The Revolt of Aphrodite

by Lawrence Durrell

  “Merlin was a great one for peregrines” he said. “And we have all taken after him—even down to small things. By the way, have you got the papers? In that briefcase Benedicta brought.” He jumped up and fetched the article. “Here they are, you see, the two schemes set out separately. One is for the hearing device only; the other is a more detailed scheme—to manage all your work. You would become part of the firm, on a fixed retainer, with royalties etc.” He replaced the documents carefully in the briefcase and patted it. “At your leisure: the patent is safe—only your signature is needed. But first you must see your advisers. Tomorrow I will send you back to Polis for the day, yes?”

  “Tell me about the firm” I said, and Jocas twinkled with pride and pleasure, in a manner which reminded me a little of Sacrapant. “Well,” he said “where to begin? Let me see.”

  “Begin with Merlin.”

  “Very well. Merlin was what you would call a merchant prince, a self-made prince. He arrived in Stamboul perhaps in the eighties of the last century on board a British yacht. He was a cabin boy. He deserted his ship, settled in the capital and began business. Much later when it had grown almost too big to handle he found myself and my brother and offered to let us become associates. How I bless the day.” He joined his huge hands together and, laughing out loud, squeezed them until the knuckle joints cracked. “He was really a genius—you know all through the period of Abdul Hamid he never failed in his negotiations, he always got his firmans through. You know of course that Abdul Hamid was mad—mad with a fear of assassination. He lived up in the Yildiz palace in absolute terror. Loaded pistols lay in every corner, on every table. If startled by a sudden move he would open fire. Once his little niece ran into the room while he was dozing and he shot her. Merlin used to take special precautions when he went to see this madman—to walk slowly, talk slowly, sit quietly. He also worked out elaborate flatteries. Sent him a life-size sculpture of himself in butter, in ice-cream. Sent him clocks of extraordinary workmanship specially designed in Zürich. It was he too who achieved other objectives for the firm by skilfully planted rumours. Abdul Hamid was very superstitious and had his horoscope made afresh each day. The firm suborned the court astrologer. In this way Merlin became in a sense the most important man in Turkey. But he was as wise as he was foreseeing. All the time he was giving money to the revolutionaries, to the Young Turks. And then the fleet—it was allowed to lie there and rot in harbour because Merlin told Hamid a pack of rumours about the use the allies would make of it—playing on his fear and credulity. Why, I have seen those battleships rusting there all my life. They grow flowers on the decks. So gradually, even during the bad period, the firm grew and grew. Now of course times have changed, it is easier for us. Then when Merlin … left us, we two brothers took over the responsibility for Benedicta. We became her uncles.” He laughed very heartily, wiping his eye in his sleeve. “And his wife?” I asked. All of a sudden Jocas looked nonplussed. His face grew serious. He thrust out his bearded chin and spread his hands in a gesture of inadequacy—as if he were powerless to answer the question satisfactorily. “There were many compromises made” he said, a trifle defensively. “There had to be. Merlin, for example, adopted the Muslim faith when he was in his fifties. Inevitably there were rumours of his wives and … ladies; but there was nothing very concise, very clear. This place was like a little walled city, and when you live à la turque the secrets of the harem are guarded from strangers. Benedicta was brought up in the harem, with foreign governesses first: then Switzerland for some years, that is why all her languages are so perfect.” “But she is English?” Jocas nodded his head rapidly. “Yes. Yes. But I have never discussed with her, nor has Chewlian. Merlin never spoke with us about his private things. He was a very secretive man. I know that Chewlian also knows nothing because once he asked me.”

  Coffee, cigars and brandy found us removed to the further end of the terrace where a sort of belvedere had been improvised out of carpets and cushions, and here the conversation turned to the recording machine which I had put at the service of Hippolyta in Athens. “I heard about it from Graphos,” admitted Jocas “and I could easily ask Chewlian to get me one and send it; but I understand that they are very hard to drive, no? And very delicate. So I waited to speak to you, to ask you about the matter.”

