The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [321]
‘Speak now, here. I am listening.’ This was indeed a new and unexpected personage, the man in the cloak. Nessim felt the colour rising in his cheeks. He climbed a couple of steps more and hissed assertively. ‘Narouz, I come from them. In God’s name what have you been saying to them? The committee has become terrified by your words.’ He broke off and irresolutely waved the memoran-dum which Serapamoun had deposited with him, crying: ‘This …
this paper is from them.’
Narouz’ eyes blazed up for a second with a maudlin pride made somehow regal by the outward thrust of his chin and a straightening of the huge shoulders. ‘My words, Nessim?’ he growled, and then nodding: ‘And Taor’s words. When the time comes we will know how to act. Nobody needs to fear. We are not dreamers.’
‘ Dreamers! ’ cried Nessim with a gasp, almost beside himself now with apprehension and disgust and mortified to his very quick by this lack of conventional address in a younger brother. ‘You are the dreamers! Have I not explained a thousand times what we are trying to do … what we mean by all this? Peasant, idiot that you are….’ But these words which once might have lodged like goads in Narouz’ mind seemed blunt, ineffectual. He tightened his mouth hard and made a slow cutting movement with his palm, cutting the air from left to right before his own body. ‘Words’ he cried harshly. ‘I know you now, my brother.’ Nessim glanced wildly about him for a moment, as if to seek help, as if to seek some instrument heavy enough to drive the truth of what he had to say into the head of the seated man. A hysterical fury had beset him, a rage against this sottish figure which raised so incomprehending a
face to his pleas. He was trembling; he had certainly anticipated nothing like this when he set out from Alexandria with his resolution bright and his mind composed.
‘Where is Leila?’ he cried sharply, as if he might invoke her aid, and Narouz gave a short clicking chuckle. He raised his finger to his temple gravely and muttered: ‘In the summer-house, as you know. Why not go to her if you wish?’ He chuckled again, and then added, nodding his head with an absurdly childish expression.
‘She is angry with you, now. For once it is with you, not with me. You have made her cry, Nessim.’ His lower lip trembled.
‘Drunkard’ hissed Nessim helplessly. Narouz’ eyes flashed. He gave a single jarring laugh, a short bark, throwing his head right back. Then suddenly, without warning, the smile vanished and he put on once more his watchful, sorrowing expression. He licked his lips and whispered ‘Ya Nessim’ under his breath, as if he were slowly recovering his sense of proportion. But Nessim, white with rage, was now almost beside himself with frustration. He stepped up the last few stairs and shook Narouz by the shoulder, almost shouting now: ‘Fool, you are putting us all in danger. Look at these, from Serapamoun. The committee will disband unless you stop talking like this. Do you understand? You are mad, Narouz. In God’s name, Narouz, understand what I am saying …’
But the great head of his brother looked dazed now, beset by the flicker of contradictory expressions, like the lowered crest of a bull badgered beyond endurance. ‘Narouz, listen to me.’ The face that was slowly raised to Nessim’s seemed to have grown larger and more vacant, the eyes more lustreless, yet full of the pain of a new sort of knowledge which owed little to the sterile revolutions of reason; it was full too of a kind of anger and incomprehension, confused and troubling, which was seeking expression. They stared angrily at each other. Nessim was white to the lips and panting, but his brother sat simply staring at him, his lips drawn back over his white teeth as if he were hypnotized.
‘Do you hear me? Are you deaf?’ Nessim shook, but with a motion of his broad shoulders Narouz shook off the importunate hand while his face began to flush. Nessim ran on, heedless, carried away by the burning preoccupations which poured out of him clothed in a torrent