The Magus - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  "Thanks a million. This is wonderful. Covers everything."

  "Except the actual business of living there."

  He nodded. "Mr. Conchis warned me."

  "You speak Greek?"

  "Little Latin, less Greek."

  "You'll pick it up."

  "I'm taking lessons already."

  "And no women."

  He nodded. "Tough. But I'm engaged, so anyway." He produced a wallet and handed me a photo. A prettyish black-haired girl smiled rather intensely out at me. She had too small a mouth; I thought I detected the ghostly beginnings of the mask of the bitchgoddess Ambition.

  "Nice girl." I handed it back. "Looks English."

  "She is English. Well, Welsh, actually. She's studying drama right here in London."

  "Really."

  "I thought maybe she could come out to Phraxos next summer. If I haven't got the sack by then."

  "Did you. . . mention it to Mr. Conchis?"

  "I did. And he was really nice about it. Even said she might be able to stay in his house."

  "I wonder which one. He has two, you know."

  "I think he said in the village." He grinned. "Matter of fact he said he'd make me pay for her room."

  "Oh?"

  "Wants me to help him on this . . ." he made a kind of you-know gesture.

  "On this?"

  "Didn't you . . ." but he obviously saw from my face that whatever it was, I didn't. "Well, maybe . .

  "Oh good lord, you can tell me."

  He hesitated, then smiled. "It's just that he does want it kept secret. I thought you might have heard, but if you didn't meet him much . . . this remarkable find on his estate?"

  "Find?"

  "You know the house? It's some place on the other side of the island."

  "I know where it is."

  "Well, it seems part of a cliff fell away this summer and they've discovered what he believes to be the foundations of a Mycenean palace."

  "He'll never keep that quiet."

  "I'd guess not. But he thinks he can for a while. Apparently he's covered it up with loose dirt. Then this spring he's going to dig. But naturally right now he doesn't want everyone visiting all over."

  "Of course."

  "So I hope I won't be too bored."

  I saw Lily dressed as the snake goddess of Knossos; as Electra; as Clytemnestra; Dr. Vanessa Maxwell, the brilliant young archaeologist.

  "Doesn't sound as if you will."

  He finished his beer, and looked at his watch.

  "Jesus, I've got to run. I'm meeting Amanda at six." He shook my hand. "You don't know how much this has meant to me. And believe me, I'll write and let you know how it goes."

  "Do that. I'd very much like to know."

  I followed him down the stairs and watched his crewcut head. I began to understand why Conchis had picked him. If one had taken a million young college-educated Americans and distilled them down into one quintessential exemplar one would have arrived at something like Briggs. I did not like to think of the omnipenetrating Americans reaching to so private a European core. But I remembered his name; much more English than my own. And there was already Joe; the prosecuting Dr. Marcus.

  We came out on the front step.

  "No last words of wisdom?"

  "I don't think so. Just my very good wishes."

  "Well . . ."

  We shook hands again.

  "You'll be all right."

  "You really think so?"

  "Of course you'll find some of the experiences strange."

  "Oh sure. Don't think I'm not going with a wide open mind. And prepared for everything. Thanks to you."

  I gave him a long smile; I wanted him to remember it was a smile that had gone on too long and hadn't quite fitted in with the situation. He raised his hand and set off. After a few paces he looked at his watch, and began to run; and in my heart I lit a candle to Leverrier.

  75

  She was ten minutes late; came quickly through the turnstiles, a polite small torment of apology on her face, and straight to where I had been standing next to the postcard counter. "Oh dear. I'm so sorry. The taxi crawled."

  I shook her outstretched hand. For a woman half a century old she was impressively good-looking; and she was dressed with an easy flair that made most of the dull afternoon visitors to the Victoria and Albert around us look even drabber than they really were; defiantly bareheaded, and in a pale gray-white Chanel suit that set off her tan and her clear eyes.

  "It's a mad place to meet. Do you mind?"