  “What would you use it for?” I asked, thinking of board-room meetings and the like. Jocas plucked his lips and looked sideways at me, with an air of exaggerated cunning. He considered. “I will tell you. We do not meddle in politics, as you know, but so often politics meddles with us that we really have to be up to date, to know what is afoot. At the moment there is a secret branch of the Young Turk officers having secret meetings. I do not want to spy on what they actually have to say; but I am on the look-out for one voice I know very well. If he has joined them, then I know all the rest. I would like a box to make a short talking of such a meeting. Would you do that for me? This has no connection with any of the other matters?” I agreed, but with every professional reservation. My little mikes were not powerful enough to record through thick walls or at a hundred metres. He shook his head. “There is a fireplace in their room; beneath one of the big cisterns. I will have a brick removed for you to put your instrument.”

  “In that case very well.”

  “I will tell Sacrapant to take you, then” he said, with considerable unfeigned relief, touching my hand. “So very good.”

  He rose now and gazed out across the dark garden. A heavy sea fog had been rolling up as we talked and settling over the waters of the sound below; we could hear the muffled horns and bells of the sea traffic as it moved cautiously down towards the city. It had turned a trifle cold and damp. I thought it time to take my leave of my host, but he would not let me go without a visit to the old dark barn which had been turned into a “mews” for his hunting birds. I fell in with the suggestion out of politeness: indeed there was nothing to see for the place was kept in almost total darkness. Vaguely I saw the shapes of the birds stirring on their wooden cross-bars. Jocas went among them with the assurance of long familiarity. He made a low hissing noise with tongue and teeth as he went from one to the next, checking the jesses which bound them to their perches. The smell of rotting meat was almost unbearable; and I could feel the fleas jumping from the dirty flagstones on to my ankles. “This week end we shall have some sport with them” he cried cheerfully. “If you are interested.”

  I agreed, for despite my personal indifference to the sport I found myself recalling to mind the image of the dark girl with the falcon on her wrist. It stirred me in some way—perhaps it was only curiosity taking fire. Nevertheless it would be interesting to go out with them, if only for the ride, and I said so. “Fine” he cried. “Fine.”

  We had a last whisky on the terrace, and then the majordomo appeared with the light to conduct me back to the guest house. I found that I was quite unsteady on my legs, though my head was clear enough. We had agreed that I should spend next day in Polis consulting my advisers and return once more at nightfall by launch. The old eunuch led me slowly and steadily downhill, suiting his pace to mine, until at last I stood once more upon the little terrace. He entered the house to light the lamps. I stood, breathing the damp fog-bound night air. There was no sky, no water, no stars. I floated in the swirling mist on my little balcony as if on a raft. His task completed the servant bowed and made his way up the hill. He was swallowed with the suddenness of a shutter falling. Then it was I heard the voice of the girl in the copse above the house. I could not see her in the darkness; but I could hear the low crooning of her voice as she addressed the bird on her wrist “Geldik gel ulalum”, over and over again, varying the monotony of the phrase by small changes of intonation. The disembodied voice moved across the hill and faded on the ear. I was tempted to call her name once—and the thought surprised me very much indeed. Instead I went to bed and lay in a tangle of damp sheets dreaming fitful and discontinuous dreams in which the voice came from a great bird no
t a woman. A strange bubbling croon, like rose water agitated in its bowl by the drawing narghile; a sound at once tender and obscene. On the one hand as sweet as the calling of turtledoves, on the other as incisive as the hiss of a snake. Great wings hovered over me in a dark sky; huge talons of iron entered my shoulders and I cried out. Then the long staggering fall earthward. But I fell into one of the kiosks of the Seraglio and was chased down dark corridors and into deserted ballrooms by three blind men. They operated by sound; when I made no move they halted, nonplussed, scimitars in hand. Then my breathing would alert them and they would rush towards me once more. I woke in a fever of perspiration and anxiety. The fog had lifted somewhat and there was a frail horned moon afloat in the water. Once more to bed where I wrestled awhile with insomnia before sinking once more into the grim quagmire of the dream.

  I was awoken by the sun in my eyes. It was pouring across the terrace and into the windows of the little room. Moreover, to my surprise and confusion, Benedicta Merlin was there, sitting on the stone balustrade of the verandah, staring in at me as I slept. Beside her stood the briefcase which I had forgotten the evening before. Her face was serious, almost intense, almost as if she had been deeply concentrating as she watched me asleep. I uttered an incoherent good-morning as I ran my hands through my hair, and she nodded. Her expression was still serious, almost a little puzzled. “You’ve been watching me asleep” said I with some vexation. “Why didn’t you wake me?” She sighed and said: “I was counting up to a hundred. Then I was going to.” She stood up and brushed some pollen or leaf mould from her hands. “I brought you this” she said, pointing to the briefcase. “The boat has arrived already and is waiting.”

