The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  The dossier was marked in her name and with the classification numeral of her post-office box. What should be done, she wondered, that had not already been done by her more experienced colleague?

  Wind rose off the lake and whirled the shutters closed; she set them to rights and after checking the moorings of the skiff set about cooking her frugal dinner in the cosy kitchen with its wooden walls and waterscape. The moralist in her frowned a little at herself, at her eagerness to come to the rescue of the child, for she felt her intention to be not quite pure, not quite disinterested. After all, had it not been the child of Affad … what would she have done? Most likely deserted it in favour of more interesting cases? Perhaps. “You are still showing your vulnerability,” she told herself, and with the thought a wave of hatred swept over her – hatred for Affad and the appalling game of cat’s cradle he was playing with her attachment. Damn him! And damn that collection of dismal death-worshippers projecting their infantile death-wish out of a ruined Egypt! “I thought the Germans were infantile enough,” she said to herself, “and that the Mediterranean races were older and wiser … what a fool! How naive can you be?”

  All this self-recrimination did not however help her to come to a decision about her clinical role in the affair of the child. She would sleep on it and decide in the morning whether to go through with it or simply to pass it to some other therapist. There were several skilful and devoted people she could think of who were quite as capable as she was, and would be glad to round off the portrait of the robot-child. It cost her a pang to think this, however, and she slept badly, dreaming of him with a fervent sadness.

  In the morning she woke and at once recalled the description of Affad as a “somewhat effete and withdrawn figure”. This annoyed her, though the feeling was, she knew, utterly irrational. But her own new appearance was pleasing, it was part of the attempt to rehabilitate herself in her own eyes, to rise phoenix-wise from the ashes of this destructive and barren attachment. She had bought the fur coat and some handsome winter gear, she had changed her perfume and she had allowed her hairdresser to alter the style of her hair and wave it differently. It really became her very well – and here there was nobody to see it, to admire it! “Serve you right,” she said vindictively to the shade of the departed “effete and withdrawn” one. But she had not been able to resist dropping into the office to seek the approval of her colleague. His reaction was most stimulating. “God! Constance, you look ten years younger and just fallen in love again – how I wish that were true!”

  In a way, so did she. But the business of sick-leave had been settled and underneath her war-paint lurked the old nightmare of fatigue. He saw the dossier under her arm and nodded his approval of her intentions. In the meantime they were proposing to place Mnemidis under prolonged sedation to see whether a simple rest might not alter his disposition. She felt less badly about leaving the case to Schwarz, who was quite obviously not the therapist to handle it; yet she also regretted her own absence because of the intrinsic fascination of the case itself. Schwarz sensed this and said, “Don’t worry about Mnemidis. He is in a pious stage at the moment and has borrowed all the books he can lay hands on. When he next appears on vaudeville it will be in scenes from the Bible I should suppose. Aber, what a freak!”

  The silence of the little house was broken only by the lapping of the lake water at the wooden jetty. The sun came out and enabled her to move her books and papers on to the lawn which was kept neatly trimmed by a visiting gardener who was invisible except on Mondays. She slept, woke, and slept again. Ate a dazed meal, and was overtaken by a real fatigue now which could only be purged by a siesta which prolonged itself until the night was falling. It seemed that the accumulated weariness of centuries was expressing itself through this long slumber and that she would never be free of it. But on the second day the weight was sloughed, and on the succeeding morning she woke early and on an impulse plunged into the lake – a shock like diving through an icy mirror. She groaned with anguished joy as she towelled herself back into rosy warmth and padded to the cosy kitchen for her breakfast. The rest had done the trick; she had more or less shaped out her line of action over the child. Still in her dressing-gown she drank coffee and ran swiftly through his very unsatisfactory dossier. Then she took her car and motored to the nearest hamlet which boasted a post office and telephoned to the mansion on the lake. A servant answered her and in a short time she heard the deep but uncertain tones of the old lady asking her what she wanted. When Constance gave her name, however, the old lady gave an “Ouf!” of relief and said, “We have been waiting for you for days. I thought perhaps that you had forgotten …” Constance sounded suitably shocked as she repeated the word: “Forgotten? How could I?”

