The Alexandria Quartet (67 page)

There are a few more lines and then the affectionate superscription.

CONSEQUENTIAL DATA

Some shorthand notes of Keats's, recording the Obiter Dicta of Pursewarden in fragmentary fashion:

(
a
)

‘I know my prose is touched with plum pudding, but then all the prose belonging to the poetic continuum is; it is intended to give a stereoscopic effect to character. And events aren't in serial form but collect here and there like quanta, like real life.'

(
b
)

‘Nessim hasn't got the resources we Anglo-Saxons have; all our women are nurses at heart. In order to secure the lifelong devotion of an Anglo-Saxon woman one has only to get one's legs cut off above the waist. I've always thought Lady Chatterley weak in symbolism from this point of view. Nothing should have earned the devotion of his wife more surely than Clifford's illness. Anglo-Saxons may not be interested in love like other Europeans but they can get just as ill. Characteristically, it is to his English Kate that Laforgue cries out:
“Une Garde-malade pour l'amour de l'art!”
He detected the nurse.'

(
c
)

‘The classical in art is what marches by intention with the cosmology of the age.'

(
d
)

‘A state-imposed metaphysic or religion should be opposed, if necessary at pistol-point. We must fight for variety if we fight at all. The uniform is as dull as a sculptured egg.'

(
e
)

Of Da Capo: ‘Gamblers and lovers really play to lose.'

(
f
)

‘Art like life is an open secret.'

(
g
)

‘Science is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart's affections.'

(
h
)

‘Truth is independent of fact. It does not mind being disproved. It is already dispossessed in utterance.'

(
i
)

‘I love the French edition with its uncut pages. I would not want a reader too lazy to use a knife on me.'

(
j
)

In a book of poems: ‘One to be taken from time to time as needed and allowed to dissolve in the mind.'

(
k
)

‘We must always defend Plato to Aristotle and vice versa because if they should lose touch with each other we should be lost. The dimorphism of the psyche produced them both.'

(
l
)

‘To the medieval world-picture of the World, the Flesh and the Devil (each worth a book) we moderns have added Time: a fourth dimension.'

(
m
)

‘New critical apparatus: le roman bifteck, guignol or cafard.'

(
n
)

‘The real ruins of Europe are its great men.'

(
o
)

‘I have always believed in letting my reader sink or skim.'

(
p
)

On reading a long review of
God is a Humorist
: ‘Good God! At last they are beginning to take me seriously. This imposes a terrible burden on me. I must redouble my laughter.'

(
q
)

‘Why do I always choose an epigraph from Sade? Because he demonstrates pure rationalism — the ages of sweet reason we have lived through in Europe since Descartes. He is the final flower of reason, and the typic of European behaviour. I hope to live to see him translated into Chinese. His books would bring the house down and would read as pure humour. But his spirit has already brought the house down around our ears.'

(
r
)

‘Europe: a Logical Positivist trying to prove to himself by logical deduction that he exists.'

(
s
)

‘My objects in the novels? To interrogate human values through an honest representation of the human passions. A desirable end, perhaps a hopeless objective.'

(
t
)

‘My unkindest critics maintain that I am making lampshades out of human skin. This puzzles me. Perhaps at the bottom of the Anglo-Saxon soul there is a still small voice forever whispering: “Is this Quaite Naice?” and my books never seem to pass the test.'

SCOBIE'S COMMON USAGE

Expressions noted from Scobie's quaint conversation, his use of certain words, as:

Vivid
, meaning ‘angry', ex.: ‘Don't be so vivid, old man.'

Mauve
, meaning ‘silly', ex.: ‘He was just plain mauve when it came to, etc.'

Spoof
, meaning ‘trick', ex.: ‘Don't spoof me, old boy.'

Ritual
, meaning ‘habit, form', ex.: ‘We all wear them. It's ritual for the police.'

Squalid
, meaning ‘very elated', ex.: ‘Toby was squalid with joy when the news came.'

Septic
, meaning ‘unspeakable', ex.: ‘What septic weather today!'

Saffron Walden
, meaning ‘male brothel', ex.: ‘He was caught in a Saffron Walden, old man, covered in jam.'

Cloud Cuckoo
, meaning ‘male prostitute', ex.: ‘Budgie says there's not a cloud cuckoo in the whole of Horsham. He's advertised.'

WORKPOINTS

‘How many lovers since Pygmalion have been able to build their beloved's face out of flesh, as Amaril has?' asked Clea. The great folio of noses so lovingly copied for him to choose from — Nefertiti to Cleopatra. The readings in a darkened room.

Narouz always held in the back of his consciousness the memory of the moonlit room; his father sitting in the wheel-chair at the mirror, repeating the one phrase over and over again as he pointed the pistol at the looking-glass.

Mountolive was swayed by the dangerous illusion that now at last he was free to conceive and act — the one misjudgement which decides the fate of a diplomat.

Nessim said sadly: ‘All motive is mixed. You see, from the moment I married her, a Jewess, all their reservations disappeared and they ceased to suspect me. I do not say it was the only reason. Love is a wonderfully luxuriant plant, but unclassifiable really, fading as it does into mysticism on the one side and naked cupidity on the other.'

This now explained something to me which had hitherto puzzled me; namely that after his death Da Capo's huge library was moved over to Smyrna, book by book. Balthazar did the packing and posting.

NOTE IN THE TEXT

*  
Page
298

From Eugène Marais's
The Soul of The White Ant
.

MOUNTOLIVE

A

CLAUDE

NOTE

All the characters and situations described in this book (a sibling
to Justine
and
Balthazar
and the third volume of a quartet) are purely imaginary. I have exercised a novelist's right in taking a few necessary liberties with modern Middle Eastern history and the staff-structure of the Diplomatic Service.

The dream dissipated, were one to recover one's commonsense mood, the thing would be of but mediocre import — 'tis the story of mental wrongdoing. Everyone knows very well and it offends no one. But alas! one sometimes carries the thing a little further. What, one dares wonder, what would not be the idea's realization if its mere abstract shape thus exalted has just so profoundly moved one? The accursed reverie is vivified and its existence is a crime
.

D. A. F.
DE
S
ADE
:
Justine

Il faut que le roman raconte
.

S
TENDHAL

I

A
s a junior of exceptional promise, he had been sent to Egypt for a year in order to improve his Arabic and found himself attached to the High Commission as a sort of scribe to await his first diplomatic posting; but he was already conducting himself as a young secretary of legation, fully aware of the responsibilities of future office. Only somehow today it was rather more difficult than usual to be reserved, so exciting had the fish-drive become.