The Magus

by John Fowles

  ‘Have you lost something? Can I help you?’

  ‘Christ almighty.’

  I climbed closer, stopped six feet from where she still grinned up at me. Her skin was much browner, now approached her sister’s degree of tan. I could see the circle behind her was an iron lid, like a hinged drain-cover. Stones had been cemented all round its upper rim. Julie herself was in a vertical iron tube sunk into the ground. Two wire hawsers ran down from the lid, some counterbalance system. She bit her lips, and curled a beckoning finger.

  ‘Won’t you come into my parlour, said the

  It was apt. There was a real spider on the island that made neat little trapdoors on every bank; I’d watched the boys trying to entice them out. But suddenly her voice and expression changed.

  ‘Oh you poor thing – what’s happened to your hand!’

  ‘He didn’t tell you?’ She shook her head, concerned. ‘Not to worry. It’s past history now.’

  ‘It looks horrid.’

  She climbed out. We stood a moment, then she reached, took the scarred hand and examined it, looked solicitously up into my eyes. I smiled.

  ‘That’s nothing. Wait till you hear the dance he’s led me over this last twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I rather thought he might.’ She looked down at the hand again. ‘But it’s bearable now?’

  ‘When I get over the shock.’ I nodded at the hole in the ground. ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘The Germans. In the war.’

  ‘Oh God. I should have guessed.’

  The observation post … Conchis would have simply concealed the entrance, blocked off the front slits. We went beside it. The hole plunged down into darkness. I could see a ladder, massive counterweights at the end of the wires, a dim patch of concrete floor at the bottom. Julie reached and tipped the lid. It fell smoothly down to ground level, where the incrusted and projecting stones on the upper side fitted the surrounding ones like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. One would never have seen it; one might just, walking over the lid, have noticed an odd fixity about the stones – but even then the neck was in a little prominence one would ordinarily have skirted.

  I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’

  ‘You surely didn’t think; I would –’ but she broke off.

  ‘Just half an hour ago he told me you were his mistress. That I’d never see you again.’

  ‘His mistress!’

  ‘And June as well.’

  It was her turn to be shocked. She stared at me as if I must be testing her in some way, then gave a little puff of protest.

  ‘But you can’t have believed him!’ I received her first serious, or nearly serious, look. ‘If you believed him for a moment I’ll never speak to you again.’

  A moment later my arms were round her and our mouths had met. It was brief, but agreeably convincing. She pulled her head gently away.

  ‘I think we’re being watched.’

  I looked back down to the yacht; and released her body, but not her hands.

  ‘Where’s June?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘I’m beyond guessing.’

  ‘I’ve had a long walk today. A lovely walk.’

  ‘The village? Hermes’s house?’

  ‘We’ve been there since Friday. So close to you. It was awful.’

  ‘Maurice … ?’

  ‘Has lent it to us for the summer.’ Her smile deepened. ‘I know. I’ve been pinching myself as well.’

  ‘Good God. This other thing he was planning?’

  ‘Abandoned. He suddenly announced one evening that he hadn’t time for it. There was some talk about next year, but… ‘ she gave a little shrug. That was to be the cost of our happiness. I sought her eyes.

  ‘You still want to stay?’

  She held my eyes a second, then bowed her head. ‘If you think we could stand each other just as ordinary people. Without all the excitement.’

  ‘That’s so silly I’m not going to answer it.’

  She smiled up. ‘Then it looks as if you’re stuck with me.’

  The siren of the yacht sounded. We turned, hand in hand. It had come opposite us, some three hundred yards offshore. Julie raised an arm and waved; and after a moment I did the same. I could make out Conchis and Joe, with Maria’s black figure between them. They raised their arms and waved back. Conchis called towards a man in the bows. There was an ascending plume of smoke, a report, a tiny black object hurtling skywards. It climbed, slowed, then burst. A shower of incandescent stars glittered for a few moments with an explosive crackle against the azure; then another, then a third. Fireworks, for the end of a theatre. A prolonged moan on the siren, more waving arms. Julie put her hands to her mouth and kissed them out to the yacht, I waved again. Then the long white hull began to curve away from the coast.

  ‘Did he really say I was his kept woman?’

  I told her verbatim. She stared after the yacht.

  ‘What a cheek.’

  ‘I knew it was a put-on. It’s just that dear old poker-face of his.’

  ‘I shall jolly well slap it next time I see him. June’ll go mad.’ But then she smiled at me. ‘Still … ‘ she pulled my hand. ‘That walk. I’m famished.’

  ‘I want to see where you lived.’

  ‘Afterwards. Please let’s eat.’

  We climbed back to where I had left the basket, and installed ourselves under a pine-tree. She undid the sandwiches, I opened the champagne, and lost some of it, it had got too warm. But we toasted each other, then kissed again, and started eating. She wanted to know everything that had happened the day before, and I told her; then everything else, the night manoeuvres, the supposed letter to her from me the week before, my not having been ill.,.

