“Oh. Is that Mr. Urfe?” It was a man’s voice I didn’t recognize. Greek, but with a good accent.
“Speaking. Who are you?”
“Would you look out of your window, please?”
Click. Silence. I rattled the hook down, with no result. The man had hung up. I snatched my dressing gown off the bed, switched out the light, and raced to the window.
My third-floor room looked out on a side street.
There was a yellow taxi parked on the opposite side with its back to me, a little down the hill. That was normal. Taxis for the hotel waited there. A man in a white shirt appeared and walked quickly up the far side of the street, past the taxi. He crossed the road just below me. There was nothing strange about him. Deserted pavements, street lights, closed shops and darkened offices, the one taxi. The man disappeared. Only then was there a movement.
Directly opposite and beneath my window was a streetlight fixed on the wall over the entrance to an arcade of shops. Because of the angle I could not see to the back of the arcade.
A girl came out.
The taxi engine broke into life.
She knew where I was. She came out to the edge of the pavement, small, unchanged yet changed, and stared straight up at my window. The light shone down on her brown arms, but her face was in shadow. A black dress, black shoes, a small black evening handbag in her left hand. She came forward from the shadows as a prostitute might have done; as Robert Foulkes had done. No expression, simply the stare up and across at me. No duration. It was all over in fifteen seconds. The taxi suddenly reversed up the road to in front of her. Someone opened a door, and she got quickly in. The taxi jerked off very fast. Its wheels squealed scaldingly at the end of the street.
A crystal lay shattered.
And all betrayed.
67
At the last moment I had angrily cried her name. I thought at first that they had found some fantastic double; but no one could have imitated that walk. The way of standing.
I leapt back to the phone and got the night porter.
“That call—can you trace it?” He didn’t understand “trace.” “Do you know where it came from?”
No, he didn’t know.
Had anyone strange been in the hotel lobby during the last hour? Anyone waiting for some time?
No, Meester Ouf, nobody.
I turned off the shower, tore back into my clothes and went out into Constitution Square. I went round all the cafés, peered into all the taxis, went back to Zonar’s, to Tom’s, to Zaporiti’s, to all the fashionable places in the area; unable to think, unable to do anything but say her name and crush it savagely between my teeth.
Alison. Alison. Alison.
* * *
I understood, how I understood. Once I had accepted, and I had to accept, the first incredible fact: that she must have agreed to join the masque.
But how could she? And why? Again and again: why.
I went back to the hotel.
Conchis would have discovered about the quarrel, perhaps even overheard it; if he used cameras, he could use microphones and tape recorders. Contacted her during the night, or early the next morning. Perhaps through Lily. Those messages in the Earth: Hirondelle. The people in the Piraeus hotel, watching me try to get her to let me back into her room.
As soon as I mentioned Alison, Conchis must have pricked up his ears. As soon as he knew she was coming to Athens he must have started to envisage new complications in his action; sized up the situation; stepped in and used it; had us followed from the moment we met; then persuaded her, all his charm, probably half deceiving her, as everyone on the fringes was deceived.
That Sunday he had suddenly gone to Nauplia was the same day the opened telegram from Alison had arrived. Even then? Hadn’t he forced me to meet her by canceling—without warning—that next, half-term weekend? Gone to Nauplia to plan? And Lily had really begun to throw her web round me, that same strange Sunday. All must have changed course, that day.
The lies I had told the next weekend. To Lily-Julie. I felt my face go red. The day she had worn light blue, dark blue; to echo Alison. I growled out loud.
I saw a meeting of all of them: I saw them overwhelming her with their sick logic, their madness, their ease, their money. And the great secret: why they had chosen me.
I recalled something that had occurred to me in the Earth—how little use had been made of Rose. All her costumes had been there. Before Alison’s “entry,” she would have been going to play a much fuller role, and that first meeting with her had been the beginning of it (and a sneer at my inconstancy). At only one week from his first approach to Alison Conchis had probably not been quite sure of her, so Rose’s role that weekend was an insurance against Alison’s failing to cooperate. Very soon after Alison must have agreed; so Rose withdrew. That was why Lily’s character and role had changed and why she had to enter—and so rapidly—the present. First she had been acting “against” Rose; then “against” Alison.
The sedan-coffin. It had not been empty. The mercilessness of it; the endless exposure.
The trial: my “preying on young women”; Alison must have told them that. And the suicide—”hysterical suicide”; she would have told them that as well. All their knowledge of my past.
I was mad with anger. I thought of that genuine and atrocious wave of sadness I had felt when the news about Alison came. All the time she would have been in Athens; perhaps in the house in the village, or over at Bourani. Watching me, even. Playing an invisible Maria to Lily’s Olivia and my Malvolio—always these echoes of Shakespearean situations.
I walked up and down my room, imagining scenes where I had Alison at my mercy. Beating her black and blue, making her weep with remorse.
And then again, it all went back to Conchis, to the mystery of his power, his ability to mould and wield girls as intelligent as Lily; as independent as Alison. As if he had some secret that he revealed to them, that put them under his orders; and once again I was the man in the dark, the excluded, the eternal butt.
