The Magus - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  Julie said reproachfully, "He knew at once."

  June pulled a face at me as she came in, as if I was to blame. "You could have pretended, Nicholas. I think you're a cad."

  "I'm past pretending. And could I be told what's happened?"

  But Julie came and took my arm. "It was a shame. It was her idea."

  June poured me a full glass of koniak; fingers for herself and her sister. She handed me mine, then sat on the bed, where Julie joined her.

  "Weren't those men fantastic?" She turned to Julie. "I told him I was being followed. And suddenly three sinister men appeared."

  "They weren't sinister. They were just out for the air."

  "Oh, you've no imagination."

  We raised glasses, clinked them.

  I said, "What exactly are we celebrating?"

  They glanced at each other, grinned. Julie smiled up at me.

  "Can't you guess?"

  June said, "Look, we have come through."

  They sat on the bed like a pair of sphinxes, enjoying their secret, their silence, and my impatience. Julie finally had mercy.

  "It was Maurice."

  "Everything?"

  "He couldn't resist a last joke. On both of us."

  "But that business on Sunday . . . did they hurt you?"

  She clasped her heart. "Oh, the shock. When I saw those men. How long did they make you stay down there?" I told her. "There were four of them. Germans. But they were all right, they didn't hurt me. There was a caϊque waiting."

  "And Maurice?"

  "He was in Athens when we got there. With June. We've spent the last two days with him."

  "And we've agreed to help him next year," said her sister.

  "And I said you would help, too. I'd convince you."

  "Did you indeed?"

  "I will." She smiled.

  "And where's Maurice now?"

  "He's really gone. To America. It's all over."

  June said, "Tonight was just us. Being naughty." She finished her drink and stood up. "Well . . ."

  I watched her put on her cardigan, the headscarf.

  "But has he told you . . . everything?" They both nodded, smiled at each other. "Come on. Stop playing sphinxes."

  June said, "It's not what we thought at all."

  "Not a masque?"

  Julie shook her head.

  "Then what?"

  "Ah."

  "That is the question."

  They laughed at my expression. Julie said, "We've got all tomorrow. A whole summer of tomorrows." She stood up. "It's stopped raining, hasn't it? Maurice has lent us the house."

  Her sister turned from the mirror and looked slyly at me. "I'll stay if you like. But Hermes is waiting to see me home. I hope."

  Julie said, "Yes, he's downstairs."

  June went to the tray and took up the bottle and filled my glass, then looked at Julie; bit her lips at me. She said softly, "A demain."

  Then the door was closing behind her.

  Julie faced me. "Do you know what I'm going to do? Have a bath." She smiled. "We really did come overland. To surprise you. And it was so hot and dusty." She came up to me and took my coat by the lapels; gave me a tenderly grave look.

  "Julie."

  "Aren't we clever?"

  "No more cleverness."

  She must have heard the implicit question, because she answered, and promised, "Tomorrow." A moment. She murmured, "Shall we lock the door?"

  I swallowed the brandy in two big gulps, then locked the door while she went and turned on the bath. She came back in the bathroom door so that we stood facing each other across the stone floor. Thunder rumbled; but the storm was past and now was freshness, reward, fertility. I reached back without taking my eyes from her, and switched off the light. She stood for a moment silhouetted, the crown of long hair, then she too reached and switched off the bathroom light. A faint gray light came through the shutters. We moved towards each other. She let me kiss her, her mouth, her neck, her shoulders. I could feel the brandy working in me, but she seemed to be passive, overwhelmed. I reached for her belt, unknotted it, pushed the dressing gown back from her shoulders, down the arms till it fell to the floor. She let me take off her underclothes and stood while I ripped off my own coat and shirt; a slim white shape, Botticelli's Primavera, trembling a little as I touched her. I took her to the bed and lay beside her, running my hands over her breasts, her stomach, her waist curve, her soft legs, the silky nakedness of her on the coarse bedspread; not the worst of substitutes for pine needles. All I could think was that at last I had her, I had come through, she was by some miracle, some triumph of an outside chance, mine and my revenge on the human condition and my own destiny. Another bracelet of bright hair about the bone. I lay on top of her, mastering her, pretending to possess her. All the time her eyes were shut, but she became less passive, began to caress the nape of my neck, my bare back. There was a scalding gush from the bathroom.

