The Revolt of Aphrodite: Tunc and Nunquam

by Lawrence Durrell

  There seemed nothing for it but to bow to his whim for the time being. But one morning my own phone rang at the office and I could tell from the timbre of his voice that the call was coming from somewhere inside the building. It was Julian all right—by now I was quite familiar with his voice, we had already spoken to each other frequently; moreover I knew that he had an office at the end of the corridor where Nathan, the general admin, sec. presided over his papers. Why, I had even recorded him once or twice for my collection. I thought in playful fashion that I might surprise him, meet him in the flesh. So while he still spoke I put down the receiver on my blotter and stalked down the long corridor to throw open the door of the office in question. But there at his desk sat Nathan only; a small dictaphone, attached to the telephone, was still playing. “Ah you’ve hung up, Mr. Charlock” said Nathan with mild reproach, cutting off. I felt something of a fool. Nathan switched over and said. “He was in very early this morning and recorded half a dozen conversations. He often does so.”

  I recounted this incident somewhat ruefully to Benedicta; but she only smiled and shook her head. “You’ll never catch Julian on the hop” she said. “Until he decides.”

  “What does he look like, Benedicta?” I asked. She gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “There isn’t anything special about him. He’s just like anyone else I think.”

  On a sudden impulse I asked: “Have you ever seen him?” The question was quite involuntary, and the moment it was out I knew it to be absurd. But Benedicta swallowed and answered: “Of course, quite definitely.” But the tone in which she said it struck me as curious. If I had had to “interpret” it in the manner of the inimitable Nash I should have taken it to mean: “I think that the person I have seen is Julian, but I am not absolutely sure.” The thought as it crossed my mind however seemed to be ever so slightly disloyal, so I stifled it and changed the subject. “Ah well” I said “I expect we shall see him for the wedding at any rate.” But once again I was to find myself in error, for neither Julian nor anyone else came to the wedding though the house was bursting with presents and telegrams of congratulations.

  The wedding! What could have been more singular? I had asked no questions, of course; but then on the other hand I had been asked none. The arrangements were not of my making, but it was to be presumed that Benedicta (if she were not herself responsible for them) had at least been consulted. I supposed that she had decided to get married in the strictest privacy, that was all. Only that and nothing more. Nor had I anyone that I wished to invite. No family. An uncle in America, some cousins in India, that was all.

  But it was my first visit to “Cathay”, that preposterous, gloomy country house which was to be our home; moreover by night, for the marriage was arranged for midnight. “Cathay” forsooth! With its turrets and fishponds, great park, cloth-of-gold chamber, huge organ by Basset. At the end of a normal office day my fellow directors came in one by one to wish me luck and a happy honeymoon—cracking the usual awkward jokes about visiting the condemned man in his cell etc. After these so amiable pleasantries I took a taxi home to an early dinner, to find the hall full of luggage and the office car already outside the door. It was piquant, mysterious, rather exciting to be motored down into the depths of the country like this. It smelt of orange-blossom and elopements in the dark of the year. I visualised some great house-party with Julian and some of his collaborators, perhaps with a wife or two present to balance the forces of good and evil. Indeed I thought that Julian could hardly do less than witness for us. We did not speak much as the car nosed its way slowly through the slippery gromboolian suburbs towards Hampshire. Benedicta sat close beside me with her gloved hand in mine, looking pale and somewhat contrite. After the ceremony we were to drive on directly to Southampton to board the Polaris—a Merlin Line cruiser. But the wedding itself was of course to be a civil one. No church-bells for Charlock.

  It was a long coldish drive with fine rain glittering in the white beam of the headlights, prickling through the greenery of forest land and heath. My initial elation had given way to a certain tender solemnity. “Benedicta” I whispered, but she only pressed my hand tightly and said: “Sh! I’m thinking.” I wondered what her thoughts might be as she stared out across the darkling light. Of a past she had confided to nobody?

