The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  “I read some more of your drafts last night; it’s queer stuff, some of it, and has a kind of bearing on what I have done. How shall I say it? You know full well that there is always something going on in the room next door and you often find yourself wondering what it might be. But it’s never what you think. Your version of our book gives the presence of events, mine the absence, if I can put it like that.”

  Sutcliffe nodded somewhat gloomily. “Yes,” he said, “and it’s because you really exist. I’m just a figment, living by proxy, turned on and off at will like a memory. I’m only as real as is necessary. My existence is contingent. Our books are linked without being interlocked, if you see.”

  “Hail!”

  “Hail!”

  “Be ye versions of one another, says the Bible!”

  “Husband thy immortality, says Job.”

  Blanford gazed long and thoughtfully at his fiction and said, “I have given you a bad time, I know; that awful marriage, and all the sadness. But now at last we are both moving towards our apotheosis, you as a fat, sad oracle, me as a post-war crock with designs upon the Underworld only. No more love, no more apple-pie in the sky. Life will become an extended reverie – and of course a number of us must die. Don’t forget it. You at least can’t do the whole thing, you are limited to a fiction’s dying. But the result can be moving or instructive or both. I shall be so glad to get you out of my system at last, my Old Man of the Sea!”

  “What you mean is that at last this terrible but blessed war, which has prevented us from thinking about ourselves – or even for ourselves – is coming to a close and we are soon to be thrown back on our own resources. Winter quarters for the 10th Legion, and Iron Rations!”

  “I am in love with Constance!” he suddenly blurted out like a schoolboy attacked with the squitters.

  Sutcliffe looked quizzical and just a trifle ironic. “Enfin!” he said. “Something that was not in the script! Something unexpected! But it could be untrue, couldn’t it? You yourself are fond of pointing out the self-deceptions of others …”

  “To hell with you!” Blanford said, fully aware of the appropriateness of the oath. The fat man said, “You mistake me for Monsieur, doubtless?”

  “Doubtless!”

  Sutcliffe chuckled indulgently and wagged a reproachful finger at his fellow scribe. “You know that Affad is back, don’t you?” Blanford did not. At that moment Cade knocked and entered on a note of interrogation. “You rang, sir?” Blanford looked up and shook his head. “No, Cade. I didn’t.” The valet looked puzzled and aggrieved. “Well, someone did ring,” he insisted before turning away to leave the room. Blanford said, “Where is Affad, then, why hasn’t he made some sign of life?” Sutcliffe, who was sharpening a pencil, shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know?” he said. “Since all the romantic convulsions I have hardly dared to mention him for fear of upsetting Constance.”

  “I think,” said the irritated Blanford, “that we are all behaving like a gaggle of maiden aunts and the result will simply cocker up the girl’s ego – already too swollen, in my humble opinion!” Sutcliffe looked at him with an ironic smile; “Hoity-toity,” he said, “such vexation now! I think we must leave it to Affad now to reappear and set things to rights.”

  But it was the following day that Affad suddenly appeared in their midst during a mid-morning gathering in the old Bar de la Navigation – though the presence of Constance was quite a rarity: she was usually far freer in the evenings. Yet on this fine morning she had made a detour on foot in order to catch Sutcliffe with a message about Trash – and had been persuaded to stay and have a drink.

  A car drew up in the street outside and suddenly with a heartleap – a desperate sense of total heed – she saw a familiar form merge up on the glass-fronted door and heard the bell tingle as he pushed it open. There stood Affad after what seemed several centuries, though it was only a matter of months. Her first impulse was to turn away, perhaps even to flee, but she converted it in characteristic fashion. Advancing upon him with a smile of welcome she caught him almost before he had entered the room and with a kiss she stuck a flower in his gun, so to speak, saying lightly, “Are we speaking to each other or not? I have forgotten.” It sounded challenging and frivolous, and she all at once repented when she saw how thin and pale he looked, and how diffident. He said in a low voice, without any trace of affectation, “Of course. I must thank you – I don’t know how as yet.” And they allowed themselves to be submerged in the general conversation – for his sudden appearance had gained Affad a general welcome. Every one was anxious to know how he was and where he had been; and for a moment this somewhat boisterous greeting obliterated all other thoughts. He accepted a glass of beer and sat down beside her to drink it and to exchange banter with Toby and Ryder, while Blanford from his corner watched the face of Constance with a sardonic and yet resigned expression. The distress she had suffered with the separation – and particularly the confidences she had made to him as her best friend – had touched him to the heart and had increased this age-old attachment to her image. So much so that he almost forgot to be jealous of Affad whose friendship was equally dear: as if they all lived equidistant from each other. But now there was a whole jumble of misunderstandings between the lovers and as Constance sat there at his side, smiling and saying nothing, her heart continued to sink, for she could not imagine that such a breach would ever be mended, nor could she devise ways to heal the wound caused by this misunderstanding. How impossible men were, after all!

