The Alexandria Quartet

by Lawrence Durrell

  For Clea too the little book of Arnauti upon Justine seemed shallow and infected by the desire to explain everything. ‘It is our disease’ she said ‘to want to contain everything within the frame of reference of a psychology or a philosophy. After all Justine cannot be justified or excused. She simply and magnificently is; we have to put up with her, like original sin. But to call her a nymphomaniac or to try and Freudianise her, my dear, takes away all her mythical substance — the only thing she really is. Like all amoral people she verges on the Goddess. If our world were a world there would be temples to accommodate her where she would find the peace she was seeking. Temples where one could outgrow the sort of inheritance she has: not these damn monasteries full of pimply little Catholic youths who have made a bicycle saddle of their sexual organs.’

  She was thinking of the chapters which Arnauti has entitled The Check, and in which he thinks he has found the clue to Justine’s instability of heart. They may be, as Clea thinks, shallow, but since everything is susceptible of more than one explanation they are worth consideration. I myself do not feel that they explain Justine, but to a degree they do illuminate her actions — those immense journeys they undertook together across the length and breadth of Europe. ‘In the very heart of passion’ he writes, adding in parentheses ‘(passion which to her seemed the most facile of gifts) there was a check — some great impediment of feeling which I became aware of only after many months. It rose up between us like a shadow and I recognized, or thought I did, the true enemy of the happiness which we longed to share and from which we felt ourselves somehow excluded. What was it?

  ‘She told me one night as we lay in that ugly great bed in a rented room — a gaunt rectangular room of a vaguely French-Levantine shape and flavour: a stucco ceiling covered with decomposing cherubs and posies of vine-leaves. She told me and left me raging with a jealousy I struggled to hide — but a jealousy of an entirely novel sort. Its object was a man who though still alive, no longer existed. It is perhaps what the Freudians would call a screen-memory of incidents in her earliest youth. She had (and there was no mistaking the force of this confession for it was accompanied by floods of tears, and I have never seen her weep like that before or since) — she had been raped by one of her relations. One cannot help smiling at the commonplaceness of the thought. It was impossible to judge at what age. Nevertheless — and here I thought I had penetrated to the heart of the Check: from this time forward she could obtain no satisfaction in love unless she mentally recreated these incidents and re-enacted them. For her we, her lovers, had become only mental substitutes for this first childish act — so that love, as a sort of masturbation, took on all the colours of neurasthenia; she was suffering from an imagination dying of anaemia, for she could possess no one thoroughly in the flesh. She could not appropriate to herself the love she felt she needed, for her satisfactions derived from the crepuscular corners of a life she was no longer living. This was passionately interesting. But what was even more amusing was that I felt this blow to my amour propre as a man exactly as if she had confessed to an act of deliberate unfaithfulness. What! Every time she lay in my arms she could find no satisfaction save through this memory? In a way, then, I could not possess her: had never done so. I was merely a dummy. Even now as I write I cannot help smiling to remember the strangled voice in which I asked who the man was, and where he was. (What did I hope to do? Challenge him to a duel?) Nevertheless there he was, standing squarely between Justine and I; between Justine and the light of the sun.

  ‘But here too I was sufficiently detached to observe how much love feeds upon jealousy, for as a woman out of my reach yet in my arms, she became ten times more desirable, more necessary. It was a heartbreaking predicament for a man who had no intention of falling in love, and for a woman who only wished to be delivered of an obsession and set free to love. From this something else followed: if I could break the Check I could possess her truly, as no man had possessed her. I could step into the place of the shadow and receive her kisses truly; now they fell upon a corpse. It seemed to me that I understood everything now.

