Read Pascali's Island Online

Authors: Barry Unsworth

Tags: #prose_history

Pascali's Island (4 page)

BOOK: Pascali's Island
9.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Mister Bowles nodded, and actually smiled at last, though as if humouring me. He showed no sign of wanting to follow up this topic. A pity, as I might have made a small commission.

'No,' I said, 'my mother simply varied her dancing with somersaults. I am talking about the eighteen-sixties now. All this was before the great days of the music hall, before Jane Avril and La Goulue. '

I was beginning to blame Mister Bowles for his failure to see the rare spirit behind my possibly unprepossessing exterior. Already something unaccommodating, and perhaps even self-righteous, about him was making itself felt. All the same, as before, and despite myself now, I was constrained to his version of things; saw the gesturing, wheedling person he thought he was seeing. My self-demeaning was a game, a counter-attack, but without hope of victory.

'Do you remember,' I ploughed odiously on, 'do you remember that marvellous phrase Mallarmé used about Loie Fuller?'

'No, I don't believe I do,' he said. 'What was it?'

'Fontaine intarrisable d'elle même.' I pronounced the French sonorously.

'Ah, yes,' he said. 'Would you like another drink?'

'That is very kind of you.' This offer was humiliating, of course, as were the words I used in accepting it. I should have been less grateful, more insolent. (I have stores of insolence, Excellency: it is always the resource of the weak.) But the fact is that I had instantly become suspicious of him: it is not customary for bored, uncomprehending strangers to offer one second drinks – unless they are guided by self-interest. I wondered for a moment whether he simply wanted to shut me up. In that he would not have succeeded: I was about to introduce the Goncourts into our discussion of the music hall. But no. After another moment he leaned forward and said, in a burst, 'That offer of yours, to act as interpreter, you know. Very decent of you. I may well take you up on it.'

'At your service,' I said.

'I have a spot of business to conduct here,' Mister Bowles said. 'It's a question of making an approach to the authorities.'

I think he would have said more, but at this point Biron returned with the drinks, and a moment afterwards Lydia Neuman appeared at the entrance to the verandah, and glanced round as if looking for someone. Presumably not seeing this person, she was turning back towards the door in the leisurely, indifferent way she has when she is alone and feels eyes upon her – I know her so well, Excellency. I wonder if I am the only one to find this assumption of indifference pitiful. Like all attempts to conceal vulnerability. On an impulse I waved and called her name. My voice caused a hush among those around Politis. Lydia saw me, hesitated briefly, then began to walk towards us. On her face the familiar curving, faintly derisive smile.

Lydia lives on the island, Excellency. Part of the time at least. She has a house with a studio in the Turkish quarter. She is of Jewish extraction. The family is Spanish in origin, but her parents now live in France, in Lyons. Her father is a financier of some kind, quite rich. No political affiliations that I can discover. She herself is an artist. She paints the landscapes and people of the island.

We stood up as she drew near the table. I was beginning to make the introduction, but Mister Bowles forestalled me. 'Bowles,' he said. 'Anthony Bowles.' He stood very tall and straight, looking at Lydia unwaveringly.

I wonder now why he was so precipitate. Not shyness, surely? Was there some design in it? Was he wanting to make it clear that he and Lydia had never met before? The only reason for wanting to make this clear is that they have. Probably I am being too ingenious.

' Lydia is an artist, a painter,' I said. I watched her slim, honey-coloured hand enclosed in his reddish big-knuckled one, and a slight chill, a feeling of premonition, visited me at this brief engulfment. (As you know by now, Excellency, I am a believer in signs and portents. The world of sense signals to us, but all messages are encoded. The true frisson is in perception of the pattern, the overall design, not in the detail, however glowing. It is the same with a well-constructed report.)

'Mr, er, Pascali was just telling me about his mother,' Mister Bowles said, when we were again seated.

'One of his favourite topics.' Lydia smiled at Mister Bowles, establishing an immediate front with him against me. She is swift and always unerring in this forming of alliances-when she is interested in someone. Always this eagerness, this optimism, at every new acquaintance. Me of course she has placed and fixed, long ago. She knows my devotion.

I looked at her face in half profile, at the dark strongly marked brows, dark eyes, high cheek bones, giving an effect of severity in repose – a severity cancelled at every slightest tendency of the mouth to smile. She was wearing a pale green crepe dress embroidered with white braid at the throat. To my exacting eye the material seemed too soft and clinging for the spare lines of her body, the angular shoulders, the high breasts. I know her body in every detail, Excellency, though I have never seen it with the eyes of sense. Years of lonely fevers in my room, shuddering knowledge. She and I have done everything together.