  ‘You did get my real letter from Siphnos?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Actually we wondered if it was some last trick. But he’s been so sweet to us. Ever since our little show-down.’

  I asked her what they’d been doing … in Crete and cruising around. She grimaced. ‘Lying in the sun and getting bored.’

  ‘I can’t think why there had to be the delay.’

  Julie hesitated. ‘He did make one attempt last weekend to sell us the idea of … you know, pushing you off on to June. I suppose he couldn’t quite give up hope on that.’

  ‘Look at this.’ I reached for my duffel-bag and showed her the envelope of money; told her how much it was, what I still felt inclined to do with it. But she was swift to disagree.

  ‘No honestly, you must take it. You’ve earned it, and he’s got so much.’ She smiled. ‘And you may have to start buying me meals soon. Now I’m out of work.’

  ‘He didn’t try and tempt you with more money?’

  ‘He did actually. It was the house in the village and you against the completion of contract money.’

  ‘A bit rough on June?’

  Julie sniffed. ‘She wasn’t allowed a vote.’

  ‘I adore that sun-hat.’

  It was soft, childlike, short-brimmed. She took it off and contemplated it, again like a child, almost gauchely, as if no one had ever paid her physical compliments before. I leant across and kissed her cheek, then put an arm round her shoulders and drew her to me. The yacht was two or three miles away now, disappearing round the end of Phraxos to the east.

  ‘And the grand enigma – not a clue?’

  ‘You’ve no idea. We were almost on our knees to him the other day. But that’s the other price. It was going on in that absurd way, or this. Being left in the dark.’

  ‘I wish to God I knew what happened here last year – and the one before.’

  ‘You haven’t heard from them?’

  ‘Not a word.’ I added, ‘I’d better confess.’ I told her about the letters I had written checking on her, and showed her the one from her bank in London.

  ‘I think that’s absolutely foul of you, Nicholas. Fancy not trusting us.’ She bit her lips. ‘Nearly as foul as June’s ringing up the British Council in
Athens and checking on you.’ I grinned. ‘I made ten bob out of that.’

  ‘Is that all I was worth?’

  ‘All she was worth.’

  I looked to the east. The yacht had disappeared, the sea was empty now, the wind blew gently through the pines above us, shifted wisps of her hair. She had slumped a little against me where I sat with my back to the pine-stem. I felt like one of those rockets, like the champagne we had drunk. I turned her face and we kissed, then lay, still kissing, side by side in the sun-flecked shade. I wanted her, but not so urgently, now that all summer lay ahead. So I contented myself with a hand beneath her shirt on her bare back, and her mouth. In the end she lay half across me, with her lips against my cheek, in silence.

  I whispered, ‘Have you missed me?’

  ‘More than it’s good for you to know.’

  ‘I’d like to lie like this every night of my life.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. Not comfortable enough.’

  ‘Don’t be so literal-minded.’ I held her a little tighter. ‘Say I may. Tonight.’

  She ran fingers through my shirt.

  ‘Was she nice in bed? Your Australian friend?’

  I lay there, chilled a moment, staring up through the pine-branches at the sky beyond, half inclined to tell her … then no, it was better to wait.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about her one day.’

  She pinched my skin gently. ‘I thought you had.’

  ‘Why do you ask, anyway?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘I’m probably not as… you know.’

  I turned and kissed her hair. ‘You’ve already proved you’re much cleverer.’

  She was silent a moment, as if she wasn’t fully reassured.

  ‘I’ve never really been physically in love with anyone before.’

  ‘It’s not an illness.’

  ‘An unknown place.’

  ‘I promise you’ll like it.’

  Another little silence. ‘I wish there was another you. For June.’

  ‘She wants to stay?’

  ‘A little while.’ Then she murmured, ‘That’s the trouble with being twins. You always have the same tastes in everything.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t see eye to eye on men.’

  She kissed my neck. ‘We do on this one.’

  ‘She’s teasing you.’

  ‘I bet you wish we had gone through with Three Hearts.’

  ‘I’m gnashing my teeth in disappointment.’

  There was another pinch, less gentle this time.

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘You’re like a little girl sometimes.’

  ‘It’s how I feel. My toy.’

  ‘Who you’re going to take to bed with you tonight?’

  ‘It’s only a single bed.’

  ‘Then there won’t be room for pyjamas.’

  ‘Actually I’ve given up wearing them here.’

  ‘You’re driving me wild.’

  ‘I drive myself wild. Lying naked there thinking about you.’

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘All sorts of wicked things.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t imagine them in words.’

  ‘Gentle things or rough things?’

  ‘Things.’

  ‘Tell me just one.’

  She hesitated, then whispered, ‘I run away and you catch me.’

  ‘What do I do then?’ She said nothing. I reached my hand down her back. ‘Put you over my knees and smack you?’

  ‘Sometimes I have to be very, very slowly seduced.’

  ‘Because you’ve never been made love to before?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘I want to undress you now.’

