He drew some postcard-size photographs from the envelope.
Before Farnaby saw them he had a sudden piercing intimation of the sort of thing it was going to be. He looked for a stunned moment at the nude recumbent model, attempting a dreamy gaze while her body strained upwards with unnatural tension, throwing her large breasts into prominence. In the next one she was bending, legs close together, presenting the substantial portals of her buttocks.
‘It is so difficult,’ Plopl said softly, ‘for a true artist to make a living these days.’ He watched Farnaby’s face. ‘Ars longa, vita brevis,’he said. ‘A true artist has to be unscrupulous …’
‘Ars rotunda, you mean,’ Farnaby said, with a nervous laugh, unable even in the midst of his embarrassment, to resist the joke. But Plopl did not seem to register it. A sort of calm had descended on him. The Tyrolean hat was set squarely on his head, and the face beneath it, pale, plump-jowled, thin-lipped, meticulously shaven, regarded Farnaby with confidence.
‘You will not see tits like that again,’ he said, with quiet authority.
‘I don’t expect I shall,’ Farnaby said, proffering back the photographs. ‘They are very good,’ he added, nodding and smiling to show that as a man of the world he was in a position to make such comparisons or at least endorse them. ‘Superb,’ he said. He had been speaking as a connoisseur, not as a customer, and was therefore startled to hear Plopl’s next words:
‘I can let you have them for, well, how much shall we say? Gentleman’s agreement, eh?’
‘No, no,’ Farnaby said quickly. ‘I don’t really –’
‘One pound fifty,’ Plopl said. ‘Four classic poses. A special price, just for you.’
‘No, I don’t want to buy them,’ Farnaby said, and there was a driven note in his voice, a note almost of distress at the misunderstanding, which Plopl must have heard and understood, because his manner changed.
‘I have others,’ he said, more loudly and somehow defensively. ‘In my cabin. More artistic. You wait here, I will go and get them.’
‘Not just now if you don’t mind,’ Farnaby said. ‘I have to go out now,’ he added, with an impulse of kindness, seeking to reduce as far as possible Plopl’s discomfiture at being rebuffed in this way.
‘The artist,’ Plopl said, falling back on what was obviously a well-tried formula, ‘has to be unscrupulous. He must not permit himself to be involved in petit-bourgeois codes. He has to send forth his grandmother to clean up houses in her declining years if it will further his art.’
You’d be more likely to get granny to strip, Farnaby thought, but he said nothing, merely nodded sagely. Plopl’s brows and lashes, he noticed, were so fair as to be almost colourless. His eyes were glossy brown. The brow beneath the brim of his hat was visibly moist. He seemed in his squatness, his feathered hat and benevolently foreign voice, a creature curiously abject and yet with a definite assertiveness of his own, an ultimate intransigence. He also displayed a mannerism, now that he had lost his salesman’s suavity, which Farnaby had not been able to see the previous evening, a habit, no doubt quite unconscious, of working his features very slightly, stretching his mouth and wrinkling up his nose a little before speaking, rather as if speech were an activity needing to be fuelled or powered in this preliminary way.
‘She’s no good, that’s the trouble,’ Plopl said morosely. ‘She has no sensitivity.’
Farnaby guessed he was talking about his model. ‘Perhaps posing for photographs doesn’t really interest her,’ he said.
‘Nothing interests her,’ Plopl said, ‘except one thing, and that is masturbating with an electric toothbrush. She has no hobbies, no intellectual pursuits. She never reads anything. I think she is educationally sub-normal.’
‘Good heavens,’ Farnaby said, startled by Plopl’s unseemly frankness in the matter of the toothbrush.
‘Begging,’ Plopl said. ‘That is what she was doing. She was begging in the streets. “Ein lira,” she said to me, she took me for a German. Istiklal Caddesi, this was. Do you know Istanbul at all?’
‘Yes, a little,’ Farnaby said. Plopl appeared dashed by this, and fell silent.
‘Do go on,’ Farnaby said.
‘She was filthy. She was in a terrible state. I took her home with me, back to my apartment. The first thing I did was make her take a bath. She was verminous. I fed her,’ Plopl said, ‘I bought clothes for her. Well, that was six, seven weeks ago and she has been at my side ever since.’ Plopl’s features worked in that combination of effects that was becoming familiar to Farnaby. ‘She is devoted to me,’ he said. ‘You know, like a dog.’ He stood looking at Farnaby a moment or two longer as if gauging some possibility. Then he gave a stiff little bow and went quickly out through the door.