  ‘This explains the grand tour we took, hand in hand so to speak, in order to overcome this succubus together with help of science. Together we visited the book-lined cell of Czechnia, where the famous mandarin of psychology sat, gloating pallidly over his specimens. Basle, Zurich, Baden, Paris — the flickering of steel rails over the arterial systems of Europe’s body: steel ganglia meeting and dividing away across mountains and valleys. Confronting one’s face in the pimpled mirrors of the Orient Express. We carried her disease backwards and forwards over Europe like a baby in a cradle until I began to despair, and even to imagine that perhaps Justine did not wish to be cured of it. For to the involuntary check of the psyche she added another — of the will. Why this should be I cannot understand; but she would tell no one his name, the shadow’s name. A name which by now could mean everything or nothing to her. After all, somewhere in the world he must be now, his hair thinning and greying from business worries or excesses, wearing a black patch over one eye as he did always after an attack of ophthalmia. (If I can describe him to you it is because once I actually saw him.) “Why should I tell people his name?” Justine used to cry. “He is nothing to me now — has never been. He has completely forgotten these incidents. Don’t you see he is dead? When I see him.…” This was like being stung by a serpent. “So you do see him?” She immediately withdrew to a safer position. “Every few years, passing in the street. We just nod.”

  ‘So this creature, this pattern of ordinariness, was still breathing, still alive! How fantastic and ignoble jealousy is. But jealousy for a figment of a lover’s imagination borders on the ludicrous.

  ‘Then once, in the heart of Cairo, during a traffic jam, in the breathless heat of a midsummer night, a taxi drew up beside ours and something in Justine’s expression drew my gaze in the direction of hers. In that palpitant moist heat, dense from the rising damp of the river and aching with the stink of rotten fruit, jasmine and sweating black bodies, I caught sight of the very ordinary man in the taxi next to us. Apart from the black patch over one eye there was nothing to distinguish him from the thousand other warped and seedy business men of this horrible city. His hair was thinning, his profile sharp, his eye beady: he was wearing a grey summer suit. Justine’s expression of suspense and anguish was so marked however that involuntarily I cried: “What is it?”; and as the traffic block lifted and the cab moved off she replied with a queer flushed light in her eye, an air almost of drunken daring: “The man you have all been hunting for.” But before the words were out of her mouth I had understood and as if in a bad dream stopped our own taxi and leaped out into the road. I saw the red tail light of his taxi turning into Sulieman Pacha, too far away for me even to be able to distinguish its colour or number. To give chase was impossible for the traffic behind us was dense once more. I got back into the taxi trembling and speechless. So this was the man for whose name Freud had hunted with all the great might of his loving detachment. For this innocent middle-aged man Justine had lain suspended, every nerve tense as if in the act of levitation, while the thin steely voice of Magnani had repeated over and over again: “Tell me his name; you must tell me his name”; while from the forgotten prospects where her memory lay confined her voice repeated like an oracle of the machine-age: “I cannot remember. I cannot remember.”

  ‘It seemed to me clear then that in some perverted way she did not wish to conquer the Check, and certainly all the power of the physicians could not persuade her. This was the bare case without orchestration, and here lay the so-called nymphomania with which these reverend gentlemen assured me that she was afflicted. At times I felt convinced that they were right; at others I doubted. Nevertheless it was tempting to see in her behaviour the excuse that every man held out for her the promise of a release in her passional self, release from this suffocating self-enclosure where sex could only be fed by the fat flames of fantasy.

  ‘Perhap
s we did wrong in speaking of it openly, of treating it as a problem, for this only invested her with a feeling of self-importance and moreover contributed a nervous hesitation to her which until then had been missing. In her passional life she was direct — like an axe falling. She took kisses like so many coats of paint. I am puzzled indeed to remember how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at least understandable. I realize now how much time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought: “She is as untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.” Then I could have walked arm in arm with her by the rotting canal, or sailed on sundrenched Mareotis, enjoying her as she was, taking her as she was. What a marvellous capacity for unhappiness we writers have! I only know that this long and painful examination of Justine succeeded not only in making her less sure of herself, but also more consciously dishonest; worst of all, , she began to look upon me as an enemy who watched for the least misconstruction, the least word or gesture which might give her away. She was doubly on her guard, and indeed began to accuse me of an insupportable jealousy. Perhaps she was right. I remember her saying: “You live now among my imaginary intimacies. I was a fool to tell you everything, to be so honest. Look at the way you question me now. Several days running the same questions. And at the slightest discrepancy you are on me. You know I never tell a story the same way twice. Does that mean that I am lying?”

