by John Fowles
"Well," he said, "do you believe me?"
"Do I look as if I don't?"
"We are none of us what we look."
"You shouldn't have offered me that suicide pill."
"You think all my prussic acid is ratafia?"
"I didn't say that. I'm your guest, Mr. Conchis. Naturally I take your word."
For a moment, masks seemed to drop on both sides; I was looking at a face totally without humor and he, I suppose, was looking at one without generosity. An at last proclaimed hostility; a clash of wills. We both smiled, and we both knew we smiled to hide a fundamental truth: that we could not trust each other one inch.
"I wish to say two final things, Nicholas. Whether you believe what I have said is comparatively unimportant. But you must believe one thing. Lily is susceptible and very dangerous — both things without realizing it herself. Like a very fine blade, she can easily be hurt - - but she can also hurt. She can hurt you, as I know to my cost, because she can deceive you again and again, if you are foolish enough to let her. We have all had to learn to remain completely detached emotionally from her. Because it is on our emotions that she will prey — if we give her the chance."
I remained staring at the edge of the tablecloth.
"And the second thing?"
"Now we have had this little talk, please let us agree to continue as if we had not had it. I will behave as if I had not told you the secret. And I want you to do the same."
"All right."
He stood up and held out his hand, which I shook.
"Now. Do you feel like some hard work?"
"No. But lead me to it."
He took me to one of the corners of the vegetable garden. Part of the supporting wall had collapsed, and he wanted it built up again, under his supervision. I had to break the dry earth with a pickaxe, shovel it back, lift the heavy stones, arrange them as he directed, packing them with earth, which he watered, his sole contribution apart from giving orders, to bind the wall together again. The wind kept blowing and it was cooler than usual; but I was soon sweating like a pig. I knew the wall must have collapsed sometime back, and I thought it peculiar that a man as rich as Conchis could not afford a few drachmas to hire a man from the village to do it for him. I guessed the real reason: I had to be kept busy, out of the way. All the time since leaving Lily I had listened for the sound of the boat, or a boat. But there had been none. I hadn't forgotten that I was going to communicate with other worlds that evening; a really complicated episode in the masque was no doubt to be mounted. That was why I was being kept so occupied. And all the time, too, I had Alison's telegram in my hip-pocket; but the one thing I longed for was to hear from him that I was after all to be his guest over halfterm.
I gave myself a break to have a cigarette. Conchis, in dark blue jumper and shorts, looked sardonically down at me, hand on hips.
"Labor is man's crowning glory."
"Not this man's."
"I quote Marx."
I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough.
"I quote blisters."
"Never mind. You have earned your passage."
"Tonight?"
"Tonight." He remained staring down at me, as if I amused him; as clowns amuse philosophers; but also a little as if he felt kinder towards me.
"Your telegram was opened when it arrived. I read it. This is . . .?"
I nodded curtly. "I shan't go."
"Of course you will go."
"I don't want to meet her any more. It was only loneliness before."
He stared down at me. I was sitting against a pine trunk.
"I shall be away next weekend. We shall all be away. Otherwise I should have been very happy to invite you both."
In spite of being warned, I felt a shock of disappointment, which I tried to hide.
"It doesn't matter."
"But if all goes well, we shall be here the week after."
"In need of a seeker?"
"In need of a seeker."
He contemplated me; reverted tacitly to Alison.
"A woman is like a keel."
"There are keels and keels."
"What you told me of her sounded very admirable. Very much what you should have. What you need."
I saw that I had been neatly trapped into not asking him why in that case he had set Lily as bait for me. It could always be dismissed as persecution mania.
"It's really my business, Mr. Conchis. My decision."
"Of course. You are quite right. Please." He went briskly away to get some more water, and when he came back I had set to again, expending on the job my sullen annoyance at not being invited. Half an hour later the wall was back to something like its proper shape. I carried the tools to a shed beside the cottage and we went back round the front of the house. Conchis said he was going down to check that the boat was securely moored; I would no doubt want to wash.
"Let me."
"Very well. Thank you."
I started off, wishing I'd kept my mouth shut, when he said my name. I turned, and he came up to me across the gravel. He gave me a powerful yet oddly paternal look.
"Go to Athens, Nicholas." He glanced towards the trees to the east. "Guai a chi la tocca."
I had very little Italian, but I knew what he meant.
He moved away before I could answer; and in an odd way I knew he was saying that she was not for me because she was not for me; not because she was a schizophrenic, or a ghost, or anything else in the masque. It was a sort of ultimate warning-off; but you can't warn off a man with gambling in his ancestry.
I went down to the jetty. The boat was already tied very carefully and securely; and he had had ten minutes with Lily, I supposed, to find out exactly what had gone on between us.
36
Lily did not appear before dinner, or after dinner; and I became increasingly impatient. Tense would be a better word. I was tense in expectation of a new "episode," I was tense in expectation of Lily's taking part in it, and I was tense in expectation of the difficulties Conchis was putting in the way of my meeting her again. I realized that he had so maneuvered me that I could not risk offending him again about the real machinery behind the "visitors" or about Lily. The dinner was, for me, uneasily silent. The breeze made the lamp tremble and glow and fade intermittently, and this seemed to increase the general restlessness. Only Conchis seemed calm and at ease.
