The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  As always in such instances there are people who say they did not mean it, that it was all a mistake, that they were misinformed; and it is true that a moan of surprise and shock was heard from the crowd but it was rapidly drowned in the roars of approval and the music of the kettle-drum. Nevertheless a silence fell, or a lessening of noise, and the crowd wept, for people felt that they had gone too far. And then pushing into the crowd came a small group of nuns who quietly but firmly forced their way up on to the stage to take possession of the mortal remains of Nancy Quiminal.

  Then as if to finally wash away and quite expunge every trace of these ignoble proceedings a thunder broke loose and it began to rain as it can only rain in the City of the Popes. Gutters brimmed and overflowed, leaves were broomed from the trees, the fires hissed and spat but went out. And the crowd began to slink away, at first hiding under eaves and in doorways, and then disappearing for good. The curfew habit was still deeply engrained. By midnight the rain had veered off and a candid moon shone in the sky. There was no sign of either enemy or friend. Even the lunatics had disbanded. Each had gone about his former task as if he had returned from a holiday. De Larchant had found his way to the cathedral where a terrified sacristan who recognised him surrendered the key of the organ loft. The grave strains of Bach suddenly swelled like a dark sail in that lightless cavern. Taillefer had gone back to the railway station to resume his job. Baudoin de St.-Just sat at a table in the rain outside the café playing a hand of solitaire with a pack of cards he had appropriated.

  It was towards morning when the night watchman of the morgue heard horses’ hooves followed by the sour buzz of the night bell. He had only just turned in after a full evening of work without light and his temper was ruffled. “What now?” he growled aloud as he opened, expecting some emergency delivery from the town. But it was only a pale tall man with two girls, his daughters. He had a letter from the mayor authorising him to see his wife’s mortal remains. It was the husband of Nancy Quiminal, a man never as yet seen for he was bed-bound by illness. Once he had been a musician and had played in the town orchestra. He was pale and thin and ravaged by illness, and so weak that his two daughters held him by the elbows. The night watchman touched his forelock to him awkwardly in a gesture of sympathy. The nuns had dressed and composed the body and tucked it into its white winding cloth. They awaited only a pasteur now to arrange for the funeral. And then the medical certificate, what of that? Was it murder or judicial murder or what? Finally it would prove to figure as an unlucky accident. The family was in no position to contest the official view.

  He hoisted a white blind and wound up a long handle so that the long chest-of-drawers swung towards them. Then he drew out a drawer to reveal the quiet form of the murdered woman. She looked like a little wakeful gnome in her snood, she was bald as a baby but with alert little ears like crocuses. Yet what affected them most was the sweet panoramic regard of the wide open eyes, the blue French eyes which held just a gleam of satirical humour in them. There were no powder-markings, just the blue hole neatly drilled between the eyes. The children were on the verge of tears and it was time to go. Her husband put out his hand to touch her pale cheek, left it for a moment and then withdrew it. He said he would come back in the morning and attend to the details with the authorities. But he never did. It remained for her two daughters to accompany their mother to a pauper’s grave – the fosse communale.

  A day or so later French troops relieved the town and at long last the bells of Avignon recovered their fearful tintinabulation which once, long ago, had driven Rabelais wild with annoyance. For the city the war had ended.

  Appendix

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF

  PETER THE GREAT

  IN THE NAME OF THE MOST HOLY AND INDIVISIBLE TRINITY, We, Peter the First, address all our successors to the throne and to the governors of the Russian Nation!

  Almighty God, to whom we owe our life and our crown, has endowed us with his light and supported us with his might, and He has made us come to see the Russians as a people called to dominate all Europe in the future.

  I base my thoughts upon the observation that most of the European nations are in a state of old age bordering on decrepitude towards which they are hastening with big strides. In consequence it is easy and certain that they will be conquered by a new and young people when it has reached the apogee of its growth, its maximum expansion. I consider therefore that the invasion of the Occident and the Orient by the northern peoples is a periodic mission decreed by providence – which by analogy in the past regenerated the Romans by barbarian invasions.

  The emigration of the peoples of the Polar regions are like the overflowings of the Nile which, at certain fixed times, enrich with their rich silt the impoverished lands of southern Egypt. I found Russia like a small rivulet and I leave to my successors a great river; they in turn will make it into a vast sea destined to fertilise an impoverished Europe; its waves will overflow everything in spite of the dykes which faltering hands may dig to restrain them; waves which my successors will know how to direct. With this objective in view I leave them the following instruction which I commend to their unwavering attention and constant observation.

  (1) To keep the Russian nation in a constant state of warlike readiness, keeping the Russian soldier forever at war, and only letting him have a respite if there be need to ameliorate the State’s finances; reform the army and choose the most opportune moments for launching it into the attack. Turn things in such a way that peace can serve the needs of war, and war those of peace, all in the interests of the greatness and growing prosperity of Russia.

  (2) Address ourselves to the people of cultivation in Europe, reaching them by any possible means – the officers in wartime and the scholars in peace, in order to let the Russian nation profit from the advantages of other nations without losing her own.

