The Alexandria Quartet (136 page)

The funeral took place next day. Clea came back, looking pale and strained. She threw her hat across the room and shook out her hair with an impatient gesture — as if to expel the whole distasteful memory of the incident. Then she lay down exhaustedly on the sofa and put her arm over her eyes.

‘It was ghastly' she said at last, ‘really ghastly, Darley. First of all it was a
cremation
. Pombal insisted on carrying out her wishes despite violent protests from Father Paul. What a beast that man is. He behaved as though her body had become Church property. Poor Pombal was furious. They had a terrible row settling the details I hear. And then … I had never visited the new Crematorium! It is unfinished. It stands in a bit of sandy waste-land littered with straw and old lemonade bottles, and flanked by a trash heap of old car-bodies. It looks in fact like a hastily improvised furnace in a concentration camp. Horrid little brick-lined beds with half-dead flowers sprouting from the sand. And a little railway with runners for the coffin. The ugliness! And the faces of all those consuls and acting consuls! Even Pombal seemed quite taken aback by the hideousness. And the heat! Father Paul was of course in the foreground of the picture, relishing his role. And then with an incongruous squeaking the coffin rolled away down the garden path and swerved into a steel hatch. We hung about, first on one leg then on the other; Father Paul showed some inclination to fill this awkward gap with impromptu prayers but at that moment a radio in a nearby house started playing Viennese waltzes. Attempts were made by various chauffeurs to locate and silence it, but in vain. Never have I felt unhappier than standing in this desolate chicken run in my best clothes. There was a dreadful charred smell from the furnace. I did not know then that Pombal intended to scatter the ashes in the desert, and that he had decided that I alone would accompany him on this journey. Nor, for that matter, did I know that Father Paul — who scented a chance of more prayers — had firmly made up his mind to do so as well. All that followed came as a surprise.

‘Well finally the casket was produced — and what a casket! That was a real poke in the eye for us. It was like a confectioner's triumphant effort at something suitable for inexpensive chocolates. Father Paul tried to snatch it, but poor Pombal held on to it firmly as we trailed towards the car. I must say, here Pombal showed some backbone. “Not you” he said as the priest started to climb into the car. “I'm going alone with Clea.” He beckoned to me with his head.

‘“My son” said Father Paul in a low grim voice, “I shall come too.”

‘“You won't” said Pombal. “You've done your job.”

‘“My son, I am coming” said this obstinate wretch.

‘For a moment it seemed that all might end with an exchange of blows. Pombal shook his beard at the priest and glared at him with angry eyes. I climbed into the car, feeling extremely foolish. Then Pombal pushed Father Paul in the best French manner — hard in the chest — and climbed in, banging the door. A susurrus went up from the assembled consuls at this public slight to the cloth, but no word was uttered. The priest was white with rage and made a sort of involuntary gesture — as if he were going to shake his fist at Pombal, but thought better of it.

‘We were off; the chauffeur took the road to the eastern desert, acting apparently on previous instructions. Pombal sat quite still with this ghastly
bonbonnère
on his knees, breathing through his nose and with half-closed eyes. As if he were recovering his self-composure after all the trials of the morning. Then he put out his hand and took mine, and so we sat, silently watching the desert unroll on either side of the car. We went quite far out before he told the chauffeur to stop. He was breathing rather heavily. We got out and stood for a desultory moment at the roadside. Then he took a step or two into the sand and paused, looking back. “Now I shall do it” he said, and broke into his fat shambling run which carried him about twenty yards into the desert. I said hurriedly to the chauffeur, “Drive on for five minutes, and then come back for us.” The sound of the car starting did not make Pombal turn round. He had slumped down on his knees, like a child playing in a sand-pit; but he stayed quite still for a long time. I could hear him talking in a low confidential voice, though whether he was praying or reciting poetry I could not tell. It felt desperately forlorn on that empty desert road with the heat shimmering up from the tarmac.