  She whispered. "It'll run over."

  "Let it."

  "I'm so tense."

  I got off the bed and she sat on the side while I knelt beside her and kissed her. The darkness paled and I could see her better, the prettiness and smallness of her, the shyness and determination not to be shy, the rendering of a body. I thought, she's never really known a normal man, it's almost as if she was a virgin; as exciting. She pushed me gently away and went into the bathroom. I got out of my remaining clothes and followed her. She had started the cold water and while we waited for the bath to cool, I held her as I had held her down outside the music room. She twisted her head to kiss me. The steam, the smell of hot salt water; the naked back of her body, its curves; that ecstasy of delicious exasperation, every nerve stiff and erect, taut to burst the bud, to break into flower; the short tremendous flower.

  Eventually we got into the bath. There was less light than in the bedroom. But touch reigned. I guessed that the shared bath represented a wish to be timidly wicked, a mode of giving way. There was a wrestling with legs, trying to fit them in as we faced each other. Splashing, leaning, trying to kiss — but it was a strain and we had to lie back. I thought of other baths shared: Alison. Of how all naked women become the same naked woman, the eternal naked woman; who could not die, who could only be celebrated as I was going, in an obscure way, to celebrate Alison in Julie; almost to mourn her as I remet and remade her.

  We began to touch each other's loins with our feet. Her toes; shy then inquisitive; the soft wet pelt, dark softness between the silk white thighs; her mysterious lust.

  A long silence. I made her turn round, so that she sat against me. There was a pretence of washing, of soaping and splashing; but mostly caressing, kissing, moulding, biting. Finally she stood up and out of the bath and we dried. She undid the scarf round her hair and it fell again. Her damp, warm body, the water gurgling away, the sense that the whole village was asleep — not only in that night, but in time, ten generations unable to understand the divinity, the paradise of sex. Not a man in the world I would have changed places with; or who would not have wanted to change places with me. She put her arms round me and kissed me, as if the bath had relieved all her tenseness; then whispered, "I haven't . . ."

  "It's all right."

  She went in to the bedroom and I got my coat and brought it into the bathroom and put on a contraceptive. When I came out she was lying on her side. I stood beside the bed, looking at her eyes, the eyes of her breasts, that body. I knelt to kiss it, but she twisted off the bed before I could stop her, with a little breath of laughter. There was more light, the moon must have come through a rift in the clouds. She stood over by the far window, as if waiting for me to catch her. I walked slowly towards her. Just before I got within reach, but was sure she was not going to move, she slipped sideways and pushed my arms down as I stretched to catch her. She stopped against the wall by the door. This fey game of tag was a kind of last acting of her role towards me: the uncatchable, the virgin temptress. It was too charmingly perverse, anoth
er attempt to be wicked, to really irritate; and too badly timed to really please.

  Now she stood, back to the wall, her arms out, hands pressed back, as if crucified. I smiled and stole closer, but she said in a low voice, "Don't move."

  She raised both her anns above her head, the backs of the wrists together, as if they were bound; and crossed her ankles, as if they were tied as well. Someone must have switched on a light in one of the houses behind the hotel, because a brighter, slatted light percolated the room; barred her body. She had a smile on her face.

  "Who am I?"

  It was a pose, a sexual guessing-game.

  "The slave?"

  "Cophetua."

  She covered her breasts and loins.

  "Eve?"

  "Now?"

  She put her hands behind her back and leant against the wall; looking at me shyly from under her eyebrows. I began to be tired of all this whimsy; I put my hands on the wall beside her head, caging her in. She looked down.

  "Her first love affaire."

  "Now be just you."

  "What is just me?"

  I took the ends of her hair and gently pinned her head back, went closer; she moved her hands from behind her back and rested them on my hips. I inched forward until I was pressing her against the wall. She put her bare feet on top of mine. I slipped my hands round her back. And we stood like that, touching noses, staring into each other's dark eyes, too close to focus.

