Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

And now all faces turned once more towards that little convoy of dinghies — faces on which was written only patient resignation or dread. Pombal was on his knees in the sheets with bent head.

Behind him, deftly steering, was Ali the boatman who had been the first to comprehend and offer his help. All the other dinghies, flying along on the same course, stayed grouped around Pombal’s as if in active sympathy. I could read the name Manon which he had so proudly bestowed upon it, not six months ago. Everything seemed to have become bewildering, shaken into a new dimension which was swollen with doubts and fears.

Balthazar stood on the quay in an agony of impatience, urging them in his mind to hurry. I heard his tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth teck tsch , clicking softly and reproachfully; a reproach, I wondered, directed against their slowness, or against life itself, its unpremeditated patterns?

At last they were on us. One heard quite distinctly the sound of their breathing, and our own contribution, the snap of stretcherthongs, the tinkle of polished steel, the small snap of heels studded with hobnails. It all mixed into a confusion of activity, the lowering and lifting, the grunts as dark hands found purchase on a rope to hold the dinghy steady, the sharp serrated edges of conflicting voices giving orders. ‘Stand by’ and ‘Gently now’ all mixed with a distant foxtrot on a ship’s radio. A stretcher swinging like a cradle, like a basket of fruit upon the dark shoulders of an Arab.

And steel doors opening on a white throat.

Pombal wore an air of studied vagueness, his features all dispersed and quite livid in colour. He flopped on to the quay as if he had been dropped from a cloud, falling to his knees and recovering. He wandered vaguely after Balthazar and the stretcherbearers bleating like a lost sheep. I suppose it must have been her blood splashed upon the expensive white espadrilles which he had bought a week before at Ghoshen’s Emporium. At such moments it is the small details which strike one like blows. He made a vague attempt to clamber into the white throat but was rudely ejected. The doors clanged in his face. Fosca belonged now to science and not to him. He waited with humbly bent head, like a man in church, until they should open once more and admit him. He seemed hardly to be breathing. I felt an involuntary desire to go to his side but Clea’s arm restrained me. We all waited in great patience and submissiveness like children, listening to the vague movements within the ambulance, the noise of boots.

Then at long last the doors opened and the weary Balthazar climbed down and said: ‘Get in and come with us.’ Pombal gave one wild glance about him and turning his pain-racked countenance suddenly upon Clea and myself, delivered himself of a single gesture — spreading his arms in uncomprehending hopelessness before clapping a fat hand over each ear, as if to avoid hearing something. Balthazar’s voice suddenly cracked like parchment. ‘Get in’ he said roughly, angrily, as if he were speaking to a criminal; and as they climbed into the white interior I heard him add in a lower voice, ‘She is dying.’ A clang of iron doors closing, and I felt Clea’s hand turn icy in my own.

So we sat, side by side and speechless on that magnificent spring afternoon which was already deepening into dusk. At last I lit a cigarette and walked a few yards along the quay among the chaffering Arabs who described the accident to each other in yelping tones. Ali was about to take the dinghy back to its moorings at the Yacht Club; all he needed was a light for his cigarette. He came politely towards me and asked if he might light up from me. As he puffed I noticed that the flies had already found the little patch of blood on the dinghy’s floorboards. ‘I’ll clean it up’ said Ali, noticing the direction of my glance; with a lithe cat-like leap he jumped aboard and unloosed the sail. He turned to smile and wave. He wanted to say ‘A bad business’ but his English was inadequate. He shouted ‘Bad poison, sir.’ I nodded.

Clea was still sitting in the gharry looking at her own hands.

It was as if this sudden incident had somehow insulated us from one another.

‘Let’s go back’ I said at last, and directed the driver to turn back into the town we had so recently quitted.

‘Pray to goodness she will be all right’ said Clea at last. ‘It is too cruel.’

‘Balthazar said she was dying. I heard him.’

‘He may be wrong.’ But he was not wrong, for both Fosca and the child were dead, though we did not get the news until later in the evening. We wandered listlessly about Clea’s rooms, unable to concentrate on anything. Finally she said: ‘You had better go back and spend the evening with him, don’t you think.’ I was uncertain. ‘He would rather remain alone I imagine.’

‘Go back’ she said, and added sharply, ‘I can’t bear you hanging about at a time like this…. Oh, darling, I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry.’

‘Of course you haven’t, you fool. But I’ll go.’ All the way down Rue Fuad I was thinking: such a small displacement of the pattern, a single human life, yet it had power to alter so much. Literally, such an eventuality had occurred to none of us. We simply could not stomach it, fit it into the picture which Pombal himself had built up with such care. It poisoned everything, this small stupid fact — even almost our affection for him, for it had turned to horror and sympathy! How inadequate as emotions they were, how powerless to be of use. My own instinct would have been to keep away altogether! I felt as if I never wanted to see him again — in order not to shame him. Bad poison, indeed. I repeated Ali’s phrase to myself over and over again.

Pombal was already there when I got back, sitting in his goutchair, apparently deep in thought. A full glass of neat whisky stood beside him which he did not seem to have touched. He had changed, however, into the familiar blue dressing-gown with the gold peacock pattern, and on his feet were his battered old Egyptian slippers like golden shovels. I went into the room quite quietly and sat down opposite him without a word. He did not appear to actually look at me, yet somehow I felt that he was conscious of my presence; yet his eye was vague and dreamy, fixed on the middle distance, and his fingers softly played a fivefinger exercise on each other. And still looking at the window he said, in a squeaky little voice — as if the words had power to move him although he did not quite know their meaning: ‘She’s dead, Darley. They are both dead.’ I felt a sensation of a leaden weight about my heart. ‘ C ’ est pas juste ’ he added absently and fell to pulling his side-beard with fat fingers. Quite unemotional, quite flat — like a man recovering from a severe stroke. Then he suddenly took a gulp of whisky and started up, choking and coughing. ‘It is neat’ he said in surprise and disgust, and put the glass down with a long shudder. Then, leaning forward he began to scribble, taking up a pencil and pad which were on the table — whorls and lozenges and dragons. Just like a child. ‘I must go to confession tomorrow for the first time for ages’ he said slowly, as if with infinite precaution. ‘I have told Hamid to wake me early.

Will you mind if Clea only comes?’ I shook my head, I understood that he meant to the funeral. He sighed with relief. ‘ Bon ’ he said, and standing up took the glass of whisky. At that moment the door opened and the distraught Pordre appeared. In a flash Pombal changed. He gave a long chain of deep sobs. The two men embraced muttering incoherent words and phrases, as if consoling each other for a disaster which was equally wounding to both.