‘Then he began to scrabble about in the sand before him, to pick up handfuls like a Moslem and pour it over his own head. He was making a queer moaning noise. At last he lay face downwards and quite still. The minutes ticked by. Far away in the distance I could hear the car coming slowly towards us — at a walking pace.

‘“Pombal” I said at last. There was no reply. I walked across the intervening space, feeling my shoes fill up with the burning sand, and touched him on the shoulder. At once he stood up and started dusting himself. He looked dreadfully old all of a sudden. “Yes” he said with a vague, startled glance all round him, as if for the first time he realized where he was. “Take me home, Clea.” I took his hand — as if I were leading a blind man — and tugged him slowly back to the car which by now had arrived.

‘He sat beside me with a dazed look for a long time until, as if suddenly touched to the quick by a memory, he began to howl like a little boy who has cut his knee. I put my arms round him. I was so glad you weren't there — your Anglo-Saxon soul would have curled up at the edges. Yet he was repeating: “It must have looked ridiculous. It must have looked ridiculous.” And all of a sudden he was laughing hysterically. His beard was full of sand. “I suddenly remembered Father Paul's face” he explained, still giggling in the high hysterical tones of a schoolgirl. Then he suddenly took a hold on himself, wiped his eyes, and sighing sadly said: “I am utterly washed out, utterly exhausted. I feel I could sleep for a week.”

‘And this is presumably what he is going to do. Balthazar has given him a strong sleeping draught to take. I dropped him at his flat and the car brought me on here. I'm hardly less exhausted than he. But thank God it is all over. Somehow he will have to start his life all over again.'

As if to illustrate this last proposition the telephone rang and Pombal's voice, weary and confused, said: ‘Darley, is that you? Good. Yes, I thought you would be there. Before I went to sleep I wanted to tell you, so that we could make arrangements about the flat. Pordre is sending me into Syria
en mission
. I leave early in the morning. If I go this way I will get allowances and be able to keep up my part of the flat easily until I come back. Eh?'

‘Don't worry about it' I said.

‘It was just an idea.'

‘Sleep now.'

There was a long silence. Then he added: ‘But of course I will write to you, eh? Yes. Very well. Don't wake me if you come in this evening.' I promised not to.

But there was hardly any need for the admonition for when I returned to the flat later that night he was still up, sitting in his gout-chair with an air of apprehension and despair. ‘This stuff of Balthazar's is no good' he said. ‘It is mildly emetic, that is all. I am getting more drowsy from the whisky. But somehow I don't want to go to bed. Who knows what dreams I shall have?' But I at last persuaded him to get into bed; he agreed on condition that I stayed and talked to him until he dozed off. He was relatively calm now, and growing increasingly drowsy. He talked in a quiet relaxed tone, as one might talk to an imaginary friend while under anaesthetic.

‘I suppose it will all pass. Everything does. In the very end, it passes. I was thinking of other people in the same position. But for some it does not pass easily. One night Liza came here. I was startled to find her on the doorstep with those eyes which give me the creeps — like an eyeless rabbit in a poultry shop. She wanted me to take her to her brother's room in the Mount Vulture Hotel. She said she wanted to “see” it. I asked what she would see. She said, with anger, “I have my own way of seeing.” Well I had to do it. I felt it would please Mountolive perhaps. But I did not know then that the Mount Vulture was no longer a hotel. It had been turned into a brothel for the troops. We were half-way up the stairs before the truth dawned on me. All these naked girls, and half-dressed sweating soldiers with their hairy bodies; their crucifixes tinkling against their identity discs. And the smell of sweat and rum and cheap scent. I said we must get out, for the place had changed hands, but she stamped her foot and insisted with sudden anger. Well, we climbed the stairs. Doors were open on every landing, you could see everything. I was glad she was blind. At last we came to his room. It was dark. On his bed there lay an old woman asleep with a hashish pipe beside her. It smelt of drains. She, Liza, was very excited. “Describe it” she told me. I did my best. She advanced towards the bed. “There is a woman asleep there” I said, trying to pull her back. “This is a house of ill fame now, Liza, I keep telling you.” Do you know what she said?
“So much the better.”
I was startled. She pressed her cheek to the pillow beside the old woman, who groaned all at once. Liza stroked her forehead as if she were stroking a child and said “There now Sleep.” Then she came slowly and hesitantly to my hand. She gave a curious grin and said: “I wanted to try and take his imprint from the pillow. But it was a useless idea. One must try everything to recover memory. It has so many hiding-places.” I did not know what she meant. We started downstairs again. On the second landing I saw some drunken Australians coming up. I could see from their faces that there was going to be trouble. One of their number had been cheated or something. They were terribly drunk. I put my arms around Liza and pretended we were making love in a corner of the landing until they passed us safely. She was trembling, though whether from fear or emotion I could not tell. And she said “Tell me about his women. What were they like?” I gave her a good hard shake. “Now you are being banal” I said. She stopped trembling and went white with anger. In the street she said “Get me a taxi. I do not like you.” I did and off she went without a word. I regretted my rudeness afterwards, for she was suffering; at the time things happen too fast for one to take them into account. And one never knows enough about people and their sufferings to have the right response ready at the moment. Afterwards I said many sympathetic things to her in my mind. But too late. Always too late.'

