The Alexandria Quartet

by Lawrence Durrell

  It is nearly one o’clock before the police have finished their business. The parties will all have ebbed back from the lake by now to the city where the news of Capodistria’s death will be waiting for them. But this is not to be all.

  One by one we straggle ashore with our gear. The cars are waiting for us, and now begins a long chaffering session with the loaders and boatmen who must be paid off; guns are broken up and the bag distributed; in all this incoherence I see my servant Hamid advancing timidly through the crowd with his good eye screwed up against the sunlight. I think he must be looking for me but no: he goes up to Nessim and hands him a small blue envelope. I want to describe this exactly. Nessim takes it absently with his left hand while his right is reaching into the car to place a box of cartridges in the glove-box. He examines the superscription once thoughtlessly and then once more with marked attention. Then keeping his eyes on Hamid’s face he takes a deep breath and opens the envelope to read whatever is written on the half sheet of note-paper. For a minute he studies it and then replaces the letter in the envelope. He looks about him with a sudden change of expression, as if he suddenly felt sick and was looking about for a place where he might be so. He makes his way through the crowd and putting his head against a corner of mud wall utters a short panting sob, as of a runner out of breath. Then he turns back to the car, completely controlled and dry-eyed, to complete his packing. This brief incident goes completely unremarked by the rest of his guests.

  Clouds of dust rise now as the cars begin to draw away towards the city; the wild gang of boatmen shout and wave and treat us to carved water-melon smiles studded with gold and ivory. Hamid opens the car door and climbs in like a monkey. ‘What is it?’ I say, and folding his small hands apologetically towards me in an attitude of supplication which means ‘Blame not the bearer of ill tidings’ he says in a small conciliatory voice: ‘Master, the lady has gone. There is a letter for you in the house.’

  It is as if the whole city had crashed about my ears: I walk slowly to the flat, aimlessly as survivors must walk about the streets of their native city after an earthquake, surprised to find how much that had been familiar has changed, Rue Piroua, Rue de France, the Terbana Mosque (cupboard smelling of apples), Rue Sidi Abou El Abbas (water-ices and coffee), Anfouchi, Ras El Tin (Cape of Figs), Ikingi Mariut (gathering wild flowers together, convinced she cannot love me), equestrian statue of Mohammed Ali in the square.… General Earle’s comical little bust, killed Sudan 1885.… An evening multitudinous with swallows … the tombs at Kom El Shugafa, darkness and damp soil, both terrified by the darkness.… Rue Fuad as the old Canopic Way, once Rue Rosette.… Hutchinson disturbed the whole water-disposition of the city by cutting the dykes.… The scene in Moeurs where he tries to read her the book he is writing about her. ‘She sits in the wicker chair with her hands in her lap, as if posing for a portrait, but with a look of ever-growing horror on her face. At last I can stand it no longer, and I throw down the manuscript in the fireplace, crying out: “What are they worth, since you understand nothing, these pages written from a heart pierced to the quick?”’ In my mind’s eye I can see Nessim racing up the great staircase to her room to find a distraught Selim contemplating the empty cupboards and a dressing table swept clean as if by a blow from a leopard’s paw.

  In the harbour of Alexandria the sirens whoop and wail. The screws of ships crush and crunch the green oil-coated waters of the inner bar. Idly bending and inclining, effortlessly breathing as if in the rhythm of the earth’s own systole and diastole, the yachts turn their spars against the sky. Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might surprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough. Will there be time?

  PART IV

  The disappearance of Justine was something new to be borne. It changed the whole pattern of our relationship. It was as if she had removed the keystone to an arch: Nessim and I left among the ruins, so to speak were faced with the task of repairing a relationship which she herself had invented and which her absence now rendered hollow, echoing with a guilt which would, I thought, henceforward always overshadow affection.

