The Magus

by John Robert Fowles

  I had never had a telepathic experience in my life, and I thought it unlikely I should start with Conchis; and if benevolent gentlemen from other worlds were feeding good deeds and artistic genius into me, they had done it singularly badly—and not only for me, for most of the age I was born into. On the other hand, I began to understand why Conchis had told me I was psychic. It was a sort of softening-up process, in preparation for the no doubt even stranger scene that would take place in the masque that next night… the “experiment.”

  The masque, the masque: it fascinated and irritated me, like an obscure poem—more than that, for it was not only obscure in itself, but doubly obscure in why it had even been “written.” During the evening a new theory had occurred to me: that Conchis was trying to recreate some lost world of his own and for some reason I was cast as the jeune premier in it, his younger self. I was well aware that during that day our relationship had changed. I was less a guest; and he was far less a host. A different kind of tension had arisen, mainly because there were things in him that I could not relate (and which he knew and intended I could not); things like the humanity in his playing of Bach, in certain elements in his autobiography, which were spoilt, undermined, by his perversity and malice elsewhere; his aggressive defense of his wealth, the “curious” books and objects that he put in my way—another parallel with de Deukans—and now the myth figures in the night, with all their abnormal undertones.

  The more I thought about it, the more I suspected the authenticity of that Belgian count—or at any rate of Conchis’s account of him. He was no more than a stalking-horse for Conchis himself. De Deukans had a symbolic truth, perhaps, but far less than a literal one.

  Meanwhile, the masque was letting me down. Silence still reigned. I looked at my watch. Nearly half an hour had passed. I could not sleep. After some hesitation, I crept downstairs and out through the music room under the colonnade. There I made my way round the gravel along the route that Lily must have taken. I walked a little way into the trees in the direction the two had disappeared; then turned back and went down to the beach. The sea lapped slowly, dragging down a few small pebbles now and again, making them rattle drily, though there was no wind, no air. The cliffs and trees and the little boat lay drenched in starlight, in a million indecipherable thoughts from other worlds. The mysterious southern sea, luminous, waited; alive yet empty. I smoked a cigarette, and then climbed back to the fraught house and my bedroom.

  31

  I had my breakfast alone again. It was a day of wind, the sky as blue as ever, but the breeze tore boisterously off the sea, typhooning the fronds of the two palms that stood like sentinels in front of the house. Further south, off Cape Matapan, the meltemi, the tough summer gale from the Ionian islands, was blowing.

  I went down to the beach. The boat was not there. It confirmed my half-formed theory about the “visitors”—that they were on a yacht in one of the many deserted coves round the west and south sides of the island, or anchored among the group of deserted islets some five miles to the east. I swam out some way to see if Conchis was visible on the terrace. But it was empty. I lay on my back and floated for a while, feeling the cool chop of the waves over my sun-warmed face, thinking of Lily.

  Then I looked toward the beach.

  She was standing on it, a brilliant figure on the salt-gray shingle, with the ochre of the cliff and the green plants behind her. I began to swim towards the shore, as fast as I could. She moved a few steps along the stones and then stopped and watched me. At last I stood up, dripping, panting, and looked at her. She was about ten yards away, in an exquisitely pretty First World War summer dress. It was striped mussel-blue, white and pink, and she carried a fringed sunshade of the same cloth. She wore the sea wind like a jewel. It caught her dress, moulded it against her body. Every so often she had a little struggle with the sunshade. And all the time fingers of wind teased and skeined her long, silky-blond hair around her neck or across her mouth.

  She showed a little moue, half mocking herself, half mocking me as I stood knee-deep in the water. I don’t know why silence descended on us, why we were locked for a strange few moments in a more serious look. It must have been transparently excited on my side. She looked so young, so timidly naughty. She gave an embarrassed yet mischievous smile, as if she should not have been there, had risked impropriety.

  “Has Neptune cut your tongue off?”

  “You look so ravishing. Like a Renoir.”

  She moved a little further away, and twirled her ombrelle. I slipped into my beach-shoes and, toweling my back, caught her up.

