The Revolt of Aphrodite

by Lawrence Durrell

  Then away beyond Cape Sunion towards those distant lighthouses of sorrow across the waters, memories of Leander, where the Moslem dead await us with an elaborate indifference. Sweet, aquiline and crucial rise the stalks of the women’s tombs, the soulless women of the Islamic canon. In marble one can see the pointed conciseness of a death which promises no afterlife—without the placebo of soul or resurrection. My own faint snoring matches that of C’s and the soft even breathing of Hippolyta in that Athenian sunlight.

  III

  Well, and so it was that the little Polybus alternately leeched and strode across the mountainous yet sunny Aegean, buffeted by a fresh north wind—a sea rolled into episodes, into long spitcurls of sea-sodium. The dirty little steamer was used to this and worse—the shrapnel bursts of spray along her grimy spars. On we went bounding like a celluloid duck. Mountains of excrement and vomit accompanied the dazed passengers, and the sea held until the straits were reached and we turned down the long brown sinus with its darned shrub—its hint of an alimentary canal leading to the inland sea. Here we gathered a hard-earned knot or two of speed. So upwards at last into a misty gulf and thence, wheeling now in a long arc to the left, to paddle into Kebir Kavak for pratique. Here, while they were hauling the yellow flag up and down and exchanging the windy garble of mariners’ talk, I first set eyes on Mr. Sacrapant who had been detailed to meet me. He sat in the stern sheets of the quarantine cutter gazing with a kind of sweet holiness up into my face, watching my expression as I fingered the engraved visiting card. It had been sent aboard by a sailor and it read

  Elias Sacrapant

  B.Sc. Economics London (external)

  I ducked and he ducked back; a faint smile illumined that pale clerkish countenance. The infernal noise of engines precluded more intimate exchanges. But presently he was allowed aboard. He negotiated the gangway with an erratic and somewhat elderly spriteliness. His hands were warm and tender, his eyes moist with emotion. “We have been waiting for you” he said almost reproachfully “with such impatience. And now Mr. Pehlevi is in the islands for the weekend. He asked me to look after you until he comes. I cannot express my pleasure, Mr. Charlock.” It seemed a bit overdone but he was charming in his white drill suit, elastic-sided boots, and white straw hat. A very large tie-pin gathered the wings of his collar over his scraggy neck. His eyes were very pale blue. Once they may have been very beautiful, almost plumbago. He spoke English as it is learned in the commercial schools of the Levant, a sort of anglo-tradesman; but very accurately and with a pretty accent. “You may relax, Mr. Charlock, for you are in my hands. I will answer any questions you put. I am the firm’s senior adviser.”

  And so it was with Sacrapant as a companion that I came upwater at last to dangle in view of the Golden Horn where the immense inertia—the marasmus of Turkey—drifted out with sea-damps to finger my soul. Cryptogram, yes, these huge walls of liquid dung baked by the sun into tumefied shapes. It all had a fine deliquescent charm—the coaxing palms, the penis-turreted domes, the lax and faded colouring of a dream turning to nightmare. Mr. Sacrapant pointed out all the sights and explained them carefully, with the exactitude of a book-keeper, but in kindly fashion, chuckling from time to time as he did so. Moreover he was splendidly efficient, darting here and there with tickets and passports, buttonholing officials, exhorting sailors and porters. “For tonight the Pera hotel” he explained “will enable you to rest. There is every luxe. Tomorrow I will come and take you to the Pehlevi danglion—a water pavilion. It is prepared for you. It will be very comfortable. You will be just fine, fine.” He repeated the word with his characteristic pious effervescence, joining his hands together and squeezing them. Very well.

  It was the least I could do to offer him dinner when at last we arrived, and he accepted the invitation with alacrity. I confess that with the sinking sun on that gaunt but beautiful terrace I was glad of company for I felt the death-grip of the Turkish night settling upon me—a sort of nameless panic wafted up with the smell of jasmine from the gardens below, from the chain-mail ramparts of forts and ravelins which enclose Polis like the scar tissue of old wounds upon which the blood has dried black. Sacrapant was someone to talk to—but not until our meal was well on its way. He addressed himself to the menu with the same fervour—indeed he removed his wrist-watch and placed it in a safe corner before picking up his knife and fork. Also he put upon his nose a pair of pince-nez the better to instruct me in the intricacies of the local cuisine. A small vermouth had brought a flush to his cheek. But at last, somewhat assuaged by the fare, he leaned back and undid his coat buttons. “I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me” he said “to think of you joining the firm—O I know that you have only come to discuss with Mr. Pehlevi.” Here he pointed his long forefinger at his own earhole to show that he knew the subject of our discussion. “But if you agree with him, you will never never repent, Mr. Charlock. Merlin’s is a marvellous firm to work for—or to let it work for you.” He chuckled and rolled his eye. “Marvellous” he said. “Whether one is its slave or its master.” I stared at him, eager to know more.

