The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [320]
‘Thirteen.’
His voice gave Nessim a dull neuralgic thrill, for he sounded drugged — the harsh authoritative voice of someone drunk on hashish, perhaps, or opium; the voice of someone signalling from a new orbit in an unknown universe. He drew his breath slowly until his lungs were fully inflated and then spoke upwards once more to the figure on the stair. ‘Ya Narouz. I have come to speak to you on a matter of great urgency.’
‘Mount’ said Narouz gruffly, in the voice of a sheepdog. ‘I wait for you here, Nessim.’ The voice made many things clear to Nessim, for never before had the voice of his brother been com-pletely free from a note of welcome, of joy even. At any other time he would have run down the stairs in clumsy welcome, taking them two at a time and calling out ‘Nessim, how good you have come!’ Nessim walked across the courtyard and placed his hand upon the dusty wooden rail. ‘It is important’ he said sharply, crisply, as if to establish his own importance in this tableau — the shadowy courtyard with the solitary figure standing up against the sky in silhouette, holding the long whip lightly, effortlessly, and
watching him. Narouz repeated the word ‘Mount’ in a lower key, and suddenly sat down putting his whip beside him on the top stair. It was the first time, thought Nessim, that there had been no greeting for him on his return to Karm Abu Girg. He walked up the steep stairs slow ly, peering upwards.
It was much lighter on the first floor, and at the top of the second there was enough light to see his brother’s face. Narouz sat quite still, in cloak and boots. His whip lay lightly coiled over the balustrade with its handle upon his knees. Beside him on the dusty wooden floor stood a half-empty bottle of gin. His chin was sunk upon his chest and he stared crookedly up under shaggy brows at the approaching stranger with an expression which combined truculence with a queer, irresolute sorrow. He was at his old trick of pressing his back teeth together and releasing them so that the cords of muscle at his temples expanded and con-tracted as if a heavy pulse were beating there. He watched his brother’s slow ascent with this air of sombre self-divided un-certainty into which there crept from time to time the smouldering glow of an anger banked up, held under control. As Nessim reached the final landing and set foot upon the last flight of stairs, Narouz stirred and gave a sudden gargling bark — a sound such as one might make to a hound — and held out a hairy hand. Nessim paused and heard his brother say: ‘Stay there, Nessim’
in a new and authoritative voice, but which contained no particular note of menace. He hesitated, leaning forward keenly the better to interpret this unfamiliar gesture — the square hand thrown out in an attitude almost of imprecation, fingers stretched, but not perfectly steady.
‘You have been drinking’ he said at last, quietly but with a profound ringing disgust. ‘Narouz, this is new for you.’ The shadow of a smile, as if of self-contempt, played upon the crooked lips of his brother. It broadened suddenly to a slow grin which displayed his hare-lip to the full: and then vanished, was swallowed up, as if abruptly recalled by a thought which it could not represent. Narouz now wore a new air of unsteady self-congratulation, of pride at once mawkish and dazed. ‘What do you wish from me?’
he said hoarsely. ‘Say it here, Nessim. I am practising.’
‘Let us go indoors to speak privately.’
Narouz shook his head slowly and after consideration said crisply:
‘You can speak here.’
‘ Narouz’ cried Nessim sharply, stung by these unfamiliar responses, and in the voice one would use to awaken a sleeper.
‘ Please. ’ The seated man at the head of the stairs stared up at him with the strange inflamed but sorrowful air and shook his head again. ‘I have spoken, Nessim’ he said indistinctly. Nessim’s voice broke, it was pitched so sharply against the silence of the court-yard. He said, almost pitifully