The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  “It worked reasonably well until the day when Schwartz elected to commit suicide and I had to take over his dossier in default of anyone better. I returned from India, so to speak, and came once more face to face with her. I experienced the most dramatic and irresistible countertransfer you can think of. The base must have been some slumbering and neglected homosexual predisposition, but the motor which set it off was, inexplicably enough, the death of Schwartz, who was a dear and long-time friend and colleague though nothing more. Inexplicable! Inexplicable!”

  “Love is!” said Jourdain, ruefully gazing at her downcast blonde head and lowered eyes so full of chagrin. “It wasn’t love but infatuation – though what matter our silly qualifications? It’s just because I feel guilty and ashamed – I should never have succumbed, yet I did.”

  “And now?”

  “But there is worse to come,” she said, “for another strange experience awaited me. I had been locked into this experience with such a savage intensity that I think I must have been a little bit out of my mind. I could not breathe without her, could not sleep, read, work … Yes, but all this (I see the despairing faces of my friends) – all this melted like an icecap just when we crossed over the border into France. It was as if I had crossed into a territory policed by the part of myself which still belonged to Sam – an older self, apparently long since dead and done with. But no. I realised with a sudden jolt that I was not a homosexual at all but a woman – a man’s woman. And the shock spread right through my nervous system so that I think that for a brief moment I may well have passed out. I loved just as intensely, but as a friend; the whole of the sexual component, as uncle Freud would so chastely say, flew out of the window. I was suddenly completely anaesthetic to feminine caresses. They were so light, so insubstantial, trivial as feathers. I suddenly knew I belonged to the hairy race of men. But there, Aubrey has always said that I am a bit of a slowcoach and am afraid to make love without a garde-feu. But do you see my dilemma now? O God!” She was pale with fury.

  “But why did you come back here?” he asked.

  “I had several reasons, among them some quite unfinished business with myself – I wanted to find out a little more about my sister Livia, her death and so on. Then I felt in a vague sort of way that psychologically it might be good to move her back into an old context which must certainly be familiar – though I haven’t yet dared to bring her back here to see you. Yet she knows I am here, and even hesitated about sending you a message, so that she still remembers you … But now it’s me who is in a mess, for I simply do not dare to tell her about my state of mind. I have to sham an affection which I no longer feel for fear of upsetting the precarious applecart of her mind again! It would be ridiculous if it were not both painful and humiliating. You see, she is valuable, valuable to us all, her talent, her genius even. We haven’t a right to put that at risk – or at least I don’t dare. On the other hand I feel like a suburban housewife who has fallen in love with the milk roundsman but does not dare to risk being divorced for it! Sutcliffe was right to laugh when I told him; instead of sympathy he said, ‘I think your policemen are simply wonderful!’ Like the historic American in London. I suppose he was right.”

  “But I don’t see how your ménage is going to work out without stress at some point.”

  “I know.”

  “Menage or manège! That is the question.”

  “Help!”

  “How can I? You must live it out.”

  “I know.” She stood up, glancing at her watch. “I must go back. But you see? Already I feel better for having ventilated the matter, even though I knew no solution would be forthcoming – how could it? It’s my own mess and I must accept the fact. On the other hand I cannot see this situation prolonging itself indefinitely. I am simply marking time now.”

  “My poor colleague,” he said drily, but with all sincerity. There was no trace of irony in his tone – for he felt the same sharp pang which touched the heart of Blanford whenever he caught sight of her downcast head and averted eyes. But he at least was not abreast of the developments which she had outlined for the benefit of Jourdain. It is difficult to know what he would have thought of them – elation, sympathy, horror? The repertoire of the human heart is a vast one, a veritable broom-cupboard. She had left the car in the little square with its silent trees and small white church which enshrined so many memories of the past. Jourdain had extracted a firm promise that she would dine with him soon in his rooms.

  She stood for a while letting the atmosphere of the little square seep into her, seep through her mind.

