The Dark Labyrinth

by Lawrence Durrell

  “Suppose, then, that all this were simply an apprenticeship.”

  “Towards what possible end?”

  “A novitiate towards a new degree of self-knowledge.”

  “My poor man, you are raving.”

  The roar of the minotaur sounded again. “No,” he cried suddenly, apprehensively. His torch had dimmed down to a dim circle of yellow light, incapable of piercing the farther end of the corridor. Fearmax sat on a stone and took another puff at his cigar; of the two corridors facing him one was dearly indicated. The smoke quickened as it was sucked noiselessly into it. Somewhere, vaguely, it was as if he could smell something, something like scent. And yet it was not really a smell, for when he concentrated he could smell nothing beyond the dampness and the smoke of his cigar. Somewhere beyond the shadows, perhaps “French Marie” was waiting. He got up and advanced upon the two corridors that faced him; his smoke dawdled slowly ahead of him. Yet it was from the second, the one down which the smoke had not gone, that he heard the steely vibrations of the minotaur’s voice—a dull jangling like strings out of tune, like dusts being washed backwards and forwards in a confined space.

  It was not a question of conscious choice, it was rather as if all activity save this devouring and overmastering curiosity in his mind had been suspended. He turned aside from the smoke and entered the other corridor; it was now that a curious thing happened. He began to feel that it was all a dream—as if he were lost in one of those dreams which confuse our childhood. He felt fear, yes, but at one remove: as if through the clouds of a morphia injection. He was supported now by the vertical clear flame of this overmastering curiosity to know what exactly the minotaur could be. Perhaps it was only one of “French Marie’s” disguises, one of her voices or aspects?

  A faint odour seemed to have grown up in the corridor he was traversing; it was somehow unpleasant and yet familiar. His feet began to scrape against objects on the hard stone floor; he picked them up and examined them in the last wavering flicker of his torch before it gave out completely. They were twigs of wood. They broke dryly between ringer and thumb. Was he then moving towards the lair of some animal which carried twigs down into the underworld to line its nest?

  He halted for a second to get his breath, wondering whether he should not turn round and retrace his steps; it was however in the same direction that he found himself moving, his feet scraping against twigs and branches, his nostrils full of an odour he had already begun to recognize as that of putrefaction. What was it? He drew several deep breaths of the foul air and suddenly his memory provided him with a clue. Once as a boy he had found a heron’s nest as he was walking across the marshes. The bird was sitting upon a structure of filthy twigs, surrounded by the half-chewed and decomposing remains of its feasts—fragments of fish and gobbets of field-mice. Now it was the same odour of decomposition that he smelt, only greatly magnified. What kind of animal would have so deep a burrow, and live upon carrion? His imagination simply could not supply an answer.

  He sat down upon the stone floor and rested his face in his hands, thinking furiously. Somewhere an obstinate thought seemed to divine the presence of “French Marie” behind it all; a nerve of misery and disquiet in himself which could not be quietened without the promise of her. And yet this terrifying odour of rotten flesh filled the close air of the corridor, and he trembled so violently now that it was as much as he could do to control his limbs. His fear seemed to stretch away on either side of him, filling the hollow sinuses of rock, overbrimming them. His breathing had become harsh now and stertorous. Was he about to enter the trance-condition so long denied him? Was he about to hear that window open abruptly in the air above him, and the voice which so long had tantalized him by a half-uttered word, speak?

  Even as he was thinking this thought he heard, at the farther end of the corridor, a faint noise—like the dim and paralytic shuffling of some very aged person. He was reminded of the harmless shuffle of carpet slippers across the wooden floors of the museum library. Presently there came a gust of tepid air—as if the displacement of some large body farther down the tunnel had driven it towards him. He called out, and as he did so tasted the impure, fetid breath of the Thing. It moved slowly in his direction—so slowly that the anguish was unbearable. It moved towards him at the speed of ice-crystals forming upon the stalactites, of the ash growing upon his cigar, of the nails growing upon his ten fingers. As yet he could see nothing, but the vague swollen promise of the darkness ahead. His torch lay expiring on the floor beside him.

  Then, at last, the immensity of darkness seemed to thicken, to ripen, to swell out towards him and he saw what appeared to him to be a pair of small bloodshot eyes moving towards him. Fearmax put his hands over his face and mentally surrendered himself to it. His lips moved but no sound came from them. He felt himself picked up at last in a soft wet mouth of enormous dimensions and carried, half-senseless, down the long damp corridors of the labyrinth.

