The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [99]
A thousand conventional commonplaces, a thousand conventional questions spring to my mind, but for a long time I can say nothing.
On the balcony the others have assembled uneasily, almost shamefacedly; they are like a group of thoughtless schoolboys for whom some silly prank has ended in the death of one of their fellows. The furry cone of noise from the hydroplane still coats the air. In the middle distance one can hear shouts and the noise of car-engines starting up. The piled bodies of the duck, which would normally be subject matter for gloating commentaries, he about the lodge with anachronistic absurdity. It appears that death is a relative question. We had only been prepared to accept a certain share of it when we entered the dark lake with our weapons. The death of Capodistria hangs in the still air like a bad smell, like a bad joke.
Ralli had been sent to get him and had found the body lying face down in the shallow waters of the lake with the black eye-patch floating near him. It was clearly an accident. Capodistria’s loader was an elderly man, thin as a cormorant, who sits now hunched over a mess of beans on the balcony. He cannot give a coherent account of the business. He is from Upper Egypt and has the weary half-crazed expression of a desert father.
Ralli is extremely nervous and is drinking copious draughts of brandy. He retells his story for the seventh time, simply because he must talk in order to quieten his nerves. The body could not have been long in the water, yet the skin was like the skin of a washerwoman’s hands. When they lifted it to get it into the hydro-plane the false teeth slipped out of the mouth and crashed on to the floor-boards frightening them all. This incident seems to have made a great impression on him. I suddenly feel overcome with fatigue and my knees start to tremble. I take a mug of hot coffee and, kicking off my boots, crawl into the nearest bunk with it. Ralli is still talking with deafening persistence, his free hand coax-ing the air into expressive shapes. The others watch him with a vague and dispirited curiosity, each plunged in his own reflections.
Capodistria’s loader is still eating noisily like a famished animal, blinking in the sunlight. Presently a punt comes into view with three policemen perched precariously in it. Nessim watches their antics with an imperturbability flavoured ever so slightly with satisfaction; it is as if he were smiling to himself. The clatter of boots and musket-butts on the wooden steps, and up they come to take down our depositions in their note-books. They bring with them a grave air of suspicion which hovers over us all. One of them carefully manacles Capodistria’s loader before helping him into the punt. The servant puts out his wrists for the iron cuffs with a bland uncomprehending air such as one sees on the faces of old apes when called upon to perform a human action which they have learned but not understood.
It is nearly one o’clock before the police have finished their business. The parties will all have ebbed back from the lake by now to the city where the news of Capodistria’s death will be waiting for them. But this is not to be all.
One by one we straggle ashore with our gear. The cars are wait-ing for us, and now begins a long chaffering session with the loaders and boatmen who must be paid off; guns are broken up and the bag distributed; in all this incoherence I see my servant Hamid advanc-ing timidly through the crowd with his good eye screwed up against the sunlight. I think he must be looking for me but no: he goes up to Nessim and hands him a small blue envelope. I want to describe this exactly. Nessim takes it absently with his left hand while his right is reaching into the car to place a box of cartridges in the glove-box. He examines the superscription once thoughtlessly and then once more with marked attention. Then keeping his eyes