The Magus, A Revised Version (38 page)

‘
You went to a …
‘
I nodded. The incredulity became credulity. She looked down.

‘
You had your revenge.
’

She came and put her arms round me.
‘
Oh Nicko, Nicko.
’

I said over her head,
‘
I
’
m not meant to have oral or closer contact for at least another month. I didn
’
t know what to do. I ought never to have written. This was never really on.
’

She let go of me and went and sat on the bed. I saw I had got myself into a new corner; she now thought that this satisfactorily explained our awkwardness till then. She gave me a kind, gentle little smile.

‘
Tell me all about it.
’

I walked round and round the room, telling her about Patarescu and the clinic, about the poetry, even about the venture at suicide, about everything except Bourani. After a while she lay back on the bed, smoking, and I was unexpectedly filled with a pleasure in duplicity; with that pleasure, I imagined, Conchis felt when he was with me. In the end I sat on the end of the bed. She lay staring up at the ceiling.

‘
Can I tell you about Pete now?
’

‘
Of course.
’

I half listened, playing my part, and suddenly began to enjoy being with her again; not particularly with Alison, but being in this hotel bedroom, hearing the murmur of the evening crowds below, the sound of sirens, the smell of the tired Aegean. I felt no attraction and no tenderness for her; no real interest in the break-up of her long relationship with the boor of an Australian pilot; simply the complex, ambiguous sadness of the darkening room. The light had drained out of the sky, it became rapid dusk. All the treacheries of modern love seemed beautiful, and I had my great secret, safe, locked away. It was Greece again, the Alexandrian Greece of Cavafy; there were only degrees of aesthetic pleasure; of beauty in decadence. Morality was a North European lie.

There was a long silence.

She said,
‘
Where are we, Nicko?
’

‘
How do you mean?
’

She was leaning on her elbow, staring at me, but I wouldn
’
t look round at her.

‘
Now I know
–
of course …
‘
she shrugged.
‘
But I didn
’
t come to be your old chum.
’

I put my head in my hands.

‘
Alison, I
’
m sick of women, sick of love, sick of sex, sick of everything. I don
’
t know what I want. I should never have asked you to come.
’
She looked down, seeming tacitly to agree.
‘
The fact is… well, I suppose I have a sort of nostalgia for a sister at the moment. If you say fuck that
– I
understand. I have no right not to understand.
’

‘
All right.
’
She looked up again.
‘
Sister. But one day you
’
ll be cured.
’

‘
I don
’
t know. I just don
’
t know.
’
I sounded suitably distraught.
‘
Look
–
please go away, curse me, anything, but I
’
m a dead man at the moment.
’
I went to the window.
‘
It
’
s all my fault. I can
’
t ask you to spend three days with a dead man.
’

‘
A dead man I once loved.
’

A long silence crept between us. But then she briskly sat up and got
off
the bed; and went and switched on the light and combed her hair. She produced the jet earrings I had left that last day in London and put them on; then lipstick. I thought of Julie, of lips without lipstick; coolness, mystery, elegance. It seemed almost marvellous, to be so without desire; at last in my life, to be able to be so faithful.

By an unhappy irony the way to the restaurant I had chosen lay through the red-light area of the Piraeus. Bars, multilingual neon
signs, photos of strippers and bellydancers, sailors in lounging groups,
glimpses through bead curtains of Lautrec-like interiors, women in lines along the padded benches. The streets were thronged with pimps and tarts, barrow-boys selling pistachios and sunflower-pips, chestnut-sellers, pasty-sellers, lottery-ticket hawkers. Doormen invited us in, men slid up with wallets of watches, packets of Lucky Strike and Camel, shoddy souvenirs. And every ten yards someone whistled at Alison.

We walked in silence. I had a vision of
‘
Lily
’
walking through
that street, and silencing everything, purifying everything; not provoking and adding to the vulgarity. Alison had a set face, and we started to walk quickly to get out of the place; but I thought I could see in her walk a touch of that old amoral sexuality, that quality she could not help
off
ering and other men noticing.

When we got to Spiro
’
s, she said, too brightly,
‘
Well, brother Nicholas, what are you going to do with me?
’

‘
Do you want to call it
off
?
’

She twisted her glass of ouzo.

‘
Do you?
’

‘
I asked first.
’

‘
No. Now you.
’

‘
We could do something. Go somewhere you haven
’
t seen.
’
To my relief she
’
d already told me that she had spent a day in Athens earlier that summer; had done the sights.

