Barry Unsworth: Pascali's Island

I do not know, even, what he proposed to do with the statue. Other than getting away with it, I don't think he knew himself. Perhaps he was planning to sell it in Europe, where for an original Greek bronze of that period (if he was right) he might have got a large sum from the right buyer. I think not, but one cannot be sure. Maybe the statue itself is a fake – there would be a marvellous irony in that. It has gone by ship to Constantinople now. Izzet told me there were fragments of brain on the statue's foot, the forward one.

Mahmoud and Izzet have been obliged to leave the site -empty-handed, save possibly for the doll. There are workmen from the mainland up there. The preliminary surveys have been made. Yesterday several times, and again today, there were explosions of dynamite, resounding over the whole island. First fanfares of Herr Gesing's Commerce and National State.

I do not go up there. Since the shooting I have lived in a sort of vacuous calm. I spend most of my time along by the shore, walking, thinking. I feel some prescience here, some demand still unsatisfied by what has been done. I sense it, glimpse it faintly, as I move towards the end; an end not seen, but contained in the beginning. Standing on the beach, among the bric-a-brac of ages, it is strange to acknowledge how infinitely small have been the gradations of change, since he arrived on the island and my report began. Minute changes in the constitution of the sea, adjustments the wind might have made to grasses, fading of things brought about by the sun in that time. Frightening, this discrepancy, wastage of persons and hopes, blankness of endurance in things.

My hopes too, in this pang of time, have withered. 'Imagine the paper-work,' he said. I remember his face as he said that, the look of pity in his eyes. 'Abdul Hamid is finished,' he said. He was right, Excellency. I knew it then, as I know it now. My reports have not been read. Worse, they have not been kept. And now you are no longer there. It was because I knew he was right, and because of the pity in his eyes, that I betrayed him. I have Lydia 's money still in the envelope, but there is no use for it now. The blood money from Herr Gesing I will not collect. I will wait here. One day they will come for me. My death will not even serve as a sacrifice, such a belated and accidental event will not be regarded with favour by any god. More than that will be required for an acceptable aroma. The world is preparing for it, Excellency.

Now you too are gone. There is nobody there. I shall bring this to a close, go for a walk along the shore, study the indifference of things. We cannot retaliate on indifference by asserting truth, only by casting doubt. Maybe none of this actually happened. Like the fly, the fly on my wrist, remember?

Lord of the world. Shadow of God on earth. God bring you increase.

Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in a mining village in Durham. He attended Stockton-on-Tees Grammar School and Manchester University. He has spent a number of years in the Eastern Mediterranean area and has taught English in Athens and Istanbul. His first novel, The Partnership, was published in 1966. This was followed by The Greeks Have a Word for It (1967) and The Hide (1970). Mooncranker's Gift received the Heinemann Award for 1973 for its 'sheer beauty of writing and richness of experience'. His other books include Stone Virgin (1985), of which the Daily Telegraph wrote: 'A marvellous novel, beautifully written and compelling', and his most recent novel, Sugar and Rum (1988). Pascali's Island was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1980.