The Magus - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  Her innocence was charming; no natural and so false; an irresistible invitation to take nothing seriously.

  "When am I going to meet your brother?"

  Her prettily lashed eyes flickered modestly down and sideways. I hope you did not venture to think he was really my brother?"

  "I ventured to think all sorts of things."

  She sought my meaning, for a moment held my eyes, then bit her lips. For no reason at all I began to feel less jealous.

  * * *

  "Wouldn't you like to bathe?"

  "No. I cannot swim."

  "I could teach you. It's very easy."

  "Thank you. I do not like sea water."

  Silence. She shifted a pebble with her shoe. It was a pretty buttoned shoe of gray kid over a white silk stocking, but very old-fashioned. The hem of her dress came within three of four inches of her ankles. Her hair blew forward, clouding her face a little. I wanted to brush it back.

  "You speak like a Scandinavian sometimes."

  "Yes?"

  "'I cannot swim.' 'I do not like.'"

  "What should I say?"

  "I can't swim. I don't like."

  She made a little pout, then put on a very creditable foreign accent. "Does it mattair eef I am not Eenglish?"

  Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat; disappearing behind her humor.

  "Does it matter if you tell me who you really are?"

  "Give me your hand. I will read your fortune. You may sit a little closer, but you must not wet my dress."

  I gave her my hand. She held it tightly by the wrist and traced the palmistry lines with the forefinger of her free hand. I was able to see the shape of her breasts at the bottom of the opening in her dress, very pale skin, the highly caressable beginning of soft curves. It was strange; she managed to suggest that this hackneyed sexgambit — one I had used myself on occasion — was rather daring, mama-defying. Her fingertip ran innocently yet suggestively over my palm. She began to "read."

  "You will have a long life. You will have three children. At about forty years old you will nearly die. You are quite sensitive, but you are also very treacherous. There are . . . there are many treacheries in your life. Sometimes you betray yourself. Sometimes you betray those who love you."

  "Why do I betray?"

  She looked seriously up at me. "The palm says what is. Not why it is."

  "Can I read yours?"

  "I have not finished. You will never be rich. Beware of horses, strong drink and old women. You will make love to many girls, but you will love only one, and you will marry her and be very happy."

  "In spite of nearly dying at forty."

  "Because you nearly die at forty. Here is where you nearly die. The happiness line is very, very strong after that."

  She let go of my hand.

  "Now can I read yours?"

  She hesitated a moment, then put her small hand in mine, and I pretended to read it. I tried to read it quite seriously in one way — the Sherlock Holmes way. But even that great master at detecting in a second Irish maidservants from Brixton with a mania for boating and bullseyes would have been baffled. However, Lily's hands were very white, very smooth, very unblemished; whatever else she was she was not a maidservant from anywhere.

  "You are taking a long time, Mr. Urfe."

  "My name is Nicholas."

  "May I call you Nicholas?"

  "If I may call you . . . ?"

  "You may call me Lily, Nicholas. But you may not sit for hours pretending to read my hand."

  "It's a very difficult hand to read. Very obscure. I can only see one thing clearly."

  "And what is that?"

  "It's extremely nice to look at and to hold."

  She snatched it away. "There. You prove what I said. You are treacherous."

  "Let me have it back. I'll be serious." But she shook her head, and put both her hands behind her, and turned, and looked at me with a perfectly done pert Edwardian rebelliousness. A wisp of hair blew across her face; the wind kindled in her clothes a wantonness, bared her throat, so that she suddenly looked very young, absurdly young, seventeen; a world away from an avenging goddess. I remembered what Conchis had said about the original Lily's gentleness and mischievousness, and I thought how wonderfully well he had cast this Lily — there was, it seemed to me, a natural teasing obliquity in her that couldn't be acted. Not when she was so close, in daylight; she seemed far less sophisticated than she had on the terrace the night before. All the condescension had disappeared. Impulsively she thrust her hand back out at me. I began to read

  it.

  "I see all the usual things. Long life. Happiness. Children. And then . . . intelligence. A lot of intelligence. Some heart. And yes — great acting ability, combined with a strong sense of humor. And this line means that you love mystery. But I think the acting's strongest."

