The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [421]
Later that evening I saw him coming down Rue Fuad towards me, beaming. ‘Hurrah!’ he shouted and threw his expensive hat high into the air. ‘ Je suis enfin là! ’
The hat described a large parabola and settled in the middle of the road where it was immediately run over by three cars in rapid succession. Pombal clasped his hands together and beamed as if the sight gave him the greatest joy. Then he turned his moon-face up into the sky as if searching for a sign or portent. As I came abreast of him he caught my hands and said: ‘Divine logic of women! Truly there is nothing so wonderful on earth as the sight of a woman thinking out her feelings. I adore it. I adore it. Our love…. Fosca! It is complete now. I am so astonished, truth-fully, I am astonished. I would never have been able to think it out so accurately. Listen, she could not bring herself to deceive a man who was in hourly danger of death. Right. But now that he is safely behind bars it is different. We are free to normalize ourselves. We will not, of course, hurt him by telling him as yet. We will simply help ourselves from the pantry, as Pursewarden used to say. My dear friend, isn’t it wonderful? Fosca is an angel.’
‘She sounds like a woman after all.’
‘A Woman! The word, magnificent as it is, is hardly enough for a spirit like hers.’
He burst into a whinny of laughter and punched me affec-tionately on the shoulder. Together we walked down the long street. ‘I am going to Pietrantoni to buy her an expensive present …
I, who never give a woman presents, never in my life. It always seemed absurd. I once saw a film of penguins in the mating season. The male penguin, than which nothing could more ludicrously resemble man, collects stones and places them before the lady of his choice when he proposes. It must be seen to be appreciated. Now I am behaving like a male penguin. Never mind. Never mind. Now our story cannot help but have a happy ending.’
Fateful words which I have so often recalled since, for within a few months Fosca was to be a problem no more.
* * * * *
V
or some considerable time I heard nothing of Pursewarden’s sister, though I knew that she was still up at the summer F legation. As for Mountolive, his visits were recorded among the office memoranda, so that I knew he came up from Cairo for the night about every ten days. For a while I half expected a signal from him, but as time wore on I almost began to forget his existence as presumably he had forgotten mine. So it was that her voice, when first it floated over the office telephone, came as an unexpected intrusion — a surprise in a world where surprises were few and not unwelcome. A curiously disembodied voice which might have been that of uncertain adolescence, saying: ‘I think you know of me. As a friend of my brother I would like to talk to you.’ The invitation to dinner the following evening she des-cribed as ‘private, informal and unofficial’ which suggested to me that Mountolive himself would be present. I felt the stirring of an unusual curiosity as I walked up the long drive with its very English hedges of box, and through the small coppice of pines which encircled the summer residence. It was an airless hot night
— such as must presage the gathering of a khamseen somewhere in the desert which would later roll its dust clouds down the city’s streets and squares like pillars of smoke. But as yet the night air was harsh and clear.
I rang the bell twice without result, and was beginning to think that perhaps it might be out of order when I heard a soft swift step ins ide. The door opened and there stood Liza with an expression of triumphant eagerness on her blind face. I found her extra-ordinarily beautiful at first sight, though a little on the short side. She wore a dress of some dark soft stuff with a collar cut very wide, out of which her slender throat and head rose as if out of the corolla of a flower. She stood before me with her face thrown upwards, forwards