The Magus - John Fowles [80]
Givray-le-Duc in the car that had been sent to fetch me, I was taken up a splendid staircase to my room, or rather my suite of rooms, and then I was invited to go out into the park to meet de Deukans. All his servants were like himself--silent, grave-looking men. There was never laughter around him. Or running feet. No noise, no excitement. But calm and order. "I followed the servant through a huge formal garden--Len� had laid it out--behind the _chateau_. Past box-hedges and statuary and over freshly raked gravel, and then down through an arboretum to a small lake. We came out at its edge and on a small point some hundred yards ahead I saw, over the still water and through the October leaves, an Oriental teahouse. The servant bowed and left me to go on my way alone. The path led beside the lake, over a small stream. There was no wind. Mist, silence, a beautiful but rather melancholy calm. "The teahouse was approached over grass, so de Deukans could not hear me coming. He was seated on a mat staring out over the lake. A willow-covered islet. Ornamental geese that floated on the water as on a silk painting. Though his head was European, his clothes were Japanese. I shall never forget that moment. How shall I say it--that _mise en paysage_. "His whole park was arranged to provide him with such d�rs, such ambiences. There was a little classical temple, a rotunda. An English garden, a Moorish one. But I always think of him sitting there on his _tatami_ in a loose kimono. Greyish-blue, the colour of the mist. It was unnatural, of course. But all dandyism and eccentricity is more or less unnatural in a world dominated by the desperate struggle for economic survival. "Constantly, during that first visit, I was shocked, as a would-be socialist. And ravished, as an _homme sensuel_. Givray-le-Duc was nothing more or less than a vast museum. There were countless galleries, of paintings, of porcelain, of _objets d'art_ of all kinds. A famous library. A really unsurpassed collection of early keyboard instruments. Clavichords, spinets, virginals, lutes, guitars. One never knew what one would find. A room of Renaissance bronzes. A case of Breguets. A wall of magnificent Rouen and Nevers faience. An armoury. A cabinet of Greek and Roman coins. I could inventory all night, for he had devoted all his life to this collecting of collections. The Boulles and Rieseners alone were enough to furnish six _ch�aux_. I suppose only the Heriford Collection could have rivalled it in modern times. Indeed when the Hertford was split up, de Deukans had bought many of the best pieces in the Sackville legacy. Seligmann's gave him first choice. He collected in order to collect, of course. Art had not then become a branch of the stock market. "On a later visit he took me to a locked gallery. In it he kept his company of automata--puppets, some almost human in size, that seemed to have stepped, or whirled, out of a Hoffman story. A man who conducted an invisible orchestra. Two soldiers who fought a duel. A prima donna from whose mouth tinkled an aria from _La Serva Padrona_. A girl who curtseyed to a man who bowed, and then danced a pallid and ghostly minuet with him. But the chief piece was Mirabelle, _la Maltresse-Machine_. A naked woman who when set in motion lay back in her faded four-poster bed, drew up her knees and then opened them together with her arms. As her human master lay on top of her, the arms closed and held him. But de Deukans cherished her most because she had a device that made it unlikely that she would ever cuckold her owner. Unless one moved a small lever at the back of her head, at a certain pressure her arms would clasp with vicelike strength. And then a stiletto on a strong spring struck upwards through the adulterer's groin. This repulsive thing had been made in Italy in the early nineteenth century. For the Sultan of Turkey. When de Deukans demonstrated her 'fidelity' he turned and said, '_C'est cc qui en elle est le plus vraisemblable_.' 'It is the most lifelike thing about her." I looked at Lily covertly. She was staring down at