  They elected to meet at teatime on the same afternoon and by the time Constance had parked her car at the gate-house over the water she had no need to ring the bell for the old lady was already in the garden waiting for her behind the grille. She fluttered a white handkerchief in a sort of furtive signal, as if to an accomplice, and came towards the gate almost on tiptoe. “I am so glad you have come!” she said in her histrionic gasping way; she had a trick of rolling her eyes as she spoke which invested her speech with a sort of subdued frenzy. It conveyed urgency, and also confusion. It was very Latin.

  But when they had shaken hands and looked each other up and down there came a moment of relief, of relaxation, almost as if on both sides the encounter had been somewhat dreaded. The old woman now became serious and stepping back drew herself up and settled her features anew into a severely unforgiving expression, as if calling herself to order after having shown an excess of feeling.

  “What will you do?” she said hoarsely, and Constance shaking her head, replied: “For the moment gain your confidence and begin to watch him quietly.”

  “We are just going out for a drive – the drive: perhaps you would care to come with us?” It was a good chance to infiltrate herself into the pattern and she at once accepted, at once followed the old lady through the herb garden with its miniature maze to the garage where already the black limousine waited with a gaitered and helmeted chauffeur at the wheel. He had already thrown the switch which rolled back the garage doors. “His nanny will bring Affad down,” explained the old lady, as she allowed the old chauffeur to help her into a warm dark overcoat. “She won’t be long.”

  Nor was she. She appeared quite soon and tried in passing to let the child attempt the marble staircase, but he was so slow that she finally swept him up into her arms and moved towards them, smiling a welcome. She was a fresh-complexioned and rather pretty Swiss girl and Constance already knew that she had her nursing degree and was fully in the counsels of the doctors; moreover she was most eager and willing to help. They exchanged smiles full of conspiratorial warmth and Constance bent briefly to kiss the impassive small face of the boy, who took no atom of interest in their movements or intentions, so familiar to him was the routine drive round the lake edge. He sat beside the old lady, stiffly upright, and with one hand upon her forearm; the two girls sat immediately in front on the fold-out seats. The chauffeur, who was separated from them by glass, checked the speaking tube to make sure that messages would reach him correctly, and switched on the radio in a very subdued manner. They moved off to the faint strains of a Strauss waltz, a strange, disembodied sound which did not disturb the nescience of the child who sat looking out upon the world without curiosity or elation. His little dark face was like that of some great bored plenipotentiary making a familiar state progress through a familiar country, a familiar ritual. Withdrawn as a Buddha he sat, watching the alien world from his perch in the absolute. There was no conversation of a general sort. Constance watched the little boy discreetly in the mirror but the observation revealed nothing, suggested nothing. She must talk to the nanny; and this she arranged sotto voce, suggesting a rendezvous in town where they might exchange views. She already felt that the old lady could contribute little to their debate except expressions of
her own intense anxiety, and there was no point in this. On the other hand Constance did not wish to seem to operate behind her back, so to speak. So she broached the subject, pleading a discussion of technical matters, and to her surprise the point was taken without demur; so that the following day the nurse met her at the “Renon” for a coffee and a discussion.

  She had read the dossier and indeed knew Schwarz already in another context. “Can I tell you what I think of it?” asked Constance, seeing that the girl looked rather doubtful about it when it was mentioned, though she seemed not to want to pronounce upon it in any definite way. “Yes, please!” she replied, and Constance said, “I am not very keen on kittens and toys which make noises; it is not just a question of motor response one is looking for, but a reaction at a deeper level, which can only come from inside himself. How can we help that?” The look of relieved delight on the girl’s face changed it utterly; she clapped her hands with delight. “Exactly what I thought! No clever tricks for us. I am glad you think so too. There must be subtler ways of waking him. But I am delighted. I know we can work together now.”

