The Alexandria Quartet (43 page)

But it was not only of the past that Justine spoke but of a present which was weighing upon her full of decisions which must be taken. In a sense, everything that Clea felt was at this time meaningless to her. As a prostitute may be unaware that her client is a poet who will immortalize her in a sonnet she will never read, so Justine in pursuing these deeper sexual pleasures was unaware that they would mark Clea: enfeeble her in her power of giving undivided love — what she was most designed to give by temperament. Her youth, you see. And yet the wretched creature meant no harm. She was simply a victim of that Oriental desire to please, to make this golden friend of hers free of treasures which her own experience had gathered and which, in sum, were as yet meaningless to her. She gave everything, knowing the value of nothing, a true
parvenue
of the soul. To love (from any quarter) she could respond, but only with the worn felicities of friendship. Her body really meant nothing to her. It was a dupe. Her modesty was supreme. This sort of giving is really shocking because it is as simple as an Arab, without precociousness, unrefined as a drinking habit among peasants. It was born long before the idea of love was formed in the fragmented psyche of European man — the knowledge (or invention) of which was to make him the most vulnerable of creatures in the scale of being, subject to hungers which could only be killed by satiety, but never satisfied; which nourished a literature of affectation whose subject-matter would otherwise have belonged to religion — its true sphere of operation. How does one say these things?

Nor, in another scale of reference, is it of the slightest importance — that a woman disoriented by the vagaries of her feelings, tormented, inundated by frightening aspects of her own unrecognized selves, should like a soldier afraid of death, throw herself into the heart of the m
êlée
to wound those whom truly she most loved and most admired — Clea, myself, lastly Nessim. Some people are born to bring good and evil in greater measure than the rest of us — the unconscious carriers of diseases they cannot cure. I think perhaps we must study them, for it is possible that they promote creation in the very degree of the apparent corruption and confusion they spread or seek. I dare not say even now that she was stupid or unfeeling; only that she could not recognize what passed within herself (‘the camera obscura of the heart'), could not put a precise frame around the frightening image of her own meaning-lessness in the world of ordinary action. The sort of abyss which seemed to lie around her was composed of one quality — a failure of value, a failure to attach meaning which kills joy — which is itself only the internal morality of a soul which has discovered the royal road to happiness, whose nakedness does not shame itself. It is easy for me to criticize now that I see a little further into the truth of her predicament and my own. She must, I know, have been bitterly ashamed of the trick she was playing on me and the danger into which she put me. Once at the Café El Bab where we were sitting over an
arak
, talking, she burst into tears and kissed my hands, saying: ‘You are a good man, really a good man. And I am so sorry.' For what? For her tears? I had been speaking about Goethe. Fool! Imbecile! I thought I had perhaps moved her by the sensibility with which I expressed myself. I gave her presents. So had Clea, so did Clea now: and the strange thing was that for the first time her taste in choosing objects of
vertu
deserted this most gifted and sensitive of painters. Ear-rings and brooches of a commonness which was truly Alexandrian! I am at a loss to understand this phenomenon, unless to love is to become besotted.… Yes.

But then I don't know; I am reminded of Balthazar's dry marginal comment on the matter. ‘One is apt' he writes ‘to take a high moral tone about these things — but in fact, who will criticize himself for reaching up to pluck an apple lying ripe upon a sun-warmed wall? Most women of Justine's temperament and background would not have the courage to imitate her even if they were free to do so. Is it more or less expensive to the spirit to endure dreams and
petit trial so
that the physician will always find a hot forehead and a guilty air? I don't know. It is hard to isolate a moral quality in the free act. And then again, all love-making to one less instructed than oneself has the added delicious thrill which comes from the consciousness of perverting, of pulling them down into the mud from which passions rise — together with poems and theories of God. It is wiser perhaps not to make a judgement.'

