Barry Unsworth - Pascali's Island

I had walked some two kilometres and was feeling tired already with the unaccustomed exercise, fully aware of my folly by this time, but obsessively unable to turn back. Then I saw the horses. They were tethered below me on a level bit of the foreshore, just above the jumble of rocks that cuts the headland off from any approach on foot from this side. There must at one time have been a massive fall of rock here. The sea has licked the rocks smooth, and in their reclinations they enclose pools, some of them deep, quite screened off from the land. Lydia and Mister Bowles would be down there, among the rocks.

I stood there looking down, concealed among the tamarisk. The sun had freed itself from its bands of mist, giving way to brilliant incontinence. There was a great glittering track over the sea. Everything was as it should be at that hour, white stones of the shore, pale thrift among the stones, plumes of the tamarisk flower, sun-warmed scents of cistus and thyme. Silent among it all, somewhere down there, Lydia and Mister Bowles.

I thought I saw a flash of white, clothing or flesh. I took out my telescope and focussed it. The boulders revealed their pockmarks and blemishes, encrustations that looked like rust or faded blood. Improbably fronded vegetation trembled with my trembling hands. Menacing, I always feel, things brought so much nearer to the human eye. As if they resented it. Quite visible now the gleam and slide of water among the dark rocks. Nothing more than this for some time. Then, with hallucinatory suddenness and distinctness a bare brown arm whisked into the arbitrary frame of the lens, a thin brown arm with a gold circle at the wrist: Lydia 's. In a second it is gone again. She is naked, they are swimming naked together. I picture their limbs below the surface, glimmering, his golden pale, hers darker, the slow refractions of their bodies, touching, coiling in the blue water. Nothing now but the speckling of long dead crustaceans, rust of algae on the higher surfaces of the rocks. Then, lower down, for no more than five seconds, I see them together, the shine of the man's vertebrae, her right shoulder, the soft fold of flesh below the armpit. Gone again.

Nothing more, I saw nothing more, Excellency, but I knew, with immediate sick excitement, what they would be doing there, on the warm shingle, between rock and water, in the glory of the early sun. I saw with my famous imagination every move they made there, I was aware, while I continued to hold the telescope, continued to hold things closer in pulsing violation of natural law, aware of everything they did to each other, I was both of them in conjunction, he and she giving and receiving in my own person what they gave and received, and for a moment or two I experienced marvellous serenity at this equipoise of being, a glimpse of paradise, then the excitement returned, my own poor flesh stirred, demanded, my hands began to tremble violently. I could no longer hold the telescope. Even now, Excellency, that heat returns to me, that helpless stirring, even after my visit to Ali (which I am coming to shortly).

Let me say in extenuation that this was no common lust. Lydia, so long the compliant partner of my fantasy, Mister Bowles, with whom I had felt from the beginning such strong affinity… There was something, some element of beauty, of benediction, in what I felt. If, through the force of imagination I had been able to go step by step with them to the culminating moment, would not my experience have been indistinguishable from his, from theirs?

But I could endure it no longer. I scrambled to my feet, clutching the wretched telescope, turned away from that silence among the rocks, and from the horses patiently cropping. Home, in my shuffling heelless shoes. Home, but the familiarity of my room failed to quieten me. I could, it is true, have ministered to myself, been my own subject and agent, it would not have been the first time my room had been witness to such splendeurs et misères, and on this occasion it would have been apt, almost poetic; but I needed another, Excellency, needed some touch that was not my own. Needed Ali, in short.

I changed into my linen suit, noticing as I did so that there were oil marks on the right lapel. Brown-and-white shoes, straw hat. The sun was higher now, it was beginning to be hot. I kept my head down, looked at no one, exchanged no greetings. Always now, when I go into the town, among the people, I am afraid. A glance misinterpreted, the wrong inflection in a greeting, anything now could be the death of me. I thought I heard a man hiss from a doorway, but I did not look.

The baths are in the Konak, an area of small shops, soup kitchens, kebab stalls, where small traders, day-labourers and artisans live – Turk, Greek, Armenian and Jew living together in conditions of promiscuity and squalor. Effluvium from the houses runs down the open gutters of the sloping streets. Smells of urine, jasmine, burnt charcoal. Smells of my fortnightly indulgence, which I am now, under stress, anticipating by a few days. Today a sharper, more pervasive smell, noticeable here because of the airless closeness of the streets: the fetid smell of captive sheep. Silent now, however, in the heat, listless.

Past the mosque. Down the alley. A thin cat avoids me. The entrance is in the alley, between two streets. Five minutes later I am in my bath. Everything now inflames my need, every familiar sight and sound, beading of steam on the tiles, click of bath slippers on the boards, the coarse white towel on my rail.

Bath, steam room, and at last the massage parlour. A private cubicle, bien entendu.

Ali shows rose-pink underlip in a smile of greeting. 'Merhaba effendim,' he says. 'This is not your usual day.' He notices everything.

'I could not wait,' I tell him, and he smiles again. Ali is always very cheerful. He is cream coffee-coloured, the product of an irregular and probably forcible union of Arab father and negro mother. From Mersin. He was a ship's boy, and stopped off here to escape a brutal and lascivious captain. He thinks he is fifteen. One day he intends to open his own steam bath and massage parlour, and he is grateful for the little extra money that I and my like give him for his special attentions. Ali will go far, I think. He has a marvellous understanding of the needs of the flesh.

I lie supine on the narrow bench, in total nudity save for the customary towel over the loins. His strong fingers knead the last cramp out of my limbs, work in the cool oil. When I am completely relaxed, almost swooningly passive, the towel of my modesty is gently removed and his hands touch me with intimate knowledge and skill. Touch by touch, with patient judgement, he takes me to the brim, dallies exquisitely with me in this state until my whole body is pleading, then brings me over to spill in protracted throbs and shudders, back to drained peace, acquiescence in man's miserable lot.

I know that by these confessions I will have increased your contempt for me. But they are connected, they are necessary. Besides, you need contempt to sustain your position. God is fed on contempt, they say.

That was, as I say, earlier today. Back in my room I found a note under the door from Mister Bowles, who had called in my absence. He wants me to arrange a further interview with Mahmoud Pasha, though he did not say why.

I was prey for some time to feelings of depression. Partly no doubt due to the hollowing of my being I had experienced under Ali's hands. Triste omne animal. Though this had not been exactly coitus. Then I was conscious of having spent rather a lot while it was still so early in the month. And of course, the blank, tyrannical pages there before me, still waiting to be filled. There is the isolation I live in, the end of my usefulness as an informer, the prefiguring of my death I see in the closed faces of those around me. I find some consolation in Schopenhaeur, in his words about the indestructibility of being. No doubt Your Excellency is acquainted with them. 'This present moment, the sole form of reality, has its source within us, not without… Although when we die the objective world will be lost to us, as will the intellect with which we acknowledge that world, yet our existence will not be affected…'