The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [146]
‘For four days then a huge encampment of tents and marquees grew up around the house — carpets and chandeliers and brilliant decorations. Alexandria was stripped bare of hothouse flowers and not less of its great social figures who made the somewhat mocking journey down to Abu Girg (nothing excites so much mocking amusement in the city as a fashionable wedding) to pay their respects and congratulate Leila. Local mudirs and sheiks, peasants innumerable, dignitaries from near and far had flocked in to be entertained — while the Bedouin, whose tribal grounds fringed
the estate, gave magnificent displays of horsemanship, galloping round and round the house firing their guns — for all the world as if Justine were a young bride — a virgin. Imagine the smiles of Athena Trasha, of the Cervonis! And old Abu Kar himself rode up the steps of the house on his white Arab and into the very reception-rooms with a bowl of flowers.
‘As for Leila, she never for one moment took those clever eyes off Justine. She followed her with care like someone study ing a histor ical figure. “Is she not lovely?” I asked as I followed her glance and she turned a quick bird-like glance in my direction before turning back to the subject of her absorbed study. “We are old friends, Balthazar, and I can talk to you. I was telling myself that she looked something like I did once, and that she is an adven-turess ; like a small dark snake coiled up at the centre of Nessim’s life.” I protested in a formal manner at this; she stared into my eyes for a long moment and then gave a slow chuckle. I was sur-prised by what she said next. “Yes, she is just like me — merciless in the pursuit of pleasure and yet arid — all her milk has turned into power-love. Yet she is also like me in that she is tender and kindly and a real man’s woman. I hate her because she is like me, do you understand? And I fear her because she can read my mind.”
She began to laugh. “My darling” she called out to Justine, “come over here and sit by me.” And she thrust upon her the one sort of confectionery she herself most loathed — crystallized violets —
which I saw Justine accept with reserve — for she loathed them too. And so the two of them sat there, the veiled sphinx and the un-veiled, eating sugar violets which neither could bear. I was de-lighted to be able to see women at their most primitive like this. Nor can I tell you very much about the validity of such judge-ments. We all make them about each other.
‘The curious thing was, that despite this antipathy between the two women — the antipathy of affinity, you might say — there sprang up side by side with it a strange sympathy, a sense of identification with each other. For example when Leila at last dared to meet Mountolive it was done secretly and arranged by Justine. It was Justine who brought them together, both masked, during the carnival ball. Or so I heard.
‘As for Nessim, I would, at the risk of over-simplification, say something like this: he was so innocent that he had not realized
that you cannot live with a woman without in some degree falling in love with her — that possession is nine points of the jealousy?
He was dismayed and terrified by the extent of his own jealousy for Justine and was honestly trying to practise something new for him — ind ifference. True or false? I don’t know.
‘And then, turning the coin round, I would say that what irked Justine herself unexpectedly was to find that the contract of wife undertaken so rationally, and at the level of a financial bargain, was somehow more binding than a wedding ring. One does not, as a woman (if passion seems to sanction it) think twice about being unfaithful to a husband; but to be unfaithful to Nessim seemed like stealing money from the till. What would you say?’
My own feeling ( pace Balthazar) is that Justine became slowly aware of something hidden in the character of this solitary endear-ing lon g-suffering man; namely a jealousy all the more terrible and indeed dangerous for never allowing itself any outlet. Sometimes