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By Root 24567 0

‘She went off early’ the little man explained. ‘Band gone. Girls gone. Everyone gone. Only these canaille from Assuan. His brother is a policeman; we dare not close.’ A fat man began to belly-dance with sugary movements of the hips and pelvis and the company began to mark the time. I left and walked past Melissa’s shabby lodgings in the vague hope that she might still be awake. I felt I wanted to talk to someone; no, I wanted to borrow a cigarette. That was all. After-wards would come the desire to sleep with her, to hold that slender cherished body in my arms, inhaling its sour flavours of alcohol and tobacco-smoke, thinking all the time of Justine. But her win-dow was dark; either she was asleep or was not yet home. Zoltan had said that she left with a party of business-men disguised as admirals. ‘ Des petits commerçants quelconques’ he had added con-temptuously, and then turned at once apologetic. No, it was to be an empty night, with the frail subfusc moon-light glancing along the waves of the outer harbour, the sea licking and relicking the piers, the coastline thinning away in whiteness, glittering away into the greyness like mica. I stood for a while on the Corniche snapping a paper streamer in my fingers, bit by bit, each fragment breaking off with a hard dry finality, like a human

relationship. Then I turned sleepily home, repeating in my mind the words of Da Capo: ‘The evening will be full of surprises.’

Indeed, they were already beginning in the house which I had just left, though of course I was not to learn about them until the following day. And yet, surprises though they were, their reception was perfectly in keeping with the city — a city of resignation so deep as almost to be Moslem. For nobody in Alexandria can ever be shocked deeply; among us tragedy exists only to flavour con-versation. Death and life are both simply the hazards of a chance which cannot be averted, and merit only smiles and conversations made more animated by the consciousness of their intrusion. No sooner do you tell an Alexandrian a piece of bad news than the words come out of his mouth: ‘I knew. Something like this was bound to happen. It always does.’ This, then, is what happened. In the conservatory of the Cervoni house there were several old-fashioned chaises-longues on which a mountain of overcoats and evening-wraps had been piled; as the dancers began to go home there came the usual shedding of dominoes and the hunt for furs and capes. I think it was Pierre who must have made the discovery while hunting in this great tumulus of coats for the velvet smoking-jacket which he had shed earlier in the evening. At any rate, I myself had already left and started to walk home by this time. Toto de Brunel was discovered, still warm in his velvet domino, with his paws raised like two neat little aiders, in the attitude of a dog which had rolled over to have its belly scratched. He was buried deep in the drift of coats. One hand had half-tried to move towards the fatal temple but the impulse had been cut off at source before the action was complete, and it had stayed there raised a little higher than the other, as if wielding an invisible baton. The hatpin from Pombal’s picture hat had been driven sideways into his head with terrific force, pinning him like a moth into his velvet headpiece. Athena had been making love to Jacques while she was literally lying upon his body — a fact which would under normal circumstances have delighted him thoroughly. But he was dead, le pauvre Toto, and what is more he was still wearing the ring of my lover. “Justice! ”

‘Of course, something like this happens every year.’

‘Of course.’ I was still dazed.

‘But Toto — that is rather unexpected, really.’

Balthazar rang me up about eleven o’clock the next morning to tell me the whole story. In my stupefied and sleepy condition it sounded not merely improbable, but utterly incomprehensible.

‘There will be the procès-verbal — that’s why I’m ringing. Nimrod is making it as easy as he can. One dinner-party witness only —

Justine thought perhaps you if you don