Pascali's Island (21 page)

'Well, they are still not very far away,' I said. 'You didn't think they would remove them altogether, did you?'

'There are two more, lower down,' he said, 'but it doesn't really matter. All I need is a bit more time. And that's where you come in.'

'How is that?' I said. I got up, for no particular reason, and walked a few paces across the floor. The movement brought me a view of the sky through Mister Bowles's window, and I saw the full moon hanging there, improbably large, dilated-looking as if resting on liquid.

'If you would go back to them,' he said, 'ask them for just a day or two more. Until the day after tomorrow. That's all the time I need. That would give me a chance to clean it up, have a good look at it. Have some sketches made, you know.'

' Lydia would be able to do that,' I said. 'Have you told her about the statue?'

'No, not yet. I'd rather you didn't say anything to her about it just yet.'

Excellency, I do not believe him. I think Lydia is in love with him, or at least that he has succeeded in making his life and purpose vitally important to her – which amounts to the same thing. I think she has been acting as intermediary for him with Mister Smith. Inconceivable that she should have remained in ignorance about the existence of the statue, when it was taking up so much of his time and attention. Why does he lie to me? Is it because he and Lydia are planning something together?

'So that is your proposition,' I said. 'I am to go to Mahmoud Pasha and Izzet and ask them to wait until the day after tomorrow. Then presumably you will hand back the lease agreement?'

'Exactly,' he said. 'And then we shall get our money.'

'What makes you think they'll wait?' I said. Actually, I was myself puzzled, as I had been puzzled for some time, by the most uncharacteristic patience being displayed by Mahmoud.

The Pasha is afraid of something, Excellency. Something is holding him back – something more than respect for a lease or the rights of a British subject.

'Oh, they'll wait,' Mister Bowles said now, with full confidence – it is obvious that he at least believes in these. 'When we have got our money,' he said, 'I shall report my discovery to the authorities in Constantinople. The statue will be recovered, it will be taken to Gulhane, where it will be exhibited to the public as one of the new museum's most prized possessions. I will request that a small plaque be placed beside it, giving my name and the circumstances of the finding.'

'And that would be enough for you?' I asked.

'It would be there, you see,' he said. 'My name, I mean. There for all to read.'

'What about me?' I said. 'Mahmoud Pasha will be furious. He will have no time to explore the site. Officials from the mainland will be here as soon as you report the matter.'

'True,' he said. 'That is quite true, old chap, but you will have the money, won't you? I mean to say, if Mahmoud had paid up and then found nothing, your position would have been just as difficult.'

His selfishness was monstrous, the single, absolute nature of his vision. 'You should have thought of that,' I said, 'before you asked me to act as interpreter.' It was true that I had intended to leave anyway, once I got the money, make for Constantinople and the archives. But Mister Bowles did not know that. He had been quite prepared to leave me to the wolves.

'Never mind that now,' he said. 'What do you say? Shall we be allies?' He was smiling. Suddenly he held out his hand. 'We two against the whole damn lot of them,' he said.

I smiled back at Mister Bowles and took his hand. 'Allies,' I said. 'We will see this thing through together.' I was drawing, Excellency, on the vocabulary of adventure story heroes, dimly remembered. And so, I think, was Mister Bowles.

In that brief interval, between the touch of his hand and the words of response that I uttered, no more than a few seconds, there was born in me the absolute conviction that Mister Bowles is trying to trick me again; and at the same time I felt my own readiness to betray him burgeoning within me.

We toasted our alliance in the remains of the beer. 'You will go and see them, then?' he said.

'Yes,' I said. 'I will.'

'There is another thing,' he said. 'If you really want to help, you can come up to the site tomorrow and lend a hand. There's a lot to do and it is slow work for just one.'

'What time?' I said.

'Oh, any time. I'll be there all day.'

I left shortly after this. He did not see me down, which was fortunate, as it turned out, because then I should probably not have stayed talking to Chaudan in the lounge. And in that case I should probably never have found out what terra rossa is. It is a type of bauxite, Excellency.

