The Magus

by John Robert Fowles

  I had a lot of marking to do, but I couldn’t stay in. I walked up to the main ridge, to the inland cliff. I had to see the roof of Bourani, the south of the island, the sea, the mountains, all the reality of the unreality. There was none of the burning need to go down and spy that had possessed me the week before, but a balancing mixture of excitement and reassurance, a certainty of the health of the symbiosis. I was theirs still; they were mine.

  I wrote a note to Alison as soon as I got back.

  Allie darling, you can’t say to someone “I’ve decided I ought to love you.” I can see a million reasons why I ought to love you, because (as I tried to explain) in my fashion, my perfect-bastard fashion, I do love you. Parnassus was beautiful, please don’t think it was nothing to me, only the body, or could ever be anything but unforgettable, always, for me. I know you’re angry, of course you’re angry, but please write back. It’s so likely that one day I shall need you terribly, I shall come crawling to you, and you can have all the revenge you want then.

  I thought it a good letter; the only conscious exaggeration was in the last sentence.

  * * *

  At ten to four on Saturday I was at the gate of Bourani; and there, walking along the track towards me, was Conchis. He had on a black shirt, long khaki shorts; dark-brown shoes and faded yellow-green stockings. He was walking purposefully, almost in a hurry, as if he had wanted to be out of the way before I came. But he raised his arm as soon as he saw me and appeared not put out.

  “Nicholas.”

  “Hello.”

  He stood in front of me and gave his little headshake.

  “A pleasant half-term?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  He seemed to have expected more, but I was determined to say nothing; and showed so. He murmured, “Good.”

  “That was an extraordinary experience. Last time. I had no idea I was so suggestible.”

  He tapped his head. “Never think of your mind as a castle. It is an engine room.”

  “Then you must be a very skilled engineer.” He bowed. “Am I to believe all those sensations came from other worlds?”

  “It is not for me to tell you what to believe.”

  I remembered, as I smiled thinly at his own thin smile, that I was back in a polysemantic world. He reached out, as if he felt sorry for me, and gripped my shoulder for a second. It was clear that he wanted to get on.

  “You’re going out?”

  “I have been writing letters all day. I must walk.”

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  “You could.” He smiled. “But I think Lily would be disappointed.”

  I smiled back. “In that case.”

  “Precisely. You will remember what we said?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you. I have great confidence in you. Sto kalo.”

  He raised his hand, and we parted.

  I walked on, but looked back after a moment to see which way he had gone. It was apparently to Moutsa or beyond it to the totally deserted western end of the island. I did not believe for a moment that he was going for a constitutional. He walked far too much like a man with something to arrange, someone to see.

  No one was visible as I approached the house, as I crossed the gravel. I leapt up the steps and walked quietly round the corner onto the wide tiling under the front colonnade.

  Lily was standing there, her feet and the bottom of her dress in sunlight, the rest of her in shadow. I saw at once that the pretense was still on. She had her back to me, as if she had been looking out to sea, but her face was turned expectantly over her shoulder. As soon as I appeared she swayed lightly round. She was wearing another beautiful dress, in a charcoal-amber-indigo art nouveau fabric, with an almost ground-length pale yellow stole. As arresting as a brilliant stage costume, and yet she contrived to wear it both naturally and dramatically.

  She held out her left hand with a smile, back up, for me to check her identity. We didn’t say anything. She sat down in her willowy manner and gestured to the chair opposite. And it became a sort of game inside a game inside a game: silence, to see which one of us could go longest without speaking. As she poured water from the silver kettle into the teapot I saw her slide a look at me, and then bite her lips to stop from smiling. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. All through the week there had been recurrent memories, images of Alison, doubts that involved comparing her with Lily… and now I knew I was right. It wasn’t only the stunning physical elegance of this girl, it was the intelligence, the quickness, the ability to be several things at the same time; to make every look and every remark ambiguous; to look cool and yet never cold.

  She turned down the pale blue flame of the spirit-stove; with a moue surrendered.

  “Maurice had to go out.”

  “Oh, why?”

  She poured two cups and handed one towards me, then looked me in the eyes.

  “So that we could have tea alone.” She smiled.

  “You look like a dream.”

  “Won’t you have a sandwich?”

  I grinned, gave up, took one. “Where’ve you been this last fortnight?”

  “Here.”

  “No you haven’t. I’ve been over several times. The house has been locked up.” She nibbled a sandwich, risked a demure look at me. “Come on, be a sport. Athens?” She shook her head. Her hair was up and drawn back from her face. She sat sideways, in profile, long neck, beautifully poised Grecian head. “I saw Maurice just now. He said you were going to tell me the truth. Over tea. Who you really are, where you’ve been—everything.”

  She looked at me under severe eyebrows; reverting. “That is a fib.”

  “He might have done. You don’t know.”

  “But I do.”

  I stared down at the ground. “Lily.”

  “Why do you say my name like that?”

  “You know why.” She shook her head. I let the silence come. She sipped her tea, watched it, sipped it again. Always that secret inner smile; I looked round into the trees, to see if I could see the “nurse”; and hoping that she might ask me what I was looking for.

