Patrick White - The Vivisector

Madame Pavloussi said: ‘My husband is so good. He is a simple man — a peasant. I hope you will learn to know him, Mr Duffield.’

Mrs Davenport refused to have the curtains drawn in any of the waterside rooms. Some of the guests had walked out, in spite of the chill, into the garden, where the artificial moonlight had been turned discreetly off. The actual moon was not quite perfect, but perhaps more precious for it, in the thick, velvety texture of night, above the electric outline of the bays.

Hero said: ‘I have never lived for any long time out of sight of the sea. I would not find it natural to live without it.’

It was almost too natural their walking out of the house together, not by mutual consent, but as the game of solitaire had been imposed on other players. Hero had covered her head as protection against the cold. In the beginning all her remarks were chattery and banal. She tended to stride: to try to disguise the fact that her legs were rather short; while he felt shivery and dull: even miserable in his dullness, for he had expected something different. Was it possible his love for Madame Pavloussi would culminate on the operating table on a prearranged afternoon?

Looking back, the rising wind filling her hood, the classic light exposing her face, she gave the impression of being in flight.

‘I have seen Cosma for the first time on the quay after we escape, ’ she needed to explain. ‘After the Catastrophe — at Smyrna — we escaped to Chios. It is his island. He is from a village in the interior, where his mother still lives, and he still goes to visit her. I have been there once, but she doesn’t respect me: I have nothing of my own — not a penny — all of it was lost in the Catastrophe — and I cannot talk to her about jam. She has two daughters and a niece who live at the port where I have met Cosma the first time. They are the kind who spend months to think of the handbags they will order from Athens. You know? All the girls are married to confectioners.’

They had reached the water, where a balustrade had been built to prevent people falling in. In front of them the sea was both dark and restless, as opposed to the solid, illuminated house, with people strolling on the terrace, some lacing themselves with their arms to brace their bodies against the cold.

‘After we reach the mainland, we have stayed in this house on the outskirts of Athens belonging to a cousin of my father. He is very mean. He has locked up the furniture. So my parents sit on packing-cases while the servants bring them cups of coffee. All the servants are here from the tsiphliki —oh dear, I am too tired to remember English — the estate we have had in Asia Minor. They would like to do something for us, but we have nothing. They can only bring coffee, and cold water from the well.’

She stood looking out over the bay, speaking in a dry, high starved voice. Perhaps she realized, because she coughed slightly, and lowered it, to make it sound more natural. There was a gramophone playing something he had forgotten, and people laughing, at a house along the point.

‘In Athens they organized the refugees,’ she continued in a more controlled, convalescent voice. ‘My sister went to teach at a school. She is the learned one, and had some slight experience among poor Greek children in Smyrna. I was given work at a bank, because I have a head for figures. Oh yes, I have always been practical!’ She snorted in apology. ‘But I was not for the bank in Athens. I work work, and am sick in the end.’ Her voice was drying out again. ‘One evening I have fallen in the snow walking from the train. I haven’t the strength or the will to get up, only to lie and sleep in the snow. Late that night some people passing took me to a house. I didn’t care. I was too happy lying in the snow, which had become in the end beautiful and warm, and — yes, sanctifying.’

She spent a year in a sanatorium on the side of a mountain.

‘When my strength came back I should have felt more grateful. That is the terrible thing: not to feel grateful enough. A woman I got to know brought me a pretty, summer frock, out of kindness; she is not at all an affluent woman. I cried and she thought it was from gratitude, and because I was cured — it was such a day, smelling of warm pine-needles — but I was crying because I didn’t care. She never got to know the real reason. I have tried to make it up to her since, but have never adequately succeeded; it is now too easy for me to give presents.’

He stood against the balustrade bracing his calves, not so much because the night was chilly, as because, in this present rise in fluctuating faith, she must be the pure soul he was longing for. He couldn’t remember having met another, unless May Noble the Courtneys’ cook, though May had been in a sense an artist, and he wanted to admire somebody who was a human being.

‘What about your husband?’ he asked, testing her in a thickened voice. ‘Where is Cosma all the time? When does he reappear in the story?’

‘I shall tell you. It was with this same woman, my friend Arta, I was sitting one day during the visiting hour, not long before I was to be discharged. A man passed Arta thought she recognized as an acquaintance. She called him in. He and I also recognized each other from Chios. He was a man who had helped us bring from the destroyer the belongings we had rescued from Smyrna: our few relics! I found him most sympathetic on the quay at night, but almost anyone who was not a Turk would have appeared acceptable. Now when he had gone Arta told me: “This is Cosmas Pavloussis, who has already made a fortune out of shipping — a peasant from Chios — a millionaire!” Arta was more impressed than I. I became furious with myself. I did not look down on him for being a peasant. I blamed myself for being deceived by his simplicity: anybody so rich could not be entirely honest. So I said: “What an ugly man — and hairy!” Arta I remember laughing and replying: “Hairy men are said to be the kindest, and I should think, the warmest!” But I found her remark repulsive,’ Hero broke off primly.

‘I thought you were the practical one.’

‘Oh, but I am! Wait! After I left the sanatorium and the bank was persuaded to take me back, Cosmas informed himself through Arta. He asked to see me. I did not want him. He send me presents. I do not want them. At this time I did not know what I wanted or what I was like. I was like some empty thing — some jug waiting to be filled up — with purpose. Then he sent a representative to my parents asking them to give me to him. He offered to pay them a lot of money, when in normal circumstances it is the father of the bride who pays the groom to take her. My father was ironical at first, because the tsiphliki of my grandfather was so great it took a man a month to ride around it on a horse. Then they change their tune: “Why not, Hero? He is a good man, isn’t he? He was most courteous and considerate the night in Chios when nobody knew a thing about anyone. You praised him then.” Because the circumstances were not comparable I did not bother to argue. I sulked. Till one morning, I remember, I break my nail opening the drawer of a steel filing cabinet. I suddenly think: “Why do I not marry this peasant-millionaire and lie all morning in good sheets without opening my eyes?” My parents were delighted. They ask: “What has changed your mind, koroula? ” I said: “Nothing” just like that—“nothing!” I said: “The night is dark enough to hide any marriage, provided there is money.” They pretended not to hear.’

She begun whimpering and squirming, her nose thick with catarrh, her voice with distaste. ‘You see? Isn’t that practical?’ she asked.

He could only agree.

‘So I married Cosmas for the wrong reasons. From the wedding I have the bonbonnière —too ornate, because he wanted to show how far he had come.’ She blew her nose. ‘But I got to love him. He is such a good man. He respected my feelings from the beginning. Some Greeks are like goats, you know: the heat of the day is the same to them.’