The Avignon Quintet (137 page)

She surprised herself by this sudden and quite spontaneous formulation. Where had it come from? Obviously she must have read it somewhere – for after all the whole subject of Eastern metaphysics was quite foreign to her study and indeed her interest. “You know more than you realise,” he said happily. “Now I’m putting you in the beginners class so you can jest learn the alphabet; later on the letters will make words and then the words will make sentences – that is if you don’t get bored and jest drop the whole thing. It does happen and it isn’t important. The science is for those who reely want it and need it and are prepared to make an effort. Like me wanting to become a
champ
– it was an obsession, and I made sacrifices to get there. However it didn’t work, I didn’t have the class. Then age took a hand and I lost out.”

“And now?” she asked.

“Bless you, I’m jest happy without any kind of afterthoughts. They showed me how one could meditate sweetly and gradually harmonise with the goings-on of the whole wide world!”

“It sounds great!”

“It certainly is. I’m telling
you!”

And so had begun her insinuation into the mysteries of the craft, and now while she thought back upon it she realised why she had never mentioned it to her colleague. He had once or twice hinted that all such matters whose provenance was Indian were somewhat intellectually disreputable in a scientist of the twentieth century: and she valued his good opinion! If ever asked she had been wont to say that twice a week she took a relaxing Turkish bath in the town. So the yoga had remained a secret between herself and Max. Yet not completely – for later Affad had redeemed this whole field of knowledge by admitting something that neither Max nor Schwarz could have admitted – namely that the heart of all these dissimilar sciences was the same heart. Max knew no science and Schwarz no yogic lore; she felt herself to be intellectually living in a double life between them, each with his claims upon her time and intelligence. If driven to it Schwarz would even quote Kipling on the question of East being East, etc. But thank goodness one day Affad took up the discussion and surprised her by saying quite simply that “Einstein’s non-discrete field, Groddeck’s ‘It’, and Pursewarden’s ‘heraldic universe’ were all one and the same concept and would easily answer to the formulations of Patanjali.” Her heart leaped with joy to hear this, for the whole weight of such tiring speculations had been pressing upon her mind, causing her anxiety and muddle in her thoughts, not to mention doubts about her methods. Of course! And one more reason to love Affad – insight was so much more important than physical beauty. As they sat confronting one another in silence she had the sudden physical feeling of his presence beside her – perhaps at that moment he was thinking of her, desiring her. Trains came and went and the forest of human feet pounded the dark pavements of the quais outside the bar. She drank and listened to her own thoughts as they scurried hither and thither like mice: all thoughts of the past. It was strange how this breach in their relationship had stopped her in her tracks – she felt quite futureless, everything lay in the past and was bathed in the sunshine of reminiscence. O where was Affad now?

TWO

The Inquisition

W
HERE INDEED
?
THEIR PLANE WAS DELAYED IN TURKEY
by bad weather – the Prince behaved as if it had happened deliberately in order to annoy him further. Nothing would convince him that the Turks (“they have souls of mud like the Nubians”) had not organised the whole thing from the depths of their anti-Egyptian feeling, even the weather which was so inclement. They spent a sombre weekend watching rain and cloud lying like smoke upon the echoing vistas of the capital – at its best a proud and sinister place. Even the beauties of the Bosphorus were dazzled and rubbed out by the wind and waves, and a racing darkness. The pleasant excursion to Eyoub which they always took was hardly tempting in such frowning weather. Moreover the subject of the journey and that of Constance weighed heavily between them; indeed every time these subjects were touched upon the Prince flew into a vehemence and was so acid that the long-suffering Affad began to wax irritated. They sat among palms in the hotel, where the Prince impatiently read out-of-date newspapers and cracked his finger-joints while Affad played solitaire on a green card table in a self-commiserating sort of manner, swearing from time to time, under his breath and in several languages. The coming Inquisition filled him with guilty gloom and apprehension.