Malvolio. Not a Hamlet mourning Ophelia. But Malvolio.
* * *
I couldn’t sleep. I had to do something. I went down to the hall and telephoned Ellenikon again. I knew there were staging flights through at all hours, and there might be someone on the desk. I was lucky: there was. Even luckier, it was an English hostess who had just come off duty, and chanced to pick up the phone on her way to bed.
Yes, she knew about Alison.
“Look, I know this sounds pretty extraordinary, but I’m an old friend of hers and I think I’ve just seen her.”
There was a silence. “But she’s dead.”
“Yes, I know. I know she’s meant to be dead.”
“But it was in the papers.”
“You saw it?”
“I know lots of people who did.”
“Actually in the papers? Or just cuttings they’d been sent?”
Her patience began to break. “I’m terribly sorry but—”
“Do you know anyone who went to the funeral?”
She said, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
I wished her good night then; it was useless to go on. I could guess what they had done. Alison would have failed to report for duty one day in London, pleaded ill health or something. A week or two later, the same cuttings would have been sent out, the same forged letters from Ann Taylor.
I turned to the night porter.
“I want a line to London. This number.” I wrote it down. A few minutes later he pointed to a box.
I stood listening to the phone burr-burr in my old flat in Russell Square. It went on a long time. At last it was picked up.
“For goodness’ sake… who’s that?”
The operator said. “I have a long-distance call for you from Athens.”
“From where!”
I said, “Okay, operator. Hello?”
“Who is that?”
She sounded a nice girl, but she was half asleep. Though the call cost me f
our pounds, it was worth it. I discovered that Ann Taylor had gone back to Australia, but six weeks before. No one had killed herself. A girl the girl on the other end didn’t know, but “I think she’s a friend of Ann’s” had taken over the flat; she hadn’t seen her “for weeks.” Yes, she had blonde hair; actually she only saw her twice; yes, she thought she was Australian.
Back in my room I remembered the flower in my buttonhole. It was very wilted, but I took it out of the coat I had been wearing and stuck it in a glass of water.
* * *
I woke up late, having finally slept sounder than I expected. I lay in bed for a while, listening to the street noises down below, thinking about Alison. I tried to recall exactly what her expression had been, whether there was any humor, any sympathy, an indication of anything, good or bad, in her small standing there. I could understand the timing of her resurrection. As soon as I got back to London I should have found out; so it had to be in Athens.
And now I was to hunt for her.
I wanted to see her, I knew I wanted to see her desperately, to dig or beat the truth out of her, to let her know how vile her betrayal was. To let her know that even if she crawled round the equator on her knees I could never forgive her. That I was finished with her. Disgusted by her. As disintoxicated of her as I was of Lily. I thought, Christ, if I could only lay my hands on her. But the one thing I would not do was hunt for her.
Then, having a shower, I began to sing. Because the masque was not over. Because, though I would not consciously admit it, Alison was alive. Because I knew there must be a confrontation between us. And I would lure her on, lead her into believing that a reconciliation was possible. I thought, if I ever get a chance of making her fall in love with me again. Such a savage revenge I would have on her. On all of them. That cat. This time I would use that cat.
And I only had to wait. They would bring her to me now.
* * *
I went down to a noon breakfast; and the first thing I discovered was that I did not have to wait. For there was another letter by hand for me. This time it contained just one word: London. I remembered that order in the Earth: Termination by July for all except nucleus. Nucleus, Ashtaroth the Unseen, was Alison.
I went to the travel agency and got a seat on the evening plane; and seeing a map of Italy on the wall, as I stood waiting for the ticket to be made out, I discovered where Subiaco was; and decided that the marionette would make the manipulators of strings wait a day, for a change.
When I came out I went into the biggest bookshop in Athens, on the corner of Stadiou, and asked for a book on the identification of flowers. My belated attempt at resuscitation had not been successful, and I had had to throw the buttonhole away. The assistant had nothing in English, but there was a good French flora, she said, which gave the names in several languages. I pretended to be impressed by the pictures, then turned to the index; to Alyssum, p. 69.
And there it was, facing page 69: thin green leaves, small white flowers, Alysson maritime… parfum de miel… from the Greek a (without) and lyssa (madness). Called this in Italian, this in German.
In English: Sweet Alison.
Part Three
Le triomphe de la philosophie serait de jeter du jour sur l’obscurité des voies dont la providence se sert pour parvenir aux fins qu’elle se propose sur l’homme, et de tracer d’après cela quelque plan de conduite qui put faire connaitre a ce malheureux individu bipède, perpétuellement ballotté par les caprices de cet étre qui dit-on le dirige aussi despotiquement, to manière dont il taut qu’il interprète les décrets de cette providence sur lui.
De Sade, Les Infortunes de la Vertu
68
Rome.
In my mind Greece lay weeks, not the real hours, behind. The sun shone as certainly, the people were far more elegant, the architecture and the art much richer, but it was as if the Italians, like their Roman ancestors, wore a great mask of luxury, a cosmetic of the overindulged senses, between the light, the truth, and their real selves. I couldn’t stand the loss of the beautiful nakedness, the humanity of Greece, and so I couldn’t stand the sight of the opulent, animal Romans; as one sometimes cannot stand one’s own face in a mirror.
