Pascali's Island (6 page)
'I am at your service,' I said.
There was silence for a few moments. We all looked at Herr Gesing, who sat very upright in his chair, hands curled into loose fists resting on the table. Then Mister Bowles leaned forward and in tones of great seriousness, said, 'If Germany puts self-interest before morality, she is heading straight for disaster, old man. No state can last long on that basis.'
Herr Gesing regarded him in silence for a moment. His thin, scrupulously shaved lips formed slowly into a sort of pout, which managed to look judicious and derisive at the same time. 'Every state behaves so,' he said.
No one replied, and in the silence Herr Gesing stood up and took his leave, bowing first to Lydia and then, with an identical bow, to us. He made his way out of the verandah. He walks with strutting steps, holding his head well back on the short neck. There is something both absurd and impressive about Herr Gesing.
I myself left shortly afterwards, weaving my portly and decorous way out, braving the glances from other tables. It was nearing midnight and I had my report to think of. I left the two of them there together.
It seems to me still, as it did at the time, that what Herr Gesing said about the behaviour of states is true. Take only this matter of the treatment of Christian minorities in the Empire. Germany refrains from condemning the Porte, indeed she behaves as a friend, and so gains lucrative concessions in Asia Minor and permission to send German officers to train your army. All the other European powers condemn us, but none of them can agree to act because they are divided among themselves. Russia, still smarting from San Stefano, demands as a condition that the Straits should be opened to her ships of war. As neither Britain nor France will entertain this, Russia does nothing. France does nothing either, because she remembers 1870, and is unwilling to offend Germany. Moreover, she too seeks trade concessions in Anatolia. Britain will not act alone, preferring public expressions of outrage. (They call you 'The Red Sultan', Excellency.) However, her main motive is not concern for the minorities, but fear of Russian influence in the Balkans. And her professions result in more suffering than would otherwise take place, since they encourage uprisings which have no hope of success, and which are put down with barbarous brutality by Your Excellency's accomplished Cossacks.
In the web that holds all these powers together, morality is merely one strand, and that a weak one; at every intersection there is a deal of some sort, provisional and largely dishonest; gumming it all together a collective salivation of ambition and self-interest. (Some sentiment too, to make it sticky.) A very precarious web, Excellency. One shade the more, one ray the less, and the whole thing falls apart.
Once again I have allowed daylight to fade unnoticed while I sit here involved in my toil of words. Trying to get everything right. Beyond my window the glimmering sea and the first pale stars. Voices from the café along the shore carry faintly to me here. The lanterns have been lit on the café verandah. Their light falls across the shore to the water's edge. Shallow waves break into the light, seethe briefly, subside.
I remember the expression, the absence of expression on those faces in the hotel last night. Politis, the priest's brother, the other Greeks there. Not hostility, no longer hostility, but the stillness of a final judgement on those faces. None of them spoke. They know. Why have you left me alone here, among enemies, Excellency? Why have you abandoned me? I should at least have heard, like Anthony, the music of departure. But there has always been silence. From the very beginning. You set me down here and left me. Or Mehmet Bey did so, on your behalf. The money every month through the Banque Ottomane, not increasing in spite of my many appeals, buying less and less, keeping me alive, after a fashion. No word of acknowledgement. No action ever taken as a result of my accusations, either of real or imaginary persons. Is it to be wondered at that these latter came to preponderate? Is it so strange that I began to invent? Invention has been my chief delight, Excellency. This island and all the people on it are my inventions. I have even invented a persona for myself. But when these fictional persons come for me they will have real knives.
I kept no copies. At first I thought of it as too dangerous. And now that I have grown more careless of the danger, it is too late. I have no record of what I have written. All those words. The words falling, strewing the sheets, random as snow to my memory, falling and melting away behind me. Everything, in my devotion to duty, I sent to your officials. I have no means of recovering what I have experienced and known – except only by visiting the Imperial Archives in Constantinople, the rooms where the reports of spies are kept. Then I could see my work again, perhaps even make copies. I could edit and collate the material. Even, one day, I could publish, with suitable omissions and abridgements of course. A book, Excellency! What happiness that would give me. But to gain admittance, to obtain the necessary permits – a man as poor as I could not hope to do that.
