John Fowles - The Magus

He took a gold pencil from his pocket, marked the passages he had read and passed the open the book over the table to me. I glanced at the book, then still smiling, at him.

“Her sister?”

“Another cake?”

“Thank you.” I put the book down. “Mr. Conchis—her sister?”

He smiled. “Yes, of course, her sister.”

“And—”

“Yes, yes, and the others. Nicholas—here, Lily is queen. For a month or two we all conform to the needs of her life. Of her happiness.”

And he had that, very rare in him, gentleness, solicitude, which only Lily seemed able to evoke. I realized that I had stopped smiling; I was beginning to lose my sense of total sureness that he was inventing a new explanation of the masque. So I smiled again.

“And me?”

“Do children in England still play that game…” he put his hand over his eyes, at a loss for the word… “ cache-cache? ”

“Hide-and-seek? Yes, of course.”

“Some hide?” He looked at me to guess the rest.

“And I seek?”

“The hiders must have a seeker. That is the game. A seeker who is not too cruel. Not too observant.”

Once again I was made to feel tactless, and to ask myself why. He had provoked this new explanation.

He went on. “Lily’s real name is Julie Holmes. You must in no circumstance reveal to her that I have told you this.” His eyes bored gravely into me. “Four or five years ago her case attracted a great deal of medical attention. It is one of the best documented in recent psychiatric history.”

“Could I read about it?”

“Not now. It would not help her—and it would be merely to satisfy your curiosity. Which can wait.” He went on. “She was in danger of becoming, like many such very unusual cases, a monster in a psychiatric freak show. That is what I am now trying to guard against.”

“Why exactly are you telling me these things now?”

“It is a decision I took coming back from Nauplia. Nicholas, I made a foolish miscalculation when I invited you here last weekend.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. You are—quite simply—more intelligent than I realized. A good deal more so. And too much intelligence can spoil our little… amusements here.”

I had the now familiar feeling that came in conversations at Bourani; of ambiguity; of not knowing quite what statements applied to—in this case, whether to the assumption that Lily really was a schizophrenic or to the assumption that of course I knew that her “schizophrenia” was simply a new hiding place in the masque.

“I’m sorry.” He raised his hand, kind man; I was not to excuse myself. I became the dupe again. “This is why you won’t let her go outside Bourani?”

“Of course.”

“Couldn’t she go out… “I looked at the tip of my cigarette… “under supervision?”

“She is, in law, certifiable. And incurable. That is the personal responsibility I have undertaken. To ensure that she never enters an asylum, or a clinic, again.”

“But you let her wander around. She could easily escape.”

He raised his head in sharp contradiction. “Never. Her nurse never leaves her.”

“Her nurse!”

“He is very discreet. It distresses her to have him always by her, especially here, so he keeps well in the background. One day you will see him.”

I thought, yeah, with his jackal-head on. It would not wash; but the extraordinary thing was that I knew, and more than half suspected that Conchis knew that I knew, it would not wash. I hadn’t played chess for years; but I remembered that the better you got, the more it became a game of false sacrifices. He was testing not my powers of belief, but my powers of unbelief; assaying my incredulity. I kept my face innocent.

“This is why you keep her on the yacht?”

“Yacht?”

“I thought you kept her on a yacht.”

“That is her little secret. Allow her to keep it.”

I smiled. “So this is why my two predecessors came here. And were so quiet about it.”

“John was an excellent… seeker. But Mitford was a disaster. You see, Nicholas, he was totally tricked by Lily. In one of her persecution phases. As usual I, who devote my life to her, became the persecutor. And Mitford attempted one night—in the crudest and most harmful way—to, as he put it, rescue her. Of course her nurse stepped in. There was a most disagreeable fracas. It upset her deeply. If I sometimes seem irritable to you, it is because I am so anxious not to see any repetition of last year.” He raised his hand. “I mean nothing personal. You are very intelligent, and you are a gentleman; they are both qualities that Mitford was without.”

I rubbed my nose. I thought of other awkward questions I could ask, and decided not to ask them; to play the dupe. The constant harping on my intelligence made me as suspicious as a crow. There are three types of intelligent person: the first so intelligent that being called very intelligent must seem natural and obvious; the second sufficiently intelligent to see that he is being flattered, not described; the third so little intelligent that he will believe anything. I knew I belonged to the second kind. I could not absolutely disbelieve Conchis; all he said could—just—be true. I supposed there were still poor little rich psychotics kept out of in’stitutions by their doting relations; but Conchis was the least doting person I had ever met. It didn’t wash, it didn’t wash. There were various things about Lily, looks, emotional non sequiturs, those sudden tears, that in retrospect seemed to confirm his story. They proved nothing. Her schizophrenia apart, though, his new explanation of what went on at Bourani made more sense; a group of idle people, talented and bored international rich, and a man like Conchis and a place like Bourani…

“Well,” he said, “do you believe me?”

“Do I look as if I don’t?”

“We are none of us what we look.”

“You shouldn’t have offered me that suicide pill.”

“You think all my prussic acid is ratafia?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m your guest, Mr. Conchis. Naturally I take your word.”

For a moment, masks seemed to drop on both sides; I was looking at a face totally without humor and he, I suppose, was looking at one without generosity. An at last proclaimed hostility; a clash of wills. We both smiled, and we both knew we smiled to hide a fundamental truth: that we could not trust each other one inch.

“I wish to say two final things, Nicholas. Whether you believe what I have said is comparatively unimportant. But you must believe one thing. Lily is susceptible and very dangerous—both things without realizing it herself. Like a very fine blade, she can easily be hurt—but she can also hurt. She can hurt you, as I know to my cost, because she can deceive you again and again, if you are foolish enough to let her. We have all had to learn to remain completely detached emotionally from her. Because it is on our emotions that she will prey—if we give her the chance.”

I remained staring at the edge of the tablecloth.

“And the second thing?”

“Now we have had this little talk, please let us agree to continue as if we had not had it. I will behave as if I had not told you the secret. And I want you to do the same.”

“All right.”

He stood up and held out his hand, which I shook.

“Now. Do you feel like some hard work?”

“No. But lead me to it.”

He took me to one of the corners of the vegetable garden. Part of the supporting wall had collapsed, and he wanted it built up again, under his supervision. I had to break the dry earth with a pickaxe, shovel it back, lift the heavy stones, arrange them as he directed, packing them with earth, which he watered, his sole contribution apart from giving orders, to bind the wall together again. The wind kept blowing and it was cooler than usual; but I was soon sweating like a pig. I knew the wall must have collapsed sometime back, and I thought it peculiar that a man as rich as Conchis could not afford a few drachmas to hire a man from the village to do it for him. I guessed the real reason: I had to be kept busy, out of the way. All the time since leaving Lily I had listened for the sound of the boat, or a boat. But there had been none. I hadn’t forgotten that I was going to communicate with other worlds that evening; a really complicated episode in the masque was no doubt to be mounted. That was why I was being kept so occupied. And all the time, too, I had Alison’s telegram in my hip-pocket; but the one thing I longed for was to hear from him that I was after all to be his guest over halfterm.