The Revolt of Aphrodite

by Lawrence Durrell

  It was well before dawn when I woke with a jolt to find Jocas standing over me, jack-booted and spurred, holding a lighted candle and grinning like a dog. “Sea fog” he said oracularly, and I heard the engines of the pinnace warming up, ticking over, in the obscurity below. Over his arm he carried a miscellaneous collection of clothes and boots—gear more suitable for a day of riding than the suit I had brought with me. I foraged about amongst it all and equipped myself with a good pair of boots, ill-fitting riding-breeches, an empty bandolier and such other sundries as seemed to me to be to the purpose. Then before climbing down the hill to the boat he poured us each a small cup of scalding sage-tea backed by a sip of gasping mastika. So we careened out of harbour into an olive drab mist which coiled around us, condensing upon hair and eyebrows. The dispirited dogs drowsed and yawned among the tarpaulins. “She went over early with the old falconers,” said Jocas “and we’ll meet later today. Hullo! What’s that?”

  The channel even at this early hour was full of ships labouring cautiously down towards the Horn, their bells clanging out warnings, soft wet lips of fog-horns, etc. In smaller craft the lookout banged upon a saucepan and shouted from time to time to mark position. As we had to cut directly through the middle of this traffic to reach the Asiatic side the operations of the pinnace were delicate in the extreme, although we were equipped with engines of great power and a fog-horn whose melancholy resonance was enough to set the dogs ululating. Jocas smoked a short pipe and waited patiently as his pilot trod cautiously among the indistinct shapes and sounds on this dark waterway. This funeral pace was imposed on us for nearly an hour and then, in the most dramatic fashion, the fog was peeled aside by a scurry of wind and we were in the full light of an early sunrise riding down along the low purple headlands of the nether shore where our drumming wake rippled down upon sleeping villages to set the coloured boats bobbing at deserted landing-stages. Everything was still sticky with fogdamp and Jocas would not let the guns out of their cases until the sun was fully up. The dogs were rubbed down with straw. We drank black coffee in tin mugs and watched the chromatic scale of yellow Byzantine light loop up the eastern end of the sky—until it ran over and raced everywhere, spilling among the shady blue valleys, and touching in the vague outlines of the foothills. Sunrise. Carob, sweet chestnut, oak—and plaintive small owls calling.

  We were running along the low toothy headlands of the coast now, in view of the country which we were to hunt. Clumps of swaying bamboos marked the points where shallow streams had nosed their way down into the bight. The land soothed itself away to the girdle of foothills, the shallow intervening valleys wearing their scrub and green screes bravely, pin-pointing here and there a cypress plume or a regiment of olives; but for the most part dwarf oak, juniper, myrtle and arbutus—the classical combination so easily negotiable (so it seems) until one tries to follow a gun-dog into the impenetrable jungle of interlocking roots and thorns. Jocas swept the land with a powerful glass, grunting with satisfaction; then he handed it to me, pointing out here and there a shattered fragment of an abandoned temple, or a cluster of pruned stone where a seamark had been allowed to dribble into a heap of rubble under the rubbing water. But away to the north his blunt finger directed me to a small landing-stage, a tiny harbour carved in shale, where the horses awaited us. Then, moving away to the right over the green land he indicated a tall hillock, with a fine tall stand of oak-trees where, in the shadow, one saw the movement and glitter of what seemed to be an encampment. “Benedicta is up there” he said. “She will have the birds. We won’t use the guns today unless … I suppose a boar might be tempting. But they are not very numerous now.”

  We were met by a little group of horsemen whose repellent ugliness and strange attire suggested to the mind the inhabitants of remotest Tartary. They were clad in greasy duffle, with jackboots of soft leather crudely sewn. Their rifles were antiques, muzzle-loaders. Their little round hats with the shallow brim emphasised the almond-shaped eyes. They greeted Jocas with an awkward curtness which suggested not so much discourtesy as the shy manners of remote mountaineers. There wasn’t a smile between the lot of them.