  At the Monastery

  It was still high afternoon when Baird awoke and washed his face in the cold spring-water from the enamel jug. The Abbot was tending his vines. “Bravo,” he cried, “I’m glad you’re in time to bathe.” Together they walked across the woodland paths to the little spit of shale which formed the promontory’s butt. With them went the faithful Mark, carrying the towels and a basket of fruit to refresh them. The sea was an ineffable blue; as if, thought Baird, our bodies would turn Tyrian blue from dipping into it. A dolphin leaped for the sun about four cables’ length out, hitting the water with the smack of a football squarely kicked. Baird took off his clothes as one might take off the soiled and ragged clouts of this world and lay down upon the hot pebbles. “Come,” he said, “I know you Greeks never find the water warm enough till August. Make an exception.” The Abbot pleaded old age and all its infirmities, and carefully tested the temperature with his finger. “It’s terribly cold,” he said, turning pale. “I could never bathe in that.” But under the lash of Baird’s teasing he finally slipped off his robes and hob-nailed boots, and did up his back-hair into a tidy bun. Brother Mark reverently took the stove-pipe hat and sat on a point to observe. The old man entered the water uttering groans of rage. His large flabby body was like oak. Baird saw the bullet-marks in his shoulder and thigh—purple scars that looked like knots in old wood. “Here I come,” he said, and they swam slowly out into the icy blueness.

  “Mark. Wash the grapes,” called the Abbot, and the little monk obeyed. “Mark’s contributions to our researches into theology and morals are wonderful,” said the old man, doing his jerky dog-paddle out to sea. “He moves from prejudice to prejudice like a logician from premises to conclusion.” Baird turned on his back and saw the little monk washing the grapes tenderly and drying them on his master’s towel.

  They walked back, all three arm in arm, to the monastery garden, where Baird and the Abbot, reclining in deck-chairs, the sea at their feet, spent the rest of the afternoon in idle innocence, eating and talking bad philosophy. Brother Mark sat discreetly in earshot, drinking it all in. “Mark,” said the Abbot suddenly, “what is goodness?” He nudged Baird and invited his amusement at poor Mark’s answers by wrinkling up his nose. Brother Mark shook his evil-looking forelock in their direction and raised the hand from which an exploding depth-charge ill-fused had removed two fingers. “Goodness”, he said, “is doing right. Doing what the book says.”

  “Which book?” said the Abbot.

  “The good book,” said Mark darkly. He knew he was being made fun of; he moved his jaws with a queer chewing motion.

  “And if you cannot read?” persisted the Abbot.

  “The Abbot John is my eyes,” replied the monk with the air of having scored heavily. The Abbot roared with laughter and slapped his knee. “Was ever a man so focused on goodness?” he asked. “He would disembowel his mother if I told him to. I don’t think he’s a real Greek—he is not argumentative in a sunny obstreperous Greek fashion; but in a gloomy way, like an Englishman or someo
ne suffering from interior stresses.” Baird closed his eyes and stretched out his legs towards the sea. In the gutter two scorpions copulated like watch springs. Bees droned in among their conversations, and almost palpable waves of heat came off the stone wall of the terrace. The Abbot caught sight of Brother Mark, sitting unhappily on the edge of the parapet, looking at his own fingers; he recollected that it is bad manners to make fun of a countryman before strangers. “Go to Brother Mark,” he said. “You are a holy man who would delight the heart of John the Baptist if he were here.” The little man looked up gratefully. His smile was like that of a small girl—a transfiguration.

  “Idolatry,” said the Abbot John, shaking his head. “Simply idolatry. It makes you despair of the world.”

  They dined that night on the great oaken table in the courtyard, under the plane trees. There was red wine in plenty, and in the soft candle-light the old Abbot’s face glowed with recaptured memories as they talked. Finally he went up to his room and brought down his little account book, and explained to Baird some of its mysteries. He had entries for every cargo of arms bought across from Palestine and smuggled into Tripoli. “You see,” he said, indicating the quantities, “there is not much. And I am serving your cause, my dear Baird, since I am removing arms from British territory and sending them into French; in both cases at the expense of the Jews; isn’t it wonderful? It is good patriotism, and it shows a good profit. I have bought a large farm in the south for Calypso’s dowry when she grows up. Perhaps an Englishman will come from London and marry her.”