  "Not in the least."

  "I bought an eighteenth-century plate the other day. They're so good at identifying here." I took the basket she was carrying. "It won't take a moment."

  She evidently knew the museum well and led the way to the lifts. We had to wait. She smiled at me; the family smile; soliciting, I suspected, what I was still not prepared to give. Determined to tread delicately between her approval and my own dignity, I had a dozen things ready to say, but her breathless arrival, the sudden feeling I had that I was being fitted, inconveniently, into a busy day, made them all seem wrong.

  I said, "I saw John Briggs on Tuesday."

  "How interesting. I haven't met him." We might have been talking about the new curate. The lift came, and we stepped inside.

  "I told him everything I knew. All about Bourani and what to expect."

  "We thought you would. That is why we sent him to you."

  We were both smiling faintly; a cramped silence.

  "But I might have."

  "Yes." The lift stopped. We emerged into a gallery of furniture. "Yes. You might."

  "Perhaps he was just a test."

  "A test wasn't necessary."

  "You're very sure."

  She gave me that same wide-eyed look she had had when she handed me the copy of Nevinson's letter. At the end of the gallery we came to a door: Department of Ceramics. She pressed the bell beside it.

  I said, "I think we've got off on the wrong foot."

  She looked down.

  "Well yes. Shall we try again in a minute? If you wouldn't mind waiting?"

  The door opened and she was let inside. It was all too rushed, too broken, she gave me no chance, though her last quick look back before the door closed seemed apologetic; almost as if she was afraid I might run away.

  Two minutes later she came back.

  "Any luck?"

  "Yes, it's what I thought it was. Bow."

  "You don't trust your intuition in everything then."

  She gave me a severe look, and then lightly took my arm as she led me on. "If there was a Department of Young Men I should certainly take you to it. I would like to have you identified."

  "And then keep me labeled on a shelf?"

  "I might give you as a present to someone."

  "Am I yours to give?"

  She looked through the windows at the gallery's end.

  "I should like the whole world. I could give it to something so much better than what possesses it now."

  A wistful smile at me, both self-mocking and self-revealing. She was defining possession, and giving. Was that why we had met in a museum? Could anyone possess anything? Tailboys, tables, Chippendale mirrors — we were walking in a world of objects possessed by nothing but themselves. Giving and possessing seemed infinitely superficial and transitory; the decor was chosen.

  She pressed my arm after a long moment, then let go of it. "They say there's a plate like mine on display. Just through here."

  We went into a long deserted gallery of china. Once again she seemed to know her way about — had rehearsed? — because she went straight to one of the walicases. She took the plate out of her basket and held it up, walking along, until from the back of a group of cups and jugs an almost identical blue and white plate was staring at her. I went beside her.

  "That's it."

  She compared them; wrapped her own loosely in its tissue paper again; and then, taking me completely by surprise, presented i
t.

  "It's for you."

  "But —"

  "Please." She was smiling at my ginger look.

  "But really . . . I mean . . ."

  "I bought it with Alison." She corrected herself. "Alison was with me when I bought it." She pushed it into my hands. I unwrapped it. In the middle of the plate there was a naϊvely drawn Chinaman and his wife; two children between them. A remote echo; peasants traveling steerage, the swell, the night wind.

  "Supposing I break it."

  "I think you should get used to handling fragile objects."

  She made the double-meaning very plain. I looked down at the plate again, the small inky-blue figures.

  "That's really why I asked to meet you."

  Our eyes met; she gently mocked by embarrassment.

  "Shall we go and have our tea?"

  "Well," she said, "why you really asked to meet me."

  We had found a table in the corner.

  "Alison."

  The waitress brought the tea things. Those teas at Bourani; I wonder if she had chosen that

  on purpose as well.

  "I told you." Her eyes rose to meet mine. "It depends on her."

  "And on you."

  "No. Not in the least on me."

  "Is she in London?"

  "I have promised her not to tell you where she is."

