The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  So she had been there that evening, and had given them the slip as usual! Felix could not repress a slightly malicious side-glance at his fellow sufferer; but Blanford looked more angry than sad. He was telling himself that this would have to stop – this infatuation would have to be brought to an end. “It leads nowhere,” he said aloud, talking to himself. At last the real truth of the matter had dawned on him – but like every glimpse of truth it was only fleeting and provisional. With the other half of his mind, so to speak, he was still lamed by his inner vision of her, of her sullen magnetism, of those expiring kisses which had ignited their minds. He did not care for the sardonic remarks of the clerk nor the cynical looks of Felix – the matter was too important, went too far into the gulfs of hopeless sentiment, of bewitchment, for the others to appreciate it.

  He hugged his mood to himself, ignoring the rest of them, treasuring every little stab of pleasure or pain which it brought. What did it matter what Livia was or what she did? A strange metaphor came into his mind which expressed the exact nature of this attachment – a metaphor which centuries later Sutcliffe would use when he tried to define his gross attachment to the pale wraith Pia, who was a diluted version of the girl Constance, Livia’s sister. But in his present mind it was Livia who provoked this thought which one would have had to be an alchemist to understand. What he loved in her was her “water” – as of a precious stone. It is after all what is really loved in a woman – not the sheath of matter which covers her – but her “signature”. In the middle of all the chatter and movement of the brothel he found himself brooding upon this fact in all its singularity and wishing for a scrap of paper on which to jot it down. He would have liked to incorporate it into his diary but he knew that by the morrow he would have forgotten it.

  Suddenly an enormous lassitude had taken hold of him. “I want to go home,” he said yawning, and to his surprise Felix pronounced himself of the same disposition. Blanford felt so lonely he could have gone out into the dark street and waved vigorously to imaginary people. Quatrefages said he would come too – “J’ai tiré mon petit coup,” he said modestly. And the Prince? Why, he was to be left; the major-domo would see him safely home to the Imperial where he had taken up his headquarters. Already a substitute pumpkin-coach in the shape of a town fiacre had been summoned and stood at the door. But the night was no longer young, and the three young men felt sallow and spent. So they set off across the town on foot, finding some refreshment in the dark coolness which was full of the scent of lemons and mandarines and honeysuckle. Felix would be the first home, then the clerk; Blanford wanted to sit somewhere and watch the dawn come up, to let his thought of Livia ripen like some huge gourd. The pain was in the pleasure – a novelty for him, he realised.

  The night had waited for them – a great paunch of silence upon which the ordinary sounds of the city hardly impinged. Somewhere an ambulance raced with its tingling alarm; there was something vengeful in the peals of its bell, he thought, as it hurried back triumphantly to the hospital with its trophy of maimed flesh. They heard its signals diminishing as it dived through the outer ramparts towards the suburbs. Felix yawned. Blanford, sunk himself, felt the whole weight of his unexpressed narcissism heavy inside him, like dough or wax, waiting to be kneaded into some sort of significant shape – by what? – but he did not as yet dare to think of himself as an artist. It was like a blind boil which could not discharge itself except in insomnia or in those sudden dispositions towards tears when some great music stirred him, or the glance of light on some ripe landscape pierced him. For others these vague intimations of beatitude, these realisations of beauty were enough in themselves simply to enjoy. But he came of that obstinate and unbalanced tribe which longed to do something about them – to realise and recreate them in a form less poignantly transitory than that vouchsafed by reality. What was to be done? That was always his thought, and he fretted inside himself at the notion that there was nothing, that he could do nothing, there was nothing to be done.