Why have you abandoned me? I was twenty-five when I was recruited as one of your informers. Polyglot, literate, possessed of some charm of manner. A promising young man. I was established here on a rate of remuneration sufficient at that time for my needs. It was thought that I could watch the movement of ideas among the more educated on the island -the spread of nationalism among the subject peoples, constitutionalism among the Turks, the affiliations and activities of foreign visitors. This I have done – with the various imaginative additions freely confessed to. I have also watched men less endowed grow rich while I crouched here at my table, with my view of the sea, my view of the workings of people. None of this I would have minded, for I realised even in those early days, before my style had developed, that I had stumbled on my métier. I would not have minded, but for the silence, the absence of recognition.
I look round my room now, in the lamplight: at the square table before me, the upright chair, pale lemon in colour on which I sit; the narrow bed against the wall and its faded quilt; my triple row of books, schemed for, stolen, bought with the scrapings of piastres, Sherlock Holmes, Candide, The Greek Testament, In Memoriam. Books, my consolation. My narguilch in the corner, given to me before his death by Ibrahim Turcut. On the narrow bench against the opposite wall, my spirit stove and coffee-making appurtenances – and my telescope, stolen from an Italian gentleman six years ago.
It is not much. Forty-five years I have been in the world. All those moments of perception and sensation, pulse beats of my life, reduced to this. I have no family, no children, no great possessions. A woman to cry for me, a yali on the Bosphoros, such things would at least be tangible evidence of a life. As it is, five minutes work of clearance would remove for ever all evidence of my existence. Other occupants there will be, knowing nothing of Basil Zavier Pascali. Nothing I see pleads for me, upholds me as a person, makes me feel more than a temporary vehicle for someone else. Perhaps you, Excellency? Your thoughts are crowded, so you need an annexe. I do not think, I am thought with. Ergo? An illusion too this heavy flesh responding blindly to imperatives from elsewhere. I do not lust, I am lusted with. An illusion. Only the words as I write have a brief radiance of reality, for the moment only.
Taking into account that my earlier reports were much sketchier, and that I have increased steadily in output until now my activity is virtually incessant, I calculate that I have addressed well over a million words to your officials at the Ministry, and they have vanished as into some kind of mighty pit. The Imperial Word-Pit, specially limed to reduce all verbiage, however densely written, however solidly informative, to sludge.
No trace of those words, except the marks on my face that the struggles with them put there… I must stop now, Excellency, rest my eyes a little. Perhaps a stroll along the shore. I am reluctant these days to go out, but this is a good moment. I am up to date with my report.
I did no more last night, Excellency. Now I am here again, at my accustomed place. Sky and sea empty. No sign today of the American's caique. Shore empty too, except for the sardine fishermen, just beginning to haul in the nets. Seven men, possibly eight. At this distance merely a ragged horizontal mark, but human, violent. The sea tormented with light, assailed by glittering splinters. The whole bay quivers with brilliant pain.
Soon it will be time for Hassan, the shore fisherman, to emerge from the shadow of the café, step out on to the bright empty shore, with his gathered net, like a person entering another's dream. Hassan and his net provide me with analogy, a high service. He was sent to me, I am convinced of it, sent to me at the beginning of my report, when I was passionately eager to write everything to you, Excellency, everything without reserve, he was sent to warn me against attempts at such inclusiveness. Picture the net at its moment of meeting the water. I mean, as thrown with all Hassan's cunning. It meets the water at fullest extent. That moment is the net's perfection of form – but it is a perfection defined by what it must necessarily exclude. Exactly that perfection is what I seek in this report. You see how it is, Excellency? We live in a world of mutually reinforcing images, and God pays me in insights for my attention to this world.
