The Magus

by John Robert Fowles

  Again, I had no feeling of the supernatural, no feeling that this was more than another nasty twist in the masque; a black inversion of the scene on the beach. That does not mean I was not frightened. I was, and very frightened; but my fear came from a feeling that anything might happen. That there were no limits in this masque, no normal social laws or conventions.

  Two things happened in the moments I stood there. Maria came towards me; and the two figures swiftly withdrew, as if to avoid any chance of her seeing them. Lily’s doppelganger was pulled back imperiously by the black hand on her shoulder. At the very last moment she looked down at me, but her face was expressionless.

  I began to run back towards the point on the path where I could see down to the beach. I flung a look over my shoulder. The figures on the terrace had disappeared. I came to the bend from which I could see down, from where, not half a minute before, I had watched the Lily on the beach last wave. The jetty was deserted; that end of the small cove was empty. I ran further down, to the little flat space with the bench, from where I could see almost all the beach and most of the path up. I waited in vain for the mounting bright dress to appear. I thought, she must be hiding in the little cave, or among the rocks. I turned and began to climb swiftly back towards the house.

  Maria was still waiting for me at the edge of the colonnade. She had been joined by a man. I recognized Hermes, the taciturn donkey-driver. He could have been the man in black, he had the right height; but he looked unruffled, a mere bystander. I said quickly in Greek, mia stigmi, one second, and walked indoors past them. Maria was holding out an envelope, but I took no notice. Once inside I raced up the stairs to Conchis’s room. I knocked on the door. No sound. I knocked again. Then I tried the handle. It was locked.

  I went back down, and paused in the music room to light a cigarette; and to take a grip on myself.

  “Where is Mr. Conchis?”

  “Then eine mesa.” He’s not in. Maria raised the envelope again, but I still ignored it.

  “Where’s he gone?”

  “Ephyge me ti varca.” Gone with the boat.

  “Where?”

  She didn’t know. I took the envelope. It had Nicholas written on it. Two folded papers.

  One was a note from Conchis.

  Dear Nicholas, I am obliged to ask you to entertain yourself until this evening. Unexpected business requires my presence urgently in Nauplia. M.C.

  The other was a radiogram. There was no telephone or cable line to the island, but the Greek coastguard service ran a small radio station.

  It had been sent from Athens the evening before. I assumed that it would explain why Conchis had had to go. But then I had the third shock in three minutes. I saw the name at the end.

  It read: BACK NEXT FRIDAY STOP THREE DAYS FREE STOP AIRPORT SIX EVENING STOP PLEASE COME ALISON.

  It had been sent on Saturday afternoon. I looked up at Maria and Hermes. Their eyes were blank, simply watching.

  “When did you bring this?”

  Hermes answered. “Proi proi.” Early that morning.

  “Who gave it to you to bring?” It was addressed to the school.

  A professor. At Sarantopoulos’s, the last evening.

  “Why didn’t you give it to me before?”

  He shrugged and looked at Maria, and she shrugged. They seemed to imply that it had been given to Conchis. It was his fault. I read it again.

  Hermes asked me if I wanted to send an answer; he was going back to the village. I said, no, no reply.

  I stared at Hermes. His wall eye gave little hope. But I demanded, “Have you seen the two young ladies this morning?”

  He looked at Maria. She said, Which girls? There are no girls here.

  I looked at Hermes again. “You?”

  “Ochi.” His head went back.

  Maria said, “Ah, katalava, katalava.” She told Hermes I meant the little girls from the cottages. They do not come here, she said to me.

  I muttered sarcastically, “Of course.” And left them.

  I returned to the beach. All the time I had been watching the place where the path came up. Down there I went straight to the cave. No sign of her. A couple of minutes convinced me that she was not hiding anywhere among the rocks and trees. I looked up the little gulley. It might have been just possible to scramble up it and to get away to the east, but I found it difficult to believe. I climbed up some way to see if she was crouching behind a rock. But there was no one.

  32

  Lying in the sun, I tried to clear my mind about the two Lilys. The idea was clear. One twin came close to me, talked to me. She had a scar on her left wrist. The other did the doppelganger effects. I would never get close to her. I would see her on the terrace, in the starlight; but always at a distance. Twins—it was extraordinary, but I had begun to realize enough about Conchis to see that it was predictable. If one was very rich… why not the rarest? Why anything but the strangest and the rarest?

  I tried to clear my mind about the Lily I knew, the scar-Lily, and myself. This morning, even last night, she had set out to make herself attractive to me; and if she was really simply Conchis’s mistress, I couldn’t imagine why he should allow it, and so obviously leave us alone together, unless he was much more profoundly perverted than I could bring myself seriously to suspect. In so many ways, it seemed all no more than a game. Lily gave strongly the impression that she was playing with me—amusing herself as much as acting a role at Conchis’s command. But all games, even the most literal, between a man and a woman are implicitly sexual; and I was clearly meant to feel that. If it was her job to seduce me, I should be seduced. I couldn’t do anything about it. I was a sensualist. I wanted to be seduced, to drink the wave.

