The Alexandria Quartet

by Lawrence Durrell

  ‘I don’t know’ said Telford, helplessly. ‘It’s rather mysterious.’

  A pale Mountolive turned and made some muttered apologies to the little group of pashas who stood about the telephone in that dreary outhouse. Immediately they spread self-deprecating hands like a flock of doves taking flight. There was no inconvenience. An Ambassador was expected to be entrained in great events. They could wait.

  ‘Telford’ said Mountolive, sharply and angrily.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell me what else you know.’

  Telford cleared his throat and went on in his slushy voice:

  ‘Well, there isn’t anything of exceptional importance from my point of view. The last person to see him alive was that man Darley, the schoolteacher. You probably don’t know him, sir. Well, he met him on the way back to the hotel. He invited Darley in for a drink and they stayed talking for some considerable time and drinking gin. In the hotel. The deceased said nothing of any special interest — and certainly nothing to suggest that he was planning to take his own life. On the contrary, he said he was going to take the night train to Gaza for a holiday. He showed Darley the proofs of his latest novel, all wrapped up and addressed, and a mackintosh full of things he might need for the journey — pyjamas, toothpaste. What made him change his mind? I don’t know, sir, but the answer may be in your safe. That is why I rang you.’

  ‘I see’ said Mountolive. It was strange, but already he was beginning to get used to the idea of Pursewarden’s disappearance from the scene. The shock was abating, diminishing: only the mystery remained. Telford still spluttered on the line. ‘Yes’ he said, recovering mastery of himself. ‘Yes.’

  It was only a matter of moments before Mountolive recovered his demure official pose and reoriented himself to take a benign interest in the mills and their thumping machinery. He worked hard not to seem too abstracted and to seem suitably impressed by what was shown to him. He tried too to analyse the absurdity of his anger against Pursewarden having committed an act which seemed … a gross solecism! How absurd. Yet, as an act, it was somehow typical because so inconsiderate: perhaps he should have anticipated it? Profound depression alternated with his feelings of anger.

  He motored back in haste, full of an urgent expectancy, an unease. It was almost as if he were going to take Pursewarden to task, demand an explanation of him, administer a well-earned reproof. He arrived to find that the Chancery was just closing, though the industrious Enrol was still busy upon State papers in his office. Everyone down to the cipher clerks seemed to be afflicted by the air of gravid depression which sudden death always confers upon the uncomfortably living. He deliberately forced himself to walk slowly, talk slowly, not to hurry. Haste, like emotion, was always deplorable because it suggested that impulse or feeling was master where only reason should rule. His secretary had already left but he obtained the keys to his safe from Archives and sedately walked up the two short flights to his office. Heartbeats are mercifully inaudible to anyone but oneself.

  The dead man’s ‘effects’ (the poetry of causality could not be better expressed than by the word) were stacked on his desk, looking curiously disembodied. A bundle of papers and manuscript, a parcel addressed to a publisher, a mackintosh and various odds and ends conscripted by the painstaking Telford in the interests of truth (though they had little beauty for Mountolive). He got a tremendous start when he saw Pursewarden’s bloodless features staring up at him from his blotter — a death-mask in plaster of Paris with a note from Balthazar saying ‘I took the liberty of making an impression of the face after death. I trust this will seem sensible.’ Pursewarden’s face! From some angles death can look like a fit of the sulks., Mountolive touched the effigy with reluctance, superstitiously, moving it this way and that. His flesh crept with a small sense of loathing; he realized suddenly that he was afraid of death.

  Then to the safe with its envelope whose clumsy seals he cracked with a trembling thumb ‘as he sat at his desk. Here at least he should find some sort of rational exegesis for this gross default of good manners! He drew a deep breath.

  My dear David,

  I have torn up half a dozen other attempts to explain this in detail. I found I was only making literature. There is quite enough about. My decision has to do with life. Paradox! I am terribly sorry, old man.

  Quite by accident, in an unexpected quarter, I stumbled upon something which told me that Maskelyne’s theories about Nessim were right, mine wrong. I do not give you my sources, and will not. But I now realize Nessim is smuggling arms into Palestine and has been for some time. He is obviously the unknown source, deeply implicated in the operations which were described in Paper Seven — you will remember. (Secret Mandate File 341. Intelligence.)

