The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [52]
These are the sort of fragments which tease the waking mind on evenings like these, walking about in the wintry darkness; until at last I turn back to the crackling fire of olive-wood in the old-fashioned arched hearth where Justine lies asleep in her cot of sweet-smelling pine.
How much of him can I claim to know? I realize that each per-son can only claim one aspect of our character as part of his know-ledge. To every one we turn a different face of the prism. Over and over again I have found myself surprised by observations which brought this home to me. As for example when Justine said of Pombal, ‘one of the great primates of sex.’ To me my friend had never seemed predatory; only self-indulgent to a ludicrous degree. I saw him as touching and amusing, faintly to be cherished for an inherent ridiculousness. But she must have seen in him the great, soft-footed cat he was (to her).
And as for Pursewarden, I remember, too, that in the very act of speaking thus about religious ignorance he straightened himself and caught sight of his pale reflection in the mirror. The glass was raised to his lips, and now, turning his head he squirted out upon his own glittering reflection a mouthful of the drink. That remains clearly in my mind; a reflection liquefying in the mirror of that shabby, expensive room which seems now so appropriate a place for the scene which must have followed later that night.
* * * * *
Place Zaglou l — silverware and caged doves. A vaulted cave lined with black barrels and chok ing with the smoke from frying whitebait and the smell of retzinnato. A message scribbled on the
edge of a newspaper. Here I spilt wine on her cloak, and while attempting to help her repair the damage, accidentally touched her breasts. No word was spoken. While Pursewarden spoke so bril-liantly of Alexandria and the burning library. In the room above a poor wretch screaming with meningitis….
* * * * *
Today, unexpectedly, comes a squinting spring shower, stiffen-ing the dust and pollen of the city, nailing the glass roof of the studio where Nessim sits over his croquis for his wife’s portrait. He has captured her sitting before the fire with a guitar in her hands, her throat snatched up by a spotted scarf, her singing head bent. The noise of her voice is jumbled in the back of his brain like the sound-track of an earthquake run backwards. Prodigious archery over the parks where the palm-trees have been dragged back taut; a mythology of yellow-maned waves attacking the Pharos. At night the city is full of new sounds, the pulls and stresses of the wind, until you feel it has become a ship, its old timbers groaning and creaking with every assault of the weather.
This is the weather Scobie loves. Lying in bed will he fondle his telescope lovingly, turning a wistful eye on the blank wall of rotting mud-brick which shuts off his view of the sea. Scobie is getting on for seventy and still afraid to die; his one fear is that he will awake one morning and find himself lying dead
— Lieutenant-Commander Scobie. Consequently it gives him a severe shock every morning when the water-carriers shriek under his window before dawn, waking him up. For a moment, he says, he dare not open his eyes. Keeping them fast shut (for fear that they might open on the heavenly host or the cherubims hymning) he gropes along the cake-stand beside his bed and grabs his pipe. It is always loaded from the night before and an open matchbox stands beside it. The first whiff of seaman’s plug restores both his com-posure and his eyesight. He breathes deeply, grateful for the reas-surance. He smiles. He gloats. Drawing the heavy sheepskin which serves him as a bedcover up to his ears he sings his little triumphal paean to the morning, his voice crackling like tinfoil. ‘ Taisez-vous,
petit babouin: laissez parler votre mère. ’
His pendulous trumpeter’s cheeks become rosy with the effort.