  Then Alison. Her telegram was like grit in the eye when one particularly wants to see clearly. I could guess what had happened. My letter of the Monday before would have arrived on Friday or Saturday in London, she would have been on a flight out of England that day, perhaps feeling fed up, half an hour to kill at Ellenikon—on impulse, a telegram. But it came like an intrusion—of dispensable reality into pleasure, of now artificial duty into instinct. I couldn’t leave the island, I couldn’t waste three days in Athens. I read the wretched thing again. Conchis must have read it too—there was no envelope. Demetriades would have opened it when it was first delivered at the school.

  So Conchis would know I was invited to Athens—and would guess that this was the girl I had spoken about, the girl I must “swim towards.” Perhaps that was why he had had to go away. There might be arrangements to cancel for the next weekend. I had assumed that he would invite me again, give me the whole four days of half-term; that Alison would not take my lukewarm offer.

  I came to a decision. A physical confrontation, even the proximity that Alison’s coming to the island might represent, was unthinkable. Whatever happened, if I met her, it must be in Athens. If he invited me, I could easily make some excuse and not go. But if he didn’t, then after all I would have Alison to fall back on. I won either way.

  The bell rang again for me. It was lunchtime. I collected my things and drunk with the sun, walked heavily up the path. But I was covertly trying to watch in every direction, preternaturally on the alert for events in the masque. As I walked through the windswept trees to the house, I expected some strange new sight to emerge, to see both twins together—I didn’t know. I was wrong. There was nothing. My lunch was laid; one place. Maria did not appear. Under the muslin there was taramasalata, boiled eggs, and a plate of loquats.

  By the end of the meal under the windy colonnade I had banned Alison from my mind and was ready for anything that Conchis might now offer. To make things easier, I went through the pine trees to where I had lain and read of Robert Foulkes the Sunday before. I took no book. But lay on my back and shut my eyes.

  33

  I was given no time to sleep. I had not been lying there five minutes before I heard a rustle and, simultaneously, smelt the sandalwood perfume. I pretended to be a
sleep. The rustle came closer. I heard the tiny crepitation of pine needles. Her feet were just behind my head. There was a louder rustle; she had sat down, and very close behind me. I thought she would drop a cone, tickle my nose. But in a very low voice she began to recite, half singing.

  A frog he would a-wooing go,

  Whether his mother would let him or no.

  So off he marched with his nice new hat

  And on the way he met with a rat.

  And they came to the door of the mouse’s hall,

  They gave a loud knock and they gave a loud call.

  Pray, Mrs. Mouse, are you within?

  Oh yes, Mr. Rat, I’m learning to spin.

  Pray, Mrs. Mouse, will you give us some beer?

  Young froggy and I are fond of good cheer.

  But as they were all a merry-making

  The cat and her kittens came tumbling in.

  The cat she seized the rat by the crown;

  The kittens they pulled the little mouse down.

  This put poor frog in a terrible fright,

  So he took his new hat and wished them good night.

  As froggy was crossing him over a brook,

  A lily-white duck gob-gobbled him up.

  So that was an end of one, two and three,

  Riddle-me-ro, riddle-me-ree.

  * * *

  All the time I was silent, and kept my eyes closed. She teased the words; I was the frog. A willing frog; the wind blew in the pines above, she said each couplet in her dry-sweet voice. After each couplet, she paused. A little silence, the wind. Then the next couplet.

  She finished. Without moving, I opened my eyes and looked back. A fiendish green-and-black face, with protuberant fire-red eyes, glared down at me. I twisted over. She was holding a Chinese carnival mask on a stick, in her left hand. I saw the scar. I grinned, and she lowered the mask to her nose and stared over it at me with taunting eyes.

  She had changed into a long-sleeved white blouse and a long gray skirt and her hair was tied back by a black velvet bow. I pushed the mask aside. She was smiling.

  “I have come to gobble you up.”

  “I haven’t even been a-wooing yet.” She half raised the mask again and looked at me over the top of it with silent incredulity. “Well, I haven’t been a-wooing you yet.”

  “You cannot woo me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Forbidden.”

  “By you?”

  “By everything.”

  She put her hands round her enskirted knees and leant back and stared up through the branches at the sky. A fine throat. She was wearing absurd black lace-up boots.

  “I saw your twin sister this morning.”

  “That was very clever. I have no sister.”

  “Yes you have. She was standing with a charming young man dressed in black. It was quite a shock. To see him dressed at all.” She looked down, and made no answer. “Where did you hide?”

  “I went home.”

  “Over there?” I pointed towards the sea.

  “Yes. Over there.”

  I knew it was no good; she wouldn’t lay down the other mask. I shrugged, smiled at her now rather serious, perceptibly watchful face and reached for my cigarettes. I offered her one, but she shook her head. She watched me strike the match and inhale a couple of times, and then suddenly reached out her hand.

  “Have one.” I held out the packet, but she wanted the cigarette in my mouth.

  “One puff.”