  But I simply am not equal to facing the simpler moral implications raised by this discovery. I know what has to be done about it. But the man happens to be my friend. Therefore … a quietus. (This will solve other deeper problems too.) Ach! what a boring world we have created around us. The slime of plot and counterplot. I have just recognized that it is not my world at all. (I can hear you swearing as you read.)

  I feel in a way a cad to shelve my own responsibilities like this, and yet, in truth, I know that they are not really mine, never have been mine. But they are yours! And jolly bitter you will find them. But… you are of the career…and you must act where I cannot bring myself to!

  I know I am wanting in a sense of duty, but I have let Nessim know obliquely that his game has been spotted and the information passed on. Of course, in this vague form you could also be right in suppressing it altogether, forgetting it. I don’t envy you your temptations. Mine, however, not to reason why. I’m tired, my dear chap; sick unto death, as the living say.

  And so …

  Will you give my sister my love and say that my thoughts were with her? Thank you.

  Affectionately yours,

  L. P.

  Mountolive was aghast. He felt himself turning pale as he read. Then he sat for a long time staring at the expression on the face of the death-mask — the characteristic air of solitary impertinence which Pursewarden’s profile always wore in repose; and still obstinately struggling with the absurd sense of diplomatic outrage which played about his mind, fickering like stabs of sheet-lightning.

  ‘It is folly!’ he cried aloud with vexation, as he banged the desk with the flat of his hand. ‘Utter folly! Nobody kills himself for an official reason!’ He cursed the stupidity of the words as he uttered them. For the first time complete confusion overtook his mind.

  In order to calm it he forced himself to read Telford’s typed report slowly and carefully, spelling out the words to himself with moving lips, as if it were an exercise. It was an account of Pursewarden’s movements during the twenty-four hours before his death with depositions by the various people who had seen him. Some of the reports were interesting, notably that of Balthazar who had seen him during the morning in the Café Al Aktar where Pursewarden was drinking arak and eating a croissant. He had apparently received a letter from his sister that morning and was reading it with an air of grave preoccupation. He put it in his pocket abruptly when Balthazar arrived. He was extremely unshaven and haggard. There seemed little enough of interest in the conversation which ensued save for one remark (probably a jest?) which stayed in Balthazar’s memory. Pursewarden had been dancing with Melissa the evening before and said something about her being a desirable person to marry. (‘This must have been a joke’ added Balthazar.) He also said that he had started another book ‘all about Love’. Mountolive sighed as he slowly ran his eye down the typed page. Love! Then came an odd thing. He had bought a printed Will form and filled it in, making his sister his literary executor, and bequeathing five hundred pounds to the schoolteacher Darley and his mistress. This, for some reason, he had antedated by a couple of months — perhaps he forgot the date? He had asked two cipher clerks to witness it.

  The letter from his sister was there also, but Telford had t
actfully put it into a separate envelope and sealed it. Mountolive read it, shaking his bewildered head, and then thrust it into his pocket shamefacedly. He licked his lips and frowned heavily at the wall. Liza!

  Errol put his head timidly round the door and was shocked to surprise tears upon the cheek of his Chief. He ducked back tactfully and retreated hastily to his office, deeply shaken by a sense of diplomatic inappropriateness somewhat similar to the feelings which Mountolive himself had encountered when Telford telephoned him. Errol sat at his desk with attentive nervousness thinking: ‘A good diplomat should never show feeling.’ Then he lit a cigarette with sombre deliberation. For the first time he realized that his Ambassador had feet of clay. This increased his sense of self-respect somewhat. Mountolive was, after all, only a man.… Nevertheless, the experience had been disorienting.

