by John Fowles
‘Yes.’
‘In spite of your note?’
He stared at me, then down at my hand – my battle-wound from the Nazi incident ten days previously. It was scarred and still red from the daubings of mercurochrome the school nurse had put on it.
‘You must be careful. There is always the danger of tetanus.’
I smiled grimly. ‘I intend to be.’
No apologies, no explanations, not even answers to questions: it was very clear that whatever he might have told the girls, he was not finished with trying to bamboozle me. Behind him, through the window, I saw Maria pass with a tray. I also saw something else. The old photograph of ‘Lily’ had disappeared from the cabinet of obscene antiquities. I put my duffel-bag on the floor, then folded my arms and gave him another thin smile.
‘I had a talk with Barba Dimitraki the other day.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I understand I have more fellow-victims than I thought.’
‘Victims?’
‘Whatever you call people who are made to suffer without being given the choice.’
‘That sounds like an excellent definition of man.’
‘I’m more interested in a definition of someone who seems to think he is God.’
At last he smiled, as if he took as a compliment what had clearly been said sarcastically. Then he came round the harpsichord towards me.
‘Let me see this hand of yours.’ I lifted it impatiently. It had been badly grazed along the knuckles, but it was largely healed now. He examined it, asked if there had been any septicaemia. Then he looked me in the eyes. ‘This was not intended. At least you will accept that?’
‘I’m not accepting anything any more, Mr Conchis. Except the truth.’
‘You may find you were happier not knowing it.’
‘I’ll risk that.’
He measured the look in my eyes, then gave a little shrug.
‘Very well. Let us have tea.’
I followed him out under the colonnade. He stood to pour, waved me rather impatiently to my chair opposite. I sat. He waved again at the food. ‘Please.’ I took a sandwich, but spoke before I started eat-ingit.
‘I thought the girls were going to hear the truth with me.’
‘They know it already.’ He sat down.
‘Including the fact that you forged a letter from me to Julie?’
‘It is her letters to you that are the forgeries.’
I noted that plural. He must have guessed she had been writing, but had guessed wrong as to the quantity. I smiled. ‘Sorry. I’ve been bitten once too often.’
He looked down, then smoothed, I fancied a shade uneasily, obviously not knowing the full extent of the rapport between Julie and myself, the edge of the table-cloth. He gave me his grave eyes.
‘What do you think I am doing?’
‘Taking some infernal liberties.’
‘Were you ever forced to return here? To come here in the first place?’
‘Now you’re being naive. You know damn well that no normal person could have stayed away.’ I raised my scarred hand. ‘And in spite of this, I’m very far from being ungrateful. But stage one of the masque, experiment, whatever you call it, is over.’ I smiled at him. ‘Your tame white rats have tumbled.’ I could see he didn’t understand the slang use of that last word. I said, ‘Fallen flat on their faces. But see no reason for repeating the process until they know “why.’
Again he searched my eyes. I remembered something June had said: He wants us to be mysteries to him as well. But it was only too clearly a very limited freedom and mystery he wanted in us; however large a maze the scientist builds, its purpose is still to allow him to watch every move. He seemed to come to a decision.
‘You learnt from Barba Dimitraki that I had a small private theatre here before the war?’
‘Yes.’
He leant back. ‘During the war, when I had a great deal of time to think, and no friends to amuse me, I conceived a new kind of drama. One in which the conventional separation between actors and audience was abolished. In which the conventional scenic geography, the notions of proscenium, stage, auditorium, were completely discarded. In which continuity of performance, either in time or place, was ignored. And in which the action, the narrative was fluid, with only a point of departure and a fixed point of conclusion. Between those points the participants invent their own drama.’ His mesmeric eyes pinned mine. ‘You will find that Artaud and Pirandello and Brecht were all thinking, in their different ways, along similar lines. But they had neither the money nor the will – and doubtless, not the time – to think as far as I did. The element they could not bring themselves to discard was the audience.’
I gave him an openly sceptical smile. This did make slightly more sense than his previous ‘explanations’, but he apparently remained ludicrously blind to the fact that he had destroyed even the remotest hope of my ever believing anything he said again – that is, he trotted out this new story with his habitual conviction, as if I could not possibly not swallow it. isee.
‘We are all actors here, my friend. None of us is what we really are. We all lie some of the time, and some of us all the time.’
‘Except me.’
‘You have much to learn. You are as far from your true self as that Egyptian mask our American friend wore is from his true face.’
I gave him a warning look. ‘He’s not my American friend.’
‘If you had seen him play Othello, you would not say that. He is a very accomplished young actor.’
‘He must be. I thought he was meant to be a mute.’
‘Then I have proved my praise.’
