‘What is all this?’ cried Athena Trasha, scenting a joke or a scandal worth repetition. ‘What indiscretions?’
‘My own’ cried Toto triumphantly into the darkness. ‘My very own.’ But Justine lay back in the dark car impassively hooded, and did not speak. ‘I can’t wait to get there’ said Athena, and turned back to Pierre. As the car turned into the gate of the Cervoni house, the light caught the intaglio, throwing into relief (colour of burnt milk) a Pan raping a goat, his hands grasping its horns, his head thrown back in ecstasy. ‘Don’t forget’ Justine said once more, for the last time, allowing him to maul her hand with gratitude for such a wonderful idea. ‘Don’t forget’ allowing her ringed fingers to lie in his, cool and unfeeling as a cow which allows itself to be milked. ‘Only tell me all the interesting conversations you have, won’t you?’ He could only mutter ‘Darling, darling, darling’ as he kissed the ring with the ovarian passion of the sexually dispossessed.
Almost at once, like the Gulf Stream breaking up an iceberg with its warm currents, dispersing it, their party disintegrated as it reached the ballroom and merged with the crowd. Abruptly Athena was dragged screaming into the heart of the press by a giant domino who gobbled and roared incomprehensible blasphemies in his hood. Nessim, Narouz, Pierre, they suddenly found themselves turned to ciphers, expelled into a formless world of adventitious meetings, mask to dark mask, like a new form of insect life. Toto’s chalk-mark gave him a few fugitive moments of identity as he was borne away like a cork on a stream, and Justine’s ring as well (for which I myself was hunting all that evening in vain).
But everything now settled into the mindless chaotic dance-figures of the black jazz supported only by the grinding drums and saxophones, the voices. The spirits of the darkness had taken over you’d think, disinheriting the daylight hearts and minds of the maskers, plunging them ever deeper into the loneliness of their own irrecoverable identities, setting free the polymorphous desires of the city. The tide washed them up now onto the swampy littorals of their own personalities — symbols of Alexandria, a dead brackish lake surrounded by the silent, unjudging, wide-eyed desert which stretches away into Africa under a dead moon.
Locked in our masks now we prowled about despairingly among the company, hunting from room to room, from floor to lighted floor of the great house, for an identifiable object to direct our love: a rose pinned to a sleeve, a ring, a scarf, a coloured bead. Something, anything, to discover our lovers by. The hoods and masks were like the outward symbols of our own secret minds as we walked about — as single-minded and as dispossessed as the desert fathers hunting for their God. And slowly but with irresistible momentum the great carnival ball gathered pace around us. Here and there, like patches of meaning in an obscure text, one touched upon a familiar identity: a bullfighter drinking whisky in a corridor greeted one in the lisping accents of Tony Umbada, or Pozzo di Borgo unmasked for an instant to identify himself to his trembling wife. Outside in the darkness on the grass by the lily pond sat Amaril, also trembling and waiting. He did not dare to remain unmasked lest the sight of his face might disgust or disappoint her, should she return this year to the promised assignation. If one falls in love with a mask when one is masked oneself… which of you will first have the courage to raise it? Perhaps such lovers would go through life together, remaining masked? (Racing thoughts in Amaril’s sentimental brain.… Love rejoices in self-torture.)
An expressive washerwoman dressed in a familiar picture-hat and recognizable boots (Pombal, as ever was), had pinned a meagre-looking Roman centurion to a corner of the mantelpiece and was cursing him in a parrot-voice. I caught the word ‘salaud’. The little figure of the Consul-General managed to mime his annoyance with choppy gestures and struggles, but it was all in vain, for Pombal held him fast in his great paws. It was fascinating to watch. The centurion’s casque fell off, and pushing him to the bandstand Pombal began to beat his behind rhythmically upon the big drum and at the same time to kiss him passionately. He was certainly getting his own back. But as I watched this brief scene, the crowd closed down upon it in a whirl of streamers and confetti and obliterated it. We were packed body to body, cowl to cowl, eye to eye. The music drove us round and round the floor. Still no Justine.
Old Tiresias
No-one half so breezy as,
Half so free and easy as
Old Tiresias.
