The Magus, A Revised Version (12 page)

The absence of the usually unfailing sun-wind made the next Saturday oppressively hot. The cicadas had begun. They racketed in a ragged chorus, never quite finding a common beat, rasping one
’
s nerves, but finally so familiar that when one day they stopped in a rare shower of rain, the silence was like an explosion. They completely changed the character of the pine-forest. Now it was live and
multitudinous, an audible, invisible hive of energy, with all its pure solitude gone, for besides the
tzitzikia
the air throbbed, whined, hummed with carmine-winged grasshoppers, locusts, huge hornets, bees, midges, bots, and ten thousand other anonymous insects. In
some places there were nagging clouds of black flies, so that I climbed
through the trees like a new Orestes, cursing and slapping.

I came to the ridge again. The sea was a pearly turquoise, the far mountains ash-blue in the windless heat. I could see the shimmering green crown of pine trees around Bourani. It was about noon when I came through the trees out on to the shingle of the beach with the chapel. It was deserted. I searched among the rocks, but there was nothing, and I didn
’
t feel watched. I had a swim, then lunch, black bread and ochra and fried squid. A long way south a plump caique thudded past towing a line of six little lamp-boats, like a mallard with ducklings. Its bow-wave made a dark miraging ripple on the creamy blue surface of the sea, and that was all that remained of civilization when the boats had disappeared behind the western headland. There was the infinitesimal lap of the transparent blue water on the stones, the waiting trees, the myriad dynamos of the insects, and the enormous landscape of silence. I dozed under the thin shade of a pine, in the agelessness, the absolute dissociation of wild Greece.

The sun moved, came on me, and made me erotic. I thought of Alison, of sex things we had done together. I wished she was beside me, naked. We would have made love against the pine-needles, then
swum, then made love again. I was filled with a dry sadness, a mixture
of remembering and knowing; remembering what was and what might have been and knowing it was all past; at the same time knowing, or beginning to know, that other things were happily past
–
at least some of my illusions about myself, and then the syphilis, for there were no signs that it was going to come back. I felt physically very well. What was going to become of my life I didn
’
t know; but lying there that day by the sea it didn
’
t seem to matter much. To be was enough. I felt myself in suspension, waiting without fear for some impulse to drive me on. I turned on my stomach and made love to the memory of Alison, like an animal, without guilt or shame, a mere machine for sensation
spread-eagled
on the earth. Then I ran across the burning stones into the sea.

I climbed the path by the wire and the undergrowth, passed beside the peeling gate, stood once more before the mysterious sign. The grassy track ran level, curved and dipped a little, emerged from the trees. The house, dazzlingly white where the afternoon sun touched it, stood with its shadowed back to me. It had been built on the seaward side of a small cottage that had evidently existed before it. It was square, with a flat roof and a colonnade of slender arches running round the south and east sides. Above the colonnade was a terrace. I could see the open french windows of a first-floor room giving access to it. To the east and back of the house there were lines of swordplants and small clumps of bushes with vivid scarlet and yellow flowers. In front, southwards and seawards, there was a stretch of gravel and then the ground fell away abruptly down to the sea. At both corners of the gravel stood palm trees, in neat whitewashed rings of stones. The pines had been thinned to clear the view.

The house abashed me. It was too reminiscent of the Cote d
’
Azur, too un-Greek. It stood, white and opulent, like Swiss snow, and made me feel sticky-palmed and uncouth.

I walked up a small flight of steps to the red-tiled side colonnade. There was a closed door with an iron knocker cast in the shape of a dolphin. The windows beside it were heavily shuttered. I knocked on the door; the knocks barked sharply over stone floors. But no one came. The house and I waited silently in a sea of insect sound. I went along the colonnade to the corner of the southern front of the house. There the colonnade was wider and the slender arches more open; standing in the deep shade, I looked out over the tree-tops and the sea to the languishing ash-lilac mountains … a
déjà vu
feeling of having stood in the same place, before that particular proportion of the arches, that particular contrast of shade and burning landscape outside
– I
couldn
’
t say.

There were two old cane chairs in the middle of the colonnade, and a table covered with a blue-and-white folkweave cloth, on which were two cups and saucers and two large plates covered in muslin. By the wall stood a rattan couch with cushions; and hanging from a bracket by the open french windows was a small brightly polished bell with a faded maroon tassel hanging from the clapper.

I noticed the twoness of the tea-table, and stood by the corner,
embarrassed, aware of a trite English desire to sneak away. Then, without warning, a figure appeared in the doorway. It was Conchis.

