The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [431]
2.Despair at end of search; no further motive force in life. 3.Horror at death.
4.Relief at death. What future possible for it?
5.Intense shame (don’t understand this).
6.Sudden desire to continue search uselessly rather than admit truth.
7.Preferred to continue to feed on false hopes!
A bewildering collection of fragments to leave among the analects of a moribund poet! But here was the point I was trying to make. She said: ‘Of course neither Nessim nor Darley noticed anything. Men are so stupid, they never do. I would have been able to forget it even perhaps, and dream that I had never really discovered it, but for Mnemjian, who wanted the reward, and was so convinced of the truth of his case that he made a great row. There was some talk of an autopsy by Balthazar. I was foolish enough to go to his clinic and offer to bribe him to say it was not my child. He was pretty astonished. I wanted him to deny a truth which I so perfectly knew to be true, so that I should not have to change my outlook. I would not be deprived of my sorrow, if you like; I wanted it to go on — to go on passionately searching for what I did not dare to find. I even frightened Nessim and incurred his suspicions with my antics over his private safe. So the matter passed off, and for a long time I still went on automatically searching until underneath I could stand the strain of the truth
and come to terms with it. I see it so clearly, the divan, the tenement.’
Here she put on her most beautiful expression, which was one of intense sadness, and put her hands upon her breasts. Shall I tell you something? I suspected her of lying; it was an unworthy thought but then … I am an unworthy person.
I: ‘Have you ever been back to the place?’
She: ‘No. I have often wanted to, but did not dare.’ She shuddered a little. ‘In my memory I have become attached to that old divan. It must be knocking about somewhere. You see, I am still ha lf convinced it was all a dream.’
At once I took up my pipe, violin and deerstalker like a veritable Sherlock. I have always been an X-marks-the-spot man. ‘Let us go and revisit it’ I said briskly. At the worst, I thought, such a visitation would be cathartic. It was in fact a supremely practical thing to suggest, and to my surprise she at once rose and put on her coat. We walked silently down through the western edges of the town, arm in arm.
There was some kind of festival going on in the Arab town which was blazing with electric fight and flags. Motionless sea, small high clouds, and a moon like a disapproving archimandrite of another faith. Smell of fish, cardamon seed and frying entrails packed with cummin and garlic. The air was full of the noise of mandolines scratching the ir little souls out on the night, as if afflicted with fleas — scratching until the blood came on the lice-intoxicated night! The air was heavy. Each breath invisibly per-forated it. You felt it come in and out of the lungs as if in a leather bellows. Eheu! It was grisly all that light and noise, I thought. And they talk of the romance of the East! Give me the Metropole at Brighton any day! We traversed this sector of light with quick deliberate step. She walked unerringly, head bent, deep in thought. Then gradually the streets grew darker, faded into the violet of darkness, became narrower, twisted and turned. At last we came to a great empty space with starlight. A dim great barrack of a building. She moved slowly now, with less certainty, hunting for a door. In a whisper she said ‘This place is run by old Mettrawi. He is bedridden. The door is always open. But he hears everything from his bed. Take my hand.’ I was never a great fire-eater and I must confess to a certain uneasiness as we walked into this
bandage of total blackness. Her hand was firm and cool, her voice precise, unmarked by any range of emphasis, betraying neither excitement nor fear. I thought I heard the scurrying of immense rats in the rotten structure around me, the very rafters of night itself. (Once in a thunderstorm