by John Fowles
I remained staring at the edge of the table-cloth, recalling that impression I had had of a timidity, a virginity; and realizing that the temperamental cause of that could equally well be clinical … her seeming physical innocence, a lifelong and enforced ignorance of men in sexual situations. It was absurd. I could not absolutely disbelieve him.
‘And the second thing?’
‘Is embarrassing to me, but it must be said. One of the tragedies of Julie’s situation is that she is a normally sexed young woman, yet with no normal outlet for her feelings. As a personable young male, you represent such an outlet – which is in itself of considerable benefit to her. Not to put too fine a point upon it, she needs someone to flirt with … to exercize her physical charms on. I gather she has already achieved some success in that way.’
‘You saw me kiss her just now. But as you didn’t warn me – ‘
He cut me short with a raised hand. ‘You are not to blame. If a pretty girl asks you to kiss her … naturally. But now you know the facts, I must point out the very difficult, and delicate, role I am asking you to play. I should not want you to repel every advance she makes, every hint of physical intimacy, but you must accept that there are certain bounds that cannot be transgressed. I cannot allow that, for obvious medical reasons. If – I speak purely hypothetically – some situation should arise where you found temptation too strong, I should be obliged to intervene. She even managed to convince Mitford last year that she would be a normal young woman if he would only take her away and marry her … not that she is scheming. When she says such things, she believes them. That is why her lies can be so convincing.’
I wanted to smile. Even if he was telling me the truth about the rest, I could not believe she would have had any sympathy for the idiotic Mitford. But there was something so obsessively severe and convinced of his own role in the old man’s eyes that I lacked the nerve to mock him.
‘I wish you’d told me all this before.’
‘That I did not you must blame partly on yourself. I did not anticipate quite such a quick response from the patient.’ He smiled, then leant back a little. ‘There is one other consideration, Nicholas. I should most emphatically not have embarked on all this if I had not felt sure that you had no emotional attachment elsewhere. From what you said –’
‘That’s over. If you’re talking about that radiogram … I’m not going to meet her in Athens.’
He looked down, shook his head. ‘Of course it is not my business. But what you said of the young lady – of your deeper feelings towards her – impressed me. I must say I think you would be foolish to turn down this offer of renewed friendship.’
‘With respect … it really isn’t your business.’
‘I should regret it very much if your decision were in any way coloured by what is happening here.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Nevertheless, I think it is better, now that you understand what is really involved, that you should reflect on whether you wish to continue your visits here. I should fully understand if you decided to have no more to do with us.’ He stopped me speaking. ‘In any case I wish to give my unfortunate godchild some respite. I have decided to take her away for ten days or so.’ He consulted me as if I were some psychiatric colleague. ‘Over-stimulation has a negative therapeutic value.’
I felt bitterly disappointed, and mentally damned Alison and her accursed radiogram. At the same time I was determined not to show it.
‘I don’t have to think about going on. I want to.’
He contemplated me, and finally nodded – the old devil, as if it were for him to accept my genuineness. ‘All the same, I recommend further thought – and an enjoyable weekend with what sounds a charming young woman in Athens.’ I drew a breath, and he went on quickly. ‘I am a doctor, Nicholas. Permit me to be frank. Young men were not designed for the celibate life you lead here.’
‘I’ve already paid to discover that.’
‘As I recall. Then for all the more reason.’
‘And the weekend after next?’
‘We will see. Let us leave it like that.’ He suddenly stood up and extended his hand, which I took. ‘Good. Excellent. I am so glad the air is cleared between us.’ He put his hands on his hips. ‘Now. Do you feel like some hard work?’
‘No. But take me to it.’
He led me round to one of the corners of the vegetable garden. Part of a wall supporting a terrace had collapsed and he wanted it built up again. He gave instructions. The dry earth had to be broken up with a pickaxe, the stones lifted back, arranged, packed with the earth, which had to be watered to bind the wall together again. As soon as I started work, he disappeared. The breeze was still blowing, though it was the time of day it normally dropped, and it was cooler than usual; but I was soon sweating like a pig. I guessed the real reason I had been turned labourer: I had to be kept busy, out of the way, while he found Julie and tried to discover exactly what had gone on between us … or perhaps congratulated her on playing her new part so well.
After some forty minutes I gave myself a break to have a cigarette. Suddenly Conchis appeared on the terrace above where I sat with my already aching back against a pine-trunk. He looked sardonically down.
‘Labour is man’s crowning glory.’
‘Not this man’s.’
‘I quote Marx.’
I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough.
‘I quote blisters.’
‘Never mind.’
He remained staring down at me, as if I pleased him, or as if something he had learnt of me since tea pleased him; as clowns sometimes please philosophers. I asked a question I had been saving up.
‘I’m to believe nothing of her stories – am I to believe anything of yours about your past?’
I had thought it might offend him, but his smile deepened.
‘Human truths are always complex.’
I smiled warily back. ‘I’m not quite sure what the difference is between what you’re doing here and the thing you hate so much -fiction.’