  Upstairs Mountolive too had lighted a cigarette in order to calm his nerves. The accent of his apprehension was slowly transferring itself from the bare act of Pursewarden (this inconvenient plunge into anonymity) — was transferring itself to the central meaning of the act — to the tidings it brought with it. Nessim! And here he felt his own soul shrink and contract and a deeper, more inarticulate anger beset him. He had trusted Nessim! (‘Why?’ said the inner voice. ‘There was no need to do so.’) And then, by this wicked somersault, Pursewarden had, in effect, transferred the whole weight of the moral problem to Mountohve’s own shoulders. He had started up the hornets’ nest: the old conflict between duty, reason and personal affection which every political man knows is his cross, the central weakness of his life! What a swine, he thought (almost admiringly), Pursewarden had been to transfer it all so easily — the enticing ease of such a decision: withdrawal! He added sadly: ‘I trusted Nessim because of Leila!’ Vexation upon vexation. He smoked and stared now, seeing in the dead white plaster face (which the loving hands of Clea had printed from Balthazar’s clumsy negative) the warm living face of Leila’s son: the dark abstract features from a Ravenna fresco! The face of his friend. And then, his very thoughts uttered themselves in whispers: ‘Perhaps after all Leila is at the bottom of everything.’

  (‘Diplomats have no real friends’ Grishkin had said bitterly, trying to wound him, to rouse him. ‘They use everyone.’ He had used, she was implying, her body and her beauty: and now that she was pregnant.…)

  He exhaled slowly and deeply, invigorated by the nicotine-laden oxygen which gave his nerves time to settle, his brain time to clear. As the mist lifted he discerned something like a new landscape opening before him; for here was something which could not help but alter all the dispositions of chance and friendship, alter every date on the affectionate calendar his mind had compiled about his stay in Egypt: the tennis and swimming and riding. Even these simple motions of joining with the ordinary world of social habit and pleasure, of relieving the taedium vitae of his isolation, were all infected by the new knowledge. Moreover, what was to be done with the information which Pursewarden had so unceremoniously thrust into his lap? It must be of course reported. Here he was able to pause. Must it be reported? The data in the letter lacked any shred of supporting evidence — except perhaps the overwhelming evidence of a death which.… He lit a cigarette and whispered the words: ‘While the balance of his mind was disturbed.’ That at least was worth a grim smile! After all, the suicide of a political officer was not such an uncommon event; there had been that youth Greaves, in love with a cabaret-girl in Russia.… Somehow he still felt aggrieved at so malicious a betrayal of his friendship for the writer.

  Very well. Suppose he simply burnt the letter, disposing with the weight of moral onus it bore? It could be done quite simply, in his own grate, with the aid of a safety-match. He could continue to behave as if no such revelation had ever been made — except for the fact that Nessim knew it had! No, he was trapped.

  And here his sense of duty, like ill-fitting shoes, began to pinch him at every step. He thought of Justine and Nessim dancing together, silently, blindly, their dark faces turned away from each other, eyes half-closed. They had attained a new dimension in his view of them already — the unsentimental projection of figures in a primitive fresco. Presumably they also struggled with a sense of duty and responsibility — to whom? ‘To themselves, perhaps’ he whispered sadly, shaking his head. He would never be able to meet Nessim eye to eye again.

  It suddenly dawned on him. Up to now their personal relationship had been forced from any prejudicial cast by Nessim’s tact — and Pursewarden’s existence. The writer, in supplying the official link, had freed them in the personal lives. Never had the two men been forced to discuss anything remotely connected with official matters. Now they could not meet upon this happy ground. In this context too Pursewarden had traduced his freedom. As for Leila, perhaps here lay the key to her enigmatic silence, her inability to meet him face to face.

  Sighing, he rang for Errol. ‘You’d better glance at this’ he said. His Head of Chancery sat himself down and began to read the document greedily. He nodded slowly from time to time. Mountolive cleared his throat: ‘It seems pretty incoherent to me’ he said, despising himself for so trying to cast a doubt upon the clear words, to influence Errol in a judgement which, in his own secret mind, he had already made. Errol read it twice slowly, and handed it back across the desk. ‘It seems pretty extraordinary’ he said tentatively, respectfully. It was not his place to offer evaluations of the message. They must by rights come from his Chief. ‘It all seems a bit out of proportion’ he added helpfully, feeling his way.

  Mountolive said sombrely: ‘I’m afraid it is typical of Pursewarden. It makes me sorry that I never took up your original recommendations about him. I was wrong, it seems, and you were right about his suitability.’

