John Fowles - The Magus

Charles-Victor Bruneau . Not in Grove. A man I spoke to at the Royal Academy of Music had never heard of him; or, needless to say, of Gonchis.

Conchis’s costume at the “trial .” On my way back from Cerne Abbas I stopped for dinner in Hungerford, and passed an antique shop on my way to the hotel. Propped up in the window were five old Tarot cards. On one of them was a man dressed exactly as Gonchis had been; even to the same emblems on his cloak. Underneath were the words Le Sorcier —the sorcerer. The shop was shut, but I took its address and later they sold me the card by post; a “nice eighteenthcentury card.”

It gave me a sharp shock when I first saw it—I looked round, as if it had been planted there for me to notice; as if I was being watched.

The “psychologists” at the trial . I tried the Tavistock Clinic and the American Embassy. All the names totally unknown, though some of the institutes exist.

Nevinson . This was the man whose Oxford college was in a book in the school library. The Bursar’s Office at Balliol sent me an address in Japan. I wrote him a letter. Two weeks later I had a reply.

Faculty of English,

Osaka University

DEAR MR. URFE,

Thank you for your letter, it came, as it were, from the distant past, and gave me quite a surprise! But I was delighted to hear that the school has survived the tvar, and I trust you have enjoyed your stay there as much as I did.

I had forgotten about Bourani. I remember the place now, however, and (very vaguely!) the owner. Did I have a iolent argument with him once about Racine and predestination? I have an intuition, no more, that I did. But so much has flowed under the bridges since those days.

Other “victims” before the war—alas, I can’t help you. The man before me I never met. I did know Geoffrey Sugden, who was there for three years after me. I never heard him refer especially to Bourani.

If you are ever in this part of the world, I should be delighted to talk over old times with you, and to offer you, if not an ouzo, at least a sake pou na pinete.

Yours sincerely,

DOUGLAS NEVINSON

The incident on the ridge . When the kapetan called me prodotis (traitor). Of course they knew one day I would know what treachery they meant.

Wimmel . In late August, a piece of luck. One of my teeth began to hurt and Kemp sent me to her dentist to have it seen to. While I was in the waiting room I picked up an old film magazine of the previous January. Halfway through I came on a picture of “Wimmel.” He was even dressed in Nazi uniform. Underneath there was a caption paragraph. Ignaz Pruszynski, who plays the fiendish Town Commandant in Poland’s much praised film of the Resistance, Black Ordeal , in real life played a very different role. He led a Polish underground group all through the Occupation, and was awarded the Polish equivalent of our own Victoria Cross.

Hypnotism . I read a couple of books on this. Conchis had evidently learnt the technique professionally. It was “virtually impossible” to get the person hypnotized to do acts that “run deeply counter to his moral beliefs.” But post-hypnotic suggestion, implanting commands that are carried out on a given signal after the subject has been woken from the hypnotic state and is in all other ways back to normal, was “perfectly feasible and frequently demonstrated.”

Raising both arms above the head . Conchis got this from ancient Egypt. It was the Ka sign, used by initiates “to gain possession of the cosmic forces of mystery.” In many tomb paintings. It meant: “ I am master of the spells. Strength is mine. I impart strength.”

The wheel symbol . “The mandala, or wheel, is a universal symbol of existence.

The ribbon on my leg, the bare shoulder . From masonic ritual, but believed to descend from the Eleusinian mysteries. Associated with initiation.

Maria . Probably really was a peasant, though an intelligent one. She spoke only two or three words of French to me; sat silent all through the trial, rather conspicuously out of place. Unlike the others, she was what she first seemed.

Lily’s bank . I wrote another letter, and got back a reply from the manager of the real Barclay’s branch. His name was not P. J. Fearn; and the headed paper he wrote on was not like that I had received.

Her school . Julie Holmes—unknown.

Mitford . I wrote a card to the address in Northumberland I had had the year before and received a letter back from his mother. She said Alexander was now a courier, working in Spain. I got in touch with the travel firm he was working for, but they said he wouldn’t be back till September. I left a letter for him.

The paintings at Bourani . I started with the Bonnards. The first book of reproductions of his work I opened had the picture of the girl drying by the window. I turned to the attributions list at the back. It was in the Los Angeles County Museum. The book had been printed m 1950. Later I “found” the other Bonnard; at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Both had been copies. The Modigliani I never traced; but I suspect, remembering those curiously Conchis-like eyes, that it was not even a copy.

Evening Standard of January 8, 1952 . No sign of a photo of Lily and Rose, in any edition.

L'Astrée . Did Conchis remember that I believed myself remotely connected with d'Urfé? The story of L'Astrée is: The shepherdess Astrée, hearing evil reports of the shepherd Celadon, banishes him from her presence. A war breaks out, and Astrée is taken prisoner. Celadon manages to rescue her, but she will not forgive him. He does not gain her hand until he has turned the lion and unicorns who devour unfaithful lovers into statues of stone.

Chaliapin . Was at Covent Garden in June, 1914, and in Prince Igor .

“ You may be elect .” When he said that, at our first strange meeting, he meant simply, “I’ve decided to use you.” That was also the only sense in which, at the end, I could be elect. He meant, “We have used you.”

Lily and Rose . Two twin sisters, both very pretty, gifted (though I came to doubt Lily’s classical education), must, if they had been up at Oxford or Cambridge, have been the double Zuleika Dobsons of their years. I could not believe that they had been at Oxford—since our years must have overlapped—but on the principle that Lily never told me the truth if she could possibly mislead me, I tried it first. I concocted a story about my being a scout for an American film producer who needed a pair of fair-haired English twins and “had heard” of two at Oxford. It wasn’t a very good story and it involved me in some ludicrous improvising—which incidentally made me realize in retrospect how great had been Lily’s skill in that art. I tried the magazines, I tried the OUDS and the ETC, I even braved several of the women’s college bursaries; and got nowhere. I went to Cambridge and did the same thing; and got nowhere; least of all at Girton. Of course I realize that because they were twin sisters there was no reason why they should have gone to the same university. But at both Cambridge and Oxford I was shown stills from all the main undergraduate productions of the last few years—and no Lily-Rose face in any of them.

Armed with a slightly less implausible story—my rich American producer had become an eccentric rich American producer—I went round a few London theatrical agencies. Several of them had pairs of twins on their books, even blonde (or platinum blonde) twins; but not Lily or Rose.