After one sally by the Prince he turned on him and said, “I implore you to drop the subject – I know your views on it too well! I know that I have to face the enquiry and answer for a gross and lamentable failure of nerve – but let me prepare myself quietly for it and not be chivvied out of my mind …”

“Who is chivvying
who
?” growled the scowling Prince, and Affad replied just as testily, “You are. And if you don’t stop I’ll take another plane.”

The Prince snorted with contempt. “
What
other plane I’d like to know!”

It was very much to the point. They had sent a telegram announcing their tardy arrival in Alexandria. The Prince after a moment of silence could not resist a resumption of hostilities. “I hope you’ll have the grace to confess that you have exercised a baleful influence on the poor girl – among other things encouraging all this yogi-bogey stuff she has got interested in.”

“It’s something you would do well to get interested in yourself before you fall apart, Prince. Those awful attacks of sciatica, for example. You could dispense with all those injections. And then your belly …”

“What’s wrong with my belly?” said the Prince haughtily, mounting his high horse.

“The Princess thinks it too protuberant.”

The little man snorted. “People of my rank cannot be expected to stand about in artificial postures dressed in a loin cloth, nor live on goat’s milk. Who the hell do you think I am, Gandhi? And all this physical stuff, in my walk of life and at my age … it’s preposterous. You have influenced a serious scientist with all this Indian mumbo-jumbo. And you, with a degree in economics and humanities!”

It was Affad’s turn to pass into a vehemence. He drew a breath and said, “It is quite gratuitous and you are behaving like a Philistine, which you are not. I have already explained to you exactly what yoga is about in scientific terms. There is
nothing
in it that contradicts western science at any point. It is simply spine-culture intended to restore the original suppleness of the muscle schemes of the body and to feed them on oxygen with the help of the lungs. You treat the whole body as a keyboard and muscle by muscle get it back into optimum condition, as supple as a snake or a cat, ideally. The
asanas
are breathing codes. They teach the muscles their role and finally the movements become sort of mental acts. The muscles are oxygen-filled and get to become almost mental acts when they move.”

“Rigmarole!” said the Prince firmly. “Mere rigmarole!” Affad produced a characteristic grunt of indignation. After all, he had not known in any detail the extent of Constance’s preoccupation with these new lessons she had started taking – nor indeed did it much concern him, except that they were valuable: for he himself had followed courses in the science long ago and had profited from them. He had in fact cured a recurrent spinal complaint in a period of two years of methodical practice. “Mental acts!” he went on heatedly. “And once informed the muscle stays in trim eternally, or until decrepitude sets in, or illness. I fully approve of her investigations, for that is what they are. And philosophically speaking the whole process is one of progressive cosmic helplessness. It relinquishes its resistance to entropy, and the basic realisation which meditation brings is really n-dimensional.
You
could do with a bit of that yourself. After all your own sexual follies foisted on you by that
idiot
house-doctor of yours! Involving children and dogs and so on, just because you began to fear impotence and were scared to talk to the Princess about it.”

This was beginning to be extremely unfair, and the Prince clenched his fists for all the world as if he were about to punch Affad in the eye. He inflated his lungs fully, as if about to launch into a tirade or utter a shout, but he did neither; he remained poised, as it were, for a long moment, and then burst into a prolonged chuckle. “You brute!” he said, and aimed a make-believe blow at Affad’s abdomen. “What an unfair thing to say!” Affad shook his head: “
Au contraire
, a moment of yoga would have set your doubts at rest in the matter and avoided all sorts of compromising and ridiculous situations – for a man of your rank, I mean, since you keep bringing it up!”

