The Avignon Quintet (66 page)

The Prince had divested himself of everything that covered the top half of his grey little body; he sat, so to speak, clad only in his heavy paps, and had a sort of chinless grandeur. His nether half was clad in lightweight Jaeger combinations which stretched to the ankle and through the fly-slit of which depended the royal member with its innocent pink tip. Quatrefages also presented a somewhat equivocal appearance, being clad only in a shirt and socks. He was clearly engaged in a long explanation or exhortation addressed to Riquiqui who stood almost out of range and half in shadow – so that it seemed that the clerk was talking with animation to two outsize breasts bulging out of a dirty shift. Beside them stood a puzzled female dwarf with a hideously rouged face as if ready for the circus; she was clad in white organdie with a marriage veil. Moreover, she was jingling with trinkets and had obviously been dressed against a very special occasion. As a matter of fact she had been specially dressed for the Prince, but now his companion was expressing the Prince’s discontent with her, and indeed his general discomforture, presumably because of her age. Yes, it was not hard to follow the train of the argument. The dwarf was too old and too big to appeal to the Prince. But they were being polite about it and the horrible little creature bobbed her agreement and dipped lovingly into a big box of Turkish Delight which the Prince had pushed towards her. She had huge, discoloured teeth like rotting dice.

As for Riquiqui she appeared to be at her wits’ end to meet the unusual demand. Languidly the little man extended a hand and indicated that what he desired was much smaller, very much smaller. He lent weight to his argument with flowery little gestures which indicated clearly that there was no question of ill-feeling or bad humour involved. He was asking, not commanding. His tone was civilised and equable. He proffered the box of loucoumi and Riquiqui in her turn dug out a cube of Turkish Delight and wolfed it, licking the powder off her talons, before dusting her shift to remove the last traces of it. Then she held up her finger as one who sees daylight at last and bustled off, leaving them to their whisky. The misshapen little phantom of pleasure followed her, ripping off her bridal veil with an abrupt gesture like an actor quitting a wig as he left the stage.

Left alone, the two occupants of the centre of the stage – the suggestion of intimate theatre was irresistible because of the severely framed scene and the brilliantly stagey lighting – reloaded their glasses and conversed in low tones. The clerk was flushed and jovial-looking in his somewhat unclean shirt. The Prince in his long combinations looked quite regal still in an attenuated sort of way. He scratched his small decoration and exuded amiability. They had not long to wait, for at last Riquiqui burst in, flushed with success, hand in hand with two little girls dressed in a manner appropriate to a First Communion. Their faces were heavily rouged, which gave them the appearance of wearing painted masks through which they peered with unafraid but puzzled wonder. She paused, the huge woman, for dramatic effect as she entered, presenting her charges boldly but hesitantly.
Eureka
! She had remembered the existence of a couple of “angels”, no doubt.

The result was a foregone conclusion. The Prince’s radiant features expressed his delight and relief; he looked like a small boy who was turning cartwheels from sheer elation. Quatrefages folded his arms after setting down his glass and beamed upon the lady while the Prince extended his hands to take hers and move them half-way to his lips in a simulated kiss of congratulation. The two little children stood mum-chance, but with a kindly air. They were sucking sweets. The Prince stood up and embraced them warmly; then he waved his arms and muttered something in Arabic and his major-domo (who must have been waiting in the shadows, the wings, so to speak) entered the lighted stage leading two large and beautifully groomed Afghan hounds on a gold leash.

The Prince clapped his hands in ecstasy and gave a little crow of laughter; he beamed round on the assembled company. Clearly everything was in order now. The next stage.…

Riquiqui threw open a side door which gave on to a bedroom of the house which had been decorated in the most extravagant fashion; a vast damascened bed lay under a lozenge-shaped pier-glass. It was covered in a gold cloth, and the shelf above it was full of children’s dolls clad in folklore costumes. The walls themselves were draped with scarlet shawls and the whole context suggested a scene from
The Phantom of the Opera
. The little manikins looked as if they were the shrunken bodies of real children which had been patiently and fastidiously pickled before being dressed as harlequins, Arlésiennes, Catalans and Basques. Into this décor she ushered the Prince, now amiably holding the hands of the two children. The dogs, now off the leash, followed at his heels like well-drilled servants who knew their duty. The stage-set was so piquant and the actors so unaware that they were being observed that the two eavesdroppers almost forgot to feel the anxious disgust which had started to seize them.