  Mr. Sacrapant continued: “Excuse me if you think my feelings are excessive, but when I look at you I can’t help the thought that if I had a son he would be about your age. With what joy I would have seen him enter Merlin’s.” He spoke about the organisation as if it were a religious order. “That is why.” And he gave my hand a shy pat, adding ruefully “But Mrs. Sacrapant can only make girls with me, five girls. And here in Stamboul for girls …” He rubbed finger and thumb together expressively and hissed on a lower note the word “Dowries”. Then he once more lay back in a sort of infantile rapture and went on. “But there again, the firm, thank God for the jolly old firm. They will look after all. No detail is too small, and no organisation offers comparable status and benefits in the Levant. We are a hundred years ahead of our time.” He poured himself a thimbleful of wine and drank it off like a hero.

  It was puzzling, this string of homilies—as if he had been sent to soften me up before my negotiations with Pehlevi began. And yet … Sacrapant was so guileless and so likeable. He dropped his napkin, and in retrieving it inadvertently revealed a strip of sock and calf. I was intrigued to see, strapped to his thin ankle, a small scout-knife such as a girl-cub might use to pierce the tinfoil on a jampot. He followed the direction of my glance. “Shh” said Mr. Sacrapant. “Say nothing. In Stamboul, Mr. Charlock, one never knows. But if attacked by a Moslem I would give a good account of myself—you may be sure.” He blushed and tittered and then all at once became grave, plunged in reverie. “Tell me more about the firm” I said, since it seemed his only topic. He sighed. “Ah the firm!” he said. “When will I ever cease to be grateful to it? But I will do better, I will show it to you. I have instructions to do so. At least as much of it as we manage from here—for we are only the Levant end. The firm is world-wide, you know, in London Berlin New York. Mr. Pehlevi’s brother Julian runs the London end. Yes, you shall see it for yourself. It will take up the time until Mr. Jocas comes back from the islands on Monday.” It sounded an interesting way of passing the time and seeing something of the city. As I walked him through the damp garden with its throbbing crickets he went on sincerely, rather touchingly. “You know—perhaps you don’t—how hard it is in the Levant to have any sort of security, Mr. Charlock. It is hard to earn good money if you have children. That is why I am so happy. The firm has meant to me serenity for wife and loved ones. Yes, and insurance too, we are all covered. Believe me, outside the firm it can be … very hard cheese I think you say in English? Very hard cheese.”

  Before taking the one dilapidated taxi he lingered for some further chatter, unwilling to end the evening; and I was glad, thinking of the ghastly bedroom that awaited me. I had forgotten to bring something to read. For his part Sacrapant behaved like a man who had been deprived of any social life, who was hungry for company. Yet he had only this one topic, the firm. “You see it is very wide. Old Mr. Merlin the founder did
not believe in building up and cornering one market; he preferred to build horizontally.” He drew his hand along his body with a stroking gesture. “We are very wide rather than very tall. There is great variety of holdings, but few are exclusive to ourselves. That is why the firm is so wide, why there is room for everyone in it—well, almost everyone.” Here he stopped and frowned. “There are some exceptions. I forgot to tell you that Count Banubula is staying in your hotel. Now he is one. He has tried for years to join the firm but with no hope. It is nothing to do with his behaviour, though when he is in Stamboul he behaves … well, very strangely. You know him I think.”

  “Yes, of course. But what has he done?”

  “I don’t know” said Mr. Sacrapant compressing his lips and shooting me a furtive glance. “But I expect the firm does. Anyway, they will not let him in; he has exhausted his nerves in pleading but Mr. Jocas is adamant. There are one or two like him. The firm makes an example of them, and they are blocked. It is a huge pity for him for he is a gentleman, though his behaviour in Stamboul would not let you think so.”

  “But he is a very mild and quiet man.”

  “Ah” said Mr. Sacrapant on a reproving note.

  “And is Merlin still alive?”

  “No” said Mr. Sacrapant, but he spoke in a whisper this time, and in a fashion that somehow carried little conviction. I had the impression that he was not at all certain. “Of course not” he added, trying to bolster the simple affirmative; but all of a sudden he looked startled and somewhat discountenanced, like a frightened rabbit. He took my hand and squeezed it saying: “I will come tomorrow and take you down to the offices for a look. Now I must go.” On this somewhat ambiguous note we parted. I turned back into the hotel relieved to see that there were still a few lights on—notably in the bar. And here I was overjoyed to come upon Count Banubula, the only occupant of the place, gloomily consulting his own reflections in the tarnished mirrors.

  His appearance had undergone a subtle change which had not been apparent when I entered the room. How to say it? He looked flushed, snouty, and somehow concupiscent. He swayed ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, as very tall buildings do. “Ah” he said as he caught sight of me, in a new and rather insolent fashion. “Ah Charlock!” I echoed his “Ah” on the same note, my curiosity aroused, for this was certainly not the Count Banubula I knew. “What about a little drink?” he went on sternly. It was virtually an order and I obeyed gladly. His waistcoat was undone and his monocle tinkled loosely against the buttons. The light was too bad to enable me to be sure, but it seemed to me that his lips and eyebrows had been discreetly touched up. This is, of course, a service which any barber will perform in the Orient on request. Banubula raised the sad plumes of his heavy eyebrows and closed his eyes, breathing slowly through his nose. Yes, he was drunk.