  "Look, Mrs. Seitas, I think—" but I swallowed what I was going to say. I watched her pour the tea; not otherwise helping me. "What the hell does she want? What am I supposed to do?"

  "Is that too strong?" I shook my head impatiently at the cup she passed.

  Her eyes weighed mine. She seemed to decide to say nothing; then changed her mind. "My dear, I never take anger at its face value."

  I wanted to shrug off that "my dear" as I had wanted to shake off her hands the week before; but she placed it with a faultless precision of tone. It was condescending, but its condescension was justified, a statement of the difference between our two experiences of life; and there was something discreetly maternal in it, a reminder to me that if I rebelled against her judgment, I rebelled against my own immaturity; if against her urbanity, against my own lack of it.

  I looked down.

  "I'm not prepared to wait much longer."

  "Then she will be well rid of you."

  I drank some of the tea. She began calmly to spread honey over her toast.

  I said, "My name is Nicholas." Her hands were arrested, her eyes probed mine. I went on, "Is that the right votive offering?"

  "If it is made sincerely."

  "As sincerely as your offer of help was the other day."

  She went on with her toast. "Did you go to Somerset House?"

  "Yes."

  She put down her knife.

  "Wait as long as Alison makes you wait. I do not think it will be very long. But I can't do anything to bring her to you. Now it is simply between you and her. I hope, I hope very much that she will forgive you. But I shouldn't be too sure that she will. You still have to gain her back." "There's gaining back to be done on both sides."

  "Perhaps. That is for the two of you to settle." She stared a moment longer at me, then looked down with a smile. "The godgame is ended."

  "The what?"

  "The godgame." Her eyes were on mine again; at their gentlest. "The godgame."

  "Because there are no gods. And it is not a game."

  She began to eat her toast, as if to bring us back to normal. I looked past her at the busy, banal tearoom. The discreet chink of cutlery on china; sounds as commonplace as sparrows' voices.

  "Is that what you call it?"

  She said, "I'm not going to talk about it, but yes . . . that is, well, a kind of nickname we use."

  She went on demurely eating.

  I said, "If I had any self-respect left, I'd get up and walk out."

  Her eyes crinkled. "Please don't. I'm counting on you to get me a taxi in a minute. We've been doing Benjie's school shopping today."

  "I can't see Demeter in a department store."

  "No? I think she would have liked them. Even the gaberdine mackintoshes and gym shoes."

  "And does she like questions? About the past?"

  "That depends on the questions."

  "The things Maurice told me — the First World War, the count with the chateau, Norway — were they in any way true?"

  "What is truth?"

  "Did they happen?"

  "Does it matter if they did not?"

  "Yes. To me"

  "Then it would be unkind of me to tell you."

  She looked down at her hands, aware of my impatience. "Maurice once said to me — when I had just asked him a question rather like yours — he said, An answer is always a form of death."

  There was something in her face. It was not implacable; but in some way impermeable.

  "I think questions are a form of life."

  "You've heard of John Leverrier?"

  I said cautiously, "Yes. Of course."

  "I think he must know far more about Maurice than you do. Do you know why?" I shook my head. "Because he never tried to know more."

  I traced patterns with the cake fork on the tablecloth; determined to seem guarded, unconvinced.

  "What happened to you that first year?"

  "The desire to help him through following years." She was smiling again, but she went on. "I will tell you that it all began one weekend, not even that, one long night of talking . . . perhaps it was no more than that we were bored. I think historically bored — as one was in the entre-deux- guerres. Certain leaps were taken. Certain gaps bridged. I imagine — don't you? — all new discoveries happen like that. Very suddenly. And then you spend years trying to work them out to their limits."

  For a time we sat in silence. Then she spoke again.

  "For us, Nicholas, our success is never certain. You have entered our secret. And now you are a radioactive substance. We hope to keep you stable. But we are not sure." She smiled. "Someone . . . rather in your position. . . once said to me that I was like a pool. He wanted to throw a stone into me. But I am not so calm in these situations as I may look."