But it was at this moment that Quatrefages entered the lavatory right under their noses and closed the door on this equivocal spectacle. He sat himself down on the throne and proceeded to more primitive business. They soon could hear his grunts and sighs right under their chins. It was quite a dilemma – they did not wish to be discovered in this spying posture. And they were suddenly aware of the precariousness of their station, for they could not simply jump down and run away. In the darkness one could have broken an ankle. So they stayed on, mentally swearing at the wretched clerk, and hoping that he would soon finish and restore them the lighted stage and the grotesque Egyptian. On the other hand, they could hardly pass the rest of the night standing up there on the oil drum watching the sexual evolutions of this Mecca-blessed libertine. A wild indecision reigned which matched their general situation; neither spoke because neither could think.

No doubt their frustration and gradually mounting discomfort would have sooner or later forced them to take a decision, but fate determined otherwise, for Quatrefages completed his business to his own satisfaction and pulled the chain; and as if by the same token the door was thrown open and the brightly lit stage once more revealed to them. There was a slight change of disposition – the door of the inner room was almost closed and even by craning the neck it would not have been possible to see with any clarity exactly what the Prince and his livestock were up to. Riquiqui was sitting down in a manner so relaxed as to suggest the puncture of an inner tube; and she was profiting by the absence of the Prince to renew her attack on the box of gummy sweets.

The little hunchback crossed the stage – now nude – and seated herself at what appeared to be a small upright piano covered in coloured shawls. She began to pick out monotonous little tunes on it with one finger. Quatrefages firmly retrieved his drink and spread himself over a divan with a relaxed and gluttonous air. The conversation flagged. There were a few indistinct sounds from the direction of the Prince’s room but nothing very concrete that might be interpreted. The whole atmosphere had become now slack and humdrum, lacking in great interest, and Blanford began to find his toes going to sleep. It was clearly time to get down and go home. He was about to express this thought to his friend when there was a sudden irruption onto the little stage which all at once reinjected vitality into the drama, brought everything alive again.

The major-domo burst clucking and chattering into the room once more (apparently through the front door, for they heard the bolts shriek) and demanded the presence of his master at once. When he was advised to be patient his voice jumped a whole octave and his hysteria mounted to the ceiling. Greatly daring (so they thought) he threw open the door of the bedroom and revealed a scene of almost domestic tranquillity – the Prince on the bed surrounded by children and dogs and himself wearing a communion veil at which the children were both laughing heartily. He shot up indignantly, forgetting to remove the veil, and let fly a stream of Arabic oaths at the head of his servant, who, however, continued to babble and gesticulate. Apparently the gravity of what he had to relate alone justified this intrusion. After a moment of wild rage the truth dawned on the Prince and he sat up to listen to what the excited man was actually saying. Whatever he at last began to comprehend had an altogether electrifying effect upon him for he leaped out of bed with commendable agility and dashed into the next room, heading for the direction of the front door and crying in a high bird-like tone and in the English of Cairo, “They have pinched the bloody coach.”

Such was the excitement of the two men, such was the velocity of their movements, that everyone took fire, everyone was sucked into the procession in spite of themselves, whirled into the drama by the sheer momentum of the Prince’s dramatic dash. The two young men balanced on the oil drums outside also gave way to a wave of panic as they realised that the whole of this sudden surge led towards the open street, where they might be discovered in this ignominious posture. They jumped down and by the beam of the torch picked their way through the shattered detritus of the old foundations walls.

