Aubrey’s own version of these events, when she mentioned all this, was characteristically different, for the whole episode bordered on the grotesque and filled him with morose-ness. “As for being pale with pride I was white to the gums with humiliation. Imagine! One day without warning the door of my room is thrown open by the obsequious Cade and a group of pin-striped notables is ushered in. It includes the consul-general and two consular clerks, Sutcliffe, Toby, Lord Galen and two other gentlemen who were described as journalists. You can imagine my alarm as they converged on me. I thought they had come to castrate me perhaps. The consul, Nevinson, held a Bible and a casket while the consular clerk held (for reasons best known to himself) a large parchment citation and a lighted candle. My hypothesis changed – they had obviously come to excommunicate me. Lord Galen then made an artless speech of fascinating inaccuracy and unconscious condescension. He praised everything except my physical beauty – my civic sense, my unflinching bravery under enemy fire, my example, my long suffering, mon cul – everything! I lay there between the sheets like a stale sandwich and allowed all this to pour over me. It was all the more humiliating as among them was Sutcliffe’s boss Ryder whose wife had almost been buried alive in a London bombardment; she had lost a hand and an eye, while here was I … You can imagine. Then the consul cleared his throat and read out a long and incoherent citation written in a style which suggested that it had been swiftly run up that morning by someone on the Daily Mirror. Then he pinned a decoration to my pyjamas and a champagne cork popped in true ceremonial fashion. I nearly cried with rage. Then to round off everything Lord Galen imparted to us all his philosophy of life which went like this: ‘The moment has come to invest in bricks and mortar. You can’t go wrong if you do.’ And Toby, who had just been to a Geneva bank to cash a cheque said, ‘Have you noticed? The peculiarly tender way that bankers take each other by the shoulders and gaze into each other’s eyes, as if they were caressing each other’s fortunes which equalled their private parts?’ Lord Galen hadn’t, and he became somewhat huffy.”
Constance cocked a professional ear to this unwonted vivacity of discourse and felt that things were very much better for Aubrey, that he was really on the mend. He could already just about stand up on his two feet and there were plans afoot for him to take a few steps during the following week. The operations had been strikingly successful. And this sudden improvement in health had encouraged him once more to think of his book, the “authorised version” of which still lingered among the disordered papers of Sutcliffe, the incorrigible and depraved shadow which hung over his life. “By the way, Affad rang up,” he said a little maliciously and watched her carefully to see what the effect on her composure was. But she replied to him coolly and gave him an account of the contretemps about the letter, and about her battle of wits with Mnemidis. He sighed and shook his head. “He will be coming back anyway,” he said, “though he didn’t say when. By the way, talking of scandal, I discovered something quite extraordinary. Lord Galen has been frequenting the maisons de tolérance of the city, and in one of them he ran into Cade, who has suddenly started to take an interest in the low life. It would seem that Lord Galen is having trouble with his erection and that his doctors in London despaired of securing the right stimulus for him. So after trying everything without avail they suggested the Continent as a probable place where such matters are taken more seriously. Moreover in Geneva there is a special bankers’ brothel called le Croc which specialises in such troubles and here Cade has found a billet also.”
“I wonder what he is up to? Have you asked him?” “Yes. He scratches his head and ponders a long time before replying in that dreadful Cockney whine, ‘It makes a nice change.’ In his pronunciation nice is naise and change chinge. My God, Constance, with all this talk about me I completely forgot to tell you how beautiful you look – the new style is unhingeing. Kiss me, please, to show you still care – will you?” This gallantry was also something new, though there was no lack of warmth in her embrace; he knew how much she loved him, and that he could ask anything of her. What better therapy, he asked himself, than this? “And even a new perfume to set off the graces of the new woman! Bravo!” He knew she was trying to outface the loss of Affad, to pick herself up off the ground, so to speak. But it had to be said in all friendship, lest she suspect him of “tactful” silences.
“Did Affad say when?”
“He said soon, very soon.”
“Eh bien,” she said, trying to sound indifferent, resigned.