  “I prefer you without the silver bow.”

  She raised a finger to her lips, banning the subject, then smiled with a sort of innocent sideways slyness; she had a remarkable gift for creating and diminishing distance by an intonation, a look. She sat down on a low projecting piece of rock that was overshaded by a pine tree, where the precipitous gulley ran down to the shingle; then closed her sunshade and pointed with it to a stone beside her, a little away from her, in the sun, where I was to sit. But I spread my towel on the rock and sat beside her in the shade. I thought how ridiculous it really was to pretend that she was in some way “psychic”; the moist mouth, the down on her bare forearms, a scar above her left wrist, her slim neck, her loose hair, an animated glance she turned to give me.

  “You’re the most deliciously pretty girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “Am I?”

  I had meant it; and I had also meant to embarrass her. But she simply widened her smile and stared back at me, and I was the one who eventually looked down.

  “Do we still have to… keep to the rules?”

  “If you want me to sit with you.”

  “Who’s the other girl?”

  “What other girl?”

  Her innocence was charming; so natural and so false; an irresistible invitation to take nothing seriously.

  “When am I going to meet your brother?”

  Her prettily lashed eyes flickered modestly down and sideways. “I hope you did not venture to think he was really my brother?”

  “I ventured to think all sorts of things.”

  She sought my meaning, for a moment held my eyes, then bit her lips. For no reason at all I began to feel less jealous.

  * * *

  “Wouldn’t you like to bathe?”

  “No. I cannot swim.”

  “I could teach you. It’s very easy.”

  “Thank you. I do not like sea water.”

  Silence. She shifted a pebble with her shoe. It was a pretty buttoned shoe of gray kid over a white silk stocking, but very old-fashioned. The hem of her dress came within three of four inches of her ankles. Her hair blew forward, clouding her face a little. I wanted to brush it back.

  “You speak like a Scandinavian sometimes.”

  “Yes?”

  “‘I cannot swim.’ ‘I do not like.’”

  “What should I say?”

  “I can’t swim. I don’t like.”

  She made a little pout, then put on a very creditable foreign accent. “Does it mattair eef I am not Eenglish?”

  Then she smiled like the Cheshire Cat; disappearing behind her humor.

  “Does it matter if you tell me who you really are?”

  “Give me your hand. I will read your fortune. You may sit a little closer, but you must not wet my dress.”

  I gave her my hand. She held it tightly by the wrist and traced the palmistry lines with the forefinger of her free hand. I was able to see the shape of her breasts at the bottom of the opening in her dress, very pale skin, the highly caressable beginning of soft curves. It was strange; she managed to suggest that this hackneyed sex-gambit—one I had used myself on occasion—was rather daring, mama-defying. Her fingertip ran innocently yet suggestively over my palm. She began to “read.”

  “You will have a long life. You will have three children. At about forty years old you will nearly die. You are quite sensitive, but you are also very treachero
us. There are… there are many treacheries in your life. Sometimes you betray yourself. Sometimes you betray those who love you.”

  “Why do I betray?”

  She looked seriously up at me. “The palm says what is. Not why it is.”

  “Can I read yours?”

  “I have not finished. You will never be rich. Beware of horses, strong drink and old women. You will make love to many girls, but you will love only one, and you will marry her and be very happy.”

  “In spite of nearly dying at forty.”

  “Because you nearly die at forty. Here is where you nearly die. The happiness line is very, very strong after that.”

  She let go of my hand.

  “Now can I read yours?”

  She hesitated a moment, then put her small hand in mine, and I pretended to read it. I tried to read it quite seriously in one way—the Sherlock Holmes way. But even that great master at detecting in a second Irish maidservants from Brixton with a mania for boating and bullseyes would have been baffled. However, Lily’s hands were very white, very smooth, very unblemished; whatever else she was she was not a maidservant from anywhere.

  “You are taking a long time, Mr. Urfe.”

  “My name is Nicholas.”

  “May I call you Nicholas?”

  “If I may call you… ?”