  A brief wind ran the whole length of the street and turned a corner, disappearing in a gusty whirl of dead leaves, pouring itself into the throat of the invisible river whose slitherings and strivings they could hear as they approached it. When the sun came a thousand leafing planes would mirror themselves in its greenish waters. Here at last was the Consulate. The pavements were still warm and, because they had been washed with water and Javel, gave off the smell of incense. Felix too felt the gnawings of a nostalgic sadness. “I am sorry you will soon be gone,” he said, but comforted himself with the thought that after such a summer he had happy enough memories stored against the winter with the rains and snows it would bring to the city. “I must ask for some leave,” he went on, enlivening his thought with the prospect of meeting the others somewhere, perhaps in London. But Blanford’s thoughts were of a graver cast – for there was to be no more Oxford after this term. Life was spreading its wings. What was to become of him? He would have enough money to live on – but what would that serve if he had no passionate aptitudes which he might fulfil? Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor … what was he to do with his life? He had shown Livia the two little lyrics in the University magazine and he thought that she had looked at him with a new respect; but this was probably imagined. As for the poems they were quite nice pastiche, without an ounce of real feelings in them. Could she not see that? He sighed aloud as he walked. Quatrefages also seemed to be touched, through his fatigue, by the prevailing nostalgia. He gazed at the dark sky and shook himself like a wet mastiff. “Life is only once,” he said unexpectedly. Felix now turned yawning into the gateway of the Consulate. “Remember the car is mine tomorrow,” he told the clerk who shrugged his shoulders with indifference. Felix paused inside the front door for a moment to listen to their receding footfalls on the dark pavements. Soon the lamplighter would emerge to gather his blossoms of light, shy as a squirrel. Soon he would be alone again in this oppressive city which could only be enjoyed if seen through the eyes of Livia. In spite of his yawns he made the effort to clean his teeth before subsiding into his bed – for he was rather proud of their evenness. He told his sleepy reflection sternly: “I shall not cry myself to sleep because there are no golf courses on the moon.” It was a declaration of faith, in a manner of speaking.

  The two others walked silently side by side, each absorbed in his thoughts: but as they began to near the little square where Quatrefages’ garish window shone out of the dark mass of the darker hotel, their steps began to lag. Despite the fatigue the clerk was reluctant to part with his companion. Truth to tell he was of a timorous nature and was always afraid to return late and alone to his room for fear of finding someone or something waiting for him. He imagined perhaps a very old tramp, sitting in the armchair waiting patiently for his return; or a blind man with a white stick and a great white dog. They would have come to propose some sort of compact with the Devil. He frowned and shook his head at his own stupidity; yet he wondered at the same time what excuse he could give which might persuade Blanford to mount the stairs with him and enter his room – just to reassure him so that he could now turn off the light and get some sleep.

  It seemed absurd to propose yet another drink but that is what he heard himself doing, and to his great delight Blanford, who seemed in some obscure way to have divined his feelings, accepted the invitation. The clerk could not believe his luck. His dejected walk became all at once buoyant and nervous, his lassitude slipped from him. As a matter of fact Blanford was always intrigued by a glimpse of this extraordinary office whose walls were covered with death charts of the Templars, each with his date of execution. In the corner lay an unmade bed and a side-table covered with the impedimenta of the insomniac in the shape of bottles of pills and tinctures of opium, packs of cigarettes, and a cluster of books on alchemy and related topics, all bearing the marker of the Calvet Museum.

  A pile of children’s exercise books were propped up on the mantelshelf. A white chamberpot stood under the bed decorated by a clust
er of roses in bloom. The whole centre of the room was taken up with the sort of trestle tables with angle lamps such as an architect might set up to draw a project in detail – or else perhaps the kind of tables upon which a paperhanger might set out his wallpapers before brushing the glue on to them. There was a small alcove in which stood a crucifix together with a bottle of whisky and several small mineral water bottles. The room smelt damply musty. It was situated on the blind side of the street and never got any light. It was heavy with dust and the little lavatory-douche was in a dreadful mess – towels covered in hair cream and, strangely, lipstick. The drains stank. Everywhere cigarettes had burnt out and left a dark burn – even on the wash basin. One wondered how there had never been a fire there. Quatrefages poured out a warmish drink and dragged out an uncomfortable chair for his guest to sit upon.

