The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [46]
‘A business associate’ I said.
‘It will do him good to see a face he knows.’
But would he recognize me, I wondered? If I had changed only half as much as he had we would be complete strangers to one another. He was lying back now, the breath whistling harshly through that long vulpine nose which lay resting against his face like the proud figurehead of an abandoned ship. Our whispers had disturbed him, for he turned upon me a vague but nevertheless pure and thoughtful eye which seemed to belong to some great bird of prey. Recognition did not come until I moved forward a few paces to the side of the bed. Then all at once his eyes were flooded with light — a strange mixture of humility, hurt pride, and innocent fear. He turned his face to the wall. I blurted out the whole of my message in one sentence. Melissa was away, I said, and I had telegraphed her to come as quickly as possible; mean-while I had come to see if I could help him in any way. His shoulders shook, and I thought that an involuntary groan was about to burst from his lips; but presently in its place came the mockery of a laugh, harsh, mindless and unmusical. As if directed at the dead carcass of a joke so rotten and threadbare that it could compel nothing beyond this ghastly rictus gouged out in his taut cheeks.
‘I know she is here’ he said, and one of his hands came running over the counterpane like a frightened rat to grope for mine.
‘Thank you for your kindness.’ And with this he suddenly seemed to grow calm, though he kept his face turned away from me. ‘I wanted’ he said slowly, as if he were collecting himself in order to
give the phrase its exactest meaning, ‘I wanted to close my account honourably with her. I treated her badly, very badly. She did not notice, of course; she is too simple-minded, but good, such a good girl.’ It sounded strange to hear the phrase ‘ bonne copine’ on the lips of an Alexandrian, and moreover pronounced in the chipped trailing sing-song accent common to those educated here. Then he added, with considerable effort, and struggl ing against a formidable inner resistance. ‘I cheated her over her coat. It was really sealskin. Also the moths had been at it. I had it relined. Why should I do such a thing? When she was ill I would not pay for her to see the doctor. Small things, but they weigh heavy.’ Tears crowded up into his eyes and his throat tightened as if choked by the enormity of such thoughts. He swallowed harshly and said: ‘They were not really in my character. Ask any business man who knows me. Ask any one.’
But now confusion began to set in, and holding me gently by the hand he led me into the dense jungle of his illusions, walking among them with such surefootedness and acknowledging them so calmly that I almost found myself keeping company with them too. Unknown fronds of trees arched over him, brushing his face, while cobbles punctuated the rubber wheels of some dark ambu-lance full of metal and other dark bodies, whose talk was of limbo
— a repulsive yelping streaked with Arabic objurgations. The pain, too, had begun to reach up at his reason and lift down fantasies. The hard white edges of the bed turned to boxes of coloured bricks, the white temperature chart to a boatman’s white face. They were drifting, Melissa and he, across the shallow blood-red water of Mareotis, in each other’s arms, towards the rabble of mud-huts where once Rhakotis