Farnaby waited some minutes, in order to give Plopl plenty of time to disappear. Then he emerged on to the terrace. It was his intention to take a walk in the hills behind the pool. Perhaps, he thought, with a quickening of excitement, perhaps I shall catch a glimpse or two of her, of Miranda. Farther down the terrace he saw the Levantine, tapping with respectful knuckles at Mrs Pritchett’s door. He tapped then listened, head inclined, then tapped again. Then he softly called, ‘Mrs Pritchett,’ and leaned forward, ear not far from her door. Farnaby saw him try the door and ascertain that it was locked, but he lingered still.
‘I think Mrs Pritchett has gone for a walk,’ Farnaby called along the terrace.
The Levantine turned with a smooth yet ponderous sway of the body. He looked at Farnaby remotely and sternly. Farnaby smiled in a conciliatory manner. ‘I believe Mrs Pritchett has gone off for a walk,’ he called again.
The Levantine looked at him a moment or two longer, then said slowly, ‘Do you know in which direction she has gone?’
‘Up into these hills, I think,’ Farnaby said. ‘Exploring the ruins.’
The Levantine looked rather blankly in the direction Farnaby had indicated. Then he nodded briefly and walked away along the terrace with his strangely distinctive gait that somehow resembled wading.
Part Four
1
The desire to end his life which Mooncranker had started to experience in the hospital in the early hours of the morning, while he groped for pretexts acceptable to Farnaby, did not disappear shortly afterwards, as it had always done before. Its intensity fluctuated but it remained with him, proving a source of strength in a way, providing much needed resolution in dealing with the lady doctor, who was angry with him for leaving the hospital so soon; even surviving the torpors and discomforts of the journey to the pool. It was so far not an intention to do any outrage on himself, but simply a languorous wish to achieve the state of being dead, the most immediate effect of which was a sort of deliberate dwelling on things. He described everything to himself as if he were writing a memorial, the sunlit terrace, the vaporous surface of the pool, the rows of numbered cabins, the manager’s deference and flickering smile.
It was the middle of the morning when he arrived. There were a number of people in the water, but not Miranda and not Farnaby, and he immediately assumed that they were together somewhere. This was no more than he had expected but it gave him pain.
He seated himself at one of the tables and ordered coffee. He looked over the row of cabins facing him, at the ranks of sage and granite hills beyond. For a moment or two he seemed to make out figures moving about on them, then the figures disappeared. Perhaps Farnaby and Miranda were up there. One thing is certain, Mooncranker told himself, that oaf will not be endeavouring to advance my cause. But isn’t that why you sent him here? At this question he experienced some return of that numbness and helplessness he had felt under Farnaby’s questioning, and he looked down at the water, slowly, almost languorously, noting the fluting of the columns. Corinthian, in all probability.
An enormously fat woman in a white costume and a white bathing-cap came out of one of the cabins. Mooncranker watched wonderingly her quaking mass descend some steps into the water. Near the bridge two n
egroes flicked drops at each other, raising mirthful, half-blind faces. A tall, sharp-featured man, in what looked like a plastic mob-cap, conversed with a shorter, plumper, moustached companion. No words of their conversation came to Mooncranker.
He had finished his coffee and was wondering if he felt strong enough to go exploring in the hills a little, when a thin, sandy-haired person in a hairy, British-looking sports jacket went past his table.
‘Excuse me,’ Mooncranker said, speaking on an impulse, ‘but do you know anyone staying here called Farnaby, James Farnaby?’
The man did not reply immediately, merely stood there peering, and Mooncranker thought perhaps he had been mistaken in the tweed. He was about to speak again when the other said,
‘’Twas you that spoke to me in the hospital.’
‘I do not recall –’ Mooncranker began, courteously, but with a certain reserve.
‘There couldna be two voices so like,’ the other said, shaking his rather shrunken-looking head. ‘I hae sailed the seven seas,’ he added.
‘Really?’ Mooncranker thought the man might perhaps be drunk, or wandering in his mind. There was, however, the disturbing reference to the hospital.
‘I’m afraid I do not remember our conversation,’ he said.
‘It was all intended,’ the other said, and nodded his head slowly. ‘The laddie you are looking for is up there in the hills.’
‘In that case,’ Mooncranker said, rising, ‘I think I’ll be getting along. See you later perhaps.’
The other man said nothing. Mooncranker smiled briefly at him and then began to make his way along the terrace towards the exit.