  “You may call me Lily, Nicholas. But you may not sit for hours pretending to read my hand.”

  “It’s a very difficult hand to read. Very obscure. I can only see one thing clearly.”

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s extremely nice to look at and to hold.”

  She snatched it away. “There. You prove what I said. You are treacherous.”

  “Let me have it back. I’ll be serious.” But she shook her head, and put both her hands behind her, and turned, and looked at me with a perfectly done pert Edwardian rebelliousness. A wisp of hair blew across her face; the wind kindled in her clothes a wantonness, bared her throat, so that she suddenly looked very young, absurdly young, seventeen; a world away from an avenging goddess. I remembered what Conchis had said about the original Lily’s gentleness and mischievousness, and I thought how wonderfully well he had cast this Lily—there was, it seemed to me, a natural teasing obliquity in her that couldn’t be acted. Not when she was so close, in daylight; she seemed far less sophisticated than she had on the terrace the night before. All the condescension had disappeared. Impulsively she thrust her hand back out at me. I began to read it.

  “I see all the usual things. Long life. Happiness. Children. And then… intelligence. A lot of intelligence. Some heart. And yes—great acting ability, combined with a strong sense of humor. And this line means that you love mystery. But I think the acting’s strongest.”

  A little white cloud floated across the sun, casting shadow over the beach. She took her hand away, and stared down at it in her lap.

  “And death?”

  “I said a long life.”

  “But I am dead. One cannot die twice.”

  I touched her arm. “You’re the most living dead person I’ve ever met.”

  She did not smile; there was swiftly, too swiftly, something very cold and gray in her eyes, a silent trouble.

  “Oh come on. There is a limit.”

  “Death is the limit.”

  I knew she must be improvising her moods and dialogue with me. The cloud had come; she had brought in death. It was time to call her bluff.

  “Look—”

  “You still do not understand.”

  “Of course I’ll keep up the pretense in front of Maurice.”

  “We are in front of Maurice.”

  I thought for one mad moment that he had crept up behind us. I even looked round. There was no one; and no place where anyone could have hidden and overheard us.

  “Lily—I admire him. I like him. I like this extraordinary masque of his. Very much. And I admire you for being so… faithful? But—”

  She said abruptly, “I have no choice.”

  This was a new tack. I thought I heard a faint note of regret. That he insisted on her keeping up the pretense at all times? On pain of dismissal, perhaps?

  “Meaning?”

  “Everything you say to me and I say to you, he hears, he knows.”

  “You have to tell him?” I sounded incredulous.

  She nodded, then stared out to sea and I knew that she was not unmasking at all. I began to feel exasperated; foiled.

  “Are we talking about telepathy?”

  “Telepathy and—” She broke off the sentence, and she shook her head.

  “And?”

  “I cannot say any more.”

  She opened out her sunshade, as if she was thinking of going away. It had little black tassels that hung from the ends of the ribs.

  “Why not?”

  “Maurice would be angry. He would know.”

  I gave an unbelieving sniff. I thought, then said, “Are you his mistress?”

  She looked very genuinely shocked. “That is very impertinent. Very rude.” She turned her back on me and I grinned—at her skill, and remembering that naked “brother,” at her nerve.

  “I just want to know where I am.”

  “That was…” she dropped her voice and the wind almost carried the words away… “completely uncalled-for and most disgusting.”

  Suddenly she stood up and began to walk quickly away over the shingle, towards the path that led up to the house. I ran after her and blocked her way. The sun had come out again. She stopped, her eyes down, then she looked up at me, hotly, apparently very near anger.

  I said, “I am not disgusting.”

  She burst out. “Why must you always know where you are? Why have you no imagination, no humor, no patience? You are like a child who tears a beautiful toy to pieces to see how it is made. You have no imagination… no poetry.” Her eyes stared at me intensely, as if she was going to cry. “That is why you are so treacherous.”

  I spread the towel out before her feet, and knelt on it. Then looked up at her. “I beg forgiveness.”

