Barry Unsworth - Pascali's Island

With undimmed ardour, then, I worked my way round the side of the gorge to the long spur of the headland. Now I was in sight of the sea again, glimpsed its far blue through tangles of broom and holly oak. Below me I could see the beginnings of the ruins, traces of walls here and there, discernible as lines and angles rather than structures, signs of a human intention among the otherwise haphazard accumulations of nature. I paused at this point, and it was fortunate I did so, because in this pause I heard voices, higher up, to my right. Moving very slowly, and keeping well below the line of the spur, I made my way towards this sound, and after no more than a hundred metres I saw them, saw the drab olive of their uniforms, two soldiers sitting on a narrow level backed by rock, in the shade of a low pine tree. One sat against the rock, the other was further forward, looking out towards the sea. I could not see their faces clearly, but their heads were young-looking, close-cropped – they were not wearing their kepis. There is room there, as far as I could judge, for bedding and a fire. A good place for surveillance, because although they cannot overlook the actual site itself, they can watch all approaches to it from above, from the interior. I suspect that Mahmoud Pasha has posted at least two more men below the site, on the shoreward side.

They showed no sign of being aware of my existence. With utmost circumspection, using declivities, thin folds in the hills, rocks, bushes, anything that afforded cover, I made my way down towards the ruins. Further down, concealment was easier as the vegetation grew more thickly, there were trees among the scrub, wild almonds, gnarled abandoned olives, umbrella pines, even some chestnut trees, all this due to the presence of water here, just below ground.

I paused again here, grateful for the shade. Far below I could see the long irregular swathe of green where vegetation clothed the shallow ravine of the water-course running down to the shore. Beyond this, and appearing like a continuation of it, the ancient jetty pushed into the sea, the water greening over the massive blocks below the surface. The shapes of marble, untarnished by centuries of immersion, glimmered in this light, at this distance, like limbs of some gigantic marine deity sprawling there. Somewhere below me, though I heard no sound, somewhere amidst this denser foliage, if I was right, was Mister Bowles.

I descended, following the green tracery of the spring, scrambling over rock and scrub, clumsy, fearful-yes, I was beginning to feel afraid, Excellency, as if Mister Bowles might suddenly manifest himself, confront me, rise up from among the rocks. I experienced that ancient fear of the watcher or tracker when he suddenly feels that he himself may be the quarry. Vigilance in pursuer or pursued breeds terror.

Nevertheless I persevered, hearing the sounds of my own exertion, hearing too the faint but all-pervasive sound of running water. The going was easier now, I was following a cracked, uneven pavement, partly grassed over. On one side of me circular bases of pillars formed the rough pattern of a colonnade; on the other the ground had slipped and fallen away, there were hummocks of rubble softened by grass and ground ivy. The pavement led to a tholos, perhaps marking the inner sanctuary of the temple. Beyond this the ground was again heaped and broken.

I took a path between thickets of arbutus, or what at first seemed a path – in fact it was merely a level cleft between outcrops of rock, and led me into another, but much narrower and steeper ravine.

As I moved slowly forward through this defile, my sense of desolation grew, the constriction in my heart tightened. No longer the ardour of discovery. Now I felt only doubt of surviving in this fearful undergrowth. Perhaps Mister Bowles was not there at all. Why should I have thought that he was? Why was I there myself, what chimera had lured me? Reason dimmed in me, all purpose left me. I was reduced to my own solitary inexplicable existence, an unwieldy, sweating person, uttering intermittent grunts, his life wasted behind him, his prospects minimal. In search of what? I stopped, stood still, and fear at my existence settled round me, closely, intimately. In full summer, in the middle hours of the day, we should avoid lonely, enclosed places, Excellency. Existence is intensified in us, to the point of dread. There was dread in the beating of my heart, in the shrilling of cicadas, the wavering flight of butterflies, the leaps of grasshoppers sustained beyond expectation. Pan's time, when every creature realises itself, the weak in fear, the strong in power.

I had some moments of swoon there, Excellency. Then, with an effort, I went on, clambered out of this 'well of eternity', literally clambered, as the gully had become impassable. I scrambled up one side, clinging to the roots of cistus and sage, on to a more gradual upward slope facing away from the sea. Before me, on the left, were further ruins, low walls, the ground plan of a house. A fig tree grew against the arch of a doorway. To my right, the slope continued, bare, ochreous, scattered with small rocks. Along the crest of the slope a few straggling thorn bushes. As I stood there, looking up, I heard, or thought I heard, a voice, a human voice, male, in trailing snatches of song. I at once began to climb the rise, setting my feet sideways, caution and the effort of climbing keeping my body low. The singing carried to me again. I lay flat, with my breast against the last few feet of the slope. Very carefully I worked my way upwards until by raising my head I was able to see what lay on the other side of the slope. What I saw was so extraordinary that I almost despair of making it credible to Your Excellency.

The ground fell steeply into a hollow, roughly circular in shape, tangled with bushes immediately below me, then open for a few yards until the land tilted up again, reddish in colour and bare, like the slope I had just climbed. Alone there, full in the sun, was Mister Bowles. He was working, slowly scraping with a short-bladed knife at the face of the farther slope. Except for his hat and a pair of white drawers, he was naked. Naked and dark red in colour, gleaming with perspiration. Red too, lustreless dull red, was the earth face he was working at. He was singing to himself in a droning baritone; not words, but odd random notes, such as a man makes when he is busily occupied.

At first, in those first few seconds, it seemed to me that Mister Bowles had taken leave of his senses in this hot secret place, and was attacking the very earth itself, in slow maniacal protest against the human lot. But the motions of his knife were too fostering, too delicate and loving. There was no adversary there. Besides, it seemed to me now that I could discern a shape, a form, lurking in the clay: Mister Bowles was engaged in an act of creation, he was carving a form out of the hillside. Stilling my agitated heart, and clearing my eyes, I made out lines of a human figure, largely embedded still, turned a little from me, the contour of a shoulder, a face, the shadow of a face, curiously obscured and indistinct. Man's or woman's? It dwelt there, while Mister Bowles, like some devotee in his hat and drawers, made worshipful motions with his knife, and droned his song. – It dwelt there, yes. He was not carving it. Not sculptor but midwife, freeing the form from its impedimenta, its gross obscuring matter, delivering it. This is the task that has been absorbing him, this the reason for all his prevarication and delay.

I watched him for some time longer, in fascination. Then I began to think about getting away. It struck me as distinctly unwise to announce myself there and then, even dangerous. I thought it best to steal away and deliberate on how best to use the knowledge thus unexpectedly gained. However, dis aliter visum. Along the crest of the slope where I was lying the earth was loose and friable. In shifting my position preparatory to retreat, I dislodged several small stones and one or two larger ones, which slid a few yards down the slope behind me until caught in the scrub. Unfortunately for me, Mister Bowles was not singing just at this moment, and he heard it. He turned at once and very quickly. I ducked down below the crest. There was silence for some moments and I was beginning to breathe again when I heard his voice, in quite distinct and passable Turkish – ah, le perfide! – saying, 'Come down here at once.' I heard sounds which indicated that he had changed position. I thought of flight, but Mister Bowles is fitter and faster. Besides, there was the revolver.