The Revolt of Aphrodite (71 page)

The air of desuetude must have been largely imagined, then, for we could take in few details until we reached the cypress glades with
their kiosks. The eunuch was talking now to the doctor, with a soft high clucking voice; it appeared that a once elaborate electrical
lighting
scheme which illuminated everything, had recently foundered owing to a faulty generator, and that nobody had bothered to have it repaired. He wagged his huge bald head in resigned disapproval. “You will see” said the doctor.

There was more light in the two villas with their cracked windows and starred mirrors—but the smell of kerosene was everywhere. The flagged floors were full of chicken bones and unswept feathers. We were asked if we would eat first—indeed in the old salon a table had been clumsily laid with a dirty tablecloth (of the finest Irish linen), several branches of dribbling candles and a solitary bunch of dusty artificial grapes in a cracked plate of alabaster. Here the stink of the birds warred with the kerosene. The walls showed cracks. The door jambs heaved and creaked—the sea salt had been at them. There was a swallow’s nest in one corner of the room.

But it was to Jocas that we were going, and he had apparently moved out lock, stock and barrel into the old shot tower—on the eastern ramparts of what had once been a fort with a high keep overlooking the gulf. Here in the old days he had spent his time delecting in a huge marine telescope pitched on a low tripod. Sitting in a deck chair, pausing only to eat an olive from time to time, Jocas could follow the whole movement of the shipping in the gulf below. But to gain access to this martello one had to walk along a crazy broken parapet built along the sea-face of the headland; a ruined staircase which Benedicta as a girl had come to know as “The
Battlements
of Elsinore”.

On this stone ramp we embarked in single file. I could hear the squinch of my rubber soles on the stone. Hereabouts too an
occasional
lemon-yellow lizard darted for cover—they are always first to emerge with the spring sunlight. But the climb was steep. Smell of thyme. So at last we crossed a walled courtyard, skirting an uncoped well disguised by tall thistles, and then climbed on to a balcony and opened a huge door.

It couldn’t have been much smaller than a good-sized parish church, the room in which Jocas had taken up residence; but the height of it was such that the upper shadows pressed upon the
lighted areas like a whole sky of darkness. One expected to see stars upon that black damascened darkness. For the rest it was a robbers’ cave from some old fairy tale. A huge fire of thorns blazed in one corner. Branches of candles and small oil lamps picked out and punctuated the foreground where the figures of men and boys worked and moved. Wait. We stood upon the threshold and gazed into this cave with its dark flapping shadows, expectantly,
hesitantly.
We had come at an inconvenient moment. An enormous Victorian hip bath was being filled with steaming water by a small boy while two other shapes were carrying a shrunken form from the bed towards it—the figure you’d say of a large white frog, legs spread apart. The bed itself was enormous and hung about with a dark red velvet baldaquin whose ropes bore the unmistakable signs, even in that erratic light, of greasy hands. The curtains were drawn back. Jocas therefore advanced towards us, carried by four arms, helpless as a child, but cheerfully smiling; the smiling languor of the small infant longing for the surcease of hot water. It had a powerful resonance this sudden glimpse—like some sombre oil painting of the Spanish school. Moreover there was enough light here on the ground to take in the dirty deal tables, the flagged floor covered in droppings of bats and birds, the smashed windows.

Our natural instinct at this unwitting intrusion was to draw back in some confusion, but the white figure waved at us with cheerful languor and cried: “At last you come. Very good.” His tone, his mien, transformed the tableau suddenly into something different, say a friendly rag in a boys’ dormitory, something which might end in a pillow fight. But he was shrunken and much withered, had lost the sturdiness of his buttocks and thighs. Yet his face was still agleam with intelligence and the little gold caps on his canines
glittered
as he smiled upon us. “Don’t go” he said. “I will soon be washed.” The two expressionless figures carrying this pale frog deposed their burden with slow carefulness in the tub. Jocas sighed to feel the water rise up round his waist. He leaned his head back against the high rim of the bath and then extended a pale hand for us to touch. There was a kind of lucid and rather moving simplicity about the gesture; his helplessness was as disarming as his smile.

