The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  The war! The Prince was much preoccupied during this period with the economic affairs of his own country as well as those which menaced the structure of European affairs. The Red Cross, which at first seemed to me to be a time-wasting representational job, proved on the contrary a most valuable source of information, a veritable port-hole open upon the new Nazi Europe; moreover, it was based in Geneva, and the traditional neutrality of the Swiss had not been violated. Nominally at least the Germans were still signatories to the Red Cross convention, and the servants of the organisation still enjoyed a quasi-diplomatic status which was everywhere accepted. I was surprised to hear the Prince announce one day that he proposed to visit France one day soon, when “things had settled down a bit”. And suddenly my own world, the lost world of friendships and youthful happiness which I had interred in the fastness of my memory, returned vividly to me in the form of a letter addressed to me which tumbled out of the scarlet despatch-box one day. It was from Constance. From Constance! I could hardly believe my eyes as I gazed upon that familiar handwriting, which I had never truthfully expected to see again. In a flash the whole vanished reality of things reasserted itself; I was deluged by memories. It was only a short note, a “trial” note as she put it, in order to see if she could locate me through the Prince. She knew of his Red Cross connection, and the postal link through Turkey was still holding. But there was something more important she had to tell me, and that was that Sam had been posted to the Middle East and would soon be here, if indeed he had not yet arrived on the scene. I sprang up from my chair, almost as if he stood already at my elbow. Sam! It was fantastic news; for he must certainly know how to go about finding me. The very telephone directory would have the Prince’s number listed.

  “Tell him from me what a sod I think him, for you know he has never written at length; he hates writing like you all do. The last thing was a picture postcard of a fat woman from Worthing on the back of which he had scribbled:

  The weather here is mild and balmy.

  I’m awfully glad I joined the army.

  “Just wait till I get my hands on him. I will prove Hilary’s contention that marriage is a martial art. O Sam, you low-down swine, hiding your laziness behind the pretence of security regulations!”

  I carried the letter about like a talisman, excited beyond measure by this sudden rekindling of the past; my loneliness had burst into a blaze, so to speak, and I was moved as well, for she had also mentioned me with affection. “You down there, alone in silence like a rising moon, building up your poems out of selected reticences, please, please write!” I did better, I sent the Red Cross a deft telex to be transmitted to her with a few scriptural passages signalled by references, all of which ran to a decent-sized letter; the superficial impression created was of a confidential letter on Red Cross matters coded out thus in quotations from the Bible. But the important thing was to spark the contact, and indeed within a week or two a bundle of letters for Sam arrived on my desk through these semi-diplomatic channels. It remained for Sam himself to manifest, and when he did I was surprised to learn that he had been in this theatre for some little time. Indeed, the bronzed young officer who one day sprang to attention and saluted as he stood in the doorway of the Red Cross office was clad in full fig as a Desert Rat, bush-shirt, suede ankle boots and all. He announced himself as “Captain Standish of the Bluebell Girls”. We hugged each other like Turkish delight, with tears in our eyes, so deeply did we feel the fatefulness of the meeting. “How marvellous to find you sitting here quite unaltered, old gloom-bag Aubrey, with your eternal notebook and slyboots expression; it restores my faith in nature, if not in the army, which got me out here so safely. And all to meet you again. O, let’s start a quarrel about something trivial shall we? Just to celebrate? You and your old Zen Cohens”– this was his version of koan. “The only koan I’ve learned is the British army one – shit or bust. It’s terse and to the point.”

  “What!” I cried. “I must not forget!” And opening my safe I took out the treasure trove of her letters and placed them before him on the desk in a triumphant fashion. “Good God,” he said fervently, and it seemed to me that his face fell a trifle. He looked sort of abashed – perhaps with guilt for not having written to her. He stood and looked at them, but did not fall upon them as I would have done had I been in his place.

