The Magus - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  Perhaps I was overbitter about the school during those days. The examinations had taken place; and it promised in the prospectus that "each student is examined personally in written English by the native English professor." This meant that I had two hundred papers or so to correct. In a way I didn't mind. It kept other anxieties and suspenses at bay.

  Wednesday came. Once again I met the boat, in vain. I half hoped for a letter, but that was in vain, too. I decided on a course of action. I would wait till the weekend; if I had heard nothing by then, I would go to Athens.

  * * *

  Wednesday had been a sultry day with a veiled sun, a sort of end-of-the-world day, very un-Aegean. That night I sat down for a really long session of correcting. Thursday was the deadline for handing in papers to the assistant headmaster. The air was very heavy, but about half-past ten I heard distant rumbles. Rain was mercifully coming. Half an hour later, when I had worked about one-third of the way through the pile of foolscap, there was a knock on the door. I shouted. I thought it was one of the other masters or perhaps one of the sixth-form leavers who had come cadging advance results.

  But it was Barba Vassili. He was smiling under his white walrus moustache; and his first words made me jump from my desk.

  "Sygnomi, kyrie, ma perimeni mia thespoinis."

  58

  "Excuse me, sir, but a young lady is waiting."

  "Where?" He indicated the gate. I was tearing on a coat. "With blonde hair?"

  "A very beautiful young lady. She is English?"

  But I was past him and running down the corridor. I called back to his grinning face — "To phos!" — to make him turn out the light. I leapt down the stairs, out of the building and raced along the path to the gate. There was a bare bulb there above Barba Vassili's window; a pool of white light. I expected to see her standing in it, but there was no one. The gate was locked at that time of night, since the masters all had passkeys. I felt in my pocket and remembered that I had left mine in the old jacket I wore in class. I looked through the bars. There was no one in the road, no one on the thistly wasteland that ran down to the sea fifty yards away, no one by the sea. I called in a low voice.

  But no quick shape appeared from behind the walls. I turned exasperatedly. Barba Vassili was coming slowly down through the trees.

  "Isn't she there?"

  He seemed to take ages to unlock the side gate we used. We went out into the road and looked both ways. He pointed, but doubtfully, down the road away from the village.

  "That way?"

  "Perhaps."

  I began to smell a rat. There was something in the old man's smile; it was ten past eleven; the thundery air, the deserted road. And yet I didn't care what happened; as long as something happened.

  "Can I have your key, Barba?"

  But he wouldn't let me have the one in his hand; had to go back inside his lodge and rummage and find another. He seemed to be delaying me; and when he at last came with another key, I snatched it out of his hand.

  I went quickly down the road away from the village. To the east lightning shuddered. After seventy or eighty yards, the school wall right-angled inland. I thought she might be just round the corner of it. But she wasn't. The road did not go much more than quarter of a mile farther; beyond the wall it looped inland a little to cross a dried-out torrent. There was a small bridge and, a hundred yards to the left of that, a chapel, which was linked to the road by a tall avenue of cypresses. The moon was completely obscured by a dense veil of high cloud, but there was a gray Palmeresque light over the landscape. I came to the bridge and called again in a low voice.

  "June? Julie?"

  I hesitated, torn between following the road and going back towards the village. Then there was a sound: my name. I ran up between the cypresses, black spindles against the opaque cloud. After forty yards or so there was a movement to my left. I whirled round. She was standing behind one of the largest trees: a dark dress, headscarf, a cardigan draped over her shoulders; all dark except for the white oval of the face.

  "Julie?"

  "It's me. June. Thank God you've come."

  I went to her. She looked back, round towards the road.

  "What on earth's wrong?"

  "I think I'm being followed."

  "Where's Julie?"

  "Isn't she here?"

  "Haven't you seen her?"

  "Not since Friday. Oh God." She let her head sink; and suddenly I was intensely suspicious again; both voice and movement were overwrought.

  "Where've you been?"