  ‘I was not warned by this but redoubled my efforts to penetrate the curtain behind which I thought my adversary stood, a black patch over one eye. I was still in correspondence with Magnani and tried to collect as much evidence as possible which might help him elucidate the mystery, but in vain. In the thorny jungle of guilty impulses which constitute the human psyche who can find a way — even when the subject wishes to co-operate? The time we wasted upon futile researches into her likes and dislikes! If Justine had been blessed with a sense of humour what fun she could have had with us. I remember a whole correspondence based upon the confession that she could not read the words “Washington D.C.” on a letter without a pang of disgust! It is a matter of deep regret to me now that I wasted this time when I should have been loving her as she deserved. Some of these doubts must also have afflicted old Magnani for I recall him writing: “and my dear boy we must never forget that this infant science we are working at, which seems so full of miracles and promises, is at best founded on much that is as shaky as astrology. After all, these important names we give to things! Nymphomania may be considered another form of virginity if you wish; and as for Justine, she may never have been in love. Perhaps one day she will meet a man before whom all these tiresome chimeras will fade into innocence again. You must not rule this thought out”. He was not, of course, trying to hurt me — for this was a thought I did not care to admit to myself. But it penetrated me when I read it in this wise old man’s letter.’

  I had not read these pages of Arnauti before the afternoon at Bourg El Arab when the future of our relationship was compromised by the introduction of a new element — I do not dare to use the word love, for fear of hearing that harsh sweet laugh in my imagination: a laugh which would somewhere be echoed by the diarist. Indeed so fascinating did I find his analysis of his subject, and so closely did our relationship echo the relationship he had enjoyed with Justine that at times I too felt like some paper character out of Moeurs. Moreover, here I am, attempting to do the same sort of thing with her in words — though I lack his ability and have no pretensions to being an artist. I want to put things down simply and crudely, without style — the plaster and whitewash; for the portrait of Justine should be rough-cast, with the honest stonework of the predicament showing through.

  After the episode of the beach we did not meet for some small time, both of us infected by a vertiginous uncertainty — or at least I was. Nessim was called away to Cairo on business but though Justine was, as far as I knew, at home alone, I could not bring myself to visit the studio. Once as I passed I heard the Blüthner and was tempted to ring the bell — so sharply defined was the image of her at the black piano. Then once passing the garden at night I saw someone — it must have been she — walking by the lily-pond, shading a candle in the palm of one hand. I stood for a moment uncertainly before the great doors wondering whether to ring or not. Melissa at this time also had taken the occasion to visit a friend in Upper Egypt. Summer was growing apace, and the town was sweltering. I bathed as often as my work permitted, travelling to the crowded beaches in the little tin tram.

  Then one day while I was lying in bed with a temperature brought on by an overdose of the sun Justine walked into the dank calm of the little flat, dressed in a white frock and shoes, and carrying a rolled towel under one arm with her handbag. The magnificence of her dark skin and hair glowed out of all this whiteness with an arresting quickness. When she spoke her voice was harsh and unsteady, and it sounded for a moment as if she had been drinking — perhaps she had. She put one hand out and leaned upon the mantelshelf as she said: ‘I want to put an end to all this as soon as possible. I feel as if we’ve gone too far to go back.’ As for me I was consumed by a terrible sort of desirelessness, a luxurious anguish of body and mind which prevented me from saying anything, thinking anything. I could not visualize the act of love with her, for somehow the emotional web we had woven about each other stood between us; an invisible cobweb of loyalties, ideas, hesitations which I had not the courage to brush aside. As she took a step forward I said feebly: ‘This bed is so awful and smelly. I have been drinking. I tried to make love to myself but it was no good — I kept thinking about you.’ I felt myself turning pale as I lay silent upon my pillows, all at once conscious of the silence of the little flat which was torn in one corner by the dripping of a leaky tap. A taxi brayed once in the distance, and from the harbour, like the stifled roar of a minotaur, came a single dark whiff of sound from a siren. Now it seemed we were completely alone together.