  At last we crackled down the long avenues towards the bowl of golden light which gleamed at the end of the long green tunnels. The house was ablaze with light, and crammed with people all right. A telephone was insisting somewhere. But to my surprise “the people” were all servants. In the rococo musicians’ gallery with its mouldy Burne-Jones flavour a quintet played ghastly subdued music as if afraid to overhear itself. Butlers and maids moved everywhere with a kind of clinical deliberation—yet for all the world as if they were making preparations for a great ball. A staff like this could have mounted a wedding reception for four hundred people. But I could see no trace of any guests. But a mountain of telegrams lay unopened on the marble tables in the hall, and the preposterous Edwardian rooms leading with an air of ever greater futility into each other were bursting with presents—everything from a concert grand to silver crocks and gew-gaws of all sorts and sizes. The mixture of portentous emptiness and reckless prodigality staggered me.

  But Benedicta moved about it all with a kind of fiery elation, mothlight of step, her face glowing with pleasure and pride. She held her head high against the forest of candle-branches and spectral Venetian lustres. It struck me then how foreign she was. I divined that this old house with its musty gawkish features offered a sort of mental association with Stamboul—those rotting palaces in style pompier copied and recopied, criss-crossed with mirrors set in tarnished mouldings. Shades of Baden and Pau—yes, that is what made her feel so at home, so at one with it all. “But is there nobody except the servants?” I asked, and she turned her dancing eyes upon me for a second before shaking her blonde head. “I told you, silly. Only us.” Only us! But we had just passed an enormously long buffet prepared for a midnight supper: apparently the baked meats (I thought in muddled quotation) were destined to grace the servants’ hall. It was marvellous, it was macabre. I felt quite a wave of affection for poor Baynes who now advanced towards us with a sheaf of telegrams—congratulations from Jocas, Julian, Caradoc, Hippolyta: his was a familiar face. These brief messages from the lost world of Athens and Stamboul gave me a little pang—they seemed almost brutally gay. Baynes said: “They are waiting for you in the library, madam.” Benedicta nodded regally and led the way. The noise of the quintet followed us apologetically. Everywhere there were flowers—but big banks of flowers professionally arranged: their heavy scent swung about in pools among the candle-shining shadows. And yet … it was all somehow like a cinema, I found myself thinking. Baynes marched before us and opened yet another door.

  The library! Of course I did not discover the fact until later, but this huge and beautifully arranged room with its galleries and moulded squinches, its sea-green dome, its furnishings of globes, atlases, astrolabes, gazetteers, was a fake: all the books in it were empty dummies! Yet to browse among the titles one would have imagined the room to contain virtually the sum total of European culture. But the books were all playful make-believe, empty buckram and gilt. Descartes, Nietzsche, Leibniz…. Here, however, all was candle-light and firelight, discreet and perhaps a trifle funereal? No, not really. A large desk, covered with a green baize cloth, conveyed the mute suggestion of an altar, with its flowers, candles and open registers. Here sunning his shovel-shaped backside stood the Shadbolt, beside the registrar for the district; their clerks stood by to act as witnesses if need be—mouldy and dispossessed-looking figures. We greeted each other formally and with much false cordiality. Benedicta gave the signal while I groped in my pockets for the ring.

  To my surprise she seemed quite moved by the grim routine of the civil ceremony. It did not last long. At a signal the tremulous Baynes appeared with champagne on a tray and we relaxed into a more compreh
ensive mood of relief. Shadbolt toasted us heartily; and Benedicta made her slow way through the house to touch glasses with the servants who had also been provided with a little spray with which to respond. It all seemed to happen in a flash. Within an hour we were on our way again, down the long roads to Southampton. It was raining. It was raining. I thought of the blue gourd of the Mediter-ranean sky with longing. Benedicta had fallen asleep, her long aquiline nose pointing downwards along my sleeve. I cradled her preciously. She looked so sly. From time to time a tiny snore escaped her lips.