  She looked up, as if surprised. "In Athens."

  "But this extraordinary hour?"

  "I didn't get here till dusk. And I . . . well, I was frightened."

  I searched her face, pale against the black foliage. She was playing a part; and not very well. I glanced down towards the road; the whitewashed corner of the school wall. Then back at her.

  "Why didn't you wait at the gate?"

  "I panicked. He was gone such a long time." She had the amateur liar's habit of looking earnestly into one's eyes.

  "Who's following you?"

  "Two men. They stopped when I got to the school."

  "Where's Julie?" My voice was curt; no nonsense.

  "I thought you'd know. I had a telegram."

  "That was from me."

  "I had two."

  "Two!"

  She nodded. "One said 'Anne.' She told you what we arranged? I was to stay in Athens. And then yours. They both came on Sunday night. So I knew one must be false. I didn't trust yours, because it didn't sound like Julie. So I stayed in Athens." There were telltale little pauses between the sentences, as if she had to have each one accepted by me before going on. I stared at her.

  "Where was this other telegram from?"

  "Nauplia." Silence; she sensed my incredulity. "What happened here at the weekend?"

  I went, very quickly, through the events of the Sunday.

  She said, "How horrible. Oh how I wish we'd never got involved in all this." It sounded even more artificial. In the darkness she looked hallucinatorily like Julie and I reached down to touch her wrist. She turned away; then tensed.

  There were footsteps on the road. Three men were walking slowly along it. People, villagers, masters, often strolled to the end of the road and back in the evening, for the coolness. But she gave me a scared look. I didn't trust June one inch; I knew she was lying. Yet lying as a soubrette lies, much more out of mischief than malice.

  She whispered. "Maurice said he would see me on Sunday. In Athens. But I haven't seen a soul. And then yesterday I somehow guessed that you had sent the other telegram."

  "How did you get here? On the boat?"

  But she avoided that trap. "I found a way by land. By Kranidi?"

  Occasionally thalassophobic parents used that route — it meant changing at Corinth and taking a taxi from Kranidi and then hiring a boat to bring one across from the mainland; a full day's journey; and difficult if one didn't speak good Greek.

  "But why?"

  "I know I've been followed everywhere in Athens. And I've seen Joe."

  "Where?"

  "On Monday. He was in a car outside the Grande Bretagne. As soon as he saw me he drove away." I didn't believe it; she was simply telling stories. I hesitated, nearly called her bluff, changed my mind. Crossing the avenue I peered cautiously round a cypress on that side. The three were calmly strolling on, their backs to us; the grayish strip of road, the low black scrub. In a few moments they went round the bend and out of sight. June came beside me. I turned to her. "I've put the whole business in the hands of the police."

  "The police?" I could tell I had caught her off-balance; then remembered that my own lies had to be convincing.

  "Only today. I expect they've been looking for you in Athens." She gave a dubious sort of nod. "Well your sister's been abducted. Hasn't she?" She wouldn't meet my eyes. I was smiling. I began to feel certain that Julie was safe; and perhaps not very far away.

&nbs
p; "I was thinking of the telegram." There was a silence. I could smell the rain; then thunder, closer. "Would you come back with me? I'm in the hotel. I'm so frightened. On my own." I gave her averted face a long salt look again; then grinned. I knew now that she had been sent to fetch me.

  "Let's go round the rear of the school. Come on. While the going's good."

  I took her hand and led her silently and quickly up the cypress alley to the chapel. Beyond it a path climbed up into the trees, and a minute or two later we came on a transverse path that led round hack to the village. Now we were higher we could see the lightning, great skittering sheets of it, ominously pink, over the sea to the east. Islands ten or fifteen miles away stood palely out, then vanished. There were green wafts of wet air. We walked rapidly, in silence, though I took her arm once or twice to help her over the steeper slopes. Below us, over the massive trunk of the school, I could see the pale light outside Barba Vassili's lodge. There were one or two lighted windows in the masters' wing. Mine was out.

