The Magus

by John Fowles

  ‘Hallo.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Nicholas. I must apologize for my absence. There has been a small scare on Wall Street.’ Wall Street seemed to be on the other side of the universe, not just of the world. I tried to look concerned.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I foolishly entered a financing consortium two years ago. Can you imagine Versailles with not one Roi Soleil, but five of them?’

  ‘Financing what?’

  ‘Many things.’ He went on quickly. ‘I had to go to Nauplia to telephone Geneva.’

  ‘I hope you’re not bankrupt.’

  ‘Only a fool is ever bankrupt. And he is bankrupt from birth. You have been with Lily?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  “We began to walk back towards the house. I sized him up, and said, ‘And I’ve met her twin sister.’

  He touched the powerful glasses round his neck. ‘I thought I heard a sub-alpine warbler. It is very late for them to be still on migration.’ It was not exactly a snub, but a sort of conjuring trick: how to make the subject disappear.

  ‘Or rather, seen her twin sister.’

  He walked several steps on; I had an idea that he was thinking fast.

  ‘Lily had no sister. Therefore no sister here.’

  ‘I only meant to say that I’ve been very well entertained in your absence.’

  He did not smile, but inclined his head. We said nothing more. I had the distinct feeling that he was a chess master caught between two moves; immensely rapid calculation of combinations. Once he even turned to say something, but changed his mind.

  We reached the gravel.

  ‘Did you like my Poseidon?’

  ‘Wonderful. I was going to – ‘

  He put his hand on my arm and stopped me, and looked down, almost as if he was at a loss for words.

  ‘She may be amused. That is what she needs. But not upset. For reasons you of course now realize. I am sorry for all this little mystery we spread around you before.’ He pressed my arm, and went on.

  ‘You mean the … amnesia?’

  He stopped again; we had just come to the steps.

  ‘Nothing else about her struck you?’

  ‘Lots of things.’

  ‘Nothing pathological?’

  ‘No.’

  He raised his eyebrows a fraction, as if I surprised him, but went up the steps; put his glasses on the old cane couch, and turned back to the tea-table. I stood by my chair, and gave him his own interrogative shake of the head.

  ‘This obsessive need to assume disguises. To give herself false motivations. That did not strike you?’

  I bit my lips, but his face, as he whisked the muslin covers away, was as straight as a poker.

  ‘I thought that was rather required of her.’

  ‘Required?’ He seemed momentarily puzzled, then clear. ‘Ah, you mean that schizophrenia produces these symptoms?’

  ‘Schizophrenia?’

  ‘Did you not mean that?’ He gestured to me to sit. ‘I am sorry. Perhaps you are not familiar with all this psychiatric jargon.’

  ‘Yes I am. But- ‘

  ‘Split personality.’

  ‘I know what schizophrenia is. But you said she did everything … because you wanted it.’

  ‘Of course. As one says such things to a child. To encourage them to obey.’

  ‘But she isn’t a child.’

  ‘I speak metaphorically. As of course I was speaking last night.’

  ‘But she’s very intelligent.’

  He gave me a professional look. ‘The correlation between high intelligence and schizophrenia is well known.’

  I ate my sandwich, and then grinned at him.

  ‘Every day I spend here I feel my legs get a little longer.’

  He looked amazed, even a shade irritated. ‘I am most certainly not pulling your leg at the moment. Far from it.’

  ‘I think you are. But I don’t mind.’

  He pushed his chair away from the table and made a new gesture; pressing his hands to his temples, as if he had been guilty of some terrible mistake. It was right out of character; and I knew he was acting.

  ‘I was so sure that you had understood by now.’

  ‘I think I have.’

  He gave me a piercing look I was meant to believe, and didn’t.

  ‘There are personal reasons I cannot go into now why I should -even if I did not love her as a daughter – feel the gravest responsibility for the unfortunate creature you have been with today.’ He poured hot water into the silver teapot. ‘She is one of the principal, the principal reason why I come to Bourani and its isolation. I thought you had realized that by now.’

  ‘Of course I had … in a way.’

  ‘This is the one place where the poor child can roam a little and indulge her fantasies.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that she’s mad?’

  ‘Mad is a meaningless non-medical word. She suffers from schizophrenia.’

  ‘So she believes herself to be your long-dead fiancee?’

  ‘I gave her that role. It was deliberately induced. It is quite harmless and she enjoys playing it. It is in some of her other roles that she is not so harmless.’

  ‘Roles?’

  ‘Wait.’ He disappeared indoors and came back almost at once with a book. ‘This is a standard textbook on psychiatry.’ He searched for a moment. ‘Allow me to read a passage. “One of the defining characteristics of schizophrenia is the formation of delusions which may be elaborate and systematic, or bizarre and incongruous.”‘ He looked up at me. ‘Lily falls into the first category.’ He went on reading. ‘“They, these delusions, have in common the same tendency to relate always to the patient; they often incorporate elements of popular prejudice against certain groups of activities; and they take the general form of self-glorification or feelings of persecution. One patient may believe she is Cleopatra, and will expect all around her to conform to her belief, while another may believe that her own family have decided to murder her and will therefore make even their most innocent and sympathetic statements and actions conform to her fundamental delusion.” And here. “There are frequently large areas of consciousness untouched by the delusion. In all that concerns them, the patient may seem, to an observer who knows the full truth, bewilderingly sensible and logical.”‘

  He took a gold pencil from his pocket, marked the passages he had read and passed the open book over the table to me. I glanced at the book, then, still smiling, up at him.