But outside all this, in the sphere of daily life, there were problems about which Justine herself needed reassurance. ‘I am astonished and a little horrified that Nessim whom I hardly know, has asked to marry me. Am I to laugh, dearest Clea, or be ashamed, or both?' Clea in her innocence was delighted at the news for Nessim was her dearest friend and the thought of him bringing his dignity and gentleness to bear on the very real unhappiness of Justine's life seemed suddenly illuminating — a solution to everything. When one invites rescue by the mess one creates around oneself, what better than that a knight should be riding by? Justine put her hands over her eyes and said with difficulty ‘For a moment my heart leapt up and I was about to shout “yes”; ah, Clea my dear, you will guess why. I need his riches to trace the child — really, somewhere in the length and breadth of Egypt it must be, suffering terribly, alone, perhaps ill-treated.' She began to cry and then stopped abruptly, angrily. ‘In order to safeguard us both from what would be a disaster I said to Nessim “I could never love a man like you: I could never give you an instant's happiness. Thank you and good-bye.”'

‘But are you sure?'

‘To use a man for his fortune, by God I'll never.'

‘Justine, what do you want?'

‘First the child. Then to escape from the eyes of the world into some quiet corner where I can possess myself. There are whole parts of my character I do not understand. I need time. Today again Nessim has written to me. What can he want? He knows all about me.'

The thought crossed Clea's mind: ‘The most dangerous thing in the world is a love founded on pity.' But she dismissed it and allowed herself to see once more the image of this gentle, wise, undissimulating man breasting the torrent of Justine's misfortunes and damming them up. Am I unjust in crediting her with another desire which such a solution would satisfy? (Namely, to be rid of Justine, free from the demands she made upon her heart and mind. She had stopped painting altogether.) The kindness of Nessim — the tall dark figure which drifted unresponsively around the corridors of society — needed some such task; how could a knight of the order born acquit himself if there were no castles and no desponding maidens weaving in them? Their preoccupations matched in everything — save the demand for love.

‘But the money is nothing' she said; and here indeed she was speaking of what she knew to be precisely true of Nessim. He himself did not really care about the immense fortune which was his. But here one should add that he had already made a gesture which had touched and overwhelmed Justine. They met more than once, formally, like business partners, in the lounge of the Cecil Hotel to discuss the matter of this marriage with the detachment of Alexandrian brokers planning a cotton merger. This is the way of the city. We are mental people, and wordly, and have always made a clear distinction between the passional life and the life of the family. These distinctions are part of the whole complex of Mediterranean life, ancient and touchingly prosaic.

‘And lest an inequality of fortune should make your decision difficult' said Nessim, flushing and lowering his head, ‘I propose to make you a birthday present which will enable you to think of yourself as a wholly independent person — simply as a woman, Justine. This hateful stuff which creeps into everyone's thoughts in the city, poisoning everything! Let us be free of it before deciding anything.' He passed across the table a slim green cheque with the words ‘Three Thousand Pounds' written on it. She stared at it for a long time with surprise but did not touch it. ‘It has not offended you' he said hastily at last, stammering in his anxiety. ‘No' she said. ‘It is like everything you do. Only what can I do about not loving you?'

‘You must, of course, never try to.'

‘Then what sort of life could we make?'

Nessim looked at her with hot shy eyes and then lowered his glance to the table, as if under a cruel rebuke. ‘Tell me' she said after a silence. ‘Please tell me. I cannot use your fortune and your position and give you nothing in exchange, Nessim.'

‘If you would care to try' he said gently, ‘we need not delude each other. Life isn't very long. One owes it to oneself to try and find a means to happiness.'

‘Is it that you want to sleep with me?' asked Justine suddenly: disgusted yet touched beyond measure by his tone. ‘You may. Yes. Oh! I would do anything for you, Nessim — anything.'