But in fact the resumption of her city rhythm was a welcome thing; she had decided to visit the child less regularly and hope for a transfer of trust and affection to the real nurse, the Swiss girl. She had taken the precaution of leaving her a bottle of Lily’s perfume to help things along. But here in the middle morning she was able to meet and question Aubrey’s surgeons about his condition and inevitably Felix Chatto dropped in for a glass, together with Toby and the hangdog patibulaire Sutcliffe, looking as much a gallows’ bird as ever. But how happy they all seemed to see her again! And how happy she was to rejoin them once more.
That afternoon Schwarz brought the alienist from Alexandria to meet her and discuss the case of Mnemidis. He apparently wished for a brief clinical discussion before embarking on the interview with his ex-patient and one-time friend. He was a tall lean man with a rasping voice like a crow. Impeccably dressed and hatted with a dark Homburg. He carried a stick with a golden knob which gave him a slight touch of sorcerer-on-holiday. His spatulate hands ended in long filbert nails, well tended. His face was pale, long, goat-like, with sulphurous yellowish eyes, a bit bloodshot as if from alcohol. But he had a kindly if commanding presence, and he called Mnemidis “our friend” with a conspiratorial smile, and formally alluded to Constance once as “my dear colleague” which showed the quality of his manners. He had apparently brought a letter for Mnemidis, and he was hoping to spend ten minutes with him – this had already been accorded. “But I wanted first of all to tell you that I have really come to negotiate his release under guarantee. His sponsor is an ex-associate, a millionaire from Egypt who will offer you every guarantee as far as security and safety is concerned in the question of actually transporting him back to his native land. I would only like to know the actual legal matters to be adjusted: what forms must I fill in, what permissions obtain?” They talked round the subject in a desultory way at first; Constance thought that the authorities would be glad to relinquish him under caution, and be rid of him. But they would have to examine the legalities involving criminal law. “That is precisely what his associate is doing today. I expect to be word-perfect this evening and tomorrow we can start a release-plan.”
“That is rather quick work.”
“Well, we can be patient if necessary. Geneva is a most interesting town where we have many friends. I wonder, doctor, if you would consider dining with me tonight? I would be honoured.”
She hesitated, but finally agreed; the goat-like emissary might know Affad! He might have some information. She cursed herself inwardly as she heard her own voice say, “Thank you, doctor, that would be a great pleasure.” He rose to his full height and with an awkward angular gesture put out his hand to shake hers. She felt obscurely that he had been looking and talking to her as if to a person about whom he had heard a lot. But perhaps this was just another self-delusion, unworthy of such an exalted personage as a psychologist! Nevertheless she would go! Nevertheless!
He was already seated at a corner table by the time she entered the old Bavaria, with its pseudo-Austrian furnishings and sedate walls covered with framed political cartoons. He explained that he had come early to secure a corner table, having read in the paper that a great international conference was opening that day, and knowing of old how congested both hotels and restaurants became during such events. He was very much in tenue de ville and wore a dark stock with pearl-headed pin which made him seem like a barrister or judge. It was only after a while that she realised that he was passably
tipsy which gave his discourse great smoothness; he had lost his raven’s croak.
