The Magus - John Fowles [139]
out of her real self, reinforcing the impression I had had throughout: that the story of Seidevarre was as new to her as it was to me. It was as if she had become another guest, an older friend of the house than myself, but still a guest; and was trying, just as I was, to assess the meaning of the parable. "All that is past possesses our present. Seidevarre possesses Bourani. Whatever happens here now, whatever governs what happens, is partly, no, is essentially, what happened thirty years ago in that Norwegian forest." He spoke to her then as he so often spoke to me; he was commencing another shift in our relationships, or the pretences that ruled them. In some way we were now both his students, his disciples. I remembered that favourite Victorian picture of the bearded Elizabethan seaman pointing to sea and telling a story to two little goggleeyed boys. A look passed between Lily and myself, and I could have sworn that she was feeling slightly the same as I was--that any clandestine meeting between us now involved a fresh element of betrayal. "Well. I must go." She slipped the mask of formality back on. We all stood. "Maurice, that was so remarkable and so interesting." Conchis kissed her hand, and then she reached it to me, but with the wrist turned, and I shook it. One shadow of conspiracy in her eyes, one minute pressure of her fingers, told me that she was still, in spite of the higher price, prepared to betray. She turned to go; then stopped. "Oh, I am sorry. I did not replace your matches." "That's all right. Please." Conchis and I were silent. I heard footsteps going rapidly across the gravel towards the sea, and I strained to glimpse her, but without success. I thought, if they put some trick on me now, it will be a proof that she is playing for Conchis and against me; a proof beyond doubt. I smiled across the table at his shadowed face; the pupils of his eyes seemed black in their clear whites; a mask that watched me, watched me. "No illustrations to the text tonight?" "Does it need illustrations?" "No. You told it... very well." He shrugged dismissively; then waved his arm briefly round: at home, at trees, at sea. "This is the illustration. Things as they are. In my small domaine." "The masque." "The masque is a metaphor. I told you that." His unshifting eyes read mine. "You are never quite sure whether you are my guest or victim. You are neither. You are something else." I looked down under his eyes, then up. "What?" "If you must speculate, explore other possibilities. But remember. What it is, has no name." He stood up, as if he had really only been waiting for a certain time, I presumed the time for Lily to "disappear," to pass. As I stood as well I said, "Thank you. Once again. For possessing me. He grinned then, his monkey grin, and took my elbow as we walked towards the door of his room. The Bonnards glowed gently from the inner wall. On the landing outside, I came to a decision. "I think I'll go for a stroll, Mr. Conchis. I don't feel very sleepy. Just down to Moutsa." I knew he might say that he would come with me and so make it impossible to be at the statue at midnight; but it was a countertrap for him, an insurance for me. If he let me go out alone, then it would be that he wanted me to walk into the trap, if there was a trap; and if he was genuinely innocent of the assignation, I could still--if discovered and then accused--pretend that I had assumed he was not. "As you wish." He put out his hand in his foreign way and clasped mine with unusual warmth, and watched me for a moment as I went downstairs. But before I had reached the bottom I heard his door close. He might be out on the terrace listening, so I crunched noisily over the gravel to the track out of Bourani. But at the gate instead of turning down to Moutsa I went on up the hill for fifty yards or so and sat down against a tree trunk, from where I could watch the entrance and the track. It was a dark night, no moon, but the stars diffused a very faint luminescence over everything, a light like the softest sound, touch of fur on ebony. My