‘
I don
’
t want to do a tourist thing. Think of something no one else ever does. Somewhere where we shall be alone.
’
She added quickly,
‘
Because of my
job. I hate people.
’

‘
How
’
s your walking?
’

‘
I
’
d love to. Where?
’

‘
Well, there
’
s Parnassus. Apparently it
’
s a very easy climb. Just a long walk. We could hire a car. Go on to Delphi afterwards.
’

‘
Parnassus?
’
She frowned, unable to quite place it.

‘
Where the muses dash about. The mountain.
’

‘
Oh, Nicholas!
’
A flash of her old self; the headlong willingness to go.

Our
barhounia
came and we started eating. She suddenly became over-vivacious, over-excited by the idea of climbing Parnassus, and she drank glass for glass of retsina with me; did everything that Julie would never have done; then called, in her characteristic way, her own bluff.

‘
I know I
’
m trying too hard. But you make me like that.
’

‘
If
–’

‘
Nicko.
’

‘
Alison, if only you
–
‘

‘
Nicko, listen. Last week I was in my old room in the flat. The first night. And I could hear footsteps. Upstairs. And I cried. Just as I cried in the taxi today. Just as I could cry now but I
’
m not going to.
’

She smiled, a little twisted smile.
‘
I could even cry because we keep on using each other
’
s names.
’

‘
Shouldn
’
t we?
’

‘
We never did. We were so close we didn
’
t have to. But what I
’
m trying to say is … all right. But please be kind to me. Don
’
t always sit so in judgment on everything I say, everything I do.
’
She stared at me and forced me to look her in the eyes.
‘
I can
’
t help being what I am.
’
I nodded, looked sorry and touched her hand to mollify her. The one thing I did not want was a row; emotion; this eternal reattachment to the past.

After a moment she bit her mouth and the small grins we exchanged then were the first honest looks since we had met.

I said good night to her outside her room. She kissed me on the cheek, and I pressed her shoulders as if, really, it was a far, far better thing that I did then than woman could easily imagine.

By half past eight we were on the road. We drove over the wide mountains to Thebes, where Alison bought herself some stronger shoes and a pair of jeans. The sun was shining, there was a wind, the road empty of traffic, and the old Pontiac I had hired the night before still had some guts in its engine. Everything interested Alison
–
the people, the country, the bits in my 1909 Baedeker about the places we passed. Her mixture of enthusiasm and ignorance, which I remembered so well from London, didn
’
t really irritate me
any more
. It seemed part of her energy, her candour; her companionability. But I had, so to speak, to be irritated; so I seized on her buoyancy, her ability to bob up from the worst disappointment. I thought she ought to have been more subdued, and much sadder.

She asked me at one point whether I had discovered any more about the waiting-room; but, eyes on the road, I said no, it was just a villa. What Mitford had meant was a mystery; and then I slid the conversation
off
on to something else.

We drove fast down the wide green valley between Thebes and Livadia, with its cornfields and melon-patches. But near the latter place a large flock of sheep straggled across the road and I had to slow down to a stop. We got out to watch them. There was a boy of fourteen, in ragged clothes and grotesquely large army boots. He had his sister, a dark-eyed little girl of six or seven, with him. Alison produced some airline barley-sugar. But the little girl was shy and hid behind her brother
’
s back. Alison squatted in her green sleeveless dress ten feet away, holding out the sweet, coaxing. The sheep-bells tinkled all around us, the girl stared at her, and I grew restless.

‘
How do I ask her to come and take it?
’

I spoke to the little girl in Greek. She didn
’
t understand, but her brother decided we were trustworthy and urged her forward.

‘
Why is she so frightened?
’

‘
Just ignorance.
’

‘
She
’
s so sweet.
’

Alison put a piece of barley-sugar in her own mouth and then held out another to the child, who pushed by her brother went slowly forwards. As she reached timidly for the barley-sugar Alison caught her hand and made her sit beside her; unwrapped the sweet. The brother came and knelt by them, trying to get the child to thank us. But she sat gravely sucking. Alison put her arm round her and stroked her cheeks.

‘
I shouldn
’
t do that. She
’
s probably got lice.
’

‘
I know she
’
s probably got lice.
’

She didn
’
t look up at me or stop caressing the child. But a second later the little girl winced. Alison bent back.
‘
Look at this, oh, look at this.
’
It was a small boil, scratched and inflamed, on the child
’
s shoulder.
‘
Bring my bag.
’
I went and got it and watched her poke back the dress and rub cream on the sore place, and then without warning dab some on the child
’
s nose. The little girl rubbed the spot of white cream with a dirty finger, and suddenly, like a crocus bursting out of winter earth, she looked up at Alison and smiled.

‘
Can
’
t we give them some money?
’

‘
No.
’

‘
Why not?
’

‘
They
’
re not beggars. They
’
d refuse it anyway.
’