Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

Language! What is the writer’s struggle except a struggle to use a medium as precisely as possible, but knowing fully its basic imprecision? A hopeless task, but none the less rewarding for being hopeless. Because the task itself, the act of wrestling with an insoluble problem, grows the writer up! This was what the old bastard realized. You should read his letters to his wife. For all their brilliance how he whined and cringed, how despicably he presented himself — like some Dostoievskian character beset by some nasty compulsion neurosis! It is really staggering what a petty and trivial soul he reveals there.’ This was an amazing insight into the tormented yet wholly complete being of the letters which I myself had just read!

‘Keats’ I said, ‘for goodness’ sake tell me. Are you writing a book about him?’ Keats drank slowly and thoughtfully and replaced his glass somewhat unsteadily before saying: ‘No.’ He stroked his chin and fell silent.

‘They say you are writing something’ I persisted. He shook his head obstinately and contemplated his glass with a blurred eye.

‘I wanted to’ he admitted at last, slowly. ‘I did a long review of the novels once for a small mag. The next thing I got a letter from his wife. She wanted a book done. A big rawboned Irish girl, very hysterical and sluttish: handsome in a big way, I suppose.

Always blowing her nose in an old envelope. Always in carpet slippers. I must say I felt for him. But I tumbled straight into a hornets’ nest there. She loathed him, and there seemed to be plenty to loathe, I must say. She gave me a great deal of information, and simply masses of letters and manuscripts. Treasure trove all right. But, my dear chap, I couldn’t use this sort of stuff.

If for no other reason than that I respect his memory and his work. No. No. I fobbed her off. Told her she would never get such things published. She seemed to want to be publicly martyred in print just to get back at him — old Pursewarden! I couldn’t do such a thing. Besides the material was quite hair-raising! I don’t want to talk about it. Really, I would never repeat the truth to a soul.’ We sat looking thoughtfully, even watchfully at each other, for a long moment before I spoke again.

‘Have you ever met his sister, Liza?’ Keats shook his head slowly. ‘No. What was the point? I abandoned the project right away, so there was no need to try and hear her story. I know she has a lot of manuscript stuff, because the wife told me so. But…. She is here isn’t she?’ His lip curled with the faintest suggestion of disgust. ‘Truthfully I don’t want to meet her. The bitter truth of the matter seems to me that the person old Pursewarden most loved — I mean purely spiritually — did not at all understand the state of his soul, so to speak, when he died: or even have the vaguest idea of the extent of his achievement. No, she was busy with a vulgar intrigue concerned with legalizing her relations with Mountolive. I suppose she feared that her marriage to a diplomat might be imperilled by a possible scandal. I may be wrong, but that is the impression I gathered. I believe she was going to try and get a whitewashing book written. But now, in a sense, I have my own Pursewarden, my own copy of him, if you like. It’s enough for me. What do the details matter, and why should I meet his sister? It is his work and not his life which is necessary to us — which offers one of the many meanings of the word with four faces!’ I had an impulse to cry out ‘Unfair’, but I restrained it. It is impossible in this world to arrange for full justice to be done to everyone. Keats’s eyelids drooped. ‘Come’ I said, calling for the bill, ‘It’s time you went home and got some sleep.’

‘I do feel rather tired’ he mumbled.

‘Avanti.’ There was an old horse-drawn gharry in a side—street which we were glad to find. Keats protested that his feet were beginning to hurt and his arm to pain him. He was in a pleasantly exhausted frame of mind, and slightly tipsy after his potations. He lay back in the smelly old cab and closed his eyes. ‘D’you know, Darley’ he said indistinctly, ‘I meant to tell you but forgot. Don’t be angry with me, old fellow-bondsman, will you. I know that you and Clea, … Yes, and I’m glad. But I have the most curious feeling that one day I am going to marry her. Really. Don’t be silly about it. Of course I would never breathe a word, and it would happen years after this silly old war. But somewhere along the line I feel I’m bound to hitch up with her.’

‘Now what do you expect me to say?’

‘Well, there are a hundred courses open. Myself I would start yelling and screaming at once if you said such a thing to me.

I’d knock your block off, push you out of the cab, anything.

I’d punch me in the eye.’ The gharry drew up with a jolt outside the house. ‘Here we are’ I said, and helped my companion down into the road. ‘I’m not as drunk as all that’ he cried cheerfully, shaking off my help, ‘ ’tis but fatigue, dear friend.’ And while I argued out the cost of the trip with the driver he went round and held a long private confabulation with the horse, stroking its nose. ‘I was giving it some maxims to live by’ he explained as we wound our weary way up the staircase. ‘But the champagne had muddled up my quotationbox. What’s that thing of Shakespeare’s about the lover and the cuckold all compact, seeking the bubble reputation e’en in the cannon’s mouth.’ The last phrase he pronounced in the strange (man-sawing-wood) delivery of Churchill. ‘Or something about swimmers into cleanness leaping — a pre-fab in the eternal mind no less!’

‘You are murdering them both.’

‘Gosh I’m tired. And there seems to be no bombardment tonight.’

‘They are getting less frequent.’ He collapsed on his bed fully dressed, slowly untying his suede desert boots and wriggling with his toes until they slid slowly off and plopped to the floor. ‘Did you ever see Pursewarden’s little book called Select Prayers for English Intellectuals? It was funny.

“Dear Jesus, please keep me as eighteenth century as possible — but without the c*******d….” ’ He gave a sleepy chuckle, put his arms behind his head and started drifting into smiling sleep.

As I turned out the light he sighed deeply and said: ‘Even the dead are overwhelming us all the time with kindnesses.’ I had a sudden picture of him as a small boy walking upon the very brink of precipitous cliffs to gather seabirds’ eggs. One slip….

But I was never to see him again. Vale!

*******

Ten thirsty fingers of my blind Muse Confer upon my face their sensual spelling

The lines ran through my head as I pressed the bell of the summer residence the following evening. In my hand I held the green leather suitcase which contained the private letters of Pursewarden — that brilliant sustained fusillade of words which still exploded in my memory like a firework display, scorching me. I had telephoned to Liza from my office in the morning to make the rendezvous. She opened the door and stood before me with a pale graven expression of expectancy. ‘Good’ she whispered as I murmured my name, and ‘Come.’ She turned and walked before me with a stiff upright expressive gait which reminded me of a child dressed up as Queen Elizabeth for a charade.

She looked tired and strained, and yet in a curious way proud. The living-room was empty. Mountolive, I knew, had returned to Cairo that morning. Rather surprisingly, for it was late in the year, a log—fire burned in the chimney-piece. She took up her stand before it, arching her back to the warmth, and rubbing her hands as if she were chilled.