Pascali's Island (3 page)

My room was as I had left it. Thankfully I slipped the shoes off my tormented feet. I stood for some moments in the darkness, at my window, looking out. Faint glimmer of moonlight, starlight, on the sea. No lights along the shore. Plaintive whistle of the watchman, then again silence.

I am at my table. Thick felt across the window – it is unwise to show light when every man of worth, Muslim or rayah, should be sleeping. I am too excited to sleep.

Light from the spirit lamp falls on my pages. I love the look of paper in lamplight, the soft bloom on the loosely gathered pages. Around this charmed space the room falls away into obscurity. Here is luxe, calme et volupté. Here is where freedom and authority, spirit and form, embrace.

How shall I begin? Not, certainly, with the bald relation of my finds among Mister Bowles's luggage. That will have to be led up to.

The streets were dark, the only light coming from windows, and the doorways of shops. We have no street lamps on the island, though there is a rumour that this year they will be installed – by an Italian company, who will certainly have offered large bribes to the appropriate officials. Forgive me, Excellency, if I speak disparagingly of your civil servants. But they are the most corrupt that the world has ever seen.

I went up by the steps. (There is also a road which climbs more gradually up towards the plateia.) I could hear the distant lamentations of the herded sheep. Pausing outside the magistrate's to get my breath, I breathed scented air from his garden, gulps of jasmine and mint. His shutters were not closed. I saw two men in the room overlooking the steps, neither of them known to me. Out at sea fishing lanterns in a looped chain.

Yannis was standing outside the hotel. He barely returned my greeting. I passed through the swing doors into the lobby, saw Mardosian at the reception desk looking, as always, sleek and slightly troubled, as if engaged in not quite satisfactory self-communings.

Excellency, that I have just described these two men so scantily, in such summary phrases, as if they did not exist until my words called them forth, fills me with disquiet. They do exist. I cannot give equal space to all in one single report. Yannis from the Smyrna dockside, Mardosian who escaped clubbing in the massacres of the nineties, to prosper here – they are mysteries, irreducible mysteries. Yet over the years, by constant reference, I have reduced them to my creatures, my props, just as I have made this island my territory. I swear I will not do this with Mister Bowles. I will render him direct, with sympathy and fidelity. I will seek to understand him, but will not fall into the error of regarding him as transparent.

I must admit that, as far as my personal relationship with him is concerned, I have not made a very good beginning. Things went wrong from the start.

I went on through the lounge, making my portly decorous way through the pink rattan tables and chairs. Following now the route which I had earlier imagined for Mister Bowles. On the walls familiar frescoes of the amorous metamorphoses of Zeus, executed by a German artist in the early years of the last century, crowded with bulky, frantic nymphs.

Across the carpeted floor, through the pillars and the potted palms, among which I suddenly saw old Mrs Socratous, sitting reading the Figaro Littéraire. Or holding it, at least. Others there were too, islanded amidst the plants and pillars with the sound of music coming through to them from the dining-room. Old people, for the most part, sitting very still. They were sitting very still, Excellency. Age and stillness combined at this moment to make them seem emblematic to me. I loitered for a while among the pillars, formulating sentences which might or might not go into this report. The good informer sees parallels everywhere, and this careful immobility reminded me of the state of the Empire. These people are dying, as we all are, as is the Ottoman power. They know it intimately, and seek by reducing movement to postpone the final pang, to achieve a sort of protracted moribundity. The lesson is plain: avoid sudden movements, Excellency.

Mrs Socratous looked up with a brief glint through narrow, gold-rimmed glasses. Her fingers, much beringed, clutched the edges of Figaro with tenacity, as if there were much needed nourishment within the spread of the page. High on the wall beyond her, Zeus, in the shape of a white bull, was bearing off a massive-thighed Europa in dishabille. Mrs Socratous did not smile exactly but her mouth appeared to relax. I said, 'Kali spera sas,' and heard no response.

