by John Fowles
I went and had one more look at the fiat in Russell Square, but there was no light on the third floor. So I returned to the hotel, defeated. An old, old man.
* * *
The next morning I went round to the estate agents who looked after the house. They had a shabby string of green-painted rooms above a shop in Southampton Row. I recognized the adenoidal clerk who came to the counter to look after me as the one I had dealt with the previous year; he remembered me, and I soon extracted from him what little information he had to give. The fiat had been assigned to Alison at the beginning of July — ten days or a fortnight after Parnassus. He had no idea whether Alison had been living there or not. He looked at a copy of the new lease. The assignee's address was the same as the assigner's.
"Must have been sharing," said the clerk.
And that was that.
And what did I care? Why should I go on searching for her?
* * *
But I waited in all the evening after my visit to the estate agent, hoping for another message. The next day I moved to the Russell Hotel, so that I had only to stroll out of the entrance and look across the square to see the house, to wait for the windows on that black third floor to light. Four days passed, and no lights; no letters, no phone calls, not the smallest sign. I grew impatient and frustrated, hamstrung by this inexplicable lapse in the action. I thought perhaps that they had lost me, they did not know where I was, and that worried me; then it angered me that I was worried.
The need to see Alison drowned everything else. To see her. To twist the secret out of her; and other things I could not name. A week passed, a week wasted in cinemas, theatres, in lying on my hotel bed and staring at the wall, waiting for that implacably silent telephone beside me to ring. I nearly sent a cable to Bourani with my address; but pride stopped that.
At last I gave in. I could stand the hotel and Russell Square, that eternally empty flat, no longer. I saw a place advertised on a tobacconist's board. It was a scruffy attic "flat" over two floors of sewing rooms at the north end of Charlotte Street, on the other side of the Tottenham Court Road. It was expensive, but there was a telephone and, though the landlady lived in the basement, she was an unmistakable Charlotte Street bohemian of the 1930's vintage: sluttish, battered, chain-smoking. She managed to let me know within the first five minutes I was in the house that Dylan Thomas had once been "a close friend" — "God, the times I've had to put him to bed, poor sod." I didn't believe her. "Dylan slept (or slept it off) here" is to Charlotte Street rather what the similar claim about Queen Elizabeth used to be to the country inns of England. But I liked her — "My name's Joan, everyone calls me Kemp." Kemp's intellect, like her pottery and paintings, was a mess; but her heart was in the right place.
"Okay," she said at the door, after I'd agreed to take the rooms. "As long as I have your money. Bring in who you want when you want. The last boy was a ponce. An absolute sweetie. The bloody fascists got him last week."
"Good Lord."
She nodded. "Them." I looked round, and saw two young policemen standing on the corner.
* * *
I also bought an old MG. The body was bad and the roof leaked, but the engine seemed to have a year or two of life left. I took Kemp out to Jack Straw's Castle on a grand inaugural run. She drank like a trooper and talked like one, but in every other way she was what I wanted and what I needed: a warm heart and a compulsive gossip about herself, who accepted without suspicion my explanation of my joblessness; partly reconciled me, in her bitter-warm way, to London and being English; and — at least to begin with — stopped me from being, whenever I felt it, too morbidly abandoned and alone.
A long August passed, and I had fits of acute depression, fits of torpid indifference. I was like a fish in stale water, stifled by the grayness of England. Just as I looked back, Adam after the fall, to the luminous landscapes, the salt and thyme of Phraxos, I looked back to the events of Bourani, which could not have happened, but which had happened, and found myself, at the end of some tired London afternoon, as unable to wish that they had not happened as I was to forgive Conchis for having given me the part he did. Slowly I came to realize that my dilemma was in fact a sort of de facto forgiveness, a condonation of what had been done to me; even though, still too sore to accept that something active had taken place, I thought of "done" in a passive sense.