“Did you have your interview?” she asked and he said that he had had a rather unsatisfactory meeting with Mnemidis. “He is very distraught by the questions the doctors keep putting to him. He confuses them with the police. You see, he has always been in a privileged position in Egypt; you probably don’t know, but he has the gift of healing among his other less pleasant attributes. He is famous and has made a fortune for his Cairo associate Ibrahim. So occasionally when he does escape and spends a few days in the souks of Cairo with the inevitable result, a blind eye is turned to the matter, though of course they sweep him up and imprison him again. He had the luck once to cure the chief of police of a stone, a gall-stone. After being touched by him Memlik Pascha passed the stone without difficulty, thus avoiding the operation we had all said would be necessary. As you know, Egypt is a strange, superstitious sort of place. They see the world in a different way. It is hard for us Greeks or Jews of the second capital, Alexandria, because we are for the most part brought up in Europe, and we see things with your eyes. But we also see their way. A split-vision. Of course a lot has to do with simple definitions. In Mnemidis you see a subject with a florid paranoia and an epileptoid inheritance resulting in bouts of acute hypomania and so on: but last night Ibrahim was telling me that he was born in the sign of the Ram; with Mars and Sun in opposition in Pluto; his moon mal-aspected in Scorpio, a magnetic dissonance between the Lion and Mercury in the eighth house … It depends where you want to look for an explanation of the formidable double-bind which triggers him off.” He turned his thirsty yellow eyes on her with a benign smiling weariness and rubbed his hands, as if he had just demonstrated something with them. She had begun to like him, for on the underside of his conversation, which was so assured, she felt a diffidence and a shyness which was most appealing. She longed to ask him if he knew Affad – after all she had accepted the evening invitation to do just that – yet her cursed pride held her bound to her reserve. What was to be done with a woman like herself?
“I suppose it is a different reality,” she said, and he replied, “Very different but not less plausible once you realise how tricky words are! Our so-called scientific reality is a mere presumption suitable for certain intellectual exercises; but we dare not believe in it, completely, wholeheartedly. We cannot swear that the electron has no sex-life … but I am being silly! Thank you for smiling! But where the hypothesis of the individual ego with ‘its’ soul rules, as in a Christian state, people live in a state of unconscious hallucination. Is that too strong?”
“No. The problem has entered psychiatry.”
“I don’t think you are right, doctor. Or else we are talking at cross-purposes. The Freudian system at any rate works through and with the hypothesis of an individual ego.”
“And Jung?”
“The doctrine has begun to crumble in Jung who is a Neo-Platonist in temperament. In that sense you are right. But all the discoveries are from Freud, he has all the honours. If the thing doesn’t work 100 per cent, why, it is not his fault. He will become out of date just as Newton has. But for us, for now, we can’t do without his genius.”
“And Mnemidis, when he gets back to Egypt, will he be free to assume his old life? I mean will he be allowed his forays?”
“I expect he will be under reasonable surveillance – who knows? The police may turn him into an instrument, directing his activities: Memlik is quite capable of that. But nobody cares, any more than you care if a sportsman bags a couple of rabbits before lunch one day. In India, where everything began, this kind of human activity, obscene in itself, was undertaken on behalf of a goddess, called, I think, Kali; the murder was an act of so-called thugee, I was told.”
“Good Lord!”
“An appropriate exclamation,” he said, pouring himself out more wine. “In Cairo there is so much confusion, noise, lights, dust, fleas, people, daylight and darkness that nobody who disappears is really missed. I myself, when I was in my professional-doctor mood, tried a thing or two on our friend out of curiosity. He had a paranoid delusion that the walls of his room were closing in on him. Well, I had a detention cell specially made for him in which the walls really did close at the rate of five inches a day. You know, he reacted positively when it became obvious that it was not a delusion, it was true: the walls were closing in! One is at home in one’s delusions and only asks to have them verified.”
“Yes, I am aware of all the dialectical clevernesses, but they do little to help us find a therapy. Discussions about reality belong in the domain of the philosopher, and one presupposes him to be sane – another question mark! Are you happy about Mnemidis’ activities?”
“No. For my part I would have him put away. I go even further: I think a healthy society would have him put away, after having tried to cure him for some years. Detention is no use.”
“But?”
“But I may be wrong. The constitution of things may be juster than I am capable of supposing. Besides, look at the mess which comes about when I decided to take things into my own hands and act – Hitler! What an illustration of the misuse of the will, what misuse of human endeavour! And what is the use of getting rid of the poor Jews if you keep monotheism? It’s crazy thinking.”
“You should talk to Schwarz.”
“I have. He agrees with me.”
“Are you a Jew?”
“Of course. Everyone is a Jew!”
He had started to sound a trifle indistinct, as if the drink were beginning to tell on him; but he read her mind and said, reassuringly, “I sound drunk, don’t I? I am not really. I took an overdose of a sleeping-draught yesterday by accident and the result is that I can hardly keep awake today. Excuse me.”
