The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [153]
‘The curious thing was, that despite this antipathy between the two women — the antipathy of affinity, you might say — there sprang up side by side with it a strange sympathy, a sense of identification with each other. For example when Leila at last dared to meet Mountolive it was done secretly and arranged by Justine. It was Justine who brought them together, both masked, during the carnival ball. Or so I heard.
‘As for Nessim, I would, at the risk of over-simplification, say something like this: he was so innocent that he had not realized
that you cannot live with a woman without in some degree falling in love with her — that possession is nine points of the jealousy?
He was dismayed and terrified by the extent of his own jealousy for Justine and was honestly trying to practise something new for him — ind ifference. True or false? I don’t know.
‘And then, turning the coin round, I would say that what irked Justine herself unexpectedly was to find that the contract of wife undertaken so rationally, and at the level of a financial bargain, was somehow more binding than a wedding ring. One does not, as a woman (if passion seems to sanction it) think twice about being unfaithful to a husband; but to be unfaithful to Nessim seemed like stealing money from the till. What would you say?’
My own feeling ( pace Balthazar) is that Justine became slowly aware of something hidden in the character of this solitary endear-ing lon g-suffering man; namely a jealousy all the more terrible and indeed dangerous for never allowing itself any outlet. Sometimes
… but here I am in danger of revealing confidences which Justine made to me during the period of the so-called love affair which so much wounded me and in which, as I learn now, she was only using me as a cover for other activities. I have described the pro-gress of it all elsewhere; but if I were now to reveal all she told me of Nessim in her own words I should be in danger, primo, of setting down material perhaps distasteful to the reader and indeed unfair to Nessim himself. Secundo: I am not sure any more of its relative truth since it might have been part of the whole grand design of deception! In my own mind even those feelings (‘im-portant lessons learned’ etc.) are all coloured by the central doubt which the Interlinear has raised in my mind. ‘Truth is what most contradicts itself …’! What a farce it all is!
But what he says of the jealousy of Nessim must be true, how-ever, for I lived for a while in its shadow, and there is no doubt about the effect it had on Justine. Almost from the beginning she had found herself followed, kept under surveillance, and very naturally this gave her a feeling of uncertainty: uncertainty made terrible by the fact that Nessim never openly spoke of it. It rested, an invisible weight of suspicion dogging and discolouring her com-monest remarks, the most innocent of after-dinner walks. He would sit between the tall candles gently smiling at her while a
whole silent inquisition unrolled reverberating in his mind. So at least she said.
The simplest and most sincere actions — a visit to a public library, a shopping list, a message on a place-card — became baffling
to the eye of a jealousy founded in emotional impotence. Nessim was torn to rags by her demands; she was torn to rags by the doubts she saw reflected in his eyes — by the very tenderness with which he put a wrap around her shoulders. It felt as if he were slipping a noose over her neck. In a queer sort of way this relationship echoed the psycho-analytic relationship described in Moeurs by her first husband — where Justine became for them all a Case rather than a person, chased almost out of her right mind by the tiresome inquisitions of those who never know when to leave ill alone. Yes, she had fallen into a trap, there is no doubt. The thought echoed in her mind like mad laughter. I