  Lightning sheeted closer, making the landscape, sleeping school, olive groves, cottages, chapels, sea, stems, branches, flash luridly into presence. I looked at my watch. It was just midnight, and I felt full of a sort of joy, an amused excitement, the intoxication of danger, deceit, the unknown, the girl beside me. We came to a path that led down between cottages, and made our way through the back alleys of the village. A few isolated drops of rain began to fall. Somewhere a shutter slammed; a man standing in a lit doorway wished us good night. At last we came to the narrow high-walled lane that led behind the hotel, and through a gateway into the back yard. A light came from the rear door, which was half-glazed. I made June wait beside it while I looked in across the stone tiles to the front part of the lobby. A few scattered chairs and a sofa; the double glass doors of the main entrance. In one of the armchairs by the reception desk sat a man in a white shirt. The clerk. He was slumped, evidently asleep. I tried the half-glazed door. It was open.

  I turned to her against the wall, and whispered.

  "You'll be all right now. I'll see you in the morning."

  "You must come in." Her face looked startled.

  "I don't think I'd better."

  "Nicholas. Please. You must." For the first time her voice sounded genuinely alarmed. "I don't want to compromise you."

  She didn't say anything, but she began to smile like a girl who recognizes that she is being teased, and deserves it; and makes churlishness very difficult.

  "I've got the key." She produced it from her skirt pocket; it had a brass tag with 13 stamped out.

  "Appropriate number."

  "Please."

  She bent, slipped off her shoes, then took the initiative and my hand. We tiptoed into the hotel lobby, halfway down which the stairs led off to the left. The man in the white shirt was snoring slightly. A clock was ticking. Rapid rain began to drum on the tatty blue and white marquise outside. Like ghosts we padded up the stone staircase, around a half-landing, and then we were out of sight. She led me along a corridor on the first floor; stopped outside the end back room. I took the key and fitted it in the lock. I didn't know what to expect; but I was as tense as a thief. The door gave. I let June go first. She fficked on the light, and we both stood in the doorway. It was a large square room. There was a double bed with a pink bedspread, a table with a green cloth, two wooden chairs and an armchair, a cupboard, two or three skimpy carpets. Pale gray walls in need of painting, a photo of King Paul, an oleograph ikon over the bed. Another door led into a bathroom.

  I closed the door and relocked it. Then I went and looked in the bathroom. A huge bath, nowhere to hide. I opened the wardrobe. A dress, a pair of girl's slacks on a hanger, a black cotton dressing gown. Under the bed: a dusty chamber pot. There was no trap.

  June had been watching and smiling. She twisted off the headscarf and the cardigan and threw them on the end of the bed; stood in a dark blue skirt and a black sleeveless shirt.

  "What now?"

  "I'd love a cigarette."

  I gave her one and lit it, and then she went to the mirror door of the wardrobe, unpinned her hair, shaking it out, slim-backed, bare-armed. I went behind her and watched her face in the mirror. Gray-amethyst eyes. She had a little smile.

  I said, "Your cue."

  "Is it?"

  She turned then, the smile widening; and much too mischievous to be consonant with an abducted sister.

  "What's so funny?"

  "I was just thinking of the first time we met." The invitation was so absurd that I laughed. "Seriously."

  "I don't think anything's very serious with you."

  I went and stood by the window, the now torrential rain. "Where is she, June?"

  She walked to the wardrobe and took out a cotton dressing gown. "I don't know. Really."

  "Come on."

  But she went into the bathroom. Thunder crashed. She left the door ajar, and a few moments later she came back with the dressing gown on, and hung the skirt and shirt she had been wearing up in the wardrobe. Rain came in a great squall of wind; gusts of coolness through the shutters. Suddenly she switched the light off, so that there was only the light from the open bathroom door. She came across the room to where I was standing. It was a short dressing gown; a deep neckline. She sat on the arm of the armchair beside me.

