Barry Unsworth: Pascali's Island

He looked up as I approached, glanced aside briefly, then regarded me steadily. I came to a halt at the table, removing my hat. His face was very real to me in this crucial moment of introduction: the long jaw and the thick fair moustache, eyes pale, rather narrow, very direct.

I paused, rather too long. The truth is, Excellency, that I was momentarily disabled by what I can only call his intenser physical existence. My own – and this may seem laughable in view of my undoubted corpulence – my own existence is liable to become quite unreal to me, especially when a strange face is confronting mine. I don't know whether it was because of this, or because the hostility of the Greeks, though still not fully registered, had thrown me off balance, but I now, on a strange impulse, in full sight of Politis, made the Moslem salaam, raising my hand to forehead and lips. 'Salaam meleikum,' I said.

Consciousness of my folly was immediate, and I felt fear, though not of those watching. 'Excuse me, sir,' I said, in English. 'Can I have a word with you?'

At once, even while he was making a gesture towards the chair opposite, even before I was seated, I knew that I had struck a false note: my loss of poise at that crucial moment had made my manner too ingratiating. The English despise a too evident desire to please. I fancied that I saw something change in his face, and I was distressed, because I wanted him to like me, or at least to see my worth. However, I went on talking.

'My name is Pascali,' I said. 'Basil Pascali. You are newly arrived on the island, I believe. I thought, since I speak English you know, after a fashion, that you might need some help… the services of an interpreter or guide. If I can be of any assistance to you, I hope you will not hesitate to ask.'

(Here I must issue a small caveat, Excellency. I am reproducing this conversation some hours after the event. My faculty of recall is good, and it has been trained over the years, through the exercise of my profession. All the same, total fidelity is impossible; there must be some degree of manipulation. Anyone who writes reports will know that in the matter of dialogue, as in sequences of action, naturalism must often be sacrificed for the sake of coherence. My aim, as always, is to convey the essence through the form.)

About my own feelings of course, there can be no mistake. And I will admit to Your Excellency that I felt a degree of self-contempt to hear my own voice, before too deferential, now become boastfully assertive. 'I live here, in the town,' I said. 'I am a well-known figure on the island. Everybody knows me. Everybody knows Basil Pascali… To make your stay more enjoyable, you understand.'

He looked at me for some moments without replying, as if he was waiting for something more. Then he said, 'That is very kind of you, Mister, er, Pascali. My name is Bowles. Anthony Bowles.'

His first words to me. First example of an incongruity about him which I found from the very first disturbing: the contrast between the unrelaxed yet leisurely movements of his body, and the blurting habit of his speech, in which bunches of words come out like offerings, full of haste and sincerity.

'There is a lot to see here,' I said. 'The island has a very long history as I am sure you know. It was one of the earliest Greek settlements. After that, layers and layers of peoples, cultures. But I am sure you know all this. We are naturally very proud…'

I was attempting, you will understand, by these indirect means, to elicit something of the purpose of his visit. As I have already said, I do not believe he is here as a tourist. There is something different in the quality of his attention. Difficult to define. He made no immediate response to my remarks, and daunted by the silence I found myself looking fixedly at the level of Vermouth in his glass. I became aware of my own dry, nervous mouth. I am very sensitive, though few know this, and this meeting was so important to me. So momentous. His arrival, my departure… With my passion for portents, Excellency, you will see… Besides, I had felt from the beginning there was something between us. His present silence, however, gave me no help.

'You are younger than I thought,' I said. 'I mean, at a distance -'

It seemed to me that at this point Mister Bowles raised the level of his eyes slightly, as if to study the top of my head.

'Yes,' I said, 'I myself… I am getting thin on top, as they say.'

I smiled at him, too familiarly. My face felt stiff. 'You too,' I said. 'Slightly. If you will forgive me. But in your case it is at the temples.'

In order to establish comradely feelings between us, I now decided to tell Mister Bowles the old joke about baldness. A mistake, as it turned out. 'The men of this region,' I said, 'the men of the Levant, and I count myself one of them, though my mother was English, primarily, we tend to wear thin on the crown, whereas with you it is at the temples. This corresponds to our respective sexual mores, or so they say.'

'Oh, yes?' he said, but without answering smile.

It was too late to stop now. I attempted a humorous leer. 'We go straight at it,' I said. 'Like bulls, you know. Vigour, but no finesse. It is the crown that bears the brunt. Whereas you… a more lateral, perfidious approach.'

I began to illustrate the difference with motions of my head, wretchedly aware that I was failing to amuse Mister Bowles. It was he who brought my cavortings to an end with the offer of a drink. 'Folklore,' I said, returning my poor head to a position of rest. 'The simple beliefs of simple people.'

'Would you care for a drink?' Mister Bowles said again.

I pretended to deliberate. I am practised in the quiet dignity of acceptance. (I do not wish to interrupt my narrative at this point, above all with complaints, Excellency, but I am forced by my low rate of remuneration to depend on others for many of the little extras of life.)

'Thank you, yes,' I said.

He clapped his hands for the waiter. (He has been in these parts long enough to have adopted that custom, at least.) Biron approached at once and I ordered aniseed brandy. 'Kai mezedakia,' I said, to remind Biron to bring the little dish of olives and feta and scraps of anchovy which by custom accompanies this drink and which had been my main reason for ordering it. I could not at this stage be sure of anything else to eat that evening.

The terrace had filled up without my noticing, so intent had I been on Mister Bowles. Another Turkish officer had joined the two at the corner table. They were drinking raki. The group around Politis was enlarged. Old Andrea was up on the little dais in the dining-room with his violin, playing tunes from Offenbach and Strauss. The officers I had not seen before. Presumably new arrivals. The garrison has been strengthened since the attacks on Turkish detachments began. It is only two weeks since a platoon was ambushed on mountain patrol, and seven killed, including the lieutenant. The number of the rebels increases daily. They receive support from the villages in the interior. The people identify with them, co-religionists, fellow-countrymen.

Mister Bowles asked me how I know English so well, since I was not English. He had not been listening then, completely. Perhaps a habit of his. Or did he wish to trap me in some inconsistency? I told him, what is true, about my life-long admiration for the English language, its wealth and resourcefulness; about the English books in my house, which I have read so carefully, the Authorised Version, and The Mill on the Floss and the poems of Walter Savage Landor. Moreover, I reminded him, my mother was English. Primarily. I became too voluble, Excellency. I had drunk the spirit quickly, on a stomach virtually empty, and moreover I was feeling what I can only describe as a sort of wounded recklessness. I knew that I had failed to make the desired impression on Mister Bowles; I knew that he despised me; and with the perversity born of my hurt, I was disposed to play up to his contempt, to be the buffoon he had set me down for.