  How long life seemed when one thought of the past – especially of all those sadly wasted years of war and its distresses. Her friend Nancy Quiminal used also to visit the little church. During the fétes votives she brought posies of flowers to offer on behalf of an old aunt who had been born in the village of Montfavet, and had attended catechism classes in the church, which hadn’t changed a jot. Constance tried the door.

  She sat there in a pew for a long moment, counting her quiet heart beats, almost without drawing breath. The immense weariness of the war years had not yet quite dissipated, while the present with its problems seemed hopelessly lacklustre. Had they come back too soon to recapture some of the élan and optimism of the past – had they made a fatal miscalculation? It was true perhaps that one should never try to go back to retrace one’s steps to a place where one has once been happy.

  A wave of depression came over her, and for a moment she was almost tempted to say a prayer of abject self-commiseration, pagan though she was. She smiled at the impulse, but compromised by crossing herself as she stood before the watchers in the painting. Who knows? It was gipsy country and the piety might work like a grigri … Then she resumed her little borrowed car and set off back to collect Sutcliffe whom she had left in town to do some shopping with Blanford.

  But when she found her way back to the little tavern by the river which was their point of rendezvous she was furious to find them both drunk – not “dead” drunk but in an advanced state of over-elaboration. Blanford could be most irritating when he became slightly incoherent while Sutcliffe became simply cryptic. They had been absorbing that deleterious brew known to the peasantry as riquiqui, a firewater compounded of several toxins. “O God!” she said in dismay. “You are both drunk!” At which they protested energetically though with a slight incoherence which gave the show away. “Au contraire, my dear,” said Blanford, “this is the way my world ends, not with a bang but a Werther. First time I’ve tasted this stuff. It’s plebeian but very consoling. Vive, les enfants du godmichet” Sutcliffe at once said, “I echo that toast in all solemnity. Did you know that for several centuries the city kept its renown because twelve churches preserved the authentic foreskin of Jesus as a holy relic? Twelve different foreskins, but each one the true and authentic …” They had set aside the pack of cards with which they had proposed to kill the time waiting for her. “A smegma culture,” said Blanford gravely, thoughtfully, and his friend said, “When I hear the word I reach for the safety catch of my hair-spray. Levels of nonentity rise with a rising population. Who is going to do our dying for us? I once knew a parson who found he could not stand the sight of a freshly opened grave; he had a serious nervous breakdown. His doctor said soothingly, ‘For a congenital worrier there is nothing more worrying than having nothing to worry about.’ The poor parson jumped into the river.” Blanford fiddled with his purchases and said, “When I killed you in the novel I intended to leave some ambiguity about the matter. Your body and the horse were washed up in Aries. But the police were to find that the dental imprints on your washed-up body did not coincide with the records of your London dentist. A pretty mystery!”

  But to do justice to Blanford it must be allowed that underneath the tugging of the alcohol with its spurious consolation there echoed on the profound sense of desolation and emptiness which followed upon the defection (if that is the word) of Constance, and her absorption in Sylvie. A
s for the programme for a future life à trois … it was problematical in the extreme. “It was anguish to revisit Tu Duc,” he told Sutcliffe. “The great dewy orchard, its apples tight and sweet as nuns’ bums. And ironically I arrived with the first cuckoo – it seemed as if the whole spring had come to Avignon to announce my cuckoldry!”

  It was with difficulty that she managed to shepherd them back to the car. Sutcliffe swore that his armpits were smoking from the riquiqui. But they were docile enough to obey her.

  TWO

  The Moving Finger

  DURING THESE DAYS OF SOMEWHAT FORCED conviviality Constance realised that Blanford was inwardly quite terrified of the move and all that it might portend. He had begun to drink rather heavily, and of course his bondsman and double followed suit – which made them excellent company for Toby and a trial to Lord Galen whose sense of humour was somewhat limited.

