The Magus, A Revised Version (104 page)

Seidevarre.
Letter from Johan Fredriksen.

Dear Sir,

The mayor of Kirkenes has passed to me, who is the schoolmaster, your letter to answer. There is in Pasvikdal a place of the name Seidevarre and there was in that place many years from now a family of the name Nygaard. I am very sorry we do not know what is become with this family.

I am very pleased to help you.

I was even more pleased to have been helped. Conchis had once been there, something had happened there. It was not all fiction.

Lily
’
s mother.
I drove down to Cerne Abbas, not expecting to find Ansty Cottage
–
or anything else. I did not. I told the manageress at the little hotel where I had lunch that I
’
d once known two girls from Cerne Abbas
–
twins, very pretty, but I
’
d forgotten their surname. It left her deeply worried
–
she knew everyone in the village and couldn
’
t think who it could have been. The
‘
headmaster
’
at the pri
mary school: in reality a headmistress. Obviously the letters had been invented on
Phraxos.

Charles-Victor Bruneau.
Not in Grove. A man I spoke to at the Royal Academy of Music had never heard of him; or, needless to say, of Conchis.

Conchis
’
s costume at the
‘
trial
’
.
On my way back from Cerne Abbas
I stopped for dinner in Hungerford, and passed an antique shop on my way to the hotel. Propped up in the window were five old Tarot cards. On one of them was a man dressed exactly as Conchis had been; even to the same emblems on his cloak. Underneath were the words LE
SORCIER
–
the sorcerer. The shop was shut, but I took its address and later they sold me the card by post;
‘
a nice eighteenth-century card
’
.

It gave me a sharp shock when I first saw it
– I
looked round, as ifit had been planted there for me to notice; as if I were being watched.

The
‘
psychologists
’
at the trial.
I tried the Tavistock Clinic and the
American Embassy. All the names totally unknown, though some of
the institutes exist. Further research turned up nothing on Conchis.

Nevinson.
This was the pre-war master whose Oxford college was in a book in the school library. The Bursar
’
s
Off
ice at Balliol sent me an address in Japan. I wrote him a letter. Two weeks later I had a reply.

Faculty of English

Osaka University

Dear Mr Urfe,

Thank you for your letter. It came, as it were, from the distant past, and gave me quite a surprise! But I was delighted to hear that the school has survived the war, and I trust you have enjoyed your stay there as much as I did.

I had forgotten about Bourani. I remember the place now, however, and (very vaguely!) the owner. Did I have a violent argument with him once about Racine and predestination? I have an intuition, no more, that I did. But so much has flowed under the bridges since those days.

Other
‘
victims
’
before the war
–
alas, I can
’
t help you. The man before me I never met. I did know Ge
off
rey Sugden, who was there for three years after me. I never heard him refer especially to Bourani.

If you are ever in this part of the world, I should be delighted to talk over old times with you, and to
off
er you, if not an ouzo, at least a
sake pou napinete.

Yours sincerely,

DOUGLAS NEVINSON

Wimmel.
In late August, a piece of luck. One of my teeth began to hurt and Kemp sent me to her dentist to have it seen to. While I was in the waiting-room I picked up an old film magazine of the previous January. Halfway through I came on a picture of the false Wimmel. He was even dressed in Nazi uniform. Underneath there was a caption paragraph.

Ignaz Pruszynski, who plays the fiendish German Town Commandant in Poland
’
s much-praised film of the resistance,
Black Ordeal,
in real life played a very different role. He led a Polish underground group all through the Occupation, and was awarded the Polish equivalent of our own Victoria Cross.

Hypnotism.
I read a couple of books on this. Conchis had evidently learnt the technique professionally. Post-hypnotic suggestion, implanting commands that are carried out on a given signal after the subject has been woken from the trance state and is in all other ways returned to normal, was
‘
perfectly feasible and frequently demonstrated
’
. But I thought back. At no point could I see that I had been unconsciously forced to behave any differently than I would have done consciously
–
than I had in fact behaved. No doubt I had been
‘
pumped
’
under hypnosis. But my own free will must have made further manipulation, except in very minor things, unnecessary.

Raising both arms above the head.
Conchis got this from ancient
Egypt. It was the Ka sign, used by initiates
‘
to gain possession of the cosmic forces of mystery
’
. In many tomb-paintings. It meant:
‘
I am
master of the spells. Strength is mine. I impart strength.
’
Another Egyptian
symbol was the ring-topped cross on the walls of the trial room. It was their
‘
key of life
’
.