  The news of the disaster in the labyrinth was brought to them after dinner by a passing shepherd. It cast rather a gloom over their gaiety. A search-party had been into the tunnel leading to the “City in the Rock” and had reported dangerous falls of rock in many places. The Abbot was pessimistic about the possible escape of the others. “It’s a terrible place,” he said. “Even the corner where we had our headquarters was dangerous. But this place of Axelos’s …” He waved his hands expressively.

  They sat for a time in silence, watching the moon rise out of Africa, bronze-brown and beautiful. Somewhere out of sight the pure scroll-like sound of a flute could be heard and the chipped noise of sheep-bells.

  “Sleep early tonight,” said the old man. “I am sure that the dream which troubled you has gone at last.”

  Baird smiled and said, “Good night.” In his little cell he blew out the light and climbed into the narrow bed, lying for a moment to hear the gentle swish of the sea upon the sea-wall, and the chaffer of fishermen putting out with their cargoes of lobster-pots. Then he sighed and went forward candidly, joyfully towards the sleep that fell upon him like a benediction out of tomorrow.

  The Abbot John, however, could not sleep. He turned and tossed for a long time in his narrow wooden bed, and finally gave it up. The fleas were biting tonight. He made a mental note to tell Spiro, the novice, to rub the floors with paraffin and plug the seams. The wood throughout the whole monastery was rotten and cankered. In his own bedroom there were several knots upon which he was always catching his foot in the dark. He lit his small night-light and took up a book of medieval sermons. The light shone upon his narrow bookshelf, his robes hanging upon a hook in the corner, the great Bible which stood upon a lectern in the alcove—an English Bible. He was getting a very old man; he had reached that age when the body seems to develop small distempers—a heart beating over-loudly, or a lung that wheezes—and in the stillness of the night he would lie and, as he put it, “listen to himself dying in pieces”. Tonight he was filled with a vague melancholy. He got up and put on his embroidered slippers. From the bottom of the cupboard he took a bottle of mastic and poured himself a tot, noticing as he did so how slack and flabby the skin of his hands had become. Soon he would be seventy. “And so little accomplished,” was the mental thought that accompanied the reflection—though precisely in which field his accomplishment should lie he could not tell. Had he wasted his life? Those years in Asia Minor, in Athos—had they borne fruit? Had he approached a complete holiness through the exercises of the Orthodox Church? A faint smell of incense wafted from the cupboard. It was of Athenian manufacture. Ah, if he could only get some of the pre-war Damascus incense, rich and pungent. He sighed as he sipped his mastic.

  Lighting a cigarette, he said to himself: “If you had told him the truth would he be happier or less happy? Would Böcklin’s disappearance as a miracle have more effect upon him than as a question of scientific fact? It is hard to say.”

  In his experience it was the miracle that usually counted; and the more enlightened the person the greater the power of the miracle. He inhaled deeply and combed out his beard with his fingers. Somewhere above him Baird slept—his slumbers lulled by the prodigious snorings of the novice. The Abbot decided to take his problem to the sea-wall. He blew out the light and left the room, closing the door gently behind him. All was still in the courtyard. A bright bluish light from the risen moon deepened the shadows to the colour of ink; the sea sighed from time to time as one turning in a deep sleep. The darkness was fragrant with the scent of wallflowers. He sat himself upon the parapet close to his beloved pots of sweet basil, and consulted the glimmering tip of his cigarette. It was absurd really, he found himself thinking, that he should make a moral problem out of what was merely a kindness done to a friend. After all, he had loved Böcklin in a sense as dearly as anyone. Was there any need to reopen the whole question of his death and their guilt in making him die? “It was as much I”, he said to himself, “who fired the shot.”

  He put out the cigarette and shuffled across the courtyard to the outhouse where Spiro kept the pots of tar and linseed oil, and all the tackle and gear of fishing. He lit himself a dark lantern, muttering to himself as he did so, and by the light of it unearthed a pot of dry tar. Over a small fire of shavings he melted it and then made his way once more across the courtyard to the chapel.

  Here the darkness was absolute. He locked the door behind him with the great key, setting his lantern and his pot of tar upon the ground. The tinsel nimbus of St. Demetrius glimmered at him from the shadows of the altar. Mice chirped in the rotten woodwork of the pews. Other features of ikons less visible swam out at him upon the absolute darkness.

