The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [151]
‘He said to Pombal once: “On fait l’amour pour mieux refouler et pour décourager les autres. ” And added: “I worry a great deal about my golf handicap.” It always took Pombal a few moments to work out these non-sequiturs. “Quel malin, ce type-là! ” he would mutter under his breath. Then and only then would Purse-warden permit himself a chuckle — having scored his personal victory. They were a splendid pair and used to drink together a great deal.
‘Pombal was terribly affected by his death — really overcome, he retired to bed for a fortnight. Could not speak of him without tears coming into his eyes; this used to infuriate Pombal himself. “I never knew how much I loved the blasted man” he would say…. I hear Pursewarden’s wicked chuckle in all this. No, you are wrong about him. His favourite adjective was “uffish!” or so he told me.
‘His public lectures were disappointing, as you may remember. Afterwards, I discovered why. He read them out of a book. They were someone else’s lectures! But once when I took him up to the Jewish school and asked him to talk to the children of the literary group, he was delightful. He began by showing them some card tricks and then congratulated the winner of the Literary Prize, making him read the prize essay aloud. Then he asked the children to write down three things in their notebooks which might help them some day if they didn’t forget them. Here they are: 1. Each of our five senses contains an art.
2. In questions of art great secrecy must be observed. 3. The artist must catch every scrap of wind.
‘Then he produced from his mackintosh pocket a huge packet of sweets upon which they all fell, he no less, and completed the most successful literary hour ever held at the school.
‘He had some babyish habits, picked his nose, and enjoyed tak-ing his shoes off under the table in a restaurant. I remember hun-dreds of meetings which were made easy and fruitful by his natural-ness and humour but he spared no-one and made enemies. He wrote once to his beloved DHL: “Maître, Maître, watch your step. No-one can go on being a rebel too long without turning into an autocrat. ”
‘When he wished to discuss a bad work of art he would say in tones of warm approbation “Most effective.” This was a feint. He was not interested enough in art to want to argue about it with others (“dogs snuffing over a bitch too small to mount”) so he said “Most effective.” Once when he was drunk he added: “The effective in art is what rapes the emotion of your audience without nourishing its values.”
‘Do you see? Do you see?
‘All this was brought to bear on Justine like a great charge of swan-shot, scattering her senses and bringing her for the first time something she had despaired of ever encountering: namely laughter. Imagine what one touch of ridicule can do to a Higher Emotion! “As for Justine” said Pursewarden to me when he was drunk once, “I regard her as a tiresome old sexual turnstile through which presumably we must all pass — a somewhat vulpine Alexan-drian Venus. By God, what a woman she would be if she were really natural and felt no guilt! Her behaviour would commend her
to the Pantheon — but one cannot send her up there with a mere recommendation from the Rabbinate — a bundle of Old Testa-ment ravings. What would old Zeus say?” He saw my reproachful glance at these cruelties and said, somewhat shamefacedly. “I’m sorry, Balthazar. I simply dare not take her seriously. One day I will tell you why.”
‘Justine herself wished very much to take him seriously but he absolutely refused to command sympathy or share the solitude from which he drew so much of his composure and self-possession.
‘Justine herself, you know, could not bear to be alone.
‘He was due, I remember, to lecture in Cairo to several societies affiliated to our own Arts Society, and Nessim, who was busy, asked Justine to take him down by car. That was how they came to find themselves together on a journey which threw up a sort of ludicrous shadow-image of a love-relationship, like a clever magic-lantern picture of a landscape, created by, strangely