The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [12]
He is rumoured to be fantastically attractive to women and he is said to have put away a small fortune earned for him by his admirers. But he also has several elderly Egyptian ladies, the wives and widows of pashas, as permanent clients upon whom he calls
at regular intervals to set their hair. They have, as he says slyly,
‘got beyond everything’ — and reaching up over his back to touch the unsightly hump which crowns it he adds with pride: ‘ This excites them.’ Among other things, he has a gold cigarette case given to him by one of these admirers in which he keeps a stock of loose cigarette-paper. His Greek is defective but adventurous and vivid and Pombal refuses to permit him to talk French, which he does much better.
He does a little mild procuring for my friend, and I am always astonished by the sudden flights of poetry of which he is capable in describing his protégées. Leaning over Pombal’s moon-like face he will say, for example, in a discreet undertone, as the razor begins to whisper: ‘I have something for you — something special’
Pombal catches my eye in the mirror and looks hastily away lest we infect one another by a smile. He gives a cautious grunt. Mnemjian leans lightly on the balls of his feet, his eyes squinting slightly. The small wheedling voice puts a husk of double meaning round everything he says, and his speech is not the less remarkable for being punctuated by small world-weary sighs. For a while nothing more is said. I can see the top of Mnemjian’s head in the mirror — that obscene outcrop of black hair which he had trained into a spitcurl at each temple, hoping no doubt to draw attention away from that crooked papier-mâché back of his. While he works with a razor his eyes dim out and his features become as expression-less as a bottle. His fingers travel as coolly upon our live faces as they do upon those of the fastidious and (yes, lucky) dead. ‘This time’ says Mnemjian ‘you will be delighted from every point of view. She is young, cheap and clean. You will say to yourself, a young partridge, a honey-comb with all its honey sealed in it, a dove. She is in difficulties over money. She has recently come from the lunatic asylum in Helwan where her husband tried to get her locked up as mad. I have arranged for her to sit at the Rose Marie at the end table on the pavement. Go and see her at one o’clock; if you wish her to accompany you give her the card I will prepare for you. But remember, you will pay only me. As one gentleman to another it is the only condition I lay down.’
He says nothing more for the time. Pombal continues to stare at himself in the mirror, his natural curiosity doing battle with the forlorn apathy of the summer air. Later no doubt he will bustle
into the flat with some exhausted, disoriented creature whose dis-torted smile can rouse no feelings in him save those of pity. I cannot say that my friend lacks kindness, for he is always trying to find work of some sort for these girls; indeed most of the consulates are staffed by ex-casuals desperately trying to look correct; whose jobs they owe to Georges’ importunities among his colleagues of the career. Nevertheless there is no woman too humble, too battered, too old, to receive those outward attentions — those little gal-lantries and sorties of wit which I have come to associate with the Gallic temperament; the heady meretricious French charm which evaporates so easily into pride and mental indolence — like French thought which flows so quickly into sand-moulds, the original esprit hardening immediately into deadening concepts. The light play of sex which hovers over his thought and actions has, how-ever, an air of disinterestedness which makes it qualitative ly different from, say, the actions and thoughts of Capodistria, who often joins us for a morning shave. Capodistria has the purely in-voluntary knack of turning everything into a woman; under his eyes chairs become painfully conscious of their bare legs. He im-pregnates things. At table I have seen a water-melon become conscious under his gaze so that it felt the seeds inside it stirring with life! Women feel like birds confronted by a viper when they gaze into that narrow flat face with its tongue always moving across the thin lips. I think of Melissa once more: hortus conclusus,