The Magus, A Revised Version

by John Fowles

  ‘We’ve told her we’re still rehearsing. We don’t want to worry her.’ She pulled a face. ‘She’s an expert at the useless tizzy.’

  ‘This film?’

  ‘It was taken from a demotic Greek story by a writer called Theodoritis–have you ever heard of him? Three Hearts?’ I shook my head. ‘Apparently it’s never been translated. It was written in the early ‘twenties. It’s about two English girls, they’re supposed to be the British ambassador at Athens’s daughters, though not twins in the original, who go for a holiday on a Greek island during the First World War and–’

  ‘One doesn’t happen to be called Lily Montgomery, by any chance?’

  ‘No, but wait. This island. They meet a Greek writer there – a poet, he’s got tuberculosis, dying … and he falls in love with each sister in turn, and they fall in love with him and everyone’s terribly miserable and it all ends – you can guess. Actually it’s not quite as silly as that. It does have a certain period charm.’

  ‘You’ve read it?’

  ‘What I can. It’s quite short.’

  I spoke in Greek. ‘Xerete kala ta ma ellenika?

  She answered, in a much more fluent and better accented demotic than my own, that she was learning some modern Greek, though knowing the ancient language was less help than people imagined; and gave me a steady look. I touched my forehead in obeisance.

  ‘He also showed us a script in London.’

  ‘In English?’

  ‘He said he was hoping to distribute two versions. Greek and English. Dubbing voices both ways.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘It seemed playable. Though it was really just a cunning rehearsal.’

  ‘But how –’

  ‘Wait a minute. More evidence.’

  She delved in the bag, then swivelled round so that we were sitting facing in opposite directions. She came out with a wallet; produced two cuttings from it. One showed the two sisters standing in a London street, in overcoats and woollen hats, laughing. I knew the paper by the print but it was in any case gummed on to a grey cuttings-agency tag: Evening Standard, January 8th, 1953. The paragraph underneath ran:

  AND BRAINS AS WELL!

  Two lucky twins, June and Julie (on right) Holmes, who will star in a film this summer to be shot in Greece. The twins both have Cambridge degrees, acted a lot at varsity, speak eight languages between them. Unfair note for bachelors: neither wants to marry yet.

  ‘We didn’t write the caption.’

  ‘So I deduced.’

  The other cutting was from the Cinema Trade News. It repeated, in Americanese, what she had just told me.

  ‘Oh and while I’m at it. My mother.’ She showed me a snapshot from the wallet; a woman with fluffy hair in a deckchair in a garden, a clumber spaniel beside her. I could see another photograph, and made her show me that as well: a man in a sports shirt, a nervous and intelligent face. He seemed in his early thirties.

  ‘This is … ?’

  ‘Yes.’ She added, ‘Was.’

  She took the photo back. There was something closed in her face, and I did not press. She went quickly on.

  ‘Of course we realize now it was a perfect cover for Maurice. If we were to play well-brought-up young ambassador’s daughters in 1914 … we innocently trotted off for lessons in deportment. Had clothes fittings. All the Lily costumes were made in London. Then in May we came out. He met us in Athens and said the rest of the company wouldn’t assemble for a fortnight. He had warned us, so we weren’t surprised. He took us on a cruise with him. To Rhodes and Crete. On the Arethusa. His yacht.’

  ‘Which he never brings here?’

  ‘It’s usually at Nauplia.’

  ‘In Athens – you stayed in his house?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s got one there. He says he hasn’t. We stayed at the Grande Bretagne.’

  ‘No office?’

  ‘I know.’ She contracted her mouth self-accusingly. ‘But we’d been told only the location shooting would take place here. And the interiors in Beirut. He showed us set designs.’ She hesitated. ‘It was a new world for us, Nicholas. If we hadn’t been so green. And so excited. And he did introduce us to two people. The Greek actor he said was going to play the poet. And the director. Another Greek. We all had dinner … actually we rather liked them both. There was lots of talk about the film.’

  ‘You didn’t check on them?’

