Pascali's Island (11 page)

Meanwhile the days succeed one another, days of summer. Hazy mornings, glittering noons, velvet evenings. I wake with the light and seat myself here early, while the mist still lies along the join between the nearer islands and the sea, and along the distant promontories of Asia. I sit here watching this beautiful inter-action, this complicity – that word again – between sea and sky, the way hazes soften the complicated folds and recesses of land-as if these wilful masses needed protecting, the sharp promontories needed sheathing.

The sea is always present to me, whether within sight or not; there on the limits of my existence, glimmering in delicate perspectives or standing brilliant and vertical on the same plane as the sky; there as an element in the light, imparting its own quality of radiance. This pervasiveness of the sea, common to all small islands, gives a provisional quality to life. Exquisite matings of earth, water and air gave us our being here, and still they live in ménage à trois, without those désillusions said to be inevitable. If there is ever a real quarrel we shall be engulfed. Meanwhile the dalliance continues, a game of creation in which islands on the horizon and islands in the sky are glimpsed, surmised, lost again, and shapes of land lodge, swim, dissolve. Out there, far away, on the furthest verge of vision and beyond, other beings inhabit those fleeting shapes, and from their stillness-which seems like motion to me- they are watching with wonder the short-lived shape on which I count for permanency.

It is no wonder, Excellency, that so many philosophers have come from this world – Ionia or the nearer islands. I mean the artist-philosophers who tried to interpret the universe. Not riddling, posturing Socrates, stroking his beard and asking for definitions. Detestable man. No, I mean those who came before that. Faced with the manifold illusion of the senses, the paradox of permanence and change, in this light at once clear and deceiving, they sought always for an extreme explanation, a principle of unity. What a leap of the mind that was, Excellency. What a giant stride. They freed us from matter, to which, of course, with modern science, we are again subjected. Those who talk of the Greek sense of balance, of the Golden Mean, forget these holy extremists. It is in extremes that the true Greek spirit lies. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Herodotus, Anaximander – the very names have a delightful cadence. I see them standing on these shores seeking to reconcile all apparent contradictions in a single dazzling formula. Parmenides is perhaps the one who best suits our condition, yours and mine, Excellency, as he suits all who fear dissolution. He says that motion itself is an illusion. The lunge of the knife, the revolts of subject states, illusory.

I have seen Mister Bowles again. Not half an hour ago, I saw him, walking along the shore below my house. He was going towards the headland, as usual. Presumably he will follow the same procedure as before, climb up into the hills from the far end of the bay. It must take him three hours at least of strenuous walking, over difficult terrain, to reach the ruins up there. There are no paths. No one goes there much now. Certainly it cannot be denied that Mister Bowles is an enthusiast for research.

He has the contract now, at least. I took him two copies, having first checked the wording with Izzet. It was written in Arabic characters, and extremely convoluted in style. However, the area in question was precisely delineated; it was specified that no building operations of any kind were to be undertaken, nor any work of mining or excavation to be carried out; the sums were correctly stated, and the dates of the lease; each copy bore the signature of the Pasha, and the official seal.

'I like everything to be clear and above board, you know,' Mister Bowles said, when I gave him the papers.

'I, on the other hand,' I said politely, 'prefer a certain degree of fruitful murk.'

'How do you make that out?' he said negligently. He had not expressed any thanks for the trouble I was taking on his behalf, nor had he referred again to the question of a fee for my services. Ridiculously enough, I could not remind him, Excellency, I still want his respect, still nurse some remnants of that feeling I had at first, that he might like me, that we might become friends. We were in the lounge, under the sternly lecherous eye of Prussian Zeus.

'I do not think human beings can live for very long above the board,' I said. 'The light would shrivel them up.'

Mister Bowles laughed at this, an explosive sound. He was smoking a thin cheroot, but did not offer me one. 'Everything strives for light,' he said. 'Everything.'

'Possibly,' I said. 'But striving for light is the natural result of normally preferring darkness.'

He laughed again. He seemed to be in a jovial mood. Perhaps his researches are going well. 'I can sign this with a clear mind anyway,' he said. 'Since you tell me it is all in order.'