He volunteered the information, I did not ask for it – it did not occur to me to ask. By a happy chance he had met Doctor Hogan earlier this evening and the doctor mentioned it to him. Lucky too was the fact that Chaudan was staying at the hotel that night. He spends most of his time in the north of the island, on what I suspect is a very uncomfortable construction site, supervising the road they are building along the coast. He is glad to escape when he can, and this evening he had managed it. Yes, Excellency, it is bauxite. Nothing to do with old maps, or explorers. Bauxite – and I am quoting Monsieur Chaudan now – is a non-plastic, claylike material. It can take many forms, depending on origin, being sometimes soft and friable, sometimes dense, sometimes porous. It varies widely in colour being found in cream, pink, brown, red, yellow, grey. Terra rossa is of a granular, earthy type, and as the name implies, red in colour.

But the truly interesting thing, Excellency, is that all bauxites, however they may vary in texture and appearance, contain a very high percentage of alumena, the principle ingredient of aluminium alloys. Aluminium: a metal white, sonorous, ductile, malleable, very light, not readily oxidised or tarnished.

I slept well, Excellency – three or four hours of unbroken sleep. Early morning now, just after sunrise. A great calm over everything, first touch of sun on the sleeping face of the sea. I feel this calm in myself, a spent feeling, peaceful, rather desolate. This report is drawing to a close. Things are falling into place. It is always the same: the potential of the beginning, the tremendous scope for action that one's characters have, the excitements of observation and inference their very freedom allows one; then the gradual, self-limiting process, alternatives scrapped, anomalies eliminated, until we are left with this form, this sequence, fixed, consistent, achieved.

I feel these threads coming together, adhesive, ready to set in their final shape. Mannfeldt, manufacturers of armaments; the diamond shape on the map; Herr Gesing's influence with Mahmoud, his interest in Mister Bowles's activities; terra rossa. There are bauxite deposits up there in the hills, Excellency. That is why Mahmoud Pasha has been buying up the land. Not to negotiate directly with the company – the government will handle the concession – but to be in a position to claim compensation. He could hope to recover at least treble his outlay. No doubt there has been some private arrangement between him and Herr Gesing, who will be working on commission. Something they would not wish the authorities in Constantinople to know – perhaps Herr Gesing has been promised a share in the profits from the resale, in exchange for advance information. I suspect that the compensation offer has already been made, already been accepted. Quite possibly the land is no longer Mahmoud's, but yours, Excellency – acquired as a preliminary to negotiating with the mining company. That would account for Mahmoud's otherwise unaccountable delay in acting against Mister Bowles, his fear that the documents would get into the wrong hands. No punishments so savage as those handed out by a corrupt administration defending its own privilege, Excellency. Mahmoud's extortions and murders here would have been overlooked, since they only affected a subject people. But irregularities in respect of imperial property would have ruined him, if they had come to light. He must have known this from the start, but his cupidity got the better of him. He must have supposed, too, that the lease would run out long before any mining operations were begun…

As for Mister Bowles, I have been looking at his notebook again. Those meticulous entries mean more to me now. There, accurately dated, with the place names in red ink, are the records of his transactions. Over the last six months or so he has been performing all over Asia Minor. Imagine it, Excellency, The same air of rectitude, the same impression of stupidity, the same objects, the same Gladstone bag! And now, after so much endured, so much fantasy sustained, so much self-contempt warded off, now life has outstripped his art, reality has transcended the dream. Can you wonder that he has become so passionate, so possessive?

There are still questions, of course. Why did Mister Bowles go back to the site that afternoon, when the deal had already been concluded? What had he been discussing with Mister Smith that day, when I saw them outside the bar, laughing together? Above all, knowing what I know of him, can I believe that he will surrender the statue to the authorities? The day after tomorrow. Why was he so definite about the day? It is the first time that he has committed himself in this way.

I do not believe him. That flower of betrayal, which grows with its own urgency "now, outside my control – I feel its petals expand. It luxuriates in my distrust of him, and its scent is sickening, desolating. A swamp plant, Excellency, growing in the corruption of my hopes, just as fantasies have flowered in his, in Mister Bowles's.