After the meal had been cleared he poured me a drink from a small carboy-shaped bottle. It was clear, the color of straw.
"What's this?"
"Raki. From Chios. It is very strong. I want to intoxicate you a little."
All through the dinner he had also been pressing me to drink more of the heavy rosé from Antikythera.
"To make me talk?"
"To make you receptive."
"I read your pamphlet."
"And thought it was nonsense."
"No. Difficult to verify."
"Verification is the only scientific criterion of reality. That does not mean that there may not be realities that are unverifiable."
"Did you get any response from your pamphlet?"
"A great deal. From the wrong people. From the miserable vultures who prey on the human longing for the solution of final mysteries. The spiritualists, the clairvoyants, the cosmopaths, the summerlanders, the blue-islanders, the apportists—all that galére." He looked grim. "They responded."
"But not other scientists?"
"No."
I sipped the raki; it was like fire. Almost pure alcohol.
"But you spoke about having proof."
"I had proof. But it was not easily communicable. And I later decided that it was better that it was not communicable, except to a few."
"Who you elect."
"Whom I elect. This is because mystery has energy. It pours energy into whoever seeks the answer to it. If you disclose the solution to the mystery you are simply depriving the other seekers . . ." he emphasized the special meaning the word now had for me .
. . "of an important source of energy."
"No scientific progress?"
"Of course scientific progress. The solution of the physical problems that face man — that is a matter of technology. But I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution."
I finished the raki. "This is fantastic stuff."
He smiled, as if my adjective might be more accurate than I meant; raised the bottle. I nodded.
"One more glass. Then no more. La dive bouteille is also a poison."
"And the experiment begins?"
"The experience begins. Now I should like you to lie in one of the lounging chairs. Just here." He pointed behind him. I went and pulled the chair there. "Lie down. There is no hurry. I want you to look at a certain star. Do you know Cygnus? The Swan? That crossshaped constellation directly above?"
I realized that he was not going to take the other chaise longue; and suddenly guessed.
"Is this . . . hypnosis?"
"Yes, Nicholas. There is no need to be alarmed."
Lily's warning: Tonight you will understand. I hesitated, then lay back. "I'm not. But I don't think I'm very amenable. Someone tried it at Oxford."
"We shall see. It is a harmony of wills. Not a contest. Just do as I suggest."
"All right." At least I did not have to stare into those naturally mesmeric eyes. I could not back down; but forewarned is forearmed.
"You see the Swan?"
"Yes."
"And to the left a very bright star, one of a very obtuse triangle."
"Yes." I drained down the last of the raki in a gulp; almost choked, then felt it flush through my stomach.
"That is a star known as alpha Lyrae. In a minute I shall ask you to watch it closely." The blue-white star glittered down out of the wind-cleared sky. I looked at Conchis, who was still sitting at the table, but had turned with his back to the sea to face me. I grinned in the darkness.
"I feel I'm on the couch."
"Good. Now lie back. Contract, then relax your muscles a little. That is why I have given you the raki. It will help. Lily will not appear tonight. So clear your mind of her. Clear your mind of the other girl. Clear your mind of all your perplexities, all your longings. All your worries. I bring you no harm. Nothing but good."
"Worries. That's not so easy." He was silent. "I'll try."
"It will help if you look at that star. Do not shift your eyes from it. Lie back."
I began to stare at the star; moved a little to make myself more comfortable. I felt the cloth of my coat with my hand. The digging had made me tired, I began to guess its real purpose, and it was good to lie back and stare up and wait. There was a long silence, several minutes. I shut my eyes for a while, then opened them. The star seemed to float in its own small sea of space, a minute white sun. I could feel the alcohol, but I was perfectly conscious of everything around me, far too conscious to be amenable.
I was perfectly conscious of the terrace, I was lying on the terrace of a house on an island in Greece, there was wind, I could even hear the faint sound of the waves on the shingle down at Moutsa. Conchis began to speak.
"Now I want you to watch the star, I want you to relax all your muscles. It is very important that you should relax all your muscles. Tense a little. Now relax. Tense . . . relax. Now watch the star. The name of. the star is alpha Lyrae."
I thought, my God, he is trying to hypnotize me; and then, I must play by the rules, but I'll lie doggo and pretend I am hypnotized.
"Are you relaxing yes you are relaxing." I noted the lack of punctuation. "You are tired so you are relaxing. You are relaxing. You are relaxing. You are watching a star you are watching . . ." the repetition. I remembered that from before. An insane Welshman from Jesus, after a party. But with him it had developed into a staring game.
"I say you are watching a star a star and you are watching a star. It is that gentle star, white star, gentle star . . ."