  (3) Take part whenever we have the chance in popular affairs and legal disputes in Europe – above all in those which touch Germany, which interest us more deeply as being nearer to us than the rest.

  (4) Divide Poland by fomenting internal dissensions and jealousies on a permanent basis; seduce the powers that be with gold, influence the Diets and corrupt them so that they favour the election of a king; seek out dissenters and protect them; send in Russian troops to foreign nations and keep them there until there is a suitable occasion to leave them there for good. If neighbouring states make difficulties, appease them temporarily by splitting up the place until such time as one can secure what one needs to hold permanently.

  (5) Provoke Sweden as much as possible until she is forced to attack us, giving us a pretext for conquering her. With this objective in view it is essential that Sweden be separated from Denmark and Denmark from Sweden – by carefully encouraging their rivalries.

  (6) Always to give German princesses in marriage to Russian princes in order to increase the number of family alliances; thus to bring the interests of both countries closer together and win Germany to our cause, asserting thus our influence.

  (7) For our trade orient ourselves in preference towards England, a power which has great need of us for its fleet and could be useful to the development of our own naval power; offering in exchange for gold our wood and other products, establishing firm links between their sailors and traders and our own, so that we can increase the scope of our own trade and a naval power.

  (8) Advance our power without a halt northwards along the Baltic coast and southward around the Black Sea.

  (9) To get as close as possible to Constantinople and India, for whoever rules over these regions will be the real ruler of the world. In consequence we must provoke unceasingly troubles between Turks and Persians. We must establish shipyards along the Black Sea, gradually extending our domination over it and over the Baltic – two land masses necessary to us if we envisage the success of the plan. Accelerate the decadence of Persia; penetrate as far as the Persian Gulf; re-establish if possible through Syria the ancient trade routes
to advance to India, the entrepôts of the whole world. Once arrived there we will no longer need the gold of England.

  (10) Seek out and maintain with care the Austrian alliance; appear to support its growing ideas of domination over Germany, but at the same time secretly fomenting the jealousy of princes against Austria. Operate so that both states ask for Russian aid and allow us to exercise over them a protective role which will prepare our future domination.

  (11) Interest the Royal House of Austria in the plan for clearing the Turks out of Europe and neutralise its jealousies over the conquest of Constantinople either by provoking a war with the older European states, or by sharing a part of the conquered territory with her; this we could take back later.

  (12) Unite all the Orthodox Greeks who are divided or who support schisms throughout Hungary and Poland; gather them together and support them so that they constitute in a group a sort of predominant and sacerdotally important body; thus we will have many friends amongst many of our enemies.

  (13) Sweden partitioned. Persia conquered. Poland subjugated. Turkey defeated. Our armies reunited. The Black Sea and the Baltic guarded by our sailing ships. For the moment we should propose, separately and in absolute secrecy, first to the Court of Versailles, then to that of Vienna, to share with them our world empire. Should one of them accept – inevitable if we know how to flatter their self esteem – we must turn one against the other and wage against them a battle whose issue is in no doubt, seeing that Russia will already hold all the Orient and a great part of Europe.

  (14) If by chance both refuse the Russian offer – a highly improbable issue – we must set alight conflicts which will ruin them both; then can Russia at a decisive moment launch an attack on Germany with her forces concentrated.

  (15) At the same time two vast fleets will set sail, one from the sea of Azov and the other from Archangel, full of Asiatic troops to join forces with the Black Sea and the Baltic fleets. Our army and navy will advance and cross the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, on the one hand invading France, on the other Germany. Once these two regions are conquered the rest of Europe will pass easily and without much effort under our control.

  That is how Europe could and must be subdued.

  SEBASTIAN

  or

  Ruling Passions

  to Simone Périer

  of Montaury by Nîmes

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks are hereby extended to Dr Torhild Leira who gave permission for the author to use hints from her beautiful article in the International Review of Psychoanalysis, vol. 7, pt 3,1980, entitled ‘The Release of Tears’.

  Contents

  ONE The Recall

  TWO The Inquisition

  THREE Inner Worlds

  FOUR The Escape Clause

  FIVE The Return Journey

  SIX The Dying Fall

  SEVEN Other Dimensions Surprised

  EIGHT After the Fireworks

  NINE End of the Road

  TEN The End of an Epoch

  ONE

  The Recall

  THE PRINCE WAS IN A VEXATION. HE HAD DECIDED ON the spur of the moment to return to Egypt with Affad whom he took to task very severely for having succumbed, as he put it, to the “whim” of falling in love with Constance. He pursued the theme doggedly as they rode in the official limousine towards the airport of Geneva. “It was completely uncalled for,” he said, “in view of your superior experience and the engagements you had entered into with the seekers.” He was referring to the small brotherhood of gnostics in Alexandria to which they both belonged and in the tenets of whose creed they both deeply believed. Yes, on this score Affad felt deeply guilty, deeply betrayed by his own desire. The face of Constance rose up in his memory as if to reproach him for what he could not help. “You had no right to fall in love,” the Prince went on testily. “I will not have her hurt.” Affad made an impatient noise in his throat. “There is no such thing, as you have said. We must find another word. I will not have engouement. It is something of another order. Not infatuation at all.” (They were speaking French, their tone was high.) Then after a long silence Affad said, “The experience was new to me; I ran aground – j’ai calé. Prince, it was not myself acting. Besides, you talk as if you were in love with her yourself.” This put the Prince into a fearful rage because it was true. He made a cryptic gobbling noise like an offended turkey and blew his nose in a cambric handkerchief.

