The Avignon Quintet

by Lawrence Durrell

  Her heart and mine have begun a whole dialogue of sensation; is it possible after such a long time she is going to acquiesce and love me? Our hearts are like kites with entangled strings. (Blanford on Constance.)

  Miss Bliss who taught him the piano long ago had a very classy Kensington accent which when she had a head cold transformed things – singing “The Berry Berry Bonth of Bay”, for example, or reading from The Furry Tails of Grimm or The Arabian Nates. The Prince revered her memory. He often thought of her and smiled puckishly. Lord Galen told him about one of his business partners. “Someone told him he looked Jewish when he was asleep, so with great astuteness he stayed awake all through the occupation!”

  Capstone of the sky, blue Vega the darkness

  Like an unharnessed cat – blue star,

  The vane and lode of sailors once was fixed,

  Who now aim at Polaris, their masts

  Vast in erection, riding the simple sea.

  “Aubrey, you will soon be beginning your novel. At last! And I shall be leaving you after all this time together, body and soul plus soul and body. It’s been great knowing you, and I hope the book works as a metaphor for the human condition, though that sounds pretentious. Only remember that those two seducers the striking metaphor and the apt adjective can turn out to be the poet’s worst enemies if they are not held in check.”

  Tiresias, the old man wearing tits for eyes,

  Deep in his vegetative slumber lies.

  Her voice lives on in memory

  A bruised gong spoke for Livia

  Lessivé par son sperme was she.

  In the Hotel Roncery the slip hatch

  Into Grévin with its wax models

  Showing more pure discernment than intelligence.

  Sutcliffe took the Prince on a binge or

  Spree – a pig in clover he rolled about in

  A garden of untrussed trulls.

  A sex in her sex like an alabaster dumpling!

  Her knickers smelt of gun-cotton, a

  Moth-bag of a woman shedding rice-paper,

  Powder, cigarette ash and paper handkerchiefs

  Which she had twitched once about her lips.

  A characteristic groan as he paid in coin.

  You’d have been surprised by the tone

  He took, the young Catullus with Julius Caesar;

  A Tory untrussing a parvenu, dressing down

  A political bounder, a tyke. Then later,

  A heart shedding its petals, Latin verse.

  Sutcliffe’s poetry hardly varies ever:

  “Come pretty firework untruss

  And let me grope thy overplus,

  Between the horns of either-or

  Be my dilemma, purple whore,

  If spring be through, the season’s pulse,

  Let’s teach each other to emulse.”

  The ego (Affad used to say) is only a sort of negative for the superlative esoteric state – tiny glimpses of wholeness; as if light passed through them, printing out a different reality. He also said: “Love won’t live on charity, its demands are absolute. If she won’t love you then your ship is down by the hull. Aubrey overheard asking S: “What can I do to make you seem more real?”

  Birds do it like young Lesbians do

  As lip to lip they tup their tails

  In an adhesive swift caress,

  The oviposter’s carnal hue,

  A member short I must confess

  They cause each other sweet distress.

  But arms thrust to the elbow up

  Is how the modern hardies tup!

  Mud … Merde … Mutt … love-bewitched in old Bombay – my think is spunk when thunk … chunks of thought thunk spill spunk. Blanford to Sutcliffe: “Reading your verse is like dragging a pond without ever finding the body.”

  Tomboy with a clitoris like an ice-skate seeks rational employ. Sutcliffe: “To oblige her I had to bark like her Pekinese long-dead, run over, buried at the bottom of the garden. Until I was hoarse, my dear fellow! Gustav was the name of the Peke.”

  Paraplegic frolics, geriatric revels! Once upon a time Truth Absolute dwelt with the Sublime and poets knew where they were or thought they did. Now?! And if you can’t get your breath because of your asthma how will you cool your nymph’s porridge? Man is so weak that he needs the protection of a woman’s desire.

  I married a fair maid

  And she was compos mantis,

  We bought a third return

  On a voyage to Atlantis.

  “Happy New Year!” the roysters cried

  While clowning clones their cuddles plied.

  Gaunt Lesbians like undusted harps

  Hung up their woofs and coiled their warps.

  Woof to warp and warp to whoof

  They like their whisky over proof.

  And so one day we

  Reached Atlantis,

  Outside all peacock

  But inside mantis

  Ecco puella corybantis

  Primavera in split panties!

  The new day is dawning – women have become sex service stations: no more attachments, just distributors of friendly faceless lust. Modern girls whose body-image is smashed by neglect. Neither caressed enough nor suckled without disgust nor respected and treated with the awe they deserve. Pious loveless lives … Anorexia nervosa the name of tomorrow’s nun – spite long ripened in a sense of inadequacy. Insolent lurching looks when flushed and a bit drunk. Man is noble, man is marvellous: he can be monogamous for whole moments at a time!