  “Are you coming to Polis with us?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not today. Why?”

  “I don’t know: we could talk.”

  “Talk?” she said in a higher register, and with a look of genuine suprise—as though the idea of someone wishing to talk to her was a novelty of the first magnitude.

  “Why not?”

  She turned on her heel almost shyly now and whispered “I must go.” She crossed the path and went slowly up the hill. I stood in my pyjamas and watched her. At the edge of the copse she turned and looked back at me. I raised my hand in a greeting and she responded, but in a curious way—abbreviating the gesture, breaking it in half. Then she turned and vanished out of sight among the trees.

  I retrieved the briefcase, and dressed in a hurry, knowing that the patient Sacrapant would be waiting for me in the stern-sheets of the Imogen, elegant yet stiff like some praying mantis or a tall crane in the docks.

  I was suitably apologetic for having kept them all waiting and was heartily forgiven on all hands; soon we were skirling along the Bosphorus coast, scoring deeply into a marble sea and throwing out a wake of white chips as we went. Everything—the great drop curtain of the city coming up before us—was hesitant, milky, tentative, mirage-edged. It was beautiful to sit within inches of the water, intently passive, so to speak: watching the glossy surface slide by under us. At such moments idle thoughts drift in star clusters, in cloud formations, across the nodding mind. I thought of Jocas’ capacity for mind-reading and compared it to my own: neither was very esoteric. If one concentrates on a human being, really concentrates, one can see his astral shape, so to speak, unfolding and progressing forward into his future: can divine the shape of what he might become. Well, I thought to myself wryly: aren’t we being the little Faustus, now? And tell me cher maître, what would you divine in the smooth pious visage of Mr. Sacrapant who sits beside you holding the sacred briefcase which is to have such a strange effect on my life? “Sacrapant?” I replied to myself. “Hum. Let me see.” All this was long before he fell out of the sky. The phrases came unbidden. “Case 225 Elias Sacrapant. He has listened all his life to Turkish music—music of a transcendental monotony. His wife loves with such piety that she has driven him steadily towards a nervous breakdown.” But Mr. Sacrapant was talking, pointing out places of tourist interest. (How travel narrows the mind!) I nodded and took refuge in the steady hum of the engines. Then, still engaged with my Faustian self, I presented another figure for analysis for an X-ray, so to speak: Benedicta! Here my self-possession quite deserted me. I saw a succession of snapshots of that cold face—the unselfconsciousness of beauty of its lines and planes and expressions. Case 226, so to speak. “She is living in absolute terror—and there is no reason for it. She has not realised that just as art is not for everyone so other subjects like lovemaking or mathematics can only come to fruition in the hands of their adepts. Her case is so hopeless that one must, absolutely must, love her.” These ideas frightened me so much that my hair almost stood on end.

  Vibart occupied a modest but comfortable little villa in a palm-filled garden beyond Pera whence he conducted a good deal of his business which concerned business men for the most part. The front room had been converted into an office with a few files and a hospitable sideboard full of bottles. He scanned through the documents from the briefcase with care but at speed, his mouth open with astonishment. Then he pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up on to the top of his head and said: “Jesus Christ, man—have you read them?” I nodded, adding: “But I’m no lawyer and wouldn’t spot any catches.”

  “Catches!” he laughed in exasperated amazement, and took an agitated turn up and down the room. “My dear sir! Have you seen the sliding royalty scale, the size of the retainer? You should have signed the articles of association at once, do you hear? They not only offer to pay you royally for what you do, but to market it; and as if that weren’t enough to provide ways and means for you to experiment to your heart’s content.” He sat down and held his ears briefly. “I don’t know what to say. I’ll look at them in more detail if you like but really, on the face of it….”

  “I felt it was almost too good to be true: as if there were something fishy behind it all.”

