The Magus - John Fowles [232]
and though it was too far to see the facial expressions, one could tell from that gap between us, the way we walked, that we were miserable. I recognised it: our return to Arachova. The cameraman must have been hidden in a cottage, shooting from behind a shutter perhaps, because a transverse black bar obscured the end of the shot. I remembered the wartime sequence of Wimmel. I also recognised the implications; that we had been followed, watched and filmed throughout. It would not have been possible on the bare upper slopes of Parnassus, but in the trees... I remembered the pool, the sun on my naked back and Alison beneath me. It was too horrible, too blasphemous, that that, of all moments, could have been public. Stripped, flayed by the knowledge; and their always knowing. Blank film again. Then another title. --------------------- The act of copulation --------------------- But the film ran through a series of numbers and flashing white scratches: the end of the reel. There was a ffipping sound from the projector. The screen stared white. Someone ran in through the door and switched the projector off. I gave a grunt of contempt; I had been waiting for that failure of nerve, of the courage of their pornography. But the man--I saw by the faint light through the door that it was Adam--walked to the screen and lifted it aside. I was left alone again. For thirty seconds or so the room remailled in darkness. Then light came from behind the curtains. Someone began to pull them, from behind, by cords, as they do for plays in parish halls. When they were about two-thirds open, they stopped; but long before that the parallel with parish halls had vanished. The light came from a shade hung from the ceiling. It let no light through, so that the illumination was thrown down in a brilliant, intimate cone onto what lay beneath. A low couch, covered by a huge golden-tawny rug, perhaps an Afghan carpet. On it, superbly white and completely naked, was Lily. She was lying against a mound of pillows, deep gold, amber, rose, maroon, themselves piled against an ornate gilt and carved headboard. She was turned sideways towards me in a deliberate imitation of Goya's _Maja Desnuda_. Her hands behind her head, her nakedness offered. Not flaunted, but offered, stated as a divine and immemorial fact. A bare armpit, as sexual as a loin. Nipples the colour of cornelians, as if they alone in all that cream-white skin had been, or could be, bitten and bruised. The tapering curves, thighs, ankles, small bare feet. And the level, unmoving eyes staring with a kind of arrogant calm into the shadows where I hung. Beyond her, on the rear wall, had been painted an arcade of slender white arches. I thought at first that they were meant to represent Bourani; but they were too narrow, and had slender Moorish-ogive tops. Goya... the Alhambra? I realised the couch was not legless, but that the far end of the room was on a slightly lower level, rather like a Roman bath. The curtains had concealed further steps down. The gleaming body lay in its greenish-tawny lake of light, without movement; and she stared at me as from a canvas. The tableau pose was held so long that I began to think this was the great finale; this living painting, this naked enigma, this forever unattainable. I had assumed it was Lily, but I could not see the scar, and I began to waver. It was Lily; it was Rose; then Lily again. Minutes passed. The lovely body lay in its mystery. I could just see the imperceptible swell of her breathing... or could I? For a few moments it was neither Lily nor Rose. I was looking at a magnificently lifelike wax effigy. But then she moved. Her head turned in profile and her right arm reached out gracefully and invitingly, in the classical gesture of R�mier, to whoever had switched on the light and drawn open the curtain. A new figure appeared. It was Joe. He was in a tunic of indeterminate period, a semi-toga, pure white, lined heavily with gold. He went and stood behind the couch. Rome? An empress and her slave? He stared at me, or towards me, for a moment, and I