  Poor Blanford with his eternal note-making and note-taking. “Proust, the last great art metaphor in European history, is relative and contingent in its view of life; ego, sensation, history … The sign manual is memory, the central notion is that being is advanced through memory – through what is kept artificially alive. History! But history is simply gossip from an eastern point of view – the five senses, the five arts, are its plumage. For after relativity and the field-theory bleakness sets in and the universe becomes cosmically pointless. Relativity does not bring relatedness! Monsieur est ravage par le bonheur! As Flaubert remarks somewhere: “Moi, je m’emmerde dans la perfection!”

  The fool waits for perfect weather but the wise man grabs at every scrap of wind, every lull. When he was young he headed for Paris, capital of synthetic loves. Tall beauties like well-trained rocking-horses. Love was a jubilant relation, placental in rhythm; we danced the foetal swirl, the omni-amni blues. A thirst for goodness becomes unhealthy. Let yourself embark on the music’s great white pinions into Time!

  The worldly life is the enemy of the poetic science! Alchemy will out! But holy structures when they go mad plunge into infamy!

  The vatic mule, our German Poet, where was he when the killing was rife? The language is so glutinous that it is like investigating the nervous system of a globe artichoke.

  The post-war world has started to form itself in Provence. In the village, Tubain, they have started drinking pastis with the old tumefied air, and playing at boules. It is reassuring. Even the human type has come back – the true Mediterranean loafer – sleep eats into him like an antacid into a dissenting Anabaptist! A purse under each eye and one under his waistcoat which stirs when he breathes as if a mole were trying to surface. A huge brown nose like Cromwell, full of snot. A Protestant mind packed tight as Luther’s big intestine with golden turds – alchemical fruit. The minority dream is to make the parochial universal – the whole universe a suburb with an accent fauiourgienne! Whiffs of red wine and underclothes – the love calls of a mouthful of dripping crumpet. An analysis of figments! Here, honey, chew on this crust, death!

  Problem of woman – lightning never strikes twice in the same place. That heavenly gloating walk, as sultry as Achilles upon a bed of glowing embers!

  Today Sutcliffe was washing his hair and singing tunelessly-his theme was “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?” to which he had harnessed words of his own devising, namely, “What shall we do with our alter
ego?” I suppose when the time comes you will force me to commit suttee – climb on to a pyre and disappear in a swirl of smoke and a delicious odour of frying bacon. My apotheosis will have begun – myself transformed into the Swami Utter Conundrum with his three free-wheeling geishas, preaching the way to Inner Umptiousness. Swami so full of inner magnetism that he sparks as he describes the new reality: “If you can leave it alone sufficiently you will discover that reality is bliss – nothing less! When the mathematical and the poetical co-exist as they were always meant to; a collision of worlds takes place and you write a hymn to Process. It’s love that beckons, that huge axiomatic doll that we kiss to three places of decimals. In her arms you realise that happiness is just despair turned inside out like a sleeve. You ask yourself, “What am I as an artist but a whimsical poacher of stallion’s eggs?”

  To investigate what went wrong with the intellect of a civilisation one has to start with human perception … i.e. sex, the original form of knowing which preceded language … i.e. telling, formulating, realising!

  sweet thumbs up

  dark thumbs down

  life’s for living

  says the clown

  nothing adventured

  nothing said

  slip off to join

  the laughing dead!

  Smirgel took every kind of precaution against declaring where he was living or how, and for a while all trace of him was lost-so much so that the Prince began to wonder whether the whole rigmarole of his story was not invented, perhaps for obscure motives. Then the air cleared and he telephoned to Constance and offered them a rendezvous at the little bistro on the road to Vers which had recently changed hands and reopened. Sunlight greeted them under the olives. He was already there when they arrived in the Prince’s great Daimler which had once belonged to Queen Mary! In the sparkling shadow and light of the glade with its green tables Smirgel looked what perhaps he really was at heart, a wandering German professor of history on holiday. But he rose to greet them and his ankles sketched the faintest shadow of a Prussian heel-click – out of respect for the two dignitaries who came forward to meet him full of a delicious sense of legitimate cupidity – the folklore of riches! The Prince’s natural affability was very fetching, he exuded warmth. They all sat down and eyed each other for a long moment of silence, until a waiter came out of the bar and procured them drinks of their choice. Smirgel was nervous and ordered water.

  After a silence during which the Prince politely toasted his guests in rather indifferent champagne Smirgel said, “Lord Galen, I feel we can afford to be frank now. I trust my reasons for wanting to meet you have become clear to you. I explained everything about the treasure to Constance and asked her to retail it to you in the hope of gaining your attention because I know that you and your consortium of interested backers are Geneva-based and serious – des gens sérieux, quoi! I am quite confident that what I have to offer them is of interest even though for the moment I cannot evaluate how much is actually at stake. The point is that nobody alive has access to it because of the pure danger inherent in the situation – the explosives and the mining! But what I can offer them is a detailed map of the boobytrapping with which one can gain safe access in order to visit and assess it. I have seen some of the precious stones and have spoken to the man who discovered it, so I know that it is not a fantasy but a fact. In exchange I would naturally wish to be represented among the other speculators, and entitled to my legitimate share of the booty.”