  It was a great relief to Constance to find a willing and enthusiastic helper in a common cause; she had feared both jealousy and incompetence in the nursemaid, and neither fear was justified. She was able straight away to arrange her own times of duty and also to launch into a long and detailed list of questions as to the child’s reactions to sleep, to food, to hot baths, to massage, and so on. There was little enough to be gleaned, for the subject showed neither special preference nor any really significant aversions. He was simply absent from his shell, his body was simply a package, an appendage. Yet he was painfully like his father in physical structure, with the long head and the same shape of eyes: only his were stone-dead whereas those of Affad senior were both hurt and also wily and amused. She could not help making the comparison when she helped the nurse undress the little one and then lower him into the warm bath in which he lay quite still like a small absorbed frog, listening – for one could not say thinking or feeling. At times waves of despair overcame her. Yet this change of patient, change of objective, brought her fresh energy and enthusiasm, and it was with pleasure that she motored the forty or so kilometres thrice a week now to assume her new role as assistant nanny.

  For the first two weeks she did nothing beyond her routine duties of caring and surveying her charge. He looked up when she came into the room sometimes but there was no curiosity, no tone in his look, and for a long while she sat, copying his breathing and attempting to influence him mentally. Sometimes, for a brief moment, he would allow an idea to infiltrate the obscurity of his condition and might perform a parody of rising to walk a few steps with an involuntary clumsiness which might end in a fall. Or else he might pick up a toy and gaze at it in an unseeing way before raising it to his mouth to bite before he dropped it on the floor and resumed his wall-gazing. But very gradually, and with professional stealth, Constance advanced towards a body-contact such as an occasional accidental embrace, or simply a pat on the shoulder; she also developed a small array of daily habits herself which she put on exhibition, so to speak, for his sake: such as drinking a little milk from a plastic mug, combing out her hair, and so on. With these she hoped gradually to draw him towards a familiarity with the circumstantial, and to break his psychic reverie – for after all he was not asleep, he was breathing. He was just not fully alive, that was all. Somewhere there might be a switch. But all this with the greatest precaution and sans haste or impetuousness. It was important to give him the notion that nobody cared because they liked him as he was – they would not wish to influence him! All this slow acting-out seemed interminable and it was almost two months before there were the first signs of contact, but by then Constance had enlarged her own sphere of expression – she was now free to hum, to whistle, to stroke him, to move him about by hand, pick him up, even at long last to sit for long silences with her arm round him, crooning and sometimes breathing on his cheek. Her existence had dawned on him, he was aware of her for sometimes now he smiled and lifted his cheek to feel her blowing softly upon it. At times, too, he lay in her arms with a cryptic expression of enjoyment, closing his eyes, specially if there was music.

  Then one day the magical weeping started, the fruitful tears began to flow; yet she was not sure of the mechanism which operated this notable and triumphant departure from the habitual nescience and withdrawal. But happen it did, and at a most awkward time, for she was all dressed up to go to a reception in the town, in order to help Schwarz who was the guest of honour of an International Psychological Association which had given him an important award, not to mention a silver medal for his work in analysis. But the Swiss girl was delayed and Constance had agreed to stay on with Affad for longer than usual.

  It was not the fact that she was in a new costume that set the tone for this encounter – for he seemed to show no particular interest, though he smiled faintly to show that she was welcome, and allowed himself to be caressed and even picked up without demur. Yet sitting in her lap he lay back and showed signs of fatigue, yawning and rubbing his eyes. One hand seemed accidentally to touch her hair, and then suddenly move to her face with fingers spread, and apparently with an aggressive intent, as if to plant them in her eyes. But the impulse waned. The threatening quality was new, though. He whimpered as if he wanted to be released, yawned, and even kicked a little, but she held him firmly in order to let him declare himself more fully; evolve and fix the rather vague emotion. But his eyes were clearer, and their focus was more profound and direct, with a quality of alarm – no, the word is too strong – anxiety, in them. He listened to her talk and humming with a new attention, he seemed poised as if upon a new slope down which he had never glided before. He gave a small moan and opened his throat wide, though nothing came forth except a pitiful clicking, dry and incoherent. It was like a yawn which had got stuck. Then suddenly – it was as if the whole of reality rushed in like a Niagara of feeling – suddenly the weeping started, weeping of such violence and abandon that it was as if his little psyche had exploded like a bomb and was on the point of disintegration. She held him tight, as if to hold the shattered fragments together against total dispersion, held him fiercely in her sheltering arms, rocking him slightly from side to side and almost keening his name, the name of her absent lover: “Affad … Affad!” It was to congratulate him passionately for this wonderful departure in the direction of the norm. She felt the tears start to her own eyes, but it was important to remain cool in the observation tower of her reason, the better to evaluate the meaning and the possibilities inherent in this new behaviour.