  Dawn’s left hand was in the sky by the time we negotiated the sticky dockland with its palpitating yellow lights and climbed the long gangplank of the sleeping ship to seek out the bridal suite on A deck. Benedicta was speechless with fatigue and so was I; too tired to supervise the stacking of the luggage, too tired to think. We fell into our bunks and slept; and by the time I woke I felt the heart-lifting sensation of a ship sliding smoothly through water—the soft clear drub of powerful engines driving us steadily seaward. There was too the occasional lift, and hiss of spray on the deck around us. I had a bath and went on deck—a wind-snatched deck with a light grizzle of rain falling upon it. The land lay far behind now in the mists of morning, a grey smudge of cloud-capped nothingness. We were on our way round the world. England hull down in the sea-mist of dawn. It was so good to be alive.

  Just time to return to my cabin and finish the study of the mantis which Marchant had lent me. “Another theory was constructed on the physiological experiments of Rabaud and others; in these it was found that the superior nerve-centres restrain or inhibit the reflexive system. The control is weakened by decapitation. The visible result is that the reflexive-genital activity of the headless male is made more vigorous and therefore biologically more effective.” Benedicta sighed in her sleep and turned to snuggle deeper into the soft pillows. The same goes for decapitated frogs, while any hangman will tell you that a broken spinal cord will produce an instant ejaculation. I put my book aside and smoked, lulled by the lilt of the ship as she manned the green sea. Then slept again to awake and find my breakfast beside me and Benedicta sitting opposite in a chair, naked and smiling. We were sliding back towards Polis, that was why perhaps—towards those first intimacies which seemed now to lie far back in the past. Did she suit her lovemaking to the country she found herself in? Now as she came to sit cross-legged on the end of my bed I thought back to those ancient kisses and little punishments—the water torture, the wax torture, the frenetic zealous kisses with their wordless pieties—all of them making a part of the bright fabric of the past which must be carried forward into a future bright with promise. And here I was with the creature within arm’s reach. Moreover what could well be more delightful than the life of shipboard with its defined routines, its lack of demands upon one’s personal initiative? And with it isolation, being surrounded by water on every side. It seemed so soon when we found ourselves sliding past Gibraltar into calmer seas, cradled by light racing cloud and water far bluer than we deserved. She had flowered into a kinetic laziness which suited itself marvellously to the holiday mood. The only interruption was an occasional long cable from Julian about the minor details of some industrial operation; but even these dwindled away into silence.

  Three months! But they passed in a slow-motion dream; already the lazy life of the ship had bemused us, sunk us into a tranced nescience. Talk of Calypso’s island—I forgot even to make notes, forgot to figure. I read like a convalescent. I was even able to find relief from those half-unconscious trains of reasoning which had always formed a sort of leitmotiv to my quotidian life—so much so that I could honestly say that there had not been a single moment until now when I was not fully occupied with my private thoughts. An invisible censor clad in gumboots strode up and down before Charlock’s subliminal threshold—O a far more competent fellow than the greybearded Freudian one. A primordial biological censor this, rather like a beefeater in the Tower of London.

  Of course there were interludes in all this uxorious sloth when my alter Charlock reproached me bitterly and pushed me into involuntary attempts to show a leg. At Monte, for example, I rallied sufficiently to consider playing the tables. I collected a mass of those long printed sheaves of paper which record the numbers thrown out by the wheels. They are of great interest to those unwary souls who wish to study form with a view to establishing a system and so breaking the bank. I was hardly less unwary and thought that a brief analysis might—I had been playing about with mathematical probability—ah wretched artificer! But when I suggested this Benedicta came back with a very decisive “Ah dear no. Have you forgotten that the firm owns nearly all the shares in the Casino? Do you think they would let me lose on my honeymoon? We’d win a fortune Felix—what would be the point of it?” Indeed! I let the long sheaves float away in the wind and settle in the pale waters.