'He likes to give himself disgraceful antecedents,' she said.

Her own, apart from the bare summary I have given you, are shrouded in mystery. She was born in Vienna, she once told me, and was for some years at school in England, a boarding school in Kent. She speaks English well, though with a French accent. She makes fairly frequent trips to Europe. What she does there, I don't know. There is much I do not know about Lydia, even after so long, but one thing is certain: she enjoys powerful protection. An unveiled foreign woman, living alone, coming and going as she pleases, she is nevertheless treated with deference. When she is away from home, a bekirji is more or less constantly stationed opposite her house during the night-time hours. Whether she has friends at court or friends here I'm not sure – she does not see many people here; but friends she has, most assuredly. To take one privilege among many, small, but enviable, she is allowed to bring foreign books back from Europe without the zealous attentions of Your Excellency's customs officials. More importantly, her journeys include visits to Athens and various parts of mainland Greece -this with the full knowledge of local officials here. However, I do not want to give the wrong impression. She is an accomplished painter, and takes her work seriously.

'His mother was an acrobat,' Mister Bowles said. This fact seemed to have lodged firmly in his mind.

'Acrobat?' Lydia said. 'He told me she was a piano teacher.'

Both of them turned to regard me with the same faintly derisive expectancy. I see myself as they must have seen me: obese, quaintly dressed; in manner and gesture effusive; face slightly moist from the exertions of speech; a man who accepts drinks and gibes, without reciprocating.

'My mother,' I said, 'belonged to a more innocent age than ours. The road show she was with fell on evil days. She took up the profession of prostitute in Constantinople which in those days had nothing but very fat whores. Fatness was regarded as the sine qua non, there was no making a career without it. That is, until my mother appeared on the scene. Being in good hard training from her acrobatics, and with no superfluous flesh on her, she appealed to a special taste – one which up to then had been completely uncatered for. As you can imagine, she began to prosper.

'Of one of the encounters of those early days I am the unathletic product. I have no idea who my father was, or begetter seems a more suitable word, what the race or background. My mother gave me different accounts at different times – she was a great one for stories.'

'You have inherited that from her, at least,' Lydia said.

Mister Bowles looked worried. 'I don't really think -' he began, then stopped, aiming at me the reproof of his pale eyes.

'Yes,' I said, 'sometimes it was a person highly placed, sometimes a poor artist, sometimes a simple peasant. There were times when I thought the whole race of men had gone into the making of me. Eventually, and to cut a long story short, my mother became the mistress of an official in the Ministry of Finance, a Maltese, by name Pascali. Through all these vicissitudes she kept me by her side. I learned English at her knee, Greek from tutors, Turkish on the streets, and French at the Lyceé. But English, as I was telling Mister Bowles before you came, was always my favourite.'

'A man's mother should be sacred,' Mister Bowles said.

Lydia was gazing at him with interest. 'Are you staying here long?' she said.

'Possibly a week or two. The whole area is rich in historical remains.'

'Are you an archeologist, then?'

'Strictly an amateur,' he said. 'It is a hobby of mine and I can afford to indulge it. At present I'm gathering material for a book about the classical antiquities, on the coast of Asia Minor and here, on the islands.'

'There is a lot here that has never been touched,' Lydia said.

'I am looking forward to investigating it.' Mister Bowles leaned forward and looked intently at Lydia. He paused, as if gathering himself, and then the words came out in a rush: 'The first settlers from Attica built a temple to Artemis up there, on the headland,' he said. 'But it seems that the area was regarded as sacred before that. Long before.' There was a note of deep seriousness in his voice.

'Perhaps because there is water there?' I suggested. 'Wells and water-courses have always bred superstitions, even faster than microbes.'

I spoke in this disrespectful way deliberately to counteract what I felt to be the religiosity of his tone. However, he made no reply. He was still looking at Lydia. 'Mister Pascali mentioned that you are a painter,' he said.

'Yes.'

'What kind of pictures do you paint?'

'Well,' Lydia said, 'landscapes mainly. With figures, you know. Though lately I have been doing some portraits.'

She was settling down to tell him about her work. Suddenly I had an idea. With Lydia on this subject, neither of them was likely to move for quite some time.

'I'll be back in a minute,' I said. Neither of them as much as glanced up.

Back through the palms and the pillars of the lounge, deserted now. The sense of being about to proceed illegally quickened my heart. I am a law-abiding man, Excellency. As I had expected, there was no one at all in the lobby, no one at the reception desk. Mardosian was making himself pleasant in the dining-room.

