The Magus, A Revised Version (26 page)

The horn broke the tense night again. Three notes, the middle the highest. They echoed faintly from some steep hillside inland, the primitive timbre seeming to wake the landscape and the night, to summon from an evolutionary sleep.

I said to Lily,
‘
What is it?
’

She held my eyes for a moment; with a strange hint of doubt, as if she half suspected me of knowing perfectly well what it was.

‘
Apollo.
’

‘
Apollo!
’

Again the horn was blown, but at a higher pitch, and closer, too close to the house now for me to see anything, because of the parapet, even if it had not been night. Conchis still sat with his oblivious face. Lily stood and held out a hand.

‘
Come.
’

I let her lead me to where we had stood before, at the eastern end of the terrace. She stared down into the trees, and I glanced at her profile.

‘
Someone seems to be mixing metaphors.
’

She couldn
’
t quite press the smile out of her mouth. My hand was gently squeezed.

‘
Be good. Watch.
’

The gravel, the clearing, the trees: I could see nothing unusual.

‘
I just wish I had a programme. That
’
s all.
’

‘
How very dull of you, Mr Urfe.
’

‘
Nicholas. Please.
’

But whatever answer she might have given to that was forestalled. From somewhere between the house and Maria
’
s cottage there came a beam of light. It was not very strong, from a small electric torch. In it, some sixty yards away on the edge of the pines, a figure stood like a marble statue. With a new shock I realized that it was that of an absolutely naked man. He was just near enough for me to make out the black pubic hair, the pale scape of his penis; tall, well-built, well cast to be Apollo. His eyes seemed exaggeratedly large, as if they had been made up. On his head there was a glint of gold, a crown of leaves; laurel-leaves. He was facing us, immobile, with his yard-long horn, a narrow crescent with a flared end, held slightly out from his waist in his right hand. It struck me after a few seconds that his skin was an unnatural white, almost phosphorescent in the weak beam, as if his body as well as his face had been painted.

I looked back: Conchis still sat as before … then at Lily, who watched the figure without expression, yet with a kind of intentness
–
as if she had seen this rehearsed, and was now curious to see the full performance
–
that silenced any desire in me to be facetious. The charade itself shocked me less than the revelation that I was not the only young male at Bourani. I knew that at once.

‘
Who is he?
’

‘
My brother.
’

‘
I thought you were meant to be an only child.
’

The Apollo figure raised his horn sideways and blew a different note, sustained, yet more urgent, as if calling lost hounds.

Lily said slowly, without taking her eyes from him,
‘
That is in the other world.
’
And then, before I could challenge her further, she pointed to our left, beyond the cottage. A faint light shape came running out of the dark tunnel where the track to the house emerged from the trees. The torch-beam moved to her
–
it was a girl, and she too was naked, except for antique sandals that were laced up her calves; or perhaps not quite naked
–
either the pubic hair had been shaved or she wore some kind of
cache-sexe.
Her hair was bound back in a classical style, and as with the Apollo her body and face seemed unnaturally white. She was running too quickly for me to see her features. She threw a look back as she came towards us, she was being chased.

She ran towards the sea, between the Apollo and the two of us standing on the terrace. Then a third figure appeared behind her. Another man, running out of the trees and down the track. He was got up as a satyr, in some kind of puffed-out hairy tights, goat-haunches ; and he had the traditional head, a beard, two stubby horns. His naked torso was dark, almost black. As he ran closer, gaining on the girl, I had my next shock. A huge phallus rose from his loins. It was nearly eighteen inches long, far too massive to be meant realistically, but it was effectively obscene. I suddenly remembered the painting in the bowl of the kylix in the room below us; and also remembered I was a long way from home. I felt unsure, out of my depth, a lot more innocent and unsophisticated at heart than I liked to pretend. I slid a quick look at the girl beside me. I thought I detected a faint smile, a kind of excitement at cruelty, even when being mimed, that I did not like; it was very remote from the Edwardian
‘
other world
’
whose clothes she still wore.

I looked back at the nymph, at her white back and dishevelled hair, her seemingly near-exhausted legs. She plunged into the trees going down towards the sea, and disappeared
–
and then, in a
coup de th
éâ
tre,
a much stronger beam shone out from directly beneath where we stood. Standing there, in the place where the first girl had just disappeared, a place where the ground rose a little before falling abruptly towards the beach, was yet another, the most striking figure of all, a woman in a long saffron chiton. It had a blood-red hem where it ended at the knees. On her feet were black buskins with silver greaves, which gave her a grim gladiatorial look, in strange contrast to the bare shoulders and arms. Again the skin was unnaturally white, the eyes elongated by black make-up, and the hair was also elongated backwards in a way that was classical yet sinister. Over her shoulders she had a silver quiver and in her left hand, a silver bow. Something in her stance, as well as the distorted face, was genuinely frightening.