  "I think you handle them very intelligently."

  "Touché." She bowed her head. Then she said, "Next week I'm going away — as I do every autumn when the children are off my hands. I shan't be hiding, but just doing what I do every September."

  "You'll be with Maurice?"

  "Yes."

  Something curiously like an apology lingered in the air; as if she knew the strange twinge of jealousy I felt and could not pretend that it was not justified; that whatever richness of relationship and shared experience I suspected, existed.

  She looked at her watch. "Oh dear. I'm so sorry. But Gunnel and Benjie will be waiting for me at King's Cross. Those lovely cakes . . ."

  They lay in their repulsive polychrome splendor, untouched.

  "I think one pays for the pleasure of not eating them."

  She grimaced agreement, and I beckoned to the waitress for the bill. While we were waiting she said, "One thing I wanted to tell you is that in the last three years Maurice has had two serious heart attacks. So there may not even be . . . a next year."

  "Yes. He told me."

  "And you did not believe him?"

  "No."

  "Do you believe me?"

  I answered obliquely. "Nothing you said could make me believe that if he died there would not be another year."

  She took her gloves. "Why do you say that?"

  I smiled at her; her own smile. No other answer.

  She nearly spoke, then chose silence. I remembered that phrase I had had to use of Lily: out of role. Her mother's eyes, and Lily's through them; the labyrinth; privileges bestowed and privileges rejected; a truce.

  * * *

  A minute later we were going down the corridor towards the entrance. Two men came down it towards us. They were about to pass when the one on the left gave a kind of gasp. Lily de Seitas stopped and threw her
arms back; she too was caught completely by surprise. He was in a dark blue suit with a bow tie, a mane of prematurely white hair, a voluble, fleshy mouth in a florid face. She turned quickly.

  "Nicholas — would you excuse me — and get me that taxi?"

  He had the face of a man, a distinguished man, suddenly become a boy again, rather comically melted by this evidently unexpected meeting into a green remembering. I made a convenient show of excessive politeness to some other people heading for the tearoom, which allowed me to hang back a moment to hear what the two might say. Lily de Seitas said nothing, but he spoke.

  "My dear Lily . . . my dearest girl . . ." and he couldn't say any more. He was holding both her hands, drawing her aside, and she was smiling, that strange smile of hers, like Ceres returned to the barren land. I had to go on, but I turned again at the end of the corridor. The man he was with, a department curator or something, had walked on and was waiting by the tearoom door. The two of them stood there. I could see the tender creases round his eyes; and still she smiled, accepting homage.

  There were no taxis about and I waited by the curb. I wondered if it had been the "someone quite famous" in the sedan; but I did not recognize him. Or some last trick, a professional adoration. His eyes had been for her only, as if the business he had been on shriveled into nothingness at the sight of that face.

  She came out hurriedly a minute or two later.

  "Can I give you a lift?"

  She was not going to make any comment. Either it was arranged, or it had been by chance but was now being used by her, as her daughters used clouds that crossed the sun and casual strollers down a road; and something about her hermetic expression made it, yet once again, infuriatingly, seem vulgar to be curious. She was not goodmannered, but expert with good manners; used them like an engineer, to shift the coarse bulk of me where she wanted. "No thanks, I'm going to Chelsea." I wasn't; but I wanted to be free of her.

  I watched her covertly for a moment, then I said, "I used to think of a story with your daughter, and I think of it even more with you." She smiled, a little uncertainly. "It's probably not true, but it's about Marie Antoinette and a butcher. The butcher led a mob into the palace at Versailles. He had a cleaver in his hand and he was shouting that he was going to cut Marie Antoinette's throat. The mob killed the guards and the butcher forced the door of the royal apartments. At last he rushed into her bedroom. She was alone. Standing by a window. There was no one else there. The butcher with a cleaver in his hand and the queen."