But because he had lost weight she took pity on him and hunted out chocolate from the kitchen – coaxing him with it to sweeten his drowsy kisses; and since he seemed the weaker today she took the dominant role, excited to drain him of every last desire by the authority of her splendid body. She feasted on his flesh and he let her go – though he was only shamming, saving his strength. And as soon as her passion subsided a little he suddenly turned her on her back like a turtle and entered her on a wave of renewal – a conqueror in his turn, but a welcomed one. All his strength had come back in a rush, as if from nowhere. But he knew that she had summoned it, had conjured it up. At last they lay entangled in each other like wrestlers, but immobile, and still mouth to mouth in a pool of ghostly sweat: and as proud of each other as lions, though meek as toys!
The telephone rang in its muted fashion, and she raised her head in drowsy dismay: “What a fool I am! I forgot to turn it off!” She was reluctant to unwind this matchless embrace for a mere professional call from Schwarz or someone. She hung back and hesitated, hoping that the invisible caller might suppose her absent and hang up; but no. The instrument went on and on insisting, and at last she crawled from bed and groped her sleepy way to the salon – only to find that as she picked up the instrument and spoke into it, it went quietly dead on her. She had just time to say “Hullo” twice before Mnemidis (for it was he) replaced the receiver with a quiet smile, having recognised her voice as that of his doctor and tormentor. So she was, after all, at home and not absent on duty as Schwarz had suggested! It was really wonderful how things fell out without any special interference on his part: they just fell into the shape dictated by his desire! Meanwhile an irritated Constance hovered above the phone, wondering whether to switch it off or not – her professional conscience reproached her for the wish. On the phone pad was a phrase which Max had given her, a quotation from a philosopher. She read it drowsily as she debated within herself the rights and wrongs of pushing the switch of the phone. “Everything is conquered by submission, even submission itself, even as matter is conquered by entropy, and truth by its opposite. Even entropy, so apparently absolute in its operation, is capable, if left to itself, of conversion into a regenerative form. The phoenix is no myth!”
Ouf! Her bones felt full to overflowing with electricity; she was outraged to find him snugly asleep instead of awaiting her! That was men for you! Yet to tell the truth she herself was not far off the same state, and enfolding him in her arms once more she fell quietly asleep, pacing him with her heartbeats! He could not guess how long this state of felicity had lasted when at last he awoke to find her lying wide-eyed and silent beside him. “What is it?” he whispered. “Did I wake you, did I snore?” But she shook her head and whispered back, “I was woken by an idea, a marvellous idea, and quite realisable unless you have any special plans for spending your time. Why don’t we go away together for a few months, to really discover each other – supposing you have a few months at your disposal? Why waste the precious day? I have accumulated a lot of leave. Provence is cleared of Germans. I have an old house which we could open up, very primitive but comfortable and in a beautiful corner near Avignon …”
“How funny,” he said, “for I was going to suggest something like that; I even borrowed Galen’s house for the occasion. Yes, we shouldn’t sit about waiting for time to catch up with us. We should act boldly like people with forever in their pockets. Perhaps this time I might actually …” But she covered his mouth with her hand.
She dared not think of becoming pregnant by him, with so many outstanding issues confronting their love. No, they must advance a step at a time, like blind people tapping a way with their white sticks. Paradoxically her very elation was terrifying. With him she might even dare to utter the words “Je t’aime!” which had always represented to her a wholly unrealisable territory of the feelings, of the heart. But then everyone alive is waiting for this experience, with impatience and with despair. Everyone alive!
