The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [148]
‘What have you done to your face?’ I say to change the subject. He has recently started to grow a moustache. He holds on to it defensively as if my question constituted a threat to shave it off forcibly. ‘My moustache, ah that! Well, recently I have had so many reproofs about work, not attending to it, that I analysed my-self deeply, au fond. Do you know how many man-hours I am losing through women? You will never guess. I thought a mous-tache (isn’t it hideous?) would put them off a bit, but no. It is just the same. It is a tribute, dear boy, not to my charm but to the low standards here. They seem to love me because there is nothing better. They love a well-hung diplomat — how do you say, fais- andé? Why do you laugh? You are losing a lot of woman-hours too. But then you have the British Government behind you — the pound, eh? That girl was here again today. Mon Dieu, so thin and
so uncared for! I offered her some lunch but she would not stay. And the mess in your room! She takes hashish, doesn’t she? Well, when I go to Syria on leave you can have the whole place. Pro-vided you respect my firescreen — isn’t it good as for art, hein? ’
He has had an immense and vivid firescreen made for the flat which bears the legend ‘LEGERETE, FATALITE, MATERNITE’ in poker-work.
‘Ah well’ he continues, ‘so much for art in Alexandria. But as for that Justine, that is a better barbarian for you, no? I bet she —
eh? Don’t tell. Why are you not happier about it? You Englishmen, always gloomy and full of politics. Pas de remords, mon cher. Two women in tandem — who would want better? And one Left-Handed — as Da Capo calls Lesbians. You know Justine’s reputa-tion? Well, for my part, I am renouncing the whole….’
So Pombal flows in great good humour over the shallow river bed of his experience and standing on the balcony I watch the sky darkening over the harbour and hear the sullen hooting of ships’
sirens, emphasizing our loneliness here, our isolation from the warm Gulf Stream of European feelings and ideas. All the currents slide away towards Mecca or to the incomprehensible desert and the only foothold in this side of the Mediterranean is the city we have come to inhabit and hate, to infect with our own self-con-tempts. And then I see Melissa walk down the street and my heart con-tracts with pity and joy as I turn to open the flat door.
* * * * *
These quiet bemused island days are a fitting commentary to the thoughts and feelings of one walking alone on deserted beaches, or doing the simple duties of a household which lacks a mother. But I carry now the great Interlinear in my hand wherever I go, whether cooking or teaching the child to swim, or cutting wood for the fireplace. But these fictions all live on as a projection of the white city itself whose pearly skies are broken in spring only by the white stalks of the minarets and the flocks of pigeons turning in clouds of silver and amethyst; whose veridian and black marble harbour-water reflects the snouts of foreign men-of-war turning through their slow arcs, depicting the prevailing wind; or swallow-
ing their own inky reflections, touching and overlapping like the very tongues and sects and races over which they keep their uneasy patrol: symbolizing the western consciousness whose power is ex-emplified in steel