  We mounted and set off across the fields feeling the sun hot upon our backs. I had not ridden for a long time—not indeed since a bit of mild hacking at university—and felt very much of a novice. Jocas rode sturdily but without elegance: indeed he sat like a sack of meal. But his huge hands and his grip on the reins suggested that a troublesome horse would receive no quarter from him.

  We crossed a half-dry marsh and began to climb the hill. Here the sun had started to make the wet land steam, and the rising mist swept upwards into the trees. It was through this abrupt dimming of our vision that Benedicta appeared, mounted dramatically on a bronze stallion, her yellow hair flying loose. She was a different woman from the dark girl with the heart-shaped face; this was someone imperative, assured, even perhaps cruel when one thought of the dense blue eyes under frowning brows: periwinkle-blue, large, fierce, finely formed. “You’re damned late” she said to Jocas, reining in and turning into a slow-plunging, arse-banging reorientation in order to come alongside us. Then still unsmiling she reached out and pressed my wrist in a gesture of greeting which was, to say the very least of it, puzzling: I could not decide if it were descended from some oriental form of greeting—or was an expression of personal intimacy. I was tempted to raise my wrist to my lips but refrained. The gesture itself may also have meant nothing; but it illuminated something for me in a flash. I understood what the meaning of my strange behaviour on the night before could be: I mean examining myself so carefully in the mirror, measuring so to speak the degree of my own narcissism in the face of this reflected man, I had been thinking of something like this: “Yes, but then we are modified effectively by the contents of our skulls, by what we think. This science nonsense has reduced your ability to affirm yourself. You would, faced by a challenge like this—I mean a girl who sets herself down in front of the target—turn the whole thing into hollow propositions which you would lodge in the conscious mind. You couldn’t just bite into her like a fresh apple. Yum, Yum. And if you did try to warm up your feelings in a more generous direction why you’d go soft, you’d go sentimental. Too much scientific thinking has poisoned feeling, has reduced your pulse-rate so to speak. What will you do if she embraces you?” Fall off my horse I suppose.

  This is where the extraordinary melancholy came over me. (At this moment my heart was simmering, my blood had turned to quicksilver. I saw her then in some almost legendary form—this slender woman riding down upon us like some drunken queen of the Iceni.) It was the melancholy subject of the night before which reflected and told himself that perhaps we are forced to choose as lovemates, shipmates, playmates those that best match our inward ugliness—the sum of our own shortcomings. No, I did not know that as yet. Not then.

  There was sweat upon her upper lips and temples; her cheek was red, little blonde hairs twinkled. The eyes didn’t have any particular expression—perhaps a touch of disdain. But when they turned upon mine a whole new world of feeling darkened them. Incredibly enough, I could have sworn she was in love with me. Riding like that through the mist I had a sudden feeling that I was about to faint, to fall out of my saddle into a bush. It did not last long, this vertiginous feeling, but it altered the whole scale of my sentiment. All of a sudden I was sure of something, I knew where I was; I longed to escape as a fish longs to escape from the hook. If one could apply some rational system to subjects like these how nice it would be: instead one must always talk as provisionally as possible and in terms of poetry. But damn it Charlock is a scientist—and scientists, moved by pure reason, never let themselves get into such awkward positions. Was it Koepgen who said that science was built upon defensive measurement and art upon propitiation?

