The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [266]
… even today their marriage feels in some curious way un-cemented. They make a perfect pair, but never seem to touch each other; indeed, once I saw her very slightly shrink as he picked a thread from her fur. Probably imagination. Is there perhaps a
thundercloud brooding there behind the dark satin-eyed wife?
Plenty nerves, certainly. Plenty hysteria. Plenty Judaic melan-choly. One recognizes her vaguely as the girl-friend of the man whose head was presented on a charger…. What do I mean?
Well, Maskelyne says with his dry empty contempt: ‘No sooner does she marry than she starts an affair with another man, and a foreigner to boot.’ This of course is Darley, the vaguely amiable bespectacled creature who inhabits Pombal’s box-room at certain times. He teaches for a living and writes novels. He has that nice round babyish back to the head which one sees in cultural types; slight stoop, fair hair, and the shyness that goes with Great Emotions imperfectly kept under control. A fellow-romantic quotha! Looked at hard, he starts to stammer. But he’s a good fellow, gentle and resigned … I confess that he seems unlikely material for someone as dashing as Nessim’s wife to work upon. Can it be benevolence in her, or simply a perverse taste for in-nocence? There is a small mystery here. Anyway, it was Darley and Pombal who introduced me to the current Alexandrian livre de chevet which is a French novel called Moeurs (a swashing study in the grand manner of nymphomania and psychic impotence) written by Justine’s last husband. Having written it he wisely divorced her and decamped but she is popularly supposed to be the central subject of the book and is regarded with grave sym-pathy by society. I must say, when you think that everyone is both polymorph and perverse here, it seems hard luck to be singled out like this as the main character in a roman vache. Anyway, this lies in the past, and now Nessim has carried her into the ranks of le monde where she acquits herself with a sharply defined grace and savagery. They suit her looks and the dark but simple splendours of Nessim himself. Is he happy? But wait, let me put the question another way. Was he ever happy? Is he unhappier now than he was? Hum! I think he could do a lot worse, for the girl is neither too innocent nor too unintelligent. She plays the piano really well, albe it with a sulky emphasis, and reads widely. Indeed, the novels of Yours Truly are much admired — with a disarming whole-heartedness. (Caught! Yes, this is why I am disposed to like her.) On the other hand, what she sees in Darley I cannot credit. The poor fellow flutters on a slab like a skate at her approach; he and Nessim are, however, great frequenters of each other,
great friends. These modest British types — do they all turn out to be Turks secretly? Darley at any rate must have some appeal because he has also got himself regally entangled with a rather nice little cabaret dancer called Melissa. You would never think, to look at him, that he was capable of running a tandem, so little self-possession does he appear to have. A victim of his own fine sentiment? He wrings his hands, his spectacles steam up, when he mentions either name. Poor Darley! I always enjoy irritating him by quoting the poem by his minor namesake to him:
O blest unfabled Incense Tree
That burns in glorious Araby,
With red scent chalking the air,
Till earth-life grows Elysian there.
He pleads with me blushingly to desist, though I cannot tell which Darley he is blushing for; I continue in magistral fashion: Half-buried in her flaming breast
In this bright tree she makes her nest
Hundred-sunned Phoenix! When she must
Crumble at length to hoary dust!
It is not a bad conceit for Justine herself. ‘Stop’ he always cries. Her gorgeous death-bed! Her rich pyre
Burn up with aromatic fire!
Her urn, sight-high from spoiler men!
Her birth-place when self-born again!
‘Please. Enough.’
‘What’s wrong