A slight snore escaped his lips and he fell silent. I was about to switch off his bedside lamp and tip-toe from his room when he continued to speak, only from far away, re-establishing the thread of his thought in another context: ‘And when Melissa was dying Clea spent all day with her. Once she said to Clea: “Darley made love with a kind of remorse, of despair. I suppose he imagined Justine. He never excited me like other men did. Old Cohen, for example, he was just dirty-minded, yet his lips were always wet with wine. I liked that. It made me respect him for he was a man. But Pursewarden treated me like precious china, as if he were afraid he might break me, like some precious heirloom! How good it was for once to be at rest!”'

VIII

S
o the year turned on its heel, through a winter of racing winds, frosts keener than grief, hardly preparing us for that last magnificent summer which followed the spring so swiftly. It came curving in, this summer, as if from some long-forgotten latitude first dreamed of in Eden, miraculously rediscovered among the slumbering thoughts of mankind. It rode down upon us like some famous snow-ship of the mind, to drop anchor before the city, its white sails folding like the wings of a seabird. Ah! I am hunting for metaphors which might convey something of the piercing happiness too seldom granted to those who love; but words, which were first invented against despair, are too crude to mirror the properties of something so profoundly at peace with itself, at one with itself. Words are the mirrors of our discontents merely; they contain all the huge unhatched eggs of the world's sorrows. Unless perhaps it were simpler to repeat under one's breath some lines torn from a Greek poem, written once in the shadow of a sail, on a thirsty promontory in Byzantium. Something like…

Black bread, clear water, blue air
.

Calm throat incomparably fair
.

Mind folded upon mind

Eyes softly closed on eyes
.

Lashes a-tremble, bodies bare
.

But they English badly; and unless one hears them in Greek falling softly, word by word, from a mouth made private and familiar by the bruised endearments of spent kisses they must remain always simply charmless photographs of a reality which overreaches the realm of the poet's scope. Sad that all the brilliant plumage of that summer remains beyond capture — for one's old age will have little but such memories upon which to found its regretful happinesses. Will memory clutch it — that incomparable pattern of days, I wonder? In the dense violet shadow of white sails, under the dark noon-lantern of figs, on the renowned desert roads where the spice caravans march and the dunes soothe themselves away to the sky, to catch in their dazed sleep the drumming of gulls' wings turning in spray? Or in the cold whiplash of the waters crushing themselves against the fallen pediments of forgotten islands? In the night-mist falling upon deserted harbours with the old Arab seamarks pointing eroded fingers? Somewhere, surely, the sum of these things will still exist. There were no hauntings yet. Day followed day upon the calendar of desire, each night turning softly over in its sleep to reverse the darkness and drench us once more in the royal sunlight. Everything conspired to make it what we needed.