Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

by Lawrence Durrell

  For years he had been trying to trace the girl, by advertisement, police, and private detectives; and it had all been in vain. She could have come to no good. Ah well, these Spaniards! What could one expect of them? They would have to keep up the hunt for a while longer, and if no trace were found of the girl, he supposed the whole estate of Rumanades would be claimed by the Government. He deplored the waste of so much good money. He toyed for a moment with the idea of falsifying the will; of inserting, say, a clause which would benefit him to the extent of several hundred thousand drachmae. But then, he remembered, as the family lawyer he could hardly do that; he must content himself by presenting a really fat bill for his professional services. Looking up, he caught Fonvisin’s eye. Enigma.

  There was one other clause of significance in the will, recently added. It stated that Francis was to receive annually the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand drachmae, with the good wishes of the deceased; and that the body was to be taken to Ithaca for burial.

  “It will be obvious to you,” he said to Gordon that evening, “that it would be difficult for you people to continue living here while the estate is being cleared up. You understand?” His English was as faultless as was his taste in clothes. “After the island reverts to the Government, of course, it will be different. Visitors will be welcome. But just at present.…”

  “Yes. I understand,” said Gordon impatiently. He was thinking of the legacy to Francis which the lawyer had just read out. He turned to Fonvisin, who was standing by the window picking his teeth with a match-stick.

  “Where will you be going from here?” he asked curiously, and the Russian scratched his lip, replying: “Not sure yet. Perhaps to Italy.”

  That afternoon, as they walked down the hill together, Gordon was elated by the knowledge that once more all the roads of the world were open to him. He would go south this time, Constantinople way, where the sun came from. He felt very strong and happy about it. Onwards again, into the blue!

  “When is the funeral?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning at dawn. He’s going to lie in state in the church next to the saint all night. In the morning the boats are going to row him across. The seaplane with the madman in it is going on to Ithaca to make arrangements.”

  “Shall we be going across too? Etiquette and that kind of thing?”

  “On the contrary. The lawyer was angry when I said I would go. You’d have to get permission.”

  “I see,” said Gordon. “Well, I only wondered.”

  They walked down the hill to the corner of the road, and paused for a moment as their ways diverged.

  “By God,” said Fonvisin with something that was remotely panic, “I might not see you all again. I’ll be away a few days in Ithaca. Fancy that.”

  Gordon’s elation vanished of a sudden, and he began to feel the fear and wonder of new adventures and places crowd his heart. It was the penalty of wandering, he thought, that there should be many goodbyes at every stage of the journey.

  “True enough,” he said shyly. “We might not meet again. Christ goes north tomorrow evening. I imagine we go with him. In case we don’t,” he held out his hand stiffly, with a frozen propriety, “good-bye and good luck.”

  Fonvisin gripped his hand in his fist, wrung it hard for a moment, and gave a crooked transfiguring grin.

  “Good luck,” he said, all in a breath, and turning, swung down the hill.

  The following night there was an unintentional festival in the village—for so many people had arrived that there was no accommodating them, and they either slept in blankets under the olives, or spent the night sitting about in the arbours round the wine-shop, drinking. They had come from everywhere, from the villages to the north and south of Nanos, in boats and by road, in all the colours of funeral and festival. With them too had come the beggars, who wandered in and out of the groups of seated men, doing a brisk trade in witticism. The old wooden-faced piper, who plagued Francis twice a day whenever he came down to Nanos (because she had a godly face), walked about, a little drunk, but in fine form. Every now and then, for the sheer fun of the thing, he would unbutton his vest, produce his pipe, and give a few toots and twirls.

  Under the olives, here and there, lay dark groups of sleepers, while from the wine-shop door, blazing in lamplight, came roars of male laughter and the greasy slicking of cards. A stream of men entered this door. Festival was in the air.

  Donkeys wheeled wearily down the road from the hills, stumbling among the boulders, and setting up wings of dust at the heels of each cavalcade. More people, and still more. In the bay a whole fleet of fishing boats and oil-driven coasters had dropped anchor. The stone-shifters were in again with a fresh load, and the still air was bright with their commerce. In their flower-yellow straws they staggered up the slope with the materials for the church, helped by the women, laughing and chattering among themselves—a polyglot crew.