‘Rather a waste of such talent.’ He sat watching me: the old humourlessly amused look. I said, ‘Your bank balance must get some surprises.’
‘The tragedy of being very rich is that one’s bank balance is incapable of giving one surprises. Pleasant or otherwise. But I confess that this was to be the most ambitious of our creations.’ He added, ‘For the reason that for me there may not be another year.’
‘Your heart?’
‘My heart.’
But he looked immortally tanned and fit; in any case, distanced any sympathy.
‘Why do you say “was to be”?’
‘Because you have proved incapable of playing your part properly.’
I grinned; it was becoming absurd. ‘It might have helped if I’d known what it was.’
‘You were given many indications.’
‘Look, Mr Conchis, I know what you’ve been saying to Julie about the rest of this summer. I didn’t come here to be provoked into a quarrel with you. So can we drop this ridiculous nonsense about my having failed you in some way? Either you meant me to fail or I haven’t failed. There’s no other alternative.’
‘I am telling you, as the director, if you like, that you have failed to gain a part. But if it is any consolation, I will also tell you that even if you had gained it, it would not have brought you what you wish … the young woman you find so seductive. That was always to be the fixed point of conclusion this summer.’
I’d like to hear that from her.’
‘It is you who would not have wanted to see her again. The comedy is over.’
‘But I intend to sec the actress home afterwards.’
‘She has promised that, no doubt.’
‘In ways infinitely more credible than yours.’
‘Her promises are worth nothing. All here is artifice. She is acting, amusing herself with you. Playing Olivia to your Malvolio.’
‘And I suppose her name is not Julie Holmes?’
‘Her real first name is Lily.’
I grinned so broadly that I had once again to admire his ability to keep a straight face. In the end I looked down.
‘Where are they? Can I see them now?’
‘They are in Athens. You will not see either Lily or Rose again.’
‘Rose?’ I said it with a sarcastic incredulity, but he simply nodded. ‘You
’re out of touch. No one calls girls of their age by names like that any more.’
‘You will not see them again.’
‘Oh yes I will. One, you want me to see them again. Two, even if for some reason you didn’t, and whatever lies you’ve cooked up to keep them in Athens this weekend, nothing can prevent me from seeing Julie finally. And three, you have absolutely no business meddling in our private feelings about each other.’
‘I agree. If they were equally real on both sides.’
I made myself sound less aggressive.
‘I also know you’re far too humane a man to think you can command people’s emotions so easily.”
‘It is simpler than you think. When you know the plot.’
‘The present plot’s ruined. The Three Hearts thing. You know that even better.’ I tried one last appeal to him. ‘I know you’ve admitted as much to the girls, so what’s the point of trying to make me think you haven’t?’ He said nothing. I put on my most reasonable voice. ‘Mr Conchis, we need hardly any convincing. We’re all happy to admit that we’re a little bit under your spell. Within limits we’re only too delighted to go on with whatever you have planned next.’
‘There is no place for limits in the meta-theatre.’
‘Then you shouldn’t involve ordinary human beings in it.’
That seemed to register. He looked down at the table between us, and for a few moments I felt that I had won. But then his eyes were on me again, and I knew I hadn’t.
‘Take my advice. Go back to England and make it up with this girl you spoke of. Marry her and have a family and learn to be what you are.’ I looked away. I wanted to shout at him that Alison was dead; and largely because he had woven Julie’s life into mine. I trembled on the brink of telling him that I wanted no more deceptions, no more of this futile double-talk … but I kept quiet. I knew my conduct there did not want his inevitable examination.
‘Is that how you learn what you are? Marrying and having a family?’
‘Why not?’
‘A steady job and a house in the suburbs?’
‘It is how most people live.’
‘I’d rather die.’
He gave a shrug of regret, but as if he didn’t really care any longer who I was or what I felt. Suddenly he stood.
‘We will meet again for dinner.’
‘I’d like to see your yacht.’
‘That is not possible.’
‘I want to talk to the girls.’
‘I have told you. They are in Athens.’ Then he said, ‘Tonight I intend to tell you something that is for our sex alone. Womankind has no place in it.’
The last chapter: I had already guessed what that meant.
‘What happened in the war?’
‘What happened in the war.’ He gave me a little nod. ‘Until dinner.’
He turned and marched indoors, and that was that. I was angry with him, yet it was more an anger of impatience than an anger of fear. I supposed Julie and I had between us in some way spoilt his fun, had seen through him in a way he did not like – perhaps more quickly than he had expected; and given rise to this infantile old man’s pique. I knew the girls were on the yacht; that even if I didn’t see them this evening, I would see them the next day. I picked up a cake and ate it thoughtfully. On top of everything else, there was my old sense of gravity, of the nature of probability … one didn’t make such elaborate preparations for a summer’s entertainment, only to call it off when it was getting interesting. We must continue; all I had just experienced was a bout of bluffing in the early part of a poker-game. The real betting was still to come.