  But Blanford preferred to stand and examine the charts on the wall with their suggestive datings, and the now lively Quatrefages followed his gaze with an air of pride. “We are down to the last of them,” he said, “and we know for certain that they had managed to hide the treasure where neither Philippe nor his Chancellor Nogaret, who conducted the persecution, could lay their hands on it. This is why things dragged on so. The Templars would confess to anything but they would not divulge the hiding place. From other documents, some pretty enigmatic, we know that five of the knights were in the secret. But we don’t as yet know which. But we have some clues to go on which seem pretty definite.” He paused to drain his glass and cough loudly. Blanford, whose curiosity had got the better of him, asked a few questions and then, suddenly and perhaps rather rudely said: “Livia told me that she thought you had discovered the place, the vault, the chapel or whatever, and that there was nothing in it. That the treasure had been pinched ages ago.…”

  The change in Quatrefages was as sudden as it was marked; his sallow complexion had become strained and laboured. He sat down on the bed and croaked out an oath: “Livia knows nothing,” he said, “nothing. The gipsies tell one all sorts of things, but it is false. I have not found the place as yet. But of course Provence is full of ruined chapels and empty vaults destroyed during the various religious upheavals. But nothing that so far corresponds with the evidence of an orchard – the ‘Verger de Saint Louis’ – where the plane trees were set in a quincunx like an ancient Greek temple grove. No, as yet we have not found the place.”

  Blanford felt all of a sudden apologetic for having made this intrusion – the more so because he suddenly felt that Quatrefages was probably lying to him. Or was it Livia? At any rate none of this was his business, and he had no intention of making the little clerk feel that he was not to be counted upon, or that his word was not believed. “I am sorry,” he said, “it was not my business and I should not have repeated gossip.”

  Nevertheless, whatever the truth of the matter was, the agitation of Quatrefages seemed somehow excessive, and Blanford could not help speculating upon this fragment of gossip which had slipped from Livia’s lips quite casually, seemingly without malice or premeditation. “When we do discover it,” said the clerk, his eyes glittering malevolently in his nervous paleness of feature, “that will be the day to rejoice.” Blanford turned away to the great wall charts of the dead Templars and as he did so the dawn broke softly in the open street below. Its faint tinges of yellow and rose coloured the walls of that sordid room, almost like some signal from a past full of mystery and significance.

  The dead names glowed like jewels, like embers still breathing in the pale ashes of the past. The names slowly recited themselves in his mind, each with its hush of death and silence cradling it. Dead cavaliers of the piebald standard! Raynier de Larchant, Reynaud de Tremblay, Pierre de Tortville, Jacques de Molay, Hugues de Pairaud, Jean du Tour, Geoffroy de Gonneville, Jean Taillefer, Jean L’Anglais, Baudoin de Saint-Just. Inhabitants now of history, destroyed by blind circumstance, by the zeal and cupidity of the lawless ages. “One wonders what they were guilty of,” he said aloud, more to himself than to anyone. His eyes traversed the great names again, lingering over them, savouring the mystery and sadness of their premature deaths by starvation, torture, or the burning pyres of the Inquisition. It was a riddle which would never be read, an enigma which still intrigued and baffled new generations of historians.

  Quatrefages sat on the edge of the bed leaning forward and concentrating – as if he were trying to follow Blanford’s train of thought, to read his mind. His face was flushed now, the fever had come back; and he was full of drink and beginning to feel it. “What were they guilty of?” he repeated aloud in a sharp cracked voice, so curiously at variance with his natural tone that Blanford turned curiously upon him and said: “Well, what?” But it was now clear that Quatrefages was very drunk indeed; he stood up and swayed and began to snivel. “The greatest heresy the world has ever known,” he said in an exalted way; he clenched his fists and raised them on high, for all the world as if he himself were standing on a high pyre, feeling the flames rising around his feet, and testifying to the truth of a belief which ran counter to the whole structure of an age’s thoughts.

  Blanford watched him burning and crying there for a moment, and then reached out a tentative hand, as if to soothe or console him against so much excessive feeling. He felt also a little guilty – as if his idle remark had somehow provoked this orgiastic recital. Quatrefages was now a-tremble with emotion. He was like a wire through which passed a current of a voltage almost too powerful to bear. “You don’t know the truth,” he said incoherently and his lips began to wobble as he spoke, his tears to choke him.

