The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [115]
And Justine? On the day this picture was taken, Clea’s painting was interrupted by a kiss, as Balthazar says. How am I to make this comprehensible when I can only visualize these scenes with such difficulty? I must, it seems, try to see a new Justine, a new Pursewarden, a new Clea…. I mean that I must try and strip the opaque membrane which stands between me and the reality of their actions — and which I suppose is composed of my own limitations of vision and temperament. My envy of Pursewarden, my passion for Justine, my pity for Melissa. Distorting mirrors, all of them…. The way is through fact. I must record what more I know and attempt to render it comprehensible or plausible to myself, if necessary, by an act of the imagination. Or can facts be left to themselves? Can you say ‘he fell in love’ or ‘she fell in love’ with-out trying to divine its meaning, to set it in a context of plausibili-ties? ‘That bitch’ Pombal said once of Justine. ‘ Elle a l’ air d’ être bi en chambrée! ’ And of Melissa ‘ Une pauvre petite poule quelconque
…’ He was right, perhaps, yet the true meaning of them resides elsewhere. Here, I hope, on this scribbled paper which I have woven, spider-like, from my inner life.
And Scobie? Well, he at least has the comprehensibility of a diagram — plain as a national anthem. He looks particularly pleased this morning for he has recently achieved apotheosis. After years as a Bimbashi in the Egyptian Police, in what he calls ‘the evening of his life’ he has just been appointed to … I hardly dare to write the words for I can see his shudder of secrecy, can see his glass eye rolling portentously round in its socket … the Secret Service. He is not alive any more, thank God, to read the words and tremble. Yes, the Ancient Mariner, the secret pirate of Tatwig Street, the man himself. How much the city misses him. (His use of the word ‘uncanny’!)….
Elsewhere I have recounted how I answered a mysterious sum-mons to find myself in a room of splendid proportions with my erstwhile pirate friend facing me across a desk, whistling through
his ill-fitting dentures. I think his new assignment was as much a puzzle to him as it was to me, his only confidant. It is true of course that he had been long in Egypt and knew Arabic well; but his career had been comparatively obscure. What could an intel-ligence agency hope to get out of him? More than this — what did he hope to get out of me? I had already explained in detail that the little circle which met every month to hear Balthazar expound the principles of the Cabbala had no connection with espionage; it was simply a group of hermetic students drawn by their interest in the matter of the lectures. Alexandria is a city of sects — and the shallowest inquiry would have revealed to him the existence of other groups akin to the one concerned with the hermetic philo-sophy which Balthazar addressed: Steinerites, Christian Scient ists, Ouspenskyists, Adventists…. What was it that riveted attention particularly on Nessim, Justine, Balthazar, Capodistria, etc.? I could not tell, nor could he tell me.
‘They’re up to something’ he repeated weakly. ‘Cairo says so.’
Apparently, he did not even know who his own masters were. His work was invisibly dictated by a scrambler telephone, as far as I could understand. But whatever ‘Cairo’ was it paid him well: and if he had money to throw about on nonsensical investigations who was I to prevent him throwing it to me? I thought that my first few reports on Balthazar’s Cabal would successfully damp all interest in it — but no. They wanted more and again more.
And this very morning, the old sailor in the photograph was cele-brating his new post and the increase of salary it carried by having a haircut in the upper town, at the most expensive of shops —
Mnemjian’s.
I must not forget that this photograph also records a ‘Secret Rendezvous’; no wonder Scobie looks distraught. For he is sur-rounded by the very spies into whose activities it is necessary to inquire — not to mention a French diplomat who is widely rumoured to be head of the French Deuxi