70
I thought in the same way of Lily. One day I nearly crashed, breaking hard at the glimpse of a girl with long blonde hair walking down a side street. I swerved the car into the curb and raced after her. Even before I saw the plain face I knew it was not Lily. But if I had rushed after the girl in the side street it was because I wanted to face Lily, to question her, to try to understand the ununderstandable; not because I longed for her. I could have longed for certain aspects of her, for certain phases — but it was that very phasality that made her impossible to love. So I could almost think of her, the light-phase her, as one thinks tenderly but historically of the moments of poetry in one's life, and yet still hate her for what she had done.
* * *
But I had to do something while I waited, while I absorbed the experience osmotically into my life. So throughout the latter half of August I pursued the trail of Conchis and Lily in England; and through them, of Alison.
It kept me, however tenuously and vicariously, in the masque; and it dulled my agonizing longing to see Alison. Agonizing because a new feeling had seeded and was growing inside me, a feeling I wanted to eradicate and couldn't, not least because I knew the seed of it had been planted by Conchis and was germinating in this deliberate silence and absence he had surrounded me with; a feeling that haunted me as the embryo grows in the reluctant mother's womb, sweeping her day and night, that I despised, disproved, dismissed, and still it grew, with rage, then in green moments melting her with . . . but I couldn't say the word.
And for a time it lay buried under inquiries, conjectures, letters.
The newspaper cuttings. Different type from that of the Holborn Gazette, where the inquest report would have appeared; and did not appear.
Foulkes pamphlet. Is in the British Museum Catalogue. Conchis's are not.
Theatre costumier's. I tried Berman's and one or two others, without the least success.
Earthquakes. There were earthquakes in 1884 and 1892 in the Ionian Islands. In a tragic way that part of Conchis's story was confirmed just before I began my research. On August 9, 1953, 450 people died in the Ionian disaster.
Military history. Letter from Major Arthur Lee-Jones.
DEAR MR. URFE,
I'm afraid your letter does ask, as you say yourself, for the impossible. The units engaged in the Neuve Chapelle set piece were mostly regular ones. I think it most unlikely that any Princess Louise's Kensington Regiment volunteers would have seen that engagement, even under the circumstances you suggest. But of course we have poor detailed records of that chaotic time, and I can't hazard more than an opinion.
I can find no trace in the records of a captain called Montague. Usually one is on safer ground with officers. But perhaps he was seconded from one of the county regiments.
De Deukans. No family of this name in the Almanach de Gotha or any other likely source I looked at.
The fire at Givray-le-Duc on August 17, 1922. Unreported in The Times and the Telegraph. Perhaps not surprisingly, as I found Givray-le-Duc was absent from even the largest French gazetteers. The spider Theridion deukansii: doesn't exist, though there is a genus Theridion.
Seidevarre. Letter from Johan Fredriksen.
DEAR SIR,
The mayor of Kirkenes has passed to me, who is the schoolmaster, your letter to answer. There is in Pasvikdal a place of the name Seidevarre and there was in that place many years from now a family of the name Nygaard. I am very sorry we do not know what is become with this family.
I am very pleased to help you.
Lily's mother. I drove down to Cerne Abbas, not expecting to find either an Ansty Cott
age or a Silver Street. I did not. I told the manageress at the little hotel where I had lunch that I'd once known two girls from Genie Abbas — twins, very pretty, but I'd forgotten their surname. It left her deeply worried — she knew everyone in the village and couldn't think who it could have been. The "headmaster" at the primary school: in reality a headmistress. Obviously the letters bad been intercepted on Phraxos; and a reply sent to England for posting.
Charles-Victor Bruneau. Not in Grove. A man I spoke to at the Royal Academy of Music had never heard of him; or, needless to say, of Gonchis.
Conchis's costume at the "trial." On my way back from Cerne Abbas I stopped for dinner in Hungerford, and passed an antique shop on my way to the hotel. Propped up in the window were five old Tarot cards. On one of them was a man dressed exactly as Gonchis had been; even to the same emblems on his cloak. Underneath were the words Le Sorcier — the sorcerer. The shop was shut, but I took its address and later they sold me the card by post; a "nice eighteenth-century card."
