The Magus - John Fowles [82]
played in your sunlight. But are we never to have palaces, never to have refined tastes, complex pleasures, never to let the imagination fulfil itself? Even a Marxist world must have some destination, must develop into some higher state, which can only mean a higher pleasure and richer happiness for the human beings in it. "And so I began to comprehend the selfishness of this solitary man. More and more I came to see that his blindness was a pose and yet his pose was an innocence. That he was a man from a perfect world lost in a very imperfect one. And determined, with a monomania as tragic, if not quite so ludicrous, as Don Quixote's, to maintain his perfection. But then one day --" Conchis never finished his sentence. With an electrifying suddenness a horn clamoured out of the darkness to the east. I thought immediately of an English hunting horn, but it was bronzier, harsher, more archaic. Lily's previously wafting fan was frozen, her eyes on Conchis. He was staring out to sea, as if the sound had turned him to stone. As I watched, his eyes closed, almost as if he was silently praying. But prayer was totally foreign to his face. The horn broke the tense night again. Three notes, the middle the highest. The player was in the trees, somewhere near the place where I had seen Foulkes. I said to Lily, "What is it?" She held my eyes for a moment, and strangely. I had an odd feeling that she thought I knew. But then she raised her closed fan to her lips and looked down. The lamplight, the waiting silence. Conchis had not moved or opened his eyes. I let a few seconds pass, then whispered to her. "What the devil's happening?" She lifted her eyes momentarily to mine. "Apollo has come." "Apollo!" "My brother." "Your brother!" I smiled, and she smiled back; but my face was full of uncertainty and hers of knowledge. Her mouth was incredibly like that of the stone statue. Again the horn was sounded, but at a higher pitch. She said, "I am called. I must go." We rose together. She held out her hand. "But where?" "Where I came from." Her eyes impressed some hidden significance into mine. Then she began to walk away. I looked quickly at Conchis, still with his oblivious face, and strode after her, stopping her at the door. "Look, for goodness sake..." Her eyes were down, avoiding mine. "Please let me pass." "Are you coming back?" Again the horn sounded, more urgently, closer, near the edge of the trees. She looked up at me. A quick oblique look at Conchis's dark figure. Then for a moment she seemed to drop the pretence. At any rate she dropped her voice. "Go and watch. Over there." Her mouth curved unexpectedly into a smile that hovered between mischief and sympathy. "And pretend to believe." I could have sworn that one of her eyelids fluttered; the ghost of a very contemporary wink. But she was gone so quickly that I was left only the more confused. I went to the parapet that faced east. The gravel, and then across the. clearing, the trees. I could see nothing unusual. Darkness and stillness. I listened for the sound of her footsteps downstairs, but there was silence there too. Then the sound came again. It echoed faintly from some steep hillside inland, its primitive timbre seeming to wake the landscape and the trees, to summon from some evolutionary sleep. Another long silence. Then suddenly there was a movement in the pines. A dim figure stood out in the starlight some fifty or sixty yards away. I had an impression of whiteness. Then from beyond the cottage there was a beam of light; not very strong, as a hand-held torch might give. With a shock I realised that the figure was that of an absolutely naked man. He raised the horn he was carrying and again came the call. He was near enough for me to see, with the aid of the weak beam of light, dark pubic hair and the pale scape of his penis. He was tall, well built, well cast to be Apollo. On his head I made out a crown of leaves; the glint of golden leaves, laurel leaves. The light made his skin even paler, so that he stood out like marble against the black trees. He was facing the house,