  The firm was omnipresent, though in a queer tactful sort of way; nor do I mean simply that the captain and crew of the vessel knew who we were, and had received instructions to take specially good care of us. It went a bit deeper than that. At every point of disembarkation we were discreetly met by the resident agent and taken on a conducted tour of the place, much in the manner of visiting minor royalty. This was most welcome in countries where we did not know the language and habits of the natives—Cambodia, India for example. Nevertheless I could well understand this unobtrusive tutelage becoming oppressive in the long run. There were a number of state occasions to be observed as well which made me sigh for the anonymity of a hotel-room in Florence; a Governor here and there bade us to his table: those huge mournful Government houses full of sighing chintz and mammoth billiard tables, full of bad pictures and unpalatable cooking. Well, I sighed—we both sighed—but there was nothing to be done but accept and attend. This of course was more marked east of Suez: we were familiars of the Mediterranean, needing no help in Athens or in Jocasland of the tumbled minarets. But Athens was strangely hushed—everyone was away it seemed, either abroad or in the islands. Nor could I get any news of Banubula or Koepgen, try as I would. I had a small fugitive inclination to visit the Plaka and perhaps Number Seven as well, but I dismissed it, telling myself that time was short. But at Stamboul it was no surprise to see a little white pinnace scuttling across the sea to meet us with Jocas steering her—this long before the mists divided to reveal the ancient city trembling among the tulip-topped bastions. I saw the great confiding hand of Jocas come sliding up the gangplank rope like a deepsea squid; then he was before us, with his shy dancing eye. There was nothing equivocal in the tenderness with which he greeted us, pressed us to his heart. He had brought some small presents like newspapers, Black Sea caviar, Turkish cigarettes and some rare pieces of jewellery for B. So we spent the day a-gossip under a white awning, watching the city swim up from the deeps. Our lunch was served on deck and Jocas drank his champagne to us, uttering the familiar druidic toasts to bless our union. Benedicta looked ravishing in her new brown skin; the fine hairs shading from temple to cheek had already turned silkworm golden. “I have never seen her look so calm, so well” said Jocas softly in an aside, and indeed it seemed to me to be so. He was full of news of the property and of course the birds and their form. Benedicta questioned him eagerly. Indeed at one point she wanted to stay a week, but the itinerary was already so charged…. Omar the master falconer was dead, but Said had taken over and was doing very well. He had invented a new kind of lure. And so on. But mixed also in this animated exchange of fact were scraps of news about other friends and acquaintances—Caradoc in New York, for example, preparing to fly out to his new venture. Graphos was going from strength to strength, after having nearly ruined his career because of an infatuation with a streetwalker. And Koepgen? “He is doing well in Moscow; he will have a year or two yet. I know you have his notebooks.” As a matter of fact I had one with me on the voyage. “And then what?” Jocas twinkled the gold smile and rubbed his hands. “He will get a large bonus and be free to pursue his studies.�
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  “And that ikon?”

  “Yes, we have found the one he wants; it is quite safe, waiting for him. But the firm comes first.” Jocas giggled. “It’s a lure, eh?”

  The liner was scheduled to stay only a few hours; it was hardly worth going ashore for such a brief period; a gaggle of sightseers were rushed ashore, crammed into buses and given a swift glimpse of the great walls of smoking dung. But we sat on deck, talking drowsily, until they returned and the warning siren sent its herds of echoes thundering across the sky. Benedicta was leaning at the rail now, staring down into the water. “In the old days” Jocas was saying dreamily “they had bird-fairs all over Central Europe—singing birds I mean. Her father was a renowned breeder of songbirds, and won prizes everywhere with his exhibits. They say he was the first to think of blinding birds in order to improve their singing—you know, red-hot copper wire. It’s easily and painlessly done they say. He built up quite a trade in cage-birds at one time, but the business outgrew it. Now only a few specialists are interested; the fairs have all lapsed. There is no room for them in the modern world, I suppose.”

  “Did it improve their singing?”

  “It would improve anyone’s singing; one sense develops to compensate for the loss of another—you know that. Why do they try to find a blind man always for muezzin? It needn’t be eyes necessarily. The voice of the castrato, for example.” He yawned heartily, by now half asleep. “Benedicta,” he called “I must leave you, my dear. I wish I could come too but I can’t.”

  The sightseeing passengers were panting aboard again led by two steatopygous priests—soutanes stuffed with blood-sausage. Benedicta came thoughtfully back to us and said, without any preliminary gambit: “Jocas, did you give Mr. Sacrapant the sack?” Jocas was surprised into a smile as he answered. “Of course not.”