The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  They could not deprive him of his right at this stage. He had earned it by those long solitary years which had so puzzled his fellow-citizens that they had hatched the most extravagant rumours about him, just to account for the fact that he lived alone and had no attachments; the life of a seminarist or monk. They said that he must be a secret homosexual, or impotent, or bewitched, or had taken a vow with a view to entering holy orders! And all to explain why in a city of debauch and casual venery he kept himself apart, though he lived a full enough social and business life. Now he went slowly round his possessions saying goodbye to them one by one, just as a rehearsal, to see how much he was attached to them and how much it would hurt to leave them. He still gloated over them – the obsidian head of a Roman cup-bearer, two cloud puffed putti, the skull of a woman covered in gold leaf from a desert tomb. No, but the cord was cut in the most profound sense of the word. He was no longer owned by them. His feelings were sharper when they consulted smaller, more trivial things. On his dressing-table the latch-key Lily had given him, his first toy soldier, a grenadier with no head. One drawer was full of a jumble of small items incomprehensible to any but himself; a dance-book from carnival with his own name filling up every space, written in the hand of Lily. (“I don’t want anyone to put their arms round you.”) Yes, at times his celibacy had become a fearful burden, specially in springtime when the first dry desert winds struck the capital; it was agony not to have a girl in one’s arms, in one’s bed. Sometimes in an agony of loneliness he walked down to the dark Corniche to watch the moon rising on the sea. In the darkness they called to one another, the lovers, with names like Gaby, Yvette, Yolande, Marie and Laure. How they ached, the names!

  One night he passed a girl alone, standing quite still, looking at the sea, and actually brought himself to speak to her. “Are you alone, Mademoiselle?” She gazed at him for a long moment, as if sizing him up, and then replied in soft, disenchanted tones, “Too much for my liking”. They walked quite unhurriedly the length of the Corniche, talking like old friends, and when they reached the outskirts of the town again he asked her to come back to his house with him, for he did not wish to spend another night alone. She hesitated for a moment and then quietly agreed. Together they walked back. When she saw the relative luxury of his home she said, “You must be very rich, then.” He replied, “Well, I am a banker by profession.” But her reaction was one of relative indifference. She was a gentle, rather passive girl, pleasant-looking rather than pretty, but not vulgar. They had at first spoken Greek, but now it was French. Her name was Melissa, she said, and by now she had warmed to his gentleness and lack of brashness.

  The rest seemed to follow naturally and he enjoyed the immense luxury not only of lovemaking but also of sleeping and drowsing beside this gentle and composed and somewhat melancholy woman, who was not a fille de joie in the professional sense but something more like a grisette. They warmed to each other though neither made any effort to arrange a further meeting. She did not, perhaps, think it was her place to do so. He wanted to write her a cheque, having no cash on him, but she would not take it. “I am with an old Jew who is jealous and goes through my bag. And I couldn’t cash it until Monday. Give me two or three of your cigars, the Juliets, he likes cigars. I could say I stole them or bought them.” But this did not seem to him adequate. “Melissa, give me your address and I will send you a money order by post.” But she did not want to do so. When first they reached the house they had talked and joked, and when he asked if she had never been married she had laughed and slipped the paper ring from his Juliet on to her ring finger and held it up, turning it this way and that as if it had been a real ring with a precious stone in it! “Alas, my family is penniless, I have no dowry.” But she did not sound preternaturally sad about it.

  In the morning, when she departed with the three cigars for her lover, he found that she had left beside the bathroom wash-basin where she had performed her toilette the paper ring, and beside it the world’s oldest contraceptive device, namely a pessary carved out of a small slip of fine sponge and impregnated with olive oil. It was washed now and dry, and as he thought of it, the history of it which stretched back into the remotest corners of Mediterranean mythic lore, he picked it up and together with the ring slipped them both into the drawer of his dressing-table among the other souvenirs of youth. This was now among the objects to which he was saying adieu, and for a brief second he wondered what had happened to the girl, for he had never seen her again after the night spent together. The objects themselves might have come from some Stone Age grave so remote did they seem: yet they had poignance.

  These reveries were interrupted by the chirping of the telephone. He awoke as if from a trance and made his way across the hall to hear the voice of the Prince at the other end of the wire – full of relief and suppressed sadness. He said, “They have just rung me up with the result of the whole enquiry. Your retraction has been accepted and your rights have been restored to you.…” He paused for a long moment, awaiting who knows what reaction from his friend. But Affad stayed stock-still with the receiver to his ear, drinking in the news and still saying not a word. He was like someone who learns that he has won a great lottery, speechless and uncomprehending. For the first time he realised the enormous attraction of death, and the secret lust for it which animates human beings. Fear and lust. In the distant recesses of memory he heard the voice of Constance saying (as she did one day when they were discussing the matter), “But it may be that you are deeply schizoid without knowing it or feeling it!” It had made him laugh at the time, for what could such formulations possibly mean in the context of a reality such as the one he was embracing?