  Paradoxically enough, however, the alcohol had an enlivening effect on his talent and the commonplace book began to fill up once more with what Sutcliffe called “thimbles” or stray thoughts, and Blanford “threads”. He wrote: “Pearls can exist without a thread but the novel is an artefact and needs a thread upon which to thread not so much the pearls as the reader! It is not true that all the great themes have been used up. Each age produces new ones. For us considerations like this: what did they think, the women who watched the crucifixion? They say that Buddha’s wife became his first initiate as did the daughter of Pythagoras. Those were the days! Or, to change topics: what of the one Spartan to outlive Thermopylae? He was left for dead on the field and came to himself when the enemy had gone. But he could not stand the odium of having escaped the slaughter, the suspicion of having run away. He killed himself in despair. A Don Juan who was terrified of women? Crusoe through the eyes of Friday? A Life of Jesus out of Freud and vice versa?” Sutcliffe broke in with: “And love? What about love?” In his new mood of sorrow and guilty intransigence Blanford said, “The greatest of human illusions. It’s not worth the kisses it is printed on! Pearls before swine, what!”

  “I am meditating a love story about the ideal couple. She would be called Rosealba, a girl to detonate insight if ever there was one. He – I haven’t chosen a name yet, but he is the original death-yield of a love-bundle bang-plus-whimper man. Moreover it is a perfect marriage. Every morning he tells her something she does not know. Every evening he puts something so big and warm into her hand that she becomes thoughtful. They are almost dead from pure yes-ness. She has filled his heart with a glorious blindness.” Blanford protested, “It is out of date. The new discrete image of fiction is different. All the people are parts of larger people or composed of parts of smaller people, enlarged or diminished according to need. All events are the same event from a different angle. The work becomes a palimpsest with a laying out of superposed profiles. (My God! What supreme, prize-winning boredom! Nevertheless avec cela j’ ai fait mon miel!)”

  “The fourth-century Thebans were renowned for the practice of male sexual cohabitation – plus a crucial military innovation. The Sacred Legion comprising 150 homosexual couples was commanded by Pelopidas. It was the corps d’élite of the line regiments, and the only full-time unit. Perhaps your escaped legionary from Thermopylae committed suicide for other reasons: like the loss of his love?”

  “Perhaps. I am reminded of some lines by Shakespeare: ‘The fulcrum of my lover’s bum / Will guarantee a nightmare come.’”

  “Pelopidas.”

  “The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is to count my uniforms and run through my decorations, always starting with the Grand Bandage of Outer Mongolia where I was consul for a week. The artist decorated is an awesome sight. Should the poet make reassuring noises? Yum yum, yes please!”

  “The sea-shell is the mystic’s telephone. Only in the sea-shell can one hear the mystical toc sonore and realise fully that in art a methodical licence rules, and that greatness does not stint but neither is it profligate. Finally that with every breath, every pulse-beat, every thought the whole universe invests its strength anew in reality. My friend, these bold words were dictated to me while I slept.”

  “In a new age of plastic caryatids we shall be permitted to change women in mid-scream. Thus to honour a secret goddess in her kilt of dead rats! Ah, you had better tear this letter up before reading it. Constance, the vatic second state you so distrust is reached without strain. I drifted into my life like an air-bubble into an old aorta. Went off bang one day and died for her. Exploded like an aneurism.”

  “Thank God for petrol. Arabs who are sensitive people buy women like others buy paintings. If paintings could open their legs they would buy paintings!”

  But this persiflage could not disguise the deep unhappiness of the inward monitor. “I feel that I am giving off a steady glow of sex – like an abandoned dungheap!” said the incorrigible Sutcliffe. “And I have discovered a way of making Galen cry when he irritates me too profusely. Any reference to his late cat ‘the wombat’ puts him into a tearful state. When I twist the knife and speak of the ‘old days’ he whips out his hanky and says, ‘Don’t go on: we were so happy. I feel so lost now. Boo hoo!’ He is highly susceptible, our great Coordinator.”