  He took them up awkwardly and instead tapped the package softly on the knuckles of his left hand as he talked. Perhaps he wanted to be alone to read them? Of course, that was it! I dismissed the matter from my mind. “I didn’t come before,” he said, “I wanted to wait for some real leave – like this, a whole week. Besides, I was posted off to Greece briefly with some odds and sods of units and guess where I have just come back from – you’ll never. Thermopylae! The Hot Gates themselves. I was visiting fireman to the New Zealanders. Then back here. And at your service. Now can you put me up, or shall I go to Dirty Dick’s?”

  The palatial dispositions set this doubt at ease for I occupied a veritable apartment with several separate but interconnecting bedrooms, and one of these was made ready for my guest, who sang and whistled joyfully in the shower, picked fleas out of his vest which were, so he said, ancient Greek fleas, and borrowing some civvies from me sent all his own clothes to the cleaners of the palace. They would all be back at dusk, spotlessly cleaned and ironed. Such was the luxury in which I lived. It created, he said, misgiving about my writings – the worst thing for a writer, he had been told, was soft living. “This way you’ll never succumb to absinthe or syphilis or something, which I gather is absolutely necessary to meet the case.” I shook my head. “On the contrary, every vice is open to me, and every drug from hashish to scarlet cummerbunds – which, by the way, I have been talked into wearing with my white dinner jacket. Promise not to laugh if we dine with the Prince – he will be delighted to see you again, and the Princess equally to meet you.”

  He agreed somewhat sombrely, anticipating perhaps a social evening, but was relieved when we dined alone with the couple in the vast echoing dining-room. He had supposed that we should have to be tactful about the Prince’s rather questionable behaviour when he was in Provence, but to our surprise we found that the Princess seemed to be fully informed of his various “sprees”, and completely understanding about them. One realised her great strength in this, and also the reason for their marvellous attachment. It was really a marriage, not an artifact. We drank, in our excitement, rather too much champagne and elected to go to bed at a decently early hour, to lie in adjacent bedrooms with the doors open, talking sleepily far into the night about everything under the sun. I noticed that Constance’s letters lay unopened upon the mantelpiece and speculated vaguely as to why they had stayed that way so long. Perhaps he was shy about being unable to answer them as they deserved? He had always accused himself of being tongue-tied and paralysed by shyness. But now they were married.… I found the matter something of a puzzle, but I was not disposed to probe for mysteries which might not be there. In due course we would speak of her.

  In due course we did; I woke well after midnight to see my friend standing naked on the moonlit terrace on which the full moon blazed, staring down into the garden, completely still. He must have heard me turn, or known in some way that I was awake, for he turned at last and crossed the brilliant terrace to stand at my window and talk to me as I lay there in the dark room. “The thing is this,” he said, and I instantly divined that he was about to explain his reluctance to open his wife’s letters. “I feel a complete traitor to Constance, to all she believes in, to all we both believed in. That is why I hesitate to open her letters. You see, Aubrey, I don’t hate the war at all, I like it; and it’s marvellous to have a good moral excuse to wage it. Our war against the Hun is just, and we must win it. Of course some wars can be bad, but some have been of the greatest use to the human race, like the Persian War fought by the old Greeks. You simply do not know what an engagement is like, going into battle. Your blood freezes, your heart trembles to
its roots. I have had no experience comparable to it. Beside it, love-making is a charming adventure, nothing more. I know, what I am saying is horrible, but it’s the truth. Adventure, I was born and trained for it; I know it now. And if I survive this lot of thunder I shall join the army for life!” He stood quite still now, with hanging head, as if abashed and waiting for the reproof which these sentiments must certainly evoke. I did not know what to say. I was disgusted beyond measure at such glib propositions. “I know what you will say and think; but I am only describing what I see. The lack of individual responsibility is so wonderful – it enables the whole race to act from its functional roots, in complete obedience. Hardship and danger are splendid medicines for softness. And the girls are available now in a way they never were. They smell the fox, smell the blood like packhounds. They are so happy that you should be torn from their arms and flung into the pit – still alive, so to speak. It’s like being a baby torn from its mother’s arms. What kisses we are reaping! How can I explain all that to Constance? I shall come back to her changed in quite unforeseen ways, but without the power to describe it all, and feeling a traitorous shit – which of course I am now from your point of view.” I groped my bedside table and found my cigarettes. We both lit up and started smoking furiously, deep in thought, like two mathematicians beating their brains out upon a problem in physics. “How can I tell her that?” he went on. “All that I have seen would seem to justify what she feels about war, what you feel about it. I have seen some horrid things, things which freeze your mind. But this desert war is marvellous – you engage, and if you lose the toss you fall back forty miles and re-form. Glorious! I have seen some fearful accidents on all sides, some suicides. I saw a bayonet charge by the Essex which was of such scrupulous malevolence that I couldn’t believe I belonged to the same race as them. I have seen chunks, whole arms and ankles literally flying off a column being machine-gunned at low level by a fighter. They fire slugs the thickness of a child’s wrist in sharp bursts like a spray. They use up the oxygen by their speed and leave you gasping in the middle of a litter of human spare parts. It’s horrible, it’s wrong … what can I say? I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. O Aubrey, say something!”