  ‘We were only there a couple of nights – then off in the yacht with Maurice. They were to come straight here.’

  ‘But never did?’

  ‘We’ve never seen them again.’ She picked a loose thread from the hem of her skirt. ‘As a matter of fact we did think it was odd there was no publicity, but they even had a reason for that. Apparently here if you say you’re going to make a film you get hundreds of extras turning up in hope of a job.’

  By chance I knew that was true. Some three months before a Greek film unit had been working on Hydra. Two of the school waiters had run away in the hope of being hired by them. It had been a minor scandal for a couple of days. I didn’t tell Julie, but smiled with the secret knowledge.

  ‘You came here.’

  ‘After a lovely cruise. But that’s when the madness began. Hardly forty-eight hours. Already we’d both realized there was something subtly different about Maurice. Because of the cruise, in so many ways we felt closer to him … I suppose we’ve both missed not having a father since 1943. He couldn’t be that, but it was a little like finding a kind of fairy uncle. Being alone with him so much, knowing we could trust him. And we had fascinating evenings. Enormous arguments. About life, love, literature, the theatre … everything. Except when we tried to discover his past, then a sort of curtain came down. You know how it is. Things you really only see in retrospect. How shall I put it – it was all so civilized on the boat. Then suddenly here it was as if he owned us. We somehow weren’t his guests any more.’

  Again she sought my eyes, as if I must be blaming her for liking anything about the old man. She had lain back on an elbow, and her voice had dropped. Now and then she would touch her hair back from where the breeze carried it across her cheek.

  ‘I know the feeling.’

  ‘The first thing was… we wanted to go and see the village. But he said no, he wanted to make the film as quietly as possible. But it was too quiet. No one else here, no sign of generators, lights, kliegs, all the things they’d need. No production unit. And this feeling that Maurice was watching us. There was something in the way he began to smile. As if he knew something we didn’t. And didn’t have to hide it any more.’

  ‘I know that exactly.’

  ‘It was our second afternoon here. June – I was sleeping-tried to go for a walk. She got to the gate and suddenly this silent Negro -we’d never seen him before – stepped out in the path and stopped her. He wouldn’t let her pass, wouldn’t answer her. Of course she was petrified. She came back at once and we marched off to Maurice.’ Her eyes lingered a dry moment on mine. ‘Then he told us.’ She looked down at the rug. ‘Not quite straight out. He could see we were … obviously. He put us through a sort of catechism. Had he ever behaved improperly, had he not honoured all that the contracts stipulated in financial terms, didn’t the relationship we’d established on the cruise … you know. Then he did come out with it. Yes, he had misled us about the film, but not totally. He did need the services of two accomplished and highly intelligent – his adjectives – young actresses. We must please listen. He swore blind that if, having listened, we were unconvinced, then

  ‘You could go.’

  She nodded. ‘So we made the mistake of listening. It went on for hours, in the end. The gist of it was that though he was truly interested in the theatre – really does own this film studio in the Lebanon – he had remained much more the doctor than he’d led us to believe. That his field had been psychiatry. He even said that he’d studied under Jung.’

  ‘I’ve had that.’

  ‘I know so little about Jung. Did you think … ?
’

  ‘I was convinced at the time.’

  ‘So were we. In the end, and rather against our will. But that day. He kept talking about our helping him cross a frontier to a new world that was half art and half science. A unique psychological and philosophical adventure. What might be an extraordinary voyage into the human unconscious. Those were all phrases he used. Of course we wanted to know what lay behind all the fine words – what we were actually expected to do. Then for the first time he mentioned you. That he wanted to mount a situation in which we two were to play parts rather like the ones in the original Three Hearts story. And you, without realizing it, would play the Greek poet.’