Passing round the desk to the panel where the heavy brass keys hang on their pegs, actually reaching out and grasping number sixteen, brought me out in a general perspiration. Key in hand I went rapidly back round the counter, wheeled left up the stairs, slipped along the corridor to room sixteen. I opened and entered, breathing heavily with the exertions of my haste. The room was warm, shuttered. I saw at once that the Englishman had not yet fully unpacked. Both of his valises were on the floor between the bed and the wall. One was locked still, the other open and half-empty.

In haste I opened this wider, saw the folded clothing. I thrust my hand into the depths of it, working the palm against the inner cover, all the way round. I trembled with fear, but I persisted. (Excellency, I ask you to notice my dedication-greater because I am not naturally endowed with courage. Men are unequal in this respect, as in all others. This of course you already know. My poor store of knowledge is contained in one small corner of your spacious mind. However, I presume to remind you. Recesses in such vast estates may become shadowy. Even the mind of God, they say, is not uniformly lit.)

Two silk shirts with the label of a tailor in Pera. So he has been in Constantinople. Then, amidst yielding of cotton, my hand touches something cold, smooth, resistant. I draw out, draw up like treasure, a smallish marble head of a woman. About as large as a man's fist. White marble, Paros marble by the look of it, warmed with age. Stylised hair, broad Asian brows, blind smile. Nose rather badly chipped. Why is he carrying her about in his luggage? Perhaps acquired on his recent travels.

Nothing further of interest in the luggage. Though by now intensely desirous of leaving, I steadied myself, controlled my breathing. I began to go through the chest of drawers in the corner. In the second one I found a notebook with glazed black covers. The journal? However, all I could make out on the pages I hastily glanced at were figures and dates in red ink, some place-names, details apparently of expenditure in Turkish liras. My eye was caught briefly by an entry against Miletus, with figures in brackets. No personal opinions or impressions whatever.

With a sort of trembling tenacity of purpose I opened drawer after drawer; and in the bottom one I was rewarded. There, quite alone, lay a short-barrelled revolver with a black rubber grip. Squat and naked it lay there, no holster, no masking cloth. A dull shine to it, blue-black. I did not touch it, Excellency. I have a horror of firearms.

Here was a discovery indeed. Do amateur archeologists normally include instruments of death in their equipment? I think not. Strangely enough I no longer felt any fear: fear had been stilled by the sight of the weapon, as by a blow. I remained for a second or two longer in the quiet room. In my mind a vague sense that something had been confirmed. Then I withdrew quietly, passed back along the corridor, down to the lobby. Someone had been at the counter while I was upstairs, because there was an open copy of Cumhuriet on it. However, I am sure no one saw me replace the Englishman's key. Pausing only to wipe palms and neck with my handkerchief, I made my way back towards the verandah, catching as I did so the stern eye of the divine rapist, now in human form, in a blue cloak and spiked helmet.

'We're having dinner here,' Lydia said. 'Come and join us.'

Thus assuring, bless her, my food for the evening. They had been joined by Herr Gesing, the German commercial agent. He has not featured in my reports before, having only been on the island a week or so…

I am very tired, Excellency. I cannot finish my account of the evening at this one sitting. I must postpone the rest until later today. My eyes ache, and the effort of focussing has become painful. Just now I opened the shutters a little and I saw light on the sea, the faintest swathe of light. Dawn has overtaken my labours. The sea lightens before the sky does, at this time of year: a kind of luminosity on the face of the water, as if daybreak is more promptly and sensitively recorded there. This band of light extends as I watch, with the effect of a long slow ripple, like a tremor in a dream – neither pleasurable nor painful, but constrained, under duress. As always, I am impressed by the docility of the sea. It quivers to light and current like a vast belly twitching in a dream… The sky above the hills lightens from minute to minute. Somewhere in the interior, beyond the bay, I see the smoke of fires. Lately I have seen them frequently, though not usually so near the coast. The smoke rises straight up in thin columns. Signals, cooking fires, it is impossible to tell. Too much smoke for shepherds' fires.

BOOK: Pascali's Island
9.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Paradime by Alan Glynn
To Catch A Storm by Warren Slingsby
The Final Play by Rhonda Laurel
Bloodhounds by Peter Lovesey
Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
Big Spankable Asses by Lisa G Riley
Crusade by ANDERSON, TAYLOR
Shadow Walkers by Brent Hartinger
Amanda Scott by The Bawdy Bride