The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [152]
‘He was at that time deeply immersed in the novel he was writ-ing, and as always he found that his ordinary life, in a distorted sort of way, was beginning to follow the curvature of his book. He explained this by saying that any concentration of the will dis-places life (Archimedes’ bath-water) and gives it bias in motion. Reality, he believed, was always trying to copy the imagination of man, from which it derived. You will see from this that he was a serious fellow underneath much of his clowning and had quite comprehensive beliefs and ideas. But also, he had been drinking rather heavily that day as he always did when he was working. Between books he never touched a drop. Riding beside her in the great car, someone beautiful, dark and painted with great eyes like the prow of some Aegean ship, he had the sensation that his book was being rapidly passed underneath his life, as if under a sheet of paper containing the iron filings of temporal events, as a magnet is in that commonplace experiment one does at school: and somehow setting up a copying magnetic field.
‘He never flirted, mind you; and if he started to approach Justine it was simply to try out a few speeches and attitudes, to verify certain conclusions he had reached in the book before actually
sending it to the printer, so to speak! Afterwards, of course, he bitterly repented of this piece of self-indulgence. He was at that moment trying to escape from the absurd dictates of narrative form in prose: “He said” “She said” “He cocked an eye, shot a cuff, lifted a lazy head, etc.” Was it possible, had he succeeded in
“realizing” character without the help of such props? He was ask-ing himself this as he sat there in the sand. (“Her eyelashes brushed his cheek.” Merde alors! Had he written that?) Justine’s thick black eyelashes were like … what? So it was that his kisses were really warm and wholehearted in an absent-minded way because they were in no way meant for her. (One of the great paradoxes of love. Concentration on the love-object and possession are the poisons.) And he discovered to her the fact that she was ridiculous, with a series of disarming and touching pleasantries at which she found herself laughing with a relief that seemed almost sinful. As for her: it was not only that his skin and hair were fresh and that his love-making was full of a lazy, unblushing enterprise; he was wholly himself in a curious way. It aroused in her an unfamiliar passionate curiosity. And then, the things he said! “Of course I’ve read Moeurs and had you pointed out a hundred times as the tragic central character. It’s all right, written by a born lettré, of course, and smells fashionably of armpits and eau de javel. But surely you are making yourself a little self-important about it all? You have the impertinence to foist yourself on us as a problem — perhaps because you have nothing else to offer? It is foolish. Or perhaps it is that the Jew loves punishment and always comes back for more?”
And suddenly, but completely, to take her firmly by the nape of the neck and force her down into the hot sand before she could find time to measure the extent of the insult or form a response in her mind. And then, while he was still kissing, to say something so ludicrous that the laughter and tears in her mind became one and the same sort of things, a mixture of qualities hard to endure.
‘ “For God’s sake!” she said, having decided to behave as if outraged. He had been too quick for her. He had surprised her while she was half-asleep in her mind, so to speak.
‘ “Didn’t you want to make love? My mistake!”
‘She looked at him, a little disarmed by the mock-repentance of his expression. “No, of course not. Yes.” Something inside her repeated “Yes, yes.” An attachment without fingerprints — some-
thing as easy as sailing a boat or driving into deep water: “Fool!”
she cried, and to her own surprise started laughing. A conquest by impudence? I don