  Outside the inn door, along the dusty wall, was piled a long row of melons, waiting for the ripening sun. The lamplight fell smoothly over them as they lay there, like hundreds of bland faces, green and yellow, fat and round, long and tapering, with the uniform expression of a coroner’s jury sitting in judgement. The women moved across and across the yellow doorway, motley as birds of paradise, stepping proudly and with the assurance of their own colours and their duty to the dead. Someone had a guitar out there among the olives, and the plangence of its strings, slowly twacked, was joined by the fine tones of a voice, singing as if the limping, rising, falling melody would go on for ever world without end. There was a deep suppressed excitement in the voices of the girls and the men under the olives, as they took up the burden, raising their faces to the roof of leaves from which shone yellow-green reflections of the light. There was devilry in the laughter of the lovers who prowled along the top of the cliffs, above the blank sea, linked of body and spirit.

  The little barn-like church was full of the reek of candles and incense. It had been newly swept and garnished, and the tin-nimbused frescos of saints had been polished so that they shone with dark malevolence. The women, red, blue, saffron, yellow, mustard, cinnamon, magenta, walked about under a forest of candles as thick as a man’s arm, each going up to the right-hand nook by the altar to kiss the case in which the rib of the patron saint was locked, before moving across the line of frescos to gaze upon the dead face of Rumanades, and leave their offering of fruit, flowers, or vegetables with the remaining Leucothean monk. He stood, poor man, with his red-rimmed eyes half closed and his beard on his chest, half asleep with fatigue, but doing his duty, on the left of the altar, with a candle in his hand, and appropriate prayer forming in his mind. He had buried his comrade that morning, with the help of a peasant.

  The little anteroom at the back of the church let out strong earthy whiffs of fruit and flowers, whenever the door was opened. The offerings were stored there; and in the gloom it resembled the dressing-room of an actress, full of the gauds of a great success.

  The priest, hollow-eyed from sleeplessness and rheumatism, moved about among all this with the dignity and unction of his office, now stopping to speak to someone, now turning aside to arrange the flowers, or snuff a curving candle.

  At about midnight Francis and Walsh walked down to the church together to look at Rumanades, arm in arm, for they were both a little nervous.

  They paused at the door, staring wide-eyed at the congregation of men and women who had made the pilgrimage to the dead. The priest, seeing them, came across and complimented her on the unfinished fresco which covered the short back wall of the building. In that yellow light it looked very bold and strong, in ripe colours, and she herself was proud of it.

  They walked up the aisle together, hand in hand, for she had never seen death, and he still feared that motionless passivity which visits the human body when it dies. Their noise on the wide stone flags of the floor, newly swept and sprinkled with sweet water, was nothing in the soft hush and fall of voices around the altar.

 
In the side wall (which was being demolished) there were gaps in the brickwork, and outside these they could catch glimpses of children playing in the light from the tavern door. In a clear space among the olives someone had lighted a small fire of sticks, and round it squatted a circle of old women, laughing and talking, happy of an event which excused the wearing of their best clothes. The town was a hive of chatter: and above it, from time to time, threads of melody from the pipes pierced their ears. The old piper was in excellent form by now.

  In the doorway at the other end of the church Vassili stood in his uniform, blear-eyed from weeping; while Christ, in his ceremonial shoes, creaked up and down, talking with gravity to anyone who would listen to him.

  “Dear sir,” he said brokenly to Walsh, gripping the boy’s arm with his little brown fingers, “dear sir,” squeezing his eyelids down hard in an effort to bring the tears to his eyes, “what a tragic, my dear sir. What a tragic” The light flapped down on his brown face from the swinging candles. They breathed in the hot sweet stink of molten wax. The old monk leaned heavily against the doorpost, weary of death itself, with his eyes drowsy red zeros in his matted hair. He nodded to them, bowing his head in a gentlemanly way, and folding his mud-grimed fingers over his chest.

  They went slowly up the two steps, past the altar-rail, holding each other’ s arm, to join the little cluster of peasants who waited their turn outside the holy of holies.

  The rib of the patron saint lay in a large ornamented casket of the size of a child’s coffin. At each side of the church-altar was a tiny nook, about five square yards in size, whose wall-surface was covered by a fresco of saints. In the right-hand chapel lay the patron saint; in the left, Rumanades.

  They waited while the peasants kissed the pictures outside, and then, muttering a prayer, ducked into the dim doorway to pay the same tribute to the casket in which the saint’s bones were reputed to lie. In the restricted space the fumes from the candles made it almost impossible to breathe. The line of dim saintly faces, circled in bright tin, glowed with a kind of ascetic malice. They waited in there for a few moments, in a kind of stupor, watching the swirl of women in the doorway, entering and kissing the silvery plates which circled the casket, running their lips round the ornamental flutings and knobs with a passion of religious fear.

