Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

We move off steadily with Nessim at the wheel and catch the last rays of the sunset as we clear the town to run along the shallow dunelands towards Aboukir. Everyone is in excellent spirits, Ralli talking nineteen to the dozen and Capodistria keeping us entertained with anecdotes of his fabulous mad father. (‘His first act on going mad was to file a suit against his two sons accusing them of wilful and persistent illegitimacy.’) From time to time he raises a finger to touch the cotton compress which is held in position over his left eye by the black patch. Pallis has produced an old deerstalker with large ear—flaps which make him look like a speculative Gallic rabbit. From time to time in the driving mirror I catch Nessim’s eye and he smiles.

The dusk has settled as we come to the shores of the lake. The old hydroplane whimpers and roars as it waits for us. It is piled high with decoys. Nessim assembles a couple of tall duck-guns and tripods before joining us in the shallow punt to set off across the reed-fringed wilderness of the lake to the desolate lodge where we are to spend the night. All horizons have been abruptly cut off now as we skirt the darkening channels in our noisy craft, disturbing the visitants of the lake with the roar of our engines; the reeds tower over us, and everywhere the sedge hassocks of islands rise out, of the water with their promise of cover. Once or twice a long vista of water opens before us and we catch sight of the flurry of birds rising — mallard trailing their webs across the still surface.

Nearer at hand the hither-and-thithering cormorants keep a curiosity-shop with their long slave-to-appetite beaks choked with sedge. All round us now, out of sight the teeming colonies of the lake are settling down for the night. When the engines of the hydroplane are turned off the silence is suddenly filled with groaning and gnatting of duck.

A faint green wind springs up and ruffles the water round the little wooden hut on the balcony of which sit the loaders waiting for us. Darkness has suddenly fallen, and the voices of the boatmen sound hard, sparkling, gay. The loaders are a wild crew; they scamper from island to island with shrill cries, their galabeahs tucked up round their waists, impervious to the cold. They seem black and huge, as if carved from the darkness. They pull us up to the balcony one by one and then set off in shallow punts to lay their armfuls of decoys while we turn to the inner room where paraffin lamps have already been lit. From the little kitchen comes the encouraging smell of food which we sniff appreciatively as we divest ourselves of our guns and bandoliers, and kick off our boots.

Now the sportsmen fall to backgammon or tric-trac and bag-andshot talk, the most delightful and absorbing masculine conversation in the world. Ralli is rubbing pigsfat into his old much-darned boots. The stew is excellent and the red wine has put everyone in a good humour.

By nine however most of us are ready to turn in; Nessim is busy in the darkness outside giving his last instructions to the loaders and setting the rusty old alarm clock for three. Capodistria alone shows no disposition to sleep. He sits, as if plunged in reflection, sipping his wine and smoking a cheroot. We speak for a while about trivialities; and then all of a sudden he launches into a critique of Pursewarden’s third volume which has just appeared in the bookshops. ‘What is astonishing’ he says ‘is that he presents a series of spiritual problems as if they were commonplaces and illustrates them with his characters. I have been thinking over the character of Parr the sensualist. He resembles me so closely. His apology for a voluptuary’s life is fantastically good — as in the passage where he says that people only see in us the contemptible skirt-fever which rules our actions but completely miss the beautyhunger underlying it. To be so struck by a face sometimes that one wants to devour it feature by feature. Even making love to the body beneath it gives no surcease, no rest. What is to be done with people like us?’ He sighs and abruptly begins to talk about Alexandria in the old days. He speaks with a new resignation and gentleness about those far-off days across which he sees himself moving so serenely, so effortlessly as a youth and a young man. ‘I have never got to the bottom of my father. His view of things was mordant, and yet it is possible this his ironies concealed a wounded spirit. One is not an ordinary man if one can say things so pointed that they engage the attention and memory of others. As once in speaking of marriage he said “In marriage they legitimized despair,” and “Every kiss is the conquest of a repulsion.” He struck me as having a coherent view of life but madness intervened and all I have to go on is the memory of a few incidents and sayings. I wish I could leave behind as much.’ I lie awake in the narrow wooden bunk for a while thinking over what he has been saying: all is darkness now and silence save for the low rapid voice of Nessim on the balcony outside talking to the loaders. I cannot catch the words. Capodistria sits for a while in the darkness to finish his cheroot before climbing heavily into the bunk under the window. The others are already asleep to judge by the heavy snoring of Ralli. My fear has given place to resignation once more; now at the borders of sleep I think of Justine again for a moment before letting the memory of her slide into the limbo which is peopled now only with far-away sleepy voices and the rushing sighing waters of the great lake.

It is pitch-dark when I awake at the touch of Nessim’s gentle hand shaking my shoulder. The alarm clock has failed us. But the room is full of stretching yawning figures climbing from their bunks. The loaders have been curled up asleep like sheep-dogs on the balcony outside. They busy themselves in lighting the paraffin lamps whose unearthly glare is to light our desultory breakfast of coffee and sandwiches. I go down the landing stage and wash my face in the icy lake water. Utter blackness all around.

Everyone speaks in low voices, as if weighed down by the weight of the darkness. Snatches of wind make the little lodge tremble, built as it is on frail wooden stilts over the water.

We are each allotted a punt and a gun-bearer. ‘You’ll take Faraj’ says Nessim. ‘He’s the most experienced and reliable of them.’ I thank him. A black barbaric face under a soiled white turban, unsmiling, spiritless. He takes my equipment and turns silently to the dark punt. With a whispered farewell I climb in and seat myself. With a lithe swing of the pole Faraj drives us out into the channel and suddenly we are scoring across the heart of a black diamond. The water is full of stars, Orion down, Capella tossing out its brilliant sparks. For a long while now we crawl upon this diamond-pointed star—floor in silence save for the suck and lisp of the pole in the mud. Then we turn abruptly into a wider channel to hear a string of wavelets pattering against our prow while draughts of wind fetch up from the invisible sealine tasting of salt.

Premonitions of the dawn are already in the air as we cross the darkness of this lost world. Now the approaches to the empty water ahead are shivered by the faintest etching of islands, sprouts of beard, reeds and sedge. And on all sides now comes the rich plural chuckle of duck and the shrill pinched note of the gulls to the seaboard. Faraj grunts and turns the punt towards a nearby island.

Reaching out upon the darkness my hands grasp the icy rim of the nearest barrel into which I laboriously climb. The butts consist merely of a couple of dry wood-slatted barrels tied together and festooned with tall reeds to make them invisible. The loader holds the punt steady while I disembarrass him of my gear. There is nothing to do now but to sit and wait for the dawn which is rising slowly somewhere, to be born from this black expressionless darkness.