  “I must admit that the thought of an immense fortune makes me sentimental,” said Lord Galen dreamily, but the Prince sounded a trifle reproachful when he said, “Yes, but think of the pure historical beauty of the thing – to rediscover this long-lost and far-famed treasure! We mustn’t lose sight of the cultural aspect, for many of the articles must be things of great beauty and we must keep a careful record for the future of our find.” The German sat quietly smoking and watching them with attention. The Prince’s mind roved far and wide among the legends and folktales of his own land, Egypt where secret treasures buried in caves and guarded by malefic djinns were a commonplace. “It would be amusing,” he said, “if the treasure had been filched away and had been replaced with feathers or sand!” He chuckled, but neither Galen nor the German found this line of thought funny. “How soon can we be sure?”

  The German smiled and replied, “Just as soon as I am prepared to release to you the map of the workings. Then we can just walk into the caves and locate the door and force it. Presto! But this I will not do until the articles of association are signed and I am happy in my mind about my part.”

  “A limited company, based on Geneva, called Treasure Trove Incorporated,” said Galen dreamily. “But how shall we describe the site? I have all the means to create the document.”

  The German pulled forth from under him – he had been seated on it – a battered briefcase which contained two documents of importance: a cadastral map of the workings with scales and numbers and the names of the owners.

  The German continued his exposition in a leisurely style and in the tone of a lecturing professor, but the matter was impeccably organised and the English choice. “I have discovered that practically the whole section which concerns us is in the possession of one single family, and I have already made contact with them. They are peasants and pretty hard up so that they have been delighted to rent the whole section to me on a hundred-year lease; on my side I have been into the legal side of things and have obtained a government lease and a permit to work the land and exploit the resources. French law is coming back into force and civil considerations are coming to the fore. I hinted that what I had in mind was to reactivate the Roman quarry as there were many unexploited seams still bearing, and this would of course provide employment in the area which would be welcomed. Indeed this will have to be our cover-story, so to speak, as we would not wish to excite the French government with tales of buried treasure upon which they might have a tax claim. However, in the present state of things I see no major reason why we should not extract the treasure, bit by bit if necessary, and maintain a cover-front of quarrymen to work the seams in good faith. Do you see anything against it?”

  Lord Galen saw nothing against it. “But the famous map of the quarry – where is that?”

  “It is in my possession, in a safe place, and at your disposition when certain conditions have been fulfilled. Chief among them is of course my acquittal by the war crimes tribunal which have put me mistakenly on their black list. In two months’ time my case comes before them, by which time I hope that Lord Galen will have acted for the defence and pulled the scales down in my favour. This whole business is due to the vanity and jealousy of the Milice. They would like to get me branded or beheaded or imprisoned because of all I know about their behaviour during the bad years. They have much to hide, as you may well suppose. But I think it will be possible to get a fair verdict in my favour especially because of the British members of the ruling committee. I am sure Lord Galen knows them all and can put in a word for me. I have their names on this piece of paper.” He passed over the documents in question and Lord Galen saw with horror that there were several friends on the list, while the president of the tribunal was one of his shareholders! He swallowed and blinked. “As soon as I am acquitted you will have the map.

  But in the meantime let us work out the articles of association and get everything ready for action.”

  He conducted them across the quarry to where the entrance was, picked out by the tall entrances to the caves, some quite profound. “We are concerned”, he said, “with the sequence of caves which begins here, on the left-hand side. I have managed to get the family which owns the land to close off the entrance as far as is possible in order to avoid trespassers of any sort. I have had several scares concerning the place. On one occasion a shepherd used them to shelter his flock during a thunderstorm: drove a hundred sheep into the entrance. My blood ran cold – I happened to be across the way, sheltering myself in a cave-entr
ance. It was too late to stop the shepherd, for he had followed his sheep into the first corridor. When I told him the danger he faced he went as white as a sheet and started to whistle up his dogs to retrieve the sheep, which by this time had scattered into the various corridors. Psychologically we both kept our fingers in our ears and hardly dared to breathe for what seemed eternity, until the last sheep had been retrieved and chased back into no man’s land. What an escape! One sheep could easily have fouled a trip wire and set off the whole place by a mass explosion. But of course once we start work seriously we must enforce strict security measures until we have cleared the place – or as much of it as is necessary for the work we have in mind.”

  (Blanford had noted in his Ulysses archive: when the Cyclops cries, “Who goes there?” and Ulysses nervously replies “Nobody”, it constitutes the first Zen statement in the European literary canon!)

  Walking back across the olive-glades they reached a working agreement as to the procedure to be invoked in order to harness all their interests together. Smirgel gave them a phone number where they might contact him if need be and then took his leave astride an ancient push-bike, melting slowly into the landscape with slow strokes of the pedals. “Well I never,” said the Prince, summoning another drink in order to talk over the whole matter with his partner. “If this comes off it will be something quite unique, no?”