Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

They had been talking that night of Amaril and his unhappy passion for a pair of anonymous hands and a carnival voice, and Pursewarden was telling one of his famous stories in that crisp uninflected French of his which was just a shade too perfect.

‘When I was twenty, I went to Venice for the first time at the invitation of an Italian poet with whom I had been corresponding, Carlo Negroponte. For a middle-class English youth this was a great experience, to live virtually by candlelight in this huge tumbledown palazzo on the Grand Canal with a fleet of gondolas at my disposal — not to mention a huge wardrobe of cloaks fined with silk. Negroponte was generous and spared no effort to entertain a fellow-poet in the best style. He was then about fifty, frail and rather beautiful, like a rare kind of mosquito. He was a prince and a diabolist, and his poetry happily married the influences of Byron and Baudelaire. He went in for cloaks and shoes with buckles and silver walking—sticks and encouraged me to do the same. I felt I was living in a Gothic novel. Never have I written worse poetry.

‘That year we went to the carnival together and got separated though we each wore something to distinguish each other by; you know of course that carnival is the one time of the year when vampires walk freely abroad, and those who are wise carry a pig of garlic in their pockets to drive them off — if by chance one were to be encountered. Next morning I went into my host’s room and found him lying pale as death in bed, dressed in the white nightshirt with lace cuffs, with a doctor taking his pulse. When the doctor had gone he said: “I have met the perfect woman, masked; I went home with her and she proved to be a vampire.” Then drawing up his nightshirt he showed me with exhausted pride that his body was covered with great bites, like the marks of a weasel’s teeth. He was utterly exhausted but at the same time excited — and frightening to relate, very much in love. “Until you have experienced it” he said “you have no idea what it is like. To have one’s blood sucked in darkness by someone one adores.” His voice broke. “Sade could not begin to describe it. I did not see her face, but I had the impression she was fair, of a northern fairness; we met in the dark and separated in the dark. I have only the impression of white teeth, and a voice — never have I heard any woman say the things she says. She is the very lover for whom I have been waiting all these years. I am meeting her again tonight by the marble griffin at the Footpads’ Bridge. O my friend, be happy for me. The real world has become more and more meaningless to me. Now at last, with this vampire’s love, I feel I can live again, feel again, write again!” He spent all that day at his papers, and at nightfall set off, cloaked, in his gondola. It was not my business to say anything. The next day once more I found him, pale and deathly tired. He had a high fever, and again these terrible bites. But he could not speak of his experience without weeping — tears of love and exhaustion. And it was now that he had begun his great poem which begins — you all know it —“ Lips not on lips, but on each other’s wounds Must suck the envenomed bodies of the loved And through the tideless blood draw nourishment To feed the love that feeds upon their deaths…. ”

‘The following week I left for Ravenna where I had some studies to make for a book I was writing and where I stayed two months.

I heard nothing from my host, but I got a letter from his sister to say that he was ill with a wasting disease which the doctors could not diagnose and that the family was much worried because he insisted on going out at night in his gondola on journeys of which he would not speak but from which he returned utterly exhausted.

I did not know what to reply to this.

‘From Ravenna, I went down to Greece and it was not until the following autumn that I returned. I had sent a card to Negroponte saying I hoped to stay with him, but had no reply. As I came down the Grand Canal a funeral was setting off in choppy water, by twilight, with the terrible plumes and emblems of death. I saw that they were coming from the Negroponte Palazzo. I landed and ran to the gates just as the last gondola in the procession was filling up with mourners and priests. I recognized the doctor and joined him in the boat, and as we rowed stiffly across the canal, dashed with spray and blinking at the stabs of lightning, he told me what he knew. Negroponte had died the day before. When they came to lay out the body, they found the bites: perhaps of some tropical insect?

The doctor was vague. “The only such bites I have seen” he said, “were during the plague of Naples when the rats had been at the bodies. They were so bad we had to dust him down with talcum powder before we could let his sister see the body.”

Pursewarden took a long sip from his glass and went on wickedly.

‘The story does not end there; for I should tell you how I tried to avenge him, and went myself at night to the Bridge of the Footpads — where according to the gondolier this woman always waited in the shadow…. But it is getting late, and anyway, I haven’t made up the rest of the story as yet.’ There was a good deal of laughter and Athena gave a well-bred shudder, drawing her shawl across her shoulders. Narouz had been listening open-mouthed, with reeling senses, to this recital: he was spellbound. ‘But’ he stammered ‘is all this true?’ Fresh laughter greeted his question.

‘Of course it’s true’ said Pursewarden severely, and added: ‘I have never been in Venice in my life.’ And he rose, for it was time for them to be going, and while the impassive black servants waited they put on the velveteen capes and adjusted their masks like the actors they were, comparing their identical reflections as they stood side by side in the two swollen mirrors among the palms. Giggles from Pierre and sallies of wit from Toto de Brunel; and so they stepped laughing into the clear night air, the inquisitors of pleasure and pain, the Alexandrians….

The cars engulfed them while the solicitous domestics and chauffeurs tucked them in, carefully as bales of precious merchandise or spices, tenderly as flowers. ‘I feel fragile’ squeaked Toto at these attentions. ‘This side up with care, eh? Which side up, I ask myself?’ He must have been the only person in the city not to know the answer to his own question.

When they had started, Justine leaned forward in the car and plucked his sleeve. ‘I want to whisper’ she said hoarsely though there was little need for Nessim and Narouz were discussing something in harsh tones (Narouz’ voice with the characteristic boyish break in it) and Athena was squibbling to Pierre like a flute. ‘Toto

… listen. One great service tonight, if you will. I have put a chalkmark on your sleeve, here, at the back. Later on in the evening, I want to give you my ring to wear. Shh. I want to disappear for an hour or so on my own. Hush … don’t giggle.’ But there were squeaks from the velvet hood. ‘You will have adventures in my name, dear Toto, while I am gone. Do you agree?’ He threw back his cape to show a delighted face, dancing eyes and that grim little procurer’s smile. ‘Of course’ he whispered back, enraptured by the idea and full of admiration. The featureless hood at his side from which the voice of Justine had issued like an oracle glowed with a sort of death’s-head beauty of its own, nodding at him in the light from the passing street-lamps. The conversation and laughter around them sealed them in a conspiracy of private silence. ‘Do you agree?’ she said.

‘Darling, of course.’ The two masked men in the front seats of the car might have been abbots of some medieval monastery, discussing theological niceties. Athena, consumed by her own voice, still babbled away to Pierre. ‘But of course.’ Justine took his arm and turned back the sleeve to show him the chalk-mark she had made. ‘I count on you’ she said, with some of the hoarse imperiousness of her speaking-voice, yet still in a whisper. ‘Don’t let me down!’ He took her hand and raised it to his Cupid’s lips, kissing the ring from the dead finger of the Byzantine youth as one might kiss the holy picture which had performed a miracle long desired; he was to be turned from a man into a woman. Then he laughed and cried: ‘And my indiscretions will be on your head. You will spend the rest of your days….’