  “You make me angry. I want to be your friend and you make it so difficult.” She half turned away. But her voice was softer.

  “Difficult to be friends if I can’t really know who you are.”

  I sat back on my haunches. With a swift change of mood she lowered her shade and tapped me lightly on the shoulder with it.

  “I deserve a knighthood now?”

  “You deserve nothing now.”

  She turned completely, as if she wanted to laugh; as if the effort of playing this “serious” exchange had exhausted her gravity. She ran, little stumbling steps, her skirt lifted with one hand, towards the jetty. I got up and lit a cigarette, and then went to where she was strolling up and down. There was more wind on the jetty, and she kept on having trouble with her hair; charming trouble. The ends of it floated up in the sunshine, silky wings of living light. In the end I held her closed sunshade for her, and she tried to hold her hair still. Her mood had veered abruptly again. She kept on laughing, fine white teeth catching the sunlight, hopping, swaying back when a wave hit the jetty end and sent up a little spray. Though once or twice she caught my arm, there was no physical coquettishness about her. She seemed absorbed in her game with the wind and the sea. A pretty, rather skittish schoolgirl in a gay striped dress.

  I stole looks at the sunshade. It was newly made. I supposed a ghost from 1915 would have been carrying a new sunshade; but somehow I believed it would have been more authentic, though supernaturally less logical, if it had been old and faded.

  Then the bell rang, from the house. It was that same ring I had heard the weekend before, in the rhythm of my own name. Lily stood still, and listened. Wind-distorted, the bell rang again.

  “Nich-o-las.” She looked mock-grave. “It tolls for thee.”

  I looked up through the trees.

  “I can’t think why.”

  “You must go.”

  “Will you c
ome with me?”

  “I must wait.” The bell rang again. “You must go.”

  I stood undecided. “Why must you wait?”

  “Because it did not toll for me.”

  “I think we ought to show that we’re friends again.”

  She was standing close to me, holding her hair from blowing across her face. She gave me a severe look.

  “Mr. Urfe!” She said it exactly as she had the night before. The same chilly over-precise pronunciation. “Are you asking me to commit osculation?”

  And it was perfect; a mischievous girl of 1915 poking fun at a feeble Victorian joke; a lovely double remove; the linguistic-dramatic equivalent of some complicated ballet-movement; and she looked absurd and lovely as she did it. She pushed her cheek forward, and I hardly had time to touch it with my lips before she had skipped back. I stood and watched her bent head.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can.” I handed her back her sunshade; gave her what I trusted was both a hopelessly attracted and a totally unduped look.

  Turning every so often, I climbed up the path. Twice she waved from the jetty. I came over the steep rise and started through the last of the thirmed trees towards the house. I could see Maria standing by the music-room door, at the bell. But I hadn’t taken two steps across the gravel before the world split in half. Or so it seemed.

  A figure had appeared on the terrace, not fifty feet away, facing and above me. It was Lily. It couldn’t be her, but it was her. The same hair blew about in the wind; the dress, the sunshade, the figure, the face, everything was the same. She was staring out to sea, over my head, totally ignoring me.

  It was a wild, dislocating, disactualizing, shock. Yet I knew within the first few seconds that although I was obviously meant to believe that this was the same girl as the one on the beach, it was not. But it was so like her that it could be only one thing—a twin sister. There were two Lilies in the field. The night before, the nymph, was explained. But I had no time to think. Another figure appeared beside the Lily on the terrace.

  It was a man, much too tall to be Conchis. At least, I presumed it was a man; perhaps “Apollo” or “Robert Foulkes”—or even “de Deukans.” I couldn’t see, because the figure was all in black, shrouded in the sun, and wearing the most sinister mask I had ever seen: the head of an enormous black dog, or jackal, with a long muzzle and high pointed ears. They stood there, the possessor and the possessed, looming death and the frail maiden. There was almost immediately, after the first visual shock, something vaguely grotesque about it; it had the overdone macabreness of a horror-magazine illustration. It certainly touched on some terrifying archetype; but it shocked common sense as well as the unconscious.