It must have been about two o’clock that the fire started in one of the chimneys on the first floor, though its results were not serious and it caused more delight than alarm by its appropriateness. Servants scurried officiously everywhere; I caught a glimpse of Cervoni, running unmasked upstairs, and then a telephone rang. There were pleasing clouds of smoke, suggesting whiffs of brimstone from the bottomless pit. Then within minutes a fire-engine arrived with its siren pealing, and the hall was full of fancy-dress figures of pompiers with hatchets and buckets. They were greeted with acclamation as they made their way up to the scene of the fireplace which they virtually demolished with their axes. Others of the tribe had climbed on the roof and were throwing buckets of water down the chimney. This had the effect of filling the first floor with a dense cloud of soot like a London fog. The maskers crowded in shouting with delight, dancing like dervishes. These are the sort of inadvertencies which make a party go. I found myself shouting with them. I suppose I must have been rather drunk by now.
In the great tapestried hall the telephone rang and rang again, needling the uproar. I saw a servant answer it, lay the receiver down, and quest about like a gun-dog until presently he returned with Nessim, smiling and unmasked, who spoke into it quickly and with an air of impatience. Then he too put the receiver down and came to the edge of the dance-floor, staring about him keenly. ‘Is anything wrong?’ I asked, lifting my own hood as I joined him. He smiled and shook his head. ‘I can’t see Justine anywhere. Clea wants to speak to her. Can you?’ Alas! I had been trying to pick up the distinguishing ring all evening without success. We waited, watching the slow rotation of the dancers, keenly as fishermen waiting for a bite. ‘No’ he said and I echoed ‘No.’ Pierre Balbz came up and joined us, lifting his cowl, and said ‘A moment ago I was dancing with her. She went out, perhaps.’
Nessim returned to the telephone and I heard him say. ‘She’s here somewhere. Yes, quite sure. No. Nothing has happened. Pierre had the last dance with her. Such a crowd. She may be in the garden. Any message? Can I ask her to ring you? Very well. No, it was simply a fire in a chimney. It’s out now.’ He put down the receiver and turned back to us. ‘Anyway’ he said ‘we have a rendezvous in the hall unmasked at three.’
And so the great ball rolled on around us, and the firemen who had done their duty now joined the throng of dancers. I caught a glimpse of a large washerwoman being carried, apparently insensible, out into the conservatory by four demons with breasts amid great applause. Pombal had evidently succumbed to his favourite brand of whisky once more. He had lost his hat but had had the forethought to wear under it an immense wig of yellow hair. It is doubtful whether anyone could have recognized him in such a rig.
Punctually at three Justine appeared in the hall from the garden and unmasked herself: Pierre and I had decided not to accept Nessim’s offer of a lift home but to stay on and lend our energy to the ball which was beginning to flag now. Little parties were meeting and leaving, cars were being rallied. Nessim kissed her tenderly and said ‘Where’s your ring?’ a question which I myself had been burning to put to her though I had not dared. She smiled that innocent and captivating smile as she said: ‘Toto pinched it from my finger a few minutes ago, during a dance. Where is the little brute? I want it back.’ We raked the floor for Toto but there was no sign of him and at last Nessim who was tired decided to give him up for lost. But he did not forget to give Justine Clea’s message, and I saw my lover go obediently to the telephone and dial her friend’s number. She spoke quietly and with an air of mystification for a few moments, and I heard her say: ‘Of course I’m all right�
�� before bidding Clea a belated good night. Then they stepped down together into the waning moonlight arm in arm, and Pierre and I helped to tuck them into the car. Selim, impassive and hawk-featured, sat at the wheel. ‘Good night!’ cried Justine, and her lips brushed my cheek. She whispered ‘Tomorrow’ and the word sang on in my mind like the whistle of a bullet as we turned together into the lighted house. Nessim’s face had been full of a curious impish serenity as of someone resting after a great expenditure of energy.
Someone had heard a ghost murmuring in the conservatory. Much laughter. ‘No, but I assure you’ squealed Athena. ‘We were sitting on the sofa, Jacques and I, weren’t we, Jacques?’ A masked figure appeared, blew a squeaker in her face and retired. Something told me it was Toto. I dragged his cowl back and up bobbed the features of Chloë Martinengo. ‘But I assure you’ said Athena, ‘it moaned a word — something like…’ she set her face in a grim scowl of concentration and after a pause sang out in a lullaby voice the expiring words ‘Justice… Justice.’ Everyone laughed heartily and several voices mimicked her: ‘Justice’ roared a domino rushing away up the stairs. ‘Justice!’