His magnificent head of hair, now plentifully touched with white,
was combed loosely back; it fell in a straight shock almost to his shoulders. Benedicta knelt down to kiss his cheek and then turned aside to order the rumpled bed while Caradoc and I stood looking down at him. His servants sponged him softly and rhythmically. “Well this is a fine business” said Caradoc harshly, disguising his affection and concern in a habitual gruffness. The doctor made some professional movements among the bottles and pans which were laid out on one of the long white tables in the corner. What a jumble of spoons and forks, of half-eaten dishes, and broken fragments of meat for the birds. The birds! They would account for that heavy rotting fragrance in the vaulted air of the room. They were ranged like trophies along the end wall, the darkest corner of the room, all but invisible, but one could hear the tinkle of their bells as they stirred and sighed. His belongings stood about in isolation, as if they had lost context. It was a trifle surrealist, the old horn gramophone with its records (Jocas loved military marches and had quite a collection). There was a tall cupboard whose doors hung open. A few articles of attire were hanging up in it; but for the most part his belongings occupied the other wall, and were hung on nails. A fez, a deerstalker, binoculars. An old-fashioned typewriter lay on the floor beside a flowered chamber-pot. Thigh boots. Two gaunt armchairs, of the style called Voltaire, stood beside the bed with a strip of tattered
carpeting
between them. Everything looked quite haphazard, the result of a series of hasty afterthoughts.

But now they were finished with him and carefully lifted him from the bath. He let them with the same air of weary innocence, smiling, but delightfully unashamed of his nakedness. They laid him out upon one of the white deal tables to dry him—and I was reminded at once of the white “cooling-tables” of the embalmers. He hissed in with pleasure at the harsh touch of the towels and in a whisper urged the men to curry him harder and yet harder, like a horse; until at last his pale flesh took on the faintest warmth of tone. Then they produced an old-fashioned night-shirt and slipped it over his head. Now it was the doctor’s turn; first an enema and then various injections. The little man whistled softly, abstractedly as he worked on his patient. Jocas had a whole lot of new and very beautiful expressions on his face—a whole new repertoire it seemed
born of the illness, no doubt, and all the considerations which it raised. Had he thought very much about death, I wondered?

But once in bed lying back like an emperor under a Byzantine covering, pressed into puffed pillows, he became suddenly
completely
himself. I mean one would not have thought him ill at all. He held Benedicta’s hand in his own confiding childlike grip and spoke in a new calm voice, smiling. “I wanted just to take leave” he said, and I realised that he was planning to die in the time-honoured, traditional eastern fashion. Here death itself had a ceremonial value and form; in the East there always seemed to be time to gather all one’s relations together and take a formal leave of them. To
distribute
alms to the poor and order the family estate. We used to die like that once in England, a hundred or so years ago. Now somehow people are rushed into the ground unceremoniously, like criminals thrown into quicklime. Jocas was doing it in the old style. I caught sight of his scarlet slippers (
les
babouches
);
there was an ink-spot on one. Under the bed, as if hastily thrust aside there was a bit of
railway
line and a model train lying on its side. In the far corner under the window stood a huge and beautifully coloured box-kite with a long tail. Of course! One could lie in bed and fly a kite through the window.

He said suddenly: “But they must be hungry. They must eat.”

It took some time to penetrate the heavy Turkish skulls of the servants, but at last the message got through and several heavy silvery trays made their appearance with two huge loaves of village bread, some olives, tinned meat, and a rank black wine. Caradoc carved all this into the semblance of helpings and we all fell to, suddenly ravenous.

