Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

In the absence of the Abbe I agreed to help him. I do not know what it was he poured into the bottles but all the flames of hell leaped up out of them until the whole ceiling of the place was covered in soot and cobwebs. The beings shrank now to the size of dried leeches, or the dried navel-cords which sometimes village folk will preserve. The Baron groaned aloud from time to time, and the sweat stood out on his forehead. The groans of a woman in labour. At last the process was complete and at midnight the bottles were taken out and interred under some loose flags in the little chapel where, presumably, they must still be. The Baron has been interned, his books and papers sealed by the Custodians of Property. The Abbe lies, as I said, in hospital. And I? Well, my Greek passport has made me less suspect than most people hereabouts. I have retired for the moment to my tower. There is still the mass of masonic data in the barns which the Abbe inhabited; I have taken charge of these. I have written to the Baron once or twice but he has not, perhaps out of tact, replied to me; believing perhaps that my association with him might lead to harm. And so … well, the war rolls on about us. Its end and what follows it — right up to the end of this century — I know: it lies here beside me as I write, in question and answer form.

But who would believe me if I published it all — and much less you, doctor of the empiric sciences, sceptic and ironist? As for the war — Paracelsus has said: “Innumerable are the Egos of man; in him are angels and devils, heaven and hell, the whole of the animal creation, the vegetable and mineral kingdoms; and just as the little individual man may be diseased, so the great universal man has his diseases, which manifest themselves as the ills which affect humanity as a whole. Upon this fact is based the prediction of future events.” And so, my dear friend, I have chosen the Dark Path towards my own light. I know now that I must follow it wherever it leads! Isn’t that something to have achieved? Perhaps not. But for me it truthfully seems so. But I hear that laughter!

‘Ever your devoted Da Capo’.*

‘Now’ said Clea, ‘oblige with the laughter!’

‘What Pursewarden’ I said ‘called “the melancholy laughter of Balthazar which betokens solipsism”.’ Balthazar did indeed laugh now, slapping his knee and doubling himself up like a jack knife. ‘That damned rogue, Da Capo’ he said. ‘And yet, soyons raisonnables if that is indeed the expression — he wouldn’t tell a pack of lies. Or perhaps he might. No, he wouldn’t. Yet can you bring yourself to believe in what he says — you two?’

‘Yes’ said Clea, and here we both smiled for her bondage to the soothsayers of Alexandria would naturally give her a predisposition towards the magic arts. ‘Laugh’ she said quietly.

‘To tell the truth’ said Balthazar more soberly, ‘when one casts around the fields of so-called knowledge which we have partially opened up one is conscious that there may well be whole areas of darkness which may belong to the Paracelsian regions — the submerged part of the iceberg of knowledge. No, dammit, I must admit that you are right. We get too certain of ourselves travelling backwards and forwards along the tramlines of empirical fact.

Occasionally one gets hit softly on the head by a stray brick which has been launched from some other region. Only yesterday, for example, Boyd told me a story which sounded no less strange: about a soldier who was buried last week. I could, of course, supply explanations which might fit the case, but not with any certainty. This young boy went on a week’s leave to Cairo. He came back having had an enjoyable time, or so he said. Next he developed an extraordinary intermittent fever with simply huge maximum temperatures. Within a week he died. A few hours before death a thick white cataract formed over his eyeballs with a sort of luminous red node over the retina. All the boy would repeat in the course of his delirium was the single phrase: “ She did it with a golden needle. ” Nothing but these words. As I say one could perhaps strap the case down clinically with a clever guess or two but … had I to be honest I would be obliged to admit that it did not exactly fit within an accepted category that I knew. Nor, by the way, did the autopsy give one anything more to go on: blood tests, spinal fluid, stomach etc. Not even a nice, familiar (yet itself perhaps inexplicable) meningeal disturbance.

The brain was lovely and fresh! At least so Boyd says, and he took great pleasure in thoroughly exploring the young man. Mystery!

Now what the devil could he have been doing on leave? It seems quite impossible to discover. His stay is not recorded at any of the hotels or army transit hotels. He spoke no language but English. Those few days spent in Cairo are completely missing from the count. And then the woman with the golden needle?

‘But in truth it is happening all the time, and I think you are right’ (this to Clea) ‘to insist obstinately on the existence of the dark powers and the fact that some people do scry as easily as I gaze down the barrel of my microscope. Not all, but some. And even quite stupid people, like your old Scobie, for example. Mind you, in my opinion, that was a rigmarole of the kind he produced sometimes when he was tipsy and wanted to show off — I mean the stuff supposedly about Narouz: that was altogether too dramatic to be taken seriously. And even if some of the detail were right he could have had access to it in the course of his duties. After all Nimrod did the procиs-verbal and that document must have been knocking around.’

‘What about Narouz?’ I asked curiously, secretly piqued that Clea had confided things to Balthazar which she had kept from me. It was now that I noticed that Clea had turned quite white and was looking away. But Balthazar appeared to notice nothing himself and went plunging on. ‘It has the ingredients of a novelette — I mean about trying to drag you down into the grave with him. Eh, don’t you think? And about the weeping you would hear.’ He broke off abruptly, noticing her expression at last.

‘Goodness, Clea my dear’ he went on in self-reproach, ‘I hope I am not betraying a confidence. You suddenly look upset. Did you tell me not to repeat the Scobie story?’ He took both her hands and turned her round to face him.

A spot of red had appeared in both her cheeks. She shook her head, though she said nothing, but bit her lips as if with vexation.

At last ‘No’ she said, ‘there is no secret. I simply did not tell Darley because … well, it is silly as you say: anyway he doesn’t believe in that sort of rubbish. I didn’t want to seem stupider than he must find me.’ She leaned to kiss me apologetically on the cheek. She sensed my annoyance, as did Balthazar who hung his head and said: ‘I’ve talked out of turn. Damn! Now he will be angry with you.’

‘Good heavens, no!’ I protested. ‘Simply curious, that is all.

I had no intention of prying, Clea.’ She made a gesture of anguished exasperation and said: ‘Very well. It is of no importance. I will tell you the whole thing.’ She started speaking hastily, as if to dispose of a disagreeable and time-wasting subject. ‘It was during the last dinner I told you about. Before I went to Syria. He was tipsy, I don’t deny it.

He said what Balthazar has just told you, and he added a description of someone who suggested to me Nessim’s brother. He said, marking the place with his thumbnail on his own lips: “His lips are split here, and I see him covered in little wounds, lying on a table. There is a lake outside. He has made up his mind. He will try and drag you to him. You will be in a dark place, imprisoned, unable to resist him. Yes, there is one near at hand who might aid you if he could. But he will not be strong enough.” ’ Clea stood up suddenly and brought her story to an end with the air of someone snapping off a twig. ‘At this point he burst into tears’ she said.