The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [241]
She knew it was unfair to put him in such a position; but she could not help herself. Was it fortunate then that fate prevented him from having to make such an elaborate decision — for her letter arrived on his desk in the same post as Nessim’s lon g tele-gram announcing the onset of her illness? And while he was still hesitating between a choice of answers there came her post-card, written in a new sprawling hand, which absolved him finally by the
words: ‘Do not write again until I can read you; I am bandaged from head to foot. Something very bad, very definitive has happened.’
During the whole of that hot summer the confluent smallpox
— invented perhaps as the cruellest remedy for human vanity
— dragged on, melting down what remained of her once celebrated beauty. It was useless to pretend even to herself that her whole life would not be altered by it. But how? Mountolive waited in an agony of indecision until their correspondence could be renewed, writing now to Nessim, now to Narouz. A void had suddenly opened at his feet.
Then: ‘It is an odd experience to look upon one’s own features full of pot-holes and landslides — like a familiar landscape blown up. I fear that I must get used to the new sensation of being a hag. But by my own force. Of course, all this may strengthen other sides of my character — as acids can — I’ve lost the metaphor!
Ach! what sophistry it is, for there is no way out. And how bitterly ashamed I am of the proposals contained in my last lon g letter. This is not the face to parade through Europe, nor would one dare to shame you by letting it claim your acquaintance at close range. Today I ordered a dozen black veils such as the poor people of my religion still wear! But it seemed so painful an act that I ordered my jeweller to come and measure me afresh for some new bracelets and rings. I have become so thin of late. A reward for bravery too, as children are bribed with a sweet for facing a nasty medicine. Poor little Hakim. He wept bitterly as he showed me his wares. I felt his tears on my fingers. Yet somehow, I was able to laugh. My voice too has changed. I have been so sick of lying in darkened rooms. The veils will free me. Yes, and of course I have been debating suicide — who does not at such times?
No, but if I live on it won’t be to pity myself. Or perhaps woman’s vanity is not, as we think, a mortal matter — a killing business?
I must be confident and strong. Please don’t turn solemn and pity me. When you write, let your letters be gay as always, will you?’
But thereafter came a silence before their correspondence was fully resumed, and her letters now had a new quality — of bitter resignation. She had retired, she wrote, to the land once more, where she lived alone with Narouz. ‘His gentle savagery makes him an ideal companion. Besides, at times I am troubled in mind now,
not quite compos mentis, and then I retire for days at a time to the little summer-house, remember? At the end of the garden. There I read and write with only my snake — the genius of the house these days is a great dusty cobra, tame as a cat. It is com-pany enough. Besides, I have other cares now, other plans. Desert without and desert within!
‘ The veil’s a fine and private place:
But none, I think, do there embrace.
‘If I should write nonsense to you during the times when the afreet has bewitched my mind (as the servants say) don’t answer. These attacks only last a day or two at most.’
And so the new epoch began. For years she sat, an eccentric and veiled recluse in Karm Abu Girg, writing those