The fire was built up with wood-shavings until it bellowed and bristled, throwing our shadows about the room. The small dark eyes of Jocas watched us with a benign affection—the expression on the face of a mother watching her children eat. I took my
doorstep-sandwich
and sat on the edge of the bed to share a friendly smile with him; he sighed with deep satisfaction as he watched us dispose ourselves around his bed. Like a child arranging his toys upon the counterpane. And I saw also that this whole visit of ours was part of a design, a deeply considered design. His architect was there to consult
about a funerary monument; the embalming team were already on the spot. Jocas was good at mind reading, and followed my thoughts clearly, like somebody reading print. “Yes” he said. “It is like that. I had at first difficulty in my ideas because Julian could not
understand;
but now he’s united with me. He has agreed with me. The need to have all our unhappy family—Merlins—under one roof, in one ground.” He spread his hands in the direction of Caradoc who was munching. Then from under his pillow he produced a piece of parchment and handed it to me. It was in Greek. “Permission of the Orthodox Church to remove the body of the old man; Koepgen will bring it. He is still alive there in Spinalonga working, happy. I saw him last week.” He chuckled softly. “Then what else? Yes, I wish myself to be golded, or do you say gilded? All gold. I have a firman for the whole headland, Caradoc.” But this sort of talk made Caradoc extremely uneasy and shy; it seemed to him rather
ill-mannered
to talk so openly about death. “It’s bad form” he said severely and munched his bread. Moreover he was very superstitious, had no intention of dying himself, and didn’t want to hear about such matters. I watched the new vivid imperial face of Jocas and racked my brains to think of the prototype; at last click, up came the
Ravenna
mosaics, together with a whole lot of half-forgotten debris about Justinian and Theodora, that brave soul. I felt the long heavy night of the Turkish soul exemplified in its old half-dead capital—the Venice of the East. “And Julian will give me a service in St. Paul’s.” It is impossible to describe the smiling childish joy with which he uttered the words. His eyes sparkled with cupidity. “St. Paul’s!” He crooned the words almost. He had begun to make everything sound extremely attractive—death should be like that. It was the ancient Greeks who couldn’t take the idea.

He took a long drink from a glass at his bedside and subsided again into sighing happiness. “Though I have never seen it,” he said “Julian once had a photograph faked to appear as if I was there at a memorial service. It was politically necessary, Amin Pasha. Here everyone thought I was in London specially for him; but it was a fake, I was here. Julian did it. Ah Julian! Only now I have come to understand him a little bit. He will never love me, but now he doesn’t care. And he fears death very much. O yes.”

The little doctor coughed. It was time for him to take his leave. He shook us each by the hand and said goodnight, placing a hand briefly upon Jocas’ forehead and nodding, as if to say that he was satisfied with his patient. The bald old eunuch recovered his lamp from the outer darkness and led him slowly away. They had put some knobs of frankincense on the fire and the air had become rich and fragrant. The servants had retired, though one remained on call. He sat on an uncomfortable-looking kitchen chair in the shadows by the birds; appeared to sleep, head on breast. But Jocas was not done with us; he still radiated energy, and it reminded me of the Jocas I had first encountered, the tough and tireless countryman, hunter, swimmer. We sat around him on the bed—the stiff brocaded
counterpane
of some Byzance weave, the candles, the frail oil-lamps … all that. And the past sat heavily on us, too.

“Felix,” he said, still holding the white hand of Benedicta in his “I followed with so much interest all your attempts to destroy us, to sabotage the firm, to escape from us. It was all in my heart, and it was so very interesting, so very passionately interesting to me. You see, I could understand you, but Julian not really. For Julian the firm perfectly expresses something, perhaps his impotence? Eh? I am not clever like him, and because I am not clever I was always in danger from him. O but I love him so.” An air of rapturous
infantility
took possession of him. He licked his red lips and went on slowly, picking and choosing his words from his limited knowledge of English as one might pick flowers at random in a field. But he could express himself well, and here and there tumbled upon a
mistake
which itself was a felicity. “But you I sympathised,” he said “and for why? Because I myself had the great search for the freeing of my soul, Felix. I too made a great calculation. But I had no courage to do it because I was afraid of Julian. He was so clever, he could simply kill me.” He thrust out a hand to arrest my
interpretation
of the remark. “I was not afraid of the death. But I did not wish to join everything else in Julian’s conscience; you see he
pretends
he has none. You must not have with the firm. But he has. Julian has seen much weeping.” He swallowed and looked sad for a moment. One saw that he really did love this enigmatic figure, it was not simply oriental exuberance. One detected too the kind of pity
that the simple, uncomplicated and healthy man can have for the cripple. Julian had never shot, flown a bird or a kite; yes, but he had made love I suppose. I caught a glimpse of Benedicta’s white serene face. She sat to me in profile, still holding Jocas’ hand and gazing at him with an air of admiring confidence. He had sunk back among the pillows and closed his eyes—not out of weariness but in order to recover the thread of his argument.