  His suffering was apparent to everyone. That expressive face took on a flayed unhealthy look — the pallor of a church martyr. In seeing him thus I was vividly reminded of my own feelings during the last meeting with Melissa before she left for the clinic in Jerusalem. The candour and gentleness with which she said: ‘The whole thing is gone.… It may never come back.… At least this separation.’ Her voice grew furry and moist, blurring the edges of the words. At this time she was quite ill. The lesions had opened again. ‘Time to reconsider ourselves.… If only I were Justine.… I know you thought of her when you made love to me.… Don’t deny it.… I know my darling.… I’m even jealous of your imagination.… Horrible to have self-reproach heaped on top of the other miseries.… Never mind.’ She blew her nose shakily and managed a smile. ‘I need rest so badly.… And now Nessim has fallen in love with me.’ I put my hand over her sad mouth. The taxi throbbed on remorselessly, like someone living on his nerves. All round us walked the wives of the Alexandrians, smartly turned out, with the air of well-lubricated phantoms. The driver watched us in the mirror like a spy. The emotions of white people, he perhaps was thinking, are odd and excite prurience. He watched as one might watch cats making love.

  ‘I shall never forget you.’

  ‘Nor I. Write to me.’

  ‘I shall always come back if you want.’

  ‘Never doubt it. Get well, Melissa, you must get well. I’ll wait for you. A new cycle will begin. It is all there inside me, intact. I feel it.’

  The words that lovers use at such times are charged with distorting emotions. Only their silences have the cruel precision which aligns them to truth. We were silent, holding hands. She embraced me and signalled to the driver to set off.

  ‘With her going the city took on an unnerving strangeness for him’ writes Arnauti. ‘Wherever his memory of her turned a familiar corner she recreated herself swiftly, vividly, and superimposed those haunted eyes and hands on the streets and squares. Old conversations leaped up and hit him among the polished table-tops of cafés where once they had sat, gazing like drunkards into each other’s eyes. Sometimes she appeared walking a few paces ahead of him in the dark street. She would stop to adjust the strap of a sandal and he would overtake her with beating heart — only to find it was someone else. Particular doors seemed just about to admit her. He would sit and watch them doggedly. At other times he was suddenly seized by the irresistible conviction that she was about to arrive on a particular train, and he hurried to the station and breasted the crowd of passengers like a man fording a river. Or he might sit in the stuffy waiting-room of the airport after midnight watching the departures and arrivals, in case she were coming back to surprise him. In this way she controlled his imagination and taught him how feeble reason was; and he carried the consciousness of her going heavily about with him — like a dead baby from which one could not bring oneself to part.’

  The night after Justine went away there was a freak thunderstorm of tremendous intensity. I had been wandering about in the rain for hours, a prey not only to feelings which I could not control but also to remorse for what I imagined Nessim must be feeling. Frankly, I hardly dared to go back to the empty flat, lest I should be tempted along the path Pursewarden had already taken so easily, with so little premeditation. Passing Rue Fuad for the seventh time, coatless and hatless in that blinding downpour, I happened to catch sight of the light in Clea’s high window and on an impulse rang the bell. The front door opened with a whine and I stepped into the silence of the building from the dark street with its booming of rain in gutters and the splash of overflowing manholes.

  She opened the door to me and at a glance took in my condition. I was made to enter, peel off my sodden clothes and put on the blue dressing-gown. The little electric fire was a blessing, and Clea set about making me hot coffee.

&nb
sp; She was already in pyjamas, her gold hair combed out for the night. A copy of A Rebours lay face down on the floor beside the ash-tray with the smouldering cigarette in it. Lightning kept flashing fitfully at the window, lighting up her grave face with its magnesium flashes. Thunder rolled and writhed in the dark heavens outside the window. In this calm it was possible partly to exorcise my terrors by speaking of Justine. It appeared she knew all — nothing can be hidden from the curiosity of the Alexandrians. She knew all about Justine, that is to say.

  ‘You will have guessed’ said Clea in the middle of all this ‘that Justine was the woman I told you once I loved so much.’