  There were other factors also which added to her anxiety and undermined her self-confidence and poise. She cursed herself for the reaction, it was so childish: but he had hardly bestowed a glance upon her new hair-style. Did he perhaps dislike it? She caught a glimpse of it in the mirror and wondered if he thought it too loud, too feminist … But then at last when he deemed that his welcome had been well and truly lived he rose and said, “Constance, please may I talk to you for a few moments? I have things to tell and things to ask.” He looked worn and pale and extremely uncertain of himself. (“Good!” she thought vindictively.)

  They went out into the sunlight together and since the day promised to be so fine he suggested that they leave the car and walk along the lakeside, a suggestion to which she agreed.

  Not without a certain trepidation, for she too seemed awkward and inhibited. But by dint of waiting and letting the rhythm of their walking chime he was at last able to collect his thoughts. “You know, you must know, you must have felt that I had decided not to speak to you again – and of course the reasons (I know they seem fatuous to you) were also plain. That is why when I came here I went to the lake house, intending to come into town as little as possible. But after I saw what you had done for the child – with your own science which I found so limited – I could not do otherwise than come and thank you for the tremendous gift.” As they walked he put his arm about her shoulders. Then they turned to each other and embraced silently, clutching at each other like drowning people, and saying nothing more, it being so difficult to breathe. Near at hand was a public bench, and at last she broke away feeling half-strangled and choked with conflicting emotions. “Ouf!” she sat herself down, between tears and rueful laughter, and put her head in her hands. He came to her side and gently stroked her hair. (Perhaps after all he did not mind the new style?) As a matter of fact when they embraced he encountered the changed scent which for some reason he greeted with a sense of unease, almost of distaste. Yet he could not analyse why exactly!

  “We are being punished for having done something so frivolous as to fall in love. Punished for being out of date.” But all this was simply to fill in the gaps of the silence and to conceal his own overwhelming emotion – he had forgotten how much he sexually desired her. His fingers received waves of sex like electricity – he stopped short of reproaching himself! “We thought we were extremely clever and superior!”

  “You are still so unsure of yourself!”

  “Unsure of you,
rather. I thought you realised more fully than you did how dangerous it might be to mess about with a machine you did not understand: a machine which was already launched upon a trajectory. One could lose an arm, an eye, a life. Perhaps I didn’t explain very cleverly what we were up to – you thought of it as a vulgar suicide club, and of course being a spirited woman felt that it qualified my love for you – how could I both love you and passively subscribe to my own death from a hand unknown and at a time chosen by others? That is what you really felt, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” She said a little sullenly, “I suppose you could say that that is what a woman would feel. A deep disappointment in your manhood, really. I had the rather foolish notion of intervening, stealing the letter – I didn’t quite make up my mind as to what I would do with it. At first I thought I would destroy it out of pure mischief and see what happened. No, I wasn’t aware of any great danger because at bottom I did not take it very seriously – you had spoken of making a renouncement of the whole thing, pleading off … what was I to imagine? So I stole it while waiting to make up my mind and I put it in a book. Someone borrowed the book, a lunatic, and the precious document simply disappeared. My God, I’m so sorry for the thoughtlessness and the annoyance. We are trying to get it back, to find out what if anything the patient could have done with it.”

  “Your hands are cold.” He sat down beside her on the bench and chafed them slowly as he talked. “I am as much to blame as you are, not for the letter, but for not explaining better what stood between us, and what you would have to accept in order to go on loving me. Yes, I did think of going back and attempting a renunciation, but really I knew it was hopeless. The minute I left your side I knew it was really out. I simply could not do it – it compromised the whole mechanics of the movement and what it had set out to do. I was a traitor!”

  “Traitor!” she echoed ironically, and he pressed her hand, saying, “Yes. Yes. I know you think it schoolboyish, but there is a man behind me and a man before, I am part of a chain, a link. Our ambitions in a mad sort of way are scientific in the most exact sense of that misused word. We are setting up a chain-reaction which we believe could counter the laws of entropy – the irreversibility of process leading always to death, dispersal, disaggregation … Of course it is wildly ambitious. But, you see, it isn’t just a romantic appetite for death as such …” He stared at her fixedly for a moment and then sighed, saying, “My God! I think you are beginning to understand. I was afraid you wouldn’t – for after all it makes part and parcel of our loving: fucking is just the cement which binds together the double image we present to reality when an orgasm is shared, is reciprocally breathed. What does old Max tell you – surely something like that, no?”

  “Yes. I was thinking of him.”

  “The man behind me represents the past and the man in front the future. In between those two poles I can say that I exist, only there, only in that Now. And in the duration I am experiencing I exist also in you, and you in me – s’il vous plait!”

  She was so happy that there would have been no point in being insincere and continuing to resist his warmth – though of course the brute badly needed punishing … “In spite of my misgivings I surrender. I am only sorry about my unpardonable intervention. But is it all that necessary to know the hour and the day?”

  “In a sense, yes. To set one’s affairs in order is only a secondary reason. But to accept the death transition profoundly is important because you pass the message on down the grapevine. What do you think societies and associations were created for? Reservoirs of energy and thought, dynamos, if you like.”

  “I see.”

