John Fowles - The Magus

He turned parentally to Lily. “My dear, I think it is your bedtime.” I looked at my watch. It was eleven twenty-five. Lily gave a little shrug, as if the matter of bedtime was unimportant.

She said, “Do you feel possessed by them? I know I feel some people possess me.”

She looked to me for confirmation, though the question was to Conchis; and the question seemed, oddly, to come out of her real self, reinforcing the impression I had had throughout: that the story of Seidevarre was as new to her as it was to me. It was as if she had become another guest, an older friend of the house than myself, but still a guest; and was trying, just as I was, to assess the meaning of the parable.

“All that is past possesses our present. Seidevarre possesses Bourani. Whatever happens here now, whatever governs what happens, is partly, no, is essentially, what happened thirty years ago in that Norwegian forest.”

He spoke to her then as he so often spoke to me; he was commencing another shift in our relationships, or the pretenses that ruled them. In some way we were now both his students, his disciples. I remembered that favorite Victorian picture of the bearded Elizabethan seaman pointing to sea and telling a story to two little goggleeyed boys. A look passed between Lily and myself, and I could have sworn that she was feeling slightly the same as I was—that any clandestine meeting between us now involved a fresh element of betrayal.

“Well. I must go.” She slipped the mask of formality back on. We all stood. “Maurice, that was so remarkable and so interesting.”

Conchis kissed her hand, and then she reached it to me, but with the wrist turned, and I shook it. One shadow of conspiracy in her eyes, one minute pressure of her fingers, told me that she was still, in spite of the higher price, prepared to betray. She turned to go; then stopped.

“Oh, I am sorry. I did not replace your matches.”

“That’s all right. Please.”

Conchis and I were silent. I heard footsteps going rapidly across the gravel towards the sea, and I strained to glimpse her, but without success. I thought, if they put some trick on me now, it will be a proof that she is playing for Conchis and against me; a proof beyond doubt. I smiled across the table at his shadowed face; the pupils of his eyes seemed black in their clear whites; a mask that watched me, watched me.

“No illustrations to the text tonight?”

“Does it need illustrations?”

“No. You told it… very well.”

He shrugged dismissively; then waved his arm briefly round: at home, at trees, at sea.

“This is the illustration. Things as they are. In my small domaine.”

“The masque.”

“The masque is a metaphor. I told you that.” His unshifting eyes read mine. “You are never quite sure whether you are my guest or victim. You are neither. You are something else.”

I looked down under his eyes, then up. “What?”

“If you must speculate, explore other possibilities. But remember. What it is, has no name.”

He stood up, as if he had really only been waiting for a certain time, I presumed the time for Lily to “disappear,” to pass.

As I stood as well I said, “Thank you. Once again. For possessing me.

He grinned then, his monkey grin, and took my elbow as we walked towards the door of his room. The Bonnards glowed gently from the inner wall. On the landing outside, I came to a decision.

“I think I’ll go for a stroll, Mr. Conchis. I don’t feel very sleepy. Just down to Moutsa.”

I knew he might say that he would come with me and so make it impossible to be at the statue at midnight; but it was a countertrap for him, an insurance for me. If he let me go out alone, then it would be that he wanted me to walk into the trap, if there was a trap; and if he was genuinely innocent of the assignation, I could still—if discovered and then accused—pretend that I had assumed he was not.

“As you wish.”

He put out his hand in his foreign way and clasped mine with unusual warmth, and watched me for a moment as I went downstairs. But before I had reached the bottom I heard his door close. He might be out on the terrace listening, so I crunched noisily over the gravel to the track out of Bourani. But at the gate instead of turning down to Moutsa I went on up the hill for fifty yards or so and sat down against a tree trunk, from where I could watch the entrance and the track. It was a dark night, no moon, but the stars diffused a very faint luminescence over everything, a light like the softest sound, touch of fur on ebony.

My heart was beating faster than it should. It was partly at the thought of meeting Lily, partly at something far more mysterious, the sense that I was now deep in the strangest maze in Europe. I remembered the feeling I had had one morning walking back to the school; of being Odysseus or Theseus. Now I was Theseus in the maze; somewhere in the darkness Ariadne waited; and the Minotaur.

I sat there for quarter of an hour, smoking but shielding the red tip from view, ears alert and eyes alert. Nobody came; and nobody went.

At five to twelve I slipped back through the gate and struck off eastwards through the trees to the gulley. I moved slowly, stopping frequently. I reached the gulley, waited, then crossed it and walked as silently as I could up the path to the clearing with the statue. It came, majestic shadow, into sight. The seat under the almond tree was deserted. I stood in the starlight at the edge of the clearing, very tense, certain that something was about to happen, straining to see if there was anyone in the dense black background. I had an idea it might be a man with blue eyes and an axe.

There was a loud ching. Someone had thrown a stone and hit the statue. I stepped into the darkness of the pine tree beside me. Then I saw a movement, and an instant later another stone, a pebble, rolled across the ground in front of me. The movement showed a gleam of white, and it came from behind a tree on my side of the clearing, higher up. I knew it was Lily.

I ran up the steep slope, stumbled once, then stood. She was standing beside the tree, in the thickest shadow. I could see her white dress inside the opened cloak, her blonde hair, and suddenly she reached forward with both hands. In four long strides I got to her and her arms went round me, the cloak fell, and we were kissing, one long wild kiss that lasted, with one or two gulps for air, for a fevered readjustment of the embrace, and lasted… in that time I thought I 'finally knew her. She had abandoned all pretense, she was hot, passionate, she kissed with her tongue as prim 1915 could never have kissed. She let me have her body; met mine. I murmured one or two torn endearments, but she stopped my mouth. A torrent of feelings rushed through me; the knowledge that I was hopelessly in love with her. I had wanted other girls. Alison. But for the first time in my life I wanted desperately to be wanted in return.

She stroked the side of my face, and I turned to kiss her hand; caught it; and brushed my lips down its side and round the wrist to the scar on the back.

A second later I had let go of her and was reaching in my pocket for the matches. I struck one and lifted her left hand. It was scarless. I raised the match. The eyes, the mouth, the shape of the chin, everything about her was like Lily. But she was not Lily. There were little puckers at the corner of her mouth, a slight over-alertness in the look, a sort of calculated impudence; a much more modern face, though it could belong only to a twin sister. She sustained my stare, then looked down, then up again under her eyelashes; she had Lily’s mischievousness, but not her cool gentleness.

“Damn.” I flicked the match away, and struck another. She promptly blew it out.