I passed on, entered the dining-room and made my way directly across to the verandah at the far end. This verandah is long and narrow, with room only for a double line of tables. It has leaded glass panes on its outer side, and an elaborate framework of wrought iron, in the English style. Presumably used as a conservatory when the house was in private hands. (It was throughout most of the last century in the possession of the Zotas family.) Converted to its present use by the enterprising Mardosian.

The Englishman was sitting at one of the farther tables, alone. Exactly as I had envisaged! Indeed, as I look back on it now, this triumph, this exact coincidence with my expectation, acted like a spur to me, impelling me forward, arranging my face already into a smile. There were others on the verandah, Greeks of the town, among them Politis the cotton merchant, with two younger men, one of them the brother of the priest, Spyromidis. At another table two Turkish officers from the garrison, in uniform. I was hardly aware of it at the time, being so intent on my meeting with the Englishman, but I seem to remember now that Politis did not return my greeting, and that the whole group was silent as I passed. I am almost sure that this is so.

He looked up as I approached, glanced aside briefly, then regarded me steadily. I came to a halt at the table, removing my hat. His face was very real to me in this crucial moment of introduction: the long jaw and the thick fair moustache, eyes pale, rather narrow, very direct.

I paused, rather too long. The truth is, Excellency, that I was momentarily disabled by what I can only call his intenser physical existence. My own – and this may seem laughable in view of my undoubted corpulence – my own existence is liable to become quite unreal to me, especially when a strange face is confronting mine. I don't know whether it was because of this, or because the hostility of the Greeks, though still not fully registered, had thrown me off balance, but I now, on a strange impulse, in full sight of Politis, made the Moslem salaam, raising my hand to forehead and lips. 'Salaam meleikum,' I said.

Consciousness of my folly was immediate, and I felt fear, though not of those watching. 'Excuse me, sir,' I said, in English. 'Can I have a word with you?'

At once, even while he was making a gesture towards the chair opposite, even before I was seated, I knew that I had struck a false note: my loss of poise at that crucial moment had made my manner too ingratiating. The English despise a too evident desire to please. I fancied that I saw something change in his face, and I was distressed, because I wanted him to like me, or at least to see my worth. However, I went on talking.

'My name is Pascali,' I said. 'Basil Pascali. You are newly arrived on the island, I believe. I thought, since I speak English you know, after a fashion, that you might need some help… the services of an interpreter or guide. If I can be of any assistance to you, I hope you will not hesitate to ask.'

(Here I must issue a small caveat, Excellency. I am reproducing this conversation some hours after the event. My faculty of recall is good, and it has been trained over the years, through the exercise of my profession. All the same, total fidelity is impossible; there must be some degree of manipulation. Anyone who writes reports will know that in the matter of dialogue, as in sequences of action, naturalism must often be sacrificed for the sake of coherence. My aim, as always, is to convey the essence through the form.)

About my own feelings of course, there can be no mistake. And I will admit to Your Excellency that I felt a degree of self-contempt to hear my own voice, before too deferential, now become boastfully assertive. 'I live here, in the town,' I said. 'I am a well-known figure on the island. Everybody knows me. Everybody knows Basil Pascali… To make your stay more enjoyable, you understand.'

He looked at me for some moments without replying, as if he was waiting for something more. Then he said, 'That is very kind of you, Mister, er, Pascali. My name is Bowles. Anthony Bowles.'

His first words to me. First example of an incongruity about him which I found from the very first disturbing: the contrast between the unrelaxed yet leisurely movements of his body, and the blurting habit of his speech, in which bunches of words come out like offerings, full of haste and sincerity.

'There is a lot to see here,' I said. 'The island has a very long history as I am sure you know. It was one of the earliest Greek settlements. After that, layers and layers of peoples, cultures. But I am sure you know all this. We are naturally very proud…'

I was attempting, you will understand, by these indirect means, to elicit something of the purpose of his visit. As I have already said, I do not believe he is here as a tourist. There is something different in the quality of his attention. Difficult to define. He made no immediate response to my remarks, and daunted by the silence I found myself looking fixedly at the level of Vermouth in his glass. I became aware of my own dry, nervous mouth. I am very sensitive, though few know this, and this meeting was so important to me. So momentous. His arrival, my departure… With my passion for portents, Excellency, you will see… Besides, I had felt from the beginning there was something between us. His present silence, however, gave me no help.

