Lawrence Durrell: The Dark Labyrinth

“Cefalû,” said Graecen, enunciating clearly but softly the word which seemed to have come out of a W. J. Turner poem.

“Cefalû,” repeated Hogarth without any emphasis one way or the other. His interest had now moved on from the book to the ticket. The name of the ship was the Europa , “Baird is going to Crete too,” he said. “A patient of mine. You’ll be travelling together, and will see.…”

“Silenus,” said Graecen with the air of a conjurer bringing off a trick. “I shall tell him everything.”

“You won’t need to,” said Hogarth sardonically. “He’ll probably tell you, that old Phanariot intriguer. What is all this about the labyrinth? I saw it in the paper.”

Graecen fished a letter out of his pocket holding up an excited hand to prevent Hogarth saying any more until he should deliver himself of his news, “A letter from Silenus,” he said. “Look.”

Hogarth saw the familiar vermilion and the little drawing on the letterhead, of a village perched upon the side of a high stone cone. “Read it,” he said. He knew that Graecen loved to read aloud, having a conceit of his voice. “All right, I will.”

Graecen sat back and put on his story-book voice — the voice reserved for reading of his own work on the radio.

“The sun”, he read, “comes up every day like the naked flash of a cannon. I am sitting in the garden writing on a fallen block of marble. The roses are doing well and so, as you have heard, is the archaeology. Further to my last, the labyrinth has produced a stone inscription — pre-Minoan? At any rate anothen script I cannot tackle, part hieroglyph. The Museum say they will send for you if I wish? My dear fellow, of course I wish. A summer in Cefalû would do you good. I need company. Bring anyone you wish. But please follow these instructions implicitly: Do not in any way, in print or by statements to the Press, commit yourself to a belief in, or knowledge of, the New Era (we hope) I’ve stumbled on. Got that?” Graecen broke off in confusion and found Hogarth’s steady eye upon him. He wrinkled his brows. “Now I wonder why ,” he said plaintively.

Hogarth admitted a wrinkle to his left cheek and shook out the burnt top of his dottle. “Why not guess?” he said. Graecen looked at him innocently.

“Dicky,” said Hogarth, “you know what our dear Silenus is. It’s just possible that the New Era is—”

“Faked?” said Graecen in alarm.

“Well, it’s a proposition,” said Hogarth easily. “It surely wouldn’t be hard to do.”

“But the lovely statue,” said Graecen.

“I should have a good look at it,” his friend advised.

Graecen looked confused and put the letter back in his pocket. He thought hard.

“How do you tell the age of a statue anyway?” said Hogarth, “apart from guesswork or typology?”

Graecen was too busy thinking to answer. He could easily get Firbank and his beastly chemicals to come along and test the stone; “but I don’t want to start any suspicion about Axelos,” he said.

“Chemicals?” said Hogarth. “Take some along with you when you go.”

“I will,” said Graecen fervently. “I will.”

He ate a rejected crust off his plate and seemed lost in thought. The statue was exquisite.

“Now then,” said Hogarth paying the bill and building a pyramid of books before taking them up. “I want you to meet a young man who is travelling on the Europa with you. He’s waiting in a pub in Shaftesbury Avenue.”

As usual Graecen had a thousand and one things to do. He took out his little leather notebook. Hogarth must really come to lunch or to dinner; but as usual he was booked right up. Tomorrow he was taking Mrs. Sanguinetti to the new Disney film. There was a dinner at the Savile in the evening. He read breathlessly through his engagements. Hogarth noticed that death hardly intruded upon Graecen’s daily life; it was assumed that he would not die before Saturday, when the Europa was due to sail. He lowered his crest like a bull and dragged his protesting friend to the corner of Tottenham Court Road. When Graecen showed signs of breaking away Hogarth anchored him successfully by giving him some of his books to hold. In this way they made their slow way down to the little pub in which Baird sat, reading a newspaper over his beer.

Later, as always happened, Graecen found that he was too late to keep the scheduled engagements for the evening, and found himself taking Hogarth out to dinner at the little Spanish restaurant in Old Compton Street, whose pimento-flavoured rice they had enjoyed together for so many years. Baird in his tactful way slipped off and left them together.

“How is it”, said Graecen when he left, “that that normal-looking young fellow should turn up in your consulting-room, Hogarth?” How indeed? Hogarth considered the question fairly for a moment. The reason for Baird’s journey to Crete was fantastic enough in its way. Cefalû was to be the answer to more than one problem. “By jove,” he said, “I almost wish I was going too, to help him dig up Böcklin.”

Over dinner he told Graecen the story.

The portrait of Baird which emerged over the grubby tablecloth in Old Compton Street was of formal proportions; as a history it was uneventful, and only the calm force of Hogarth’s description made it of interest to Graecen. Hogarth was tirelessly interested in his own patients; and he could communicate his interest when he pleased. And yet, thought Graecen so often, while he listened to him, Hogarth was so much more interesting than any of his patients could be. His peculiar reticence, for example, had preserved a wall between them for a third of a century. At the University Hogarth had been a monosyllabic misanthrope, working in his own fashion — chiefly during the day with his blinds drawn and the little electric desk-lamp on. Later he had accepted a fellowship to a German University, where he spent some ten years in talking philosophy and walking in the mountains with his students. He had returned to London with a German wife whom Graecen had never seen. Hogarth lived in Herne Hill, of all places, doing some miserably-paid work as analyst for some Government Department. During this time they met frequently, but Graecen was never invited to visit his home or meet his wife. By accident he found out that Hogarth had a son — but when he asked him about it he received a blank stare. Hogarth neither denied nor corroborated the story. Yet somehow, in some fashion that Graecen could never understand, their friendship remained unimpaired by all this. Later still he was surprised to see Hogarth’s name in the catalogue of an exhibition of oil-paintings at the Leicester Gallery. The paintings were powerfully-executed landscapes, owing nothing to influence or training. Hogarth had dismissed them lightly when he mentioned them. “I did them in Germany during my student days,” he had said, without either interest or self-depreciation. That was all.

Later still Hogarth appeared on the scenes in London as a consulting psycho-analyst with a small consulting-room in Harley Street. He seemed to be immediately successful, and had written one or two rather queer books, expounding some sort of philosophy of disease that Graecen had not been able to understand. He had read one of the books, hoping perhaps that he might be able to review it for Hogarth, but it was frankly beyond his powers to understand it. And now Hogarth was busy at work at analysis — he referred to it ironically as “half-soleing the souls of the half-baked”—and into his web people like Fearmax and Baird seemed to be wandering in increasing numbers.

Baird was an only son. His father was a member of the landed gentry displaced by fortune and endeavouring to keep up standards in a world which every day found them less comprehensible or necessary. He was a Justice of the Peace in Herefordshire, a capital horseman, a regular contributor to The Field , and the author of several books about birds. Baird’s mother had died when he was three and his father had never married again. In the stone-roofed house with its neat topiary hedge and green lawn running down to the river, his life had been a quiet and a happy one. His well-regulated youth was calculated to offer him an education and an outlook fit for the inheritance his father was to leave behind; a tradition for mildness, good-breeding, and cultivation rather than culture. In those days it seemed that the genteel might inherit the earth, and that Baird might be among them.