  “Was your friend glad to see you in Athens?”

  “She didn’t see me in Athens. We called it off. By letter.”

  “Oh.”

  “For good.” She nursed the cup, refusing to look at me, to be interested. “Are you glad?”

  “Why should I be glad?”

  “I was asking whether. Not why.” She gave a tiny shrug, as if I had no right to ask; raised one of her black shoes and contemplated it; waited for my next move. “You know I’ve been hypnotized since I saw you last?” She nodded. “Were you there?” She shook her head, quite vehemently. “He’s hypnotized you?” She nodded again. “Often?”

  She turned and put her elbows on the table and stared at me.

  “Yes. Many times.”

  And I was caught; still not quite able to be sure that the schizophrenia was another invention; still not all clear to what extent she was playing to his cues.

  “This is why you can’t lie to him?”

  She seemed to be more interested in looking at my face than in answering, but in the end she said, “It’s good for me.”

  “He says. Or you?”

  “Both of us. It is very relaxing.”

  “Last time you seemed to think it was frightening.”

  She smiled. “And frightening.” I looked at her mouth, that long, mobile, smiling mouth; the ambiguous gray-hyacinth eyes. It was the way their corners cocked obliquely; it made it difficult to believe that she meant a word of what she was saying.

  “He obviously still wants you to vamp me.”

  She looked down then, and the smile disappeared. After a moment she stood up and went to the far edge of the colonnade, by the house wall, where the steps led down to the vegetable terrace. I followed her, thinking she was going to stroll there. But she turned with her back against the wall. I stood in front of her; after a moment I put my hand on the wall behind her h
ead, barring her in. There grew in me an intuition that she had, right from the beginning, found me physically more attractive than she wanted to admit. Narcissus-like I saw my own face reflected deep in her indecision, her restlessness. She was not smiling; and in the silence she let my eyes explore her own. I let my hand slip very lightly onto her shoulder. She did not move. I shifted it down onto her bare arm, to cool white skin. And suddenly I was sure that she wanted me, or would allow me, to kiss her.

  I took her other arm and drew her towards me. Her eyes closed, our mouths met; and hers was warm, moved convulsively under mine for four or five seconds. I had just time to get my hand to the small of her back, to press her body against mine, know its weight, slenderness, the flesh reality. But then she pushed me away.

  “We mustn’t. Not here.”

  “Lily.”

  She gave me an almost frighteningly intense out-of-role look; as if I had forced her to do something she was ashamed of; and its sincerity was very nearly as exciting as the touch of her mouth. I tried to pull her back to me again.

  “No. Because of Maurice.”

  She pressed my hand with sudden firmness, a kind of promise of the emotion she had to hide, and went back to the table. But she stood by it, as if she was at a loss to know what to do now. I went behind her.

  “Why did you do that?” She stood staring down at the table, keeping her face half averted from me. “Because he told you to?”

  She turned then, a swift, frank look of denial; and as quickly turned away again. She moved out into the sun at the front of the colonnade.

  I went after her. “You must let me see you alone again. Tonight.”

  “No.” She swayed round, flaring her stole, like a figure from Beardsley, so that we walked back to the terrace end of the colonnade.

  “At midnight. By the statue.”

  “I daren’t.”

  “Because of him?”

  “Because of everything.” She gave me a side look. As if she would like to say more. We walked another step or two. She came to a decision. “It’s so complicated. I don’t know what to do any more.” She murmured, “If I think I can…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence. I put my arm round her shoulder and kissed the side of her head. She twisted lightly away. A small lizard scuttered along the bottom of the wall in front, and she leaned out to look at it.

  “I may not… I can’t promise.” She said it casually; like a heroine in Chekhov, unpredictable, shifting, always prey to something beyond the words and moods of the apparent situation.

  There were footsteps on the gravel, round the corner of the house; and then she looked at me, once again completely out of role, a practical, alert, very un-Chekhovian insistence in her low voice.

  “You mustn’t say a word.”

  “Of course.”

  “I think he’ll take you away now. I’m supposed to disappear.” She said very quickly, in a whisper, “I so wanted you to come back.” Then she was smiling into distance, past my shoulder.

  I turned. Conchis had come silently round the corner. In his hands he held poised a four-foot axe. With a formal bow to me Lily moved quickly, almost too punctiliously on cue, across the tiles and into the house.

  * * *

  There was a strange moment of hiatus; of a new madness.

  “Have you had your tea?”

  “Yes.”

  He lowered the axe.

  “I have found a dead pine. Will you help me cut it down?”

  “Of course.”

  “It will make good firewood.”

  The dialogue bore no relation to what either of us was thinking or wanted to say. His first appearance had been another coup de théatre, intentionally ominous, as if he was going to run at us with the axe raised and split our heads open; and he still stared at me as if something about Lily’s quick exit had made him newly suspicious.

  “Come.”

  He silently offered me the axe to carry. We set off towards the gate. He walked fast, with a grim, purposeful expression. At last I made an effort and asked him where he had learnt to hypnotize. He dismissed it—”a very simple discipline”; there was nothing mysterious or magical about it, it was a matter of training and experience.