The Prince reflected deeply, nodding as he thought. “It was a terrible period,” he admitted, thinking back no doubt to the brothel in Avignon where he had once organised what he was wont to describe as a “little spree”. The thought gave him cold shudders now. Thank goodness he had confided everything in the Princess and with her help recovered his balance, as well (to his surprised relief) as his virility. Now when he thought back upon that period he had cold shudders, for it was clear that if the Princess had left him it would have been not because of his sexual misdemeanours so much as his lack of confidence in her as a confidante. She was keen on her role as wife and helpmeet. He sighed. “Thank God all that is over.” And now all of a sudden his evil humour deserted him and was replaced by an affectionate concern for his friend and for the reception he must get from the small committee in Alexandria who awaited the sinner’s return. The executive arm of the fellowship was limited to three members who operated with a formal anonymity on behalf of the whole group; but as they were rotated with great regularity every year it was not possible to guess in detail at their composition. Thus the Prince, who would have loved to try and intervene on his friend’s behalf, or to use his influence to secure some sort of favourable view of his crime – the word is not too strong – was checked by the fact that he did not know whether he had a personal friend among the three to whom he might appeal.… The very idea was of course immoral and unthinkable in the gnostic context, but then it was not for nothing that the Prince was a man of the Orient and impregnated with its labyrinthine strategies!

The night drew on and the thunder rumbled. Affad relinquished his solitaire for some sleepy general conversation before suggesting that they should go to bed and not wait for a summons from the airport which would never come because of the wind and pelting rain.

They shambled up to bed like sleepy bears, and were woken at three o’clock with the intelligence that the plane was ready to leave within the hour, and would touch down at Alexandria – an unusual concession to the Prince’s eminence and also to his wire-pulling which was, as always, inspired.

They dozed for the most part in the ill-lit plane and made their way slowly across the waters, tossing and swaying into Egypt where the inadequate aerodrome had been alerted to light them in along a flare path manifestly too short for any but small wartime planes. A bumping and grinding landing rounded off this disagreeable journey; a chalky greasy dawn was coming up as the office car rounded the last headland by the dunes and entered the sleeping town with its soft whirling klaxon pleading with strings of early camels plodding to market with vegetables. “I shall say no more – except tell me as soon as you can what they say,” said the Prince and his companion nodded, smiling wanly. “It’s impossible to foresee their judgement,” he said, “because it has never happened before, an apostasy like mine. O Lord! It will have created a precedent.” He sounded close to tears of misery, which indeed he was. The Prince left him – a dozen servants had been waiting all night on the steps of the town house, wet and miserable but faithful as dogs. They whipped open the door and conjured away his baggage. Affad was driven on; his more modest house was set in a grove of palm trees, back from the boulevard. His garden ran beside that of the museum, and indeed from his cellar there was a secret entrance into its basement. Sometimes after dinner he took his guests through the secret door and into the gloomy crypt where so many treasures (which could not be shown for lack of space) stood or lay, shrouded in sheets. Indeed the museum itself was most charming by yellow candlelight, and he used to carry a branch of Venetian candles with him on such occasions. But his own house was more modestly staffed than that of the Prince; a cook and a butler, the faithful and negligent Said, made up the whole staff.

As his key clicked in the door his valet Said rose from the armchair in which he had spent the night’s vigil and advanced, rubbing his eyes but smiling delightedly to see his master again. Affad greeted him affectionately and stood steadily divesting himself until the servant carried away his coats and freed him to advance and make a loving tour of the home in which he had spent so many years of his life – many of them quite alone except for the servants. A clock gave off a soft musical chime as if to welcome him back. The statue of Pallas and the stuffed raven were still on the ledge above the fanlight. His books were arrayed on either side of the Adam fireplace – a fine array of friends. He advanced, touched the covers with his fingers as if to identify and greet the author of each, and then progressed towards the group of Tanagra figures in their glass case. He licked his finger and touched the glass to verify if Said had cleaned in his absence or not. But in reality he was searching for something. The servant came back with his mail – a meagre collection of bills for water and electricity, and appeals for hospitals and homes. No, it was not that. He knew that they must have summoned him to a rendezvous. Normally such a missive would have been slipped under the door. He questioned the servant, but no, he had seen nothing like that. He sat down for a moment and drank the coffee which had been prepared for him as he reflected. Finally in some perplexity – for he had expected an instant and peremptory message – he took himself off to his sumptuous bathroom for a bath and a complete change of clothing, not without a certain feeling of relief. Perhaps the whole business might be delayed for a while? On the other hand, he longed to have it over and done with as summarily as possible.