Before anything else, I knew I was expected. He saw me without surprise, with a small smile, almost a grimace, on his face.

He was nearly completely bald, brown as old leather, short and spare, a man whose age was impossible to tell: perhaps sixty, perhaps seventy; dressed in a navy-blue shirt, knee-length shorts, and a pair of salt-stained gym shoes. The most striking thing about him was the intensity of his eyes; very dark brown, staring, with a simian penetration emphasized by the remarkably clear whites; eyes that seemed not quite human.

He raised his left hand briefly in a kind of silent salutation, then strode to the corner of the colonnade, leaving me with my formed words unspoken, and called back to the cottage.

‘
Maria!
’

I heard a faint wail of answer.

‘
My name is…
’
I began, as he turned.

But he raised his left hand again, this time to silence me; took my arm and led me to the edge of the colonnade. He had an authority, an abrupt decisiveness, that caught me
off
balance. He surveyed the landscape, then me. The sweet saffron-like smell of some flowers that grew below, at the edge of the gravel, wafted up into the shade.

‘
I
chose well?
’

His English sounded perfect.

‘
Wonderfully. But you must let me
–
‘

Once again his arm, brown and corded, swept silencingly towards the sea and the mountains and the south, as if I might not have properly appreciated it. I looked sideways at him. He was obviously a man who rarely smiled. There was something mask-like, emotion-purged, about his face. Deep furrows ran from beside his nose to the corners of his mouth; they suggested experience, command, impatience with fools. He was slight
ly mad, no doubt harmlessly so,
but mad. I had an idea that he thought I was someone else. He kept his ape-like eyes on me. The silence and the stare were alarming, and faintly comic, as if he was trying to hypnotize a bird.

Suddenly he gave a curious little rapid shake of
the
head; quizzical, rhetorical, not expecting an answer. Then he changed, as if what had happened between us till then was a joke, a charade, that had been rehearsed and gone according to plan, but could now be ended. And I was completely
off
-
balance again. He wasn
’
t mad after all. He even smiled, and the ape-eyes became almost squirrel-eyes.

He turned back to the table.
‘
Let us have tea.
’

‘
I only came for a glass of water. This is…
’

‘
You came here to meet me. Please. Life is short.
’

I sat down. The second place was mine. An old woman appeared, in black, a black grey with age, her face as lined as an Indian squaw
’
s. She was incongruously carrying a tray with an elegant silver teapot, a kettle, a bowl of sugar, a saucer with sliced lemon.

‘
This is my housekeeper, Maria.
’

He spoke to her in very precise Greek, and I heard my own name and the name ofthe school. The old woman bobbed at me, her eyes on the ground, unsmiling, and then unloaded her tray. Conchis plucked the muslin away from one of the plates with the quick aplomb of a conjurer. I saw cucumber sandwiches. He poured the tea, and indicated the lemon.

‘
How do you know who I am, Mr Conchis?
’

‘
Anglicize my name. I prefer the
“
ch
”
soft.
’
He sipped his tea.
‘
If you question Hermes, Zeus will know.
’

‘
I
’
m afraid my colleague was tactless.
’

‘
You no doubt found out all about me.
’

‘
I found out very little. But that makes this even kinder of you.
’

He looked out to sea.
‘
There is a poem of
the T
’
ang dynasty.
’
He sounded the precious glottal stop.
‘
“
Here at the frontier, there are falling leaves. Although my neighbours are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups on my table.
”
‘

I smiled.
‘
Always?
’

‘
I saw you last Sunday.
’

‘
They were your things down there?
’

He bowed his head.
‘
And I also saw you this afternoon.
’

‘
I hope I haven
’
t kept you from your beach.
’

‘
Not at all. My private beach is down there.
’
He pointed over the gravel.
‘
But I always like a beach to myself. And I presume the same of you. Now. Eat the sandwiches.
’

He poured me more tea. It had huge torn leaves and a tarry China fragrance. On the other plate were
kourabi
è
des,
conical butter-cakes rolled in icing sugar. I
’
d forgotten what a delicious meal tea could be; and sitting there I felt invaded by the envy of the man who lives in an institution, and has to put up with institution meals and institution everything else, for the rich private life of the established. I remembered having tea with one of my tutors, an old bachelor don at Magdalen; and the same envy for his rooms, his books, his calm, precise, ticking peace.

I bit into my first
kourabi
è
,
and gave an appreciative nod.