  Christ came in while they stood there, and began to kiss the silver-work with ostentatious loudness, smacking his lips against the metal which had been worn smooth by generations of hands and mouths.

  He came across to them again when he had finished, smiling and saying, with a certain pleasure: “The saint is kind to us, dear sir.”

  “Christ,” said Francis quietly.

  “Yes, missy?” He was all attention, his violet eyes wide with expectation, his hands ready to gesture.

  “What time do you leave tomorrow?”

  “Very early morning. At sunlight.”

  “Come,” said Walsh, and hooked his arm again through hers. “Let’s go out now.”

  They walked past the front of the altar and the row of framed pictures, almost completely rotted away by the damp and neglect. In the semi-chapel on the opposite side of it, they paused staring in on the coffin which held the body of the old man. In detail this second nook was like the first; an ordinary bed had been placed in it, under the crowding brown faces of paint, and covered with cloth of some dark velvety material. On this lay the smooth coffin.

  They entered together and stood for a long time, without nervousness, looking down on his white face, composed and yet not severe. There was a slight compression at the corners of his mouth, as though a smile were about to break out on his face at any moment. The only unhappy thing was the stare which made his eyes so expressionless. He lay there glaring up at the fresco of saints above his head, like an absolute stranger in a strange place.

  Francis withdrew her arm, and stood loosely beside the boy, staring at the enigmatic old man’s face, without fear or prejudice: quite alien and strong in herself again.

  The interminable muttering continued in the body of the church at their backs. The monk snoozed against the door-post, waking occasionally to give a little shiver of fatigue. He was beyond sorrow by this time; and beyond showing even the polite forms of it. Very far away, in the infinity that was night outside, a voice took up a song of lovesickness, with a slow lift and drag about it that suggested physical pain. The guitar, almost inaudible, squeezed the melody out drop by drop, as one would clean a wound. Through the hole in the wall they were able to see the circle of old women round the fire stir with the warmth of approval, warming to the lure of the sweet words. The singer was dying for them: and the old flesh on their bones ached for lovers. Not for the dead and forgotten men, the shades which lurked in grimy corners of the memory, but for new ones, young men with the brightness in them, haggard for women and the bodies of women. The singer was giving himself to them as Juan is said to have given himself, from pity, to an old woman who importuned him; and they, like that old and lovesick woman, were become new again and fresh for lust. Their faces were turned to the singing so that the firelight shone on the folds and pouches of their flesh: and they caught their hands together and squeezed them between their knees in a delight that was painful.

  Inside the church the candles still sparkled, while the smoke of incense went up to the ceiling like steam. The boy and girl stood for a long time, staring at the face of Rumanades, rapt.

  ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

  They were none of them awake at dawn to see the final ceremony, except Fonvisin, who was taking an active part in it, and Gordon; Marlowe had worked so long and so hard that he slept on well into the afternoon. Francis, through the numb content of her body, and the dreams which passed in her mind, heard the noise and bustle of the preparations.

  At three o’clock that morning Gordon had packed some food in a knapsack, taken his binoculars and climbed the long cliff-paths to the Jump, alone, and very happy.

  Now, at early dawn, he sat on the edge of the dancing-floor, dangling his feet in space, smoking.

  Eastward the light crawled up the flanks of the mountains, and brimmed over slowly until it flooded the death-still sea. Inland it had penetrated the valley, shining on the chequers of olive and vine, corn and barley.

  In the village noise was growing up dimly out of silence. A man sang a few bars of a song. A door banged. Three ants in scarlet set out on the road to the bay.

  Nanos looked like a glass bowl of water in which fruits floated—grapes, cherries, figs. The coloured boats bobbed gently, while from under the awnings sleepy men appeared, stretching themselves and yawning, stiff with the chill of damp. From the tethering-grounds among the olives came the sniggering of donkeys. A woman shouted something.

  Gordon watched keenly, and saw the confusion growing, until the town looked like an armed camp preparing for an attack. From the white gates of the Villa Pothetos three dark figures emerged and began to walk down to the village. He guessed that they must be the lawyer, the doctor, and Fonvisin. Half an hour later the procession started.

  From the door of the church pressed a coloured multitude of people, clustering round the black figures which bore the coffin on their shoulders. The priest and the monk were in full ceremonial costume; over their black soutanes they wore beautifully fringed and embroidered stoles, reaching almost to their ankles. In the right hand of each was clutched a tall candle, while the priest held one of the sacred books. Behind them came the crowding peasants, holding aloft the sacred ikons of the village, laughing and talking among themselves.