  A little white cloud floated across the sun, casting shadow over the beach. She took her hand away, and stared down at it in her lap.

  "And death?"

  "I said. A long life."

  "But I am dead. One cannot die twice."

  I touched her arm. "You're the most living dead person I've ever met."

  She did not smile; there was swiftly, too swiftly, something very cold and gray in her eyes, a silent trouble.

  "Oh come on. There is a limit."

  "Death is the limit."

  I knew she must be improvising her moods and dialogue with me. The cloud had come; she had brought in death. It was time to call her bluff.

  "Look —"

  "You still do not understand."

  "Of course I'll keep up the pretense in front of Maurice."

  "We are in front of Maurice."

  I thought for one mad moment that he had crept up behind us. I even looked round. There was no one; and no place where anyone could have hidden and overheard us.

  "Lily — I admire him. I like him. I like this extraordinary masque of his. Very much. And I admire you for being so . . . faithful? But —"

  She said abruptly, "I have no choice."

  This was a new tack. I thought I heard a faint note of regret. That he insisted on her keeping up the pretense at all times? On pain of dismissal, perhaps?

  "Meaning?"

  "Everything you say to me and I say to you, he hears, he knows."

  "You have to tell him?" I sounded incredulous.

  She nodded, then stared out to sea and I knew that she was not unmasking at all. I began to feel exasperated; foiled.

  "Are we talking about telepathy?"

  "Telepathy and —" She broke off the sentence, and she shook her head.

  "And?"

  "I cannot say any more."

  She opened out her sunshade, as if she was thinking of going away. It had little black tassels that hung from the ends of the ribs.

  "Why not?"

  "Maurice would be angry. He would know."

  I gave an unbelieving sniff. I thought, then said, "Are you his mistress?"

  She looked very genuinely shocked. "That is very impertinent. Very rude." She turned her back on me and I grinned — at her skill, and remembering that naked "brother," at her nerve.

  "I just want to know where I am."

  "That was . . ." she dropped her voice and the wind almost carried the words away . . . "completely uncalled-for and most disgusting."

  Suddenly she stood up and began to walk quickly away over the shingle, towards the path that led up to the house. I ran after her and blocked her way. The sun had come out again. She stopped, her eyes down, then she looked up at me, hotly, apparently very near anger.

  I said, "I am not disgusting."

  She burst out. "Why must you always know where you are? Why have you no imagination, no humor, no patience? You are like a child who tears a beautiful toy to pieces to see how it is made. You have no imagination . . . no poetry." Her eyes stared at me intensely, as if she was going to cry. "That is why you are so treacherous."

  I spread the towel ou
t before her feet, and knelt on it. Then looked up at her. "I beg forgiveness."

  "You make me angry. I want to be your friend and you make it so difficult." She half turned away. But her voice was softer.

  "Difficult to be friends if I can't really know who you are."

  I sat back on my haunches. With a swift change of mood she lowered her shade and tapped me lightly on the shoulder with it.

  "I deserve a knighthood now?"

  "You deserve nothing now."

  She turned completely, as if she wanted to laugh; as if the effort of playing this "serious" exchange had exhausted her gravity. She ran, little stumbling steps, her skirt lifted with one hand, towards the jetty. I got up and lit a cigarette, and then went to where she was strolling up and down. There was more wind on the jetty, and she kept on having trouble with her hair; charming trouble. The ends of it floated up in the sunshine, silky wings of living light. In the end I held her closed sunshade for her, and she tried to hold her hair still. Her mood had veered abruptly again. She kept on laughing, fine white teeth catching the sunlight, hopping, swaying back when a wave hit the jetty end and sent up a little spray. Though once or twice she caught my arm, there was no physical coquettishness about her. She seemed absorbed in her game with the wind and the sea. A pretty, rather skittish schoolgirl in a gay striped dress.

  I stole looks at the sunshade. It was newly made. I supposed a ghost from 1915 would have been carrying a new sunshade; but somehow I believed it would have been more authentic, though supernaturally less logical, if it had been old and faded.