They slept again, then woke, and drowsed their way slowly towards the late afternoon when the unexpected fever awoke in him – an onslaught so sudden that the symptoms for her seemed instantly recognisable as a rogue attack of malaria. But at first she was startled at its violent onset, to see him jumping and shivering with such violence, while he could hardly speak, his teeth chattered so in his head. “I brought it back from the desert – they have been planting rice like fools, and now you get anopheles right up to the gates of Alexandria!” But if his temperature had gone through the ceiling his pulse had sunk through the floor. He hovered now on the very edges of consciousness, but without undue alarm, for he knew that it would pass. Only with fury and self-disgust, for he was dying to make love to her again. And he had broken out into a torment of sweat. She found a thick towelling dressing-gown with a hood – indeed, they had stolen it from the hotel he had last occupied when in Geneva. An ideal thing for such a state, though it took quite an effort to get him into it, for he almost could not stand because of these paroxysms of trembling. He almost dropped on all-fours under the attacks. The sudden change was quite alarming, for he was ashen-white and all curled up. Malignant malaria is well known for its sudden paroxysms of fever which arrive or depart with incredible suddenness. But here was a temporary end of their love-making: he would simply have to sweat his way through the bout until the fever left him. She heaped him with blankets while he obediently turned his face to the wall and quivered his way into a half-sleep with a temperature so high that he was all but delirious. She did not even take his temperature in order not to alarm herself! Of course there were drugs which, administered in the night, might help to bring the fever down on the morrow. But of course he would be as limp as a cat afterwards … Damn!
Damn also because the telephone rang at that moment, and this time it was the voice of Schwarz, sounding preternaturally grave, as if he were trying to master a concern or an anxiety. “I have been trying to reach you everywhere to tell you that your pet patient has broken out and escaped. Yes, Mnemidis!”
She thought for a long moment and then said, “Isn’t our security foolproof? What about Pierre?” Schwarz replied, “He has stabbed him quite severely with a carving knife from the kitchens. But he has clearly got away because he made a phone call to his doctor friend from Alexandria and was most excited by their news. You know they were trying to take him back home? Well, they have succeeded in getting a laisser-passer for him from the Swiss, and there is nothing to prevent him just meeting them and being airlifted in a private plane – which is standing by at the airport. That is why I am not proposing to get unduly alarmed by the break-out; but I have moved into a hotel and asked a carpenter to change the locks on my flat. I think you should do the same. Until we get the all clear. The Alexandrian doctor has promised to signal me when he is safely in their custody so that they can escort him back to Cairo. What a bore it is! I hope you are feeling a bit chastened for having insisted on keeping him under treatment? No? Well, you should. At any rate, Constance, don’t take any chances. For the moment he is somewhere in town, and nobody knows exactly where. So … Be on the qui-vive please, will you?’
“Very well,” she said, though without conviction.
SIX
The Dying Fall
MNEMIDIS WAS MAKING THE MOST OF HIS FREEDOM, He was filled with elation at the excellence of his disguise and the anonymity it conferred, though he looked a somewhat able-bodied nun. But he revelled in the unfamiliar beauties of the old town. As for the fête votive, it was so very touching and innocent that he was almost compelled to brush away a tear. It was very affecting. He laughed heartily and sincerely at the vastly correct jokes, careful not to boom, however. The squeaky exchanges of Punch and Judy and the rapt enthusiasm of the children filled him with an emotion close to dread. Once in Cairo long ago a little child had come to him, perhaps ten years old, doubtless a Bedouin and lost in the city … he had a fit of harsh coughing. It was time to be moving on. He was waiting for the evening to arr
ive but he had not as yet actually located the situation of the apartment he planned to visit. But there was a most convenient tourist map of the city outside the gardens at the bus stop. There was also a list of the principal avenues and a marker to help find one. He spent a long moment doing so and verifying his own position vis-à-vis the street in question. He had all the time in the world. He had already been astute enough to phone to the hotel of his two Cairo associates, and the doctor had given him the good news of his successful démarches, of the Swiss laisser-passer, and of the private plane waiting for him. Mnemidis was overjoyed, but asked for a little time before joining his associates; he had something to do in the town first, but he thought that it might be possible to meet them at the airport late in the evening, say at dinner time or just after … All this in a fine colloquial Arabic with its reassuring gutturals. “Above all,” said the doctor, “do not commit any indiscretions, for you will be locked up for good, and we will never be able to release you. Take care!” Mnemidis chuckled and said that he would take care.