I was pleased that he trusted me. So pleased that my grievance about the fee receded. Mister Bowles has some quality of binding people to him.

'They didn't ask for it to be signed in their presence then,' he said. 'No, of course not – the contract does not matter much to them, does it.'

This remark showed a shrewdness that surprised me. Mister Bowles is full of surprises… I took Izzet his copy back at once, together with the ten liras which had been agreed on as a deposit.

'Mister Bowles would like a receipt for this,' I said.

'He is a great one for papers,' Izzet said sourly. 'Does he say when the balance of the money will be arriving?'

'No.'

Izzet looked at me for a moment in silence. Now that we were alone together he was much less friendly. 'The Pasha will hold you personally responsible,' he said.

'I merely acted as interpreter,' I told him.

'You will be held responsible,' he said again.

We parted coldly. I was depressed and frightened by his words, Excellency. I know what can happen to those against whom Mahmoud Pasha has a grievance. I could not settle down to my report in the evening – I lost a valuable evening's writing time because of that cursed Izzet. Gone for ever the words I might have written then. The mood of one day is never like that of the next.

Today I feel better. I now have my month's pay in hand, collected this morning from Pariente, the local agent for the Banque Ottomane. This is paid on the fifth day of the month with absolute regularity. It has not varied, to my recollection, for twenty years and is, in itself, I sometimes think, an argument for a regulated universe, with all controls set. Pariente is a melancholy man at the best of times, and I thought he looked at me with some special quality of sorrow today. Again I wondered if he was the leak, if it was him I had to thank for my predicament.

'Keeping you busy this week,' I said to him, in jocular reference to the well-known fact that his post is not very exacting. 'First the Englishman, and now me.'

'Englishman?' he said. Pariente's eyes are chestnut brown, luxuriantly lashed. There was no flicker of comprehension in them as he looked back at me, and I knew in that moment, quite beyond any doubt, that Mister Bowles had not so far been to see him to arrange a transfer. Interesting fact, Excellency.

From there I went to the Sans Souci for an aperitif. At this stage in the month I always allow myself such gestures – it is good for the morale. I tried to engage Stavros, the waiter, in conversation, but he barely spoke to me. In fact, he walked away from me while I was still speaking. After an acquaintance of nine years, Excellency.

I have been thinking again about the American, and about Lydia 's words and behaviour that afternoon at her studio, that unguarded remark of hers, that she had heard of him. Surely that can only mean she knew of him beforehand, before he came here. Unless it was simply a fault in her English, the wrong choice of preposition. But no, she was conscious herself of having said the wrong thing, she tried to cover it up by talking of the Italian crew-member. Where can she have learnt of Mister Smith's existence? Presumably on her travels.

She was disappointed – and annoyed – to hear they had searched the boat. That was because they had botched the business. So she had wanted Mister Smith to be detected. But in what? Excellency, it can only be guns, or arms of some kind. What else would he be waiting there for? Spargos, Ramni, all the islands to the west, belong now to the Greeks. What could be easier than for a boat to put out from there? A meeting out in the bay some moonless night, the cargo transferred to Mister Smith's caique. He is here as a bona fide sponge-fisherman. All he has to do is wait for the right opportunity. A rendezvous with the rebels from the interior, a barca rowed across the bay. Beyond the headland there are numerous inlets suitable for the purpose…

But if this is indeed the truth of the matter, and Lydia has definite knowledge of it, then it is highly probably that she warned the authorities herself. Perhaps this is how she lives so free from interference on the island. She travels, she hears things, she passes them on. Not for pay, like a professional, but for love… I remember the passion of her opposition to change, new styles in art. Perhaps she feels the same about political changes. Lydia is on your side, Excellency, it would seem. A natural reactionary. Or is it that she dislikes people making money out of guns? Instruments of death, as she would probably put it.

Now, forewarned in his turn, Mister Smith might change his plans, even decide to abandon the attempt. Or, depending on his psychology, he will feel emboldened. Quite possible, of course, that I am wrong about him, wrong about Lydia. What is it based on, after all? An uncertain inflection, a momentary loss of poise, an odd choice of phrase. Slight indications indeed. All the same, there was something… She was waiting for him, for Mister Bowles. She was excited. Is she in love with him? Perhaps it was excitement that disturbed her judgement, betrayed her into those small, but revealing, indiscretions.

