Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

And so …

Will you give my sister my love and say that my thoughts were with her? Thank you.

Affectionately yours, L. P.

Mountolive was aghast. He felt himself turning pale as he read.

Then he sat for a long time staring at the expression on the face of the death-mask — the characteristic air of solitary impertinence which Pursewarden’s profile always wore in repose; and still obstinately struggling with the absurd sense of diplomatic outrage which played about his mind, flickering like stabs of sheetlightning.

‘It is folly!’ he cried aloud with vexation, as he banged the desk with the flat of his hand. ‘Utter folly! Nobody kills himself for an official reason!’ He cursed the stupidity of the words as he uttered them. For the first time complete confusion overtook his mind.

In order to calm it he forced himself to read Telford’s typed report slowly and carefully, spelling out the words to himself with moving lips, as if it were an exercise. It was an account of Pursewarden’s movements during the twenty-four hours before his death with depositions by the various people who had seen him. Some of the reports were interesting, notably that of Balthazar who had seen him during the morning in the Cafe Al Aktar where Pursewarden was drinking arak and eating a croissant. He had apparently received a letter from his sister that morning and was reading it with an air of grave preoccupation. He put it in his pocket abruptly when Balthazar arrived. He was extremely unshaven and haggard. There seemed little enough of interest in the conversation which ensued save for one remark (probably a jest?) which stayed in Balthazar’s memory. Pursewarden had been dancing with Melissa the evening before and said something about her being a desirable person to marry. (‘This must have been a joke’ added Balthazar.) He also said that he had started another book ‘all about Love’. Mountolive sighed as he slowly ran his eye down the typed page. Love! Then came an odd thing. He had bought a printed Will form and filled it in, making his sister his literary executor, and bequeathing five hundred pounds to the schoolteacher Darley and his mistress. This, for some reason, he had antedated by a couple of months — perhaps he forgot the date? He had asked two cipher clerks to witness it.

The letter from his sister was there also, but Telford had tactfully put it into a separate envelope and sealed it. Mountolive read it, shaking his bewildered head, and then thrust it into his pocket shamefacedly. He licked his lips and frowned heavily at the wall. Liza!

Errol put his head timidly round the door and was shocked to surprise tears upon the cheek of his Chief. He ducked back tactfully and retreated hastily to his office, deeply shaken by a sense of diplomatic inappropriateness somewhat similar to the feelings which Mountolive himself had encountered when Telford telephoned him. Errol sat at his desk with attentive nervousness thinking: ‘A good diplomat should never show feeling.’ Then he lit a cigarette with sombre deliberation. For the first time he realized that his Ambassador had feet of clay. This increased his sense of self-respect somewhat. Mountolive was, after all, only a man…. Nevertheless, the experience had been disorienting.

Upstairs Mountolive too had lighted a cigarette in order to calm his nerves. The accent of his apprehension was slowly transferring itself from the bare act of Pursewarden (this inconvenient plunge into anonymity) — was transferring itself to the central meaning of the act — to the tidings it brought with it.

Nessim! And here he felt his own soul shrink and contract and a deeper, more inarticulate anger beset him. He had trusted Nessim! (‘Why?’ said the inner voice. ‘There was no need to do so.’) And then, by this wicked somersault, Pursewarden had, in effect, transferred the whole weight of the moral problem to Mountolive’s own shoulders. He had started up the hornets’ nest: the old conflict between duty, reason and personal affection which every political man knows is his cross, the central weakness of his life! What a swine, he thought (almost admiringly), Pursewarden had been to transfer it all so easily — the enticing ease of such a decision: withdrawal! He added sadly: ‘I trusted Nessim because of Leila!’ Vexation upon vexation. He smoked and stared now, seeing in the dead white plaster face (which the loving hands of Clea had printed from Balthazar’s clumsy negative) the warm living face of Leila’s son: the dark abstract features from a Ravenna fresco! The face of his friend. And then, his very thoughts uttered themselves in whispers: ‘Perhaps after all Leila is at the bottom of everything.’

(‘Diplomats have no real friends’ Grishkin had said bitterly, trying to wound him, to rouse him. ‘They use everyone.’ He had used, she was implying, her body and her beauty: and now that she was pregnant….)

He exhaled slowly and deeply, invigorated by the nicotine-laden oxygen which gave his nerves time to settle, his brain time to clear. As the mist lifted he discerned something like a new landscape opening before him; for here was something which could not help but alter all the dispositions of chance and friendship, alter every date on the affectionate calendar his mind had compiled about his stay in Egypt: the tennis and swimming and riding. Even these simple motions of joining with the ordinary world of social habit and pleasure, of relieving the medium vitae of his isolation, were all infected by the new knowledge. Moreover, what was to be done with the information which Pursewarden had so unceremoniously thrust into his lap? It must be of course reported. Here he was able to pause. Must it be reported? The data in the letter lacked any shred of supporting evidence — except perhaps the overwhelming evidence of a death which…. He lit a cigarette and whispered the words: ‘While the balance of his mind was disturbed.’ That at least was worth a grim smile! After all, the suicide of a political officer was not such an uncommon event; there had been that youth Greaves, in love with a cabaret-girl in Russia…. Somehow he still felt aggrieved at so malicious a betrayal of his friendship for the writer.

Very well. Suppose he simply burnt the letter, disposing with the weight of moral onus it bore? It could be done quite simply, in his own grate, with the aid of a safety-match. He could continue to behave as if no such revelation had ever been made — except for the fact that Nessim knew it had! No, he was trapped.

And here his sense of duty, like ill—fitting shoes, began to pinch him at every step. He thought of Justine and Nessim dancing together, silently, blindly, their dark faces turned away from each other, eyes half-closed. They had attained a new dimension in his view of them already — the unsentimental projection of figures in a primitive fresco. Presumably they also struggled with a sense of duty and responsibility — to whom? ‘To themselves, perhaps’ he whispered sadly, shaking his head. He would never be able to meet Nessim eye to eye again.

It suddenly dawned on him. Up to now their personal relationship had been forced from any prejudicial cast by Nessim’s tact — and Pursewarden ’ s existence. The writer, in supplying the official link, had freed them in the personal lives. Never had the two men been forced to discuss anything remotely connected with official matters. Now they could not meet upon this happy ground.

In this context too Pursewarden had traduced his freedom. As for Leila, perhaps here lay the key to her enigmatic silence, her inability to meet him face to face.

Sighing, he rang for Errol. ‘You’d better glance at this’ he said.

His Head of Chancery sat himself down and began to read the document greedily. He nodded slowly from time to time. Mountolive cleared his throat: ‘It seems pretty incoherent to me’ he said, despising himself for so trying to cast a doubt upon the clear words, to influence Errol in a judgement which, in his own secret mind, he had already made. Errol read it twice slowly, and handed it back across the desk. ‘It seems pretty extraordinary’ he said tentatively, respectfully. It was not his place to offer evaluations of the message. They must by rights come from his Chief. ‘It all seems a bit out of proportion’ he added helpfully, feeling his way.