  “Merlin? Fishy? You must be mad, Charlock. The firm is as sound as a rock and highly respectable. You are damned lucky to have got into it at your age and in your line of business. I wouldn’t hesitate if I were in your shoes. As a matter of fact I know quite a lot about Merlin because I was once asked to do an article for The Times on our Levant merchants, and I started to research on him. But somehow or other I got sidetracked, couldn’t get enough material; Pehlevi raised some trivial objections—not this one, Julian, who runs the London end. I was sorry because the story was a most romantic rags-to-riches one. It started very modestly with this naval cadet deserting his battleship, and going to ground in Polis. Then, bit by bit, with his headquarters in a wine-shop he started dealing with true Scots judgement: hides, coal, corn, poppy from Lebanon, qat from the Yemen, tobacco, perhaps a touch of slaving on the Red Sea…. It grew up slowly but steadily into a giant he couldn’t handle alone. Hence the two Pehlevi brothers, God knows where Merlin found them; they couldn’t be more unlike each other in temperament and background. Jocas … well you’ve seen him. Julian I have never seen but only heard about. A tremendous career at Oxford, a spell in the Bank of England, and then he took over London for Merlin. With the disappearance of Merlin from the scene the firm divided by a sort of binary fission—rather like the division of the Eastern and Western churches: only of course they work hand in glove the two brothers. Julian is all banking, investment schemes, manufacturing, stocks and shares and so on: while this end you have chiefly trade based on marketable raw materials. Istanbul is still a conventionally strategic entrepôt for whatever comes down the Black Sea into the Med. Don’t look so gloomy Charlock. With one scratch of a pen you can secure more than financial independence, man, but riches as well as the security to go on doing your work in peace. It makes me feel hysterical to think of your luck.”

  “What of Benedicta Merlin, the brunette daughter?”

  “Brunette? She’s blonde—or one of us is colour blind. No, I remember now that she is given to wearing wigs of various colours. But she is blonde I swear, and very
handsome. There, my boy, is another prize worth carrying off. I should say she’s one of the richest women in the world.”

  “But she’s a widow. Yet they never use her married name.”

  “Yes, so it seems. I never saw her husband.”

  I stood up and finished my sherry thoughtfully. “Well,” I said “I’ll leave the papers with you for the time being, for a closer look into them. Then, if you still think … I don’t know.” I had an obscure but obstinate feeling against tying myself down with such finality—though I could bring no reasoning to bear on it. I could not elucidate it.

  “Righto” said Vibart, disappointed. “Only in a world where almost everyone has compromised and is doing a job he doesn’t like or want in order to eat—one can’t help envying a chap an offer like this.”

  “What would you do if you could?”

  “Get out of diplomacy, where everything is so much smaller than life and … no, I won’t say the word, Charlock, I won’t say it.”

  I sighed for him, having heard all this bleat before. “I know” I said. “You want to write.” Vibart groaned and ran his hand through his blond hair; he smiled that attractive smile of his and agreed shyly. “My dear Charlock,” he said “I have always been big with book, but it will never get written unless I WAKE UP.” He shouted the last three words and banged on his desk so loudly that I was startled. “Sorry” he said. His wife called from the other room to ask if he was all right. “Of course I’m all right” he cried indignantly. “That is the whole trouble.” Under the foolery I could sense a very real anger and frustration. Vibart was a charming and highly articulate victim of his education. “I must escape before I contract the diplomatic pruritus” he went on. “Better anything than to live forever in terror of committing a mere imprudence.” I laughed and invited him to walk off his ill humour and he readily agreed to accompany me back to my point of rendezvous with Sacrapant. In the course of his long rambling self-decortication he threw in small scraps of hearsay, tidbits of information which sometimes struck me as false—or if not false, then on the face of it at variance with what I would have myself surmised as true. For instance, that Sacrapant was a crack pistol-shot and had won a number of cups thereby; that Julian had ordered some Corinthian columns for the Merlin estate and had them broken up and scattered about in order to imitate a Greek temple. “But let me talk about myself” said Vibart, still seething with the desire of self-castigation. “It is my only real subject. I come, Charlock, from an interesting family with a record for profligacy, degeneracy, philistinism and selfishness which stretches back to Tudor times. But where are all these qualities? The strain has gone thin and sour, for I am wise and good. I can show you nothing worse than sloth, shoddiness, self-delusion and sanctimoniousness. Bad enough, you may say: but all negative things. What, shall I stay on forever, and lobby myself a dwarfdom by dancing the Boaconstrictor with a Councillor’s wife?”