He went on talking, but all the curtness, the abruptness of his ordinary manner had disappeared. It was as if the lulling sound of the sea, the feel of the wind, the texture of my coat, and his voice dropped out of my consciousness. There was a stage when I was myself, looking at the star, still lying on the terrace; I mean aware of lying and watching the star, if not of anything else.
Then came a strange illusion; not that I was looking up, but down into space, as one looks down a well.
Then there was no clearly situated and environmented self; there was the star, not closer but with something of the isolation a telescope gives; not one of a pattern of stars, but itself, floating in the blue-black breath of space, in a kind of void. I remember very clearly this sense, this completely new strange perceiving of the star as a ball of white light both breeding and needing the void around it; of, in retrospect, a related sense that I was exactly the same, suspended in a dark void. I was watching the star and the star was watching me. We were poised, exactly equal weights, if one can think of awareness as a weight, held level in a balance. This seemed to endure and endure, I don't know how long, two entities equally suspended in a void, equally opposite, devoid of any meaning or feeling. There was no sensation of beauty, of morality, of divinity, of physical geometry; simply the sensation of the situation. As an animal might feel.
Then a rise of tension. I was expecting something. The waiting was a waiting for. I did not know if it would be audible or visible, which sense. But it was trying to come, and I was trying to discover its coming. There seemed to be no more star. Perhaps he had made me close my eyes. The void was all. I remember two words, Conchis must have spoken them: glisten, and listen. There was the glistening, listening void; darkness and expectation. Then there came a wind on my face, a perfectly physical sensation. I tried to face it, it was fresh and warm, but I suddenly realized, with an excited shock, not at anything but the physical strangeness of it, that it was blowing on me from all directions at the same time. I raised my hand, I could feel it. The dark wind, like draft from thousands of invisible fans, blowing in on me. And again this seemed to last for a long time. At some point it began imperceptibly to change. The wind became light. I don't think there was any visual awareness of this, it was simply that I knew the wind had become light (perhaps Conchis had told me the wind was light) and this light was intensely pleasing, a kind of mental sunbathing after a long dark winter, an exquisitely agreeable sensation both of being aware of light and attracting it. Of having power to attract and power to receive this light.
From this stage I moved to one where it dawned on me that this was something intensely true and revealing; this being something that drew all this light upon it. I mean it seemed to reveal something deeply significant about being; I was aware of existing, and this being aware of existing became more significant than the light, just as the light had become more significant than the wind. I began to get a sense of progress, that I was transforming, as a fountain in a wind is transformed in shape; an eddy in the water. The wind and the light became mere secondaries, roads to the present state, this state without dimensions or sensations; awareness of pure being. Or perhaps that is a solipsism; it was simply a pure awareness.
That lasted; and then changed, like the other states. This state was being imposed on me from outside, I knew this, I knew that although it did not flow in on me like the wind and the light, it nevertheless flowed, though flowed was not the word. There was no word, it arrived, descended, penetrated from outside. It was not an immanent state, it was a conferred state, a presented state. I was a recipient. But once again there came this strange surprise that the emitters stood all around me. I was not receiving from any one direction, but from all directions. Though once again, direction is too physical a word. I was having feelings that no language based on concrete physical objects, on actual feeling, can describe. I think I was aware of the metaphoricality of what I felt. I knew words were like chains, they held me back; and like walls with holes in them. Reality kept rus
hing through; and yet I could not get out to fully exist in it. This is interpreting what I struggled to remember feeling; the act of description taints the description.
I had the sense that this was the fundamental reality and that reality had a universal mouth to tell me so; no sense of divinity, of communion, of the brotherhood of man, of anything I had expected before I became suggestible. No pantheism, no humanism. But something much wider, cooler and more abstruse. That reality was endless interaction. No good, no evil; no beauty, no ugliness. No sympathy, no antipathy. But simply interaction. The endless solitude of the one, its total enislement from all else, seemed the same thing as the total interrelationship of the all. All opposites seemed one, because each was indispensable to each. The indifference and the indispensability of all seemed one. I suddenly knew, but in a new hitherto unexperienced sense of knowing, that all else exists.
Knowing, willing, being wise, being good, education, information, classification, knowledge of all kinds, sensibility, sexuality, these things seemed superficial. I had no desire to state or define or analyze this interaction, I simply wished to constitute it — not even "wished to" — I constituted it. I was volitionless. There was no meaning. Only being.
But the fountain changed, the eddy whirled. It seemed at first to be a kind of reversion to the stage of the dark wind breathing in on me from every side, except that there was no wind, the wind had been only a metaphor, and now it was millions, trillions of such consciousnesses of being, countless nuclei of hope suspended in a vast solution of hazard, a pouring out not of photons, but noons, consciousness-of-being particles. An enormous and vertiginous sense of the innumerability of the universe; an innumerability in which transience and unchangingness seemed integral, essential and uncontradictory. I felt like a germ that had landed, like the first penicillin microbe, not only in a culture where it was totally at home, totally nourished; but in a situation in which it was infinitely significant. A condition of acute physical and intellectual pleasure, a floating suspension, a being perfectly adjusted and related; a quintessential arrival. An intercognition.