  This cost her a good deal to say. She was standing with a coffee cup in one hand, clad in her blue-striped pyjamas by the door. She closed her eyes as she spoke, as if she were expecting a blow to fall upon the crown of her head. Out of the closed eyes came two tears which ran slowly down on each side of her nose. She looked like a young stag with a broken ankle. ‘Ah! let us not speak of her any more’ she said at last in a whisper. ‘She will never come back.’

  Later I made some attempt to leave but the storm was still at its height and my clothes still impossibly sodden. ‘You can stay here’ said Clea ‘with me’; and she added with a gentleness which brought a lump into my throat, ‘But please — I don’t know how to say this — please don’t make love to me.’

  We lay together in that narrow bed talking of Justine while the storm blew itself out, scourging the window-panes of the flat with driven rain from the seafront. She was calm now with a sort of resignation which had a moving eloquence about it. She told me many things about Justine’s past which only she knew; and she spoke of her with a wonder and tenderness such as people might use in talking of a beloved yet infuriating queen. Speaking of Arnauti’s ventures into psycho-analysis she said with amusement: ‘She was not really clever, you know, but she had the cunning of a wild animal at bay. I’m not sure she really understood the object of these investigations. Yet though she was evasive with the doctors she was perfectly frank with her friends. All that correspondence about the words “Washington D.C.”, for example, which they worked so hard on — remember? One night while we were lying here together I asked her to give me her free associations from the phrase. Of course she trusted my discretion absolutely. She replied unerringly (it was clear she had already worked it out though she would not tell Arnauti): ‘There is a town near Washington called Alexandria. My father always talked of going to visit some distant relations there. They had a daughter called Justine who was exactly my age. She went mad and was put away. She had been raped by a man.’ I then asked her about D.C. and she said, “Da Capo. Capodistria”.’

  I do not know how long this conversation lasted or how soon it melted into sleep, but we awoke next morning in each other’s arms to find that the storm had ceased. The city had been sponged clean. We took a hasty breakfast and I made my way towards Mnemjian’s shop for a shave through streets whose native colours had been washed clean by the rain so that they glowed with warmth and beauty in that soft air. I still had Justine’s letter in my pocket but I did not dare to read it again lest I destroy the peace of mind which Clea had given me. Only the opening phrase continued to echo in my mind with an obstinate throbbing persistence: ‘If you should come back alive from the lake you will find this letter waiting for you.’

  On the mantelpiece in the drawing-room of the flat there is another letter offering me a two-year contract as a teacher in a Catholic school in Upper Egypt. I sit down at once without thinking and draft my acceptance. This will change everything once more and free me from the streets of the city which have begun to haunt me of late so that I dream that I am walking endlessly up and down, hunting for Melissa among the dying flares of the Arab quarter.

  With the posting of this letter of acceptance a new period will be initiated, for it marks my separation from the city in which so much has happened to me, so much of momentous importance: so much that has aged me. For a little while, however, life will carry its momentum forward by hours and days. The same streets and squares will burn in my imagination as the Pharos burns in history. Particular rooms in which I have made love, particular café tables where the pressure of fingers upon a wrist held me spellbound, feeling through the hot pavements the rhythms of Alexandria transmitted upwards into bodies which could only interpret them as famished kisses, or endearments uttered in voices hoarse with wonder. To the student of love these separations are a school, bitter yet necessary to one’s growth. They help one to strip oneself mentally of everything save the hunger for more life.

  Now, too, the actual framework of things is undergoing a subtle transformation, for other partings are also beginning. Nessim is going to Kenya for a holiday. Pombal has achieved crucifixion and a posting to the Chancery in Rome where I have no doubt he will be happier. A series of leisurely farewell parties have begun to serve the purposes of all of us; but they are heavy with the absence of the one person whom nobody ever mentions any more — Justine. It is clear too that a world war is slowly creeping upon us across the couloirs of history — doubling our claims upon each other and upon life. The sweet sickly smell of blood hangs in the darkening air and contributes a sense of excitement, of fondness and frivolity. This note has been absent until now.