But there was time enough in hand, so having fixed a rendezvous at the airport at nine with the hope of a midnight departure, he left all the details to his friend, asking only that he might be met with a parcel containing a change of clothes, male clothes. He did not expatiate upon his present disguise because at bottom he trusted nobody. But his freedom and the secrecy of his whereabouts put him in a strong position to dictate his own terms. All the rest was up to him. He decided, since the afternoon was agreeably warm, to walk slowly across Geneva, and this he did, humming happily under his breath.
His route took him across the seedier parts of the old town, the poorer quarters, full of maisons closes and oriental cafés and moribund hotels; not to speak of the blue cinemas playing pornographic films. The one thing the war had not changed or debased was pornography; if anything, far from reducing it, it had caused an efflorescence, an increase. So necessary is it for the scared human ego to belittle a force which it recognises as being incalculably stronger than itself – the only really uncontrollable force man knows: for even if repressed it bursts out in symbolism, violence, dreaming, madness … Mnemidis slackened his pace in order to take in the whole scene with a just pleasure. There were a few sleazy whores already on the street, and the cinemas were rich in promise. He lingered at the entrance looking at the stills, attracting a number of curious and amused looks for he was still in his nun’s garb. What marvellous titles the films had, expressing the age-old wishes and dreams of poor man, revealing him in all his frailty. He chuckled with an ape-like sophistication!
In the rue Delabre there was Queue de Beton or The Concrete Prick; further down Plein Le Cul or A Cuntfull and further on Les Enculées or The Buggered. It was absolutely delicious! He tore himself away with difficulty. It was with deep regret, however, for he simply longed to pass away an hour or so watching the antics of a blue film – it sharpened his intelligence. In it he felt the profound succulence of abused flesh. Even to think of it gave him hot flushes. However, he could hardly enter such a place in his present garb, and of course he did not wish to draw too much close attention to himself. But how reassuring it was to think that if all went well – and why should it not? – he would be leaving the country of his unjust captivity that very night! It elated him beyond measure, and he almost made the mistake of lighting a cigarette, for he bad bought a packet. But he resisted the impulse successfully. He wandered past the cinemas and along the silent avenue leading to the park. He was not far off now, and he was filled with a silent felicity for he knew that luck would be with him in this just enterprise.
The mad must be people without selves: their whole investment is in the other, the object. They are ruled by the forces of total uncertainty. At this point Mnemidis did not know, with one half of his brain, what he might do under the promptings of the other half. A delicious uncertainty!
Like the greatest of mystics he had arrived at an unconscious understanding of nature as something which exists in a state of total disponibilité, of indeterminacy, of hovering? He was the joker in the pack, he was equally ripe for black mischief or the felicity of pure godhead. It was all according to how the dice fell, the wheel spun. Moreover he recognised that nature itself was completely indifferent to the outcome – to human bliss or pain. He felt only the electrical discharge of impulse throbbing in his body, like the engine of a ship, driving him onwards to the harbour of his realisation, a mystic of crime!
There is no therapy for reason, any more than for original sin. Yet sometimes even now he almost awoke from this mood, shook himself like a dog, wondering of a sudden if some small element had not worked loose somewhere in his inner thinking … some tiny link. But he could not bear the wave of oppression and mistrust which followed in the wake of this sentiment and he closed his mind upon it like a steel door. His mouth set in a grim line. And now here he was in the street he had been seeking, standing before the very house he proposed to visit, utterly sure that everything had been planned for him, so that he might execute an exemplary punishment in the form of a farewell to Swiss medicine. And, by goodness, the door was ajar into the hall, for Constance had slipped out to the nearest pharmacy in search of a febrifuge for her fever-bound lover. She would not be gone very long. Hence she left the flat door ajar. Mnemidis saw with deep satisfaction the black shadow of the nun like some allegorical bat mount the stairs with a kind of Luciferian deliberation – as if she had been summoned to read a service for the sick or to hear the confession of someone in extremis. He chuckled to find that the flat door was also open. He entered and stood for a long moment looking about him, as if to memorise the geography of the place; but in fact he was simply listening to his own heartbeats and soliciting his soul, asking himself what he should do next. He heard the faint stirring of the bed in the next room and boldly opened the door – also ajar! His heart swelled up in triumph for there was a figure in the bed, covered from head to foot in a towelling dressing-gown with a hood drawn right over the head. Its face was turned to the wall, away from him, and from the whispering and trembling he at once guessed that she must be in a high fever, practically a delirium. But it was mysterious that she should be here all alone, lying ill in this darkened room. Perhaps there was someone else in the flat? With great swiftness now he explored all the other rooms, and then subsided with relief, for there was not a soul. What a perfect situation. “I told you so!” he said to himself under his breath, and breathing deeply like a voluptuary he advanced towards his victim.
