The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [200]
From the vantage-point of this island I can see it all in its doubleness, in the intercalation of fact and fancy, with new eyes; and re-reading, re-working reality in the light of all I now know, I am surprised to find that my feelings themselves have changed, have grown, have deepened even. Perhaps then the destruction of my private Alexandria was necessary (‘the artifact of a true work of art never shows a plane surface’); perhaps buried in all this there lies the germ and substance of a truth — time’s usufruct — which, if I can accommodate it, will carry me a little further in what is really a search for my proper self. We shall see.
* * * * *
XIII
lea and her old father, whom she worships. White-haired, erect, with a sort of haunted pity in his eyes for C
the young unmarried goddess he has fathered. Once a
year, however, on New Year’s eve, they dance at the Cecil, stately, urbanely. He waltzes like a clockwork man.’ Somewhere I once wrote down these words. They bring to mind another scene, another sequence of events.
The old scholar comes to sit at my table. He has a particular weakness for me, I do not know why, but he always talks to me with humorous modesty as we sit and watch his beautiful daughter move around the room in the arms of an admirer, so graceful and so composed. ‘There is so much of the schoolgirl still about her —
or the artist. Tonight her cape had some wine on it so she put a mackintosh over her ball gown and ate the toffees which she found in the pockets. I don’t know what her mother would say if she were alive.’ We drank quietly and watched the coloured lights flickering among the dancers. He said ‘I feel like an old procurer. Always looking out for someone to marry her…. Her happiness seems so important, somehow … I am going the right way about to spoil it I know, by meddling … yet I can’t leave it alone …
I’ve scraped a dowry together over the years…. The money burns my pocket…. When I see a nice Englishman like you my instinct is to say: “For God’s sake take her and look after her.”
… It has been a bitter pleasure bringing her up without a mother. Eh? No fool like an old fool.’ And he walks stiffly away to the bar, smiling.
Presently that evening Clea herself came and sat beside me in the alcove, fanning herself and smiling. ‘Quarter of an hour to mid-night. Poor Cinderella. I must get my father home before the clock strikes or he’ll lose his beauty-sleep!’
We spoke then of Amar whose trial for the murder of de Brunel had ended that afternoon with his acquittal due to lack of direct evidence.
‘I know,’ said Clea softly. ‘And I’m glad. It has saved me from a crise de conscience. I would not have known what to do if he had been convicted. You see, I know he didn’t do it. Why? Because, my dear, I know who did and why….’ She narrowed those splendid eyes and went on. ‘A story of Alexandria — shall I tell you? But only if you keep it a secret. Would you promise me?
Bury it with the old year — all our misfortunes and follies. You must have had a surfeit of them by now, must you not? All right.
Listen. On the night of the carnival I lay in bed thinking about a picture — the big one of Justine. It was all wrong and I didn’t know where. But I suspected the hands — those dark and shapely hands. I had got their position quite faithfully, but, well, some-thing in the composition didn’t go; it had started to trouble me at this time — months after the thing was finished. I can’t think why. Suddenly I said to myself “Those hands want thinking about,”
and I had the thing lugged back to my room from the studio where I stood it against a wall. Well, to no effect, really; I’d spent the whole evening smoking over it, and sketching the hands in different positions from memory. Somehow I thought it might be that beastly Byzantine ring which she wears. Anyway, all my thinking was of no avail so about midnight I turned in, and lay smoking in bed with my cat asleep on my feet.
‘From time to time a small group of people passed outside in the street, singing or laughing, but gradually the town was drain-ing itself of life, for it was getting late.