  “Other problems. How to defend yourself against your own self-esteem, eh? How not to look complacent when you are? There must be a gadget. The objective of the Christian is to be good, that of the Buddhist to be free. A different frequency. As death closes in more and more, illustrates itself with the loss of friends, the difference becomes more marked, one tends to take out more fire insurance. The mysterious root-force which gives enduring life to art can be felt and described in terms of architectonics, but its nature and essence remain mysterious – a dark river flowing from nowhere to nowhere. The pen touching paper marks the point of intersection merely. But when the artists of an age begin to use architectonics without humility we are in danger of losing the thread they weave. Wagner, Picasso – they are like mechanised muezzins whose prayers are recorded and broadcast on an almost political level. The intimacy has gone, the sensual exchange is not there. A microphone has intervened. As for the artist … poor fellow, after birth the terror of ego-consciousness strikes, the awe invades, the fear, and immediately the self laps itself in layer after layer of protective feelings to avoid foundering: like an onion, layer upon layer of defensive schemes. This is what poor old Buddha tried to counter by his policy of unwrapping the poor ego from its mummy-like swaddling clothes – the nervous aggressive reactions. He had made a capital discovery, but it is hard to convince people that the threat of nature is illusory. Yet once they twig the fact peace spreads round them in rings. But it’s a whole art, to make yourself thoroughly vulnerable, even open towards death. Yes, once you are in the know nothing much matters any more, the penny has dropped. You realise that harmlessness is the highest good.”

  “Good art is never explicit enough.”

  “How should it be? It does not contain an ethic. You cannot break the code of the beauty exemplified by the rose. Ah! blessed principle of Indeterminacy which renders every eventual second of time miraculous: because all creation is arbitrary, capricious, spontaneous. Without forethought or afterthought.”

  “Every two seconds a mental defective is born. Nevertheless I pat the whole universe on the back and cry, ‘Well done, old cock, well done!’“

  “A monkey telling its nits, the priest his beads. Yet somewhere I am sure the Great Plan exists. It is pinned out on a vast wall-map containing every imaginable reference as to our entries, exits, names, styles, natures, destiny. I’m sure!”

  “You remind me of poor Quatrefages!”

  “Yes. And his great map of the Templars. He has retired into the fastnesses of Montfavet – la vie en rose! He has not quite succeeded in convincing Galen that there is no Templar treasure to be exploited, but very nearly. The real secret treasure was the Grail, the lotus of insight. They had become infected first by the old Gnosticism so rampant in the Middle Orie
nt (outremer); and then secondly and definitively by the practices of yoga – as the thread woven from millet round their waists so clearly showed. The Catholics were quite right – they were heretics, and their practices did create a danger for the Catholic world.”

  “Galen must be beside himself with anguish, after having invested so much money in futile research on the subject. So indeed must be the Prince who allowed himself to be talked into the scheme. We shall see next week when he arrives.”

  “They will find something else – a new line in widows and orphans. The war has created so many.”

  “A world without man – how was it before we emerged, I often wonder? Perhaps trees were the original people, anterior to humankind. Man sprang from the humus when it was mixed with water. Thus the mystics desire to regress into the unassailability of plant life – the insouciant lotus – in order to recapture the down-drive into dissolution, echoing the force we call gravity upon body and mind. What would you say to that? Excellence – the very notion of excellence comes from rarity, scarcity, paucity. Nature’s robust mutations encourage species to evolve and lead the many towards the unique one. Ah! The brain’s old begging-bowl! Perhaps the first fish were soluble and could not resist the rubbing water: but gradually by will-power and curiosity they learned survival. And elephants like humble space-ships floated without touching the ground …”

  “Then came man. Woman blows man like spun glass from her womb. He is the weaker of the two, she writes his books though he executes them. Yet his sperm is her supreme document. If the quality falls off she becomes sick with malnutrition, soul-hunger, a sort of vampirism possesses her. The couple, the basic brick of understanding, is at risk. What is compromised is the sexual bonding which comes with insight.”