  But I was dumbfounded, thunderstruck. I was also rather shamefaced at having been caught out in a moral dilemma which I had never resolved; perhaps the slick moral judgment was mine, and mine the condemnation? Inevitably, and without quite meaning to, I found myself becoming sententious. “My experience has been limited so far as a non-combatant,” I said. “And surely humanity’s mishaps suffice – do we have to add to them by wars? Last week I was asked to go down to Port Said and read for a weekend to some remnants of the Australian Div. There were about two hundred young men, all cases of blindness. They were waiting in transit to be repatriated. It was terrible to see their white, shocked faces and fluttering eyelids, and their panic, for they were new to this world of blindness. I felt sort of ashamed, as if I had no clothes on. I read to them from The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature, etc., etc., the gospel according to Gollancz. It was a strange experience to hear the 16th psalm in the atmosphere of the first-class saloon of a cruise-liner. Instead of looking down as one does when poetry is read or music played, they raised their faces like chickens, as if the words were pouring down on them from a cloud. I was glad to beat a retreat after an hour. Despite the profuseness of the education officer’s thanks I gathered that my ‘pommy accent’ offended some and spoiled the experience for most.”

  While I talked he had put the light on in his room and unearthed a decanter of whisky; we had a drink there in the theatrical moonlight of the Egyptian night.

  “There’s one thing I want to ask – a favour,” he said at last. “I took the liberty of putting your name on my blood-sheet, you know, the next-of-kin sheet we all have to fill in.”

  “But why?” I said.

  “Well, just in case I get stopped in my tracks by something, I would like to feel that it was you who would break it to Constance; you would be able to explain it better than anyone and offer what consolation one can in such circumstances. I felt it sort of kept the good tension of the last summer in Provence – as was appropriate. Is it all right with you? Unless you don’t want the responsibility of announcing the dismal fact of my departure for the land of shades …”

  “Of course not,” I said, getting back into bed and switching off the light. “Let’s catch a glimpse of sleep before the sun comes up.”

  “Done,” he said with an enormous healthy yawn. “Done!”

  Turning and tossing restlessly, eager to achieve sleep before the dawn with its first mosquito rendered it almost impossible, I heard him muttering on, pursuing the same line of thought which had caused us such an amazing exchange of confidences.

  “It’s awful how we all want in one way or another a certificate for glory,” he said sadly, and groaning, fell asleep.

  He was up well before me, and was sitting on the terrace reading his correspondence with affectionate attention – our talk had dispersed his doubts and fears. Somewhere a soft breakfast gong sounded and I groaned my way to the shower.

  “Awake at last,” he cried, with a revival of his usual high spirits. “I saw you lying there, dauntless as a sausage, snoring your head off, and I could not help but appreciate your contribution to the war effort. It sounded like distant gunfire.”