The wheel symbol.
‘
The mandala, or wheel is a universal symbol of existence.
’

The ribbon on my leg, the bare shoulder.
From masonic ritual, but
believed to descend from the Eleusinian mysteries. Associated with initiation.

‘
Maria.
’
Probably really was a peasant, though an intelligent one. She spoke only two or three words of French to me; sat silent all through the trial, rather conspicuously out-of-place. Unlike the others,
she
may have been what she first seemed.

Lily
’
s bank.
I wrote another letter, and got back a reply from the manager of the real Barclay
’
s branch. His name was not P. J. Fearn; and the headed paper he wrote on was not like that I had received.

Her school.
Julie Holmes
–
unknown.

Mitford.
I wrote a card to the address in Northumberland I had had the year before and received a letter back from his mother. She said Alexander was now a courier, working in Spain. I got in touch with the travel firm he was working for, but they said he wouldn
’
t be back till September. I left a letter for him.

The paintings at Bourani.
I started with the
Bonnards
. The first book of reproductions of his work I opened had the picture of the girl drying by the window. I turned to the attributions list at the back. It was in the Los Angeles County Museum. The book had been printed in 1950. Later I
‘
found
’
the other Bonnard; at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Both had been copies. The Modi
gliani I never traced; but I suspect, remembering those curiously Conchis-like eyes, that it was not even a copy.

‘
Evening Standard
’
of January 8th, 1952. No sign of a photo of Lily and Rose, in any edition.

L
’
Astr
é
e.
Did Conchis remember that I believed myself remotely connected with
d
’
Urfé
? The story of
L’Astr
é
e
is: The shepherdess Astr
é
e, hearing evil reports of the shepherd Celadon, banishes him from her presence. A war breaks out, and
Astr
é
e
is taken prisoner. Celadon manages to rescue her, but she will not forgive him. He does not gain her hand until he has turned the lion and unicorns who devour unfaithful lovers into statues of stone.

Chaliapin.
Was at Covent Garden in June 1914, and in
Prince Igor.

‘
You may he elect.
’
When he said that, at our first strange meeting, he meant simply,
‘
I
’
ve decided to use you.
’
That was also the only sense in which, at the end, I could be elect. He meant,
‘
We
have
used you.
’

Lily and Rose.
Two twin sisters, both very pretty, gifted (though I came to doubt Lily
’
s classical education), must, if they had been at Oxford or Cambridge, have bee
n the double Zuleika Dobsons of
their years. I could not believe they had been at Oxford
–
since our years must have overlapped
–
so I tried the
‘
other
’
place. I searched through student magazines, tracked down stills from various college and university theatre productions, even braved one or two of the women
’
s college bursaries … and all in vain. Girton, her supposed college, had not a single likely candidate. London University proved a similar blank.

I also tried a few London theatrical agencies. Three times I was shown photographs of twin sisters; and was three times disappointed. I had no more luck at Berman
’
s and one or two other theatrical costumiers I went to. The Tavistock Repertory had not put on any production of
Lysistrata.
rada
could not help. Indeed all I derived from the whole exercise
–
since my inquiries involved the concocting of various reasons for them
–
was a grudging retrospective admiration for the two girls
’
own skill in improvising lies.

Of course there was one extra cunning in the
‘
Julie Holmes
’
invention. We always tend to believe people who have had the same experiences as ourselves. Her Cambridge equalled my Oxford, and soon.

Othello,
Act I, Scene III.

She is abus
’
d, stol
’
n from me, and corrupted

By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;

For nature so preposterously to err,

Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,

Sans witchcraft could not.

And:

A maiden never bold;

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion

Blush
’
d at herself; and she
–
in spite of nature,

Of years, of country, credit, everything
–

To fall in love with what she fear
’
d to look on!

The fabulous whore Io.
Lempri
è
re:
In the ancient Gothic Io and Gio signified
‘
earth
’
, as Isi or Isa signified
‘
ice
’
or water in its primordial state;
and both were equally titles of the goddess, who represented the productive
and nutritive power of the earth.
Indian Kali, Syrian Astarte (Ashtaroth),
Egyptian Isis and Greek Io were considered one and the same goddess. She had three colours (on the walls
in the trial): white, red, and
black, the phases of the moon, and also the phases of woman: virgin, mother, and crone. Lily was evidently the goddess in her white, virgin phase; and perhaps in the black, as well. Rose would have stood for the red phase; but then Alison was given that role.