  She took the cigarette and pecked out her lips at it in the characteristic way of first smokers; took a little puff, then a bigger one. She coughed and buried her head in her knees, holding out the cigarette for me to take back.

  “Horrible.”

  “Beautifully acted.”

  She bowed her head again to cough. I looked at the nape of her neck, her slim shoulders, her total reality.

  “Where did you train?”

  “Train?” She spoke into her knees.

  “Which drama school? RADA?”

  She shook her head, then looked up and said, “I have never had a dramatic training.” I had the impression that this was the truth, a remark out of role; and that she sensed that I sensed it, and had to improvise defense. She went on quickly, “As far as I know.”

  “Oh of course. You suffer from amnesia.” She was silent, looking straight ahead, as if in two minds about whether to play at being offended or not. She threw me a veiled look, then stared ahead again. I lay on my elbow. “I don’t mind in the least being made a fool of, but I can’t stand every attempt at natural curiosity being treated as bad taste.” I watched the side of her face. We were at right angles to each other. She remained chin on knees, eyes lost in the distance.

  I said after a few moments, “You’re trying—very successfully—to captivate me. Why?”

  She made no attempt this time to be offended. One realized progress more by omissions than anything else; by pretenses dropped.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  She picked up the mask and held it like a yashmak again.

  “I am Astarte, mother of mystery.” The piquant gray-violet eyes dilated, and I had to laugh.

  I said, very gently, “Buffoon.”

  The eyes blazed. “Blasphemy, oh foolish mortal!”

  “Sorry, I’m an atheist.”

  She put down the mask.

  “And a traitor.”

  “Why?” I remembered the reference to treachery during the palm-reading.

  “Astarte knows all.” She looked sideways at me, coolly, changing the mood. The cable from Alison.

  There was silence. She kept hugging her knees, looking at the ground in front of her.

  “He told you about this girl.”

  “You told me.”

  “I told you!”

  “I was there when you told Maurice.”

  “But we were in the garden. You can’t have been.”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “She is Australian. You… lived with her as man and wife.”

  “He told you, didn’t he?” Silence. “You know what her job is?” She nodded. “Let me hear you say it.”

  “She is an air-hostess.”

  “What is an air-hostess?”

  “She looks after passengers on airplanes.”

  “How do you know that? You died in 1916.”

  “I asked Maurice.”

  “I bet you’re good at chess.”

  “I cannot play chess.”

  “Why don’t you ask him about your own past?”

  “I know I was born in London. We lived in a part of London called St. John’s Wood. Maurice lived in St. John’s Wood too. I studied music, I was in love with Maurice, we became engaged, but then the dreadful war came and he had to go away and I went to nurse and… I caught typhoid.” She was barely pretending this was true; simply reciting her “past,” with a small smile, in order to tease me.

  I reached out and caught her hand. At the same time I heard the sound of a boat engine; she heard it as well, but her eyes gave nothing away.

  She said in a small, cold voice. “Please let me go.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  “You’re hurting my wrist.”

  “Promise not to go.”

  There was a pause. She said, “I promise not to go.” I quickly raised her wrist and kissed it before she could react. She gave me an uncertain glance, then pulled her hand away, but not too roughly. She swiveled round and turned her back to me. I picked up a cone.

  “I suppose he told you this Australian girl sent me a cable yesterday.” She did not answer. “If you said I could meet you, how shall I put it… officially?… here next weekend, or unofficially somewhere else… in the village? Anywhere. I shouldn’t go.” There was a pause. “I’m trying to be frank. Not treacherous.” Her back was silent. “I haven’t been very happy on Phraxos. Not until I came here, as a matter of fact. I’ve been, well, pretty lonely. I kn
ow I don’t love… this other girl. It’s just that she’s been the only person. That’s all.”

  “Perhaps to her you seem the only person.”

  “There are dozens of other men in her life. Honestly. There’ve been at least three more since I left England.” A runner ant zigzagged neurotically up the white back of her blouse and I reached and flicked it off. She must have felt me do it, but she did not turn. “It was nothing. Just an affaire.”

  She didn’t speak for some time. I craned round to see her face. It was pensive. She said, “I know you did not believe what Maurice said last night. But it was true.” She glanced round solemnly at me. “I am not the real Lily. But I am not anyone impersonating the real Lily.”

  “Because you’re dead?”

  “Yes. I am dead.”

  I crouched beside her, tapped her shoulder.

  “Now listen. All this is very amusing. But it just doesn’t hold water. First there are several of you. You’ve got a twin sister, and you know it. You do this disappearing trick, and you have this charming line of mystery talk. Period dialogue and mythology and all the rest. But the fact is, there are two things you can’t conceal. You’re intelligent. And you’re as physically real as I am.” I pinched her arm, and she winced. “I don’t know whether you’re doing all this because you love the old man. Because he pays you. Because it amuses you. Because you’re his mistress. I don’t know where you and your sister and your other friends live. I don’t really care, because I think the whole idea’s original, it’s charming to be with you, I like Maurice, I think this is all fun… but don’t let’s take it all so bloody seriously. Play your charade. But for Christ’s sake don’t try to explain it.”