  Then the bell rang, from the house. It was that same ring I had heard the weekend before, in the rhythm of my own name. Lily stood still, and listened. Wind-distorted, the bell rang again.

  "Nich-o-las." She looked mock-grave. "It tolls for thee."

  I looked up through the trees.

  "I can't think why."

  "You must go."

  "Will you come with me?"

  "I must wait." The bell rang again. "You must go."

  I stood undecided. "Why must you wait?"

  "Because it did not toll for me."

  "I think we ought to show that we're friends again."

  She was standing close to me, holding her hair from blowing across her face. She gave me a severe look.

  "Mr. Urfe!" She said it exactly as she had the night before. The same chilly over-precise pronunciation. "Are you asking me to commit osculation?"

  And it was perfect; a mischievous girl of 1915 poking fun at a feeble Victorian joke; a lovely double remove; the linguistic-dramatic equivalent of some complicated ballet-movement; and she looked absurd and lovely as she did it. She pushed her cheek forward, and I hardly had time to touch it with my lips before she had skipped back. I stood and watched her bent head. "I'll be as quick as I can." I handed her back her sunshade; gave her what I trusted was both a hopelessly attracted and a totally unduped look.

  Turning every so often, I climbed up the path. Twice she waved from the jetty. I came over the steep rise and started through the last of the thinned trees towards the house. I could see Maria standing by the music-room door, at the bell. But I hadn't taken two steps across the gravel before the world split in half. Or so it seemed.

  A figure had appeared on the terrace, not fifty feet away, facing and above me. It was Lily. It couldn't be her, but it was her. The same hair blew about in the wind; the dress, the sunshade, the figure, the face, everything was the same. She was staring out to sea, over my head, totally ignoring me.

  It was a wild, dislocating, disactualizing, shock. Yet I knew within the first few seconds that although I was obviously meant to believe that this was the same girl as the one on the beach, it was not. But it was so like her that it could be only one thing — a twin sister. There were two Lilies in the field. The night before, the nymph, was explained. But I had no time to think. Another figure appeared beside the Lily on the terrace.

  It was a man, much too tall to be Conchis. At least, I presumed it was a man; perhaps "Apollo" or "Robera Foulkes" — or even "de Deukans." I couldn't see, because the figure was all in black, shrouded in the sun, and wearing the most sinister mask I had ever seen: the head of an enormous black dog, or jackal, with a long muzzle and high pointed ears. They stood there, the possessor and the possessed, looming death and the frail maiden. There was almost immediately, after the first visual shock, something vaguely grotesque about it; it had the overdone macabreness of a horror-magazine illustration. It certainly touched on some terrifying archetype; but it shocked common sense as well as the unconscious.

  Again, I had no feeling of the supernatural, no feeling that this was more than another nasty twist in the masque; a black inversion of the scene on the beach. That does not mean I was not frightened. I was, and very frightened; but my fear came from a feeling that anything might happen. That there were no limits in this masque, no normal social laws or conventions. Two things happened in the moments I stood there. Maria came towards me; and the two figures swiftly withdrew, as if to avoid any chance of her seeing them. Lily's doppelganger was pulled back imperiously by the black hand on her shoulder. At the very last moment she looked down at me, but her face was expressionless.

  I began to run back towards the point on the path where I could see down to the beach. I flung a look over my shoulder. The figures on the terrace had disappeared. I came to the bend from which I could see down, from where, not half a minute before, I had watched the Lily on the beach last wave. The jetty was deserted; that end of the small cove was empty. I ran further down, to the little flat space with the bench, from where I could see almost all the beach arid most of the path up. I waited in vain for the mounting bright dress to appear. I thought, she must be hiding in the little cave, or among the rocks. I turned and began to climb swiftly back towards the house. Maria was still waiting for me at the edge of the colonnade. She had been joined by a man. I recognized Hermes, the taciturn donkeydriver. He could have been the man in black, he had the right height; but he looked unruffled, a mere bystander. I said quickly in Greek, mia stigmi, one second, and walked indoors past them. Maria was holding out an envelope, but I took no notice. Once inside I raced up the stairs to Conchis's room. I knocked on the door. No sound. I knocked again. Then I tried the handle. It was locked.