‘
You are not the first English person to have admired Maria
’
s cooking.
’

‘
Mitford?
’
His eyes fixed me sharply again.
‘
I met him in London.
’

He poured more tea.
‘
How did you like Captain Mitford?
’

‘
Not my type.
’

‘
He spoke of me?
’

‘
Not at all. That is … His eyes were intent.
‘
He just said you
’
d had
a….
disagreement?
’

‘
Captain Mitford made me ashamed to have English blood.
’

Till then I had felt I was beginning to get his measure; first of all, his English, though excellent, was somehow not contemporary, more that of someone who hadn
’
t been in England for many years; and then his whole appearance was foreign. He had a bizarre family
resemblance to Picasso; saurian as well as simian, decades of living in
the sun, the quintessential Mediterranean man, who had discarded everything that lay between him and his vitality. A monkey—
glander, essence of queen bees; and intense by choice and exercise as
much as by nature. He was plainly not a dandy about clothes; but there are other sorts of narcissism.

‘
I didn
’
t realize you were English.
’

‘
I spent the first nineteen years of my life in England. Now I have Greek nationality and my mother
’
s name. My mother was Greek.
’

‘
You go back to England?
’

‘
Rarely.
’
He jumped swiftly on.
‘
Do you like my house? I designed and built it myself.
’

I looked round.
‘
I envy you.
’

‘
And I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you.
’

His face was without the
off
ensively avuncular smile that usually accompanies such trite statements; and something intent about the look he gave me made it clear he did not mean it tritely.

‘
Well. Now I will leave you for a few minutes. Then we shall have a look round.
’
I had risen with him, but he gestured me down again.
‘
Finish the cakes. Maria will be honoured. Please.
’

He walked into the sunlight at the edge of the colonnade, stretched his arms and fingers, and with another gesture to me to help myself
passed back inside the room. From where I was sitting I could see one
end of a cretonne-covered sofa, a table with a bowl of milky flowers on it. The wall behind was covered by bookshelves, from the ceiling to the floor. I stole another
kourabi
è
.
The sun was beginning to float down on the mountains, and the sea glittered lazily at the foot of their ashy, opaque shadows. Then there was an unannounced shock of antique sound, a rapid arpeggio, far too real to come from a radio or record. I stopped eating, wondering what new surprise I was being presented with.

There was a moment
’
s silence, perhaps to leave me guessing. Then came the quiet plangent sound of a harpsichord. I hesitated, then decided that two could play the independence game. He played quickly, and then tranquilly; once or twice he stopped and retook a phrase. The old woman came and silently cleared away, without once looking at me, even when I pointed at the few cakes left and praised them in my stilted Greek; the hermit master evidently liked silent servants. The music came clearly out of the room, and flowed round me and out through the colonnade into the light. He broke
off
, repeated a passage, and then stopped as abruptly as he had begun. A door closed, there was a silence. Five minutes passed, then ten. The
sun crept towards me over the red tiles.

I felt I ought to have gone in earlier; that now I had put him in a huff. But he appeared in the doorway, speaking.

‘
I have not driven you away.
’

‘
Not at all. It was Bach?
’

‘
Telemann.
’

‘
You play very well.
’

‘
Once, I
could
play. Never mind. Come.
’
Hisjerkiness was pathological; not only as if he wanted to get rid of me, but of time itself.

I stood up.
‘
I hope I shall hear you play again.
’
He made a little bow, refusing the invitation to invite.
‘
One gets so starved of music here.
’

‘
Only of music?
’
He went on before I could answer.
‘
Come now. Prospero will show you his domaine.
’

As we went down the steps to the gravel I said,
‘
Prospero had a daughter.
’

‘
Prospero had many things.
’
He turned a dry look on me.
‘
And not all young and beautiful, Mr Urfe.
’

I smiled tactfully, thinking he must be referring to memories of the war, and left a little silence.

‘
You live alone here?
’

‘
What some would call alone. What others would not.
’

It was said with a kind of grim contempt, and he stared ahead as he
spoke. Whether to mystify me once more or because there was no more to be said to a stranger, I couldn
’
t tell.

He walked rapidly on, incessantly pointing things out. He showed me round his little vegetable-garden terrace; his cucumbers, his almonds, his long-leaved loquats, his pistachios. From the far edge of the terrace I could see down to where I had been lying only an hour or two before.

‘
Moutsa.
’

‘
I haven
’
t heard it called that before.
’

‘
Albanian.
’
He tapped his nose.
‘
Snout. Because of the cliff over there.
’

‘
Not very poetic for such a lovely beach.
’