Early the morning after my arrival I caught a local train out towards Tivoli and the Alban hills. After a long bus ride I had lunch at Subiaco and then walked up a road above a green chasm. A lane branched off into a deserted glen. I could hear the sound of running water far below, the singing of birds. The road came to an end, and a path led up through a cool grove of ilex, and then tapered out into a narrow flight of steps that twisted up around a wall of rock. The monastery came into sight, clinging like an Orthodox Greek monastery, like a martin’s nest, to the cliff. A Gothic loggia looked out prettily over the green ravine, over a little apron of cultivated terraces falling below. Fine frescoes on the inner wall; coolness, silence.
There was an old monk in a black habit sitting behind the door through to an inner gallery. I asked if I could see John Leverrier. I said, an Englishman, on a retreat. Luckily I had his letter ready to show. The old man carefully deciphered the signature, then nodded and silently disappeared down into some lower level of the monastery. I went on into a hall. A series of macabre murals: death pricking a young falconer with his longsword; a medieval strip-cartoon of a girl, first titivating herself in front of a glass, then fresh in her coffin, then with the bones beginning to erupt through the skin, then as a skeleton. There was the sound of someone laughing, an old monk with an amused face scolding a younger one in French as they passed through the hall behind me. Oh, si tu penses que le football est un digne su jet de meditation…
Then another monk appeared; and I knew, with an icy shock, that this was Leverrier.
He was tall, very close-cut hair, with a thin-checked brown face, and glasses with “standard” National Health frames; unmistakably English. He made a little gesture, asking if it was I who had asked for him.
“I’m Nicholas Urfe. From Phraxos.”
He managed to look amazed, shy, and annoyed, all at the same time. After a long moment’s hesitation, he held out his hand. It seemed dry and cold; mine was stickily hot from the walk. He was nearly four inches taller than myself, and as many years older, and he spoke with a trace of the incisiveness that young dons sometimes affect.
“You’ve come all this way?”
“It was easy to stop off at Rome.”
“I thought I’d made it clear that—”
“Yes you did, but…”
We both smiled bleakly at the broken-ended sentences. He looked me in the eyes, affirming decision.
“I’m afraid your visit must still be considered in vain.”
“I honestly had no idea that you were…” I waved vaguely at his habit. “I thought you signed your letters…”
“Yours in Christ?” He smiled thinly. “I am afraid that even here we are susceptible to the forces of anti-pretension.”
He looked down, and we stood awkwardly. He came, as if impatient with our awkwardness, to a kinder decision; some mollification.
“Well. Now you are here—let me show you round.”
I wanted to say that I hadn’t come as a tourist, but he was already leading the way through to an inner courtyard. I was shown the traditional ravens and crows, the Holy Bramble, which put forth roses when Saint Benedict rolled on it—as always on such occasions the holiness of self-mortification paled in my too-literal mind beside the vision of a naked man pounding over the hard earth and taking a long jump into a blackberry bush… ow! yarouch!… and I found the Peruginos easier to feel reverence for.
I discovered absolutely nothing about the summer of 1951, though I discovered a little more about Leverrier. He was at Sacro Speco for only a few weeks, having just finished his novitiate at some monastery in Switzerland. He had been to Cambridge and read history, he spoke fluent Italian, he was “rather unjustifiably believed to be” an authority on the pre-Reformation monastic orders in England, which was why h
e was at Sacro Speco—to consult sources in the famous library; and he had not been back to Greece since he left it. He remained very much an English intellectual, rather self-conscious, aware that he must look as if he were playing at being a monk, dressing up, and even a little, complicatedly, vain about it.
Finally he took me down some steps and out into the open air below the monastery. I perfunctorily admired the vegetable and vineyard terraces. He led the way to a wooden seat under a fig tree a little farther on. We sat. He did not look at me.
“This is very unsatisfactory for you. But I warned you.”
“It’s a relief to meet a fellow victim. Even if he is mute.”
He stared out across a box-bordered parterre into the blue heat of the sun-baked ravine. I could hear water rushing down in the depths.
“A fellow. Not a victim.”
“I simply wanted to compare notes.”
He paused, then said, “The essence of… his… system is surely that you learn not to ‘compare notes.’” He made the phrase sound repellent; cheap. His wanting me to go was all but spoken. I stole a look at him.
“Would you be here now if…”
“A lift on the road one has already long been traveling explains when. Not why.”
“Our experiences must have varied very widely.”
“Why should they be similar? Are you a Catholic?” I shook my head. “A Christian even?” I shook my head again. He shrugged. He had dark shadows under his eyes, as if he was tired.
“But I do believe in… charity?”
“My dear man, you don’t want charity from me. You want confessions I am not prepared to make. In my view I am being charitable in not making them. In my position you would understand.” He added, “And at my remove you will understand.”
His voice was set cold; there was a silence.
He said, “I’m sorry. You force me to be more brusque than I wish.”
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