'You are younger than I thought,' I said. 'I mean, at a distance -'

It seemed to me that at this point Mister Bowles raised the level of his eyes slightly, as if to study the top of my head.

'Yes,' I said, 'I myself… I am getting thin on top, as they say.'

I smiled at him, too familiarly. My face felt stiff. 'You too,' I said. 'Slightly. If you will forgive me. But in your case it is at the temples.'

In order to establish comradely feelings between us, I now decided to tell Mister Bowles the old joke about baldness. A mistake, as it turned out. 'The men of this region,' I said, 'the men of the Levant, and I count myself one of them, though my mother was English, primarily, we tend to wear thin on the crown, whereas with you it is at the temples. This corresponds to our respective sexual mores, or so they say.'

'Oh, yes?' he said, but without answering smile.

It was too late to stop now. I attempted a humorous leer. 'We go straight at it,' I said. 'Like bulls, you know. Vigour, but no finesse. It is the crown that bears the brunt. Whereas you… a more lateral, perfidious approach.'

I began to illustrate the difference with motions of my head, wretchedly aware that I was failing to amuse Mister Bowles. It was he who brought my cavortings to an end with the offer of a drink. 'Folklore,' I said, returning my poor head to a position of rest. 'The simple beliefs of simple people.'

'Would you care for a drink?' Mister Bowles said again.

I pretended to deliberate. I am practised in the quiet dignity of acceptance. (I do not wish to interrupt my narrative at this point, above all with complaints, Excellency, but I am forced by my low rate of remuneration to depend on others for many of the little extras of life.)

'Thank you, yes,' I said.

He clapped his hands for the waiter. (He has been in these parts long enough to have adopted that custom, at least.) Biron approached at once and I ordered aniseed brandy. 'Kai mezedakia,' I said, to remind Biron to bring the little dish of olives and feta and scraps of anchovy which by custom accompanies this drink and which had been my main reason for ordering it. I could not at this stage be sure of anything else to eat that evening.

The terrace had filled up without my noticing, so intent had I been on Mister Bowles. Another Turkish officer had joined the two at the corner table. They were drinking raki. The group around Politis was enlarged. Old Andrea was up on the little dais in the dining-room with his violin, playing tunes from Offenbach and Strauss. The officers I had not seen before. Presumably new arrivals. The garrison has been strengthened since the attacks on Turkish detachments began. It is only two weeks since a platoon was ambushed on mountain patrol, and seven killed, including the lieutenant. The number of the rebels increases daily. They receive support from the villages in the interior. The people identify with them, co-religionists, fellow-countrymen.

Mister Bowles asked me how I know English so well, since I was not English. He had not been listening then, completely. Perhaps a habit of his. Or did he wish to trap me in some inconsistency? I told him, what is true, about my life-long admiration for the English language, its wealth and resourcefulness; about the English books in my house, which I have read so carefully, the Authorised Version, and The Mill on the Floss and the poems of Walter Savage Landor. Moreover, I reminded him, my mother was English. Primarily. I became too voluble, Excellency. I had drunk the spirit quickly, on a stomach virtually empty, and moreover I was feeling what I can only describe as a sort of wounded recklessness. I knew that I had failed to make the desired impression on Mister Bowles; I knew that he despised me; and with the perversity born of my hurt, I was disposed to play up to his contempt, to be the buffoon he had set me down for.

'Irish on her mother's side,' I said. 'She came out to Constantinople as a dancer and acrobat with a travelling show.'

'Acrobat?' Mister Bowles seemed solemnly surprised at this.

'The two were quite often combined in those days. Cabaret artiste was a less respected profession than it became afterwards. I don't mean sexual acrobatics. For that you had to go to the Armenian quarter.' I paused to eat the last bit of cucumber on my plate. 'Astounding agility those girls had,' I said. 'They would take on all comers. Ha, ha, forgive the pun. Including mules. Even now, if you know where to go…'