  "My sister's with Maurice, Nicholas. I really don't know where. I expect on his yacht." She paused, then added, "She's completely under his influence."

  "Rubbish."

  She looked up at me. "Didn't you realize?" Lightning flickered through the shutters. She jumped, too obviously. I counted three; then thunder boomed.

  "I see. And you've come to console me?"

  The rain pelted outside. Somewhere down the corridor a key went into a lock, a door opened and closed. Then a secondary clap of thunder. June stood up and came very close beside me. She had put on scent in the bathroom. I put my cigarette in my mouth and left it there.

  "Why not?"

  I leant back against the sill. She was tracing patterns on it; as she had on the back of the seat by the Poseidon statue.

  "Come on. Where is she?"

  "Oh, how I hate thunder." But I knew she didn't mind it at all. She waited, staring down through the shutters, in profile. She murmured, "I'm cold."

  I crossed the room to the light, which I switched on; then leant against the door.

  "Why don't you just take all your clothes off and hop into bed?"

  "I'm shy."

  "I never noticed that before."

  "But I will if you like."

  "I do like."

  "I'll just finish my cigarette."

  "Please."

  There was a silence. She clasped one elbow, and moved nervously round a little, the shortening cigarette cocked in the air. She sat on the edge of the bed. Thunder pealed again, overhead, and she shivered. Silence; the drumming rain.

  "I think it's much more exciting when one doesn't really know the other person, don't you?"

  "I'm sure you speak from a wealth of experience."

  "Do I look so innocent?" For a moment her sideways look up at me seemed sincere; and innocent.

  I shook my head. "Completely worldworn."

  "Some appearances are deceptive."

  I said, "Cigarette ends don't lie." It was getting very short.

  "Oh. Yes. I forgot." She took a last puff, then stubbed it out on the abalone shell beside the bed.

  She stood, and touched the ends of the belt of her dressing gown.

  "Would you mind turning the light off?"

  "I see you better with it on."

  She looked down. "It seems so coldblooded."

  "Poker is a coldblooded game."

  "Poker?"

  Thunder interrupted us again.

  "I thought that was what we were playing."

  She fiddled with the ends of her belt.

  "At least you could kiss me."

  "I shall. Later."

  Silence; she took a bre
ath. I thought for one moment . . . but she gave me a quick look and said, "I'm afraid I must go along to the loo first."

  I immediately unlocked the door and opened it. She checked for a moment as she passed me; an oblique look.

  "I shan't be a moment."

  I grinned, to tell her I could see the trick a mile off, but she had gone. I took the key out of the lock and went back to the window. There was the strange smell in summer Greece of wet stone, almost a London smell. Steady rain; I imagined it running down the walls of hundreds of thirsty cisterns. The excited eels. A minute passed.

  There was a sound. I flicked a look round, and although I allowed myself only a glimpse of the girl in the black dressing gown in the doorway, I knew I had been right from the beginning. The door was closed, the light turned off. I kept my back turned; almost silent footsteps behind me, and then two cool hands reached round and touched my cheeks, my eyes, ran down to my mouth.

  59

  The hands caressed my cheeks again; then my ears; playfully pulled them, as June might have pulled them. I thought of various clever things to say; of pretending that I did not know. But in the end I just said, "Julie."

  The hands stopped; there was a little silence.

  "She said you'd guessed."

  I turned and she was smiling at me; the Leonardo smile; dressed exactly as June had been, her hair down. I put a quiet offence into my voice.

  "Why?"

  "Just a little last surprise."

  "Or a test?"

  She bowed her head in a not altogether mock shame; and then I kissed her. A long minute, the receding thunder, the mild rain; silence and her warm mouth, the feel of her body through the thin cotton. I had and held her.

  There was a discreet knock.

  "It's June."

  She went to the door, switching on the light. June stood there holding a tray with a bottle of Greek cognac on it and three glasses. She had put on another identical black shirt and blue skirt — her sister's.