But the Prince and his servant, with the trajectory of comets, had rushed into the street, and as if quite mesmerised, so had the rest of them – Riquiqui, Quatrefages, the little naked dwarf, the dogs and the communicating children. They all stood gazing about them in a daze of wonder and confusion and anger, for the coach which had apparently been standing before the front door, had disappeared. The Prince stamped his naked foot on the pavement with a gesture of febrile vexation, while his servant, as if to make quite sure, ran to the corner of the street and quested about generally like a gun-dog trying for a scent. Then he came back shaking his head and muttering. The Prince gazed around him, his regard travelling from face to face as if for sympathy. “Who could have done it—” he said, and Riquiqui, who had shown less surprise and consternation than the others, replied, “It’s the gipsies. Leave it to me. Tomorrow I will find them.”

The company was so absorbed in this little drama that they greeted the appearance of Felix and Blanford in an almost absent-minded way, hardly greeting them; but when they brought evidence to suggest that the coach had been stolen some good time ago (for it had not been there when they arrived) they managed to kindle a little interest. They were, after all, potential clients – so thought the little dwarf, who tried to link her arm in that of Felix, to his pained horror. “I will call the police,” said the Prince in a sudden burst of childish petulance. “I will telephone to Farouk.” It carried little conviction, for there he was with his little member protruding from his long woollen combinations.

Quatrefages, after a moment of reflection, led him muttering back into the house of pleasure and this time Blanford and Felix followed them in order to have a drink and to reassure themselves about the absence of Livia. Quatrefages, overcome by a sudden pudicity, became aware of his naked condition and hunted for his trousers before pouring out more whisky; the Prince retired haughtily to the inner room with his dogs and children and banged the door, leaving instructions that he was not to be disturbed for at least an hour. Blanford sipped his drink and heard the tinny piano tinkle. He felt suddenly terribly sleepy. Quatrefages said with a malicious grin: “Livia has gone to the gipsies.”

So she had been there that evening, and had given them the slip as usual! Felix could not repress a slightly malicious side-glance at his fellow sufferer; but Blanford looked more angry than sad. He was telling himself that this would have to stop – this infatuation would have to be brought to an end. “It leads nowhere,” he said aloud, talking to himself. At last the real truth of the matter had dawned on him – but like every glimpse of truth it was only fleeting and provisional. With the other half of his mind, so to speak, he was still lamed by his inner vision of her, of her sullen magnetism, of those expiring kisses which had ignited their minds. He did not care for the sardonic remarks of the clerk nor the cynical looks of Felix – the matter was too important, went too far into the gulfs of hopeless sentiment, of bewitchment, for the others to appreciate it.

He hugged his mood to himself, ignoring the rest of them, treasuring every little stab of pleasure or pain which it brought. What did it matter what Livia was or what she did? A strange metaphor came into his mind which expressed the exact nature of this attachment – a metaphor which centuries later Sutcliffe would use when he tried to define his gross attachment to the pale wraith Pia, who was a diluted version of the girl Constance, Livia’s sister. But in his present mind it was Livia who provoked this thought which one would have had to be an alchemist to understand. What he loved in her was her “water” – as of a precious stone. It is after all what is really loved in a woman – not the sheath of matter which covers her – but her “signature”. In the middle of all the chatter and movement of the brothel he found himself brooding upon this fact in all its singularity and wishing for a scrap of paper on which to jot it down. He would have liked to incorporate it into his diary but he knew that by the morrow he would have forgotten it.

Suddenly an enormous lassitude had taken hold of him. “I want to go home,” he said yawning, and to his surprise Felix pronounced himself of the same disposition. Blanford felt so lonely he could have gone out into the dark street and waved vigorously to imaginary people. Quatrefages said he would come too –
“J’ai tiré mon petit coup,”
he said modestly. And the Prince? Why, he was to be left; the major-domo would see him safely home to the Imperial where he had taken up his headquarters. Already a substitute pumpkin-coach in the shape of a town
fiacre
had been summoned and stood at the door. But the night was no longer young, and the three young men felt sallow and spent. So they set off across the town on foot, finding some refreshment in the dark coolness which was full of the scent of lemons and mandarines and honeysuckle. Felix would be the first home, then the clerk; Blanford wanted to sit somewhere and watch the dawn come up, to let his thought of Livia ripen like some huge gourd. The pain was in the pleasure – a novelty for him, he realised.