The Magus - John Fowles [44]
�aux_, or their equivalents, and such men and women. And instead of their having to grow, like mushrooms, from a putrescent compost of inequality and exploitation, they will come from an evolution as controlled and ordered as de Deukans's tiny world at Givray-le-Duc. Apollo will reign again. And Dionysus will return to the shadows from which he came." Was that it? I saw the Apollo scene in a different light. Conchis was evidently like certain modern poets; he tried to kill ten meanings with one symbol. "One day one of his servants introduced a girl into the _ch�au_. De Deukans heard a woman laughing. I do not know how... perhaps an open window, perhaps she was a little drunk. He sent to find out who had dared to bring a real mistress into his world. It was one of the chauffeurs. A man of the machine age. He was dismissed. Soon afterwards de Deukans went to Italy on a visit. "One night at Givray-le-Duc the majordomo smelt smoke. He went to look. The whole of one wing and the centre portion of the _ch�au_ was on fire. Most of the servants were away at their homes in the neighbouring villages. The few who were sleeping at the _ch�au_ started to carry buckets of water to the mass of flames. An attempt was made to telephone for the _pompiers_, but the line had been cut. When they finally arrived, it was too late. Every painting was shrivelled, every book ashes, every piece of porcelain twisted and smashed, every coin melted, every exquisite instrument, every piece of furniture, each automaton, even Mirabelle, charred to nothingness. All that was left were parts of the walls and the eternally irreparable. "I was also abroad at the time, De Deukans was woken somewhere near dawn in his hotel in Florence and told. He went home at once. But they say he turned back before he got to the still smouldering remains. As soon as he was near enough to realise what the fire had done. A fortnight later he was found dead in his bedroom in Paris. He had taken an enormous quantity of drugs. His valet told me that he was found with a smile on his face. "I returned to France a month after his funeral. My mother was in South America and I did not hear what had happened till my return. One day I was asked to go and see his lawyers. I thought he might have left me a harpsichord. So he had. Indeed, all his surviving harpsichords. And also... but perhaps you have guessed." He paused, as if to let me guess, but I said nothing. "By no means all his fortune, but what was, in those days, to a young man still dependent on his mother, a fortune. At first I could not believe it. I knew that he had liked me, that he had come perhaps to look on me rather as an uncle on a nephew. But so much money. And so much hazard. Because I played one day with opened windows. Because a peasant girl laughed too loud... all hazard. The world began in hazard. And will end in it. Though I should in any case have been rich. My father was hardly poor. When _o Pap pous_ died in 1924 he also left everything to my mother. And he was very far from poor. But I promised to tell you the words de Deukans also left me, with his money and his memory. No message. But one fragment of Latin. I have never been able to trace its source. It sounds Greek. Ionian or Alexandrian. It was this. _Utram bibis?_ _Aquam an undam?_ Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?" "He drank the wave?" "We all drink both. But he meant the question should always be asked. It is not a precept. But a mirror." I thought; could not decide which I was drinking. "What happened to the man who set fire to the house?" "The law had its revenge." "And you went on living in Paris?" "I still have his apartment. And the instruments he kept there are now in my own _ch�au_ in the Auvergne." "Did you discover where his money came from?" "He had large estates in Belgium. Investments in France and Germany. But the great bulk of his money was in various enterprises in the Congo. Givray-le-Duc, like the Parthenon, was built on a heart of darkness." "Is Bourani built on it?" "Would you leave at once if I said it was?" "No." "Then you have no right to ask." He smiled, as if to tell me not to take him too seriously, and stood up, as if to nip any further argument in the bud. "To bed now. Take your envelope." He led the way through to my room, and lit my lamp, and wished me good night. But in his own door he turned and looked back towards me. For once his face showed a moment's doubt, a glimpse of a lasting uncertainty. "The water or the wave?" Then he went.