  “Have you ever failed?”

  “Of course. Any hypnotist who maintains the contrary is a charlatan.” Something had annoyed him, though it was apparently not myself.

  I hefted the axe to the other shoulder.

  “Did you ask me any questions?”

  He looked quite shocked. “I am a doctor, therefore under the Hippocratic oath. If ever I wished to ask you questions under hypnosis, I should certainly ask your permission first.” We walked twenty paces before he went on. “It is a very unsatisfactory method. It has been demonstrated again and again that patients are quite capable of lying under hypnosis.”

  “All those stories about sinister hypnotists forcing—?”

  “A hypnotist can make you do foolish and incongruous things. But he is powerless against the superego.”

  We went through the gate. I let a few moments pass.

  “You hypnotize Lily?”

  “From time to time. For therapeutic reasons.”

  He indicated the line we should take through the trees.

  “It reduces her schizophrenia?”

  “Precisely. It reduces her schizophrenia.” Again we walked some way before he spoke again; but this time it was with less asperity, as if the leaving Bourani had allowed him to recover his equanimity. “How did you find her just now?”

  “Enigmatic.”

  “Not to me.” He gave me a quick, burning look. “She is assuming her persecution role. I saw that at once.”

  I grinned; he studiously avoided looking at me.

  “I didn’t notice it.”

  “She is deceitful.” Then he said, as if it followed, “She has spoken of you a great deal in our absence.”

  “May I ask where you were?”

  “We were in Beirut, Nicholas. And she talked about you in terms that suggested the possibility of a certain physical attraction. I say this merely to warn you. You must resist all her advances in that line. This will be difficult for you. She is a pretty girl. And very clever at getting what she wants.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I smiled at him again, to insure myself against seeming his fool. But once more he had neatly slashed off the cautious belief I was beginning to grow in Lily as a totally independent person, with independent motives. It was as if he could never let me rest too long on the pleasant side of the masque; always the black side had to be evoked. Always he had to suggest that Lily was simply the personification of his irony, his partner in making all declarations ambivalent. Every truth at Bourani was a sort of lie; and every lie there, a sort of truth.

  I asked him what they had been doing in Beirut, and as we went down through the trees, he talked about the Lebanon, which had not been the subject of my question, but which I guessed was all the answer I should get to it. Later, when he pressed me to tell him about Alison, I paid him back in his own coin.

  44

  She came with her lovely swaling walk towards the lamplight, towards the table, in the corner of the terrace, in a white dress under a black evening cloak. It looked more an Empire than a First World War dress, but I assumed that it was in period. Conchis and I stood for her. She allowed him to take off her cloak, then bowed imperceptibly to me. We sat, Conchis poured her a cup of coffee.

  “Nicholas and I have been discussing religion.”

  It was true. He had brought a Bible to table, with two reference slips in it; and we had got on to God and no-God.

  “Indeed.” She looked at me; almost with hostility, so formally, in role.

  “Nicholas calls himself an agnostic. But then he went on to say that he did not care.”

  She switched her eyes back to me.

  “Why do you not care?”

  We had returned to uncontracted forms.

  “M
ore important things.”

  “Is anything more important?”

  “Practically everything, I should have thought.”

  She pressed her lips together, and stared down at the tablecloth without speaking. Then she leant forward and picked up a box of matches I had left on the table. She took out a dozen matchsticks and began to build a house.

  “Perhaps you are afraid to think about God.”

  “One can’t think about what cannot be known.”

  “You never think about what is not certain? About tomorrow? About next year?”

  “Of course. I can make reasonable prophecies about them.”

  She played with the matches, pushing them idly into patterns with her long fingers. I watched her beautiful mouth; wished I could end the cold dialogue.

  “I can make reasonable prophecies about God.”

  “Such as?”

  “He is very intelligent.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I do not understand him. Why he is, who he is, or how he is. And Maurice tells me I am quite intelligent. I think God must be very intelligent to be so much more intelligent than I am. To give me no clues. No certainties. No sights. No reasons. No motives.” She stared up at me from her matches; her eyes had a kind of bright intensity that I recognized from Conchis. Things were not fortuitous; her entry was timed, the subject ensured, and now the double message.

  “Very intelligent—or very unkind?” I looked at Conchis with a small smile, but she answered.

  “Very wise. Do you know, Mr. Urfe, that I pray?”

  “What for?”

  “I ask God never to reveal himself to me. Because if he did I should know that he was not God. But a liar.” Now she looked at Conchis, who was facing expressionlessly out to sea; waiting for her, I thought, to finish her part of the act. Suddenly I saw Lily’s forefinger silently tap the table twice. Her eyes flicked sideways at Conchis and then back to me, and she gave the tiniest, least perceptible of nods. I looked down. She had laid two matches diagonally across each other and two others beside them: XII. She avoided my suddenly comprehending eyes; and then, pushing the matchsticks into a little heap, she leant back out of the pool of light from the lamp and turned to Conchis. “But Mr. Urfe wishes to listen to you.”