The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [102]
‘You will have guessed’ said Clea in the middle of all this ‘that Justine was the woman I told you once I loved so much.’
This cost her a good deal to say. She was standing with a coffee cup in one hand, clad in her blue-striped pyjamas by the door. She closed her eyes as she spoke, as if she were expecting a blow to fall upon the crown of her head. Out of the closed eyes came two tears which ran slowly down on each side of her nose. She looked like a young stag with a broken ankle. ‘Ah! let us not speak of her any more’ she said at last in a whisper. ‘She will never come back.’
Later I made some attempt to leave but the storm was still at its height and my clothes still impossibly sodden. ‘You can stay here’
said Clea ‘with me’; and she added with a gentleness which brought a lump into my throat, ‘But please — I don’t know how to say this
— please don’t make love to me.’
We lay together in that narrow bed talking of Justine while the storm blew itself out, scourging the window-panes of the flat with driven rain from the seafront. She was calm now with a sort of resignation which had a moving eloquence about it. She told me many things about Justine’s past which only she knew; and she spoke of her with a wonder and tenderness such as people might use in talking of a beloved yet infuriating queen. Speaking of Arnauti’s ventures into psycho-analysis she said with amusement:
‘She was not really clever, you know, but she had the cunning of a wild animal at bay. I’m not sure she really understood the object of these investigations. Yet though she was evasive with the doctors she was perfectly frank with her friends. All that correspondence about the words “Washington D.C.”, for example, which they worked so hard on — remember? One night while we were lying
here together I asked her to give me her free associations from the phrase. Of course she trusted my discretion absolutely. She replied unerringly (it was clear she had already worked it out though she would not tell Arnauti): ‘There is a town near Washington called Alexandria. My father always talked of going to visit some distant relations there. They had a daughter called Justine who was exactly my age. She went mad and was put away. She had been raped by a man.’ I then asked her about D.C. and she said, “Da Capo. Capodistria”.’
I do not know how long this conversation lasted or how soon it melted into sleep, but we awoke next morning in each other’s arms to find that the storm had ceased. The city had been sponged clean. We took a hasty breakfast and I made my way towards Mnemjian’s shop for a shave through streets whose native colours had been washed clean by the rain so that they glowed with warmth and beauty in that soft air. I still had Justine’s letter in my pocket but I did not dare to read it again lest I destroy the peace of mind which Clea had given me. Only the opening phrase continued to echo in my mind with an obstinate throbbing persistence: ‘If you should come back alive from the lake you will find this letter waiting for you.’
On the mantelpiece in the drawing-room of the flat there is another letter offering me a two-year contract as a teacher in a Catholic school in Upper Egypt. I sit down at once without think-ing and draft my acceptance. This will change everything once more and free me from the streets of the city which have begun to haunt me of late so that I dream that I am walking endlessly up and down, hunting for Melissa among the dying flares of the Arab quarter.
With the posting of this letter of acceptance a new period will be initiated, for it marks my separation from the city in which so much has happened to me, so much of momentous importance: so much that has aged me. For a little while, however, life will carry its momentum forward by hours and days. The same streets and squares will burn in my imagination as the Pharos burns in history. Particular rooms in which I have made love, particular café tables where the pressure of fingers upon a wrist held me spell-bound, feeling through the hot pavements the rhythms