The Magus

by John Fowles

  ‘Who is he?’

  She hesitated, then abandoned secrecy. ‘Very nearly what he told you he was. At one stage.’ With one last encouraging pressure, she let go of my hand. ‘He’s the French equivalent of an emeritus professor of psychiatry. Until a year or two ago he was a pillar of the Sorbonne medical school.’ She gave me a quick side-glance. ‘And I wasn’t at Cambridge. I read psychology at London University. Then I went to Paris to do postgraduate work under Maurice. So did Joe, from America. And several of the others here you haven’t met yet.’ She said, ‘Which reminds me … you must have got so many false impressions, but one thing – you must forgive Joe for what he did that evening. He’s really a very intelligent… and gentle person.’ I looked at her: something in her face was shy, and she gave a little confirmatory shrug. ‘Julie isn’t the one of us he might feel masculine about.’

  ‘I’m lost.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll understand very soon. There’s one other thing. Julie wasn’t lying when she told you it was her first summer here. It is. In a way she’s even been a fellow-victim.’

  ‘Yet knowing what was going on?’

  ‘Yes, but … also having to find her way through the maze. We’ve all been through it. In the past. Joe. Me. Everyone else. We do know what it’s like. The being lost. The rejection. The anger. And we all know it’s finally worth it.’

  There were great skittering sheets of lightning behind us, almost continuous. Islands to the east, ten, fifteen miles away, stood palely out, then vanished. The smell of rain was heavy in the air, little scurries of precursory wind. We were walking fast through the village. Somewhere a shutter slammed, but there seemed no one about.

  ‘An experiment in what?’

  Unexpectedly she stopped; made me turn and face her.

  ‘Nicholas, first, you’ve been our most interesting subject yet. Second, all your secret reactions, feelings, guesses … all the things you haven’t even told Julie … are vitally important to us. We have hundreds of questions to ask you. But we don’t want to spoil their validity by giving you all the explanations beforehand. I’m asking you to be patient for just a day or two more.’

  Her eyes were very direct, so direct I looked down from them.

  ‘I’ve got very short on patience.’

  ‘I know it must seem to be asking a lot. But we would be so grateful.’

  I gave no sign of acceptance, but I did not argue any more. We began walking again. She must have sensed my recalcitrance. After a few steps she threw me a sop.

  ‘I’ll give you one clue. Maurice’s lifelong special field has been the nature of the delusional symptoms of insanity.’ She put her hands in her pockets. ‘Psychiatry is getting more and more interested in the other side of the coin – why sane people are sane, why they won’t accept delusions and fantasies as real. Obviously it’s very difficult to explore that if you tell your sane guinea-pig, your very sane guinea-pig in this case, that everything he’s going to be told is an attempt to delude him.’ I said nothing, and she went on. ‘You must be thinking we’re running a very delicate tightrope in medical ethics. We are … aware of that. But our justification is that one day the sane temporary victims like you may have helped some very sick people. Perhaps far more than you can imagine.’

  I let a few steps pass in silence.

  ‘What was the delusion planned for tonight?’

  ‘That I was your last true friend.’ She added quickly, ‘Which wasn’t all a lie. The friend part, anyway.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to buy it.’

  ‘You weren’t really expected to.’ She gave me another quick smile. ‘If you can imagine playing chess, but not to win … merely to see what moves the other person makes.’

  ‘All that Lily and Rose nonsense.’

  ‘The names are a kind of joke. There’s a card in the Tarot pack called the magus. The magician … conjuror. Two of his traditional symbols are the lily and the rose.’

  We came past the hotel into the little square round the main harbour. The lightning made its shuttered facades spring luridly to life, like a stage set… and what she was beginning to tell me, that too was like the lightning: flashes of seeing all, darkness of still doubting it. But as with the real lightning, illumination began to overcome night.

  ‘Why is it Julie’s first year?’

  ‘Her emotional life’s been – I gather she told you.’

  ‘She was at Cambridge?’

  ‘Yes. Her affaire with Andrew really was a disaster. I knew she hadn’t got over it. I thought this might help her. And Maurice was attracted by the possibilities that twin sisters afforded. That was another reason.’

  ‘I was meant to fall for her?’

  She hesitated. ‘Nothing in the course of our experiments is “meant” in that sense. You can force people to do many things, but not feel sexual attraction. Or the opposite.’ She looked down at the cobbles. ‘It’s improvised, Nicholas. Not planned. If you like, the rat is given a kind of parity with the experimenter. It also can dictate the walls of the maze. As you have, perhaps without fully realizing it.’ A few steps passed, then she said in a lighter voice. ‘I’ll tell you one other secret. Julie wasn’t at all happy about Sunday. The kidnapping. In fact we weren’t at all sure she would do it. Till she did.’

  I thought back: and remembered Julie’s marked reluctance to show me that wretched subterranean hiding-place before our picnic and what had followed it; and even then I had almost forced it on her.

  ‘Do I have any sisterly approval – in real life?’

