The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [87]
this strange sleepy creature at his side, found himself thinking over and over again: ‘Thank God I am not a genius — for a genius has nobody in whom he can confide.’
The glances he snatched at her enabled him to study her, and to study me in her. Her loveliness must have disarmed and disturbed him as it had me. It was a beauty which filled one with the terrible premonition that it had been born to be a target for the forces of destruction. Perhaps he remembered an anecdote of Pursewarden’s in which she figured, for the latter had found her as Nessim him-self had done, in the same stale cabaret; only on this particular evening she had been sitting in a row of dance-hostesses selling dance-tickets. Pursewarden, who was gravely drunk, took her to the floor and, after a moment’s silence, addressed her in his sad yet masterful way: ‘ Comment vous défendez-vous contre la solitude? ’ he asked her. Melissa turned upon him an eye replete with all the candour of experience and replied softly: ‘ Monsieur, je suis devenue la solitude même. ’ Pursewarden was sufficient ly struck to remember and repeat this passage later to his friends, adding: ‘I suddenly thought to myself that here was a woman one might very well love.’
Yet he did not, as far as I know, take the risk of revisiting her, for the book was going well, and he recognized in the kindling of this sympathy a trick being played on him by the least intent part of his nature. He was writing about love at the time and did not wish to disturb the ideas he had formed on the subject. (‘I cannot fall in love’ he made a character exclaim ‘for I belong to that ancient secret society — the Jokers!’; and elsewhere speaking about his marriage he wrote: ‘I found that as well as displeasing another I also displeased myself; now, alone, I have only myself to displease. Joy!’)
Justine was still standing over me, watching my face as I com-posed these scorching scenes in my mind. ‘You will make some excuse’ she repeated hoarsely. ‘You will not go.’ It seemed to me impossible to find a way out of this predicament. ‘How can I refuse?’ I said. ‘How can you?’
They had driven across that warm, tideless desert night, Nessim and Melissa, consumed by a sudden sympathy for each other, yet speechless. On the last scarp before Bourg El Arab he switched off the engine and let the car roll off the road. ‘Come’ he said. ‘I want to show you Justine’s Summer Palace.’
Hand in hand they took the road to the little house. The care-taker was asleep but he had the key. The rooms smelt damp and uninhabited, but were full of light reflected from the white dunes. It was not long before he had kindled a fire of thorns in the great fireplace, and taking his old abba from the cupboard he clothed himself in it and sat down before it saying: ‘Tell me now, Melissa, who sent you to persecute me?’ He meant it as a joke but forgot to smile, and Melissa turned crimson with shame and bit her lip. They sat there for a long time enjoying the firelight and the sensa-tion of sharing something — their common hopelessness. (Justine stubbed out her cigarette and got slowly out of bed. She began to walk slowly up and down the carpet. Fear had overcome her and I could see that it was only with an effort that she over-came the need for a characteristic outburst. ‘I have done so many things in my life’ she said to the mirror. ‘Evil things, perhaps. But never inattentively, never wastefully. I’ve always thought of acts as messages, wishes from the past to the future, which invited self-discovery. Was I wrong? Was I wrong?’ It was not to me she ad-dressed the question now but to Nessim. It is so much easier to address questions intended for one’s husband to one’s lover. ‘As for the dead’ she went on after a moment, ‘I have always thought that the dead think of us as dead. They have rejoined the living after this trifling excursion into quasi-life.’ Hamid was stirring now and she turned to her clothes in a panic. ‘So you must go’ she said sadly, ‘and so must I. You are right. We must go.’ And then turn-ing to the mirror to complete her toilet she added: