Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

‘Leave the rest to us’ said Balthazar.

‘I’d like to see her’ I said enviously — as if, by bringing her to life, I had made her, in a way, my own property too. ‘Could I?’ As I pushed open the door and crept into the little cell like a miser I heard Amaril say peevishly: ‘It’s all very well to talk about surgical repair in that glib way ——’ It was immensely quiet and white, the little ward with its tall windows. She lay with her face to the wall in the uncomfortable steel bed on castors of yellow rubber. It smelt of flowers, though there were none to be seen and I could not identify the odour.

It was perhaps a synthetic atomizer spray — the essence of forget-me-nots? I softly drew up a chair beside the bed and sat down. Her eyes were open, gazing at the wall with the dazed look which suggested morphia and fatigue combined. Though she gave no sign of having heard me enter she said suddenly.

‘Is that you Darley?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was clear. Now she sighed and moved slightly, as if with relief at my coming. ‘I’m so glad.’ Her voice had a small weary lilt which suggested that somewhere beyond the confines of her present pain and drowsiness a new self-confidence was stirring. ‘I wanted to thank you.’

‘It is Amaril you’re in love with’ I said — rather, blurted out.

The remark came as a great surprise to me. It was completely involuntary. Suddenly a shutter seemed to roll back across my mind. I realized that this new fact which I was enunciating was one that I had always known, but without being aware of the knowing! Foolish as it was the distinction was a real one. Amaril was like a playing card which had always been there, lying before me on the table, face downwards. I had been aware of its existence but had never turned it over. Nor, I should add, was there anything in my voice beyond genuine scientific surprise; it was without pain, and full of sympathy only. Between us we had never used this dreadful word — this synonym for derangement or illness — and if I deliberately used it now it was to signify my recognition of the thing’s autonomous nature. It was rather like saying ‘My poor child, you have got cancer!’ After a moment’s silence she said: ‘Past tense now, alas!’ Her voice had a puzzled drawling quality. ‘And I was giving you good marks for tact, thinking you had recognized him in my Syrian episode! Had you really not? Yes, Amaril turned me into a woman I suppose. Oh, isn’t it disgusting? When will we all grow up? No, but I’ve worn him out in my heart, you know. It isn’t as you imagine it. I know he is not the man for me. Nothing would have persuaded me to replace Semira. I know this by the fact of having made love to him, been in love with him! It’s odd, but the experience prevented me from mistaking him for the other one, the once-for-aller! Though who and where he is remains to discover. I haven’t really affronted the real problems yet, I feel. They lie the other side of these mere episodes. And yet, perverse as it is, it is nice to be close to him — even on the operating-table. How is one to make clear a single truth about the human heart?’

‘Shall I put off my journey?’

‘But no. I wouldn’t wish it at all. I shall need a little time to come to myself now that at last I am free from the horror. That at least you have done for me — pushed me back into midstream again and driven off the dragon. It’s gone and will never come back. Put your hand on my shoulder and squeeze, instead of a kiss. No. Don’t change plans. Now at last we can take things a bit easily. Unhurriedly. I shall be well cared for here as you know.

Later when your job is done we shall see, shall we? Try and write. I feel perhaps a pause might start you off.’

‘I will.’ But I knew I wouldn’t.

‘Only one thing I want you to do. Please visit the Mulid of El Scob tonight so that you can tell me all about it; you see it is the first time since the war that they are allowing the customary lighting in that quartier. It should be fun to see. I don’t want you to miss it. Will you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thank you, my dear.’ I stood up and after a moment’s pause said: ‘Clea what exactly was the horror?’ But she had closed her eyes and was fading softly into sleep.

Her lips moved but I could not catch her answer. There was the faintest trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

A phrase of Pursewarden’s came into my mind as I softly closed the door of the ward. ‘The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time.’

*******

It was already late when at last I managed to locate a gharry to take me back to the town. At the flat I found a message to say that my departure had been put forward by six hours; the motor-launch would be leaving at midnight. Hamid was there, standing quite still and patient, as if he already knew the contents of the message. My luggage had been collected by an Army truck that afternoon. There was nothing left to do except kill the time until twelve, and this I proposed to do in the fashion suggested by Clea: by visiting the Mulid of El Scob. Hamid still stood before me, gravid with the weight of another parting. ‘You no come back this time, sir’ he said blinking his eye at me with sorrow. I looked at the little man with emotion. I remembered how proudly he had recounted the saving of this one eye. It was because he had been the younger and uglier brother of the two. His mother had put out his brother’s two eyes in order to prevent him from being conscripted; but he, Hamid, being puny and ugly — he had escaped with one. His brother was now a blind muezzin in Tanta.

But how rich he was, Hamid, with his one eye! It represented a fortune to him in well-paid work for rich foreigners.

‘I come to you in London’ he said eagerly, hopefully.

‘Very well. I’ll write to you.’ He was all dressed up for the Mulid in his best clothes — the crimson cloak and the red shoes of soft morocco leather; in his bosom he had a clean white handkerchief. It was his evening off I remembered. Pombal and I had saved up a sum of money to give him as a parting present. He took the cheque between finger and thumb, inclining his head with gratitude. But self-interest could not buoy him up against the pain of parting from us. So he repeated ‘I come to you in London’ to console himself; shaking hands with himself as he said the words.

‘Very well’ I said for the third time, though I could hardly see one-eyed Hamid in London. ‘I will write. Tonight I shall visit the Mulid of El Scob.’

‘Very good.’ I shook him by the shoulders and the familiarity made him bow his head. A tear trickled out of his blind eye and off the end of his nose.

‘Goodbye ya Hamid’ I said, and walked down the stairs, leaving him standing quietly at the top, as if waiting for some signal from outer space. Then suddenly he rushed after me, catching me at the front door, in order to thrust into my hand, as a parting present, his cherished picture of Melissa and myself walking down Rue Fuad on some forgotten afternoon.

*******

The whole quarter lay drowsing in the umbrageous violet of approaching nightfall. A sky of palpitating velours which was cut into by the stark flare of a thousand electric light bulbs. It lay over Tatwig Street, that night, like a velvet rind.

Only the lighted tips of the minarets rose above it on their slender invisible stalks — appeared hanging suspended in the sky; trembling slightly with the haze as if about to expand their hoods like cobras. Drifting idly down those remembered streets once more I drank in (forever: keepsakes of the Arab town) the smell of crushed chrysanthemums, ordure, scents, strawberries, human sweat and roasting pigeons. The procession had not arrived as yet. It would form somewhere beyond the harlots’ quarter, among the tombs, and wind its slow way to the shrine, geared to a dancing measure; calling on the way at each of the mosques to offer up a verse or two of the Book in honour of El Scob. But the secular side of the festival was in full swing. In the dark alleys people had brought their dinner tables into the street, candlelit and decked with roses. So sitting they could catch the chipped headtones of the girl singers who were already standing on the wooden platforms outside the cafes, piercing the heavy night with their quartertones. The streets were beflagged, and the great framed pictures of the circumcision doctors rippled on high among the cressets and standards. In a darkened yard I saw them pouring the hot sugar, red and white, into the little wooden moulds from which would emerge the whole bestiary of Egypt — the ducks, horsemen, rabbits, and goats. The great sugar figurines too of the Delta folklore — Yuna and Aziz the lovers interlocked, interpenetrated — and the bearded heroes like Abu Zeid, armed and mounted among his brigands. They were splendidly obscene — surely the stupidest word in our language? — and brilliantly coloured before being dressed in their garments of paper, tinsel, and spangled gold, and set up on display among the Sugar Booths for the children to gape at and buy. In every little square now the coloured marquees had been run up, each with its familiar sign.