  “How marvellous,” he said in a low voice, cherishing this sense of voluptuous completeness. The Prince went on, “The letter had already been sent to you when they received your abdication, hence the confusion. Now it is in order again.”

  “But I received no letter,” said Affad.

  “It must be in Geneva waiting for you. I think they sent it to the Red Cross pouch – you know all the problems we face today. First the British, that meddlesome fool Brigadier Maskelyne is always prying for British Intelligence, and then the Egyptian police are convinced that we are a subversive political movement … So care must be taken. But the letter has been written and the details worked out.”

  “They did not tell you any details? How long have I got, for example, and where must I expect the last scene to take place?”

  “No, they told me nothing. I suppose in Geneva itself, though I don’t know when. I have sent an urgent signal to try and trace the letter. It must be in your tray in Geneva but we might as well make sure.”

  “Who wrote it? Who would know? I would like to know whether I must say goodbye here and return there or whether I have some months ahead of me.”

  “Only the letter can tell you that.”

  “Can’t you ask the committee?”

  “My dear, I don’t know who they are. I was told the little I know by a voice, an anonymous voice. It was someone I did not know, so how could I ask someone? Who?”

  “I see.” It was very vexatious not to be in full possession of the details; it was like planning a long voyage and not being in possession of the tickets.

  “I foresaw your puzzlement,” said the Prince, “and I tried to find out myself by telephoning to Samsoun. He was not sure but thought that you would be expected to be present in Geneva for the next few months. And things are more conveniently arranged abroad, as you know. I should act on that assumption until we find the blasted letter and can be sure. Say goodbye to Alexandria leaving you!” It was grim to quote the famous poem at this moment, but the Prince was overwhelmed with sadness at the prospect of losing an irreplaceable friend, and nervous excitement makes one do tactless things. “Yes,” said Affad slowly, “I think you are right. I shall do just that, and in my own time. How strange it will feel! See you later in the day.” He rang off and went to dress. Then he walked down into the t
own at his usual leisurely pace, first to drop into the Bourse and renew old acquaintances in their offices, then to study the fluctuations of the market. Everyone was so glad to see him back that for a while he almost forgot the valedictory nature of these visits. People thought that he had come back after a long stay abroad to resume the old life of the banking community of the city. He went to the club to read the newspapers, or such of them as were still alive after the war. There was a Rotary meeting going on upstairs and he made a surprise visit to it, to join in its deliberations and greet other older associates.

  That evening he changed into a habitual dinner jacket and joined the Prince’s dinner party at the Auberge Bleu to keep up his reputation for pleasant affability: and as he was a good dancer, his reputation as a tolerable ladies’ man. Once or twice he caught the Prince staring at him with a sort of hungry, affectionate curiosity, as if he were trying to evaluate his friend’s feelings, but Affad had never been demonstrative, his expressions were not easy to decipher. But during a brief exchange he said, “Tomorrow night I am going out to Wady Natrun to see Lily for the last time; may I tell her that she can count on you in the future if she needs help?” The reproachful glance of the Prince told him that his question need not have been asked.

  “Will she see you?” he asked.

  “I do not know. I will try.”

  Lily was another preoccupation. Somebody had once asked him at a party, “Who is that girl you were talking to? The girl with the tears in her voice?” It expressed the sense of poignant rapture of her tone, a voice swerving like some brilliant bird from register to register. What had become of her soul, her mind, now that her body no longer counted for her – sleeping in some wattle hut in the middle of the desert with only the hideous summer sun for company? He sighed as he thought of the desert. It too was an abstraction like the idea of death – until the life of the oasis made it a brutal reality. Yet what terrible longings the desert bred in its addicts! “Yes, surely she will see me,” he told himself under his breath. He said goodnight to his hosts and walked down to the seafront for a breath of air before facing the night. The sea was rough, but playfully so, resounding to a rogue wind from the islands. It dashed itself on the rocks below the Corniche. Few people were about, but here and there was a group of friends returning on foot from some party or other. Once he heard the soft strains of a guitar vibrating in the distance. The museum slumbered in darkness with all its trophies – did the statues manage to doze for a moment during the Alexandrian night? The light in the hall had been left on by the thoughtful Said; he found his way to the kitchen for a late cup of tea which he took up to bed with him; he would have liked to read, but his eyelids felt heavy and as he did not want to lose this valuable predisposition he did nothing but just lay there drinking his tea and watching the shadows on the ceiling and thinking of Constance. What would she be doing at this hour? he wondered.

  Soon they would come to the end of the road and she would have to find a new path through the future. It weighed in him, the sadness, but there was also mixed with the emotion a sense of relief and fulfilment. He slid softly, as if down a sand dune, into a harmless, dreamless sleep.

