The Magus - John Fowles [59]
garden. On the western side of the house a shuttered window corresponded to the door at the end of Conchis's bedroom. It appeared as if there was something more than a cupboard there. Then I looked up at the north-facing back of the house, at my own room. It was easy to hide behind the rear wall of the cottage, but the ground was hard and bare; showed nothing. I strolled on into the arbour. The little Priapus threw up his arms at me, jeering his pagan smile at my English face. No entry. Ten minutes later I was down on the private beach. The water, blue and green glass, was for a moment cold, then deliciously cool; I swam out between the steep rocks to the open sea. After a hundred yards or so I could see behind me the whole cliffed extent of the headland, and the house. I could even see Conchis, who was sitting where we had sat on the terrace the night before, apparently reading. After a while he stood up, and I waved. He raised both his arms in his peculiar hieratic way, a way in which I knew now that there was something deliberately, not fortuitously, symbolic. The dark figure on the raised white terrace; legate of the sun facing the sun; the most ancient royal power. He appeared, wished to appear, to survey, to bless, to command; _dominus_ and domaine. And once again I thought of Prospero; even if he had not said it first, I should have thought of it then. I dived, but the salt stung my eyes and I surfaced. Conchis had turned away--to talk with Ariel, who put records on; or with Caliban, who carried a bucket of rotting entrails; or perhaps with... but I turned on my back. It was ridiculous to build so much on the sound of quick footsteps, the merest glimpse of a white shape. When I got back to the beach ten minutes later he was sitting on the baulk. As I came out of the water he stood and said, "We will take the boat and go to Petrocaravi." Petrocaravi, the "ship of stone," was a deserted islet half a mile off the tip of Phraxos. He was dressed in swimming shorts and a garish red-and-white water-polo player's cap, and in his hand he had the blue rubber flippers and a pair of underwater masks and snorkels. I followed his brown old back over the hot stones. "Petrocaravi is very interesting underwater. You will see." "I find Bourani very interesting above water." I had come up beside him. "I heard voices in the night." "Voices?" But he showed no surprise. "The ipcord. I've never had an experience quite like it. An extraordinary idea." He didn't answer, but stepped down into the boat and opened the engine housing. I untied the painter from its iron ring in the concrete, then squatted on the jetty and watched him fiddle inside the hatch. "I suppose you have speakers in the trees." "I heard nothing." I teased the painter through my hand, and smiled. "But you know I heard something." He looked up at me. "Because you tell me so." "You're not saying, how extraordinary, voices, what voices. That would be the normal reaction, wouldn't it?" He gestured rather curtly to me to get aboard. I stepped down and sat on the thwart opposite to him. "I only wanted to thank you for organising a unique experience for me." "I organised nothing." "I find it hard to believe that." We remained staring at each other. The red-and-white skullcap above the monkey eyes gave him the air of a performing chimpanzee. And there stood the sun, the sea, the boat, so many unambiguous things, around us. I still smiled; but he wouldn't smile back. It was as if I had committed a faux pas by referring to the singing. He stooped to fit the starting handle. "Here, let me do that." I took the handle. "The last thing I want to do is to offend you. I won't mention it again." I bent to turn the handle. Suddenly his hand was on my shoulder. "I am not offended, Nicholas. I do not ask you to believe. All I ask you is to pretend to believe. Just pretend to believe. It will be easier." It was strange. By that one gesture and a small shift in expression and tone of voice, he resolved the tension between us. I knew on the one hand that he was playing some kind of trick on me;