It gave me a sharp shock when I first saw it—I looked round, as if it had been planted there for me to notice; as if I was being watched.
The "psychologists" at the trial. I tried the Tavistock Clinic and the American Embassy. All the names totally unknown, though some of the institutes exist. Nevinson. This was the man whose Oxford college was in a book in the school library.
The Bursar's Office at Balliol sent me an address in Japan. I wrote him a letter. Two weeks later I had a reply.
Faculty of English,
Osaka University
DEAR MR. URFE,
Thank you for your letter, it came, as it were, from the distant past, and gave me quite a surprise! But I was delighted to hear that the school has survived the tvar, and I trust you have enjoyed your stay there as much as I did.
I had forgotten about Bourani. I remember the place now, however, and (very vaguely!) the owner. Did I have a iolent argument with him once about Racine and predestination? I have an intuition, no more, that I did. But so much has flowed under the bridges since those days.
Other "victims" before the war — alas, I can't help you. The man before me I never met. I did know Geoffrey Sugden, who was there for three years after me. I never heard him refer especially to Bourani.
If you are ever in this part of the world, I should be delighted to talk over old times with you, and to offer you, if not an ouzo, at least a sake pou na pinete.
Yours sincerely,
DOUGLAS NEVINSON
The incident on the ridge. When the kapetan called me prodotis (traitor). Of course they knew one day I would know what treachery they meant.
Wimmel. In late August, a piece of luck. One of my teeth began to hurt and Kemp sent me to her dentist to have it seen to. While I was in the waiting room I picked up an old film magazine of the previous January. Halfway through I came on a picture of "Wimmel." He was even dressed in Nazi uniform. Underneath there was a caption paragraph. Ignaz Pruszynski, who plays the fiendish Town Commandant in Poland's much praised film of the Resistance, Black Ordeal, in real life played a very different role. He led a Polish underground group all through the Occupation, and was awarded the Polish equivalent of our own Victoria Cross.
Hypnotism. I read a couple of books on this. Conchis had evidently learnt the technique professionally. It was "virtually impossible" to get the person hypnotized to do acts that "run deeply counter to his moral beliefs." But post-hypnotic suggestion, implanting commands that are carried out on a given signal after the subject has been woken from the hypnotic state and is in all other ways back to normal, was "perfectly feasible and frequently demonstrated."
Raising both arms above the head. Conchis got this from ancient Egypt. It was the Ka sign, used by initiates "to gain possession of the cosmic forces of mystery." In many tomb paintings. It meant: "I am master of the spells. Strength is mine. I impart strength."
The wheel symbol. "The mandala, or wheel, is a universal symbol of existence.
The ribbon on my leg, the bare shoulder. From masonic ritual, but believed to descend from the Eleusinian mysteries. Associated with initiation.
Maria. Probably really was a peasant, though an intelligent one. She spoke only two or three words of French to me; sat silent all through the trial, rather conspicuously out of place. Unlike the others, she was what she first seemed.
Lily's bank. I wrote another letter, and got back a reply from the manager of the real Barclay's branch. His name was not P. J. Fearn; and the headed paper he wrote on was not like that I had received.
Her school. Julie Holmes — unknown.
Mitford. I wrote a card to the address in Northumberland I had had the year before and received a letter back from his mother. She said Alexander was now a courier, working in Spain. I got in touch with the travel firm he was working for, but they said he wouldn't be back till September. I left a letter for him.
The paintings at Bourani. I started with the Bonnards. The first book of reproductions of his work I opened had the picture of the girl drying by the window. I turned to the attributions list at the back. It was in the Los Angeles County Museum. The book had been printed m 1950. Later I "found" the other Bonnard; at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Both had been copies. The Modigliani I never traced; but I suspect, remembering those curiously Conchis-like eyes, that it was not even a copy.