  ‘Her sister?’

  ‘Another cake?’

  ‘Thank you.’ I put the book down. ‘Mr Conchis – her sister?’

  He smiled. ‘Yes, of course, her sister.’

  ‘And–’

  ‘Yes, yes, and the others. Nicholas – here, she is queen. For a month or two we all conform to the needs of her unhappy life.’

  And he had that, very rare in him, gentleness, solicitude, which only Lily seemed able to evoke. I realized that I had stopped smiling; I was beginning to lose my sense of total sureness that he was inventing a new stage of the masque. So I smiled again.

  ‘And me?’

  ‘Do children in England still play that game … ‘ he put his hand over his eyes, at a loss for the word, ‘cache-cache?’

  I took a breath, remembering only too vividly the subject of our conversation’s recent use of the same image; and thought, the cunning little bitch, the cunning old fox, they’re throwing me backwards and forwards like a ball. That last strange look she had given me, all that talk of not betraying her, a dozen other things; I felt humiliated, and at the same time fascinated.

  ‘Hide-and-seek? Of course.’

  ‘The hider must have a seeker. That is the game. A seeker who is not too cruel. Not too observant.’

  ‘I’d rather got the impression that I was the centre of attention.’

  ‘I wish to involve you, my friend. I wish you to gain something from this. I cannot insult you by offering you money. But
I hope there will be reward for you too.’

  ‘I’m not complaining about my salary. But I would like to know a little more about my employer.’

  ‘I think I told you that I had never practised medicine. That is not quite true, Nicholas. In the twenties I studied under Jung. I do not now count myself a Jungian. But my principal interest in life has remained psychiatry. Before the war I had a small practice in Paris. I specialized in schizophrenic cases.’ He put his hands on the edge of the table. ‘Do you wish to see evidence? I can show you papers I published in various journals.’

  ‘I’d like to read them. But not now.’

  He sat back. ‘Very well. You must in no circumstances reveal what I am going to tell you.’ His eyes bored gravely into mine. ‘Lily’s real name is Julie Holmes. Four or five years ago her case attracted a great deal of attention in psychiatric circles. It is one of the best documented. Even if it was not already highly unusual in itself, it was virtually unique in there being a twin sister of a perfectly normal psychological type who could provide what scientists call a control. The aetiology of schizophrenia has long caused fierce debate between the neuro-pathologists and psychiatrists proper – whether it is essentially a physical and genetically conditioned or a spiritual disorder. Julie and her sister clearly suggest the latter is the case. Whence the great interest they have aroused.’

  ‘Are these documents available?’

  ‘One day you shall read them. But at the moment it would only hamper your role here. It is vital that she believes you do not know who she really is. You cannot create that impression if you know all the clinical facts and background. Agreed?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Julie was in danger of becoming, like many such striking cases, something of a monster in a psychiatric freak show. That is what I am now trying to guard against.’

  I began to swing the other way – after all, she had warned me, I was to have my credulity put on the rack again. I could not believe that the girl I had just left suffered from some deep mental flaw. A liar, yes; but not a celebrated lunatic.

  ‘May I ask how you come to take such an interest in her?’

  ‘For the simplest and most non-medical of reasons. Her parents are very old friends. She is not only my patient, Nicholas. But my godchild.’

  ‘I thought you’d lost all contact with England.’

  ‘They do not live in England. Switzerland. Where she spends most of her year now. In a private clinic. I cannot alas give all my life to her.’

  I could almost feel him willing me to believe. I looked down, then up at him with a small grin. ‘Before you told me this, I was going to congratulate you on hiring such a skilled young actress.’

  His stare at me was unexpectedly fierce, somehow put on the alert.

  ‘She did not by any chance suggest that to you herself?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  But he didn’t believe me; and of course, I realized at once, he didn’t have to believe me. He bowed his head a moment, then stood and went to the edge of the colonnade and stared out. Then he gave me a smile back. It was almost one of concession.

  ‘I see events have forestalled me. She has adopted a new role towards you. Yes?’

  ‘She certainly didn’t tell me about this.’

  He remained scrutinizing me, and I stared blandly back. He struck his hands together in front of him, as if in self-reproach at his own stupidity. Then he returned to his chair and sat again.

  ‘In a way you are right, Nicholas. I have most certainly not hired her, as you put it. But she is a skilled young actress. Let me warn you that some of the cleverest confidence tricksters in the history of crime have also been schizophrenics.’ He leant forward on the table, clasping his elbows. ‘You must not force her into corners. If you do, she will tell you lie upon lie – until your head swims with them. You are normal, for you that is bearable. But for her it may mean a grave relapse. Years of work undone.’