  “So I feel that without that knowledge I am passing on a feeble signal. Like a dirty spark plug!” He put his arm in hers and said, “God! I am so happy I think I am going to faint!”

  “Don’t do that! Let me cook you some lunch. You are just faint from all your Egyptian excesses. But seriously – you have got very thin. Why?”

  “I’ve been in the desert such a lot: one can’t eat in the heat. Also I thought I had lost your respect. It was pretty bad, it made me realise that you were really a lovemate and that anyone else was out of the question – it would diminish what we had discovered in such an accidental way! I don’t want to give you a swollen head so I won’t go on. Anyway, it must be self-evident. What I really wanted to do was to father a child on you – by one act of perfect mutual attention: in a single yoga-breath, as you would say. Like you blow a smoke-ring, perfect and self-sustaining. Constance, why don’t you shut me up?” But it was honey to her!

  And there was only one way to do that and they sat and embraced so passionately that they received the curious or amused glances of the passers-by. Then at long last she proposed that they should walk back to her flat, but he had to sit still for a moment for he was in no state to stand up and walk – which amused her vastly. “Just think of ice-cream,” she said, “and it will be all right!” But it was some moments before they resumed their walk. How glorious the sunlight seemed; they made a detour through the public gardens where preparations were almost complete for a local fête votive. Some of the stalls were already in place selling their fragile carnival wares, toys and ribbons and celluloid propellers and dolls for the children. They walked with their little fingers linked. She said to herself, “It feels marvellous to be loved from top to toe, not an inch of you free from the honey.” At a bar they ordered a bottle of cheap champagne and drank it as if it were nectar. That is the terrible thing, she thought, love is really a state of mania!

  From a medical point of view it was practically certifiable. She remembered him saying once, long ago, “Constance! Let’s fall in love and create a disappointment of children!” And simultaneously she recalled Max telling her that “Every girl’s a one-man girl, and every man too. Hence the trouble, for just anybody won’t do – it’s gotta be the him and the her of the fairy tale. Humans were born to live in couples like wild doves or cobras. But then we went and lost periodicity, meat-eating came in with the taste of blood: then sugar, salt, alcohol followed and we lost our hold on the infinite!” She wondered what Max would think of Affad’s gnostic beliefs and obligations. Not so much perhaps, for the true yogi knew the hour of his death, and did not need artificial reminders in order to render it a conscious act.

  “What are you thinking so sadly?” he asked.

  “Nothing specially sad; just that time is passing; it has become doubly valuable since all this talk about death. Which is anyway impertinent and silly – trying to pre-empt reality when destiny may well be preparing to make an end of us in the next five minutes. We could be run over by a taxi.”

  “You are right; we will certainly pay for all these fine sentiments! God, though, it’s marvellous to see you again, feeling all signals register and echo! The strategies of nature may be boundless but this thing puts them under the burning-glass.”

  “I loathe high-minded people like ourselves. We are just the type I can’t stand.”

  “I know. And all this self-caressing sort of talk ruins fucking. Why don’t we shut up and get on with it? I feel quite anorexic-sexanorexic. If you got into my bed I would be seized by paralysis. I would just dribble and swoon. Narcissus beware!”

  They reached her flat and mounted the stairs arm-in-arm, still uplifted to the point of subversion by the bad champagne they had drunk; but also now a little afraid, a little withdrawn, because of the coming shock of their first encounter for so long. He looked particularly scared. The flat was spotless, the cleaning woman had been; and in leaving she had drawn the curtains so that they wandered into a half-darkened room. And just stood, quietly breathing, and regarding each other with anxiety, and at the same time so out of their depth.

  “Sebastian!” she whispered, more to herself than to him, but he caught the name and took her hands, drawing her softly through the half-opened door towards the familiar cherished bed, reflected three ways by the tall mirrors, taking the hushed light of the window upon their
bright skins.

  The lovers, she was thinking, belonged to an endangered species and were in need of protection; should perhaps be kept on reservations like specimens of forgotten and outmoded physical strains, wild game? But was there any happiness which was the equal of this? To be blissed-out by the kisses of the correct partner, to make love and fade? Not to squander but to husband – a perilous game, really, for it was changing even while one was in the act of experiencing it. Yet there were so many people, perhaps the most, who arrived at the end of a life of limited usefulness to find the doors of this kind of happiness bolted and barred against them through no fault of their own-just scurvy luck.

  Their clothes rustled and fell in a heap like a drift, and slowly, hesitantly they enfolded each other and drifted into the warm bed, to lie for a while breathing shakily, like freshly severed twins. So conscious also that kiss by kiss they would be winding steadily down into the grave. He was remembering some words from a letter: “Nothing can be added or subtracted from what exists, yet inside this wholeness endless change and permutation is possible with the same elements.” Her teeth sank into his lips, he felt the sweet galbe of her flanks and arching back.

  And yet, for all the tension, at the heart of their exchanges was a calm sensuality of understanding such as only those lucky enough to feel married in the tantric fashion experience. They were squarely each to each with no fictions of lust needed to ignite them. Embraces were woven like a tissue.