  Meanwhile he wept and screamed with all his might as if to rid himself in one cathartic expenditure of all the demons which had held him spellbound for so long, and part of the screaming let loose waves of aggression which made him kick and choke and storm and grind his teeth. This savage gust of anger alternated with waves of almost inhuman despair; he seemed about to shatter into a million fragments, to disperse, to melt. Only the warm and determined ceinture of her arms offered his psyche the chance to contain its woe and reorder the disturbed torrents of the affect flowing out of his very soul. She had never as yet heard anything like it in her professional career, though in the long and tedious confessional work associated with her trade weeping was common enough. But this inarticulate discharge had a fury and despair which was quite unique. It went on and on until it seemed he would come to the end of his voice as well as his strength.

  She put him down on the floor and all of a sudden the weeping stopped, as if turned off like a tap, and the child slumped groggily back into a reminiscence of his previous role of absence and wall-gazing; but now he was beside himself with exhaustion, and when she picked him up again he at once went off into a further paroxysm of weeping, as if overcome anew with despair, the uprooting despair of the primal wound whose depth she could not as yet evaluate. Still carrying him, and he was quite heavy, she took him to the luxurious bathroom and t
urned on the tap to run him a warm relaxing bath. He allowed himself to be undressed while lying on the bed, still expressing a now voiceless weeping. And even when it had started to peter away into the noiselessness of utter exhaustion the face kept the hard fixity of the primal howl, so that (with closed eyes) it resembled something like a tiny Greek tragic mask. He lay so still in the water that he might have been dead; softly and sweetly she sang to herself in a small absorbed voice as she propelled him very slowly back and forth in the bath.

  She wrapped him softly in the great perfumed bath-towel and then powdered him with talc before putting him to bed in the quiet bedroom with its faithful night-light burning – a tiny Christmas tree lighted by electric bulbs. Here he seemed at last to cave in, to succumb to a profound slumber, completely extenuated. For a while he turned hither and thus with a trace of his former restlessness, and then turned on his side and like a ship going down, nosedived into sleep. But he did one thing that he had never done before – he thrust his thumb into his mouth. It was an archaic gesture which suggested a fruitful and deep regression to some place of psychic hurt – like someone fingering the scar tissue, the cicatrice of an old wound. As she sat beside him and watched quietly her hopes rose for his restoration to the human world. But she frowned as she thought of the elder Affad, of his delight and perhaps gratitude: had her motives been entirely disinterested? Was it on these grounds …? But she shook her head sharply to banish the thought and then looked at her watch. There was half an hour before the Swiss girl came back on duty. He slept so soundly that it might have been possible to tiptoe away, but she did not wish to risk it in case there was some new and fruitful departure in behaviour to be studied. She crossed the room to the daybook and entered a few notes which she would afterwards expand into a case-history, dictating it on to her magnetophone before handing it to her typist. The time passed quickly and by the time the Swiss girl tiptoed into the room she had finished and was ready to polish herself up for the party and take her leave. As she did so she communicated the events of the afternoon and evening to the girl, who showed great delight at the news of a deviation in behaviour. “It might be the beginning of a radical shift,” Constance admitted, “But we must be patient and not force.”