  ‘Then you’d have to carry me back.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  She leant up on an elbow, then leant across and kissed me, a little smile.

  ‘Tonight. I promise. And June’s waiting for us.’

  ‘Let me see your place first.’

  ‘It’s horrid. Like a tomb.’

  ‘Just one quick dekko.’

  She stared down into my eyes, as if for some reason she was inclined to argue me out of it; then smiled and stood and reached a hand for me. We went back down the steep slope over the sea. Julie stooped and pulled on a stone: the encrusted lid rose, the dark hole gaped. She turned and knelt, felt down with a foot for the top rung of the ladder, then began to clamber down. She reached the bottom some fifteen feet below and her face craned up.

  ‘Be careful. Some of the rungs are worn.’

  I turned and climbed down after her. It was unpleasantly claustrophobic inside the tube. But at the bottom, opposite the ladder, a small square room opened out, about fifteen feet by fifteen. In the poor light I could make out a door in each sidewall and on the side towards the sea, the blocked apertures of what must have once been machine-gun, or observation, slits. A table, three wooden chairs, a small cupboard. There was a fusty staleness in the air, as if silence had a smell.

  ‘Have you got a match?’

  She held out a hurricane lamp, and I lit it. The left wall of the room was painted with a clumsy mural – a beer-cellar scene, foaming steins, bosomy girls with winking eyes. Dim traces showed that there had once been colours, but now it was only the black outlines that remained. It was as remote as an Etruscan wall-painting; of a culture long sunken under time. On the right-hand wall was something more skilful – a perspective street vista that I guessed to be of some Austrian city … Vienna, perhaps. I guessed, too, that Anton had helped to execute it. The two side-doors looked like bulkhead doors aboard a ship. There were massive padlocks on each.

  Julie nodded. ‘That was our room, in there. Joe used the other.’

  ‘What a godawful place. It smells.’

  ‘We used to call it the Earth. Have you ever smelt a fox-earth?’

  ‘Why are the doors locked?’

  ‘I don’t know. They never have been. I suppose there must be people on the island who know the place exists.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘You’re not missing anything. Just costumes. Beds. More ghastly murals.’

  I looked at her in the lamplight. ‘You’re a brave girl. To face this sort of thing.’

  ‘We hated it. So many sour, unhappy men. Locked away here with all that sunlight outside.’

  I touched her hand.

  ‘Okay. I’ve seen enough.’

  ‘Would you put out the lamp?’

  I extinguished it, and Julie turned to climb the ladder to the outside. Slim blue legs, the brilliant daylight dazzling down. I waited a moment at the bottom, to keep clear of her feet, then started after her. The top of her body disappeared.

  And then she screamed my name.

  Someone, perhaps two someones, had sprung from behind the lid and grabbed her arms. She seemed to be lifted, almost jerked bodily out and away – a leg kicked wildly sideways, as if she were trying to hook a foot behind the counterweight wires. My name again, but cut short; a scuffle of stones outside, out of my sight. I clawed violently up the remaining rungs. For one fraction of a second a face appeared in the opening above. A young man with crew-cut blond hair, the sailor I had seen that morning at the house. He saw I was still two rungs from the top, and immediately slammed the lid down. The shocked counterweights rattled against the metal wall by my feet. I bellowed in the sudden pitch darkness.

  ‘For God’s sake! Hey! Wait a minute!’

  I pushed with all my force on the underside of the lid. It gave infinitesimally, as if someone were sitting or standing on it. But it refused to budge at a second attempt. The tube was too narrow for me to apply much upward pressure.

  Once more I strained to heave it up; then listened. Silence. I tried the lid one last time, then gave up and climbed down to the bottom. I struck a match, relit the hurricane-lamp; tried the two massive doors. They were impenetrable. I tore open the cupboard. It was as empty of objects as what had just happened was of reason. Snarling
with rage, I remembered Conchis’s fairy-godfather exit: the gay farewell, the fireworks, the bottle of Krug. Our revels now are ended. But this was Prospero turned insane, maniacally determined never to release his Miranda.

  I stood at the foot of the ladder and seethed, trying to comprehend the sadistic old man’s duplicities: to read his palimpsest. His ‘theatre without an audience’ made no sense, it couldn’t be the explanation. The one thing all actors and actresses craved was an audience. Perhaps what he was doing did spring in part from some theory of the theatre, but he had said it himself: The masque is only a metaphor. So? Some incomprehensible new philosophy: metaphorism? Perhaps he saw himself as a professor in an impossible faculty of ambiguity, a sort of Empson of the event. I thought and thought, and thought again, and arrived at last at nothing but more doubt. It began to extend to Julie and June as well. I returned to the schizophrenia stage. That must be it, it was all planned from the beginning, I was never to have her, always to be tormented, mocked like Tantalus. Yet how could any girl do what she had done – I could still feel her kisses, remember every word of that deliberately erotic little whispered conversation she had initiated – and not mean an iota of it? Except someone who was indeed mentally deranged and in some way aware that her promises need never be met?