  He sighed deeply, for what he was about to do would cost money to repair. Taking his pot of smoking tar he advanced into a corner and faced a small sandstone plaque standing above a slab of the paving. Through the soles of his slippers he felt the damp flags exuding their chill. He took up the stick with the rags tied to its end, which served him for a brush, and began to paint out an inscription in Greek which read:

  UNDER THIS SLAB LIE THE MORTAL

  REMAINS OF G. BÖCKLIN, A VERY

  GALLANT OFFICER OF THE GERMAN ARMY,

  KILLED IN ACTION 1944

  He lingered for some time after he had successfully removed the inscription, reflecting with irony that his effort of age had been made on behalf of someone who did not believe in miracles. At any rate now Baird would never know the truth!

  The Abbot fell asleep almost at once after reaching his room again, and did not wake until Brother Mark tiptoed into his cell at dawn with a crust of bread and a glass of goat’s milk. He slept very well, so there was no excuse for his drowsiness the next morning when Baird found him sitting half-asleep on the white parapet, fishing-rod in hand. The sun was shining brightly. Baird approached on tiptoe and peered down into the blue. “Your bait has gone,” he said pleasantly. The Abbot groaned. He was holding a book in his other hand and trying to read between naps. “I hate fishing,” he said. “I don’t really know why I do it. Self-discipline, I suppose.” Turning his head he roared: “Calypso. Come and change my bait.”

  The little girl came and with expert fingers crushed the shell of the hermit crabs and fixed their limp writhing bodies on the hooks, while the Abbot averted his face. He could not bear to see them wriggle. “How they move,” said the little girl in her faraway voice. “Don’t,” said the Abb
ot, “don’t tell me. I hate inflicting pain.” She gave the signal and he cast the line erratically out into the blue again.

  Baird sat down on the wall and tossed pebbles into the sea absently, waiting for his friend to catch something. “In half an hour”, he said, “I must walk over to Cefalû. Will you come?”

  The Abbot John said he would. “But promise”, he said, “that you will say nothing about the City in the Rock being a real discovery.” Baird promised.

  Campion

  Campion and Virginia Dale were pushed bodily into something that was not unlike the flue of an old French chimney; the girl had fainted, and Campion had put his arms round her and managed to stagger a few feet into the gap, while the stones and earth poured into the opening behind them. Their faces were brown with dust, he noticed, as he climbed slowly up what seemed to be a flight of irregularly-hewn stairs towards a broad band of daylight. The girl was heavier than she looked; he was carrying her over his shoulders after the manner approved by firemen in rescues from fourth-floor windows. Campion was spared the anxiety of Miss Dombey—spared everything except thoughts of merciful deliverance, for almost from the beginning he could see the encouraging whiteness of daylight at the other end of the hold into which they had been blown. He climbed slowly, pausing to place Virginia gently on her feet and shake her; he did not think she had been hurt, as she had been standing behind him, and might, at the worst, have been flicked by the passing splinters of stone, one of which had lodged in his eye and temporarily blinded him; at least it felt as if it had blinded him. How magnificent the daylight looked, streaming softly into the entry above them. “Virginia,” he called, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Virginia.” The girl seemed inclined to come round. He blew into her nostrils and saw her eyelids flutter. “Are you all right?” he said, but she subsided once more into what seemed to be more like a troubled sleep than a faint. Campion dragged her a few feet higher and paused. To his left there was a hole in the rock, a panel as large as a small bathroom mirror. It pierced several feet of solid rock and gave him a dim aquarium-like view of a cavern, in which, to his surprise, he saw the diminishing figures of Mr. and Mrs. Truman; saw them, briefly, for perhaps a second—for all the world as if he were looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope. He shouted hoarsely, putting his mouth to the opening, but there was no response. The grey-green subaqueous light shone steadily in a little group of stones. They had been (unless it had been an optical illusion) perhaps fifty yards away. His eyes were beginning to trouble him again; he could feel something stuck to the cornea when he closed it. Virginia stirred and moaned. Pausing from time to time to shake her, Campion mounted the last twenty paces, and collapsed with her upon the ledge, half-blind with sunlight. Here they lay for a long moment breathing the welcome scents of sage in the rare mountain air, and listening to the distant drumbeats of the sea. Presently Virginia sat up and looked round her. She was still pale and seemed about to be sick. Campion peeled off his coat, turning his body as it lay on the ground, to disengage first one arm and then the other. Thank God, he had managed to bring their lunch. “Virginia,” he said, “are you all right?” The girl gave a little cry and pointed to his face.