‘I do not object to the principles of fiction. Simply that in print, in books, they remain mere principles.’ He said, ‘Let me pass on an axiom about our species, Nicholas: Never take another human being literally.’ He added, ‘Even when they are so ignorant that they do not know what “literally” means.’
‘There’s no danger of that. Here, anyway.’
He looked down, then straight at me. ‘What I am employing is a very new psychiatric technique. It has been only very recently developed in America. They call it situation therapy.’
‘I’d like to read those papers of yours.’
‘Which reminds me. I looked for them just now. I seem to have mislaid them.’
It was shameless, he made it sound like a blandly deliberate lie; as if he wished me to stay in doubt.
‘Too bad.’
He folded his arms. ‘I have been thinking … your friend. As you perhaps know, I own the house that Hermes lives in in the village. He uses only the ground floor. It occurred to me that you might like to bring her to Phraxos for a while. She is most welcome to the upper floor. It is primitive. But sufficiently furnished. And quite spacious.’
That really did take the wind out of my sails, though it seemed a colossal nerve rather than a kindness… to have taken all this trouble to net me, and now to be offering every kind of escape. He must have been so sure that he had me, and for a moment I felt like taking the offer; not that I wanted Alison within a hundred miles of the island, but just to spite him.
‘Then I couldn’t help here any more.’
‘Perhaps you could both help here.’
‘She wouldn’t give up her job. And I really don’t want to be involved with her any more.’ I added, ‘But thanks all the same.’
‘Well. The offer stands.’
He turned rather abruptly away then, as if this time I had offended him. I set to again, expending on the job my growing sense of frustration. Another
forty minutes later the wall was back to something like its proper shape. I carried the tools to a shed behind the cottage, then went round to the front of the house. Conchis sat there under the colonnade, quietly reading a Greek newspaper.
‘Is it done? Thank you.’
I made one last effort.
‘Mr Conchis, you’ve got the whole thing with this other girl ludicrously wrong. It was just an affaire. It’s past history now.’
‘But she wishes to see you again?’
‘Nine tenths out of curiosity. You know what women are like. And probably just because the man she now lives with is out of London for a few days.’
‘Forgive me. I will interfere no further. You must do as you feel. Of course.’
I turned away, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut, when he said my name. I looked back at him from the open doors into the music room. He gave me a powerful yet paternal look.
‘Go to Athens, my friend.’ He glanced towards the trees to the east. ‘Guai a chi la tocca.’
I had very little Italian, but I knew what he meant. I went on up to my room, undressed; then to the bathroom and the salt-water shower. In an odd way I knew what he was really saying. She was not for me because she was not for me; not because she was a ghost, or a schizophrenic, or anything else in the masque. It was a sort of ultimate warning—off; but you can’t warn off a man with gambling in his ancestry.
I lay naked on my bed after the shower, staring at the ceiling, trying to evoke Julie’s face, the curve of her eyelashes, the feel of her hand, her mouth, that frustratingly brief pressure of her body as we kissed; and her sister’s body seen the night before. I imagined Julie coming to me there, in the bedroom; or in the pine-forest, darkness, a wildness, a willing rape … I became the satyr; but then, remembering what had happened to him, realizing now what lay behind that little bit of classical hocus-pocus, I opted for detumescence and dressing. I too was beginning to learn to wait.
36
I did not enjoy dinner. Once again he tripped me up, by handing me a book as soon as I appeared.
‘My papers. They were on the wrong shelf
It wasn’t a very thick book, and cheaply bound in green cloth, without indication of the contents. I opened it – the page sizes and types of print differed, they were obviously pieces taken ad hoc from various journals and bound up. The texts seemed to be in French throughout. I saw a date: 1936. One or two titles. Early prognosis of mild schizophrenia. The influence of profession on syndromes of paranoia. A psychiatric experiment in the use of Stramonium. I looked up.
‘What’s Stramonium?’
‘Datura. The thorn-apple. It produces hallucinations.’
I put the book down. ‘I look forward to reading it.’
In a way it turned out to be an unnecessary proof. By the time dinner was ended I was at least convinced that Conchis had far more than even a knowledgeable layman’s familiarity with psychiatry; and also that he had known Jung. That did not necessarily mean, of course, that I had to believe him about Julie. I tried to bring her in, but he was adamant – the less I knew of her case, at this stage, the better … though he promised that by the end of the summer I should be given the full picture. All the time I wanted to challenge him, but I was frightened of the growing resentment I was beginning to store against him: that things might explode into the kind of confrontation where I could only lose everything – be firmly told never to return. Then I sensed that he was in any case prepared, more than ready to throw up further clouds of obfuscating sepia if I really pressed him. My only defence was, as best as I could, to answer enigma with enigma; and my consolation, an intuition that he avoided all further reference to Athens and Alison for something of the same reason – that he might exasperate me into awkward questions.
So the meal passed – on one level I listened to an impressively shrewd old doctor, on another I was a mouse before a cat. I was also on tenterhooks for Julie to appear; and curious to know what experience I was to have that evening. A lingering aftermath of the meltemi made the lamp between us tremble and glow and fade intermittently, and this seemed to increase the general restlessness. Only Conchis seemed calm and at ease.