  "I'm going to find out."

  "Are you?"

  A little smile at the corner of her mouth; the Leonardo smile again. I caught her to me and kissed her; she gave, then struggled wildly, so wildly that I half let go of her. I caught her back, but still she struggled; though it became a sex struggle, a falling across the end of the bed, rolling on top of each other, kisses begun and bite-ended, grapplings. I remembered an old Urfe law: that girls possess sexual tact in inverse proportion to their standard of education. She seemed to want me to rape her. Her legs opened, but only for tantalizing moments, then closed as she twisted away.

  In the end I threw myself back.

  "Julie. Come on. For Christ's sake."

  It must have sounded more like despair than pleasure, because she suddenly knelt beside me, her hair hanging, staring down. She caught hold of my wrists and pretended to hold me down.

  "Do you want me?"

  "I'm dying for you."

  Then very quickly she slipped off the bed; ran to the door. I sat up.

  "Julie?"

  I saw her pale figure against the faint rectangle; watching me for a moment. Her right hand reached sideways.

  She spoke. The strangest voice; as hard as glass.

  "There is no Julie."

  There was the sound of her alien voice and a metallic click. For a fraction of a second I thought it was a joke, she was acting again, had accidentally touched the key.

  Then there was a violent cascade of events.

  * * *

  The door was flung wide open, the light came on, there were two black figures, two tall men in black trousers and shirts. One was the Negro and the other was "Anton." Joe came first, so fast at me that I had no time to do anything but convulsively grip the bedspread over my loins. I tried to see Julie, her face, because I still could not accept what I knew: that she had turned the key and opened the door. Anton flung her something she caught and quickly put on — a deep-red towel bathrobe. Joe flung himself at me just as I was about to shout. His hand clapped violently across my mouth and I felt the weight of him; a whiff of shaving lotion, or hair oil. I was in no fit state to struggle. What fighting I did was mainly to try to keep the bedspread over me. Anton gripped my legs. They must have had loops of rope ready prepared, because in fifteen seconds I was tied up. Then I was gagged. I got out one stifled beginning of what I felt at Julie.

  "You —"

  But then I was silenced. The two men forced my arms back, so I was lying fiat, straining my neck up to see Julie. She turned, tying the ends of the belt. Another figure appeared in the door: Conchis. He was dressed like the others, in black shirt and trousers. He looked at Julie, and gave a little nod of approval; touched her shoulder. She was combing her hair briefly, not looking at me. Like a woman athlete who had just won a race. Conchis came and stood over me. He looked down at me absolutely without expression. I threw all the hate I had in me at him, tried to make obscene sounds that he could understand. A flash of awareness: this was an echo of the torture room in the war; a corner room at the end of a corridor; a man lying on his back on the table; symbolically castrated.

  Now Julie came to the other side of the bed. My eyes began to fill with tears of frustrated rage and humiliation. I was just able to realize that her look was not completely detached from me; there was no contempt in it, no mockery; but a strange reversion to her old self, the Lily self, the cool, aloof self that I had first known. Not as if she was an athlete now, but a woman surgeon who had just performed a difficult operation successfully. Peeling off the rubber gloves; surveying the suture. They were all the same; not gloating, not taunting, even a little anxious — relieved, efficient, yet anxious.

  A team, less interested in each other, than in their difficult common purpose.

  Julie's cool, controlled eyes looked down into my wet, angry ones, and I couldn't stand it. I had to shut them. I felt the lightest touch on my bare arm, and I knew it was her hand. A moment later, when I looked again, she was halfway to the door. She went out. Conchis came forward from doing something by the table. He leant over me. "Nicholas, we shall not frighten you any more. But we want you to go to sleep. It will be convenient for us and less painful for you. Please do not struggle."