  ‘But Christ Almighty, you must have –’

  She tilted her head, looked away a moment, beyond the words to express it. ‘Nicholas, we were flabbergasted. And yet in some way … I don’t know, it had somehow always been there. You know, real theatre people are generally rather silly and superficial offstage. And Maurice … I remember June said something about feeling insulted. How dare he think he could buy people just because he was so rich. It was the nearest I’ve ever seen him to being caught on the raw. Hurt. He made a long speech, and I know for once it was sincere, about the guilt he’d always felt over his money. How his only real passion was to know, to extend human knowledge. How his one dream was to realize a long-held theory, how it was not a selfishness, a mere strange whim … as far as genuineness in that way was concerned, he really was rather impressive. He even silenced June in the end.’

  ‘You must have asked what the theory was.’

  ‘Over and over again. But he came up with the same old thing. If we knew, we would contaminate the purity of the experiment. His words again. He did give us more analogies than we’ve ever had since. In one way it was to be a sort of fantastic extension of the Stanislavski method. Improvising realities more real than reality. You were to be like a man following a mysterious voice, several voices, through a forest of alternative possibilities – who wouldn’t even know themselves … since they were us … what their alternatives really meant. Another parallel was a play, but without a writer or an audience. Only actors.’

  ‘And in the end – can we be told then?’

  ‘He’s promised that from the beginning.’

  ‘Me as well?’

  ‘He must be dying to know what you’re really feeling and thinking. Since you’re at the centre of it all. The chief guinea-pig.’

  ‘Obviously he won you over that day.’

  ‘We spent a night talking it over alone. One minute we would, the next we wouldn’t. In the end June decided to make a little test. “We came down the next morning and said we wanted to go home, as soon as possible. He argued and argued, but we were adamant. In the end he said very well, he’d have the yacht come from Nauplia and take us to Athens. But we said no. This day, now. We’d catch the steamer back to Athens.’

  ‘And he let you go?’

  ‘We packed, he took us and our luggage round the island in the boat. He was absolutely silent, he didn’t say a word. All I could think about was losing the sunlight, everything around us. Dreary old London. It came to the point when we were only a hundred yards from the steamer. I looked at June

  ‘And bit the apple.’ She nodded. ‘Had he wanted the money back?’

  ‘No. That was another thing. And he was so delighted. He didn’t blame us at all.’ She sighed. ‘He said it proved his choice was right.’

  Through all this I had waited for a reference to the past, to my own certain knowledge that Conchis had now devoted at least three summers to his ‘long-held theory’, whatever it really was. But I held my tongue. Perhaps Julie sensed that I remained sceptical.

  ‘That story last night. About Seidevarre. I think that’s some kind of clue. The place of mystery in life. Not taking anything for granted. A world where nothing is certain. That’s what he’s trying to create here.’

  ‘With himself cast as God.’

  ‘But not out of vanity. Out of intellectual curiosity. As a hypothesis. To see how we react. And not one kind of god. Several.’

  ‘He keeps telling me hazard rules everything. But you can’t knowingly pretend to be God as Hazard.’

  ‘I think he means us to realize that.’ She added, ‘He even jokes about it sometimes. We see far less of him, ever since you appeared. Much more only to do with whatever’s happening. It’s as if he’s withdrawn. He says it. We can’t expect to question God.’

  I surveyed her bent head, the line of her body, her closeness; and almost heard Conchis’s voice answering my doubt of hazard. Then why are you here with this girl? Or, Does it matter, as long as you are here with her?

  ‘June says he questions you about me.’

  Her eyes went skywards a moment. ‘You’ve no idea. It’s not only you. What 7 feel. Whether I believe you … even what I think’s going on in his, Maurice’s, mind. You can’t imagine.’

  ‘It must have been obvious I was no actor.’

  ‘It wasn’t at all. I thought you were brilliant. Acting as if you couldn’t act.’ She turned and lay on her stomach, head towards me. ‘We’ve long realized that the first line he gave us – that we should mystify you – was a blind. According to the script we deceive you. But the deceiving deceives us even more.’

  ‘This script?’

  ‘“Script” is a joke. He tells us roughly when to appear and disappear – in terms of exits and entries. The sort of atmosphere to create. Sometimes lines.’

  ‘That theological talk last night?’

  ‘Yes. He asked me to say that.’ She gave a little half-apologetic glance up. ‘And I do believe it a little, anyway.’

