The Magus - John Fowles [45]
coasts that face north. On my last day I had a boatman take me round the island. For pleasure. By chance he landed me for a swim at Moutsa down there. By chance he said there was an old cottage up here. By chance I came up. The cottage was crumbled walls. A litter of stones choked with thorn-ivy. It was very hot. About four o'clock on the afternoon of April the eighteenth, 1929." He paused, as if the memory of that year had stopped him; and to prepare me for a new facet of himself; a new shift. "There were many more trees then. One could not see the sea. I stood in the little clearing round the ruined walls. I had immediately the sensation that I was expected. Something had been waiting there all my life. I stood there, and I knew who waited, who expected. It was myself. I was here and this house was here, you and I and this evening were here, and they had always been here, like reflections of my own coming. It was like a dream. I had been walking towards a closed door, and by a sudden magic its impenetrable wood became glass, through which I saw myself coming from the other direction, the future. I speak in analogies. You understand?" I nodded, cautious, not concerned with understanding; because underlying everything he did I had come to detect an air of stage management, of the planned and rehearsed. He did not tell me of his coming to Bourani as a man tells something that chances to occur to him, but far more as a dramatist tells an anecdote where the play requires. He went on. "I knew at once that I must live here. I could not go beyond. It was only here that my past would merge into my future. So I stayed. I am here tonight. And you are here tonight." In the darkness he was looking sideways at me. I said nothing for a moment; there had seemed to be some special emphasis on the last sentence. "Is this also what you meant by being psychic?" "It is what I mean by being fortunate. There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being." "Perhaps." "Not perhaps. For certain." "What happens if one doesn't recognise the... point of fulcrum?" But I was thinking, I have had it already--the silence in the trees, the siren of the Athens boat, the black mouth of the shotgun barrels. "You will be like the many. Only the few recognise this moment. And act on it." "The elect?" "The elect. The chosen by hazard." I heard his chair creak. "Look over there. The lamp fishermen." Away at the far feet of the mountains there was a thin dust of ruby lights in the deepest shadows. I didn't know whether he meant simply, look; or that the lamps were in some way symbolic of the elect. "You're very tantalising sometimes, Mr. Conchis." "I am prepared to be less so." "I wish you would be." He was silent again. "Suppose that what I might tell you should mean more to your life than the mere listening?" "I hope it would." Another pause. "I do not want politeness. Politeness always conceals a refusal to face other kinds of reality. I am going to say something about you that may shock you. I know something about you that you do not know yourself." He paused, again as if to let me prepare myself. "You too are psychic, Nicholas. You are sure you are not. I know that." "Well, I'm not. Really." I waited, then said, "But I'd certainly like to know what makes you think I am." "I have been shown." "When?" "I prefer not to say." "But you must. I don't even know what you really mean by the word. If you merely mean some sort of intuitive intelligence, then I hope I am psychic. But I thought you meant something else." Again silence, as if he wanted me to hear the sharpness in my own voice. "You are treating this as if I have accused you of some crime. Of some weakness." "I'm sorry. Look, Mr. Conchis, I just know that I am _not_ psychic. I've never had a psychical experience in my life." I added, na�ly, "Anyway, I'm an atheist." His voice was gentle and dry. "If a person is intelligent,