After the table had been cleared he poured me a drink from a small carboy-shaped bottle. It was clear, the colour of straw.
‘What’s this?’
‘Raki. From Chios. It is very strong. I want to intoxicate you a little.’
All through the dinner he had also been pressing me to drink more of the heavy rose from Antikythera.
‘To dull my critical faculties?’
‘To make you receptive.’
‘I read your pamphlet.’
‘And thought it was nonsense.’
‘Difficult to verify.’
‘Verification is the only scientific criterion of reality. That does not mean that there may not be realities that are unverifiable.’
‘Did you get any response from your pamphlet?’
‘A great deal. From the wrong people. From the miserable vultures who prey on the human longing for the solution of final mysteries. The spiritualists, the clairvoyants, the cosmopaths, the summerlanders, the blue-islanders, the apportists – all that galère.’ He looked grim. ‘They responded.’
‘But not other scientists?’
‘No.’
I sipped the raki; it was like fire, almost pure alcohol.
‘But you spoke about having proof
‘I had proof. But it was not easily communicable. And I later decided that it was better that it was not communicable, except to a few.’
‘Who you elect.’
‘Whom I elect. This is because mystery has energy. It pours energy into whoever seeks an answer to it. If you disclose the solution to the mystery you are simply depriving the other seekers … ‘ he emphasized the special meaning the word had for me ‘ … of an important source of energy.’
‘No scientific progress?’
‘Of course scientific progress. The solution of the physical problems that face man – that is a matter of technology. But I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution.’
I finished the raki. ‘This is fantastic stuff.’
He smiled, as if my adjective might be more accurate than I meant; raised the bottle.
‘One more glass. Then no more. La dive bouteille is also a poison.’
‘And the experiment begins?’
‘The experience begins. I should like you to take your glass and lie in one of the lounging-chairs. Just here.’ He pointed behind him. I went and pulled the chair there. ‘Lie down. There is no hurry. I want you to look at a certain star. Do you know Cygnus? The Swan? That cross-shaped constellation directly above?’
I realized that he was not going to take the other chaise-longue; and suddenly guessed.
‘Is this … hypnosis?’
‘Yes, Nicholas. There is no need to be alarmed.’
Lily’s warning: ‘Tonight you will understand.’ I hesitated, then lay back.
‘I’m not. But I don’t think I’m very amenable. Someone tried it at Oxford.’
‘We shall see. It is a harmony of wills. Not a contest. Just do as I suggest.’ At least I did not have to stare into those naturally mesmeric eyes. I could not back down; but forewarned is forearmed. ‘You see the Swan?’
‘Yes.’
‘And to the left a very bright star, one of a very obtuse triangle.’
‘Yes.’ I drained down the last of the raki in a gulp; almost choked, then felt it flush through my stomach.
‘That is a star known as alpha Lyrae. In a minute I shall ask you to watch it closely.’ The blue-white star glittered down out of the wind-cleared sky. I looked at Conchis, who was still sitting at the table, but had turned with his back to the sea to face me. I grinned in the darkness.
‘I feel I’m on the couch.’
‘Good. Now lie back. Contract, then relax your muscles a little. Tha
t is why I have given you the raki. It will help. Julie will not appear tonight. So clear your mind of her. Clear your mind of the other girl. Clear your mind of all your perplexities, all your longings. All your worries. I bring you no harm. Nothing but good.’
‘Worries. That’s not so easy.’ He was silent. ‘I’ll try.’
‘It will help if you look at that star. Do not shift your eyes from it. Lie back.’
I began to stare at the star; moved a little to make myself more comfortable. I felt the cloth of my coat with my hand. The walling had made me tired, I began to guess its real purpose, and it was good to lie back and stare up and wait. There was a long silence, several minutes. I shut my eyes for a while, then opened them. The star seemed to float in its own small sea of space, a minute white sun. I could feel the alcohol, but I was perfectly conscious of everything around me, far too conscious to be amenable.
I was perfectly conscious of the terrace, I was lying on the terrace of a house on an island in Greece, there was wind, I could even hear the faint sound of the waves on the shingle down at Moutsa. Conchis began to speak.
‘Now I want you to watch the star, I want you to relax all your muscles. It is very important that you should relax all your muscles. Tense a little. Now relax. Tense … relax. Now watch the star. The name of the star is alpha Lyrae.’
I thought, my God, he is trying to hypnotize me; and then, I must play by the rules, but I’ll lie doggo and pretend I am hypnotized.
‘Are you relaxing yes you are relaxing.’ I noted the lack of punctuation. ‘You are tired so you are relaxing. You are relaxing. You are relaxing. You are watching a star you are watching … ‘ the repetition; I remembered that from before at Oxford. An insane Welshman from Jesus, after a party. But with him it had developed into a staring match.
‘I say you are watching a star a star and you are watching a star. It is that gentle star, white star, gentle star
He went on talking, but all the curtness, the abruptness of his ordinary manner had disappeared. It was as if the lulling sound of the sea, the feel of the wind, the texture of my coat, and his voice dropped out of my consciousness. There was a stage when I was myself looking at the star, still lying on the terrace; I mean aware of lying and watching the star, if not of anything else.