  The whole room belonged to Melissa — the pitiful dressing-table full of empty powder-boxes and photos: the graceful curtain breathing softly in that breathless afternoon air like the sail of a ship. How often had we not lain in one another’s arms watching the slow intake and recoil of that transparent piece of bright linen? Across all this, the image of someone dearly loved, held in the magnification of a gigantic tear moved the brown harsh body of Justine naked. It would have been blind of me not to notice how deeply her resolution was mixed with sadness. We lay eye to eye for a long time, our bodies touching, hardly communicating more than the animal lassitude of that vanishing afternoon. I could not help thinking then as I held her tightly in the crook of an arm how little we own our bodies. I thought of the words of Arnauti when he says: ‘It dawned on me then that in some fearful way this girl had shorn me of all my force morale. I felt as if I had had my head shaved.’ But the French, I thought, with their endless gravitation between bonheur and chagrin must inevitably suffer when they come up against something which does not admit of préjugés; born for tactics and virtuosity, not for staying-power, they lack the little touch of crassness which armours the Anglo-Saxon mind. And I thought: ‘Good. Let her lead me where she will. She will find me a match for her. And there’ll be no talk of chagrin at the end.’ Then I thought of Nessim, who was watching us (though I did not know) as if through the wrong end of an enormous telescope: seeing our small figures away on the skyline of his own hopes and plans. I was anxious that he should not be hurt.

  But she had closed her eyes — so soft and lustrous now, as if polished by the silence which lay so densely all around us. Her trembling fingers had become steady and at ease upon my shoulder. We turned to each other, closing like the two leaves of a door upon the past, shutting out everything, and I felt her happy spontaneous kisses begin to compose the darkness around us like successive washes of a colour. When we had made love and lay once more awake she said: ‘I am always so bad the fir
st time, why is it?’

  ‘Nerves perhaps. So am I.’

  ‘You are a little afraid of me.’

  Then rising on an elbow as if I had suddenly woken up I said: ‘But Justine, what on earth are we going to make of all this? If this is to be —’ But she became absolutely terrified now and put her hand over my mouth, saying: ‘For God’s sake, no justifications! Then I shall know we are wrong! For nothing can justify it, nothing. And yet it has got to be like this.’ And getting out of bed she walked over to the dressing-table with its row of photos and powder-boxes and with a single blow like that of a leopard’s paw swept it clean. ‘That’ she said ‘is what I am doing to Nessim and you to Melissa! It would be ignoble to try and pretend otherwise.’ This was more in the tradition that Arnauti had led me to expect and I said nothing. She turned now and started kissing me with such a hungry agony that my burnt shoulders began to throb until tears came into my eyes. ‘Ah!’ she said softly and sadly. ‘You are crying. I wish I could. I have lost the knack.’

  I remember thinking to myself as I held her, tasting the warmth and sweetness of her body, salt from the sea — her earlobes tasted of salt — I remember thinking: ‘Every kiss will take her near Nessim, but separate me further from Melissa.’ But strangely enough I experienced no sense of despondency or anguish; and for her part she must have been thinking along the same lines for she suddenly said: ‘Balthazar says that the natural traitors — like you and I — are really Caballi. He says we are dead and live this life as a sort of limbo. Yet the living can’t do without us. We infect them with a desire to experience more, to grow.’