  The chandeliers in the great house whose ugliness I have come to hate, blaze over the gatherings which have been convened to say farewell to my friend. They are all there, the faces and histories I have come to know so well, Sveva in black, Clea in gold, Gaston, Claire, Gaby. Nessim’s hair I notice has during the last few weeks begun to be faintly touched with grey. Ptolemeo and Fuad are quarrelling with all the animation of old lovers. All round me the typical Alexandrian animation swells and subsides in conversations as brittle and frivolous as spun glass. The women of Alexandria in all their stylish wickedness are here to say good-bye to someone who has captivated them by allowing them to befriend him. As for Pombal himself, he has grown fatter, more assured since his elevation in rank. His profile now has a certain Neronian cast. He is professing himself worried about me in sotto voce; for some weeks we have not met properly, and he has only heard about my school-mastering project tonight. ‘You should get out’ he repeats, ‘back to Europe. This city will undermine your will. And what has Upper Egypt to offer? Blazing heat, dust, flies, a menial occupation.… After all, you are not Rimbaud.’

  The faces surging round us sipping toasts prevent my answering him, and I am glad of it for I have nothing to say. I gaze at him with a portentous numbness, nodding my head. Clea catches my wrist and draws me aside to whisper: ‘A card from Justine. She is working in a Jewish kibbutz in Palestine. Shall I tell Nessim?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’

  ‘She asks me not to.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  I am too proud to ask if there is any message for me. The company has started to sing the old song ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ in a variety of times and accents. Pombal has turned pink with pleasure. I gently shake off Clea’s hand in order to join in the singing. The little consul-general is fawning and gesticulating over Pombal; his relief at my friend’s departure is so great that he has worked himself up into a paroxysm of friendship and regret. The English consular group has the disconsolate air of a family of moulting turkeys. Madame de Venuta is beating time with an elegant gloved hand. The black servants in their long white gloves move swiftly from group to group of the guests like eclipses of the moon. If one were to go away, I catch myself thinking, to Italy perhaps or to France: to start a new sort of life: not a city life this time, perhaps an island in the Bay of Naples.… But I realise that what remains unresolved in my life is not the problem of Justine but the problem of Melissa. In some curious way the future, if there is one, has always been vested in her. Yet I feel powerless to influence it by decisions or even hopes. I feel that I must wait patiently until the shallow sequences of our history match again, until we can fall into step once more. This may t
ake years — perhaps we will both be grey when the tide suddenly turns. Or perhaps the hope will die stillborn, broken up like wreckage by the tides of events. I have so little faith in myself. The money Pursewarden left is still in the bank — I have not touched a penny of it. For such a sum we might live for several years in some cheap spot in the sun.

  Melissa still writes the spirited nonchalant letters which I have such difficulty in answering save by whining retorts about my circumstances or my improvidence. Once I leave the city it will be easier. A new road will open. I will write to her with absolute frankness, telling her all I feel — even those things which I believe her forever incapable of understanding properly. ‘I shall return in the spring’ Nessim is saying to the Baron Thibault ‘and take up my summer quarters at Abousir. I am determined to slack off for about two years. I’ve been working too hard at business and it isn’t worth it.’ Despite the haunted pallor of his face one cannot help seeing in him a new repose, a relaxation of the will; the heart may be distracted, but the nerves are at last at rest. He is weak, as a convalescent is weak; but he is no longer ill. We talk and joke quietly for a while; it is clear that our friendship will repair itself sooner or later — for we now have a common fund of unhappiness upon which to draw. ‘Justine’ I say, and he draws in his breath slightly, as if one had run a small thorn under his fingernail, ‘writes from Palestine.’ He nods quickly and motions me with a small gesture. ‘I know. We have traced her. There is no need to… I’m writing to her. She can stay away as long as she wishes. Come back in her own good time.’ It would be foolish to deprive him of the hope and the consolation it must give him, but I know now that she will never return on the old terms. Every phrase of her letter to me made this clear. It is not us she had abandoned so much but a way of life which threatened her reason — the city, love, the sum of all that we had shared. What had she written to him, I wondered, as I recalled the short sobbing breath he had drawn as he leaned against the whitewashed wall?