  ‘You should have met her last answer to every maiden’s prayer.’ She added quickly, ‘I’m being catty. Andrew was very clever. Sensitive. But a bisexual. They do have awful problems. She needs someone … ‘ I saw her mouth curve. ‘My strictly clinical opinion is that she’s found him.’

  We climbed an uphill alley towards the square of the execution.

  ‘All the old man has told me about his past – is that all invention?’

  ‘We’re very anxious to hear your guesses and conclusions first.’

  ‘But you know the truth?’

  She hesitated. ‘I think I know most of the truth. I know what Maurice has let us know.’

  I pointed at the wall where the plaque commemorating the execution stood. ‘And about that?’

  ‘Ask anyone in the village.’

  ‘I know he was here. But did it happen as he said?’

  She was silent a moment. ‘Why do you think it didn’t?’

  ‘All that vision of the pure essence of freedom was very fine. But eighty lives seems rather a high price for it. And hardly to tie in with the hatred of suicide you claim he has.’

  ‘Then perhaps he made a terrible error of judgment?’

  That set me back a moment. ‘That’s what I felt.’

  ‘Did you tell him so?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  I saw her smile. ‘Then perhaps that was your error of judgment.’ She went on before I could answer. ‘When I was once … what you are now, he spent an evening destroying every belief I had in my own intelligence, every pride I had in my work, all in circumstances where I had to believe him … in the end I broke down, I just kept saying, It isn’t true, it isn’t true, I’m not like that. Then I looked up, and he was smiling. He just said, At last.’

  ‘I wish he didn’t seem to get such genuine sadistic enjoyment out of doing it.’

  ‘But that’s precisely why one believes him. Or he would say, precisely why one doesn’t stand up against the real thing.’ She glanced drily at me. ‘The apparently sadistic conspiracy against the individual we call evolution. Existence. History.’

  ‘I realized that was what the meta-theatre was about.’

  ‘He used to give a famous lecture on art as institutionalized illusion.’ She grimaced. ‘One secret horror we always have is that someone like you will have read it. It’s one reason we could never do this to a young French intellectual.’

  ‘He i
s French?’

  ‘No. Greek. But he was born in Alexandria. Mostly brought up in France. His father was very rich. Cosmopolitan. At least I imagine. Maurice seems to have rebelled against the life he was supposed to lead. He claims he first went to England to escape from his parents. To study medicine.’

  ‘And obviously you admire him a lot.’

  She gave a little nod as she walked, then said quietly, ‘I think he’s the greatest teacher in the world. I don’t even think. I know.’

  ‘How did it go last year?’

  ‘Oh God. That dreadful man. We had to find another subject. Not from the school. Someone in Athens.’

  ‘And Leverrier?’

  She had a smile, unmistakably of affectionate memory. ‘John.’ Then she touched my arm. ‘That’s a very different story. Tomorrow? Now it’s your turn. Tell me a bit more about… you know.’

  So I told her a little about Alison. I hadn’t misled her in any way in Athens, of course. I simply hadn’t realized how much she had been hiding.

  ‘There was no previous record of suicide attempts?’

  ‘Absolutely none. She’d always seemed someone who could take things as they came.’

  ‘No depressive… ?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It does happen. With women. Out of the blue. The tragedy is, they often don’t really mean it.’

  ‘I’m afraid she did.’

  ‘It was probably always latent. Though there are usually signs.’ She said, ‘And usually there’s a better reason for it than just breaking offa relationship.’

  ‘I’ve tried to feel that.’

  ‘At least it’s not as if you lied to her in any way.’ She pressed my hand briefly. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself

  We had come to the house, and in high time, because the first sporadic but heavy drops of rain were beginning to splash down. The storm seemed to be heading straight for the island. June pushed the outer gate open and I followed her up the path. She took a key and unlocked the front door. The hall was lit, though the current kept wavering under the much greater currents of electricity being discharged in the sky. There she turned and kissed my cheek quickly, almost shyly.

  ‘Wait here. She may be asleep. I won’t be a second.’

  I watched her run up the stairs and disappear. There was a tap, and she called Julie’s name in a low voice. A door opened and closed. Then silence. The thunder and lightning outside, an abrupt squall of more consistent rain on the windowpanes, a gust of cool air from somewhere. Two minutes passed. Then the invisible door upstairs opened.

  Julie came first, barefooted, in a black kimono over a white nightdress. She paused a moment, a distressed face, staring down at me, then she came running down the stairs.

  ‘Oh Nicholas.’

  She fell into my arms. We didn’t kiss. June stayed at the top, smiling down. Julie held me away from her, searching my eyes.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She sank against me again, as if she was the one who needed comforting. I patted her back. June blew a light kiss, a benison, down at me from the top of the stairs, then disappeared.

  ‘June’s told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  She held me a little closer still. ‘I’m so relieved it’s all over.’

  ‘I haven’t forgiven you for Sunday.’

  She looked up, with a good deal more seriousness in her face than there had been in my voice; beseeched me to believe her.

