Barry Unsworth: Pascali's Island

He looked at me briefly, our eyes met. His eyes look as if they ought to recognise you, but don't, and are angry, or perhaps merely puzzled, at this failure of recognition.

I slept, Excellency. Late in the afternoon now, judging by the sun. I no longer possess a watch, having been obliged by my necessities to sell it to Eskenazi three months ago. He gave me a quarter of its value. If this goes on I shall have to sell my telescope – which an Italian gentleman left behind. Actually, I stole it from him. I will not sell my ring or my hookah or my books.

The sea has changed, taken on a new aspect with the shift of the sun. The blue is deeper, harder. Little trace now of that earlier haze. As if those opalescent particles had sunk below the surface, thickening the water. Sea and sky mingle no longer, ruled apart on the horizon. Later again this line will dissolve. I know every mood, every aspect of the sea. After all, I have been recording these details for twenty years. No, it is not so long. In my earlier years I did not concern myself with such matters, but concentrated strictly on the doings of the inhabitants: arrivals and departures, conversations, the activities of the Literary Society. They were meagre and brief, those first reports. It was only gradually that I discovered my gift, realised that I had stumbled on my true métier. Then I began to see the island in its entirety as my subject. It is that which has kept me here, Excellency, in this one room, eking out a bare existence, deprived of all that makes life worth living for the many. The only concession to flesh my long-sustained fantasies about Lydia Neuman, an artist living here. That and my fortnightly visits to Ali, the mulatto boy at the baths. For the rest, observing, listening, writing. Writing. I have written my life away here.

No, the sea is not a proper image for the void. The sea is sufficiently inhabited with bodies both native and foreign – it doesn't matter which, as the sea makes everything its own, modifies everything in the interests of unity, and this is exactly what the informer does, Excellency, with the elements he takes from life. Bleach, bloat, shimmer or rot – depending on the original substance. The sea is more strictly comparable to my finished report, multiplicity of effect within a single organic whole…

While I am thus eagerly dreaming of my finished report, Hassan, the shore fisherman, emerges from the shadow of the café verandah farther along the shore towards the town. In the distance I see him stepping on legs thin as stilts down towards the sea. He holds his net like a gathered skirt. Stippled briefly by the bars of shadow cast by the verandah railing, then out on to the vacant expanse of shore. He walks slowly towards me, keeping close to the sea. He is as I see him every day: beak of a nose turned steadily seawards, faded headcloth and ragged shirt, black shalvas tucked up above his crane's thighs. The same. Yet today, in this my last report, he seems like some special emissary or messenger. The universe is crammed with symbols and portents, for those who have eyes.

How did they find out about me? No one has been here in my absence, my papers have not been disturbed. Perhaps some casual indiscretion in Constantinople, reaching the wrong ears. Or the agent for the Banque Ottomane, where I go every month for my stipend, Mister Pariente… But he knows nothing of the source of the money. In any case, why now, after twenty years?

Nevertheless, some connexion must have been made. There is a good deal of tension now on the island, with the rebels in the mountains stepping up activities. Separatist movements are everywhere gaining strength. I am not pure Greek, of course, they know that. I spend a lot of time with foreigners. All this might be regarded as suspicious. And then, two years ago, I ceased through boredom and laziness to attend the meetings of the Literary Society, where local patriots devote themselves to keeping Greek culture alive, quote Palamas and Pericles, express treasonable sentiments under the tutelage of the pappas. Harmless for the most part, but they have connexions, Excellency – these thin threads of sentiment and subversion extend to the furthest corners of your possessions and at points within this complex web are men with guns and money and friends abroad. My failure to attend may have gone against me.

I have continued to send details of these meetings, of course, even though not actually present at them. Why should it matter, when both fact and invention are received in silence? In solitude such as mine these distinctions blur. Even before I left the society, many of those attending had become in my reports partially fictitious, or they were people culled from other times and other places, put in for the sake of colour and variety.

Hassan is wading circumspectly into the pale water holding the net stealthily clear of the surface. The water is so clear that I can see the glimmer of his legs below the surface. He stops, turns away sharply as if piqued with the sea, then at once makes his cast, swinging round again, ending with arms outstretched like a suppliant. The net sails out, bunched at first, catching sun in its strands and weights. It opens, glinting, resembling for this brief time a sudden gauzy swarm of insects over the sea. It drops, dipping its mesh into the water with the briefest glitter of disturbance.

Because the times I shall watch Hassan are numbered now, his actions take on ritual significance for me, a kind of lustral character. As do those of the group of women now sitting against the low wall at the top of the beach between here and the café. Dressed in black for bereavement and gossip. I can hear the plaintive, yet plangent, notes of their voices. Movements, voices, timeless, immemorial. The island does not change. Mister Bowles saw it as the first colonisers must have seen it.

Why has he come, why is he here? An indefinite stay – that, in itself, is suspicious. If it were simply to see the castle built by the Crusaders, the Roman harbour installations, the Seljuk mosque, the classical remains along the coast, two days and a guide would be sufficient. No, he has some other purpose in mind. 'I hope you gave him a good room,' I said to Yannis, who is bad-tempered, but a simple man. 'Of course,' he said, 'Room 16, the big one, with a view of the sea.' So I know where he is. Yannis did not seem more unfriendly than usual. Strange.

Hassan is a good way off along the shore. I see him again involved in that controlled violence of movement. The net invisible now, but the gesture unvarying, that final stillness of the outstretched arms. Beyond him the sea is wrinkled like the back of a hand. A thin moon above it. The fishing boats stand out in the bay, waiting for darkness. Further out I see the pale lights of the American's caique, though not the shape of the boat itself.

Mister Bowles will be there now, in his room. Sitting at his window reviewing the events of the day, questioning himself, his motives. Or unpacking: photograph of a woman he always carries with him. No, he is writing in his journal – all English travellers have journals, it is an essential part of their equipment. He is making an entry in his journal before dinner. The English are very methodical and have a strong sense of duty, which they regard as sufficient morality. Wrongly.

Darkness is falling as he finishes his entry. He stands at the window of his room looking out. He hears, as I am hearing now, the wail of the muezzin calling on us to pray. Behind him faint crepitations. At once, with his strongly developed sense of hygiene, he suspects filthy cockroaches. From the lokanta across the square the sound of a zither. Someone singing a few words. Cooking smells. In a few moments he will go down to the dining-room: plum-coloured carpeting, oval tables, gilt chairs. Soft flares of the gas lamps along the walls. Biron, the waiter, slim and assiduous. Would monsieur like an aperitif? One of the tables on the terrace, perhaps? From here you can see the lights of the harbour.