  The Prince was up and in a somewhat testy mood, unlike his usual lark-like good humour. He was reading the war news in the columns of Al Ahram and shaking his head over the noncommittal communiqués issued by the staff. It was one of those rare periods of stalemate where nothing particular was happening. But it was not of this that he wished to speak. “I sometimes wonder,” he told us, “if the British really want to win or not; they behave in such an extraordinary way. You know about our agent? Well, we have a Nazi agent living in the summer-house at the bottom of the garden; the gardeners found him and he offered them money to leave him alone. Can you imagine – a German archaeologist who speaks perfect Arabic? As you may well imagine, I rushed to the Consulate and told them, expecting they would send someone to sweep him up and shoot him. Not a bit of it. That detestable and supercilious Brigadier Maskelyne said, ‘We make a point of never disturbing a nesting agent.’ And now they are even proposing to supply him with equipment. Is this war, I ask myself? If all the agents are going to be left alone and even kept supplied …” He did not appear to imagine that it would be very much worth our while to try and infiltrate German or Italian Intelligence, and as he was almost hopping with irritation it was wiser to leave him in ignorance of the facts of life.

  The conversation turned upon the few days of relaxation he had immediately accorded me with the appearance of my friend; no effort must be spared to make Sam’s leave as agreeable as possible. A marvellous series of alternatives was proposed – excursions to the four corners of Egypt, visits to countless ancient sites. Only time was the enemy, circumscribing this little holiday. “Nevertheless,” cried the Prince with energy and determination, “between the lot of us we shall certainly see that he has a good time.” His vague gesture took in not only his wife and palace staff but also the various secretaries and his friend Affad.

  Indeed, the banker Affad was the most charming, diffident and resourceful of the Prince’s associates, presenting himself as an eager host, and his invitation was made the more tempting by the fact that he was about to set off on a journey by water – a Nile journey: moreover, in a well-appointed little ship belonging to the French Embassy. We hardly realised the magnitude of our luck until we had been two whole days aboard this pretty pirogue travelling up-Nile, a water world which is like no other. It was all too brief, for halfway up to the nearest big town we were to be dropped in order to return to Cairo by car, since my friend must not overstay his leave, or even risk such an eventuality, while this return would enable him to enjoy a little of the company of the Prince and Princess to whom he had taken a great fancy. But this little
journey proved delightful as a sort of extension of our untroubled Provençal summer – the links formed there still held. Indeed they seemed almost forged anew, so ever-present seemed Constance and Hilary her brother, seemed Felix Chatto the consul … seemed even in ghostly form the dark shade of Livia. Where would she be, I wondered? And Avignon with its looming skyline against the blue sky – the cathedrals which Hilary had always referred to as “disused prayer factories, with no noise of bumble like turbines coming from them”. The thrilling swish of mistral in the pines. It was all these, it was all here.

  More piquant still was the fact that Affad’s other two guests proved to be a French couple, of meridional persuasion; “les ogres” they were christened, for their family name was LeNogre. They were brother and sister, twins to the hour, inseparable – Bruno and Sylvaine by name. The boy was a young attache in the Free French Embassy; his sister kept house and entertained for him. They owned, or so he said in his calm, studied English, an old derelict chateau in the village of Villefoin, not very far from Tubain where “our” chateau, the house of Constance, was situated. Why, they had been there that summer – we could all have met! There was a gleam of sorrow in the dark eye of Sylvaine as she stated the fact. The expression on her face, the shape of her features, her way of holding her head, reminded me most acutely of someone, though I could not for the life of me think whom. The thought was troubling, like the attentions of a fly one could not brush away; but my obstinate memory refused to yield up the key to those dark features. Her brother was deeply preoccupied and ashamed of the way France had fallen, and of these base chicaneries of the French Mediterranean fleet which refused to join the Allies. However, the Free French movement was now a fact, and within the year De Gaulle would have twenty thousand Frenchmen in the field under his leadership … so that all was not lost. Yet it was touching to see so young a man wounded in his national honour by the collapse of his country and its wholehearted espousal of a Nazi peace. But, he added ruefully, “I am surprised at the strength of my own feelings – I did not know I had any. I am just the average French intellectual, and you know how cynical they are!” Sam reassured him in his tactful way by saying that something very similar had come about in England. “I was very much criticised for joining up,” he added, with a side-glance at me, “as Aubrey will tell you.” All of this was true; we had all been living in a fool’s paradise. It has taken Hitler to blow off the tent top and show us what a circus the political world really was.