  ‘I hated it. Nicholas, I nearly didn’t do it. Honestly. It was so terrible, knowing it was going to happen.’

  ‘You hid it disgustingly well.’

  ‘Only because I knew it was all nearly over.’

  ‘I hear it’s your first year as well.’

  ‘And my last. I couldn’t do it again. Especially now … ‘ again she appealed for understanding, forgiveness. ‘June’s always been so mysterious about it. I had to see what it was like.’

  ‘I’m glad. Finally.’

  She came close against me again.

  ‘I haven’t lied about one thing.’

  ‘I wonder what that is.’

  My hand was found, gently pinched in reproach. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Anyway, you can’t go back to your school in this rain.’ She added, ‘And I hate being alone in thunder and lightning.’

  ‘So do I. Now you mention it.’

  Our next lines were not spoken; and once they were exchanged, she took my hand and led me upstairs. We came to the door of the room I had searched three days before. But there she hesitated, then gave me a faintly self-mocking yet genuinely shy look.

  ‘What I said on Sunday?’

  ‘You long ago made me forget every other girl I’ve

  She looked down. ‘This is where my witchcraft stops.’

  ‘I always liked us better as Ferdinand and Miranda.’

  She smiled a moment, as if she had forgotten that; gave me an intense look, seemed about to say something else, changed her mind. She opened the door and Ave went in. There was a lamp on by the bed, the shutters were closed. The bed was as she had left it, the sheet and a folkweave bedspread thrown aside, the pillow crumpled; some open book of poetry beneath the lamp, I could see its broken lines of print; an abalone-shell used as an ashtray. “We stood a little at a loss, as people do when they have foreseen such moments too long. Her hair was down, the white hem of her nightdress reached almost to her ankles. She glanced round the room, as if with my eyes, as if I might be contemptuous of such domestic simplicity; made a little grimace. I smiled, but her shyness was contagious – and the changed reality between us, what she had really meant by no more ‘witchcraft’: no more games, evasions, tantalizings. For a bizarre few seconds those seemed, in retrospect, to hold a paradoxical innocence; Adam and Eve before the Fall.

  Mercifully the world outside came to our aid. There was a flash of lightning. The lamp shuddered, then went out. We were plunged into pitch darkness. Almost at once there was a tremendous peal of thunder overhead. Before it had died away she was in my arms and we were kissing hungrily. More lightning, even louder and closer thunder. She twisted against me, clinging like a child. I kissed the crown of her head, patted her back, murmured.

  ‘Shall I undress you and put you to bed and hold you?’

  ‘Let me sit on your lap a minute. It makes me so nervous.’

  I was led in the darkness to a chair opposite the bed, against the wall. I sat, she sat across my knees, and we kissed again. Then she nestled against me; found my free hand and laced her fingers through mine.

  ‘Tell me about your friend. What really happened.’

  I told her what I had told her sister a few minutes before. ‘It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I felt so fed up with Maurice. With you. I couldn’t face just hanging around here.’

  ‘Did you tell her about me?’

  ‘Only that I’d met someone on the island.’

  ‘Was she upset?’

  ‘That’s the absurd thing. If only she had been. Hadn’t buried it all so “well.’

  Her hand squeezed mine gently. ‘And you didn’t want her at all?’

  ‘I felt sorry for her. But she really didn’t seem too surprised.’

  ‘Not answering my question.’

  I smiled in the darkness at this not very well concealed battle between sympathy and feminine curiosity.

  ‘I kept thinking how much rather I’d be with you.’

  ‘Poor girl. At least I can imagine how she must have felt.’

  ‘She wasn’t like you. She never took anything seriously. Especially if it was male.’

  ‘But she must have taken you seriously. In the end.’

  I had anticipated that. ‘I think I was just a kind ot symbol, Julie. Of all sorts of other things that had gone wrong in her life. The last straw, I suppose.’

  ‘What did you do in Athens?’

  ‘A few sights
. Had a meal. Sat and talked. Drank too much. It was all very civilized, really. Or seemed it.’

  Her nails dug gently into the back of my hand. ‘I bet you did go to bed.’

  ‘Would you be angry if we had?’

  Her head shook against mine. ‘No. I deserved it. I’d understand.’ She raised my hand and kissed it. ‘I wish you’d tell me.’

  ‘Why are you so curious?’

  ‘Because there’s so much I don’t know about you.’

  I took a breath.

  ‘Perhaps I should have. Then at least she might still be alive.’

  There was a little silence, then she kissed my cheek. ‘I’m only trying to find out if I’m spending the night with a callous swine or a bruised angel.’

  ‘There’s only one way to find that out.’

  ‘You think?’

  Another light kiss, then she slipped gently free of my arm and moved away a little beside the bed. It was very dark in the room, and I could see nothing. But then lightning shivered through the shutters. For a brief flash I saw her by the cassone, peeling her nightdress over her head. Then it was sound, her feeling her way back towards me, a crack of thunder, a little shocked outbreath. I reached and found her groping hand and pulled her back naked to my lap.