sympathy, an indication of anything, good or bad, in her small standing there. I could understand the timing of her resurrection. As soon as I got back to London I should have found out; so it had to be in Athens. And now I was to hunt for her. I wanted to see her, I knew I wanted to see her desperately, to dig or beat the truth out of her, to let her know how vile her betrayal was. To let her know that even if she crawled round the equator on her knees I could never forgive her. That I was finished with her. Disgusted by her. As disintoxicated of her as I was of Lily. I thought, Christ, if I could only lay my hands on her. But the one thing I would not do was hunt for her. Then, having a shower, I began to sing. Because the masque was not over. Because, though I would not consciously admit it, Alison was alive. Because I knew there must be a confrontation between us. And I would lure her on, lead her into believing that a reconciliation was possible. I thought, if I ever get a chance of making her fall in love with me again. Such a savage revenge I would have on her. On all of them. That cat. This time I would use that cat. And I only had to wait. They would bring her to me now. I went down to a noon breakfast; and the first thing I discovered was that I did not have to wait. For there was another letter by hand for me. This time it contained just one word: _London_. I remembered that order in the Earth: _Termination by July for all except nucleus_. Nucleus, Ashtaroth the Unseen, was Alison. I went to the travel agency and got a seat on the evening plane; and seeing a map of Italy on the wall, as I stood waiting for the ticket to be made out, I discovered where Subiaco was; and decided that the marionette would make the manipulators of strings wait a day, for a change. When I came out I went into the biggest bookshop in Athens, on the corner of Stadiou, and asked for a book on the identification of flowers. My belated attempt at resuscitation had not been successful, and I had had to throw the buttonhole away. The assistant had nothing in English, but there was a good French flora, she said, which gave the names in several languages. I pretended to be impressed by the pictures, then turned to the index; to Alyssum, p. 69. And there it was, facing page 69: thin green leaves, small white flowers, _Alysson maritime_.. _par fum de miel_... from the Greek _a_ (without) and _lyssa_ (madness). Called this in Italian, this in German. In English: _Sweet Alison_.
Part Three
_La triomphe de la philosophie serait de jeter du jour sur l'obscurit�es voies dont la providence se sert pour parvenir aux fins qu'elle se propose sur l'homme, et de tracer d'apr�cela quelque plan de conduite qui put faire connaitre a ce maiheureux individu bip�, perp�ellement ballott�ar les caprices de cet �e qui dit-on le dirige aussi despotiquement, to mani� dont il taut qu'il interpr� les d�ets de cette providence sur lui._ De Sade, _Les Infortunes de to Vertu_
68
Rome. In my mind Greece lay weeks, not the real hours, behind. The sun shone as certainly, the people were far more elegant, the architecture and the art much richer, but it was as if the Italians, like their Roman ancestors, wore a great mask of luxury, a cosmetic of the overindulged senses, between the light, the truth, and their real selves. I couldn't stand the loss of the beautiful nakedness, the humanity of Greece, and so I couldn't stand the sight of the opulent, animal Romans; as one sometimes cannot stand one's own face in a mirror. Early the morning after my arrival I caught a local train out towards Tivoli and the Alban hills. After a long bus ride I had lunch at Subiaco and then walked up a road above a green chasm. A lane branched off into a deserted glen. I could hear the sound of running water far below, the singing of birds. The road came to an end, and a path led up through a cool grove of ilex, and then tapered out into a narrow flight of steps that twisted up around a wall of rock. The monastery came into sight, clinging like an Orthodox Greek monastery, like a martin's nest,