laid out a superlative English breakfast of a sort that only the great country houses might have provided in the past. Leaving aside the sausages and tomatoes grilling quietly in the silver chafing-dishes, there were also several kinds of fish, including haddock and kipper, and also, laughably enough, a dish of warm kedgeree with eggs on horseback; the whole was backed up with two kinds of marmalade. We were served (on beautiful plate) by two nubian servants with gold sashes and white gloves.

  Akkad was delighted with our laughter and smiled slyly as he said: “It’s not what the others will be getting at all. I thought a sort of confirmation breakfast would be in order. I’m sorry to keep striking this public-school note, Piers, but my upbringing included a memorable English spell at Mournfield which I have never forgotten and which supplied me with a host of affectionate memories and many good friends.” So, still smiling over this extraordinary desert scene we took our places and tucked into this breakfast with a will. “Afterwards we will ride,” said Akkad. “But just you three and myself. We shall leave Toby behind to look after Sabine until we come back. You see, now that you have seen what you have seen I can fill in the picture a little with more factual things, with texts and little commentaries which relate to your presence here. You see, all this was not an accident – I mean your coming to Egypt at this time, and to me. I saw it happening several years ago during the same period of the year in the same shrine. Of course I did not know your names, but I knew you by sight and I knew your circumstances with tolerable accuracy. I was able to judge what you might do to help or hinder the group in its activities. I was also able to predict the degree to which you yourselves would benefit from the creed of the sect, the tenets of this gnosticism – which seems at first so forbidding.” He was silent for a long moment now, smoking a slim cigar and drinking his coffee. “No. It was no accident,” he said. “And indeed your circumstances are unlike those of most of the others – the special relationship to sex and the understanding of love in your sense … This was what we believe but few of us had ever experienced, at least in the singularly pure form which you seem to have realised. We will speak about that today.”

  No more was said; Piers hung his head and looked somewhat shy at this reference to sex, for he was always extremely pudique about such personal and private exchanges, and shuddered at any kind of coarse allusions to matters which he considered so agonisingly important, so very close to his heart. I think this excessive delicacy used to irritate Sabine who always tried to puncture what she regarded as an inexperienced and juvenile reserve. But then she had never made love to him – it would have surprised her. But Akkad on the contrary seemed to appreciate and respect this delicacy in him; he would not I think have agreed to Sabine’s strictures (so openly and honestly expressed) when she said: “Ach, you and your little sister are overbred and over-refined. You need a streak of coarseness in your lives.” She may have been right, she may have been counting upon me to supply the missing factor?

  When this baroque breakfast of Akkad’s had come to an end a messenger was despatched to summon the horses and bring a small picnic for each of us. “I am going to take you down to the sea, but in a different place where you have never been,” said Akkad who enjoyed putting on a childish air of mystery. “A secret place,” he added slyly. And then as we were mounting the horses and trying out stirrup-lengths and reins he said: “By the way, in case any one asks you, you must say that you went to a lecture at Abu Menouf, but not mention the word gnostic. You see the shrine was founded in memory of a great Wali, seer, holy man – but apparently a Mohammedan. Here in Egypt we try never to offend religious susceptibilities, and the dervishes are convinced that what we are doing here is having a quite orthodox religious service in the memory of the Saint. So we are. So we are. But Abu Menouf himself was a gnostic, and this oasis being far off the beaten track seemed a suitable place for our gatherings. We did not wish to trouble the authorities with our beliefs which have nothing to do with the social or political situation of the country. We gather twice or thrice a year here for this precise purpose. Our own patron saint is the Aescupalian snake you saw, though the dervishes are convinced that the soul (the Moslem soul) of Abu Menouf went into it when he died. It would be a nice theological point to try and establish whether Ophis is Moslem or gnostic. One day we will ask it.

  “For the moment however, we claim it in the name of Abu Menouf himself who was an extraordinary old man, a wanderer over the face of the earth, a great interpreter of dreams and visions. The snake may well be his soul revisiting us – they both liked milk, which to the dervishes is proof positive. For us it is, of course, a symbol of the caduceus of Aesculapius, of the spinal column, of the kundalini-serpent of the Indians – you will be able to trace the ancestry of the idea through many continents and many religions. It is also the sacred phallus of Greece and Egypt and India, as well as the coiled intestines from which one can perform a divination by entrails as our ancestors did. All this is an exoteric scale of reference, an explanation: but the actual naked experience of Ophis cannot as you will realise be properly put into words. It will be found quite mysteriously fruitful and enriching to remember as you get older, though you will never be able to analyse it and discover exactly why. But there is much you can discover, there are many meanings which are accessible to the reason. Now come, as Byron once said: ‘Enough of this antiquarian twaddle. Let’s have a swim.’ Only we have a ride of about two hours before I can offer you a sand beach.”

  Akkad led away on an easterly course and at a good pace, considering the precocious heat of the sun; and Toby was left twisting his thumbs and looking abashed, as if he had
been sent to Coventry, though Akkad assured him that this was no reprisal for his lack of candour about the ceremony. We faced an hour of soft riding now, until at last we came upon a chain of blood-red hills and a large stony valley littered with blocks of stone, of schist, of crystal, it seemed; the mouth was of considerable breadth, and it was intersected with parallel lines of rock ravine where, Akkad said, the gazelles came down at night in search of dew. This was the entry to a sombre region of petrified forest which stretched away down to the edge of the sea. The whole scene was littered with petrifacts of different sizes and kinds, enormous trees, weighing tons, bared of their branches, overthrown and turned to stone. It was a weird ride through this wilderness with its dead petroliths, its solid vegetation; almost symbolic it seemed, for Akkad said nothing as he led soberly on, skirting the recumbent tree-forms. Some of the tree-trunks measured about three feet in diameter, and were from thirty to fifty feet in length! The greater number were of a species of timber no longer known to Egypt, but there were also palms here and there melted stone-solid by wind and weather. The heat was intense here and the aspect of the place, so wild and abandoned, melancholy to a degree.