The Magus - John Fowles [235]
a number of things on it: a Thermos, a brown-paper packet, cigarettes and matches, a black box like a jewellery case, an envelope. I sat up and shook my head. Then I threw the blanket aside and went unevenly over the uneven floor to the door. I was at the top of a hill. Before me stretched a vast downward slope of ruins. Hundreds of stone houses, all ruined, most of them no more than grey heaps of rubble, decayed fragments of grey wall. Here and there were slightly less dilapidated dwellings; the remnants of second floors, windows that framed sky, black doorways. But what was so extraordinary was that this whole tilted city of the dead seemed to be floating in midair, a thousand feet above the sea that surrounded it. I looked at my watch. It was still going; just before five. I clambered on top of a wall and looked round. In the direction in which the late afternoon sun lay I could see a mountainous mainland stretching far to the south and north. I seemed to be on top of some gigantic promontory, absolutely alone, the last man on earth, between sea and sky in some mediaeval Hiroshima. And for a moment I did not know if hours had passed, or whole civilizations. A fierce wind blew out of the north. I returned inside the room and carried the suitcase and other things out into the sunshine. First of all I looked at the envelope. It contained my passport, about ten pounds in Greek money, and a typewritten sheet of paper. Three sentences. "There is a boat to Phraxos at 11: 30 tonight. You are in the Old City at Monemvasia. The way down is to the southeast." No date, no signature. I opened the Thermos: coffee. I poured myself a full capful and swallowed it; then another. The packet contained sandwiches. I began to eat, with the same feeling I had had that morning, of intense pleasure in the taste of coffee, the taste of bread, of cold lamb sprinkled with oregano and lemon juice. But added to this now was a feeling, to which the great airy landscape contributed, of release, of having survived; a euphoria, a buoyancy and resilience. Above all there was the extraordinariness of the experience; its uniqueness conferred a uniqueness on me, and I had it like a great secret, a journey to Mars, a prize no one else had. Then too I seemed to see my own behaviour, I had woken up seeing it, in a better light; the trial and the disintoxication were evil fantasies sent to test my normality, and my normality had triumphed. _They_ were the ones who had been finally humiliated--and I saw that perhaps that astounding last performance had been intended to be a mutual humiliation. While it happened it had seemed like a vicious twisting of the dagger in an already sufficient wound; but now I saw it might also be a kind of revenge given me for _their_ spying, their voyeurism, on Alison and myself. I had this: being obscurely victorious. Being free again, but in a new freedom... purged in some way. As if they had miscalculated. It grew, this feeling, it became a joy to touch the warm rock on which I sat, to have the _meltemi_ blowing, to smell the Greek air again, to be alone on this peculiar upland, this lost Gibraltar, a place I had even meant to visit one day. Analysis, revenge, recording: all that would come later, as the explanations at the school, the decision to remain or not for another year, would have to be made later. The all-important was that I had survived, I _had_ come through. Later I realised that there was something artificial, unnatural, in this joy, this glossing over all the indignities, the exploited death of Alison, the monstrous liberties taken with my liberty; and I suppose that it had all been induced under hypnosis by Conchis again. It would have been part of the comforts; like the coffee and the sandwiches. I opened the black box. Inside, on a bed of green baize, lay a brand-new revolver, a Smith & Wesson. I picked it up and broke it. I looked at the bases of six bullets, little rounds of brass with leadgray eyes. The invitation was clear. I shook one out. They were not blanks. I pointed the gun out to sea, to the north, and