  ‘Then shouldn’t you have warned me before?’

  For a second he continued staring at me, then he looked down.

  ‘Yes. You are right. I should have warned you. I begin to sec I have miscalculated badly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Too much insistence on the truth can spoil our little – but I assure you clinically fruitful – amusements here.’ He hesitated, then went on. ‘It has long struck some of us that there is a paradox in the way we treat mental abnormalities of a paranoiac cast. We place our patients where they are constantly questioned, supervised, watched … all the rest. Of course it can be argued that it is for their good. But we really mean that it is for our good. Society’s good. In fact, only too often unimaginative institutional treatment gives plausible substance to the basic delusions of persecution. What I am trying to create here is an ambience in which Julie can believe she has some command over circumstance. If you like, in which for once she is not the one being persecuted … the one who always knows least. We all try to contribute to give her tins impression. I also allow her to think on occasion that I do not know quite what is going on, that she is leading me by the nose.’

  His tone of voice managed to suggest that I was rather slow not to have guessed this for myself. I had the familiar feeling that came in conversation at Bourani, of not knowing quite what statements applied to – in this case, whether to the assumption that ‘Lily’ really was a schizophrenic or to the assumption that of course I knew that her ‘schizophrenia’ was simply a new hiding-place in the masque.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He raised his hand, kind man; I was not to excuse myself. ‘This is why you won’t let her go outside Bourani?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Couldn’t she go out … ‘ I looked at the tip of my cigarette under supervision?’

  ‘She is, in law, certifiable. That is the personal responsibility I have undertaken. To ensure that she never enters an asylum.’

  ‘But you let her wander around. She could easily escape.’

  He raised his head in sharp contradiction. ‘Never. Her nurse never leaves her.’

  ‘Her nurse!’

  ‘He is very discreet. It distresses her to have him always by her, especially here, so he keeps well in the background. One day you will see him.’

  With his jackal-head on. It would not wash; but the extraordinary thing was that I more than half suspected that Conchis knew it would not wash. I hadn’t played chess for years; but I remembered that the better you got, the more it became a game of false sacrifices. He was assaying not my powers of belief, but my powers of unbelief.

  ‘This is why you keep her on the yacht?’

  ‘Yacht?’

  ‘I thought you kept her on a yacht.’

  ‘That is her little secret. Allow her to keep it.’

  ‘You bring her here every year?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I swallowed my knowledge that one of them must be lying; and my growing feeling that it was not the girl I must now think of as Julie.

  I smiled. ‘So this is why my two predecessors came here. And were so quiet about it.’

  ‘John was an excellent… seeker. But Mitford was quite the reverse. You see, Nicholas, he was totally tricked by Julie. In one of her persecution phases. As usual I, who devote my summers to her, became the persecutor. And Mitford attempted one night – in the crudest and most harmful way – to, as he put it, rescue her. Of course her nurse stepped in. There was a most disagreeable fracas. It upset her deeply. If I sometimes seem irritable to you, it is because I am so anxious not to see any repetition of last year.’ He raised his hand. ‘I mean nothing personal. You are very intelligent, and you are a gentleman; they are both qualities that Mitford was without.’

  I rubbed my nose. I thought of other awkward questions I could ask, and decided not to ask them. The constant harping on my intelligence made me as suspicious as a crow. There are three types of intelligent person: the first so intelligent that being called very intelligent must seem natural and obvious;
the second sufficiently intelligent to see that he is being flattered, not described; the third so little intelligent that he will believe anything. I knew I belonged to the second kind. I could not absolutely disbelieve Conchis; all he said could -just – be true. I supposed there were still poor little rich psychotics kept out of institutions by their doting relations; but Conchis was the least doting person I had ever met. It didn’t wash, it didn’t wash. There were various things about Julie, looks, emotional non sequiturs, those sudden tears, that in retrospect seemed to confirm his story. They proved nothing; and perhaps this development had always been planned, and she had not wanted to spoil it completely…

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘do you believe me?’

  ‘Do I look as if I don’t?’

  ‘We are none of us what we look.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have offered me that suicide pill.’

  ‘You think all my prussic acid is ratafia?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I’m your guest, Mr Conchis. Naturally I take your word.’

  For a moment, masks seemed to drop on both sides; I was looking at a face totally without humour and he, I suppose, was looking at one without generosity. A hostility was at last proclaimed; a clash of wills. We both smiled, and we both knew we smiled to hide a fundamental truth: that we could not trust each other one inch.

  ‘I wish to say two final things, Nicholas. Whether you believe what I have said is comparatively unimportant. But you must believe one thing. Julie is susceptible and very dangerous – both things without realizing it herself. Like a fine blade, she can easily be hurt -but she can also hurt. We have all learnt, had to learn to remain completely detached emotionally from her. Because it is on our emotions that she will prey – if we give her the chance.’