Alone once more, I found that my irresolution and despondency had turned to physical hunger, and I traversed the dance-floor cautiously in the direction of the supper-room from which I could hear the thirsty snap of champagne corks. The ball itself was still in full swing, and dancers swaying like wet washing in a high wind, the saxophones wailing like a litter of pigs. In an alcove Drusilla Banubula sat with her dress drawn up to her shapely knees, allowing a pair of contrite harlequins to bandage a sprained ankle. She had fallen down or been knocked down it would seem. An African witch-doctor wearing a monocle lay fast asleep on the couch behind her. In the second room a maudlin woman in evening dress was playing jazz on a grand piano and singing to herself while great tears coursed down her cheeks. An old fat man with hairy legs hung over her, dressed as the Venus de Milo. He was crying too. His belly trembled.
The supper-room however was comparatively quiet, and here I found Pursewarden, uncowled and apparently rather tipsy, talking to Mountolive as the latter walked with his curious gliding, limping walk round the table, loading a plate with slices of cold turkey and salad. Pursewarden was inveighing somewhat incoherently against the Cervonis for serving Spumante instead of champagne. ‘I should watch it’ he called out to me, ‘there’s a headache in every mouthful.’ But he had his glass refilled almost at once, holding it with exaggerated steadiness. Mountolive turned a speculative and gentle eye upon me as I seized a plate, and then greeted me by name with evident relief. ‘Ah, Darley’ he said, ‘for a moment I thought you were one of my secretaries. They’ve been following me around all evening. Spoiling my fun. Errol simply refuses to violate protocol and leave before his Chief of Mission; so I had to hide in the garden until they thought I had left, poor dears. As a junior I have so often cursed my Minister for keeping me up on boring evenings that I made a vow never to make my juniors suffer in the same way if I should ever become Head of Mission.’ His light effortless conversation with its unaffectedness of delivery always made him seem immediately sympathetic, though I realized that his manner was a professional one, the bedside manner of the trained diplomat. He had spent so many years in putting his inferiors at their ease, and in hiding his spirit’s condescension, that he had at last achieved an air of utterly professional sincerity which while seeming true to nature could not, in reality, have been less false. It had all the fidelity of great acting. But it was annoying that I should always find myself liking him so much. We circled the table slowly together, talking and filling our plates.
‘What did you see in the garden, David?’ said Pursewarden in a teasing tone, and the Minister’s eye rested speculatively on him for a minute, as if to warn him against saying something which would be indiscreet or out of place. ‘I saw’ said Mountolive smiling and reaching for a glass, ‘I saw the amorous Amaril by the lake — talking to a woman in a domino. Perhaps his dreams have come true?’ Amaril’s passion was well-known to everyone. ‘I do hope so.’
‘And what else?’ said Pursewarden in a challenging, rather vulgar tone, as if he shared a private secret with him. ‘What else, who else did you see, David?’ He was slightly tipsy and his voice, though friendly, had a bullying note. Mountolive flushed and looked down at his plate.
At this I left them and made my way back, equipped with loaded plate and glass. I felt a certain scorn in my heart for Pursewarden, and a rush of sympathy for Mountolive at the thought of him being put out of countenance. I wanted to be alone, to eat in silence and think about Justine. My cargo of food was nearly upset by three heavily-rouged Graces, all of them men to judge by the deep voices, who were scuffling in the hall. They were attacking each others’ private parts with jocular growls, like dogs. I had the sudden idea of going up to the library which would surely be empty at this time. I wondered if the new Cavafy manuscripts would be there, and whether the collection was unlocked, for Cervoni was a great collector of books.
On the first floor, a fat man with spindly legs, dressed in the costume of Red Riding Hood, was hammering on a lavatory door; servants were sucking the soot from the carpets of the rooms with Hoovers and talking in undertones. The library was on the floor above. There was a noise in one of the bedrooms, and from the bathroom below I could hear someone being chromatically sick. I reached the landing and pressed the airtight door with my foot, and it sucked open to admit me. The long room with its gleaming shelves of books was empty save for a Mephistopheles sitting in an arm-chair by the fire with a book on his knees. He took his spectacles off in order to identify me and I saw that it was Capodistria. He could not have chosen a more suitable costume. It suited his great ravening beak of a nose and those small, keen eyes, set so close together. ‘Come in’ he cried. ‘I was afraid it might be someone wanting to make love in which case … toujours la politesse, I should have felt bound.… What are you eating? The fire is lovely. I was just looking up a quotation which has been worrying me all evening.’
