John Fowles - The Magus

After five minutes I came out. The children had mercifully disappeared, and I could take the alley to the right of the church. On one side there were the round cylinders of the church apses, on the other a wall eight or nine feet high. The alley turned and the wall continued. But halfway along it there was an arched gateway: a keystone with the date 1823 Ofl it, and above that a place where there had once been a coat of arms. I guessed that the house inside had been built by one of the pirate “admirals” of the War of Independence. There was a narrow door let into the right hand of the two gate doors, with a slit for letters. Above it, painted white on black on an old bit of sheet metal, was the name Hermes Ambelas. To the left the ground fell away behind the church. There was no way of looking over the wall from that side. I went to the small door and pushed it gently to see if it gave. But it was locked. The islanders were notoriously honest, thieves unknown; and I could not remember having seen an outer gate locked like that anywhere else on Phraxos.

I went on. The rocky lane dipped abruptly down between two cottages. The roof of the one on the right was below the wall of the house. At the bottom a cross alley took me back and around to the other side. There the ground fell away even more precipitously and I found myself looking up ten feet of vertical rock even before the wall foundation started. The house and its garden walls on this side continued the rockface, and I could see that in fact it was not a very big house, though still by village standards much too grandiose for a donkey driver.

Two ground-floor windows, three upstairs, all shuttered. They were still in the last sunlight and must have given a fine view west over the village and the straits to the Argolian mainland. Was it a view Julie knew well? I felt like Blondel beneath Richard Coeur de Lion’s window, but not even able to pass messages by song. Down in a small square below I could see two or three women interestedly watching me. I waved, strolled on, as if my look upwards had been idle curiosity. I came to yet another cross alley, and climbed up it to my starting point outside Agios Elias. The house was impregnable to passing eyes.

Later, down in front of the Hotel Philadelphia, I looked back. I could see over all the intervening roofs the church and the house to the right of it, the five windows staring out.

They seemed defiant, but blind.

Monday was a day of academic chores, catching up on the Sisyphean piles of marking that seemed always to roll down on my desk; finalizing—miserable word for a miserable prospect—the end-of-term examination papers; and trying all the time not to think about Julie.

I knew it was useless asking Demetriades to help me find out the names of the English masters at the school before the war. If he knew them he wouldn’t tell them; and very probably he genuinely did not know them. I went to the school bursar, but this time he could not help me; all the bursary records had gone with the wind of 1940. On Tuesday I tried the master who ran the school library. He went at once to a shelf and pulled down a bound volume of Founder’s Day programs—one for each year before the war. These programs were lavishly got up to impress visiting parents and in the back contained class lists—as well as a list of “professors.” In ten minutes I had the names of the six who had taught between 1930 and 1939. But I was still stuck for all their addresses.

The week ground slowly past. Each lunchtime I watched the village postman come in with letters and give them to the duty prefect, who then made a slow, slow tour of the tables. None came for me. I expected no mercy from Conchis; but I found it hard to forgive Julie.

The first and most obvious possibility was that she had taken her sister’s advice and flown back to England; in which case I couldn’t believe she would not have written at once—at least to tell me. The second was that she had had to accept the cancellation of the weekend; but she could still have written to console me, to explain why. The third was that she was being held prisoner, or at any rate incommunicado to the extent that she could not post a letter to me. I couldn’t really believe that, though I had angry moments when I thought of going to the police, or of hiring a caïque and going to Nauplia myself.

The days dragged on, redeemed only by one little piece of information that fell into my hands by chance. Looking through the books in the English bay in the library for a suitable “unseen” for the exams, I took down a Conrad. There was a name on the flyleaf: D. P. R. Nevinson . I knew he had been at the school before the war. Underneath was written Balliol College, 1930 . I started looking through the other books. Nevinson had left a good number; but there was no other address besides Balliol. The name W. A. Hughes, another prewar master’s, appeared on two poetry volume flyleafs, without address.

I left lunch early on the Thursday, asking a boy to bring me any letters that might be distributed later. I had come not to expect any. But about ten minutes afterwards, when I was already in pajamas for the siesta, the boy knocked on my door. Two letters. One from London, a typewritten address, some educational publisher’s catalogue. But the other…

A Greek stamp. Indecipherable postmark. Neat italic handwriting. In English.

Siphnos, Monday

MY DEAR SWEET NICHOLAS,

I know you must be angry with me for not having written, but the answer is very simple. We’ve been at sea (in all ways) and today is our first in sight of a postbox. I must be quick, because the boat that takes the mail sails in half an hour. I am writing in a cafe' by the harbor and June is keeping watch.

We left Nauplia in the yacht on Thursday, we thought for a day or two’s cruise. I don’t know where to begin—well, first of all, June has refused to go on. He began to tell us the “script” on Friday evening. It involved my having a ridiculous quarrel with you. Then June trying to make it up—and trying to make love to you at the same time. Of course we demanded to know why—why everything, in the end. I can’t tell you all we said—except that when it had all been said, neither June nor myself was satisfied. He went back to this business of mystification, and some incomprehensible talk about time. Time with a capital T. I don’t think we were meant to understand. He was cunning, really, because he said that the more we demanded to know, the more impossible it was to go on.

June took all the initiative. She told him about you and me. He pretended to be amazed, but we didn’t believe his amazement (probably weren’t meant to). (I must hurry.) In the end he became very understanding, but once again too understanding. You know what I mean. Greeks, and fearing gifts.

When we went to bed we thought we were heading back for Nauplia—and then on to the island on Saturday. Instead when we got up we were out of sight of land—and we’ve stayed out of sight—reach, anyway—of land till now. All Maurice would say was that he had to revise all his plans. I think he may have been trying to soften us—show us how hurt he was, and remind us (me, sweet Nicholas) of what we were missing. But we stood firm.

What has been arranged is this: he has begged me to play my part for one more week. He says he wants to tell you the last chapter of his life and to play what he calls the “disintoxication” scene. He says you will now be expecting the last chapter (?). Whatever seems to be happening (he’s told us, so I tell you) on Saturday and Sunday, at the end no bell will ring. I shan’t have to go away… unless you want me to. Perhaps you do now.