“Should you drink?”
“Perhaps not; but after I have seen you home I am proposing to visit an old friend for a nightcap, and I must be in good form for him. Perhaps you know Sutcliffe?”
“Of course! Do you know him?”
“I have always known him. We are old hands, so to speak. I have been out of touch with him for a fairish time and am anxious to compare notes with the rogue.”
“And Blanford?”
“I only know of him through Sutcliffe himself – something about collaboration on a book which wasn’t going too well; according to him each one was trying to drag the sheets over to his side of the bed, and the book was suffering from it. I gather Sutcliffe has some sort of job here which he hates. As for ‘our friend’ Mnemidis he will be happy to get back home to Cairo. His nerves are at breaking-point under the questioning, so he says. Speaking in Arabic of course; he says you are putting a truth-drug in his food so he refuses it with the result that he is always hungry.”
“O God!” she said with dismay. “… It’s started!”
“I thought you must know, he must have said something.”
“No. I was waiting for it, however! O what a dismal business it is when the persecution thing rears up. It’s unfair!”
He laughed and said, “Yes: all is silent save for the noise of swearing psychoanalysts getting the locks on their doors changed! Are you in the telephone book?”
“Yes. But I think we can ignore the graver eventualities in this case. Swiss detention is severe and exact. Still!”
“As you say,’Still!’”
“Should I break off the interviews now before he turns nasty? Of course he himself may refuse to continue; and I was so much hoping … However, I will tell Schwarz that the milk has turned – the expression is his.”
“I should personally break it off.”
It was a depressing thought to feel forced to conclude this promising line of enquiry – she could see the phantom letter slowly dissolving as a reality. Tomorrow she would recover her Bible and say goodbye to this striking madman on whom all pity and sympathy would be lost because he seemed to be completely filling a destined role, something for which he had been born. In murder he perfected himself, you mig
ht say! An existentialist formulation worthy of the Left Bank! Where the Jewish Babel was being built by Sartre and Lacan and their followers, swarming like flies on the eyeballs of a dying horse! She had had many a disagreement about this with Affad whose fatal indulgence for letters often made him excuse any sort of dog-rhetoric, or so she told him. And here they had come to the end of the evening and the fatal mental block against mentioning his name was as fast as ever. She sighed, and her companion smiled and said, “I expect you are sleepy. In Geneva one does not siesta as in my country, so that one makes a poor showing in the evening if one stays late.”
“I am sorry.”
“It was not a reproach.”
He walked her back to her flat along the tranquil park-fringed borders of the lake, talking quietly about their patient, and about his plans for transplanting him, as he put it, back to the sumptuous apartment among the mosques which had been his before the present imbroglio had altered the balance of things. In the course of the coming week the legal side of the question would be settled, and then they would be free to devise the safe transfer of the patient. “Doubtless you will miss him and be full of a professional regret; but he is easily replaced, when you think of it. Almost any prime minister of any European country … As for him he spends hours at the little window of his new room which overlooks the kitchens. He is lost in admiration for the nuns.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yes. There is a silent order of nuns who are in charge of a whole wing and who do much of the catering for the whole establishment. The kitchens have big bay-windows and he can see them moving about preparing the food for the inmates, like ‘feluccas’ (I am quoting) for they wear those tall starched white coifs on their heads and broad white collars over their black vestments. I spent a while with him watching them, for I offered to go back with him and Pierre very kindly let me. They are very striking, they look like Easter lilies to me, the shape of the coif, and our friend wondered whether they were really silent by choice or whether they had become dumb owing to the lies disseminated in the Bible which he is reading so avidly. But he is so sane that he remains very cunning and one can’t tell if he is lying or not – because he does not himself know. What a predicament to be in! Maybe it is what overturned the reason of men like Nietzsche. I have often wondered.” It seemed rather a strange proposition, so she did not attempt to embroider on it. But in general how strange the preoccupations of lunatics were; what could Mnemidis find in the view of the nuns in the kitchen?
The Avignon Quintet Page 105