The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [105]
‘(Of you Justine said simply, with a slight shrug: “I had to put him out of my mind”.)
‘Well, these are some of the thoughts that passed through my mind as the train carried me down through the orange groves to the coast; they were thrown into sharp relief by the book I had chosen to read on the journey, the penultimate volume of God is a Humorist. How greatly Pursewarden has gained in stature since his death! It was before as if he stood between his own books and our understanding of them. I see now that what we found enig-matic about the man was due to a fault in ourselves. An artist does
not live a personal life as we do, he hides it, forcing us to go to his books if we wish to touch the true source of his feelings. Under-neath all his preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions which allow the forebrain to chatter) there is, quite simply, a man tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tender- ness in the world.
‘And all this brings me back to myself, for I too have been changing in some curious way. The old self-sufficient life has transformed itself into something a little hollow, a little empty. It no longer answers my deepest needs. Somewhere deep inside a tide seems to have turned in my nature. I do not know why but it is towards you, my dear friend, that my thoughts have turned more and more of late. Can one be frank? Is there a friendship possible this side of love which could be sought and found? I speak no more of love — the word and its conventions have become odious to me. But is there a friendship possible to attain which is deeper, even limitlessly deep, and yet wordless, idealess? It seems somehow necessary to find a human being to whom one can be faithful, not in the body (I leave that to the priests) but in the culprit mind? But perhaps this is not the sort of problem which will interest you much these days. Once or twice I have felt the absurd desire to come to you and offer my services in looking after the child perhaps. But it seems clear now that you do not really need anybody any more, and that you value your solitude above all things….’
There are a few more lines and then the affectionate super-scription.
* * * * *
The cicadas are throbbing in the great planes, and the summer Mediterranean lies before me in all its magnetic blueness. Some-where out there, beyond the mauve throbbing line of the horizon lies Africa, lies Alexandria, maintaining its tenuous grasp on one’s affections through memories which are already refunding them-selves slowly into forgetfulness; memory of friends, of incidents lon g past. The slow unreality of time begins to grip them, blurring the outlines — so that sometimes I wonder whether these pages record the actions of real human beings; or whether this is not
simply the story of a few inanimate objects which precipitated drama around them — I mean a black patch, a watch-key and a couple of dispossessed wedding-rings….
Soon it will be evening and the clear night sky will be dusted thickly with summer stars. I shall be here, as always, smoking by the water. I have decided to leave Clea’s last letter unanswered. I no longer wish to coerce anyone, to make promises, to think of life in terms of compacts, resolutions, covenants. It will be up to Clea to interpret my silence according to her own needs and desires, to come to me if she has need or not, as the case may be. Does not everything* depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?
So that….
WORKPOINTS
Landscape-tones: steep skylines, low cloud, pearl ground with shadows in oyster and violet. Accidie. On the lake gunmetal and lemon. Summer: sand lilac sky. Autumn: swollen bruise greys. Winter: freezing white sand, clear skies, magnificent starscapes.