  I went back down, and paused in the music room to light a cigarette; and to take a grip on myself.

  "Where is Mr. Conchis?"

  "Then eine mesa." He's not in. Maria raised the envelope again, but I still ignored it.

  "Where's he gone?"

  "Ephyge me ti varca." Gone with the boat.

  "Where?"

  She didn't know. I took the envelope. It had Nicholas written on it. Two folded papers. One was a note from Conchis.

  Dear Nicholas, I am obliged to ask you to entertain yourself until this evening. Unexpected business requires my presence urgently in Nauplia. M.C.

  The other was a radiogram. There was no telephone or cable line to the island, but the Greek coastguard service ran a small radio station.

  It had been sent from Athens the evening before. I assumed that it would explain why Conchis had had to go. But then I had the third shock in three minutes. I saw the name at the end. It read: BACK NEXT FRIDAY STOP THREE DAYS FREE STOP AIRPORT SIX EVENING STOP PLEASE COME ALISON.

  It had been sent on Saturday afternoon. I looked up at Maria and Hermes. Their eyes were blank, simply watching.

  "When did you bring this?"

  Hermes answered. "Proi proi." Early that morning.

  "Who gave it to you to bring?" It was addressed to the school.

  A professor. At Sarantopoulos's, the last evening.

  "Why didn't you give it to me before?"

  He shrugged and looked at Maria, and she shrugged. They seemed to imply that it had been given to Conchis. It was his fault. I read it again.

  Hermes asked me if I wanted to send an answer; he was going back to the village. I said, no, no reply.

&nb
sp; I stared at Hermes. His wall eye gave little hope. But I demanded, "Have you seen the two young ladies this morning?"

  He looked at Maria. She said, Which girls? There are no girls here.

  I looked at Hermes again. "You?"

  "Ochi." His head went back.

  Maria said, "Ah, katalava, katalava." She told Hermes I meant the little girls from the cottages. They do not come here, she said to me.

  I muttered sarcastically, "Of course." And left them.

  I returned to the beach. All the time I had been watching the place where the path came up. Down there I went straight to the cave. No sign of her. A couple of minutes convinced me that she was not hiding anywhere among the rocks and trees. I looked up the little gulley. It might have been just possible to scramble up it and to get away to the east, but I found it difficult to believe. I climbed up some way to see if she was crouching behind a rock. But there was no one.

  32

  Lying in the sun, I tried to clear my mind about the two Lilys. The idea was clear. One twin came close to me, talked to me. She had a scar on her left wrist. The other did the doppelganger effects. I would never get close to her. I would see her on the terrace, in the starlight; but always at a distance. Twins — it was extraordinary, but I had begun to realize enough about Conchis to see that it was predictable. If one was very rich . . . why not the rarest? Why anything but the strangest and the rarest?

  I tried to clear my mind about the Lily I knew, the scar-Lily, and myself. This morning, even last night, she had set out to make herself attractive to me; and if she was really simply Conchis's mistress, I couldn't imagine why he should allow it, and so obviously leave us alone together, unless he was much more profoundly perverted than I could bring myself seriously to suspect. In so many ways, it seemed all no more than a game. Lily gave strongly the impression that she was playing with me — amusing herself as much as acting a role at Conchis's command. But all games, even the most literal, between a man and a woman are implicitly sexual; and I was clearly meant to feel that. If it was her job to seduce me, I should be seduced. I couldn't do anything about it. I was a sensualist. I wanted to be seduced, to drink the wave.

  Then Alison. Her telegram was like grit in the eye when one particularly wants to see clearly. I could guess what had happened. My letter of the Monday before would have arrived on Friday or Saturday in London, she would have been on a flight out of England that day, perhaps feeling fed up, half an hour to kill at Ellenikon — on impulse, a telegram. But it came like an intrusion — of dispensable reality into pleasure, of now artificial duty into instinct. I couldn't leave the island, I couldn't waste three days in Athens. I read the wretched thing again. Conchis must have read it too — there was no envelope. Demetriades would have opened it when it was first delivered at the school.