The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [217]
( r)
‘Europe: a Logical Positivist trying to prove to himself by logical deduction that he exists.’
( s)
‘My objects in the novels? To interrogate human values through an honest representation of the human passions. A desirable end, perhaps a hopeless objective.’
( t)
‘My unkindest critics maintain that I am making lampshades out of human skin. This puzzles me. Perhaps at the bottom of the Anglo-Saxon soul there is a still small voice forever whispering:
“Is this Quaite Naice?” and my books never seem to pass the test.’
SCOBIE’S COMMON USAGE
Expressions noted from Scobie’s quaint conversation, his use of certain words, as:
Vivid, meaning ‘angry’, ex.: ‘Don’t be so vivid, old man.’
Mauve, meaning ‘silly’, ex.: ‘He was just plain mauve when it came to, etc’
Spoof, meaning ‘trick’, ex.: ‘Don’t spoof me, old boy.’
Ritual, meaning ‘habit, form’, ex.: ‘We all wear them. It’s ritual for the police.’
Squalid, meaning ‘very elated’, ex.: ‘Toby was squalid with joy when the news came.’
Septic, meaning ‘unspeakable’, ex.: ‘What septic weather today!’
Saffron Walden, meaning ‘male brothel’, ex.: ‘He was caught in a Saffron Walden, old man, covered in jam.’
Cloud Cuckoo, meaning ‘male prostitute’, ex.: ‘Budgie says there’s not a cloud cuckoo in the whole of Horsham. He’s advertised.’
WORKPOINTS
‘How many lovers since Pygmalion have been able to build their beloved’s face out of flesh, as Amaril has?’ asked Clea. The great folio of noses so lovingly copied for him to choose from —
Nefertiti to Cleopatra. The readings in a darkened room.
* * *
Narouz always held in the back of his consciousness the memory of the moonlit room; his father sitting in the wheel-chair at the mirror, repeating the one phrase over and over again as he pointed the pistol at the looking-glass.
* * *
Mountolive was swayed by the dangerous illusion that now at last he was free to conceive and act — the one misjudgement which decides the fate of a diplomat.
* * *
Nessim said sadly: ‘All motive is mixed. You see, from the moment I married her, a Jewess, all their reservations disappeared and they ceased to suspect me. I do not say it was the only reason. Love is a wonderfully luxuriant plant, but unclassifiable really, fading as it does into mysticism on the one side and naked cupidity on the other.’
* * *
This now explained something to me which had hitherto puzzled me; namely that after his death Da Capo’s huge library was moved over to Smyrna, book by book. Balthazar did the packing and posting.
NOTE IN THE TEXT
* Page 298
From Eugène Marais’s The Soul of The White Ant.
MOUNTOLIVE
A
CLAUDE
τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ ἄγαθοῦ διάμονος
NOTE
All the characters and situations described in this
book (a sibling to Justine and Balthazar and the third volume of a quartet) are purely imaginary.
I have exercised a novelist’s right in taking a few
necessary liberties with modern Middle Eastern
history and the staff-structure of the Diplomatic
Service.
The dream dissipated, were one to recover one’s commonsense mood, the thing would be of but
mediocre import — ’tis the story of mental wrong- doing. Everyone knows very well and it offends
no one. But alas! one sometimes carries the thing a little further. What, one dares wonder, what
would not be the idea’s realization if its mere
abstract shape thus exalted has just so profoundly moved one? The accursed reverie is vivified and
its existence is a crime.
D. A. F. DE SADE: Justine
Il faut que le roman raconte.
STENDHAL
I
s a junior of exceptional promise, he had been sent to Egypt for a year in order to improve his Arabic and
A found himself attached to the High