  The next evening he took the desert road and drove in the cool of the day along the narrow tarmac road which united the two capitals, Cairo and Alexandria. The heat haze had subsided, the sky was clear with the promise of a ghostly moon to light his return. His anxiety as to whether Lily would see him or not had sharpened today, for he had begun to have new doubts. Night was coming – he could feel the evening damps rising to his cheeks as the open car traversed the dunes towards the distant green splash which marked the site of the oasis. He would perhaps arrive before the great portals were closed upon the darkness, perhaps not. It did not matter, he could always knock, he told himself.

  The monastery gradually rose up out of the sand with its curiously barbaric atmosphere – as if it stood somewhere much more remote, perhaps on the steppes of Middle Asia? The cluster of beehive buildings were glued together in a vast complex of brownish stone: pumice and plaster and whatnot, and the colour of wattle smeared with clay. This light, friable type of material offered excellent insulation against both desert heat and also the cold of the darkness during the winter.

  The palm groves stood there, silently welcoming, with their weird hieratic forms, benignly awkward. But the great doors had been shut and he was forced to lift the heavy knocker and dash it upon the booming wood once or twice and to swing upon the thick bellrope which set up a remote interior jangling in the distant recesses of the place. At last a monk opened and interrogated him, and having given the name of Yanna correctly he was allowed to send him a message and to take a chair in the waiting-room with its dense smell of candlewax and incense.

  The principal Coptic father of the monastery had been once a banker, but for many years now had retired to this life of silence and contemplation, though he ruled the place with an iron hand and vaunted the efficiency of its activities. He was completely bald and had a heavy, Chinese-looking countenance which contained, deeply embedded, two eyes of penetration and pertness, always twinkling on the edge of laughter. Affad greeted him with affectionate familiarity and explained that he had come on the offchance of an interview with Lily as he was planning to go on a long journey and wished to see her before he went away: also to give her up-to-date news of the child … Yanna debated and sighed as he did so, shaking his brown dome of a head doubtfully. He said, “Nobody has seen her for ages now; food is left and the dish is emptied and put back outside her hut, so we know she is alive, that is all. But she was in a bad way, a significant way. She once wrote me a message saying, ‘I have begun to see colours with my mouth and hear sounds with my eyes, everything is confused. If I take a pencil in hand I make letters a foot high. I must retire and cure myself again.’” They gazed at one another, reflecting. “The best would be just to go and try. She can only refuse, you can only go away after all.” He crossed the room to the wall upon which there was a large framed picture of the oasis with the grouping of the buildings clearly marked, thinning away into the desert where there were the cells, mere wattle shelters which housed those who had chosen to live as solitary anchorites. There were also a few lean-to shelters for sheep against the desert winds. He placed his finger on one of the star-shaped huts and said, “There! I will give you the monk Hamid who takes food, he will show you the way; but my friend, if she is unwilling don’t insist, I implore you!” Affad looked reproachfully at his friend and said, “Of course not – why do you say that?”

  “I’m sorry. It was out of place. I apologise.”

  The old monk who was the night-janitor of the monastery now appeared bearing in his hand a dark-lantern and a wattle basket with some fruit and a bowl of rice. He bowed and grunted his assent when he had received the orders and, turning, led the way across the complex of silent buildings and thence through a large lemon grove which, like an outpost, opened directly on to desert dunes with here and there a fringe of palms.

  It was quite a stumble across the sands and Affad could not help noticing with admiration the curious ease of movement of his companion: his walk was a sort of glide across the difficult terrain. The lantern with its single candle seemed on the point of going out all the time; but a frail horn of moon was rising through the dense fur of the night mists. So they came at last to one of the remotest cells beyond which lay nothing – just the uncompromising sea of sand curling and flowing away into the empty sky. In such a place the sight of a stone or of a distant bird of prey would stand out from the whole of nature like a sun-spot. He shivered with a pleasurable distaste as he thought of life here, how it must be; to be alone with one’s thoughts here, and nothing else to distract you away from thinking them. The old man grunted, put down the lantern some way from the wooden door and gave a strange hoarse cry, as if to some domestic animal: a sort of “Hah!” or “Hey!”

  For a while there was no response and then they heard a shuffling noise, as of a br
oom sweeping up dead leaves, or of someone rustling old parchment, old newspapers. But no voice. The janitor advanced to the door, and after placing his ear to it, drew back and said hoarsely, “Someone is here to see you.” At the same moment he beckoned Affad to come and stand beside him, and by the same token, to make himself known. Affad did not know what to say, everything had flown out of his mind. He said at last, “Lily! Listen! It is I.”

  There was a further rustling sort of commotion and then the door opened violently and a gaunt, ragged figure appeared, shielding its face from the dim light and chattering with excitement like a sort of huge monkey. He cried out her name again and the chattering subsided a little while her voice – such as it was, for the sound was as disembodied as if it came from some kind of instrument – called to the old janitor, “Go and leave me!” And the old man, taking up his lantern with a submissive reverence, glided away into the surrounding night. Now the light was indeed dim, yet he did not dare to reach for the little electric torch he always carried in his pocket. She was like some rare bird which might be disturbed by the light, might disappear in a panic. How did she look now, after all this time? He could not guess.