  Blanford was able to glimpse now the zealot who lived underneath the external guise of the young man – the carapace of industry and probity and politeness which made up the outer man. But now it was as if a switch had been thrown, first by the drink and then by Livia’s remark – the image of a dam came into his mind, or one of those écluses on the Rhône through which their barge had slid. The current had pushed down all the debris of Quatrefages’ solitary and secret life – sitting there agonising over long-dead knights, and trying by guile and science to pick their pockets. “We are like grave-robbers in the pay of Galen,” he cried with a bitter vehemence, still standing in his theatrical attitude of human sacrifice. “They have reduced the whole thing to a vulgar matter of fric, of booty. They have missed the whole point of this tremendous apostasy. Blanford, écoutez!” He took his companion by the shoulders and shook him so violently that his drink was nearly upset and he was just able to set it down and free his elbow in time.

  Quatrefages sank back on to his bed and plunged his chin moodily into his fists. “That is what is killing me,” he said in a lower key, suppressing the drama in his voice a little; “the ignominiousness of what we are doing, and my own part in it.” Blanford’s reactions to this sort of outburst were typically Christian public-schoolboy; he felt shy, alarmed and overwhelmed. He cursed himself for having unwittingly provoked this storm. He did not want to witness Quatrefages’ self-recriminations and breast-beatings. If he so much disapproved of what he was doing why did he not resign? It was easy to simplify matters thus – he knew that. But he suppressed a sigh as he sat down, prepared to let the clerk talk himself out. “I began in good economic faith, and then I began to get more and more curious about the Templars – not about their fortune but about the nature of their heresy. To defy the reign of matter as they did, to outface the ruling devil – that was what intrigued me. Yes, they quietly built up an almost unassailable temporal power – they were the bankers of the age. And these great constructions were their banks, their prisons.”

  He waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the Papal Palaces on their elevation above the river, now doubtless turning rose also, petal by petal, spire by spire. “The knights were systematically destroyed by the hooded anonymous butchers of the Inquisition in order to secure the succession of what they now knew was evil – the pre-eminence of matter and will in the world. They were the instruments of Old Nick himself who
was not going to have his throne shaken by this superb refusal of the knights; he was not going to submit without a struggle. The death wish against the life wish – God, you know, is only an alibi in all this, only a cover-story. The real battle between the negative and positive forces was joined here – and all Europe in the coming ages was at stake.” He paused and licked his dry lips. Then, draining his glass in a wobbly way, he said, almost in a whisper, “They lost, and we lost with them.”

  The two of them stared at one another for a moment and then Quatrefages gave a hopeless little chuckle and put his head on one side and, half closing his eyes – like a bird putting its head under its wing – said: “I know why you look at me like that. You are saying to yourself that it is preposterous to feel so strongly about a mere historical event. You are right. But we are living out the fateful destiny of European man which was decided then – right here in Avignon. We are taking part in this materialist funeral of living man. Yes, they were suppressed and deafening clouds of propaganda were pumped out over them to obscure the real issues and blacken their names. They were accused of every kind of sorcery, whereas the only conjuring they indulged in was the flat refusal to continue living the great lie of civilisation as it was then ordered. Of course it had to be kept secret, for it was heresy, in the strict terms of the epoch.”

  He fell silent at last. Blanford stared at the great wall maps: among them was a series of architectural studies of the various Temples and their disposition. He was, he concluded, in the presence of a harmless young maniac who had allowed his head to be turned by the bogus speculations of the popular mysticism which was at the moment all too fashionable. The Rosy Cross, the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, Madame Bavatsky.… He knew the line of country fairly well and indeed had read quite a few books about these matters – but without being swept off his feet by what he regarded as enjoyable fantasies. “What does it matter if there is a treasure or not?” cried Quatrefages passionately, waking up temporarily to resume his theme. Bang! “To add a little more fric to Galen’s fortune? But I think there is no treasure; I think Philippe Le Bel got it all. I have not mentioned this to anyone because I am not absolutely sure – but our search for the quincunx of trees concerns another sort of treasure. That is what I really believe. But who can I talk to about it? Nobody! Nobody!”