The Magus - John Fowles [18]
that belonged more to the world of the Ottoman Empire, Baizac in a fez, than to the 1950's. I had to agree with Mitford. It was desperately dull. I tried one or two of the fishermen's wineshops. They were jollier, but I felt they felt I was slumming; and my Greek never began to cope with the island dialect they spoke. I made enquiries about the man Mitford had had a row with, but no one seemed to have heard of either him or it; or, for that matter, of the "waiting room." Mitford had evidently spent a lot of time in the village; and made himself unpopular with other masters besides Demetriades; there was a heavy aftermath of anglophobia, aggravated by the political situation at that time, which I had to suffer. Soon I took to the hills. None of the other masters ever stirred an inch further than they needed to, and the boys were not allowed beyond the _chevaux de frise_ of the high-walled school grounds except on Sundays, and then only for the half-mile along the coast road to the village. The hills were always intoxicatingly clean and light and remote. With no company but my own boredom, I began for the first time in my life to look at nature, and to regret that I knew its Ianguage as little as I knew Greek. I became aware of stones, birds, flowers, land, in a new way, and the walking, swimming, the magnificent climate, the absence of all traffic--ground or air, for there wasn't a single car on the island, there being no roads outside the village, and airplanes passed over not once a month--these things made me feel healthier than I had ever felt before. I began to get some sort of harmony between body and mind; or so it seemed. It was an illusion. There had been a letter from Alison waiting for me when I arrived at the school. It was very brief. She must have written it at work the day I left London. _I love you, you can't understand what that means because you've never loved anyone yourself. It's what I've been trying to make you see this last week. All I want to say is that one day, when you do fall in love, remember today. Remember I kissed you and walked out of the room. Remember I walked all the way down the street and never once looked back. I knew you were watching. Remember I did all this and I love you. If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you forever for today._ Another letter came from her the next day. It contained nothing but my check torn in two and a scribble on the back of one half: _No thanks._ And two days later there was a third letter, full of enthusiasm for some film she had been to see, almost a chatty letter. But at the end she wrote: _Forget the first letter I sent you. I was so upset. It's all over now. I won't be old-fashioned again._ Of course I wrote back, if not every day, two or three times a week; long letters full of self-excuse and seff-justification until one day she wrote _Please don't go on so about you and me. Tell me about things, about the island, the school. I know what you are. So be what you are. When you write about things I can think I'm with you, seeing them with you. And don't be offended. Forgiving's forgetting._ Imperceptibly information took the place of emotion in our letters. She wrote to me about her work, a girl she had become friendly with, about minor domestic things, films, books. I wrote about the school and the island, as she asked. One day there was a photo of her in her uniform. She'd had her hair cut short and it was tucked back under her fore-and-aft cap. She was smiling, but the uniform and the smile combined gave her an insincere, professional look; she had become, the photo sharply warned me, a stranger, someone not the someone I liked to remember; the private, the uniquely my, Alison. And then the letters became once-weekly. The physical ache I had felt for her during the first weeks seemed to disappear; there were still times when I knew I wanted her very much, and would have given anything to have her in bed beside