He has just appeared again, this time walking in the opposite direction, along the shore towards the headland. Not Hassan, the Englishman. Mister Bowles. I looked up from the page and saw him, midway between the water and the wall. Dressed again for walking, in heavy shoes, loose-fitting grey trousers, the same brown hat. I watched his figure slowly receding against the coruscating expanse of the bay. When he was beginning to grow indistinct against the rocks of the headland, I went and got Signor Niccoli's telescope. Now I could see him clearly again, walking steadily, looking neither to right nor left. I had assumed that when he reached the limit of the bay he would turn back. He could, of course, if he wanted to walk further, clamber over the rocks and get down into the next, much smaller, bay-from that point to the head of the promontory there is a series of rocky inlets. However, he did neither of these things. When he was nearing the low wall of rock he turned away from the sea, crossed the upper, steeper part of the shore. He disappeared for a minute or two, then I saw him again higher up, watched him climb until he was lost among the rock and scrub of the foothills.
Where is he making for? Perhaps that fold in the hills, above the old harbour, the area he spoke of. Prosecuting his researches. Possibly. But there could be other reasons. He could be making his own survey of the coast-for landing stages perhaps, or seeking some contact with the people in the interior. There are, as we all know, rebel forces in the mountains. We see their fires. Your troops are ambushed in lonely places. These people come down into the villages for supplies and nobody says anything. It may be that Mister Bowles has come to give them encouragement or money, stir up a bit of murder-for the best of reasons, no doubt, reasons these days are always excellent. Deaths here could be of benefit somewhere, to someone, provide a bargaining point, strengthen an argument. The Powers dabble in blood, if you will forgive the play on words.
We must make no violent movements, Excellency. We must emulate Mrs Socratous in the lobby of the Metropole, keeping as still as possible. Your Empire is the most cosmopolitan the world has ever seen, a multiplicity of races, creeds and tongues, united in the Ottoman state. A perfect equivalent, in political terms, of that unity in diversity which has exercised philosophers ever since Thales. (He held the opinion, if you will remember, that the world, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, is made of water.)
This unity can only be preserved by our remaining immobile. Avoid sudden gestures, Excellency. Avoid detonations. Avoid radical reform. There are certain phases in the progress of decay which can become interminable. We are living through one such. They have called us the Sick Man of Europe, but invalids can outlive their squabbling heirs. Let us aim at protracted moribundity. Make repairs by all means. Soothe local discontents. Review the pay structure for those in government service, especially your faithful and anonymous army of spies. That much motion will serve to keep carrion birds at bay.
The particles cluster to you, their natural lode and only attractive principle. By granting constitutions you will break this field of force. And what will they do, with their shining new nationhood? Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians, Macedonians. I will tell you, Excellency. They will devise uniforms and anthems and distinctive ways of marching on parade. They will be quick to take offence. It is a dignified thing to be a nation, and honour can only be served by inflicting atrocities up and down your new-found borders. More important than this, there is the attitude of the Powers to be considered. Take Austria, for example. Italy could shut off the Adriatic tomorrow, if she wished. If that were to happen, think how important Salonika would become to the Hapsburgs. Do you think they will allow the Slavs autonomy in Macedonia?
It is more than thirty years since your accession, and I have seen your dominions loosening, falling away from year to year. You must keep still, Excellency.
Why is it that I feel uneasy, giving this excellent advice of a faithful servant? Perhaps I smell again the steam of your Empire, vaporised blood. It hangs in the air of our immobility.
What is he doing, up there in the hills? Lydia may know something. A visit to her studio might elicit some information; or at least, though lower in the scale of things, food. I have not eaten today yet.
I did not continue yesterday, feeling tired after my visit to Lydia 's studio. Tired and unwell. In fact I almost lost consciousness, on the steps up to my balcony. That was after leaving the Englishman. The blood was beating in my head and my vision was impaired for some minutes. I went to bed but could not sleep for a long time, not till early morning. Today I feel better. I need new glasses, Excellency. These I have had for ten years now. I was giving French lessons during that period to the daughters of the magistrate and to the Assistant Chief of Police, and I was able to save a little. I got the glasses in Smyrna. They are good glasses, but my eyes need stronger lenses now.