2
From here you can get a better idea of things, Farnaby told himself dutifully. He had been clambering about for some time and now found himself high up in the hills, among the ruins of the ancient city. At this angle the water of the pool could not be seen, only the neat rectangle of buildings surrounding it; far below lay the valley of the Meander, where the fabulously devious river squirmed towards the sea, its course marked out by the bright russet of the platans lining the banks. Beyond rose the mountains, dominated by the snowcapped peak of Buba Dagh – Senemoǧlu had told him this was the name. Majestic Summit, Farnaby informed himself. About 1,500 feet up here, I should say.
Feeling himself alone and immune he gestured widely at the firm-edged world of morning. There was no blur or stain on anything. Distant mountain, near rock, the trees in the valley, all had the same clarity, without distorting radiance or gloss. Because of this even light the landscape seemed immutable – Farnaby felt himself and the hillside and everything around fixed in their spatial relations, like pieces in a mosaic or gemmed surface. My whirling atoms come finally to rest. The level terrace immediately below – one hundred, two hundred feet? – was presumably the main avenue of the city. Somewhere hereabouts Miranda and Mrs Pritchett are walking and talking. Miranda serious and attentive. She will have fallen into the role of disciple, for the morning at least, as she would probably adopt any role she felt unambiguously as somebody’s need. Dear malleable Miranda. Excitement at her persuadability invaded him once again. Her narrow feet not far away, bearing her body about these mounds and thickets in sensible shoes – she will have dressed the part for Mrs Pritchett. Stepping about, hitching her skirt up to get over obstacles. Mrs Pritchett voluble, stressing the facts. Seen them once, or thought I did, in the distance, Miranda in a headscarf, Mrs Pritchett in a flame-coloured garment … He cast his eyes around in the hope of catching sight of them, but nothing. Might be anywhere amidst these slopes and hollows, ruined walls, soft heaps of grass-grown rubble. What he did see, higher up and away to the right, were two figures, male and female, the male with something over his shoulder like a rifle. Rifle? No, it thickened at the end into a box-like excrescence. A camera on a tripod. Plopl and Pamela off to do a bit of shooting on location.
He made out numbers of crumbling sarcophagi at the far end of the terrace. The whole area nothing but one vast cemetery. Under this turf, bones, acres and acres of bones, and objects that people are interred with. Other monuments, of course, there must have been: he glanced at the mounds and hummocks all around him. Agora? Temple? Baths? He had not the sort of imagination that could invest these remains with a function. What struck him now was their oppressive extensiveness as a whole. An obscure feeling of disrespect rose in him, and deepened almost to brutality, a violent repudiation of this ancient rubble and any claim it might make on human piety. He did not understand this feeling very well, but knew that it had somehow sprung from thoughts of Miranda …
‘Do not go so fast,’ Plopl said. ‘I am not a mountain goat.’ Breathing heavily, he set down his tripod against a rock. He took out a large green handkerchief and mopped his brow and neck. He looked up with resentment at Pamela, standing indifferently, sideways to him a little higher up. ‘No sense in climbing always higher and higher up, you fool,’ he said. ‘What we must look for is some little level area which is not overlooked.’ He had been out of temper since his failure to sell Farnaby the photographs, a failure very damaging to his self-esteem and also to that sense of the male camaraderie existing between Farnaby and himself which he had experienced right from the first, the evening before in the pool. For Farnaby to have bought the photographs would have constituted a bond between them, a basis for friendship. Now, Plopl felt, he had offered himself and been rejected. Moreover, there was the question of money. One hundred and fifty pence was not a large amount, certainly, but it would have helped. They had not enough between them at the moment to pay the bill … Plopl’s brow contracted. Feelings of misery and disappointed hopes invaded his being. His face felt prickly with heat. He looked up once again at the motionless form above him in the pink cotton dress. Cow.
‘You will keep a look out if you please,’ he said savagely, ‘for a place where we can take the photographs. And you will carry the tripod and camera.’
Mrs Pritchett and Miranda stopped near the theatre and Mrs Pritchett began reading aloud from her book:
A Phrygian city, altitude twelve hundred feet, on the right bank of the Churuk Su (Lycus) about eight miles above its junction with the Menderes (Meander) situated on a broad terrace six hundred feet above the valley and six miles north of Laodicea. On the terrace are springs that have deposited calcareous material in their neighbourhood. To these, and to the ‘Plutonium’ – a probable fissure in the limestone rocks – the place owed its celebrity and sanctity …
‘I wonder why they say “probable”,’ she said, frowning. ‘Either there was a fissure in the limestone rocks or there wasn’t, one would think.’
