The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [22]
Opening the door I was immediately blinded by the glare and smoke. The party did not seem to be of the usual kind, for the guests consisted of three or four maimed-looking naval cadets, and a prostitute from Golfo’s tavern, smelling of briny paws and taphia* Improbably enough, too, she was bending over a figure seated on the end of a couch — the figure which I now recognize as Melissa, but which then seemed like a catastrophic Greek comic mask. Melissa appeared to be raving, but soundlessly for her voice had gone — so that she looked like a film of herself without a
sound-track. Her features were a cave. The older woman appeared to be panic-sticken, and was boxing her ears and pulling her hair; while one of the naval cadets was splashing water rather inexpertly upon her from a heavily decorated chamber-pot which was one of Pombal’s dearest treasures and which bore the royal arms of France on its underside. Somewhere out of sight someone was being slow ly, unctuously sick. Pursewarden stood beside me sur-veying the scene, looking rather ashamed of himself. Melissa was pouring with sweat, and her hair was glued to her temples; as we broke the circle of her tormentors she sank back into an expressionless quivering silence, with this permanently engraved shriek on her face. It would have been wise to try and find out where she had been and what she had been eating and drinking, but a glance at the maudlin, jabbering group around me showed that it would be impossible to get any sense out of them. Nevertheless, seizing the boy nearest me I started to interrogate him when the hag from Golfo’s, who was herself in a state of hysterics, and was only restrained by a naval stoker (who had her pinioned from behind), began to shout in a hoarse chewed voice.
‘Spanish fly. He gave it to her.’ And darting out of the arms of her captor like a rat she seized her handbag and fetched one of the sailors a resounding crack over the head. The bag must have been full of nails for he went down swimming and came up with frag-ments of shattered crockery in his hair. She now began to sob in a voice which wore a beard and call for the police. Three sailors converged upon her with blunt fingers extended advising, exhorting, imploring her to desist. Nobody wanted a brush with the naval police. But neither did anyone relish a crack from that Promethean handbag, bulging with french letters and belladonna bottles. She retreated carefully step by step. (Mean-while I took Melissa’s pulse, and ripping off her blouse listened to her heart. I began to be alarmed for her, and indeed for Purse-warden who had taken up a strategic position behind an armchair and was making eloquent gestures at everyone.) By now the fun had started, for the sailors had the roaring girl cornered — but unfortunately against the decorative Sheraton cupboard which housed Pombal’s cherished collection of pottery. Reaching behind her for support her hands encountered an almost ine xhaustible supply of ammunition, and letting go her handbag with a hoarse
cry of triumph she began to throw china with a single-mindedness and accuracy I have never seen equalled. The air was all at once full of Egyptian and Greek tear-bottles, Ushabti, and Sèvres. It could not be long now before there came the familiar and much-dreaded banging of hob-nailed boots against the door-lintels, as lights were beginning to go on all round us in the building. Purse-warden’s alarm was very marked indeed; as a resident and more-over a famous one he could hardly afford the sort of scandal which the Egyptian press might make out of an affray like this. He was relieved when I motioned to him and started to wrap the by now almost insens ible figure of Melissa in the soft