I will go up there again soon, to fix the few threads remaining.

It is done. I have been to Izzet-but not to ask for more time. I have betrayed Mister Bowles, the flower is in the light of day now. I did not do it for money, though money was the pretext I carefully fashioned for myself. Even that was unnecessary, because there was money here, waiting for me when I returned from seeing Izzet. An envelope under the door, containing exactly my share of the money, one hundred and fifty liras, as a note, written hastily in pencil, unsigned: Here is the sum we agreed on. I advise you to get clear of the island without delay. It cannot be Mister Bowles who delivered this: he is still up there, on the site, cherishing his bronze boy. If not he, then who? Lydia, it could only be Lydia. He would never have confided in anyone else. Not Mister Smith surely, he will be keeping out of the way for the next few hours. Besides, Mister Bowles would not trust him. No, it must be Lydia, she is the only one he could count on, whose money he could count on. That is why he brought her in, not for the sketches as he pretended to me, but for the money – Mister Smith will have to be paid, and his price for such an undertaking would be high, the Englishman could not meet the bill, presumably.

All the same, it was sent at his behest. He honoured his promise. He recognised the contribution I had made. There is even, in the note, care for my welfare and safety. And I have betrayed him. Perhaps at the very moment I was putting the knife into his back that envelope was being slipped under my door. The money has not made my act superfluous, because it was not the motive; but it gives me a feeling of love for Mister Bowles. Not gratitude, love. Also it renders the flower more repellent. In a few hours from now he will be in the hands of the authorities, who are also denizens of the swamp. It will be perhaps the last arrest your accredited representatives on this island will make, because your power too is at an end, Excellency. You too, the king alligator, you are finished too.

Excuse me for the bitterness of my tone. Let me try to preserve coherence in my narrative, even at this late stage, due distance, a semblance of order. I will begin with my visit to the site today, my second visit and I fervently hope my last. (But Izzet told me to remain here, await instructions, and I fear they have plans for me still.)

I set off early. I kept well down below where the soldiers were stationed. They were probably still sleeping, but I took no chances. Mister Bowles himself had not been there long when I arrived. He had brought wine and bread and tomatoes, and he shared this food with me, we ate it together sitting against the bankside in the shade – the sun had not yet risen high enough to reach the lower part of the hollow, which still had the cool of night in it.

After we had finished eating we set to work, each armed with a long-bladed knife. Mister Bowles brought these. He had got them, he told me, from a stall in the market. Presumably they are left-overs from the Sacrifice Bay ram. Mister Bowles worked on the line of the body turned outward, I on the other side, cutting deeper into the hillside, hollowing out the earth behind the head and right shoulder. We had to be careful not to cut too much away behind, especially in the lower part, as there was a danger of disturbing the balance of the figure, which, as I have said, stood upright.

We worked like this for perhaps two hours. At regular intervals one or other of us would step back and survey him. Little by little the naked body was assuming shape under our hands. There were no longer those disfiguring gouts of clay which had produced dread in me by bemonstering the features. The metal was still clay-coloured, and clay was crusted in the ears, the corners of the eyes, the folds of the lips, the short curling hair; but the proportions were clear now, the level brows, the line of the chin, the strong column of the neck.

As we worked Mister Bowles talked to me. His hesitations and plunges seemed less strange here, the rhythm of our work providing a sort of accompaniment. He had always, it seemed, been interested in the ancient world. 'Ever since I was so high,' he said, holding out his knife. At school it had always been the ancient history lessons that he liked best, looked forward to most. 'The very names,' he said. 'Sumerians, Babylonians…

And then the idea that you could dig, find out things about them… When people asked me what I wanted to be, you know, I always said, Archeologist.' But his father had died when he was fourteen, there had been difficulties with money, he had had to go and work in an insurance office, marine insurance, in the City of London. 'How I hated it,' he said. 'Totting up figures all day long, you know. I was there for ten years. Until my mother died.' I thought of his little notebook, the neat columns there. It was probably in the insurance office that he had acquired this orderly habit. Was it there too, I wondered, during that ten years' slow rage, that he had seen his mission in life?