  “I knew you would have to come to me” she said in a low voice. A minatory note, a little too intense: I did not like it one little bit. This again did not need saying now: at the touch of her finge
rs on my wrist I had realised that she had been willing me to return once more in a slow curve to that point of reference in time at which our natures had ignited each other. Heavens, what a way to express it! But we are modified effectively by what we think. (Charlock, cool your mind with the calculus.) Benedicta waited for me to answer her—but what was I to tell her about the whole deathscapade of lovemaking? The soul of modern man is made of galvanised iron. She turned away, biting her lips. I felt sad to have to wound her by a silence and an awkwardness at a time when our feelings had defined themselves, grouped themselves, were waiting only to be honourably avowed and recognised. Thoughts incoherent and dispersed floated through my skull as the horses undulated up the slope. I heard for example (why?) the disembodied voice of Sipple say: “Blowed if I see any culture in the Parthenon. To me it’s just a marble birdcage. They say it’s old but how is one to tell? There are no maggots in marble.” But if I could see her so clearly as she was that day I could also see, by simple extension of her look, her manner, the Benedicta who could sit for hours before a mirror with a finger to her lips, her eyes wide with fright; I could see those cupboards full of fancy-dress costumes, the masks. Puppetry! Among the cartoons of monks and demons there hung whips with knotted thongs. Yes, I saw Benedicta always elaborately gowned and cloaked, always wearing some fabulously expensive bracelet over a left-hand glove: Benedicta dressed like an Infanta to welcome me to the white walls and glassy balconies of the Sanatorium in Zürich which her father had once endowed. If I had dared then to say simply: “Benedicta I love you” it would have been like the report of a gun, the discharge of a firearm that blows the top of your skull off. The hero of the New Comedy will be the scientist in love, grappling with the androgynous shapes of his own desire. Wouldn’t you say?

  But we had come now to a shady clearing among the trees on the nether side of the hill which dipped down towards flat green country of simple brush, iodine coloured. Here the old falconers were gathered about the awkward wooden cages which held their choicest birds. They looked like all specialists look—all members of bowling clubs, artisans, artists, tend to look. Old wrinkled specialists who spent their whole time hanging about the falcon market in Istanbul waiting to pick up a bargain—an eyas tiercel or a peregrine or a jack Merlin (strange that should have been the name of Benedicta’s father). Did he look rather like the bird? The little group talked in low moping tones, they had all of them grave bedside manners, walking among the unfidgeting birds. A single cigarette passed from hand to hand. The gunbearers stood about in dispirited fashion, but with our arrival all was animation; the horses were trimmed, girths checked. Jocas elected to fly the largest of the falcons, his favourite, while the girl chose a smaller short-winged bird—one that could be discharged from the wrist at the first sight of prey almost in the manner of a shotgun. We wound down the hill in single file before fanning out the beaters and the dogs, trained skilfully not to overrun. Once down the hill Jocas looked over our dispositions and released his hawk with a shrill musical cry, slipping the hood from its eyes. After a swift look about the great bird rose magnetically, its wings crushing down the air as it rustled upwards in a slow arc, to take up its position in the sky. This one would “wait on” in the higher air to have the advantage over far-flying quarry. But as yet we had hardly begun the beat, moving with the sun at our backs; a couple of woodcock rose with a rattle and began their crashing trajectory across the lower sky. At once the shrill ululations of the falconers broke out, encouraging the great falcon: sometimes these sounds reminded one of the muezzin’s call to prayer from a minaret in the old city. So the battle began. One of the woodcocks went to earth in the bracken and refused to be flushed, but the second put up a struggle characterised by tremendous speed and finish. It seemed to be able to judge the moment when the falcon had positioned itself for the stoop; instantly it would dive for cover, only to be flushed once more by the ever advancing line of beaters. After the third or fourth repetition of this tactic it began to tire; its flights became shorter and more erratic, its plunges for cover more desperate. The hunt had now broken into several parties, interest being divided by other quarry, by new birds taking the air. I saw Benedicta discharge the short-winged hawk from her wrist at the sight of something rising among the holm-oaks. It flew at incredible speed—fired like sling-shot.

  But the battle between Jocas’ falcon and the woodcock had drawn us on ahead of the rest. It was exciting, the gallop across the flat plain after the failing woodcock. It was after about a mile and a half that one saw the falcon shortening its gyres, closing the space between it and its quarry. It was winding it in almost, as a fisherman winds in a fish. The woodcock despite its fatigue was game and rose again and yet again, but falteringly now. It was becoming clear that the end was not far off. The falcon once more positioned itself, helped now by a slight change of the wind’s direction. It took careful aim and suddenly came plummeting down at incredible speed, adding impetus to its own great weight. Too late the woodcock tried to evade it by a feint, sliding sideways as it fell. The falcon struck it a devastating blow with its hind talons—must have struck it stone dead in fact. Down they both went now in a tangle of wings, leaving a trail of slow feathers in the amazed sky. At once the horsemen shrilled and ululating broke into a ragged gallop to retrieve. Jocas, red faced and sweating, was radiant now. “It was that shift of wind” he said. “Game won’t fly upwind under a hawk. What elegance eh?”