  The absurd memory of the pile of exam papers I had still to mark flicked through my mind. Joe and Anton held my left arm like a vice. I resisted for a moment, then gave in. A dab of wet. The needle pricked into my forearm. I felt the morphine, or whatever it was, enter. The needle was withdrawn, another dab of something wet. Conchis went back to his table. I lay for half a minute or so, then looked to see what he was doing. He was sitting by the table, his legs crossed. A black medical case lay on the table in front of him. Everyone was silent. I tried to realize what I had got into: a world without limits.

  A man with an arrow in his heart.

  Mirabelle. La Maitresse-Machine.

  Perhaps five minutes passed, then both sisters reappeared. They were dressed exactly like the others, in black trousers and black shirts. Julie's — Lily's? — hair was up, tied by a black chiffon bandana. She went and sat by Conchis without looking at me. June emptied the things in the wardrobe into a suitcase. My head began to swim, faces and objects, the ceiling, to recede from present reality; down and down a deep black mine of shock, rage, incomprehension and flailing depths of impossible revenge.

  60

  I was to have no sense of time for the next five days. When I first woke up I did not know how many hours had passed since I was in the hotel bed. I was very thirsty, and that must have been what woke me. I remember one or two things indistinctly. A sense of surprise that I was in my own pajamas but not in my room at school; then realizing I was in a bunk, at sea, but not in a caϊque. It was the narrowing forecabin of a yacht. I was reluctant to leave my sleep, to think, to do anything but sink back into it. I was handed a glass of water by a young man with crewcut blond hair, who had evidently been waiting for me to wake. Dimly I recognized him as the one who had closed the "lid" of the Earth on me. I was so thirsty that I had to drink the water, even though I could see it was suspiciously cloudy. Then I must have blurred into sleep again.

  The same man made me go to the head in the bow of the yacht at some later point, and I remember he had to hold me upright, as if I was drunk; and I sat on the pan and just went to sleep again. There were portholes, but the metal shields were screwed down. I asked one or two questions, but he didn't answer; and it didn't seem to matter.

  The same procedure happened again, once, twice, I don't know, in different circums
tances. This time I was in a room in a proper bed. It was always night, always if light an electric light; figures and voices; then darkness.

  But one morning — it seemed like morning, though it might have been midnight for all I knew, because my watch had stopped — I was woken up by the blondhead, made to sit on my bed, to dress, to walk up and down the room twenty or thirty times. Another man stood by the door.

  I became conscious of something I had hazily noticed before, an extraordinary mural that dominated the whitewashed wall opposite the bed. It was a huge black figure, larger than lifesize, a kind of living skeleton, a Buchenwald figure, lying on its side on what might have been grass, or flames. A gaunt hand pointed down to a little mirror hanging on the wall; exhorting me, I supposed, to look at myself, to consider I must die. The skull face had a startled and startling intensity that made it uncomfortable to look at; and uncomfortable to think of the mind that had put it there for me. I could see it was newly painted.

  There was a knock on the door. A third man appeared. He carried a tray with a jug of coffee on it. It had the most beautiful smell; of real coffee, something like Blue Mountain, not the monotonous "Turkish" powder they use in Greece. And there were rolls, butter, and quince marmalade; a plate of ham and eggs. I was left alone. In spite of the circumstances it was one of the best breakfasts of my life. Every flavor had a Proustian, mescalin intensity. I seemed to be starving, and I ate everything on the tray, I drank every drop of coffee and I could have done it all over again. There was even a pack of American cigarettes and a box of matches.

  I took stock. I was wearing one of my own pullovers and whipcord trousers I hadn't put on since the winter. The high curved ceiling was that of a cistern under a house; the windowless walls were dry, but subterranean. There was electric light. A suitcase, my own, full of my things, stood in a corner.

  The wall against which the table stood was new-built of brick. It had a heavy wooden door in it. No handle, no spyhole, no keyhole, not even a hinge. I gave it a push, but it was bolted or barred outside. There was another triangular table in the corner — an oldfashioned washbowl, with a sanitary bucket underneath. I rummaged in my suitcase; a clean shirt, a change of underclothes, a pair of summer trousers. I saw my razor and shaving brush, and that reminded me that I had a clock of Sorts on my chin.