  The procession went on down the hill, centred on the coffin and its bearers; down through the olives and past the lemon groves, until at last it left the cliff-paths, and emerged safe and sound on the jetty. Alongside the line of bobbing coloured ships there was a halt and conference while Christ manoeuvred his boat into position to receive the privileged mourners with the coffin. The others began crowding into the boats, laughing, with a great swinging of skirts and twirl
of scarves.

  Then the long line of boats set out southward in the keen air of morning, to Ithaca.

  THE END

  Zero

  &

  Asylum in the Snow

  Two Excursions into Reality

  (written in Corfu)

  “Asylum in the Snow.” Published in Seven.

  No. 3. Winter 1938.

  “Zero.” Published in Seven. No. 6. Fall 1939.

  Zero and Asylum in the Snow privately

  printed by the author, Rhodes 1946.

  Astu,

  What is unpleasant and a strain on my modesty is that fundamentally every name in history is myself. And with the children I have put into the world matters stand thus: I ponder, with a certain amount of suspicion, whether all who enter in the kingdom of God also come from God. This autumn I was obscured so as to become as insignificant as possible and was twice a spectator at my own funeral, the first time as Count Robilant (no, he is my son, in so far as I am Carlo Alberto, and untrue to my nature) but I myself was Antonelli. Dear Herr Professor you should see this edifice as I am wholly inexperienced in the things I create, so that you are free to make every criticism, I am grateful without being able to promise that I shall profit thereby. We artists are unteachable.

  From the letters written by

  Nietzsche after he became insane.

  EVERYTHING ILLOGICAL IS GOD: AND I AM GOD!

  The night opens with a Tibetan delicacy; the shadows fall across the long-nosed sun-dial and tell me that I exist, I exist. I have decided to speak, not for those who in their fervour are aimless and lunatique, those who run magically, whose ankle-bones are chaotic with reality; nor for those who paddle in their own urine, or knead their dung into delicate torsos. I will tell you who I am and what I am doing here. I will speak with a nicety of language that would give ears to the blind, and eyes to the deaf who hear me, but do not understand what my glossary is. If I am bitter it is because the asp has stung me; it is because the vial was emptied into my ear while I slept. (Actually it is great pathos—do not smile at the wringing of hands, at the torpor I exhibit when I meet you. By request of the management, do not smile.…) You weep, my darling, you take my hand and press it to your mouth, completely fatal; I feel the segment of white teeth touch my knuckles through the great grin of tears you wear. The snow chimes about us and I can do nothing, nothing. I cannot find words, only a sort of music which is cold comfort because I do not hear your answers. You see me sitting here like a Prussian with tears standing in my eyes. They never fall. They are always there. Two tears of rock carved on the canthus. Rather than agonize you lean over and tuck the motoring rug under my knees. The black trees open, the wind climbs, and the vortex of language comes up in my throat like a soft ball of blood. The memoryless hysteria of the snow closes on us like a mantrap, your arm is in my arm. Do you think I do not understand? I see myself sitting here stiffly, like a robot, behind the taciturn driver. I am a figure of fun perhaps because I cannot find the right word, and you do not dare to speak to me: because I can only manipulate an algebraic thunder in answer. Laugh if you want, it does not touch me: only you weep to see me groping among the syllables for a platitude of comfort, the naked bodies of lost words which would heal. If I try I can almost cross the gulf. What have you been doing? Are you happy? Why do you smile, weep, wonder, etc.? Are the apple-trees still knotted in their own hamstrings? You see, I can almost manage it. I am almost speaking after the manner of men. Almost. That does not alter my sitting here, like an incubus beside you, knowing that you are trembling under the striped rug. I have confused you with the loose-black-mouth-of-the-foal: the entity of the farm. I take in imagination always the wet, loose lips in my hand and kiss them, breathing in the cordial scent of the cud. It would be fatal to my peace of mind if I had a mind. In the madhouse even the wireless shuts down at twelve. Good-night everyone, and the moment is yours. I speak to you with simplicity then, because you are neither the foal nor the seal, and I am not myself. The apple-trees are growing in my mind: the earth opening all her pomp and liquors under the snow. In the Spring we will go down to the pool, and I shall meditate the miracle all over again. Are these pieces of the explored world banal? It is a sort of gathering up of threads, a finale, a vale—before the adventure begins. It is necessary to put my affairs in order before I go to meet my father. It is necessary to empty the old wine in meditation and reverence before stiffening the skins with new. I think you understand.…