It was lucky also that he had to deal with this inert and passive form and not a target presenting more difficulties – having to struggle, use force or ruse. No, the white form lay before him as if upon a slab, waiting to be operated on; in the beautiful simplicity of the whole business he felt he could read the handwriting of higher providence. Yes, this was how it had to be! And poising himself with profound concentration he put one hand upon the shoulder of the figure and completed his work with such speed and dexterity that he quite surprised himself. There was no cry, no groan, no sudden spasm. Just a deep sigh, as if of repletion, and a small gulp – a mere whiff of sound. With knives so preternaturally sharp it was hardly necessary to thrust with force, nevertheless he took no chances and gave of his best. Consummatum est! A whole mass of gloom-laden preoccupation seemed at once to fall from his shoulders. It was as if his conscience had voided itself like a sack. He almost cheered in his elation. But he wiped the weapons most carefully upon the silent shoulder of the corpse and then crossed the room on tiptoe. In the salon was a writing desk with a framed photo of his tormentor looking particularly pretty and intellectual. He stared at it for a long time, smiling grimly with a satisfied air. It was here, under this picture, that he at last placed the missing letter which she had been kicking up so much fuss about during recent weeks. Once when young he had been apprenticed to a conjuror and had retained a few of the skills he learned – making things appear and disappear with professional skill. It had not been diffic
ult to do this with the letter. But now he was going to surrender it – like a parting snub!
He withdrew as silently as he had entered, closing the flat door behind him with a slight click – indeed this is what puzzled Constance on her return a quarter of an hour later: finding the flat door shut. It was vexatious for she had no key and she did not want to tap and awaken her patient. She returned downstairs and rang for the concierge who had a master key which she loaned her. She entered at last to stand in startled surprise at the open door of the bedroom, her arms full of medicines. But almost at once the unnatural silence and inertness of the figure on the bed struck a chill of premonitory alarm in her. And peering as she advanced she saw the bloodstains on the sheet and shoulder of the wrap. She held her breath and let drop the package she held. She called his name once, then twice on an even sharper note of interrogation, alarmed by the stillness. One thin hand stuck out of the wrap, contracted up now in death like the claw of a dead bird. She fell upon the pulse for a long moment, ferociously concentrated with total attention. Then with a gasp she drew back the sheet and began to unwrap the silent parcel, letting out a wail of anguish as the reality of the affair came rushing at her, engulfing every feeling. How could it be real, and as she drew back the wrappings strange jumbled thoughts and memories contended in her head with her concentration upon the terrible reality of the situation – the wounds! Once someone had told of unwrapping an Egyptian mummy to get at the precious eatable flesh which is the soul-nourishment of the gnostic – and noticing that it had been stabbed through the wrappings, that is to say after its death. Now who would fall upon and stab a a body already dead and parcelled up for the grave? The mystery remained! Yes, it was Affad who had told her. And now this white towelling dressing-gown was the very same into which she had bled so copiously upon her first sexual encounter with him. They had stolen it from his hotel as a kind of lover’s talisman. When she had uncovered his body and made quite sure she started to faint; she had just enough presence of mind to dial the emergency code, four-number four-ambulance which might come to her aid. But it was someone else’s voice it seemed that told the operator to summon Schwarz to her side. Then she fainted away. And so they found her.
The Avignon Quintet Page 111