I joined him and placed my loaded plate as an offering between us to be shared. ‘I came to see the new Cavafy manuscript’ I said.
‘All locked up, the manuscripts’ he said.
‘Well.’
The fire crackled brightly and the room was silent and welcoming with its lining of fine books. I took off my cape and sat down after a preliminary quest along the walls, during which Da Capo finished copying something out on to a piece of paper. ‘Curious thing about Mountolive’s father’ he said absently. ‘This huge eight-volume edition of Buddhist texts. Did you know?’
‘I had heard’ I said vaguely.
‘The old man was a judge in India. When he retired he stayed on there, is still there; foremost European scholar on Pali texts. I must say.… Mountolive hasn’t seen him for years. He dresses like a saddhu he says. You English are eccentrics through and through. Why shouldn’t the old man work on his texts in Oxford, eh?’
‘Climate, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps.’ He agreed. ‘There. That’s what I was hunting for — I knew it was somewhere in the fourth volume.’ He banged his book shut.
‘What is it?’
He held his paper out to the fire and read slowly with an air of puzzled pleasure the quotation he had copied out: ‘The fruit of the tree of good and evil is itself but flesh; yes, and the apple itself is but an apple of the dust.’
‘That’s not Buddhist, surely’ I said.
‘No, it’s Mountolive père himself, from the introduction.’
‘I think that.…’
But now there came a confused screaming from somewhere near at hand, and Capodistria sighed. ‘I don’t know why the devil I take part in this damned carnival year after year’ he said peevishly, draining his whisky. ‘It is an unlucky time astrologically. For me, I mean. And every year there are ugly accidents. It makes one uneasy. Two years ago Arnelh was found hanging in the musicians’ gallery at the Fontanas’ house. Funny eh? Da
mned inconsiderate if he did it himself. And then Martin Fery fought that duel with Jacomo Forte.… It brings out the devil. That is why I am dressed as the devil. I hang about waiting for people to come and sell me their souls. Aha!’ He sniffed and rubbed his hands with a parchment sound and gave his little dry cachinnation. And then, standing up and finishing the last slice of turkey, ‘God, have you seen the time? I must be going home. Beelzebub’s bedtime.’
‘So should I’ I said, disappointed that I could not get a look at the handwriting of the old poet. ‘So should I.’
‘Can I lift you?’ he said, as the sucking door expelled us once more into the trampled musical air of the landing. ‘Useless to expect to say good-bye to our hosts. Cervoni is probably in bed by now.’
We went down slowly chatting into the great hall where the music rolled on in an unbroken stream of syncopated sound. Da Capo had adjusted his mask now and looked like some weird bird-like demon. We stood for a moment watching the dancers, and then yawning he said: ‘Well, this is where to quote Cavafy the God abandons Antony. Good night. I can’t stay awake any longer, though I am afraid the evening will be full of surprises yet. It always is.’
Nor was he to be proved wrong. I hovered for a while, watching the dance, and then walked down the stairs into the dark coolness of the night. There were a few limousines and sleepy servants waiting by the gates, but the streets had begun to empty and my own footfalls sounded harsh and exotic as they smacked up from the pavements. At the corner of Fuad there were a couple of European whores leaning dispiritedly against a wall and smoking. They called once hoarsely after me. They wore magnolia blossoms in their hair.
Yawning, I passed the Etoile to see if perhaps Melissa was still working, but the place was empty except for a drunk family which had refused to go home despite the fact that Zoltan had stacked up the chairs and tables around them on the dance-floor. ‘She went off early’ the little man explained. ‘Band gone. Girls gone. Everyone gone. Only these canaille from Assuan. His brother is a policeman; we dare not dose.’ A fat man began to belly-dance with sugary movements of the hips and pelvis and the company began to mark the time. I left and walked past Melissa’s shabby lodgings in the vague hope that she might still be awake. I felt I wanted to talk to someone; no, I wanted to borrow a cigarette. That was all. Afterwards would come the desire to sleep with her, to hold that slender cherished body in my arms, inhaling its sour flavours of alcohol and tobacco-smoke, thinking all the time of Justine. But her window was dark; either she was asleep or was not yet home. Zoltan had said that she left with a party of business-men disguised as admirals. ‘Des petits commerçants quelconques’ he had added contemptuously, and then turned at once apologetic.
The Alexandria Quartet Page 43