The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [463]
‘Go back’ she said, and added sharply, ‘I can’t bear you hanging about at a time like this…. Oh, darling, I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry.’
‘Of course you haven’t, you fool. But I’ll go.’
All the way down Rue Fuad I was thinking: such a small displacement of the pattern, a single human life, yet it had power to alter so much. Literally, such an eventuality had occurred to none of us. We simply could not stomach it, fit it into the picture which Pombal himself had built up with such care. It poisoned everything, this small stupid fact — even almost our affection for him, for it had turned to horror and sympathy! How inadequate as emotions they were, how powerless to be of use. My own instinct would have been to keep away altogether! I felt as if I never wanted to see him again — in order not to shame him. Bad poison, indeed. I repeated Ali’s phrase to myself over and over again.
Pombal was already there when I got back, sitting in his gout - chair, apparently deep in thought. A full glass of neat whisky stood beside him which he did not seem to have touched. He had changed, however, into the familiar blue dressing-gown with the gold peacock pattern, and on his feet were his battered old Egyptian slippers like golden shovels. I went into the room quite quietly and sat down opposite him without a word. He did not appear to actually look at me, yet somehow I felt that he was conscious of my presence; yet his eye was vague and dreamy, fixed on the middle distance, and his fingers softly played a five-finger exercise on each other. And still looking at the window he said, in a squeaky little voice — as if the words had power to move him although he did not quite know their meaning: ‘She’s dead, Darley. They are both dead.’ I felt a sensation of a leaden weight about my heart. ‘ C’ est pas juste’ he added absently and fell to pulling his side-beard with fat fingers. Quite unemotional, quite flat — like a man recovering from a severe stroke. Then he suddenly took a gulp of whisky and started up, choking and coughing. ‘It is neat’ he said in surprise and disgust, and put the
glass down with a long shudder. Then, leaning forward he began to scribble, taking up a pencil and pad which were on the table —
whorls and lozenges and dragons. Just like a child. ‘I must go to confession tomorrow for the first time for ages’ he said slowly, as if with infinite precaution. ‘I have told Hamid to wake me early. Will you mind if Clea only comes?’ I shook my head, I understood that he meant to the funeral. He sighed with relief. ‘ Bon’ he said, and standing up took the glass of whisky. At that moment the door opened and the distraught Pordre appeared. In a flash Pombal changed. He gave a long chain of deep sobs. The two men embraced muttering incoherent words and phrases, as if consoling each other for a disaster which was equally wounding to both. The old diplomat raised his white womanish fist in the air and said suddenly, fatuously: ‘I have already protested strongly.’ To whom, I wondered? To the invisible powers which decree that things shall fall out this way or that? The words sputtered out meaninglessly on the chill air of the drawing-room. Pombal was talking.
‘I must write and tell him everything’ he said. ‘Confess every-thing.’
‘Gaston’ said his Chief sharply, reprovingly, ‘you must not do any such thing. It would increase his misery in prison. C’ est pas juste. Be advised by me: the whole matter must be forgotten.’
‘Forgotten!’ cried my friend as if he had been stung by a bee.
‘You do not understand. Forgotten! He must know for her sake.’
‘He must never know’ said the older man. ‘Never.’
They stood for a long while holding hands, and gazing about them distractedly through their tears; and at this moment, as if to complete the picture, the door opened to admit the porcine outlines of Father Paul — who was never to be found far from the centre of any scandal. He paused inside the doorway with an air of unction, with his features registering a vast glut-tonous self-satisfaction. ‘My poor boy’ he said,