The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [293]
( d) Even the Saint dies with all his imperfections on his head.
( e) Such a one as might be above divine reproach, beneath human contempt.
( f) Possession of a human heart — disease without remedy. ( g) All great books are excursions into pity. ( h) The yellow millet dream is everyman’s way. Later these oracular thoughts would be all brushed softly into the character of Old Parr, the sensualist Tiresias of his novel, though erupting thus, at haphazard, they offered no clue as to the order in which they would really be placed fina lly.
He yawned. He was pleasantly tipsy after his second Armagnac. Outside the grey awnings, the city had once more assumed the true pigmentation of night. Black faces now melted into blackness; one saw apparently empty garments walking about, as in The Invisible Man. Red pill-boxes mounted upon cancelled faces, the darkness of darkness. Whistling softly, he paid his bill and walked lightly down to the Corniche again to where, at the end of a narrow
street, the green bubble of the Etoile flared and beckoned; he dived into the narrow bottleneck staircase to emerge into an airless ballroom, half blinded now by the incandescent butcher’s light and pausing only to let Zoltan take his mackintosh away to the cloakroom. For once he was not irked by the fear of his unpaid drink-chits — for he had drawn a substantial advance upon his new salary. ‘Two new girls’ said the little waiter hoarsely in his ear,
‘both from Hungary.’ He licked his lips and grinned. He looked as if he had been fried very slowly in olive oil to a rich dark brown. The place was crowded, the floor-show nearly over. There were no familiar faces to be seen around, thank God. The lights went down, turned blue, black — and then with a shiver of tambourines and the roll of drums threw up the last performer into a blinding silver spot. Her sequins caught fire as she turned, blazing like a Viking ship, to jingle down the smelly corridor to the dressing-rooms. He had seldom spoken to Melissa since their initial meeting months before, and her visits to Pombal’s flat now rarely if ever coincided with his. Darley too was painstakingly secretive —
perhaps from jealousy, or shame? Who could tell? They smiled and greeted one another in the street when their paths crossed, that was all. He watched her reflectively now as he drank a couple of whiskies and slowly felt the lights beginning to burn more brightly inside him, his feet respond to the dull sugared beat of the nigger jazz. He enjoyed dancing, enjoyed the comfortable shuffle of the four-beat bar, the rhythms that soaked into the floor under one’s toes. Should he dance?
But he was too good a dancer to be adventurous, and holding Melissa in his arms thus he hardly bothered to do more than move softly, lightly round the floor, humming to himself the tune of Jamais de la vie. She smiled at him and seemed glad to see a familiar face from the outer world. He felt her narrow hand with its slender wrist resting upon his shoulder, fingers clutching his coat like the claw of a sparrow. ‘You are en forme’ she said. ‘I am en forme’ he replied. They exchanged the meaningless pleasantries suitable to the time and place. He was interested and attracted by her execrable French. Later she came across to his table and he stood her a couple of coupes de champagne — the statutory fee exacted by the management for private conversations. She was on
duty that night, and each dance cost the dancer a fee; therefore this interlude won her gratitude, for her feet were hurting her. She talked gravely, chin on hand, and watching her he found her rather beautiful in an etiolated way. Her eyes were good — full of small timidities which recorded perhaps the shocks which too great an honesty exacts from life? But she looked, and clearly was, ill. He jotted down the words: ‘The soft bloom of phthisis.’ The whisky had improved his sulky good humour, and his few jests were rewarded by an unforced laughter which, to his surprise, he found delightful. He began to comprehend dimly