She stood there for several moments, cold and outraged and ominously barring the way. Then she reached back with her free hand and with a venomous quickness pulled an arrow out of the quiver. But before she could fit it to the bow-string, the beam tracked back to the arrested satyr. He stood spectacularly terrified, his arms flung back and his head averted, the mock phallus
–
in the better light I
could see it was jet black
–
still erect. It was a pose without realism, yet dramatic. The beam swept back to the goddess. She had her bow at full stretch, the arrow went. I saw it fly, but lost it in the darkness. A moment later the beam returned to the satyr. He was clutching the arrow
–
or an arrow
–
to his heart. He fell slowly to his knees, swayed a second, then slumped sideways among the stones and thyme-bushes. The stronger torch lingered on him, as if to impress the fact of his death; then it was extinguished. Beyond, in the weaker original beam, Apollo stood impassively, surveying, a pale marmoreal shadow, like some divine umpire, president of the arena. The goddess began to walk, a striding huntress walk, her silver bow held in one hand by her side, towards him. They stood facing us for a moment, then each raised a free hand, the palm bent back, in a kind of final tableau, a grave salutation. It was another effective gesture. It had a fleeting, but genuine, dignity, the farewell of immortals. But then the remaining light went out. I could still just distinguish the two pale shadows, turning away now with the rather mundane haste of actors eager to get
off
stage while the lights are down.

Lily moved, as if to distract me from this more pedestrian side of things.

‘
Excuse me one moment.
’

She crossed towards where Conchis sat. I saw her bend over and whisper something. Then I looked back to the east. A dark shape moved towards the trees: the satyr. There was a tiny sound from the colonnade below, someone had accidentally bumped into a chair and made its legs scrape. Four other actors, two people doing the lighting … the mechanics of the mounting of this and the other incidents began to seem quite as uncanny as truly supernatural happenings. I tried to imagine what connection there was between the elderly man on the road by the hotel, the
‘
pre-haunting
’
, and this scene I had just witnessed. I thought I had grasped, during Conchis
’
s telling, the point of the
caract
è
re
of de Deukans. He had been talking of himself and me
–
the parallels were too close for it to mean anything else.
‘
And discouraged every kind of question …
‘
how unable
‘
I
was to judge him
’
…
‘
very few friends and no relations
’
…
but where did that tie in with this latest episode?

Plainly it was an attempt at the sort of
‘
scandalous evocation
’
mentioned in
Le Masque Fran
ç
ais.
At that level I could laugh at it,
and at any attempt to resurrect the psychic nonsense. But more and more I smelt some nasty drift in Conchis
’
s divertimenti. That phallus, the nakedness, the naked girl… I had an idea that sooner or later I was going to be asked to perform as well, that this was some initiation to a much darker adventure that I was prepared for, a society, a cult, I didn
’
t know what, where Miranda was nothing and Caliban reigned. I also felt irrationally jealous of all these other people who had appeared from nowhere to poach in
‘
my
’
territory, who were in some way in conspiracy against me, who knew more. I could try to be content as a spectator, to let these increasingly weird incidents flow past me as one sits in a cinema and lets the film flow past. But even as I thought that, I knew it was a bad analogy. People don
’
t build cinemas for an audience of one, unless they mean to use that one for a very special purpose.

At last Lily straightened from where she had stood bent beside Conchis, talking in a low voice to him. She came back towards me. There was a little sliver of knowingness in her eyes now: an unmistakable curiosity to see how I had reacted to this latest development. I smiled and made a little movement of the head: I was impressed, but not fooled … and I was very careful to show her that I was not shocked, either. She smiled.

‘
I must go now, Mr Urfe.
’

‘
Congratulate your friends on their performance.
’

She pretended to be taken aback, and her eyelids fluttered as if she knew she was being teased.

‘
You surely did not suppose they were merely performing?
’

I said gently,
‘
Come
off
it.
’

But I received no answer. Her eyes had the tiniest trace of a smile, and then she very delicately bit her lips, before touching her skirt and dropping me the ghost of a curtsey.

‘
When shall I see you again?
’

Her eyes flicked back towards Conchis, though her head did not move. Once again I was to believe we were in collusion together.

‘
That depends on when I am next woken from my immemorial sleep.
’

‘
I hope it
’
s very soon.
’

She raised her fan to her lips, ju
st as she had with the recorder
brush, and pointed surreptitiously back to Conchis. I watched her disappear into the house, then I went and stood across the table from him. He seemed recovered from his trance. His eyes were even more intense than usual, like black phosphorus, almost leechlike; much more the eyes of a scientist checking the result of an experiment, the state of the guinea-pig, than of a host seeking approval from a guest after a spectacular entertainment. I knew he knew I was confused, even though I looked down at him from behind my chair with the same small sceptical smile I had tried on Lily. Somehow I also knew that he no longer expected me to believe what I was supposed to believe. I sat down, and still he stared, and I had to say something.

‘
I
’
d enjoy it all more if I knew what it meant.
’

That pleased him. He sat back and smiled.

‘
My dear Nicholas, man has been saying what you have just said for the last ten thousand years. And the one common feature of all the gods he has said it to is that not one of them has ever returned an answer.
’

‘
Gods don
’
t exist to answer. You do.
’