But he flinched and said: ‘I am speaking about an understanding in which friendship and knowledge can take the place of love until and if it comes as I hope. Of course I shall sleep with you — myself a lover, and you a friend. Who knows? In a year perhaps. All Alexandrian marriages are business ventures after all. My God, Justine, what a fool you are. Can't you see that we might possibly need each other without ever fully realizing it? It's worth trying. Everything may stand in the way. But I can't get over the thought that in the whole city the woman I most
need
is you. There are any number a man may want, but to want is not to need. I may want others — you I need! I do not dare to say the same for you. How cruel life is, and how absurd.' Nobody had said anything like that to her before — had offered her a partnership as coolly designed, as wholly pure in intention. It must be admired from this point of view. ‘You are not the sort of man to stake everything on a single throw at
rouge et noir'
she said slowly. ‘Our bankers who are so brilliant with money are notoriously weak in the head when it comes to women.' She put her hand upon his wrist.

‘You should have your doctor examine you, my dear. To take on a woman who has said that she can never love you — what sort of temerity is that? Ah, no!'

He did not say anything at all, recognizing that her words were really not addressed to him: they were part of a long internal argument with herself. How beautiful her disaffected face looked — chloroformed by its own simplicity: she simply could not believe that someone might value her for herself — if she had a self. He was indeed, he thought, like a gambler putting everything on the turn of a wheel. She was standing now upon the very edge of a decision, like a sleepwalker on a cliff: should she awake before she jumped, or let the dream continue? Being a woman, she still felt it necessary to pose conditions; to withdraw herself further into secrecy as this man encroached upon it with his steady beguiling gentleness. ‘Nessim' she said, ‘wake up.' And she shook him gently.

‘I am awake' he said quietly.

Outside in the square with its palms nibbled by the sea-wind, a light rain was falling. It was the tenth Zu-el-Higga, the first day of Courban Bairam, and fragments of the great procession were assembling in their coloured robes, holding the great silk banners and censers, insignia of the religion they honoured, and chanting passages from the litany: litany of the forgotten Nubian race which every year makes its great resurrection at the Mosque of Nebi Daniel. The crowd was brilliant, spotted with primary colours. The air rippled with tambourines, while here and there in the lags of silence which fell over the shouts and chanting, there came the sudden jabbering of the long drums as their hide was slowly stiffened at the hissing braziers. Horses moaned and the gonfalons bellied like sails in the rain-starred afternoon. A cart filled with the prostitutes of the Arab town in coloured robes went by with shrill screams and shouts, and the singing of painted young men to the gnash of cymbals and scribbling of mandolines: the whole as gorgeous as a tropical animal.

‘Nessim' she said foolishly. ‘On one sole condition — that we sleep together absolutely tonight.' His features drew tight against his skull and he set his teeth tightly as he said angrily: ‘You should have some intelligence to go with your lack of breeding — where is it?'

‘I'm sorry' seeing how deeply and suddenly she had annoyed him. ‘I felt in need of reassurance.' He had become quite pale.

‘I proposed something so different' he said, replacing the cheque in his wallet. ‘I am rather staggered by your lack of understanding. Of course we can sleep together if you wish to make it a condition. Let us take a room at the hotel here, now, this minute.' He looked really splendid when he was wounded like this, and suddenly there stirred inside her the realization that his quietness was not weakness, and than an uncommon sort of sensibility underlay these confusing thoughts and deliberate words, perhaps not altogether good, either. ‘What could we prove to each other' he went on more gently ‘by it or by its opposite: never making love?' She saw now how hopelessly out of context her words had been. ‘I'm bitterly ashamed of my vulgarity.' She said this without really meaning the words, as a concession to his world as much as to himself — a world which dealt in the refinements of manners she was as yet too coarse to enjoy, which could afford to cultivate emotions
posees
by taste. A world which could only be knocked off its feet when you were skin to skin with it, so to speak! No, she did not mean the words, for vulgar as the idea sounded, she knew that she was right by the terms of her intuition since the thing she proposed is really, for women, the vital touchstone to a man's being; the knowledge, not of his qualities which can be analysed or inferred, but of the very flavour of his personality. Nothing except the act of physical love tells us this truth about one another. She bitterly regretted his unwisdom in denying her a concrete-chance to see for herself what underlay his beauty and persuasion. Yet how could one insist?