  The problem was insoluble. Surely the insidious goblins of love had ceased to exist on the thin moral fare offered by the modern world? Affad was thinking with deep desire mingled with remorse of that secret field or realm which constitutes the moral geography of the mystic. His friend Balthazar had once said ruefully, “I thought I was living my own life but all the time it was really living me without any extraneous aid. It had taken half a century for me to realise this! What a blow to my self-esteem!”

  “Your behaviour is out of date,” said the Prince again. “Since contraception things have changed. Women were once unique events in the life of a man; now woman is a mere commodity like hay. Availability has bred contempt.”

  “Not Constance!” he said.

  “Of course Constance!” said the old man.

  Affad thought back in silence. When he had first seen her he had been unable to believe his eyes, so original had her style of beauty seemed. (“I hate people acting out of epoch,” said the Prince vehemently, and he intended the remark to wound.) “In fact so do I. But in any given moment of time some part of us is out of date, stays chronologically prehistoric in the most obstinate way. The kisses of ancestors take firm possession of our senses; we are mere distributors of love, not inventors. Even less investors.”

  “Fiddlesticks!” said the Prince.

  “I was alarmed to find that for once this demonic sentiment was not moribund. I tried to escape it in vain, I really tried!”

  “Fiddlesticks!” cried the Prince and gave a tiny stamp on the floor of the limousine. He was beside himself with … not only moral vexation but also jealousy. Affad said, “You are behaving as if I were a curate who had been untrue to his vows of chastity. I won’t have it.” But this was unfair, the business was much graver. It was in the most literal sense a matter of life and death and sacrifice. He had fallen short of his own intentions. In ancient times human sacrifice was invented to placate this particular demon. Think of the hundreds of imberb boys and impubert girls it had needed to placate the Cretan minotaur! “On my last birthday my old aunt Fatima sent me a telegram saying, ‘Death is of no importance to It: why then to you?’ Was she wrong?”

  “Yes, she was wrong,” said Affad, out of sheer contrariness, for the Prince was very annoying and there was no point in continuing to give in to him. On theological matters it was another affair – he would have to face the Star Chamber, so to speak, and answer for his fidelity; but this was an inner committee which had every right to probe his sincerity. They had never heard of Constance, like the Prince. “As a matter of fact Constance herself took a rather robust medical attitude to the sentiment you so much disapprove of,” he said, and he felt the Prince’s mind pucker up around his affection for the girl. She had once referred scornfully to love’s angoisse vésperale, evening distress, but then had softened of a sudden, tears had come into her eyes, she had put her hand over her mouth as if to discourage a disposition to cry. Under her breath she had added. “Mon Dieu! Quel sentiment de déréliction!”

  “Well, I suppose it is all fiddlesticks, as you say, but it is an expensive form of folly. She will take to her bed with a high fever and transfer her angustia to her medical duties. How to face those huge heaps of dead leaves, the neurotic patients who besiege her?”

  They rode on for a while in silence, the Prince cracking his finger joints with an ill-tempered scowl. That brave girl, he was thinking, having to defend herself from the charm and folly of this suave python of a man. It was quite maddening for he loved Affad also as he would have loved his closest friend.
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  “I hardly dare to confide my distress in you because you react so violently. What would you say, I wonder, if you knew that I had been trying to make her pregnant – to face total and irrevocable disaster, so to speak, which would have united us definitively. Eh?” The elder man jumped at the confidence but did not comment upon it; he just sat looking straight ahead for a long moment before asking, “Does she know yet? For certain?” and Affad took his arm affectionately as he replied, “Unfortunately yes!” Rather surprisingly the Prince turned his birdbright glance upon him and said with unexpected sympathy, “Bad luck! Poor girl! But it would have rendered your decision to leave her even harder, even more cruel. You have behaved like a great coward in all this business, I feel; you have failed on both sides, Eros and Thanatos. Yes, you may well hang your head, my boy. And I suppose you blame love for all this lack of moral fibre?”

  “Fiddlesticks!” said Affad in his turn with a blush which showed that he had felt the force of the reproof. His thoughts had come full circle and settled into the deep gloom engendered by his self-reproach and by the knowledge that in the last analysis it was the secret brotherhood which had the ultimate claims upon his life, and that at any moment they could foreclose upon his future. What a curse it was, after all, this love which set friend against friend, lover against loved. The whole circle of his friendships had shifted, been displaced by Constance’s choice of him.