  The barman produced two whiskies and disappeared through a hatch. Still with eyes shut the Count said: “I knew you were coming. I have been here some time. Ah, my goodness, if you only knew. I can’t leave till Thursday now.” He started an involuntary spin like a top, and just managed to find his way to a chair. “Sit” he said, in the same authoritative way. “It is better so.” I obeyed, and sat opposite him, staring at him. There was a very long silence, so long indeed that I thought he would drop off to sleep but no, he had been setting his mind to the problem of conversation. “Do you know what Caradoc said about me?” asked the Count with slow sad tones. “He said I looked like a globe artichoke, and that I would die, a whisky-stiffened mummy in some Turkish bagnio.” He gave a sudden squawk of laughter and then sank back into this oozing gloom, eyeing me narrowly. “Cruel man” he said. “They are all cruel men. For years I have done their dirty work. There have never been the small rewards I asked for. Nothing. No hope. I go on and on. But I have reached the end of my tether. I am in despair, Charlock. At my age one can’t go on and on and on and on….” his voice sank into a mumble. “But who are these people?” I said.

  “It isn’t anybody special, it’s just the firm.”

  “Merlin’s?”

  He nodded sadly. “O Lord” I said “does no one talk about anything else in this city?”

  The Count had taken a leap into autobiography and did not heed my remark. “I love my dear wife” he said “and I esteem her. But now she sits all day with her hair done up in a scarf and curl papers writing long letters about God to Theosophists. And I have become abnormal, you see Charlock? Without wishing it. In these hot climates one cannot be deprived of one’s rights without something happening. Since she became religious all is ended; yet I could never divorce her because of the scandal. My name is an ancient one.” He blew his nose violently in a silk handkerchief and dibbled a finger in his right ear to clear it. Then he shook his head with equal violence, as if to clear his brain. “And then all these negotiations, all this pleading. It has made me a very superstitious man, Charlock. I feel I must try and avert a horrible fate—unless they relent. Look!” He threw open his waistcoat to reveal a plump white chest to which was attached an iodine locket. He waited for my comment, but it was somewhat difficult to find words; the iodine locket was the talisman of the day, much advertised in the vulgar press. It promised health to the wearer for a very small outlay. “But health is no good” said Banubula sadly “if one’s fate is wrong. I have been a student of Abraxas for several years now, and I know my fate is wrong. Do you know how I defend myself?” I shook my head. He detached from his key ring a small Chaldean bronze leaf inscribed after the fashion of amulets thus:

  S A T O R

  A R E P O

  T E N E T

  O P E R A

  R O T A S

  Banubula nodded like a mandarin. “It is only to prove to you that I have tried everything. I even tried love potions on my spouse, but they made her violently ill. I meant well. That much you will grant me.” I nodded, granting him that much.

  “O God” said Banubula, drinking deeply, thirstily. “My sorrow seems bottomless, bottomless.” The choice of phrase seemed to me bizarre, but I did not comment. “Just how would things change if… if all these negotiations were successful?” I asked. At once his large hairless face changed its expression, became animated with a fiery enthusiasm. “Ah then everything would be different, don’t you see? I should be in!”

  The officious barman started to bang shutter and door and indicate brusquely that the bar was closing; he refused us another drink. “You see?” said the Count. “My whole life is like that—one refusal follows another, everywhere, in everything.” His lower lip dipped steeply towards a self-commiserating burst of tears, but he restrained them manfully. “To bed I think” I said, with as much cheerfulness as I could muster. And I did what I could to steer the yawing bulk of the Count upstairs to bed. “I won’t bother to undress” he said cheerfully, falling upon his bed. “Goodnight.”

  I turned at the door to find that he was regarding me with one eye open with the air of a highly speculative jackdaw. “I know” he said “you are dying to question me about him. But I know so little.”

  “Could Sipple be working for Merlin’s?”

  “Certainly. At any rate it was they who cabled and telephoned to Hippolyta asking her, us, to get him over to Polis as swiftly as was humanly possible.”

  “What on earth could Sipple do? Spy?”

  Banubula yawned and stretched. “As for the boy you said you… found; that has nothing to do with the case. I mean it’s a quite independent fact which has nothing to do with the firm. It’s Sipple’s own business.”

  “But how do you know about it?”

  “Sipple told me. He denied having anything to do with it.”

  “There was no mention in the newspapers; somebody must have found the body. Who hushed the whole matter up?”

  “In the Middle East” said Banubula sighing “a London detective would go out of business; there are so many people with such unusual motives…. I mean, look, suppose Sipple’s landlord thought that the discovery of a corpse woul
d prejudice him letting the room to someone else. What would he do? He would put it in a sack and slip it into one of the sewers, or take it to the top of Hymettus and fling it into a crevasse—there are some hundreds of feet deep, sheer falls, never been explored.” Banubula cleared his throat and went on in a shyer tone of voice. “Once I was forced to get rid of a rival for my wife’s hand in somewhat the same fashion; though in my case it was complicated by blackmail and menaces.”