  ‘But otherwise you improvise?’

  ‘All along he says that if things don’t go quite as planned it doesn’t matter. As long as we keep to the main development.’ She said, ‘It’s also all about role-playing. How people behave in situations they don’t understand. I told you. He has said that’s part of it.’

  ‘One thing’s obvious. He wants us to think he’s putting all sorts of obstacles between us. Then gives us all these opportunities to destroy them,’

  ‘To begin with there was no talk of getting you to fall in love with me except in a very distant nineteen-fifteeny sort of way. Then by that second week he persuaded me that I had to make some compromise between my 1915 false self and your 1953 true one. He asked me what I’d do if you wanted to kiss me.’ She shrugged. ‘One’s kissed men on stage. In the end I said, If it was absolutely necessary. That second Sunday I hadn’t decided. That’s why I put on that dreadful act.’

  ‘It was a nice act.’

  ‘That first conversation with you. I had terrible trac. Far worse than I’ve ever had on a real stage.’

  ‘But you forced yourself to let me kiss you.’

  ‘Only because I thought I had to.’ I followed the hollow of her arched back. She had raised one blue-stockinged foot backwards in the air and, chin cupped in her hands, was avoiding my eyes. She said, ‘I think for him it’s like some mathematical proposition. Except that we’re all x, and he can put us where he likes in his equation.’ There was a little silence. ‘I’m not being honest. I wanted to know what it was like being kissed by you.’

  ‘Despite the adverse propaganda.’

  ‘That didn’t begin till after that Sunday afternoon. Though he had said all along that I mustn’t get emotionally involved with you.’

  She stared at the rug. A yellow butterfly hovered over us, then glided away.

  ‘Did he give a reason?’

  ‘Yes. That one day I might have to make you … dislike me.’ She stared down. ‘Because you’d have to start feeling attracted to June. It all goes back to the ridiculous Three Hearts thing again. The poet character did transfer his affections. One sister was fickle, the other caught him on the rebound … you know.’ She added, ‘He does keep running you down terribly. To both of us. As if he’s apologizing to the hounds for having provided such an awful fox. Whic
h is palpably absurd. Especially when you’ve done all the hunting.’ She looked up. ‘Do you remember that speech he gave me, when I was Lily, about your having no poetry? No humour, and all the rest? I’m sure it was meant just as much for me as for you.’

  ‘But why should he drive us together?’

  She said nothing for a moment. ‘I don’t think the Three Hearts story means anything. But there’s a much greater work of literature that may.’ She left a pause for me to guess, then murmured, ‘Yesterday afternoon, after my little scene. Another magician once sent a young man hewing wood.’

  ‘I missed that. Prospero and Ferdinand.’

  ‘Those lines I recited.’

  ‘He also brought it up on my very first visit here. Before I even knew you existed.’ I noticed she was avoiding my eyes. It was not, given the end of The Tempest, difficult to guess why. I murmured, ‘He can’t have known we’d

  ‘I know. It’s just … ‘ she shook her head. ‘That I’m his to give.’ She added, ‘Not you.’

  ‘And he certainly has a Caliban.’

  She sighed. ‘I know.’

  ‘Which reminds me. This hiding-place of yours.’

  ‘Nicholas, I can’t show you. If we are being watched, they’ll see.’

  ‘It’s close to here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At least you can tell me where.’ She seemed embarrassed in a different way now; again avoided my eyes. ‘Supposing you were in trouble.’

  She smiled. ‘If we were earmarked for a fate worse than death … I think it would have happened by now.’

  ‘But why can’t I know? You promised.’

  ‘I still promise. But please not now.’ She must have heard the sharpness in my voice, because she reached out and touched my hand. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve broken so many other promises to Maurice this last hour. I feel I ought to keep one.’

  ‘Is it so important?’

  ‘Not at all. Except he says he wants to surprise you with it one day. I don’t know how.’

  I was puzzled, yet in a way it was additional proof of her story; a contrariness that confirmed it. I left a little silence, as a test, knowing that liars hate silence. But she passed that.