I remembered the lunch, at this same table, a fortnight before, then looked round outside the colonnade. Perhaps the sisters were waiting there now, somewhere in the pines… it might all have been no more than his perverse way of making me look. I took my things upstairs to my room; searched under the pillow, in the wardrobe, thinking that Julie might have left some little message. But there was nothing. Then I went out.
I strolled all round the domaine, in the windless air. I waited in all the previous places. I kept on turning, looking backwards, sideways, listening. But the landscape seemed silent, and nothing and no one appeared. Even on the yacht there was no sign of life, though I noticed that the little powerboat was in the water, moored by a rope ladder amidships. The theatre seemed truly empty; and like all empty theatres, as the old devil no doubt intended, it became in the end both flat and a little frightening.
We were to have dinner under the colonnade, not upstairs as usual. The table, laid for two, had been placed at its western end, looking out over the trees and Moutsa down below. Another table stood at the front, by the central steps, with sherry and ouzo, water and a bowl of olives. I had almost finished my second glass when the old man appeared. Dusk was fading into night. It was very still, dead air over everything.
I had decided while I waited to be more diplomatic. I suspected that the angrier I became, the more pleased he secretly was. I resigned myself to not seeing the girls; and to pretending that I accepted his explanation. He came silently to where I stood, and I smiled at him.
‘May I get you something?’
‘A little sherry. Thank you.’
I poured half a glass and handed it to him.
‘I’m sincerely sorry if we have spoilt your plans.’
‘My plans are whatever happens.’ He silently toasted me. ‘You cannot spoil that.’
‘But you must have known we would see through the parts you gave us.’
He looked out to sea. ‘The object of the meta-theatre is precisely that – to allow the participants to see through their first roles in it. But that is only the catastasis.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what that word means.’
‘It is what precedes the final act, or catastrophe, in classical tragedy.’ He added, ‘Or comedy. As the case may be.’
‘The case depending on?’
‘Whether we learn to see through the roles we give ourselves in ordinary life.’
I sprang my next question on him, out of a silence, in his own style.
‘To what extent is your dislike of me a part of your part?’
He was undisconcerted. ‘Liking is not important. Between men.’
I felt the ouzo in me. ‘Even so, you don’t like me?’
His dark eyes turned on mine. ‘I am to answer?’ I nodded. ‘Then no. But I like very few people. And even fewer of your age and sex. Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society. It is one I have long banished, at least from my life here. You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.’
I left a pause. ‘You sound like a certain kind of surgeon. A lot more interested in the operation than the patient.’
‘I should not like to be in the hands of a surgeon who did not take that view.’
‘Then your … meta-theatre is really a medical one?’
Maria’s shadow appeared behind him as she brought a soup-tureen to the white-and-silver table in its pool of lamplight.
‘You may see it so. I prefer to think of it as a metaphysical one.’ Maria announced that we could take our seats. He acknowledged her words with a little bow, but did not move. ‘It is above all an attempt to escape from such categories.’
‘More an art than a science?’
‘All good science is art. And all good art is science.’
With this fine-sounding but hollow apophthegm he put down his glass and moved towards the table. I spoke at his back as I followed.
‘My guess is that, in your view, I’m the real schizophrenic here.’
He did not answer until he was at his chair.
‘Real schizophrenics have no choice in what they are.’
I stood opposite him. ‘Then I’m an unreal schizophrenic?’
Just for a moment he relaxed a little, as if I had said something ch
ildish but amusing. He gestured.
‘It does not matter now. Let us eat.’
Almost as soon as we had started I heard the footsteps of two or three people behind me on the gravel round by Maria’s cottage. I glanced back from my egg-lemon soup, but the table had been placed, no doubt deliberately, where it was impossible to see.
‘Tonight I wish to illustrate my story,’ said Conchis.
‘I thought you’d done that already. And only too vividly.’
‘These are real documents.’
He indicated that I should go on eating, he would say nothing more. Then I heard footsteps on the terrace outside his bedroom, above our heads. There was a tiny squeal, the scrape of metal. I finished my soup, and while we waited for Maria, tried again to mollify him.
‘I’m sorry I’m not going to hear more of your life before the war.’
‘You have heard the essential.’
‘As I understood the Norwegian story, you rejected science. Yet apparently you went into psychiatry.’
He gave a little shrug. ‘I dabbled in it.’
‘That glimpse I had of your papers suggested more than dabbling.’