  So the day wore on; the quarry was rich and various, and the incidents of the kill quite absorbing. I quite forgot my saddle-soreness. The longest and dourest battle Jocas fought was, strangely enough, with one of the slowest birds of all, a marsh-heron. One would not have believed that this slowcoach of a bird could outwit a trained hunting falcon, but this was very nearly the case. Indeed the heron proved so cunning that it had Jocas swearing with admiration. Though in lateral flight it is slow, the big concave wings give it the power of rising rapidly in the perpendicular, almost in balloon-fashion: meanwhile the falcon has the task of trying to gain sufficient height for her swoop by circling. The old heron used this advantage so skilfully that the battle ranged over several miles. Twice the hunter misjudged its distance, or the heron sidestepped it in the sky: for the falcon, missing it, lost the superiority of altitude and was forced laboriously to circle once again until it could take up the required position. But at last—and both birds were tiring—it found its site and with a swoop “bound to” the heron and both came tumbling out of the sky together with a crash and scream.

  The sun was well past meridian when we broke off the sport, all parties converging once more on the hillside where, on the eastern side, there was an old abandoned marble fountain in the denser part of the wood. Here a spring boomed and swished among the rocks and the air was sweet and dense with moisture. Here we lounged and ate the food which had been sent up from the boat in a wicker hamper. The cool shade was luxurious and sleep-inducing—and indeed Jocas had dozed off for a few moments when a messenger rode into the camp from the boat and summoned him back on urgent business to the town. He left at once, with a resigned good humour, promising to send the pinnace back to collect us that night. I was left alone with Benedicta. Watching her move among the falconers, smoking a cigarette, I felt the same tightening of the heart-strings as I had when she rode out of the mist towards me. That, and also an awkward sense of premonition: the sense of having embarked upon a course of action which would reward me perhaps by the very damage it might do to my self-reliance, or my self-esteem. Rubbish. And yet at the heart of it all there was a magical content—for there seemed to me to be absolutely no alternative to make me hesitate. Apart from the greed of the eyes and the mind which contemplated her bright abstract beauty there was a kind of inner imperative about the matter —as if this was what I had been foreordained to execute. Yes, I had been born to get myself into this extraordinary, this bewitching mess. So that it was with a complete calm assurance of happiness that I merely nodded and agreed when she
said: “I am sending them all down to the boat this evening, but I shall stay here tonight with you. Yes?” The “yes” was quite unnecessarily wistful, and now I repaid the debt of my earlier negligence by taking up the slender fingers and pressing them back to life. So we sat side by side on the grass eating a pomegranate, surrounded by all the bustle of the encampment breaking up. They were to leave us sleeping bags, wine and food; torches, cigarettes, and horses. It took them hours to pack up. We stood side by side in the green evening light to watch the cavalcade straggle down the valley towards the sea. Then, thoughtfully stripping off her clothes, she turned slowly towards the broken marble cistern where the water drummed, she walked into it, seizing the foaming jets with her hands, crying out with joy at its intense cold. So we lay rolled about and were massaged by the icy spring, to climb out cold and panting at last, and lie down as wet as fish in each other’s arms. But before making love or attempting any kind of intimacy, lying mesmerised like this, still trembling from the cold water, she uttered a cautionary phrase which to my bemused mind sounded as normal, as natural, as the bustle and boom of the water in the marble dish below us. “Never ask me anything about myself, will you? You must ask Jocas, if you want to know anything. There’s a great deal Ido not know. I mustn’t be frightened, you see.”