  Errol’s eye glinted with modest triumph. He said nothing, however, as he stared at Mountolive. ‘Of course,’ said the latter, ‘as you well know, Hosnani has been suspect for some time.’

  ‘I know, sir.’

  ‘But there is no evidence here to support what he says.’ He tapped the letter irritably twice. Enrol sat back and breathed through his nose. ‘I don’t know’ he said vaguely. ‘It sounds pretty conclusive to me.’

  ‘I don’t think’ said Mountolive ‘it would support a paper. Of course we’ll report it to London as it stands. But I’m inclined not to give it to the Parquet to help them with their inquest. What do you say?’

  Enrol cradled his knees. A slow smile of cunning crept around his mouth. ‘It might be the best way of getting it to the Egyptians’ he said softly, ‘and they might choose to act on it. Of course, it would obviate the diplomatic pressure we might have to bring if … later on, the whole thing came out in a more concrete form. I know Hosnani was a friend of yours, sir.’

  Mountolive felt himself colouring slightly. ‘In matters of business, a diplomat has no friends’ he said stiffly, feeling that he spoke in the very accents of Pontius Pilate.

  ‘Quite, sir.’ Errol gazed at him admiringly.

  ‘Once Hosnani’s guilt is established we shall have to act. But without supporting evidence we should find ourselves in a weak position. With Memlik Pasha — you know he isn’t very pro-British … I’m thinking.…’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  Mountolive waited, drinking the air like a wild animal, scenting that Errol was beginning to approve his judgement. They sat silently in the dusk for a while, thinking. Then, with a histrionic snap, the Ambassador switched on the desk-light and said decisively: ‘If you agree, we’ll keep this out of Egyptian hands until we are better documented. London must have it. Classified of course. But not private persons, even next-of-kin. By the way, are you capable of undertaking the next-of-kin correspondence? I leave it to you to make up something.’ He felt a pang as he saw Liza Pursewarden’s face rise up before him.

  ‘Yes. I have his file here. There is only a sister at the Imperial Institute for the Blind, I think, apart from his wife.’ Errol fussily consulted a green folder, but Mountolive said ‘Yes, yes.
I know her.’ Errol stood up.

  Mountolive added: ‘And I think in all fairness we should copy to Maskelyne in Jerusalem, don’t you?’

  ‘Most certainly, sir.’

  ‘And for the moment keep our own counsel?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Thank you very much’ said Mountolive with unusual warmth. He felt all of a sudden very old and frail. Indeed he felt so weak that he doubted if his limbs could carry him downstairs to the Residence. ‘That is all at present.’ Errol took his leave, closing the door behind him with the gravity of a mute.

  Mountolive telephoned to the buttery and ordered himself a glass of beef-tea and biscuits. He ate and drank ravenously, staring the while at the white mask and the manuscript of a novel. He felt both a deep disgust and a sense of enormous bereavement — he could not tell which lay uppermost. Unwittingly, too, Pursewarden had, he reflected, separated him forever from Leila. Yes, that also, and perhaps forever.

  That night, however, he made his witty prepared speech (written by Enrol) to the Alexandrian Chamber of Commerce, delighting the assembled bankers by his fluent French. The clapping swelled and expanded in the august banquet room of the Mohammed Ali Club. Nessim, seated at the opposite end of the long table, undertook the response with gravity and a calm address. Once or twice during the dinner Mountolive felt the dark eyes of his friend seeking his own, interrogating them, but he evaded them. A chasm now yawned between them which neither would know how to bridge. After dinner, he met Nessim briefly in the hall as he was putting on his coat. He suddenly felt the almost irresistible desire to refer to Pursewarden’s death. The subject obtruded itself so starkly, stuck up jaggedly into the air between them. It shamed him as a physical deformity might; as if his handsome smile were disfigured by a missing front tooth. He said nothing and neither did Nessim. Nothing of what was going on beneath the surface showed in the elastic and capable manner of the two tall men who stood smoking by the front door, waiting for the car to arrive. But a new watchful, obdurate knowledge had been born between them. How strange that a few words scribbled on a piece of paper should make them enemies!