Evening Standard of January 8, 1952. No sign of a photo of Lily and Rose, in any edition.
L'Astrée. Did Conchis remember that I believed myself remotely connected with d'Urfé? The story of L'Astrée is: The shepherdess Astrée, hearing evil reports of the shepherd Celadon, banishes him from her presence. A war breaks out, and Astrée is taken prisoner. Celadon manages to rescue her, but she will not forgive him. He does not gain her hand until he has turned the lion and unicorns who devour unfaithful lovers into statues of stone.
Chaliapin. Was at Covent Garden in June, 1914, and in Prince Igor.
"You may be elect." When he said that, at our first strange meeting, he meant simply, "I've decided to use you." That was also the only sense in which, at the end, I could be elect. He meant, "We have used you."
Lily and Rose. Two twin sisters, both very pretty, gifted (though I came to doubt Lily's classical education), must, if they had been up at Oxford or Cambridge, have been the double Zuleika Dobsons of their years. I could not believe that they had been at Oxford — since our years must have overlapped — but on the principle that Lily never told me the truth if she could possibly mislead me, I tried it first. I concocted a story about my being a scout for an American film producer who needed a pair of fair-haired English twins and "had heard" of two at Oxford. It wasn't a very good story and it involved me in some ludicrous improvising — which incidentally made me realize in retrospect how great had been Lily's skill in that art. I tried the magazines, I tried the OUDS and the ETC, I even braved several of the women's college bursaries; and got nowhere. I went to Cambridge and did the same thing; and got nowhere; least of all at Girton. Of course I realize that because they were twin sisters there was no reason why they should have gone to the same university. But at both Cambridge and Oxford I was shown stills from all the main undergraduate productions of the last few years — and no Lily-Rose face in any of them. Armed with a slightly less implausible story — my rich American producer had become an eccentric rich American producer — I went round a few London theatrical agencies. Several of them had pairs of twins on their books, even blonde (or platinum blonde) twins; but not Lily or Rose.
The Tavistock Repertory: a total blank. No productions of Lysistrata. The agent's name: unknown.
I tried RADA; with similar unsuccess.
One cunning device in the "Julie Holmes" invention: we tend to believe people who have had the same experiences as ourselves; who mirror us. So her naval commander father equaled my brigadier father; her Cambridge, my Oxford; her unhappy love affaire, mine; her year's teaching, mine.
Her being "interfered with" was an irony,
obviously; or perhaps an echo of Artemis's mythical fear of the pains of childbirth. But perhaps she told me this to make it easier for me to confess in return. Looks she gave me: as if she was waiting for something. And if I had spoken . . .?
Othello, Act I, Scene III.
She is abus'd, stol'n from me, and corrupted
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;
For nature so preposterously to err,
Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,
Sans witchcraft could not.
And:
A maiden never bold;
Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blush'd at herself; and she, in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, every thing,
To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on!
Polymus Films. I didn't see the obvious, that one misplaced letter, until painfully late.
The famous whore Io. Lemprière: "In the ancient Gothic Io and Gio signified earth, as Isi or Isa signified 'ice' or water in its primordial state; and both were equally titles of the goddess, who represented the productive and nutritive power of the earth." Indian Kali, Syrian Astarte (Ashtaroth), Egyptian Isis and Greek Io were considered one and the same goddess. She had three colors (on the walls in the trial): white, red, and black, the phases of the moon, and also the phases of woman: virgin, mother, and crone. Lily was evidently the goddess in her white, virgin phase; and perhaps in the black, as well. Rose would have stood for the red phase; but then Alison was given that role.
Tartarus. The more I read, the more I began to reidentify the whole situation at Bourani — or at any rate the final situation — with Tartarus. Tartarus was ruled by a king, Hades (or Conchis); a Queen, Persephone, bringer of destruction (Lily) — who remained "six months with Hades in the infernal regions and spent the rest of the year with her mother Demeter on earth."