I will keep my eyes on them, Excellency.

Just after midnight. I hear the first whistles of the night watchmen. An instructive evening, Excellency. I was making for the Metropole with no particular intention in mind, and I had just reached the small plateia below it, when I saw a group of people, among them Lydia and Herr Gesing, sitting on the terrace of the taverna on the far side – Ta Varelia, it is called, Excellency. It has a terrace with a grape vine, and coloured lanterns, a pretty place. I hesitated for some moments, but I did not think there would be any trouble from the Greeks while I was in that company-the worst they could do was refuse to serve me. I walked across the plateia, observing as I drew nearer that Dr Hogan and his wife were in the group – he is married to a woman of the island. Also the French engineer Chaudan, and another lady, whom I did not know. There was no one else on the terrace-they had put two tables together, so they could all sit round.

Doctor Hogan was the first to see me. 'Hello, Basil,' he said. 'Come and join us.'

'This is Mrs Marchant,' Lydia said. 'She is travelling in this part of the world. Basil Pascali, one of the fixtures of the island.'

'Slightly more mobile than that, I hope,' I said, bowing to Mrs Marchant, who is a woman of about fifty, with narrow grey eyes and a very full underlip. I sat down next to her with Lydia on the other side of me. I was curious about Mrs Marchant. There is no cruise ship in at present, Excellency. She must be travelling alone and independently. Not so unusual for a woman these days as it used to be, but all the same…

'You are lucky to be living here,' she said. Her accent was American. From the folds of her person, released by this little stirring of enthusiasm, came odours of warm, scented crepe.

'Oh, Basil is a gentleman of leisure,' Doctor Hogan said. He is a genial fellow, but like the others, thinks of me as an idle sponger. Amusing. A fixture of the island. An unfortunate phrase, in view of my predicament. Lydia, however, knows me better than the others. She knows my feelings for her, though these have never been expressed in words. She senses my sufferings.

'It is such a spiritual landscape, so infused with spirit,' Mrs Marchant said. 'Anyone who lives here, as you do, must be touched with spirit, you cannot be immune.'

'Spirit,' Herr Gesing said, before I could reply, 'Yes, meine Dame, but what is this spirit, I ask you, this word that people talk about so…'

'Freely?' I suggested, back to my old game of completing Herr Gesing's thoughts for him.

'Freely, ja'

His voice was thickened with the wine he had been drinking. Before Mrs Marchant could reply, Lydia looked up and said, 'Ah here you are, Anthony.' The tall figure of the Englishman was standing silently before us. First name terms, Excellency. We had not seen him approach. He must have come from above, by way of the steps. In those first few moments I looked at Lydia 's face, rather than at him, and saw on it a look of vivid expectation. There was something vulnerable, exposed, about her expression. I was reminded of her devotional look in the studio. In spite of her worldliness, she trusts people with her feelings, trusts their good will, as children do. Very dangerous.

'Sorry I'm late,' Mister Bowles said. They had arranged to meet, then. He sat down on the other side of Lydia.

'By spirit I was referring to the higher feelings,' Mrs Marchant said. 'AH that is not material. Our moral sense. Our sense of beauty for example…'

Herr Gesing said brusquely, 'Spirit is Geist, no? It is not feeling, it is movement. Through all history it is working. Like a turbine. Not the machine, you understand, the energy principle. Hegel, it was Hegel, who -'

'Energy principle?' Lydia broke in. 'What does that mean? You're as bad as Basil, the other day, defending free experimentation. That's another kind of energy principle, I suppose. None of you will look at what is before your eyes. I believe in things. You talk as if the world was empty. All these energy principles and swirling movements in history. It is simply opening the floodgates.'

'Floodgates to what?' Doctor Hogan said.

'To the irrational.'

'Floodgates?' Herr Gesing said.

I could not recall the German for this, so attempted to convey the idea by gesture and explanation.