‘Maybe they didn’t know exactly where it was,’ Miranda said softly, pushing back the hair from her brows and looking upward to where the marble benches of the theatre hung above them.
‘Oh, they must have known, surely.’ Mrs Pritchett spoke sharply, sharpness being the only response she could find to the other’s baffling vagueness, assumed from the outset this morning. The girl seemed wrapped up in herself, impervious. She was like a different person. Mrs Pritchett, who had been hoping for a good deal from the walk, was irritated and distressed, and these feelings caused her to become harsher in manner, overpositive.
‘If the place owed its celebrity and sanctity to it, they must have known where it was,’ she said. ‘Surely.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean them,’ Miranda said, and then paused, with a casualness that seemed to Mrs Pritchett to border on the perverse.
‘What did you mean then?’
‘I meant the people who wrote the guidebook,’ Miranda said. ‘Not the devotees themselves. Or maybe it was never in any particular place at all, maybe it was a sort of legend put out by the priests you know, to make themselves seem powerful.’
‘I doubt it,’ Mrs Pritchett said. ‘No, I think it must really have existed. There is another reference to it, a bit farther on …’ She began to turn over the pages of the guidebook.
‘Who is that down
there?’ Miranda said suddenly. She was looking down the hillside the way they had come.
‘Where?’ Mrs Pritchett turned to look. In the distance she saw a male figure moving towards them. After a second or two it disappeared from sight, presumably lost in some fold of the ground.
‘It looked rather like the American boy,’ Miranda said.
Mrs Pritchett shrugged slightly and then looked into Miranda’s face, the beautiful, oddly set eyes, the slightly swollen-looking mouth with at the moment a very slight tendency downward at the corners, as at some residual deprecation. No inventory of the girl’s features could explain the sort of interior flinching Mrs Pritchett now experienced at the soft heedlessness of the girl’s expression. It was as though she were obliged to tense or stiffen the walls of her heart against some threat of flooding …
Farnaby had seen Lusk too, moving with a purposeful air across the lower slopes. Once or twice he seemed to stumble and once he flung out his arms as if to maintain balance. Then he disappeared into a narrow scrub-covered declivity which led up between two rocky spurs of hill and Farnaby guessed that he was working his way upwards towards the level shelf of ground immediately below the theatre. He wondered about this for some moments, because it seemed an odd route for Lusk to have chosen, then he dismissed it from his mind.
He looked down again at the neat rectangle of buildings surrounding the invisible water of the pool. A self-contained world when you were within that enclosure, but from here merely a small and incongruously regular shape among the hills. He began to walk diagonally across the face of the slope. His feet caught in low shrub and protruding rock. Still a good way above him, the tiered ranks of the theatre. Dating from Roman times. Excellent state of preservation. To me however it bears an irresistible resemblance to the mons venus. Definitely, with that vertical fissure of a central aisle, vulvar. Of or pertaining to. In an excellent state of preservation. Lying up there in an age-long position of readiness, waiting for a phallus of the right dimensions. A randy Titan. Epic theme. Now towards those doubtless Byzantine walls. Just within them on a prominent hilltop the substantial remains of an octagonal church. Perhaps this was the church of St Philip. What said Mooncranker on his sick bed? Drip, drip, the vitalizing fluid into those thirsty veins. I am in danger of becoming dehydrated. Flawless plaster of the ceiling, wings of shadow, tremulous, calm profile, slow voice. The apostle Philip was martyred in this city in the year A.D.80. Perhaps this was the church they led him forth from. Something sexy about martyrs. Perhaps the ravishment of it all. Oh, those cunning folds of the loin cloth, the blood-bedewed dreamy-eyed saints. Who was that tender-fleshed one stuck all over with arrows? That wasn’t Philip. The real thing must have been beastly, of course. Brutal in the extreme. They probably took him out and crushed his skull with a stone. No pretext for ecstasy in a crushed and mangled corpse. That is why crucifixion is so effective, it preserved the human dignity … Bandaged Christ amid the glint of flies’ wings … Suddenly Farnaby stopped dead, looking down at the ground before him. Did she know? Did Miranda know what Mooncranker was going to give him? She had avoided him afterwards as if in her mind at least some momentous event had taken place. And how could Mooncranker have known of his interest in Christ at that time? What had Miranda said? He got me on his side.
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