The Magus - John Fowles [62]
as I could, to the edge of the gulley. "Good day," I called in Greek. "What are you doing?" And then again: "_Ti kanete?_" But they made not the least reply. They stood and stared at me--the man with a vague anger, it seemed, the girl expressionlessly. A flaw of the sun-wind blew a brown banner, some part of the back of her dress, out sideways. I thought, it's Henry James. The old man's discovered that the screw could take another turn. And then, his breathtaking impudence. I remembered the conversation about the novel. _Words are for facts. Not fiction_. I looked around again, towards the house; Conchis must declare himself now. But he did not. There was myself, with an increasingly foolish smile on my face--and there were the two of them in their green shadow. The girl moved a little closer to the man, who put his hand ponderously, patriarchally, on her shoulder. They seemed to be waiting for me to do something. Words were no use. I had to get close to them. I looked up the gulley. It was uncrossable for at least a hundred yards, but then my side appeared to slope more easily to the gulley floor. Making a gesture of explanation, I started up the hill. I looked back again and again at the silent pair under the tree. They turned and watched me until a shoulder on their side of the small ravine hid them from view. I broke into a run. The gulley was finally crossable, though it was a tough scramble up the far side through some disagreeably sharp-thorned bushes. Once through them I was able to run again. The carob came into sight below. There was nothing there. In a few seconds--it had been perhaps a minute in all since I had lost sight of them--I was standing under the tree, on an unrevealing carpet of shrivelled seedpods. I looked across to where I had slept. The small grey and rededged squares of the pamphlet and _Time_ lay on the pale carpet of needles. I went well beyond the carob until I came to strands of wire running through the trees, at the edge of the inland bluff, the eastern limit of Bourani. The three cottages lay innocently below among their little orchard of olives. In a kind of panic I walked back to the carob and along the east side of the gulley to the top of the cliff that overlooked the private beach. There was more scrub there, but not enough for anyone to hide, unless they lay flat. And I could not imagine that choleric-looking man lying down flat, in hiding. Then from the house I heard the bell. It rang three times. I looked at my watch--teatime. The bell rang again; quick, quick, slow, and I realised it was sounding the syllables of my name. I shouted--"Coming!" My voice echoed, lonely, ridiculous. I began to walk back. I ought, I suppose, to have felt frightened. But I wasn't. Apart from anything else I was too intrigued and too bewildered. Both the man and the wheyfaced girl had looked remarkably English; and whatever nationality they really were, I knew they didn't live on the island. So I had to presume that they had been specially brought; had been standing by, hiding somewhere, waiting for me to read the Foulkes pamphlet. I had made it easy by falling asleep, and at the edge of the gulley. But that had been pure chance. And how could Conchis have such people standing by? And where had they disappeared to? For a few moments I had let my mind plunge into darkness, into a world where the experience of all my life was disproved and ghosts existed. But there was something far too unalloyedly physical about all these supposedly "psychic" experiences. Besides, "apparitions" obviously carry least conviction in bright daylight. It was almost as if I was intended to see that they were not really super- natural; and there was Conchis's cryptic, doubt-sowing advice that it would be easier if I pretended to believe. Why easier? More amusing, more polite, perhaps; but "easier" suggested that I had to pass through some ordeal. I stood there in the trees, absolutely at a loss; and then smiled. I had somehow landed myself in the centre of an extraordinary old man's fantasies. That was clear. Why he should hold